Rosa Mundi and Other Stories Part 52

His tone was still quiet, but it was also stern. He pushed a determined hand through Derrick's arm. "If you won't come my way," he said, "I shall come yours."

Derrick swore under his breath. But he yielded. "Very well," he said aloud. "I'll come. But I swear I won't touch anything."

"You needn't swear," said Carlyon; "it's unnecessary."

And Derrick bit his lip nearly through, being exasperated. He did not, however, resist the compelling hand a second time, realizing the futility of such a proceeding.

So in dead silence they reached the Grand and entered. Then Carlyon spoke again.

"Come up to my room first!" he said.

Derrick went with him unprotesting.

In his own room Carlyon turned round and took him by the shoulders.

"Now," he said, "are you ill or merely sulky? Just tell me which, and I shall know how to treat you!"

"It's no thanks to you I'm not dead!" exclaimed Derrick stormily. "I didn't want to meet you, but, by Heaven, since I have, and since you have forced an interview upon me, I'll go ahead and tell you what I think of you."

Carlyon turned away from him and sat down. "Do, by all means," he said, "if it will get you into a healthier frame of mind!"

But Derrick's flow of eloquence unexpectedly failed him at this juncture, and he stood awkwardly silent.

Carlyon turned round at last and looked at him. "Sit down, d.i.c.k," he said patiently, "and stop being an a.s.s! I'm a difficult man to quarrel with, as you know. So sit down and state your grievance, and have done with it!"

"You know very well what's wrong!" Derrick burst out fiercely, beginning to prowl to and fro.

"Do I?" said Carlyon. He got up deliberately and intercepted Derrick.

"Just stop tramping," he said, with sudden sternness, "and listen to me!

You have your wound alone to thank for keeping you out of the worst mess you ever got into. If you hadn't gone back in a hospital truck, you would have gone back under escort. Do you understand that?"

"Why?" flashed Derrick.

"Why?" echoed Carlyon, striking him abruptly on the shoulder. "Tell me your own opinion of a hot-headed, meddling young fool who not only got into mischief himself at a most critical moment, but led half-a-score of valuable men into what was practically a death-trap, for the sake of, I suppose he would call it, an hour's sport. On my soul, Derrick," he ended, with a species of quiet vigour that carried considerable weight behind it, "if you weren't such a skeleton I'd give you a sound thras.h.i.+ng for your sins. As it is, you will be wise to get off that high horse of yours and take a back seat. I never have put up with this sort of thing from you. And I never mean to."

Derrick had no answer ready. He stood still, considering these things.

Colonel Carlyon turned his back on him and cut the end of a cigar. "Do you grasp my meaning?" he enquired at length, as Derrick remained silent.

Derrick moved to a chair and sat down. Somehow Carlyon had taken the backbone out of his indignation. He spoke at last, but without anger.

"Even if it were as you say," he said, "I don't consider you treated me decently."

Carlyon suddenly laughed. "Even if by some odd chance I have actually spoken the truth," he said, "I shall not, and do not, feel called upon to justify my action for your benefit."

"I think you owe me that," Derrick said quickly.

"I disagree with you," Carlyon rejoined. "I owe you nothing whatever except the aforementioned thras.h.i.+ng which must, unfortunately, under the circ.u.mstances, remain a debt for the present."

Derrick leant forward suddenly

"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 ma.s.sacred? 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, d.i.c.k," 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 circ.u.mstances, 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. .h.i.t, he stood by them. He only took himself off just before morning came and you ventured to move to our a.s.sistance."

"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.