"Stop rotting, Carlyon!" he said, with impulsive earnestness. "I can't
help talking seriously. You didn't know, surely, what a tight fix we
were in? You couldn't have intended us to--to--die in the dark like
that?"
"Intended!" said Carlyon sharply. "I never intended you to occupy that
position at all, remember."
"Yes; but--since we were in that position, since--if you choose to put
it so--I exceeded all bounds and intentions and took those splendid
little Goorkhas into a death-trap; I may have been a headstrong, idiotic
fool to do it; but, granted all that, you did not deliberately and
knowingly leave us to be massacred? You couldn't have done actually
that."
Carlyon laid his cigar-case on the table at Derrick's elbow, and lighted
his own cigar with great deliberation.
"You may remember, Dick," he said quietly, after a pause, "that once
upon a time you wrote--and published--a book. It had its merits and it
had its faults. But a fool of a critic took it into his head to give you
a thorough slating. You were furious, weren't you? I remember giving you
a bit of sound advice over that book. Probably you have forgotten it.
But it chances to be one of the guiding principles of my life. It is
this: Never answer your critics! Go straight ahead!"
He paused.
"I remember," said Derrick. "Well?"
"Well," said Carlyon gravely, "that is what I have done all my life,
what I mean to do now. You are in full possession of the facts of the
case. You have defined my position fairly accurately. I did know you
were in an impossible corner. I did know that you and the men with you
were in all probability doomed. And--I did not think good to send a
rescue. You do not understand the game of war. You merely went in for it
for the sake of sport, I for the sake of the stakes. There is a
difference. More than that I do not mean to say."
He sat down opposite Derrick as he ended and began to smoke with an air
of indifference. But his eyes were on the boy's face. They had been
close friends for years.
Derrick still sat forward. He was staring at the ground heavily,
silently Carlyon had given him a shock. Somehow he had not expected from
him this cool acknowledgment of an action from which he himself shrank
with unspeakable abhorrence.
To leave a friend in the lurch was, in Derrick's eyes, an act so
infamous that he would have cut his own throat sooner than be guilty of
it. It did not occur to him that Carlyon might have urged extenuating
circumstances, but had rather scornfully abstained from doing so.
He did not even consider the fact that, as commanding-officer, Carlyon's
responsibility for the lives in his charge was a burden not to be
ignored or lightly borne. He did not consider the risk to these same
valuable lives that a rescue in force would have involved.
He saw only himself fighting for a forlorn hope, his grinning little
Goorkhas gallantly and intrepidly following wherever he would lead, and
he saw the awful darkness down which his feet had stumbled, a terrible
chasm that had yawned to engulf them all.
He sat up at last and looked straight at Carlyon. He spoke slowly, with
an effort.
"If it had been only myself," he said, "I--perhaps, I might have found
it easier. But there were the men, my men. You could not alter your
plans by one hair's-breadth to save their gallant lives. I can't get
over that. I never shall. You left us to die like rats in a hole. But
for a total stranger--a spy, a Secret Service man--we should have been
cut to pieces, every one of us. You did not, I suppose, send that man to
help us out?"
Carlyon blew a cloud of smoke upwards. He frowned a little, but his look
was more one of boredom than annoyance.
"What exactly are you talking about?" he said. "I don't employ spies. As
to Secret Service agents, I think you have heard my opinion of them
before."
"Yes," said Derrick. He rose with an air of finality. His young face was
very stern. "He was probably attached to General Harford's division. He
found us in a fix, and he helped us out of it. He knew the land. We
didn't. He was the most splendid fighting-man I ever saw. He tried to
stick up for you, too--said you didn't know. That, of course, was a
mistake. You did know, and are not ashamed to own it."
"Not in the least," said Carlyon.
"The men couldn't have held out without him," Derrick continued. "After
I was hit, he stood by them. He only took himself off just before
morning came and you ventured to move to our assistance."
"He had no possible right to do it," observed Carlyon thoughtfully
ignoring the bitter ring of sarcasm in the boy's tone.
"Oh, none whatever," said Derrick. He spoke hastily, jerkily, as a man
not sure of himself. "No doubt his life was Government property, and he
had no right to risk it. Still he did it, and I am weak-minded enough to
be grateful. My own life may be worthless; at least, it was then. And I
would not have survived my Goorkhas. But he saved them, too. That, odd
as it may seem to you, made all the difference to me."
"Is your life more valuable now than it was a few months ago?" enquired
Carlyon, in a casual tone.
"Yes," said Derrick shorty.
"Has Averil accepted you?" Carlyon asked him point-blank.
"Yes," said Derrick again.
There was a momentary pause. Then: "Permit me to offer my
felicitations!" said Carlyon, through a haze of tobacco-smoke.
Derrick started as if stung. "I beg you won't do anything of the sort!"
he said with vehemence. "I don't want your good wishes. I would rather
be without them. I may be a hare-brained fool. I won't deny it. But as
for you--you are a blackguard--the worst sort of blackguard! I hope I
shall never speak to you again!"
Carlyon, lying back in his chair, neither stirred nor spoke. He looked
up at Derrick from beneath steady eyelids. But he offered him nothing in
return for his insulting words.
Derrick waited for seconds. Then patience and resolution alike failed
him. He swung round abruptly on his heel and walked out of the room.
As for Colonel Carlyon, he did not rise from his chair till he had
conscientiously finished his cigar. He had stuck to his principles. He
had not answered his critic. Incidentally he had borne more from that
critic than any man had ever before dared to offer him, more than he had
told Derrick himself that he would bear. Yet Derrick had gone away from
the encounter with a whole skin in order that Colonel Carlyon might
stick to his principles. Carlyon's forbearance was a plant of peculiar
growth.
V