He had been sitting on the front steps of the house when Mactier had brought him his mail and he had opened it there.
There were the papers, and a half dozen bills, a wedding invitation, two sets of reception cards, the announcement of a club meeting, and a letter from his aunt in eastern Scotland, begging him to come to them, if only for a week, and telling him that Cary was with them, and—Mackenzie's letter.
He had laid it aside to open last. It might have been he wanted to take his time reading it; or a dread of hearing from any of the old mess. At any rate, he hesitated before opening it, even when he had disposed of the rest of the mail.
He read it after awhile, and then he raised his head and looked hard at the group of trees near the house.
And so Mackenzie had been transferred to a distant regiment soon after he, Trevelyan, had resigned. There were a good many pages given to the description of the new Station and the new set of officers and men, that Trevelyan skipped over hastily. It was only the last part that had struck him suddenly, like a heavy blow in the face, and that made him, after awhile, pick up the letter and re-read the part.
"We had a cholera scare this season, but we managed to strangle it, so that it never became more than local, but it kept Clarke—he's my assistant, and a good chap he is—and me, on the jump for a time. The natives won't look out for the water, and I don't believe the entire medical and military force of the United Kingdom combined would be able to make them do so! And of course it's damnation in this special spot where there is more or less cholera every year. I sometimes feel inclined to say if they're such fools let them drink and bathe and drown themselves in the water, for they're not worth saving. But you see, unless the scourge is stamped out among them it goes on spreading and threatens the barracks. We can't spare one of our dandy men. We need 'em all in the Service—every last mother's son of 'em, bless their stout old British hearts!
"You saw a case or two at the old Station, and you know something of what it means. But you haven't any idea of an army surgeon's dread of an epidemic—that is a surgeon who has been through the cholera mill. I know, for I've spent most of my term in India, and years ago I was in the midst of a howling time of it—men dropping off by the score! I never want to go through such a thing again. The horror of it is enough to last a man a good deal longer than his natural life—and the chaps who helped me! Well, most of the men who could—and they were brave men, too—took to heels, and the handful that buckled to, to nurse, kept getting sick from fatigue and the vile water—and then when the men died—the fires—
"There, you know it, I suppose, or you've heard of it before. No one knows it, until one's been through it.
"The natives were pretty good on the whole a few months ago and so we stamped it out then. Jove! some of them were sick, though—sicker than the sickest dog you ever saw—. There was one fellow—he was worth saving—and I never worked so hard over a man in my life, except Stewart when he was hurt at the old Station. He died, though. All the while I kept thinking of that time with Stewart, and how you brought him back from death. I've never understood that, and I never learned anything like it in my Materia Médica. It was kind of uncanny, but it did the work. I wondered if you could have done something for that fellow. I couldn't. He was a Scotchman, by the way, of the rank and file."
Here the letter stopped. On a fresh sheet was a postscript.