In Tottenham Court Road, Rolfe bade his friend goodbye, and the cab rushed on.

CHAPTER 2

It was half past ten when Rolfe knocked at the door in Hamilton Terrace.  He learnt from the servant that Mr. Carnaby was at home, and had company.  In the room known as the library, four men sat smoking; their voices pealed into the hall as the door opened, and a boisterous welcome greeted the newcomer’s appearance.

‘Come to condole?’ cried Hugh, striding forward with his man-of-the-wide-world air, and holding out his big hand.  ’No doubt they’re having a high old time at the club.  Does it please them?  Does it tickle them?’

’Why, naturally.  There’s the compensation, my boy —­ you contribute to the gaiety of your friends.’

Carnaby was a fair example of the well-bred, well-fed Englishman —­ tall, brawny, limber, not uncomely, with a red neck, a powerful jaw, and a keen eye.  Something more of repose, of self-possession, and a slightly more intellectual brow, would have made him the best type of conquering, civilising Briton.  He came of good family, but had small inheritance; his tongue told of age-long domination; his physique and carriage showed the horseman, the game-stalker, the nomad.  Hugh had never bent over books since the day when he declined the university and got leave to join Colonel Bosworth’s exploring party in the Caucasus.  After a boyhood of straitened circumstances, he profited by a skilful stewardship which allowed him to hope for some seven hundred a year; his elder brother, Miles, a fine fellow, who went into the army, pinching himself to benefit Hugh and their sister Ruth.  Miles was now Major Carnaby, active on the North-West Frontier.  Ruth was wife of a missionary in some land of swamps; doomed by climate, but of spirit indomitable.  It seemed strange that Hugh, at five and thirty, had done nothing particular.  Perhaps his income explained it —­ too small for traditional purposes, just large enough to foster indolence.  For Hugh had not even followed up his promise of becoming an explorer; he had merely rambled, mostly in pursuit of fowl or quadruped.  When he married, all hope for him was at an end.  The beautiful and brilliant daughter of a fashionable widow, her income a trifle more than Carnaby’s own; devoted to the life of cities, wherein she shone; an enchantress whose spell would not easily be broken, before whom her husband bowed in delighted subservience —­ such a woman might flatter Hugh’s pride, but could scarce be expected to draw out his latent energies and capabilities.  This year, for the first time, he had visited no wild country; his journeying led only to Paris, to Vienna.  In due season he shot his fifty brace on somebody’s grouse-moor, but the sport did not exhilarate him.