Bab-us-Sahelhad the advantage over Qadirabad that its natural torridity was tempered by the sea breeze in the daytime and the land breeze at night, but that was all. After the shady gardens which had at least looked cool, though they were not so, the staring bareness of the coast town was the more horrible. No trees, no vegetation even—save the unsightly milk-bush and the grey-brown thorn which was supposed to provide the camel with adequate nourishment—neutral tints everywhere, from glaring white to every possible dull hue that sand or dust or rock could assume. It was like Egypt without the Nile—the Egypt of those days, with half-starved donkeys, ragged children, diseased beggars, and mud-heap houses complete. That was in and around the native town, which at least had patches of shade here and there, where the mud hovels nestled up close to the side of a mosque or sought the shelter of the city wall. But the European houses, strung out along their sun-baked road, received no shelter either from one another or from anything else. Each grilled alone in its own compound, like a mud-built oven subjected to furnace heat from above and on all sides. Merely to look out from the hot shade of the verandah made the eyes ache as though they had been exposed to burning flame. The very wind was hot, and it lifted the all-surrounding dust and whirled it about in maddeningly confusing shapes—“playing at waterspouts,” Eveleen once said bitterly—so that you didn’t know whether you were standing on your head or your heels till you found a thick coating of grit on your hair. Nor was the place even healthy. The stagnant marsh remained a marsh when it seemed as though any water in it must evaporate by boiling—since it was fed by sea-water percolating through the sand, and the wells apparently drew their supplies from it, to judge by the taste of the liquid. Experts had reported that there ought to be an abundant supply of good water in the hills to the west of the town, but Colonel Bayard felt a delicacy in undertaking large engineering works. It would look as though the British occupation of Bab-us-Sahel on the coast, as of Sahar high up the river, was intended to be permanent, and his aim in life was to prove that it was not. There were few of the Bab-us-Sahel Europeans who did not adore Colonel Bayard, but in the hot weather the adoration was tinged with resentment.
Eveleen lived through the dreadful weeks by dint of her consuming interest in her neighbours’ affairs. All unconsciously her husband had hit upon the very place for her. It would never have occurred to him that the impulse to have a finger in every pie, which he called meddling, could be turned to uses of friendly helpfulness such as suggested the old neighbourly life at home, where everyone knew and discussed every one else’s business, and furthered it as opportunity offered. Mrs Gibbons, as the Agency surgeon’s wife, might be supposed to have acquired by contiguity a certain amount of professional knowledge, but if so, it was the merest surface polish, for the good lady would in any circumstances have physicked and nursed any community in which she found herself. “Gumption” was the word most frequently on her lips, and the quality most evident in her actions. When Colonel Bayard declined again to give an appearance of permanence to the occupation by establishing an experimental garden—such as all new stations were equipped with—for determining what the soil would produce, it was Mrs Gibbons who stepped into the breach in default of the public authorities, and under inconceivable difficulties, grew successive crops of vegetables which did much to preserve the health of her fellow-exiles. She kept fowls which actually produced eggs, a flock of sheep—a small one, of course, but they were really sheep, not goats,—and several cows, and woe be to the cowherd who sought to increase the apparent output of milk by surreptitiously introducing into the pail some of the water in which a portion of his scanty attire had been previously soaked. The products of her farm were eagerly bought up—when there were any to sell, for regardless of such base details as heavy expense and rightful profit, Mrs Gibbons rejoiced with her whole heart in giving things away. Eveleen accused her of standing in rapt contemplation of an unconscious sheep, and cold bloodedly apportioning its joints in her mind to the various people in whose needs she was most interested at the moment, but her whole manner of life was after Eveleen’s own heart.
Theoretically, that is, for if there was one quality of the possession of which Mrs Ambrose’s worst enemy could not accuse her, it was the all-important “gumption.” She delighted in distributing gifts of milk or eggs, but of the minute care and watchfulness required for their production she was wholly incapable. Mrs Gibbons shook her wise head over her a dozen times a day, and wondered how a married woman could possibly be so heedless. The normal Early Victorian married woman, however young, was staid with a staidness that would be improbable in a grandmother at the present day. She laid down the law to other women with the assurance naturally conferred by her position on a dazzling eminence attained by sheer merit, and she made—or professed to make—her husband’s comfort and satisfaction her one object in life. Mrs Ambrose fell lamentably below this standard. Like Richard, Mrs Gibbons was compelled sorrowfully to believe that she had never really grown up. She coaxed when she should have commanded, received with ingenuous pleasure attentions she ought to have demanded as a right, and would forsake at any time the lofty society of her sister-matrons to advise a subaltern as to the proper treatment of a sick pony. But, as her hostess once said indignantly to a detractor, she would give the gown from her back to any one that needed it, and run herself off her legs to help a sick person; and if this did not necessarily show gumption, it showed something better. There were no professional nurses in India, not even Mrs Gamp and Mrs Prig, and a woman’s character was soon gauged by her readiness to nurse her friends in time of need—and not her friends only, but the veriest stranger, who had, as Europe would have said, no sort of claim upon her. Naturally Mrs Gibbons’s services were in constant, demand when the inevitable “low fever” made its appearance towards the end of the hot weather, but could she have multiplied herself by twenty, they would not have gone round, so that she was glad to be able to turn over some of the slighter cases to her guest. She did so not without misgiving, and with an impressive warning as to the size of doses, and the distinction to be observed between internal and external application; but no tragedies occurred. As a matter of fact, the medicine was generally forgotten, unless the patient or a servant remembered it, while the nurse brightened the sick-room with anecdote and comment, until the victims declared reproachfully that they would die of laughing, if of nothing else. She herself found the torments of prickly heat easier to bear when her mind was thus occupied, and was beginning to pride herself on having got through the hot weather remarkably well, when, just as all properly constituted people were counting the days to the breaking of the monsoon, she also went down with the fever. It was not a very severe attack, but it was characteristic of Eveleen to be convinced she would not recover, and with bitter tears to entreat Mrs Gibbons to let her see Ambrose just once more. Mrs Gibbons had been surprised, and a little scandalised, by the apparent brevity of the communications passing between the pair, and the obviously appalling difficulty Eveleen found in writing to her husband, and it is possible that she heightened the colours a little in her own letter. At any rate, when Eveleen awoke one day from a refreshing sleep, to the welcome sound of rain pouring down outside, she found Richard sitting looking at her. She smiled at him happily.
“That’s nice, now!” she said in her soft crooning voice. “It’s a pleasure to see you there, Ambrose. If you knew how good y’are to look at, you’d maybe be too proud.”
Richard Ambrose—buttoned up and strapped down as all official Britons were in those days, even in the tropics—smiled with some embarrassment. “I fear you are joking, my dear. Ought I to return the compliment?”
“Y’ought, then!” with energy. “I may be a washed-out doll, but my hair is smooth. You see that?”
She held out in a feeble hand a limp tress, which he scrutinised doubtfully. Eveleen’s hair was as ill regulated as her character. It would not curl, but neither would it lie flat, since it was possessed of a rebellious crispness which defied brushing and all known pomades. Hence the sportive ringlet and the sleek band—the two styles alone possible to the normal woman of the day—were both out of the question. But Richard did not look pleased.
“I—I think I liked it better as it used to be,” he said hesitatingly. Eveleen sighed loudly.
“Some people are never satisfied!” she lamented, then her tone changed. “And y’are come to take me back with y’at last? Oh, don’t tell me y’are not!”
