BOOK I

ROSE OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER I

It is our fate as a nation, head and heart of a worldempire, that much of our manhood must pursue itscareer far away from home. And it is our strengththat these English sons of ours have taught themselvesto make it home wherever they find their work.

The fervid land of India had become home toRaymond Bethune for so many years that it wouldhave been difficult for him to picture his life elsewhere.The glamour of the East, of the East that is England's,had entered into his blood, without, however, alteringits cool northern deliberate course; that it can be thuswith our children, therein also lies the strength ofEngland.

Raymond Bethune, Major of Guides, loved thefierce lads to whom he was at once father and despot,as perhaps he could have loved no troop of honestthick-skulled English soldiers. He was content withthe comradeship of his brother officers, men whothought like himself and fought like himself; contentto spend the best years of existence hanging betweenheaven and earth on the arid flanks of a Kashmirmountain range, in forts the walls of which had beencemented by centuries of blood; looked forward,without blenching, to the probability of laying down hislife in some obscure frontier skirmish, unmourned andunnoticed. His duty sufficed him. He found happinessin it that it was his duty. Such men as he arethe very stones of our Empire's foundation.

*      *      *      *      *

Yet though he was thus intimately satisfied withhis life and his life's task, Bethune was conscious ofa strange emotion, almost a contraction of the heart,as he followed the kitmutgar to Lady Gerardine'sdrawing-room in the palace of the Lieutenant-Governor,this October day.

The town below hung like a great rose jewel,scintillating, palpitating, in a heat unusual for theautumn of Northern India. Out of the glare, thecolour, the movement, the noise; out of the throng ofsmells—spice, scent, garlic, t

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