“Well, this is the sort of thing makes a man feel he hasn’t lived in vain! Fine showy things those swords—eh? I hadn’t the heart to deprive the poor beggars of ’em, though they would have made a nice heirloom to hand down in a private gentleman’s family. And now to make things lively for our backward friend Kamal-ud-din!”
“General!”—Colonel Bayard’s voice was hoarse with emotion—“I have said nothing, raised no protest—I vowed I would make no further effort—but after all this—— Ain’t you yet content?”
“Content?” Sir Harry stared at him. “What is there to be content about? After this next battle, perhaps——”
“Another battle! more bloodshed! Don’t those awful heaps satisfy you which I passed in the moonlight last night? Are you determined to destroy this unhappy nation if it fails to destroy you?”
“It has destroyed nineteen of my officers and two hundred and fifty-six men of my small force already. Merciful Heaven! do you think me a stone? Shall I ever forget that long row this morning of the corpses of my noblest friends, grim with dust and blood, laid side by side until the sand should shroud them from my sight? Are you accusing me of taking pleasure in bloodshed, Colonel Bayard?”
“Nay, not that—— Yet what can I think when I see you passing from one horror to another? Your bravery, your capacity, none can now dispute—if any one was ever fool enough to doubt it. Would that your sword had been drawn in a nobler cause! but you have chosen the shortest way, and it ain’t for me to remonstrate further. But shed no more blood, I entreat you; make your name as famous for mercy as it will always be for conquest.”
“What is it you are trying to get me to do?” Sir Harry turned and looked at him suspiciously.
“Kamal-ud-din—I know him well; he is young and easily moved. At present he is undecided whether to provoke a battle or not, because he believes you incensed against him. Let me go to him——”
“Certainly not. Too valuable a hostage.”
“Let me write, then. I will choose a messenger from the retainers of his uncles, who will inform him of their submission, and urge him to come in and surrender. With him in your hands, there is no leader left about whom the remnants of the Khans’ armies may rally, and you attain at once all the results of a battle without fighting one.”
“Be it so, then. Heaven knows the army is in no state to fight again to-day, and I should be crippled in any movement by this train of wounded.”
“A grandjoke for y’, Evie!” Brian ran up the steps gleefully, forgetful for the moment of the anxious charge which—so his friends alleged—was sapping the bloom from his youthful cheek, and turning his hair prematurely grey. It was three days after the battle at Mahighar, the camp had been pitched in and about the Agency compound, and in the ruined Residency itself the Engineers had patched up two or three rooms and a verandah for Eveleen, that she might not have to face the vicissitudes of the weather in a tent.
“And I have one for you!” responded Eveleen joyously. “Yours first—you’ll appreciate mine all the better for waiting for it. Don’t mind Ambrose; he’s far too busy to notice our nonsense.” She turned slightly towards Brian, and with a wicked glance, laid one forefinger over the other close to her eye. Richard was reading ostentatiously at some little distance—but it was no more novel or interesting work than an old Addiscombe text-book, somehow washed up on this distant beach.
“Listen, then. D’ye know y’are the General’s guardian angel, his talisman of success—that he won’t fight until y’are there, and if he lost you he’d be a gone coon? What d’ye think of that now? It’s proud y’ought to be, indeed.”
“I’d be prouder if I thought he took a proper view of my importance to him,” dolefully. “I’ll impart to y’a horrid secret, Brian. Sometimes I could almost believe the ungrateful old gentleman regarded me as an encumbrance!”
“That’s his artfulness. He don’t want you to realise your value. Why, when Khair Husain Khan, wishing to show suitable respect, desired to send y’a fine present of jewels t’other day, d’ye think the old lad would let you have it? Not he! Gave him a nasty snub, I promise you!”
“Ah, then, that was it!” Eveleen’s eyes danced. “I saw the creature look at me, but how would I know what he was saying? Sure Sir Harry might have had the politeness to offer me the choice whether I’d accept or not.”
She glanced very slightly towards Richard, and Richard flung away his book, remarked “Psh!” very loudly, and rose and stalked towards his wife and her brother.
