Owen Kresney possessed in a high degree that talent for discovering or inventing slights which is pride of race run crooked, and reveals the taint of mixed blood in a man's veins. As District Superintendent of Police he had relieved his predecessor in the middle of the hot weather. His sister being at Mussoorie, he had arrived alone; and, in accordance with the friendly spirit of the Frontier, had been made an honorary member of the station Mess, where he had found himself very much a stranger in a strange land.
The man's self-conceit was unlimited; his sense of humour nil; and in less than a month he had been unanimously voted a "pukka [12] bounder" by that isolated community of Englishmen, who played as hard as they worked, and invariably "played the game"; a code of morals which had apparently been left out of Kresney's desultory education. The fact revealed itself in a hundred infinitesimal ways, and each revelation added a fresh stone to the wall that sprang up apace between himself and his companions.
Among them all Desmond and Wyndham represented, in the highest degree, those unattainable attributes which Kresney was secretly disposed to envy; and his narrow soul solaced itself by heartily detesting their possessors. This ability to recognise the highest without the least desire to reach it, breeds more than half the pangs of envy, hatred, and malice that corrode the lesser natures of earth. But there were also, in Kresney's case, personal and particular reasons which served to nourish these microbes of the soul.
Toward the close of the hot weather the man's growing unpopularity had been established by an incident at Mess, which brought him into such sharp contact with Desmond as he was not likely to forget.
There had been a very small party at dinner. Several of the older men were absent on leave, and three were on the sick list, no uncommon occurrence in Frontier stations. Thus it had chanced that Desmond was the senior officer present.
The wine had already been round twice when the sound of a lady's name, spoken in passing, had diverted Kresney's attention from his own dissatisfied thoughts.
It chanced that he had met this same lady at Murree a year ago, and that she had roundly snubbed his advances towards intimacy. The unexpected mention of her name revived that sense of injury which smoulders in such natures like a live coal; and on the same instant awoke the desire to hit back with the readiest weapon available.
Forgetful of the restriction imposed by the rigid code of the mess-table, he launched the first disparaging comment that sprang to his mind.
Directly the sentence was out, he could have bitten his own tongue for pure vexation.