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Updated: June 16, 2025
Wratislaw obeyed and stretched the huge folio on the table. The elder man ran his forefinger in a circle. "There that wretched radius is the plague of my life. Our reports stop short at that line, and reliable information begins again some hundreds of miles north. Meanwhile between?" And he shrugged his shoulders. "I got news to-day in a roundabout way from Taghati.
He asked about recent events in the House, commenting shrewdly enough, but without interest. When Wratislaw in turn questioned him on his doings, he had none of the ready enthusiasm which had been used to accompany his talk on sport. He gave bare figures and was silent. Afterwards in his own sanctum, with drawn curtains and a leaping fire, he became more cheerful.
"I never realized my gross insufficiency so bitterly." "Ah!" said Wratislaw, sitting up, "love? "Did you happen to see Miss Wishart's engagement in the papers?" "I never read the papers. But I have heard about this: in fact, I believe I have congratulated Stocks." "Do you know that she ought to have married me?" Lewis cried almost shrilly. "I swear she loved me.
It is rumoured that the expedition has a semi-official character." "That's our friend," said Wratislaw, putting the paper into his pocket. Lord Beauregard wrinkled his brow and stared at the bowl of his pipe. "I see the motive clearly, but I am hanged if I understand why an evening paper should print it. Who in this country knows of the existence of Bardur?"
It was only my hideous folly that drove her from me." "Folly?" said Wratislaw, smiling. "Folly? Well you might call it that. I have come up 'ane's errand, as your people hereabouts say, to talk to you like a schoolmaster, Lewie. Do you mind a good talking-to?" "I need it," he said. "Only it won't do any good, because I have been talking to myself for a month without effect.
"Do you know Wratislaw?" asked Mr. Stocks abruptly. "Tommy? why, surely! My best of friends. He had got his fellowship some years before I went up, but I often saw him at Oxford, and he has helped me innumerable times." The young man spoke eagerly, prepared to extend warm friendship to any acquaintance of his friend's. "He and I have sometimes crossed swords," said Mr. Stocks pompously.
They entered a private room where the fire had burned itself out, and the lights fell on heavy furniture and cheerless solitude. Beauregard spread himself out in an arm-chair, and stared at the ceiling. Wratislaw, knowing his chief's manners, stood before the blackened grate and waited. "Fetch me an atlas that big one, and find the map of the Indian frontier."
It was his one spoken tribute to their friendship; and both, with the nervousness of honest men in the presence of emotion, hastened to change the subject. Wratislaw left betimes the next morning, and a long day faced Lewis with every hour clamouring for a decision. George would be back by noon, and before his return he must seek quiet and the chances of reflection.
Then your troubles will begin, my friend, and I can wish nothing better for you than the support of some man in the Commons who knows that Bardur is not quite so pastoral as Hampshire. He may relieve you of some of the popular odium you are courting, and at the worst he can be sent out." Wratislaw whistled long and low. "I think not," he said. "He is too good to throw away.
It is the old fate of the freelance, the Hal o' the Wynd who fights for his own hand; for in life's contest the taking of sides is assumed to be a necessity. Such was Lewis's reflections when he found Wratislaw waiting for him in the Etterick dogcart when he emerged from a meeting in Gledsmuir. He had now enjoyed ten days of it, and he was heartily tired.
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