“Always glad to see you, Delany,” he remarked, with forced geniality, “but I should be uncommonly obliged if you would help me in putting a stop to this nonsense. You can’t think it’s particularly gratifying for a man to know that such tales are going about the bazar with respect to his wife.”
“But sure no one that matters regards ’em as anything but a joke!” said Brian in surprise.
“Ah, but Ambrose can never see a joke, don’t you know?” said Eveleen plaintively.
“Perhaps not, but I can see defiance when I am treated to it——” Richard was not apt at epigram, and his return was deplorably lame. He went on to seek sympathy from Brian, who did not look encouraging: he disliked matrimonial differences which went deeper than mere surface squabbling. “I desired your sister particularly not to show herself at to-day’s ceremony, yet where should I find her but on horseback within the square, close to the General—thus giving confirmation to all these foolish reports?”
“As if I’d have let anything or anybody in the whole wide world keep me away!” Eveleen broke in indignantly. “To see the colours go up on the round tower, and the guns firing, and the soldiers cheering and cheering as if they would never stop—would anything make me miss such a sight, I ask you?”
“Not my wishes, evidently. You have no regard for them.”
“And why would I, when you gave me no slightest, tiniest hint of a reason? Was there any, will you tell me?”
“I had a reason, certainly, but I didn’t want to alarm you. Perhaps I was foolish to be so careful.”
“Will you never learn that when anything is really, truly interesting, there ain’t the smallest possibility of its being alarming? Don’t y’agree with me, Brian?”
“Well, now, I don’t entirely.” Brian was perhaps not sorry to give a helping hand to a brother-man. “It might be you’d do well to be alarmed in this case, Evie—I don’t know. It’s a bit of a mystery to me. By what I make out from my Khans yonder—who can be precious affable when they like—it has something to do with some piece of jewellery of yours that you gave away or sold. The thing has got into Kamal-ud-din’s hands—whatever it is—and he has it to thank that he ain’t a prisoner like his uncles and cousins.” For with callous disregard of Colonel Bayard’s assurances on his behalf, Kamal-ud-din had first promised effusively to come in and surrender on the following morning, and then employed the interval in removing himself and his forces into the desert,en routefor his remote ancestral fortress of Umarganj. Possibly the messenger who conveyed the letter had conveyed also information as to the state of the British troops; at any rate, Kamal-ud-din was fully justified in his belief that pursuit was out of the question.
Eveleen pointed a dramatic finger at her husband. “Put the blame where it ought to be, Brian. There’s the culprit for you. ’Twas that blue pendant Uncle Tom gave me, that I showed y’at Bombay—the seal that wouldn’t seal, don’t you know? Well, Ambrose found the Khans set a value on it, believing ’twas the seal of King Solomon, and had been stolen from them years and years ago, so he very kindly made them a present of it, without so much as asking my leave.”
“I remember it—a sort of blue cheese-plate. But it’s you are joking now, Evie. D’ye ask me to believe he took your pendant and gave it away without your knowing?”
Richard growled inarticulately, and Eveleen felt obliged to furnish the explanation he disdained to supply.
“Well, not that exactly. I had pledged it, or pawned it—whatever you like to call it—to get you that money you wanted, when you were afraid you’d miss the chance of getting into the General’s family, don’t you know? and Ambrose was shockingly cross with me about it. So I suppose he thought he’d punish me, but ’twas he gave it to Kamal-ud-din, you see.”
“Holy Moses! I come into this too, do I?” groaned Brian. “Don’t betray me to my old lad, either of you, or Iwillget a wigging. For you see, Evie, we have spoilt his luck between us. The stone and you go together somehow—it’s blue, and your eyes are blue; green, rather, I’d say if I was asked—so Khair Husain told me, and when y’are separated, the luck’s split. At present we have the lady, and Kamal-ud-din has the pendant—the Belle and the Bauble, to make a pantomime title out of it. If the General had had the Bauble as well as the Belle, he’d have swept up Kamal-ud-din with the rest of the Khans, and conquered the country at one go. If Kamal-ud-din had had the Belle as well as the Bauble, the Khans would have won t’other day, and cut all our throats on the field of battle, and led the General in triumph by a gold chain through his nose. Well, there y’are, you see. Don’t it strike you as a bit of a temptation to the Arabits to bring the Belle and the Bauble together again by carrying off the lady?”
