“Ay! do they—gey and badly! Come, let’s be ganging doon. I’m sorely wanting a nip!”
And their figures crossed the threshold of the broken doorway, and Mortimer Jowell heard the pebbles rolling under their sliding feet as they negotiated the downward path.
“If I were the kind of man I’d like to be, I wouldn’t even take the twenty-five thousand pounds he settled on me when I got my Commission,” he muttered. “No, sir! I’d send it back—and send in my papers—and get a berth in the Sultan’s pay. Turn Bashi, perhaps, though I hate Turks, filthy beggars! Still.... Gaw!... that ain’t half a bad idea!”
Momentarily he forgot his keen unhappiness in contemplation of a glowing portrait of Mortimer—not Jowell Pasha—riding to war upon an Arab charger of dazzling beauty, presented by his royal master in conjunction with a gold and jeweled scimitar—in recognition of His Excellency’s distinguished services as Commander of an Imperial Order.
He saw the Pasha, followed by a lengthy train of aide-de-camps, orderlies, and pipe-bearers, returning to his luxurious tent at nightfall, to be welcomed by his mother—an English lady of pleasant but dowdy appearance—and His Excellency’s young and lovely bride. And he put his hand into his breast and pulled out a note-case—and took from this the oddest little scrawly letter—that had been brought to him at the camp of the First Division before he went to the Front.
“Honored Sir,
“I am told it is thus one begins a letter to a gentleman of Ingiland. Pardon me if I am wrong! When my nurse binds the pencil to my wrist with a ribbon I can write as the Ingliz ladies at the school at Pera taught me, though it is not so well as I speak.
“I have much heard of your deeds at the Alma Battle, and of your noble answer to the false messenger of the English Emir, and I am proud to the bottom of my heart! For so brave a man has told me that he loves me. Honored Sir, you have given me what I thought to have never! I pray Our Lord Isa and the Lady Maryam to bless and guard you! Do we, I wonder, meet again?
“Honored Sir,
“I am yours respectfully,
“Zora,
“Of the House of Jones.”
The Ensign folded up the funny little letter and kissed it—and put it back in his note-case, and stowed the note-case away. And then he remembered the sergeant and section, waiting at what was left of the Commissariat-Sheds, and hoisted himself by that rope of Duty, up upon his stiff and aching legs.