“I—I really can’t say, my dear. We ain’t our own masters in Khemistan nowadays—I suppose you know?”
“That Sir Harry Lennox is coming up? I know that, of course. Brian’s safely on the Staff now—you have heard?”
“I saw it gazetted—yes.” The tone firmly declined to congratulate either superior or subordinate. “Well, then, you must see that things are altered. It don’t lie with me to give you leave to come up the river—nor even with Bayard now.”
“Sure it’s all the same thing, if it lies with Sir Harry. But why do you talk as if he would change things?”
“His appointment must supersede Bayard—may supersede all of us. Surely you perceive that? Bayard and Bayard’s men ain’t likely to be here long.”
“I don’t see why. I believe Colonel Bayard and Sir Harry will like one another greatly.”
“Fall on each other’s necks and swear eternal friendship, in fact? Well, my dear, I hope so, but I doubt it. Old Lennox is Maryport’s man, and if he comes here, it’s to further Maryport’s policy, and we all know what that is.”
“But Sir Harry don’t see eye to eye with Lord Maryport by any means. Brian says he can’t speak with patience of the way his plan for the Ethiopian Expedition was bungled at the end—leaving the ladies prisoners and all. If they hadn’t been rescued, ’twas all the talk in Poonah that he’d have called out the Governor-General.”
“Well, there you are, you see. He would have had us remain in Ethiopia, no doubt.”
“Not a bit of it! He wouldn’t allow native states inside our boundaries, but he would never advance a step beyond them unless he was forced. The times I’ve heard him say that! If he comes, ’twill be to make the Khans keep their treaties, that’s all.”
“Pray, my dear, don’t agitate yourself so excessively. Ain’t Bayard here to make the Khans keep their treaties, and will they do it? And if they won’t do it for him, whom they call their father and mother, will they do it for the first arrogant old party that comesbehaudering[swaggering] along? And when they won’t—what then?”
“Why, Sir Harry will make ’em, or know the reason why.”
“Precisely; he’ll break ’em, and say that was his orders.”
“But if ’twas his orders, sure he must do it?”
“D’ye think any orders would induce Bayard to do it? He’d be broke first himself, and that’s what will happen, you mark my words. The G.-G. wants Khemistan, and means to get it.”
He spoke so warmly that Eveleen’s voice was quite timid—she could not bear to hint at disagreement when Richard was for once talking to her as a reasonable being—as she suggested meekly, “But if the Khans made the treaties, oughtn’t they keep them?”
“Well, ain’t Bayard trying to make ’em? As he says, if the fools would only consult their own interests, they would be on his side. The treaties leave ’em quite free to govern the country according to their own ideas—though that don’t commend itself to you, eh? But there they are, and if they would behave themselves in their external relations, Maryport himself couldn’t lay a finger on ’em. But they won’t—very far from it.”
“Sure they ought be punished, then.”
“All very well theoretically, my dear, but you wait till it has to be done. That’s where the trouble will begin, and we shall all be in two camps. Bayard on one side—one of ourselves, a greatshikari, apukkasportsman—and on the other a foul-mouthed old blackguard who boasts that he knows nothing of India, and goes about abusing high and low the Directors, who are our masters and his, and the Services, who are supposed to be his comrades, and making the troops discontented. Whose part d’ye think most people will take—all old Indians especially?”
“But you wouldn’t mean they’d——”
“I ain’t suggesting there’ll be bloodshed among ourselves. But Bayard will resign, or be kicked out, and old Harry will rush to destruction with no one to stop him. The G.-G. may think he has set him an easy task, but he don’t know Khemistan. It’ll mean war to a certainty. Without Bayard to smooth ’em down, the Khans won’t stand the old chap’sgali, [insults] and their Arabits will face any army we can bring against ’em. Kamal-ud-din especially is full of fight.” He stopped suddenly, then laughed a little. “I don’t know what you’ll say to Kamal-ud-din’s latest, by the bye. Whether the performances of the talisman haven’t quite come up to expectation, or whether he heard of your threat to keep the luck, and resents it, I can’t say, but he seems to think the Seal ain’t quite complete. At any rate, a friend of his called upon me to enquire in the most discreet manner whether I was disposed to part with you, as there was a good home waiting for you where the jewel and you would be reunited.”
“The shameful wretch!” Eveleen’s blue eyes had dilated till they looked all black. “To dare to suggest such a thing——! And what did you say?”
“That his flattering proposals could not be entertained till my wife was a widow—— Eh? what did you say?”
“Nothing more? You let him think——?”
“Oh, I kicked him out. But they saw nothing shocking in the idea, of course—meant everything to be quite open and above-board, arranged in the most friendly way——”
“Well, if you call that friendly!” Tears and fury strove in Eveleen’s voice.
“They would regard it as quite friendly to invite a man to divorce his wife that she might marry some one else. The unfriendly way would be to take her without asking. Now really, my dear! I thought you would look upon it as a good joke, or I wouldn’t have told you.”
“And I suppose he said your wife was a crosspatch, and as ugly as sin, and altogether you’d do well to be rid of her and get another?”
“You must think me a very patient fellow, my dear! And ’pon my honour,” slowly, “I begin to believe I must be.”
“Ambrose, you have made a joke! D’ye hear, that was a joke! What’s come to you?” She was laughing hysterically. “And to do it when you must be cursing yourself for not taking the chance to get rid of me and start afresh! A new wife who would be English and proper and suitable and all the things I couldn’t be to save my life!”
“And wouldn’t be if you could? No, steady! no more of this, please. Quiet!”
His firm hand on her shoulder helped Eveleen to choke back the screams which threatened to burst forth, but she grasped the hand convulsively and held fast to it. “No, I’ll be good, I’ll be good! I didn’t mean—— But tell me now—Ambrose, tell me—what have I done? How have I disappointed you? How will I ever put things right if I don’t know what’s wrong?”
Panting painfully, she leaned half out of the bed, still gripping his hand with both hers, her eyes searching his face. Richard Ambrose, hating a scene at least as much as most Englishmen, wriggled uncomfortably. “Really, my dear, I don’t know—— Why”—with a sudden bright idea—“I thought it was you who were disappointed. Give you my word I did.”
“Then you had no business to. But what is it was wrong with me? It ain’t as though you didn’t know what I was like. We had known one another so long——”
“True.” He carried the war boldly into the enemy’s country. “But it was so long ago that I had forgot the changes time must bring. I had lived too much alone: I was an old man before I was a young one. But looking back, I thought—I hoped—I might succeed in making you happy. I was mistaken, and by involving you in my mistake I wrought you an irreparable injury.”
“Ambrose!” Eveleen was as easily diverted as a child. Her eyes filled with tears, her lip trembled. “What are you saying—a mistake, injury? That you have injured me, would you say?”
“Don’t I know from your own lips that you are the most miserable woman in the world?” he asked bitterly, but it must be confessed, with a feeling of shame.
“I didn’t say it! I didnot! How can you——?”
“Pardon me, you did—at Qadirabad, five months ago.”
“But if I did, I never meant it—y’ought to know that! You must know—you couldn’t have believed it! Swear to me you did not, or I’ll crawl out of bed and hold to your feet so you can’t get away!”
“Pray don’t. It ain’t necessary. I’ll swear anything you choose. What will old Mother Gibbons say to me for letting you agitate yourself like this?”
“Mrs Gibbons is a dear sweet soul, and the heart of Dr Gibbons doth safely trust in her, because she never runs up bills. Indeed, then, she scolds him when he spends too much on cheroots. Would you have me turn like her?”
