THE LOVE-SONG OF HAR DYAL

The bugler was sounding the second mess-call as the Resident’s carriage drew up before the steps of the Mess verandah on which stood all the officers of the regiment, dressed in the white drill uniform worn at dinner in India during the hot weather.  From the carriage Major Norton, a stout, middle-aged man in civilian evening dress, descended stiffly and shook hands with the Commandant of the battalion, Colonel Trevor, who had come down the steps to meet him and whose guest he was to be.

On the verandah Wargrave was introduced to him by the Colonel and took his outstretched hand with reluctance; for Frank felt stirring in him a faint jealousy of the man who was Violet’s legal lord and an indefinite hostility to him for not appreciating his charming wife as he ought.  And while the Resident was shaking hands with the others Wargrave looked at him with interest.

Major Norton was a very ordinary-looking man, more elderly in appearance than his years warranted.  He was bald and clean-shaved but for scraps of side-whiskers that gave him a resemblance to the traditional stage-lawyer of amateur theatricals, a likeness increased by his heavy and prosy manner.  It was hard to believe that he had ever been a young subaltern, though such had once been the case, for the Indian Political Department is recruited chiefly from officers of the Indian Army.  But he was never the gay and light-hearted individual that most junior subs. are at the beginning of their career.  Even then he had been a sober and serious individual, favourably noted by his superiors as being earnest and painstaking.  And now he was well thought of by the Heads of his Department; for his plodding and methodical disposition and his slavish adherence to rules and regulations had earned him the reputation of being an eminently “safe” man.  How such a gay, laughter-loving, coquettish and attractive woman as Violet Dering came to marry one so entirely her opposite puzzled everyone who did not know the inner history of a girl, one of a large family of daughters, given “her chance in life” by being sent out to relatives in Calcutta for one season, with a definite warning not to return home unmarried under penalty of being turned out to face the world as a governess or hospital nurse.  And Violet liked comfort and hated work.

During dinner Wargrave found himself instinctively criticising Norton’s manner and conversation, and rapidly arrived at the conclusion that Raymond had described him accurately.  The Resident, though a very worthy individual, was undoubtedly a bore; and Colonel Trevor, beside whom he sat, strove in vain to appear interested in his conversation.  For he had heard his opinions on every subject on which Norton had any opinions over and over again.  As the Resident was the only other European in the station he dined regularly at the Mess on the weekly Guest Night with one or other of the officers.  He was not popular among them, but they considered it their duty to be victimised in turn to uphold the regiment’s reputation for hospitality; and in consequence each resigned himself to act as his host.