“I’d like to see them try it!” declared Eveleen defiantly. “I sent a message to Kamal-ud-din by poor Tom Carthew when he had the stone first that I was ill-wishing it with all my might, but that’snothingto what I’d do if they tried to get hold of me. Besides”—with one of the sudden changes of mood her husband found so bewildering—“it’s just a notion I have that Ambrose wouldn’t be so ready to part withme, though he thinks he can make free as he likes with my things.”
It was absolutely impossible for Richard to rearrange his thoughts quickly enough to respond adequately to this overture of peace and the glance that accompanied it, but he managed to call up some sort of smile, and to mutter, “Oh no—rayther not, I’m sure!” Brian, scenting a reconciliation, made haste to clinch the matter.
“And don’t you be so nasty about that old pendant, Evie. I’m quite certain Ambrose would have given you something instead, if y’had asked him nicely.”
“Ah, but Ambrose don’t agree with giving his wife presents when she can’t keep accounts and wastes his money for him,” said Eveleen wickedly. “There! would you believe it, I was forgetting my joke that I had for you! What d’ye think of that, now?” she brought out of her pocket a handkerchief tied up in knots, and unfastening them, let a small torrent of gems tumble out upon the cane lounge where she was sitting. Richard’s face darkened again angrily.
“Mrs Ambrose, where did you get those?”
“Looks as though somebody had been making you a present, if Ambrose won’t,” said Brian lightly, with the amiable intention of averting another dispute. “Or have you been making a little private expedition of your own after loot? In the Fort to-day—oh, fie, Mrs Ambrose, fie! Won’t I set the Provost Marshal and the Prize Agents on you!”
Eveleen was bathing her hands in the jewels, without troubling to answer either man’s question. “Such a pity they spoil their stones so cruelly,” she said. “I wonder why will they always pierce them and they never seem to cut them so as to bring out the full beauty. And flaws, now—you’d think they didn’t even notice them, as if they only cared for a stone to be as large as possible.”
Richard’s hand gripped her shoulder—not gently. “You acknowledge these are native stones, then—from the treasury, I suppose? How did you get them?”
“If you hurt me so, I’ll cry. I know I’ll have a horrid bruise for weeks. Y’are so rough, Ambrose!”
“Get on with y’, Evie,” said Brian curtly. “How did you get hold of these things?”
“Well, then, I found them!” Eveleen looked defiantly from one to the other, resenting their tone.
“You found them? Where, pray?”
“On my dressing-table—wrapped up in an old dirty bit of silk embroidery. I nearly called Ketty to pick it up with a stick and throw it away, it looked so horrid. Then I saw something sticking out, and ’twas this emerald.”
“Did your ayah know anything of the parcel?”
“She swore she did not, and I wouldn’t think she’d tell me a direct lie.”
“May have been bribed to turn her back for a moment,” suggested Brian.
“More likely her attention was attracted by something going on outside,” said Eveleen promptly. “Her bump of curiosity’s enormous, don’t you know.”
“What do you make of this, Delany?” asked Richard hoarsely. “Is it some such plot on Kamal-ud-din’s part as you hinted at just now?”
“To reunite the Belle and the Bauble, d’ye mean? I wouldn’t think that—unless they’d imagine my sister was to be cot like a bird by spreading a trail of crumbs in front of her. No, if y’ask me, I’d say ’twas some bright scheme on the part of those Khans of mine, that have the heart worried out of me with their crooked ways. Every man of ’em is laden with stones like these. I know because they’re so anxious to make me presents of ’em. But now they know if I accept anything ’twill only go to the Prize Agents, they’re knocking off a bit. Possibly, now they have proved my Roman virtue, they are trying elsewhere.”
“But what’s the notion?”