“Certainly not—in that respect, at any rate.”
“Then I’ll tell you this—I’d rather be myself, and be scolded by you, in your most shockingly cold style, than be like Mrs Gibbons—there! Now, will you let me come back with you to Qadirabad?”
“Good heavens!” he said helplessly. “Were the hysterics nothing but a sham, then?” But he saw the perplexity in her eyes changing again into poignant reproach, and hastened to make amends.
“No, I’m a fool, forgive me. But you will allow it’s a bit difficult for a man to follow you into a fresh mood every second minute—eh?”
“But why would I be in the same mood all the time?” in genuine perplexity. He laughed shortly.
“Don’t know, I’m sure, my dear. Blame me as much as you like, but judge me leniently when you find me slow. I was born like it, and have very likely got worse.”
He cut short her assurances that on no account would she have him the least bit different by departing, on the plea that he feared a scolding from Mrs Gibbons, and left to herself, Eveleen realised that she was baffled still. The enigma was not solved, the barrier was still between them. Compared with the good-comradely relations existing between Dr and Mrs Gibbons, she and Richard were like strangers feverishly struggling to behave as near friends. Perhaps, after all, Richard was right, and nothing else was possible to him. It was hardly likely he could change much at his age, and the more she dashed herself against his defences the more uncomfortable and embarrassed he would be. She must be calm, reasonable,English, if they were to be happy together. “And how will I manage that?” she asked herself dolefully. “I’ll try—if it’s only to please him, but it’s a poor chance!”
Whether from his own feelings alone, or assisted by Mrs Gibbons, Richard had learnt his lesson. No more hysterics for him! He had taken up his quarters at Government House—since Colonel Bayard had deputed him to act as his representative in receiving Sir Henry Lennox when he landed—and he paid his wife a visit punctiliously morning and evening, but departed instantly if she showed the least sign of becoming excited. Under this bracing treatment Eveleen improved rapidly in health, and was promoted first to a couch on the verandah and then to taking drives, and was even well enough to be allowed to accompany her hostess to the shore to welcome the new ruler when he arrived from Bombay. Everything seemed to conspire to spoil Sir Henry’s first impression of Bab-us-Sahel. It was bad enough that his steamer should have been compelled to anchor off the port the night before, in imminent danger of running upon a reef in the darkness, and it was undignified for the person invested with supreme military and political power in Khemistan to be dragged in his boat through the surf and up the beach by yelling coolies because the tide would not allow of his landing at the pier. But the ladies watching from their carriages opined that something more serious must be wrong as the small bent figure, with dark glasses and long straggling beard, hobbled up the shore. Sir Henry had brushed aside brusquely the greetings of the officers awaiting him, and was giving sharp orders, pointing now to the vessel pitching on the horizon, now to the headlands on either side of the town. Something had to be done instantly, that was clear, for not until two or three men had detached themselves from the group, and mounted and ridden off in hot haste, did he appear to remember his manners.
“Sickness on board!” said Mrs Gibbons the experienced, noting that the port surgeon was one of those who had ridden away. “Now I wonder what it is—not cholera, I trust! I must see what beds——”
“Ah, but just wait till Sir Harry has passed!” urged Eveleen, in deep disappointment. “We don’tknowthat it’s sickness. And you wouldn’t make me cut my own brother? There he is—that’s Brian!” indicating a youth whose tall form towered above that of the General, naturally short and now bowed with rheumatism. Brian had a large mouth—expanded further by a cheerful smile—and blue eyes like his sister’s, one of them closed at the moment in a palpable wink. Eveleen was so much taken up with responding to this greeting that she was surprised to find her husband—portentously stiff and correct, as who should say, “This is none of my doing!” bringing Sir Henry up to the carriage. The General’s faded blue tunic might have been a relic of the Peninsula, and he wore a curious helmet of his own invention instead of the ordinary cap or shako with a linen cover and curtain. But the keen eyes twinkling through the dark spectacles, and the enormous nose, would have made him noticeable anywhere, quaint little figure though he was. He saluted and bowed low as he approached the two ladies in their best white gowns and flower-trimmed lace caps—Mrs Gibbons solid, jolly, and dependable; Eveleen all on wires, quivering with interest and excitement.
“My chief pleasure in coming to Khemistan,” he said courteously, “was the prospect of meeting Mrs Ambrose again, but I did not expect to have the honour so soon.”
“Ah, but that’s because I have been here for the hot weather,” said Eveleen eagerly. “But I may go up the river again with Ambrose, may I not?”
“So far as the matter rests with me, I shall be only too delighted,” was the courtly reply, and it took all Eveleen’s self-control not to cast a glance of triumph at her husband.
“And how is Black Prince?” she enquired, seeking hastily for safer themes.
“A bit seedy just now—we have had a terrible voyage——” his face was shadowed. “But he’ll soon shake that off.” Then the twinkle reappeared. “But would not a well-conducted lady have enquired first after my wife and the girls?”
“Ah, I never was that!” lamented Eveleen. “But I’ll do it, I’ll do it! Pray, Sir Harry, has Lady Lennox forgiven me yet for teaching Sally to jump?”
“I think I may say she has—particularly since she believes Sally has forgot the accomplishment.”
“While all the time Sally’s naughty papa has been keeping it alive in secret—eh, Sir Harry? Ah then, I know you, you see—and you and Sally and I will have many a fine gallop yet. I’ve set up a little Arab I’d like you to see——”
“With all my heart—but not at present, I fear. Now I must reluctantly bid——”
“Ah, but I must make known to you my kind friend Mrs Gibbons here, who would be Chief Medical Officer if ladies could be doctors. She read in your face that you had sickness on board while you were still far down the strand.”
“Ah, my dear lady!” there was no badinage now in the General’s voice—“we don’t alarm our gentle friends with these sad matters, but we have lost fifty-four men from cholera since leaving Bombay. That was what detained me just now—giving orders for pitching a camp of isolation immediately on the point yonder. I can do nothing till my poor fellows are transferred there.”
“Then Mrs Gibbons is the person you want!” triumphantly. “She has already reckoned up in her mind how many beds she can put her finger on in an hour.”
The General shot a keen look at Mrs Gibbons’s composed face. “By Jove, ma’am, you’re the woman for me! With your permission, I’ll send over my own surgeon to consult with you immediately. Ladies, your servant!”
“Oh, Sir Harry!” cried Eveleen desperately as he turned away, “you’ll be letting Brian—my brother—come to tiffin, or dinner, at any rate?”
“Lieutenant Delany shall certainly pay his respects to Mrs Ambrose and her hostess this evening”—again Brian’s eye sought his sister’s and closed in a wink—“if his duties will allow. During the day he will be continuously occupied.”
“If I might suggest, sir——” they heard Richard’s voice as Sir Henry stumbled off resolutely through the sand to the waiting horses. They heard also the General’s answer.
“No, sir, you may not suggest. There is far too much ‘suggesting’ here. I take no suggestions from my subordinates.”
Itwas late when Brian Delany found his way to Mrs Gibbons’s bungalow, so late that the good lady herself—pardonably weary after a long hot afternoon spent in looking up or improvising hospital equipment in the company of surgeons ignorant of the limited resources of the place—had begun to hint that invalids did well to go to bed early. But when he was heard dismounting at the verandah steps, she gave up her efforts in despair, contenting herself, as she took her departure, with the threat that if Brian stayed more than half an hour, she would get up again and come and turn him out. Eveleen hardly heard her, so much engrossed was she in greeting her brother.
