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The habit of resistance was beginning to take effect at last; and, almost before Zyarulla had time to wonder at his silence, Lenox had waved aside his open palm. "No, no," he said quietly. "I have eaten enough, and thou wilt need all and more before we set foot in a bazaar again. Opium is not for Sahibs.
Till dusk he worked without intermission; and, as if by a fiendish nicety of calculation, the evening mail-bag, brought out by runner from Dalhousie, contained the coveted parcel of tobacco, whose arrival he had alternately craved and dreaded throughout the past ten days. Zyarulla set it before him with manifest satisfaction.
Once he leaned forward, as though he had some urgent matter to communicate, but apparently changed his mind, and spoke conversationally between puffs at his cigar. "Zyarulla said you were at the Desmonds. Is that the cavalry Desmond, the V.C. chap, whose wife was shot by a brute of a Ghazi four years ago?" "Yes; a hideous affair.
And since the regiment claimed many hours of the Englishman's day, the brunt of the nursing devolved upon Zyarulla, who scorned suggestions of sleep, and appeared to live on pellets of opium, and a hookah, which inhabited the verandah outside his master's room. There were moments when they were tempted to despair.
When Lenox staggered back into the hall, dizzy with headache, and half-blinded with glare, he was met by Desmond, who, noticing a slight lurch as he entered, took hold of his arm. "Zyarulla told me what happened," he said, a great gentleness in his voice. "Come on to your room, old man. Take a rousing dose of phenacetin, and lie down till tiffin. I'll bring you a lime-squash." "Thanks.
Bat there had been days when all his training in self-discipline had been needed to restrain him from applying to Zyarulla, whose kummerbund held a perennial store of the precious drug, the more so since his Ladaki 'cook' chosen mainly for his powers of endurance knew rather less about the primitive requirements of camp catering than Lenox himself; and in spite of keen air and exercise his appetite had steadily fallen away.
But the first mouthful of toast was enough for him. He pushed the plate away; and his hand went out instinctively to the pipe Zyarulla, had laid beside it. "Damn!" he muttered between his teeth, almost flinging it from him; and at that instant the door opened. "Desmin, Sahib argya," the Pathan announced; and with a startled sound, Lenox got upon his feet, and began fastening his waistcoat.
Then, because his last cup of tea was being held in reserve for breakfast, he contented himself with goat's milk, a slab of chocolate, and native biscuits that served him for bread. It was late before Zyarulla returned, with a companion, a native from Yasin, on the Indian side of the Pass.
He had put the matter to practical proof with a sledge-hammer directness all his own; had opened her eyes to the humiliating truth that never in all her thirty years of living had she given up anything that mattered for any one. And now She raised her head with a start, Zyarulla had brought in a telegram, and Lenox stood reading it with a transfigured face, an eager light in his eyes.
Zyarulla responded by a gleam of teeth as he followed his master to the camp fire of roots and scrub, on whose summit 'dinner' was served steaming hot; a delectable mass of mutton and rice; eaten straight from the copper cooking vessel, lest the ice-bound breath of the mountains freeze it before it could reach its destination.
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