“I ask y’, indeed! Just for a sort of propitiation, maybe, to the man in charge of ’em. But then again, they may have some plan in hand, and ’twould help ’em if I went about with my eyes shut. Or it may be they want a good word said for ’em to the General. You know these fellows. Can any of us say what’s in their minds?”
“You think they are plotting to escape?”
“I don’t know, I tell you. The way they keep my mind on the stretch, wondering what are they after now, you’d pity me if you knew! They can’t want more indulgences or luxuries, for they’ve got ’em all. It makes me angry to go from the General in his wretched littlerowty, that barely keeps the sun off his old head, to those chaps with their great cool rooms and fountains and green stuff. It can’t be more servants they want, for they couldn’t get ’em in. The place is packed with big strapping fellows, that go backwards and forwards to the Fort, and can carry news, or treasure, or anything they like but arms—and I wouldn’t put it past ’em to smuggle them too now and then. At least, there’ll be no more treasure to be had now, for the Prize Agents have taken it over—three million pounds they talk about.”
“And you’d grudge your poor sister one little handful of spoilt stones!” said Eveleen tragically.
“Precisely. Hand ’em over, Evie, and I’ll leave the lot with the Prize Agents as I go back. Whatever they were put in your room for, ’twas for no good, and you know that as well as I do.”
“He won’t leave me so much as one little weeshy diamond! Ah, it’s a cruel brother I have, and a cruel husband too! I wonder have they any hearts at all, at all?”
“It’s a brother and a husband miles too good for you y’have,” said Brian, tying up the stones inexorably in his handkerchief. “See here, Ambrose, I’ll be getting you a receipt for these, in case there’d be any question of a trap.”
“You have a head on your shoulders,” said Richard heartily. “The Sahib’s horse!” he called to a servant.
Presently he came back from the steps to find Eveleen pouting in her corner of the lounge. “Sure you might have letmesend them to the Prize Agent,” was her complaint. “What bit of a chance have I of doing the right things, when two great men seize them out of my hands and do them instead?”
“You see,” with a grave face, “you are so sadly destitute of jewellery that they might have been a temptation.”
“Ah now, aren’t y’ashamed to turn my own words against me like that? D’ye not know a good horse is more to me than a diamond necklace any day?”
“But not more than this sort of thing, I hope, or I shall feel I have gone wrong again.” He dropped a little parcel into her lap, and stood watching while she snatched it up in surprise.
“And what’s this, now? Have you been wasting your money on me, Ambrose? I’m surprised at you!”
Happily the possible double meaning of her last sentence did not occur to her as she eagerly opened the case, and displayed a gold locket set with pearls—large and massive, eminently what was then called “a handsome piece of jewellery.” “And did you really choose this for me?”
“Bayard chose it in Bombay—I asked him. He brought it up with him, and forgot all about it till he was packing again yesterday. Ain’t you going to look inside?”
She opened it joyfully, never doubting what she was about to see, and uttered a little sound of dismay. It was Brian’s cheerful eyes that smiled quizzically at her, their expression curiously natural, though the rest of the miniature showed the mannered stiffness of the native artist.
“Do you like it?” asked Richard anxiously. “I got it done here to send down after Bayard to take with him and have it put in the locket. I was afraid you would miss that calotype of your brother when I took it to the painter, but it was only two or three days in the bustle of packing up, and you happened not to think of it.”
Eveleen was hardly listening to him. She lifted her eyes tragically from the locket in her lap. “And why not yours?” she demanded.
“Mine? Why, I was sure you would rather have your brother’s,” he replied, in all innocence.
“Major Ambrose, there are times when I’d like—I’d like—— I won’t tell you what I’d like to do to you, but ’twould not be pleasant.”
“Then you ain’t pleased?” incredulously.
“Why in the world would you putBrianinto it?”
“Well, it was bought with that first money he paid back, you remember, and it seemed suitable——”
Eveleen laughed drearily. “D’ye tell me that, now? Well then, with the last money he pays back will you let him get me a locket and put you into it? Then I’ll wear you both at once.”