“Well, Brian?” sitting up eagerly as he came in.
“Well, old Evie!” he stooped and kissed her. “Been more than a little bit seedy—eh?”
“Ah, what do I signify? Let me look at you, Brian. D’ye know, I believe you’re—grown!”
“Will you listen to the woman! Grown, am I? Grownthin, my dear, till you could count the bones of me!”
“Nonsense, then! You look far too well for that. But I do see, indeed—yes, there’s a look of hardness——”
“Hardness about me, would you say? No, indeed, but plenty about the little old horror you went and handed me over to! Little I thought ’twas a slave I was to be, when you blarneyed me into trying to get into the General’s family.”
“Sure it’s all for your good. You look twice the boy you did—twice the man, I’d say.”
“Do you tell me that, now? And how many yards of aide-de-camp is the General to entertain if we all stretch out this way? It’s not an increase of length, I tell you, but a decrease of girth—a shocking decrease!”
“My poor fellow! You look starved, indeed!”
“Starved, is it? That’s just what I am. How would you help it with a chief that drinks water as soon as whisky, and can live happy on country prog? No wine—no beer, even—on active service, and precious little other times. And hates the smell of a weed——”
“Ah, nonsense, nonsense! You mayn’t smoke?”
“Not on service. At Poonah Stewart and I would get away by ourselves when we couldn’t stand it any longer, and one keep ‘Cave!’ while t’other indulged. But as often as not the old lad would be after us before we were done.”
“Ah, Brian, it’s a reformed character you’ll be, and no thanks to yourself! And the poverty-stricken look that seems to hang about you—what of that, now?”
“That comes of wearing uniform always and all day long, my dear creature. And when your coat gets shabby, why—‘Hang it, sir! have it mended. An honest patch won’t shame either you or me, let me tell you.’”
“Well, you’re not quite come to that yet.”
“Am I not, indeed? This is my best coat, ma’am, put on to impress the ladies on landing. And even in having two, I’m breaking my General’s rules. What d’ye think is his allowance for a fellow on active service? Why, just what he stands up in, and nothing else but a pair of shoes, a second shirt and inexpressibles, a flannel waistcoat for chilly weather, a towel, and a piece of soap!”
“But what about coloured clothes?”
“They’re snakes, I tell you, and he St Patrick! Whether you may wear ’em on leave, I don’t know, for I’ve had no leave since I’ve been with him, but certainly not within a hundred miles of headquarters. A shooting-jacket is ‘a deformity of dress,’ and as for a blouse”—this was a kind of Norfolk coat made in thin materials—“if one met his eye, believe me, he’d tear it off you and kick it out of the house. Oh, he’s a holy terror, and no mistake!”
“The very person you needed to take you in hand, my dear fellow! And tell me, does he work you hard?”
“Don’t he, just!” with a hollow groan. “From morning to night—day in, day out—your nose is on the grindstone. ‘If I thought there was the remotest chance of your studying,’ says he, ‘I’d allow you time for it, the same as I do myself, but ’tis no use. So I’ll find you work instead, just to keep you out of mischief.’”
“Sure he’s the wise man! And what would he be studying?”
“Marlborough, Frederick, the Duke—all those old codgers full of plans of battles like starfishes, with a compass in the corner to show they’re upside-down! Much good they’d do me or anybody! I’d want to get them up-sided first, and then they’d be all wrong. And some great little old Latin book that he hammers bits out of at meals and all sorts of times, with Alexander’s campaigns in it—for an example and an incitement, says he.”
“You’ll be a wonder by the time he’s done with you! And the work—what’s that like?”
“Like galloping hell-for-leather through the heat to surprise some wretched barracks where they ain’t prepared for inspection. And turning everything topsy-turvy, and hauling everybody over the coals, and putting up the private soldiers to make complaints, and swearing till all is blue that there ain’t an officer in the place fit to hold his commission, and the C.O. and the surgeon ought to be drummed out of the Army with ignominy! Oh, I tell you they love him down there!” Brian waved a hand in a direction supposed to be that of Bombay.
“You have great times indeed! Don’t you enjoy it all?”
“I believe you! To see a poor wretch of a private trying hard to think of some grievances, with one eye on the General, who’s so anxious for ’em, and t’other on his own officer, who’s safe to pass on to him the wigging he gets—it’s rich! But it ain’t what you may call fair play. Why, the very first thing I was taught when I got into the regiment was that an officer must never permit a private soldier an interview without he was full dressed and accompanied by a sergeant. But the General swears an officer must be accessible to his men day and night—in their shirt-sleeves if they choose—and no sergeant within a mile of ’em. D’ye wonder no one knows how he stands?”
“’Twas like that when they fought in Spain, I suppose.”
“Oh, no doubt; but this is India, and peace time. Not that I’d quarrel with anything that made people more friendly, but when you have to unlearn all you were ever taught——! It’s mad about the men the old lad is. The officers may go hang, but every private is his good comrade. The letters they send him! you’d laugh, I tell you—where you didn’t cry! Well, there y’are now; what d’ye expect these old colonels and brigadiers, who have spent all their lives in India, to think of it?”
“You mean they would not be pleased?”
“Pleased? Sure they hate the General as heartily as he hates them. And he hates the Civilians worse. And if there is anything he hates worse than a Civilian, it’s a Political. So now you see why it’s Old Harry and the rank and file against the Services and all the old Indians everywhere.”
“Ah, if he hates the Politicals—I heard him catch up Ambrose in the horridest way—— But how can he——”
“Oh, he don’t mean it a bit. If you sit mum and let him rage over your head, he’ll be smiling sweetly on you in another five minutes. But if you give it him back—my word, won’t he kick up a dust! And if you bear malice, so can he—for ever and ever. He’s the drollest old chap—like a child in some ways. You tip Ambrose the wink not to answer him back, and not to use Persian words in speaking or writing to him—he boasts he don’t understand a syllable of anything but plain English—and they’ll get on like a house afire.”
“But, Brian, he ain’t accustomed——”
“My dear creature, he’s got to get accustomed—or be broke. I do hope he and Bayard and all the fellows here ain’t going to get their noses in the air. If they do, the General will rub ’em tidily in the dust for ’em, and enjoy doing it. But if they’ll just take a little pains to keep on his soft side—and no man has a softer—we’ll all be the happiest family in the world.”
“You will have found the soft side, then?”
“With intervals, my dear creature—with intervals. Explosions, let us say, which take you by surprise all the more because you have been getting on so uncommon well the moment before. But I’m the lucky chap; only once have I been regularly blown sky-high—and that was your fault.”
“It’s trying to tease me y’are, you rude boy.”
“Not a bit of it. I was riding with him one day—up hill, so for once we couldn’t gallop, and the old fellow began to do the paternal—bad luck to him!—enquire into my private affairs, and so on. I was shaking in my shoes for fear what he might be asking next, when he suddenly comes out with the question how I got the money to pay my debts. ‘Oh, glory!’ says I, ‘safe this time, at any rate!’ and told him ’twas from my sister. And then there was a sort of earthquake and eruption of Vesuvius all in one, and me lying in little bits at the bottom. ‘Will you tell me,’ says he at the end, precious stern, ‘how y’ever dared face me after sponging on a female to get the means to enter my family?’ ‘And where would I get it,’ says I, plucking up courage for very desperation, ‘only from the woman from whom I’ve had everything since she first took care of me as an infant?’”
