I.
Some two weeks after that day of tragedy—a tragedy that had stirred and enraged the whole station—Theo Desmond and Paul Wyndham left Kohat on furlough, long over-due to both. Such a wander-year, spent together, had, from early days, been one of their cherished dreams; but, as too often happens, there proved little family likeness between the dream and the reality. In the dream, Desmond was naturally to be the leading spirit of their grand tour. In the reality, all practical plans and considerations had devolved on Paul, and Theo it was who assented, unquestioning, uncaring, so long as he could put half the world between himself and Kohat.
His long illness, the fear of losing his sight, the double shock of self-revelation and loss had affected him mentally as blow on blow affects a man physically. Since the night of his wife's death none had seen him strongly moved, either by sorrow, pleasure, or anger. He had said and done all that was required of him with a strained unnatural precision. Even to the few who had drawn nearest to him in former times of trouble, he seemed now like a house whose every door is locked and every shutter drawn.
Outwardly unmoved, he had endured the ordeal of Evelyn's funeral, the storm of public surprise and indignation aroused by her murder. Though British officers, not a few, have been victims to fanaticism in India, no Englishwoman had ever been shot at before, and the strong feeling aroused by so dastardly a crime had been long in subsiding. The news had been wired to Peshawur. The Commissioner had galloped across thirty miles of desert next morning; and before Evelyn's funeral, at sundown, her death had been openly avenged by the hanging of her murderer and the burning of his body.
On that day Honor had gone over to Mrs Conolly's bungalow, there to remain till Meredith's arrival; and in the two weeks that followed, Desmond had seen little of her—or of any one save Paul. She had helped him in disposing of Evelyn's personal belongings; and at his earnest request, had accepted one or two of her trinkets, the remainder being sent home to her mother. At his request also, Honor had taken over charge of his piano while he was away; and if a touch of constraint marked their parting, neither was aware of it in the other.
By one sole distinction he had set her apart from the rest. To her, and her only, he could and did speak of his wife; for the simple reason that in her he recognised a love and a sorrow that matched his own—a sorrow untainted by the lurking after thought, "Better so"; and that tacit recognition had been for Honor the single ray of light in her dark hour. Once, before parting, she had spoken of it to Paul, who thenceforward knew his friend's aloofness for what it was—not the mere reserve of the strong man in pain, but the old incurable loyalty to his wife that had kept them all at arm's length in respect of her while she lived.
So they two went forth together on their sorrowful pilgrimage; and, once gone, there fell a curtain of silence between Desmond and those he had left behind. Week after week, month after month, that silence remained unbroken, though Olliver and his wife wrote and John Meredith wrote also on his return; though they plied him with questions, with news of the Regiment and Border politics, never a sight of his handwriting came to cheer them. But for Paul's unfailing, if discouraging bulletins, no word of him would have reached them at all.
Honor herself wrote twice, without avail; and thereafter accepted the fiat of silence, gleaning what comfort she might from a steady correspondence with Paul. It was not in her to guess how those fortnightly letters, so frank in expression, so reserved in essence, had upheld him through the darkest and most difficult months of his life; months in which he could only stand aside and wait till the man he loved, as Jonathan loved David, should come forth out of the house of sorrow and take up the broken threads of life once more.