“Well, I think it is nonsense of you to think
of leaving the regiment. There is work to be
done here. There is the work of punishing men
who have committed the most atrocious crimes.
There is the work of winning back India for England.
Every Englishman out here, who can carry a weapon,
ought to remain at his post until the work is done.
“As to this wound of mine, that is a matter
between us only. As I have told you, I have altogether
forgiven you, and am not even disposed greatly to
blame you, thinking, as you did, that I was responsible
for that poor girl’s flight. I shall never
mention it to a soul. I have already put it out
of my mind, therefore it is as if it had never been
done, and there is no reason whatever why you should
shrink from companionship with your comrades.
I shall think much better of you for doing your duty
like a man, than if you went home again and shrank
from it.”
“You are too good, sir, altogether too good.”
“Nonsense, man. Besides, you have to remember
that you have not gone unpunished. Had it not
been for your feeling, after you had, as you believed,
killed me, you never would have stood and let that
Sepoy shoot you; so that all the pain that you have
been going through, and may still have to go through
before you are quite cured, is a punishment that you
have yourself accepted. After a man has once
been punished for a crime there is an end of it, and
you need grieve no further over it; but it will be
a lesson that I hope and believe you will never forget.
“Hackett, who has been my soldier servant for
the last five years, was killed in the fight in the
Kaiser Bagh. If you like, when you rejoin, I
shall apply for you in his stead. It will make
your work a good deal easier for you, and I should
like to have the son of one of my old tenants about
me.”
The man burst into tears.
“There, don’t let’s say anything
more about it,” Mallett went on, taking the
thin hand of the soldier in his. “We will
consider it settled, and I shall look out for you
in a couple of months, so get well as quick as you
can, and don’t worry yourself by thinking of
the past. I must be off now, for I have to take
down a party of convalescents to rejoin this evening.
“Goodbye, lad,” and without waiting for
any reply, he turned and left the marquee.
“It is little more than two years and a half
since I left, Lechmere, but it seems almost a lifetime.”
“It does seem a time, Major. We must have
marched thousands of miles, and I could not say how
many times we have been engaged. There has not
been a week that we have not had a fight, and sometimes
two or three of them.”
“Well, thank God, we are back again. Still
I am glad to have been through it.”
“So am I, sir. It will be something to
look back on, and it is curious to think that while
we have been seeing and doing so much, father and
my brother Bob have just been going about over the
farm, and seeing to the cattle, and looking after
the animals day in and day out, without ever going
away save to market two or three times a month at
Chippenham.”
