The Pointing Man | Page 5

along the road.
By an hour after midnight nearly the whole white population can be
presumed to be asleep; day wakes early in the East, and there are few
who keep all-night hours, because morning calls men from their beds to
their work, and even this hot, sultry night people lay on their beds and
tried to sleep; but in the small bungalow where the Rev. Francis Heath
lived with a solitary Sapper officer, the bed that he slept in was smooth
and unstirred by restless tossing inside the mosquito net.
The Rev. Francis was out, sitting by the bed of a dying parishioner. He
watched the long hours through, dressed as he had been in the
afternoon, in a grey flannel suit, his thin neck too long and too spare for
his all-around collar, and as he watched sometimes and sometimes
prayed, he too felt the pressure of the night.
The woman he prayed beside was dying and quite unconscious of his
presence. Now and then, to relieve the strain, he got up and stood by
the window, looking at the lights against the sky and thinking very
definitely of something that troubled him and drew his lips into a tight,
thin line. He was a young man of the type described usually as
"zealous" and "earnest," and a light that was almost the light of
fanaticism shone in his eyes. A dying parishioner was no more of a
novelty to Mr. Heath, than one of Mrs. Wilder's dinner-parties was to
her guests, and yet the woman on the bed appealed to his pity as few
others had done in his experience.
When the doctor came he nodded to the clergyman and just touched the
hand on the quilt. He was in evening dress, and he explained that he
had been detained owing to his hostess having been taken suddenly ill.
"Where is Rydal himself?"
He asked the question carelessly, dropping the pulseless wrist.

"Who can tell?" said the Rev. Francis Heath.
"He'd better keep out of the way," continued the doctor. "I believe
there's a police warrant out for him. Hartley spoke of it to-night. She
will be gone before morning, and a good job for her."
The throbbing hot night wore on, and July the 29th became July the
30th, and Mangadone awoke to a fierce, tearing thunder-storm that
boomed and crashed and wore itself out in torrents of heavy rain.

II
TELLS THE STORY OF A LOSS, AND HOW IT AFFECTED THE
REV. FRANCIS HEATH
Half-way up a low hill rise on the far side of the Mangadone
Cantonment was the bungalow of Hartley, Head of the Police. It was a
tidy, well-kept house, the house of a bachelor who had an eye to things
himself and who was well served by competent servants. Hartley had
reached the age of forty without having married, and he was solid of
build and entirely sensible and practical of mind. He was spoken of as
"sound" and "capable," for it is thus we describe men with a word, and
his mind was adjusted so as to give room for only one idea at a time.
He was convinced that he was tactful to a fault, nothing had ever
shaken him in this belief, and his personal courage was the courage of
the British lion. Hartley was popular and on friendly and confidential
terms with everybody.
Mangadone, like most other places in the East, was as full of cliques as
a book is of words, but Hartley regarded them not at all. Popularity was
his weakness and his strength, and he swam in all waters and was
invited everywhere. Mrs. Wilder, who knew exactly who to treat with
distant condescension and who to ignore entirely, invariably included
him in her intimate dinners, and the Chief Commissioner, also a
bachelor, invited him frequently and discussed many topics with him as
the wine circled. Even Craven Joicey, the banker, who made very few

acquaintances and fewer intimates, was friendly with Hartley; one of
those odd, unlikely friendships that no one understands.
The week following upon the thunder-storm had been a week of grey
skies over an acid-green world, and even Hartley became conscious
that there is something mournful about a tropical country without a sun
in the sky as he sat in his writing-room. It was gloomy there, and the
palm trees outside tossed and swayed, and the low mist wraiths down
in the valley clung and folded like cotton-wool, hiding the town and
covering it up to the very top spires of the cathedral. Hartley was
making out a report on a case of dacoity against a Chinaman, but the
light in the room was bad, and he pushed back his chair impatiently and
shouted to the boy to bring a lamp.