“That’s my dear boy!” Eveleen beamed on him. “I wouldn’t ask you to say better than that.”
“He saw it—I’ll grant him that—but he was uncommon stiff with me still. ‘And how much have you paid her back by now?’ he lets out at me all of a sudden. ‘Why, nothing, General!’ says I, astonished. ‘That, at least, we can put right,’ says he. ‘Fifty rupees a month, my fine fellow—and the first month you’re behindhand is your last away from your regiment.’ I swear to you I thought it cheap at the moment! Permit me, ma’am, to tender you payment of the first three months’ instalments.” With a low bow he presented a slip of paper.
“As if I’d touch it, then! But I’ll always be proud——”
“You must touch it, and take it and keep it, if you don’t want me kicked out. Sure I’d lose more than you think——”
“Ah, well, Ambrose will be pleased. ’Twas his money, after all,” languidly. “And will you tell me, Mr Brian Delany”—with sudden animation—“what it is you’d lose if you went back to your regiment? You have not been falling in love, now? Brian!” with tremendous certainty, “you have dared to make love to Lucy Lennox? Oh dear, oh dear! these boys! What will they be doing next?”
“Not guilty, ma’am! Listen to me now. Stewart it is that’s sweet on Miss Lucy, and I playing gooseberry for them time and time again. So there!”
“Well, go on with you. What about yourself?”
“You’ll break my heart laughing at me.” But Eveleen read in the tone that Brian was at least as eager to confess as she was to hear.
“You know I won’t. Tell me, now. It can’t be Sally?”
“Sally it is. Sally’s the girl for my money.”
“But she’s nothing but a little bit of a child yet. Is it thirteen she is—or fourteen?”
“How’d I know—or care? That child is as old—as ancient. ‘My wise little Sally,’ her papa calls her, and she turns the stubborn old ruffian round her finger as easy as winkin’. And to hear her lecture your brother, my dear creature you’d think she was her own grandmother! Give her a year or two, and I’ll marry her without so much as a ‘by your leave!’ even if General is G.-G. by that time!”
“Perhaps she won’t have you, my dear fellow.”
“Then it’s a bachelor I’ll be all my born days. Do you take me, ma’am? It’s a case! What in the world’s that?”
“That” was a nightcapped head—the body presumably attached thereto remaining discreetly out of sight—which appeared at a doorway. “Three-quarters of an hour!” said a sepulchral voice. “And Mrs Ambrose still an invalid. Mr Delany, will you be so good as to return to your quarters, and let your sister go to bed?”
“I will, ma’am, I will!” Brian winked largely at Eveleen. “I’m a sad fellow to have brought you here to turn me out, but ask my sister if all I’ve told her ain’t worth it.”
“Begone, graceless wretch!” Eveleen was quoting from the melodrama—miscalled historical—recently staged by the Bab-us-Sahel Dramatic Club, and Brian, recognising the style common to melodrama, answered in the same vein.
“Cruel but virtuous dame, at thy command I go!” and went.
The few days which covered Sir Henry Lennox’s sojourn at Bab-us-Sahel were well filled. He saw the outbreak of cholera stamped out, he reviewed the troops, he set on foot plans for improving the landing conditions, providing a water-supply, and laying out large vegetable gardens, with a view to preventing the scurvy from which the garrison suffered. For the present a ration of lime-juice was to be served out, but it was clear, from the arrangements made for the future, that the town was to remain in British hands, and knowing people opined once more that Sir Harry’s visit was to end in the annexation of Khemistan. This did not appear to be his own opinion, however. He was come, he said quite frankly, to make the Khans keep their treaties—with such modification as might seem called for. He had not come to fight, and he did not for a moment believe that the Khans would provoke a rupture, but he was quite certain he was going to put an end to the anomalous condition of things that had obtained hitherto. It was in his mind, also, that the large British force at Sahar—far up the river—must be badly in need of inspection by a competent authority, and this need it was his purpose to supply. The requirements of Bab-us-Sahel having therefore been observed, noted and pigeon-holed at lightning speed, the General set out on his way up the river. To the relief of Richard Ambrose, who had been rather inclined to fear, from the tone of his references to the Khans, that his mode of dealing with them would be to knock their heads together and bid them listen to reason, Sir Harry consented to pay a visit of ceremony to Qadirabad in the course of his journey. Thus it was only natural that he should offer the Ambroses a passage in his steamer, since the Khans might well feel alarmed if he was not accompanied by any representative of their friend Colonel Bayard, and Eveleen and her husband returned up the river in state.
Unfortunately, the added grandeur did nothing to mitigate the inconveniences of the voyage, but the General himself was so absolutely unconscious of these that no one else durst refer to them. Eveleen had her tent on deck as before, and having once made certain that such comfort as was possible was secured to her, Sir Harry dismissed the subject from his mind. If they had only been privates, the officers on board confided ruefully to one another, the General would have thought no pains too much to make them comfortable, but the higher ranks were expected to be content with the meagre accommodation that sufficed for himself. To the honour of his staff be it said that they loved him too much to grumble at hardships shared with him, and it must be confessed that no one who did not love him could have remained in his family for a week.
Eveleen studied him appreciatively day by day, but from a point of view other than that of the quaint companionship of Mahabuleshwar. Half unconsciously, she had acquired something of the Anglo-Indian attitude of mind in her sojourn up the country, and it helped her to understand the alarm and dislike with which he was viewed by old Indians generally. It was perfectly true that he knew nothing of India, and prided himself on the fact, which in some curious way he had brought himself to regard as a merit. In fact, ignorance of India seemed to him an essential qualification for dealing successfully with Indian affairs—a conviction shared with him by many less simple-hearted egoists both before and since. Curiously enough, he was always on the watch to pick up information about things Indian—historical, geological, agricultural, linguistic,—but the information must be surprised and as it were snatched from the people who knew, at moments when they were off their guard. Not only did he keep his eyes open, but he was not too proud to confess he had been mistaken. The little book on the Campaigns of Alexander, to which Brian had alluded, was his constant companion, and he had succeeded to his own complete satisfaction in reconstructing the itinerary of the Greek forces, and identifying the various places mentioned with existing towns. But the whole scheme collapsed under the shock of the discovery that the river was wont to change its course from year to year—sometimes from month to month—and that it would be unreasonable to expect to find a town where it had stood a century ago, much more two thousand years. This was a severe blow, and for a day or two the little book was less in evidence. Brian and Eveleen asked one another wickedly whether the report on the condition of Khemistan—which Sir Harry was compiling at alarming length—would likewise prove to be founded on imagination rather than knowledge of the country, but by degrees they began to perceive a method in the little man’s madness, and to watch for the lightning questions by means of which he would inform himself.