“By all means, if you wish it. But I don’t quite——”
“You would not. I’d have y’understand, Ambrose, that you never will see to your dying day! Ah, then, it’s a cross wife you have, isn’t it? Why don’t you give me a box on the ear?”
To any one but Sir Harry Lennox, his position at this time would have inevitably recalled that of the original Austrian who caught the Tartar. With his little force hanging on gallantly to the river front of Qadirabad, he was powerless to exercise any control on the land side, and it did not need much shrewdness to guess that the Arabits defeated at Mahighar were slipping out of the city in a continuous stream to join Kamal-ud-din and strike a return blow under his leadership. But it might have been more dangerous to keep them than to let them go, and the General remained untroubled by their defection. His concern at the moment was with bricks and mortar—or rather, in this locality, earth and mud. In the course of ten strenuous days, the ramshackle old Fort was put into such a state of repair as it had not known since it was first built; an entrenched camp was constructed about the battered Residency, and a small fortification erected on the other side of the river, where the steamers lay, to protect them and the precious stores they carried. But no one knew better than Sir Harry how very inadequate was his force even to guard what he held—much more to take the field again; and he had not only ordered reinforcements up from Bab-us-Sahel and down from Sahar, but had put his pride in his pocket so far as to ask the Governor-General for the regiments from British India which he had refused earlier. Pending the arrival of relief, he sat tight, presenting a spectacle of prudent inactivity which was as surprising as it was trying to his officers, who knew that Kamal-ud-din’s hopes must be rising with every messenger that reached him from Qadirabad. What could be more obvious than that the Bahadar Jang was distracted by the necessity of holding so much ground with such small numbers, that he durst not show his nose outside his fortifications, and that an attack in force on any portion of them must oblige him either to concentrate his entire strength in its defence and abandon the rest, or to hold the whole so weakly that it would fall an easy prey? Gloomy reports went round, leading to gloomier prognostications. The right bank of the river was wholly hostile. In the north the wild tribes were coming down from their hills, like vultures lured by the hope of being in at the death of the old lion. Down in the delta the wild tribes of the plains were waxing bold—interfering with thedâks, raiding the outlying houses of Bab-us-Sahel. The river itself might be considered safe wherever there was water for the steamers, but beyond the range of their guns Kamal-ud-din could do whatever he liked even on the left bank. He would know of the reinforcements marching from Sahar—of course he would swoop upon them from his desert eyrie and annihilate them by sheer weight of numbers.
“’Deed and y’are kindly welcome, as old Biddy used to say!” Eveleen greeted her brother one afternoon. “Mr Ferrers and Sir Dugald Haigh have been calling, and made me miserable entirely. Sir Dugald never says anything, but he sits and looks so solemn you’d be certain things were at their very worst. And Ferrers said any amount—that the General had lost his opportunity once for all when he let Kamal-ud-din escape and planted himself down here. But if only he was given the chance, says he, he’d engage to beat up Kamal-ud-din’s headquarters and bring him back prisoner, and so end the war at one blow.”
“Lieutenant Ferrers is a very great officer,” said Brian sardonically, “and if ’twas only his own life, and not the lives of other men and horses, would pay the price, I’d like well to see him sent out on just that easy bit of business. But we must hope to get rid of him cheaper than that.”
“Sure you may be as sarcastic as you please, but that don’t give me an answer to hurl at the man. Here I am, knowing nothing but what he and the rest say, and Ambrose looking virtuous and shocked when I ask him will he tell me anything, and talking about matters of duty and official secrets. Why, I believe the common soldiers know more of the General’s plans than I do! Often I see a knot of them, and in the middle his old helmet and Black Prince tossing his lovely little head, and it don’t need to be a prophet to know they’re asking him all sorts of questions, and he answering them as if he liked it.”
“And you never asked a question in your life, and the old lad wouldn’t like it if you did!”
“That he would not—or at any rate, I’m on my best behaviour, and trying not to tease him. Besides, wouldn’t I seem to be reflecting on the state of his mind if I asked him did ever any General before lay out a beautiful camp, and then move all his soldiers out of it into the desert, and only leave the hospitals and the baggage and headquarters and the prisoners and Ambrose and me inside?”
