"Next, year, I should say, as things are going now."
"Well, I hope it may be possible. But . . one would have to think it over."
"Talk it over, you mean . . eh?"
Something in the tone angered Lenox.
"Yes, sir . . talk it over. That is what I meant," he had answered, looking straightly at the other: and they had returned somewhat abruptly to the matter in hand.
But Lenox had dined with the Foreign Secretary that night, and they had parted good friends, as ever: Sir Henry begging the younger man to ask him for anything that might serve to lessen the hardships and dangers ahead of him, adding, as they shook hands: "I assure you, my dear fellow, we who sit in Simla fully realise how much the country owes to men of your sort; and grudge no money spent in making the way smoother for you."
But Lenox, knowing well that hardships and perils loom larger in an easy-chair than on the slope of a glacier, had asked for little, beyond permission to depart, and that speedily.
A few days at Pindi had sufficed for the collecting of stores and equipment. Then he had pushed northward in earnest, picking up his escort of Gurkhas from their station in the foot-hills: and so on through Kashmir, where spring had already flung her bridal veil over the orchards, and retreating snow-wreaths had left the hills carpeted with a mosaic of colour,—primula, iris, orchid, and groundlings innumerable: over the Zoji-la Pass, into the shadeless, fantastic desolation of Ladak; and on, across stark desert and soundless snow-fields, to Leh, the terminus of all caravans from India and Central Asia. Here Lenox had spent two days with one Captain Burrow of the Bengal Cavalry, who, with a handful of half-starved Kashmiri soldiers, upheld the interests of the British Raj on this uttermost edge of Empire. Here also he found a letter from Quita; read and re-read it, and stowed it away in his breast-pocket, trying not to be aware of a haunting ache deep down in him, which must perforce be ignored. The old charm of the Road, the 'glory of going on,' that works like madness in the blood, was strong upon him as ever. But whereas, in former journeyings, he had been one man, he was now two. The whole-hearted ecstasy of travel would never again be his. He had given a part of himself into a woman's keeping; and let him put the earth's diameter between them, she would hold him still. Every week, every day that drew him farther from her did but bring home to him more forcibly the mysterious, compelling power of marriage, its large reserves of loyalty, its sacred and intimate revelations, its inexorable grip on life and character.
But meanwhile, there was the Road before him; a rough road, full of vicissitudes and anxieties, of interests and anticipations that left him small leisure for the communings of his heart.
Before leaving Leh, hill camels and ponies had been added unto him; besides twenty-one decrepit Kashmir soldiers,—a type extinct since they have been handled by British officers. These were to be deposited by Lenox at his so-called 'base of operations,' by way of guarding the trade route so grievously troubled by the brigand state.