The fame of the General had reached Qadirabad before him, and the anxiety of the Khans to produce a good impression was shown by their assiduity in offering him a welcome. A high official was deputed to meet the steamer before it came in sight of the city, and the river bank was studded with bearers of enormous trays of sweetmeats, so many from each Khan. At the Residency other officials were waiting, with more sweetmeats and a polite offering of ten fat sheep, and it was clear to Richard and his colleagues of the Agency that the rulers were both puzzled and nervous. Here was an abrupt little man of terrible aspect, reputed to be the most ferocious fighter Europe could produce, and a disciple—if not a relative—of the world-famous Wellington. He was armed with vague powers—all that was known was that they were greater than those of any General who had hitherto visited the country,—but how he meant to use them no one could say. It was not even known whether he and the Resident Sahib were friends or enemies—bitterly did the Khans regret that the two men had not met, that sharp eyes unseen might have observed and reported their demeanour—nor whether the Resident was still in authority or not. The one obvious thing seemed to be to make sure of the favour of the alarming Unknown, and the obvious way of doing it was to show him every possible honour. A scarlet palanquin of state, with green velvet cushions, was sent to convey him to the Fort, his staff and that of the Agency following on richly-caparisoned camels. Besides his own escort of fifty Khemistan Horse, he had a guard of honour of Arabit Sardars and their retainers, and at the city gate the younger Khans—each in his palanquin—met him and escorted him in. Curious crowds fought for a sight of him and acclaimed him enthusiastically, and as he mounted the rise to the gateway of the Fort every one salamed to the ground. Khemistan was doing its best to conciliate the intruder.
“And how did he get on with them at all?” asked Eveleen eagerly of her husband, when the procession had returned, and he was thankfully divesting himself of the trappings of full dress.
“So-so. He meant to be all that was charming, but he hasn’t a notion how to take ’em, and they don’t know what to make of him. He looks upon ’em as a set of children, because they would have his spectacles passed round for ’em all to try on, and that’s how he talks to ’em. Of course the Munshi put all he said into proper form, but they judge by the tone much more than the words. That dry hard way he has of barking things out was what impressed ’em, I could see, though he was trying his utmost to put them at their ease. They don’t like him, and they’re precious frightened of him—that’s about it, I should say.”
“If only the Colonel had been here, now!” sighed Eveleen. Richard looked at her queerly.
“What good would that have done? He couldn’t have shortened this man’s huge beak, or got him to go about without spectacles—which frighten them because they think his eyes are so savage that he wears ’em to deaden the expression,—or made him speak soft and slow. It ain’t in the old chap, and he don’t know enough about India to try and cultivate it if he hasn’t got it. And they know well enough that he’s been sent here over Bayard’s head—the only thing they can’t make out yet is whether they’re in it together or not.”
If Sir Harry were aware of the alarming impression he had produced, he showed no sign of it, but continued his journey up the river the next day, leaving with Richard the letter which was to call the Khans’ attention to the breaches of treaty of which they had been guilty, and the advisability of mending their ways forthwith. At Sahar he was to be met by Colonel Bayard, who had been enjoying himself vastly—free from the responsibility and respectability of the Agency—in his mission to the wild country on the Ethiopian border. He had made long journeys on camel-back in disguise, provided for the safety and sustenance of the British force retiring from Iskandarbagh, settled various outstanding matters in connection with the small state of Nalapur—and incidentally embroiled himself with the Governor-General, who was a bad person to quarrel with. The occasion was the affairs of Nalapur. Not only did Lord Maryport consider Colonel Bayard had exceeded his powers in reorganising the government—that was merely presumption,—but he accused him of deluding the durbar deliberately by laying claim to powers he knew he did not possess, and then indeed Colonel Bayard was touched in his tenderest point. An acrimonious correspondence was in progress, of which he assured himself happily that he had so far carried off all the honours; but the drawback in quarrelling with authority is that authority is always in a position to have the last word—and that word had not yet been spoken. Both Colonel Bayard and his friends—to whom he read or repeated what he considered the most telling portions of his letters—forgot this, and when the news came that Sir Harry Lennox and he had taken a fancy to one another at first sight, and were working together in the most amicable way, the Political Establishment in Khemistan forgot its fears, and settled down contentedly in the conviction that, after all, things were going on much in the old way.
The Khans also were hugging this amiable delusion to their souls. Richard was kept busy with visiting them and receiving their Vakils, now delivering the papers sent to him from Sahar for the purpose, and then transmitting the answers. Knowing Colonel Bayard to be their friend—though without feeling it necessary to requite his friendship otherwise than in word,—they were quite happy since he still remained in the country, and bent all their energies, which were small, and their ingenuity, which was infinite, to the task of enabling him on their behalf to hoodwink the intruder. With the aid of a judicious rattling together of shields and tulwars—to give the hint of unpleasant possibilities in the background if things were pressed to extremities—they looked forward to tiding over this crisis as they had done others. Richard was a good deal worried by their attitude. He could not bring them to realise that they had a second person—and a very different one—to deal with now, and whenever he tried it they replied with the warlike demonstrations intended especially for the General’s benefit. It was quite certain that there was an unusual amount of coming and going about the Fort. Fresh bands of Arabit horsemen seemed to be arriving continually, and while some of them departed again, others remained. Moreover, Richard doubted very much whether those who went away returned to Arabitistan. From the reports brought him by his spies, he believed that they were reinforcements for the garrisons of the desert fortresses of which the Khans boasted as unreachable and impregnable, and from which Sahar itself might be assailed in case of need. He could only pass on his observations to Sir Harry, and try to convince the Khans of the seriousness of the situation, while doing his utmost to bring them to reason by peaceful means.
Eveleen had returned from Bab-us-Sahel full of good resolutions, determined to take Mrs Gibbons as her model from henceforth. She would never want to ride at unorthodox hours—virtue was assisted in this respect by the heat,—and she would benefit society by starting a farmyard and kitchen-garden. Unfortunately for her good intentions, Qadirabad was a very different place from Bab-us-Sahel, since mutton, poultry, and vegetables were all easy to get. She relinquished with a sigh the idea of a sheep-farm and chicken-run, but a garden she would have, and achieved—with the aid of the Residencymaliand his underlings—success of a sort. Themalihad an unfair advantage in the perpetual contests waged between them, since he knew his own mind and did not change it from day to day, while Eveleen’s continual visions of newer and better arrangements led to weird apparitions of onions in the flower-beds and violets among the lettuces. Happily themaliwas able, with conscious rectitude, to show that he had a proper supply of vegetables coming on in regions to which the Beebee had not penetrated, and instead of starving the Agency staff, Eveleen escaped with a good deal of teasing on her peculiar horticultural tastes. But those who had planted the garden were not destined to eat its fruits.
“Sure there’s a steamer coming down the river!” Running out on the verandah dressed for the evening ride, Eveleen stood still to listen. “Ambrose, d’ye hear?”
“A steamer to-day? Nonsense!” cried Richard, joining her hastily. “No, by Jove, it is!”
“What will it be, I wonder?” in much excitement. “Oh, send the horses back, and let us go down to the strand.”
Other people joined them as they neared the path down the low cliff on which the Residency stood, and waited on the landing-stage. TheAsteroidcame round the bend with the light of the setting sun full on her.
“Well, now; if it’s not the Resident!” cried Eveleen, as a figure on the paddle-box took off his hat and waved it to the group in the shadows. “He must be invalided. See how ill he looks!”
“As if you could tell at this distance!” said Richard, in his superior way; but as the steamer drew round to the landing-stage, he had to acknowledge that Colonel Bayard did look very ill.
“That attack of fever we heard of will likely have been worse than we knew. He must go to bed at once.” Eveleen spoke with all the determination of Mrs Gibbons herself, and Colonel Bayard, hurrying to shake hands with them as soon as he set foot on shore, heard her.
“What have I done, Mrs Ambrose, that I am to be sent to bed like a naughty child? I know there are plenty of people who have the worst possible opinion of me, but I didn’t expect to find them here.”
“Sure it’s for your own sake,” she said seriously. “You don’t look fit to be up.”
