aunt in Yorkshire. Martin had arranged to meet Lawrence and Rendell at
Seatoller in the Lakes. He went in a bitter mood, hungry for Freda,
physically stale, and hopeless. But the traditional rain never came
and soon they knew every crag of Honister and Grey Knotts, of
Glaramara, of The Gables and the Scawfells, of the Langdale Pikes. The
challenge of wind and weather on the hills and the flaming splendour of
Borrowdale in autumn drove apprehension and despair from his soul. He
learned that in some places a man cannot be morbid.

On an evening of late September they were playing three-handed auction.
A telegram arrived from Devonshire. The commissioners had sent the
result to his home address, it seemed.

Martin put down his hand and tore open the envelope. He had passed
fifty-first on the list.

"Looks like India," he said quietly.

Neither Rendell nor Lawrence knew what to say. He had wanted the Home
service, they knew, and fifty-first would not get that for him. They
muttered congratulations self-consciously.

Martin took up his hand once more. It was solidly black.

"Five hearts?" he said. "Five royals."

The opposition collapsed and he made his tricks.

They played late, thinking only of the cards. Martin's career was
settled, his life mapped out, his whole future determined by that
message, and they talked of rubbers and pence. If he had miraculously
passed in first or failed altogether they would have discussed it, but,
because he had achieved the expected mediocrity, by tacit convention
they were silent. The cards were really more important.

VIII

As Martin lay in bed that night it occurred to him with all the
violence of a real discovery that he was, under certain conditions, the
destined ruler and administrator of a nation far vaster and more
ancient than his own, a nation of whose religion, ideals and practical
needs he knew nothing whatever. He was equally ignorant of its
population, products and methods of life, though of course he had a
year in which to learn about these things. Incredible that he, Martin,
twenty-two, boyish and superficial, should be a guardian of this
people, a pro-consul in the making! And perhaps more strange was his
apathy. In addition to his complete ignorance about India he cared
nothing for the place, for how can a man, temperamentally inclined to
Nationalism rather than to Imperialism, care for a nation which he only
knows by a red blob on the m