IX.
At the end of the twelve months Stewart got a letter from Trevelyan.
He smiled a bit curiously as he tore open the travel worn flap. He wondered what Robert had to say for himself or what he wanted. It was the first letter he had received since Robert had been ordered to India, but he laughed genuinely in the silence of the deserted club room, at the opening, and characteristic words:
"This is a damnable hole! It is hot as—well I won't swear any more—but it is hotter than I ever imagined a place could be on the surface of the earth. We are miles from any decent civilization, and how you can talk decently about the natives and the native regiments, staggers me! I don't trust 'em, and what's more I doubt very much if they hold me in any higher regard. But what is the good of writing so to you. You know what Indian service is. Your station was either a good deal better than mine, or you have a lot more back bone than I have. The first idea making me jealous, and the last not being conducive to self-respect, there don't seem to be any choice! To move requires a strenuous effort. The life is stagnation. It is a living death and the death numbness is creeping into my veins. They tell me that the natives have not been so quiet for years, and most of the officers and men wish they'd stir up a bit and give them some trouble. I don't. I don't want trouble. I don't believe I could fight if I had to! Damned odd, isn't it, when my blood used to boil and my head throb queer, when I was a little shaver at home and there was danger around? I guess I wasn't cut out for the Service, after all. Mactier would wonder— * * * I think I'm going mad. As you may have caught on I am writing all this with a purpose; for it is only fair for you to know what this station is, and I'm asking more than one man ought of another, but if you'd get transferred out here— There wouldn't be any trouble about the technical part of it, for the Engineers are needed bad for surveying. Your last letter said something about your getting a commission in the Gordon Highlanders—if you could only come here instead—I suppose I am selfish, but I can't get a grip on things. If—"
Stewart looked up from the letter, toward the window and the street—seriously. Then he went over to the window and sat down in a big chair and leaned forward, still looking out. The noise of the passing carriages and the stir of the passing crowd crept in to meet the silence of the empty reading room. He sat motionless, heedless alike of the noise and the stillness. Once he thought of Cary, and his face changed swiftly.
Then he went back to the letter and finished it, and later he re-read it, and folded it, and put it in his vest pocket. Then he went back to his old occupation of looking out of the window.
The crowd was no longer one big indistinct blur, and he was vaguely conscious that he saw his mother's carriage among the others coming down the street. It came nearer and he could see that his sister was in it. There was a girl sitting beside her. The girl was Cary.
* * * * *
It was a week before Stewart called again at the lodgings. Cary firmly expected him the second day; grew bewildered as the evening of the fourth came and went without bringing him; on the fifth grew anxious and on the sixth wrote to him. Calling on his family just then for news was out of the question. They had gone to Brighton for a week.
He came to her the day her letter reached him.