“Morally I may not be, but physically I assure you I am. But I have had a heavy time this hot weather, and no doubt it’s told upon me. And I have had a bit of a blow just lately.”
“Ah!” said Richard quickly.
“Yes—to make a long story short, I am remanded to my regiment.”
They stopped in climbing the path, and looked at him incredulously. Colonel Bayard, the prince of Politicals, deprived of his acting rank and sent back to do duty with native infantry! The man who had ruled kingdoms and dispensed lakhs was to return to a despised calling and its scanty pay. He read their horrified amazement in their eyes, and raised his hand brusquely.
“No, don’t pity me too much; keep a little for yourselves. I wish I were the only person affected, but the fact is—the Political Establishment is dissolved.”
“Dissolved?” echoed Richard hoarsely.
“Destroyed, broken up, cast aside, kicked out. By the fiat of my Lord Maryport, without the ghost of a reason given.”
“Lennox!” the word sounded like a curse. Colonel Bayard saw Eveleen’s mute gesture of protest, and smiled at her.
“No, Mrs Ambrose, you are right. Old Harry had nothing to do with it—was as much taken aback as I was. He told me frankly he had been on the point of writing to recommend the reduction of the Agency, but certainly not its abolition. Like all those bustling energetic people just out from home, he thinks we do nothing for our money. Let him wait till he has had two or three hot weathers in Khemistan! At any rate, his view of it is that we spend our time drinking beer and smoking cheroots”—with a rather conscious laugh, for his friends would hardly have recognised him without a fat cigar in his mouth,—“and occasionally signing the papers our black clerks bring us, and he is going to work without any clerks at all. You will be the victim of his economy, Richard. Even he acknowledges that he must have some sort of political officer to consult when he’s quite out of his depth, so I put in a word for you.”
“As though I would stay here a day without you!”
“My dear fellow, you must. You are married, you have your wife here——” he smiled again at Eveleen as she looked back at him from the verandah steps with brimming eyes. “You can’t take her back to your regiment. The life would kill her. It ain’t as if she were a young girl,” he added in a whisper before he followed.
“True; she ain’t a young girl.” The tone was savage, but Richard knew his friend was right. A girl who knew India, brought up by a managing mother accustomed to Indian ways, might have faced the life which had been his for so many painful years; but Eveleen, knowing as little of the country as she did of method and contrivance—what would there be before her but a miserable struggle ending in ruined health and spirits for both? He was not free to cut loose from Khemistan.
“So you must swallow the bitter pill, you see,” Colonel Bayard was saying as they mounted the steps, “and do what you can for my poor Khans from a distance. By the bye, I didn’t tell you that—this place is to be closed for the present; you are to go up to Sahar. I shall have to break it all to them to-morrow. I couldn’t go down the river without bidding ’em farewell, but it will be one of the hardest things I have ever done.”
“Forthe last time!” said Colonel Bayard, with a comical glance of self-pity at Richard, as they rode out the next morning preceded by the chobdars with their silver sticks and followed by the barbaric escort.
“Not a bit of it! You’ll never be left mud-crawling with a black regiment. The G.-G. will find out his mistake in no time, and send for you back.”
“It would take a good deal to make him do that. I was promised the Agency for the down-river states when he sent Lennox here, but there’s no word of it now. Don’t look so shockingly cut up, Richard. I tell you it’s a release from bondage for me, after thelacqueyway I have been treated this summer by his lordship—bandied about like a racquet-ball! Old Lennox would have kept me on as his personal assistant—doing the deed first and getting permission afterwards—if I would have stayed; but I asked for furlough instead, and he put theAsteroidat my disposal to take me down the river in the handsomest way. A singular character, that old chap, but a thorough good fellow.”
“I hear he spoke very properly of you at the dinner they gave you before starting.”
“Properly? Nay, I assure you I didn’t know where to look. I might have been Scipio Africanus and Sir Philip Sidney rolled into one, instead of a failed Political going back to his regiment a poorer man than when he left it twenty years ago. By the bye, I don’t know whether I am in order in taking thesowari[retinue] with me to-day. Merely a private individual now, I suppose.”
“Not till you have left Khemistan, surely! If Sir Henry’s attitude is as generous as you say, he couldn’t grudge you the ordinary marks of respect.”
“Ay, but to him they ain’t ordinary, and he means to put an end to ’em. He has no chobdars himself, and he’s going to abolish these. An escort he can tolerate—but only on state occasions, of course—because it can follow him at a gallop, but fellows walking in front of him and making him ride slow—never!”
“How does he ever expect to impress these people?” said Richard bitterly. “They won’t have an atom of respect for him.”
“Oh, you should hear him on the subject. He thinks we can’t compete with the Indians in matters of show and state, so he won’t try. They will be more impressed by seeing we can do without every single thing they care about, so he says. And I’m bound to say he lives up to his theories. I thought so when I dined with him—privately, I mean; not theburra khana—and found everything camp-fashion. The plates and dishes and so on came out of his canteens—he takes a couple about with him so as to be able to give dinner-parties, he told me—and what d’ye think was the principal thing on the table? Why, pork chops and common bazar stuff at that—and the old chap tucking into them with real gusto and pressing ’em on me!”
“Well, if he can survive that sort of thing, he ought certainly to impress the Khans,” said Richard drily. “But it’s a pity he don’t stay here under their eye, for they ain’t impressed a bit at present.”
But in this he was wrong, as appeared speedily. Due notice had been sent to the Fort of Colonel Bayard’s desire to pay a farewell visit to their Highnesses, and the proper message of welcome received in return. But the message was couched in terms more flowery and formal than quite suited the intimate relations which had prevailed between the Resident and his charges, and there was no sign on the road of the messengers who should have met the procession at stated points and implored the visitor to hasten, since he alone could pour the snow-cooled sherbet of delight into the parched mouth of expectation. The reason for this lapse from good manners appeared on the visitors’ arrival at the Fort, for it seemed that a sudden illness had prostrated the ruling family at one blow. One Khan after another for whom Colonel Bayard enquired was declared to be sick, the attendants adding intimate and distressing details on a scale that did credit to their memories—or possibly their imaginations.
“Oh, let them alone!” said Richard, in a hasty whisper. “They funk meeting you.”
“But why should they funk meeting me? Nay”—to the embarrassed attendants,—“if their Highnesses are indeed so ill, I must postpone my journey, for I could not dream of leaving Khemistan while those who have been to me as sons are lying between life and death. I will send my own physician to visit them, and I myself will spend each day at the Palace, that I may be at hand the moment they call for me.”
Hurried consultations ensued, messengers came and went, and at last the chief spokesman advanced again. “Let the Resident Sahib be pleased to enter. Rather than force him to delay his departure, and incur the wrath of his lord the General Sahib”—Colonel Bayard stiffened perceptibly,—“their Highnesses will bedew the blossoms of affection with the tears of regret even at the risk of their health.”
He paused for a moment to see whether the visitor would take the hint, then sighed and led the way in. Apparently the Khans thought it safer to receive their fallen friend in a body, for the official disregarded Colonel Bayard’s request to be allowed to pay his respects to them separately, which would have seemed more natural. If they did not appear to be sick, at any rate they all looked very sorry for themselves when he and his assistant faced at last the row of seated figures on their cushions. Long wadded coats concealed their pleated muslin tunics and wide silk trousers, and the only touch of brightness was given by the gay kincob which covered their flowerpot-shaped caps. As politeness demanded, one and all declared that the mere sight of the fortunate face of the Resident Sahib had instantly banished all traces of illness, and then hurried on to enquire whether he also was well and prosperous. The formalities of salutation, perfunctory though they might be, took some time when each Khan had to be addressed and to reply separately, and it was beginning to look as though the whole interview would be occupied with such matters, when Sir Henry Lennox’s health and prosperity came under discussion as well. The example was set by Gul Ali Khan, the venerable white-bearded head of the family, whose memory went back to the days of conquest, when the wild band of Arabit chieftains had swooped down from their fastnesses upon Khemistan, and dispossessing the native rulers, reigned in their stead. He was the last survivor of the conquerors, and wore with dignity the turban which proclaimed him Chief of his house—the coveted emblem which would not descend to the son for whom he would fain have secured it, but to an interloper, the son of his father’s old age. This interloper, Shahbaz Khan, a handsome dapper man—absurdly young-looking to be the brother of the aged Gul Ali—sat beside him, and took up the strain of affectionate enquiry. For the Khans positively overflowed with anxiety for the General’s health, and their enquiries were couched in such terms of affection that even Colonel Bayard—loath as he was to believe it—could not mistake their drift. His day was over and done with; Sir Henry Lennox was the rising sun.
It was a bitter pill, but Colonel Bayard would not have been himself had he not done his best to take advantage of this new loyalty to influence his faithless charges for their good. When all the questions all the Khans could think of on Sir Henry’s affairs had been asked and answered, and before they could start on those of the Governor-General, he interposed a courteous hope that their admiration for the General’s character would make it easy for them to satisfy him on the subject of the breaches of treaty. Instantly a change that might be felt passed over them, as though each face had withdrawn itself behind a veil. Gul Ali answered with dignity—
“The Resident Sahib need not fear. The treaties we have made we shall keep, provided the English keep theirs.”
This did not sound very hopeful to the man who had been trying in vain for so long to get them to keep those very treaties, but Colonel Bayard answered politely—
“Of that your Highnesses need have no fear while matters are in the hands of the General. I rejoice to be able to leave Khemistan with all difficulties so happily arranged.”
Gul Ali’s expression was a little fatuous, as he said like an automaton, “The treaties we have made we shall keep, but we will sign no new treaty.”
Since it was known to Colonel Bayard that Lord Maryport intended to impose new and stricter obligations on the Khans, owing to their persistent breaches of former treaties, he did not feel able to say more than—“It is not for me to anticipate what the General may have to say to your Highnesses, but if the old treaties are kept there will certainly be no need for a new one.”
Khair Husain Khan, a clever-looking man with rather Jewish features, interposed. “The English pledged themselves not to interfere in any way with our rights over our own subjects. To that we hold!” triumphantly.
“Yet is it well for your Highnesses so to treat your subjects that they flee to the protection of the English?”
“If they do, we will have them back!” put in young Kamal-ud-din arrogantly. “Yes, even if they have to be torn from the hem of the General Sahib’s skirts!”
This, or something like it, was the Khans’ latest exploit, since their officials had invaded the boundaries of the Sahar Cantonment, and dragged away a number of unfortunates who had sought refuge there from their oppressors. But it seemed to be recognised that this was going rather far, for Khair Husain said hastily, with a soothing wave of the hand—
“The wretches had failed to pay their taxes, as the Resident Sahib knows. If they were allowed to escape, all Khemistan would seek an asylum with the British.”
“But why did they fail to pay?” asked Colonel Bayard boldly. “Was it not because it was known they had amassed riches, and their taxes were so much increased as to strip them of all?”
Gul Ali laughed complacently. “True—quite true. It is not well for subjects to grow rich, for they become troublesome. If they heap up wealth, it must be for their masters.”
“Since this is the last time I shall see the face of your Highnesses, let me beg once more that you will look at this matter differently. It is all of a piece with your imposing tolls designed to kill the traffic on the river. A wealthy people is an honour and a strong support to princes, and the making of money by honest means should be encouraged, not hindered.” The black looks bent on Colonel Bayard made him pause, and he added, with some emotion, “Your Highnesses will not hear me, I see. But let me entreat you to listen to the General, though his tongue be strange, and he neglect the forms of ceremony I have always been careful to use. Should he propose an interview, speak to him plainly of what is in your hearts. He will do this in any case, for it is not his custom to disguise his meaning.”
Gul Ali rode off hastily upon a side-issue. “It is not well to meet the envoys of the Farangis in consultation nowadays,” he said. “There was a certain Ethiopian Sardar who did so.”
The taunt was a bitter one—and worse, deserved,—for at the outset of the Ethiopian disasters the British Envoy, struggling desperately in the toils cast about him, had stooped to invite the foremost of his assailants to a conference, with the intention of making him a prisoner. In the remotest corners of Asia stray Englishmen were to rue the attempt for many a day, though the Envoy had paid with his life for trying to use the weapons of men better acquainted with them than he. But it had been cast in Colonel Bayard’s teeth before, and he met it with a bold counter-attack.
“True, Khan Sahib, and it was not the Sardar who suffered. Had the treachery been his, would it have surprised you?”
“Nay, but it was the Elchi Sahib’s!” came in chorus.
“And he paid the penalty. But has such treachery never been known in Khemistan?”
“Never on the part of a Farangi!” promptly.
“I thank your Highnesses in the name of my country. Has it ever been known of any Farangi anywhere?”
“Never until now. But what one Farangi has done, another may do.”
“I think not. The Elchi’s deed has been condemned by every Farangi who heard of it. I know of none who would imitate it—least of all the General.”
“He had better not!” cried Kamal-ud-din rudely. “He comes to Khemistan with a few hundred white soldiers, who are even now dying fast of sicknesses great and small, while our armies are numbered by thousands, and they are growing every day. Should he seek to defy or betray us, death such as the Elchi met with will be the least thing he has to fear.”
Astonished and displeased, Colonel Bayard made as if to rise from his chair. “I must ask leave of your Highnesses to retire——” he was beginning, but Shahbaz Khan interposed hastily.
“Nay, this is shameful talk! O my brother, is it to go forth to the world that the Khans of Khemistan permitted such things to be said in their hearing concerning their father and protector, the Bahadar Jang?”
“Nay, nay!” said Gul Ali timorously. “Youth speaks with the tongue of youth, which is headstrong and foolish. The General Sahib will know how to regard the folly.”
The mildness of the rebuke gave Kamal-ud-din fresh courage. “The General Sahib has nothing to fear if he comes to us in peace and openness of mind,” he said sullenly, “But who is he that we must guard our tongues when speaking of his greatness? He may call himself Bahadar Jang” [valiant in fight]—this was one of the polite epithets employed by the Khans in his interview with them which Sir Harry, who was not a conspicuously modest man, save in the presence of the fair sex or the Duke of Wellington, had accepted with some complacency as merely appropriate,—“but in all his years of warfare he has not taken spoil enough to put a single diamond in his sword-hilt!”
“Farangi Generals don’t go to war for the sake of loot,” said Colonel Bayard. “Any spoil the General Sahib might take he would present to his and my august mistress, the Queen of England.” He turned slightly to bow towards the large engraving of the young Queen which hung crookedly on the wall—suggesting that it had been put there hurriedly when the interview was found inevitable—very sleek of hair, very lofty of brow, sweetly simpering as to expression, and obviously overburdened with a headgear recalling the mural crown of antiquity. Richard followed his example, and the Khans salamed perfunctorily. The words seemed to have given them a new idea.