“You can’t say you have no neighbours!” laughed Brian. “But see here, Evie, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t know what he’s after. Now then, let me think how can I wrap up the truth in an Oriental apologue, so that any unauthorised listeners may be puzzled to find it? Listen, now; will you think y’are an old lady, poor and proud, like our cousin Gracia, living out Donnybrook way on her little bit of an annuity?” Eveleen looked mystified, but nodded. “Well, then, she has prosperous relatives living in Merrion Square—Counsellor Sullivan and his lady,—and she likes greatly to keep up the family feeling. But she has no money for coach-hire, and how would she walk all that way, even if she wasn’t terrified her little house would be robbed while she was gone? Will you tell me what she’d do?”
“I’d say she’d ask them would they come and see her,” entering into the spirit of the fable.
“Just so. And you wouldn’t be surprised if she’d put forward what attractions she could offer—to make it clear the favour was on her side, and the Counsellor and his lady would be well repaid for their long drive? The roses in her little bit of a garden would be at their best, and she could give ’em such eggs as they’d never buy in Dublin, and fresh cream from the farm over the way. Can’t you see the old lady in her old worn satin gown and her cap with the smuggled lace, and how she be worrying the girl she has, the way she wouldn’t know what she’d be doing? ‘I’d have you recollect, Rose Ann, there’s nothing so wonderful about Merrion Square. In my young days, ’twas company from the Cass’le, no less, we’d be entertaining—the Lord and Lady Lieutenant, and the grand ones they’d bring with ’em. Not that I have anything to say against my cousin the Counsellor—I have the highest respect for him and Mrs Sullivan,—but go out of my way to make any difference for them is a thing I’d never do. They must take us as we are, and just put up with what we are accustomed to,’ and she looks so majestically at the girl she’d never dare remember all the polishing up of the old silver, and the eggs and cream ordered, and the saffron cakes bought at the shop. D’ye see then how old Gracia, because she can’t get to Merrion Square herself, will make the Sullivans come out to Donnybrook, and bear the fatigue and expense—such as it is? and how she’ll make her preparations to entertain ’em in good time, while pretending she’s doing nothing of the kind? and how she’ll cry ’em down as very good sort of people and praise ’em up because they are relatives of hers, all in the same breath?”
“I do, I do!” cried Eveleen delightedly. “And Rose Ann understands perfectly that though the Sullivans are no very great things, yet she’ll bring eternal disgrace upon herself if she don’t treat them as though they were. But your beloved charges, Brian—how will you bring them in?”
“My ‘interesting’ charges, as the General calls ’em?” said Brian thoughtfully. “Well now, wouldn’t they be the jealous neighbours that would be always on the look-out to drop hints to the Sullivans that the creature fed every day on stirabout and potatoes, the same as Rose Ann? and if they could make a mistake in the day, or manage to arrive an hour too early, they’d catch her going about the house in her old patched petticoat and print bed-gown? Then if the Sullivans were the malicious sort of people that like to spring disagreeable surprises on their friends—why, they’d do it.”
“They would,” with conviction. “Ah, don’t you hope somebody of the sort has been listening to us talking? There’s not much they could make out of our tales of home. But I suppose I may ask you whether your interesting charges have been more agreeable this two or three days? It’s no secret to any one the way they behave.”
“I believe you—except to us,” said Brian, with unusual bitterness. “The fellows are worse than ever, I tell you—so cock-a-hoop their bearing would show they were in correspondence with Kamal-ud-din and counting on his success if there was nothing else. Tell you what, Evie, that fellow Bayard—I know he’s your friend and Ambrose’s, but I can’t help saying it—the fellow’s a fool. It’s a blessing he’s left us to ourselves in despair, but I had a letter from him to-day from Bab-us-Sahel, begging me for his sake to leave nothing undone that could conduce to the comfort and honour of the Khans. And already they have so much liberty they’re a danger as well as a nuisance.”
“He’s such a faithful friend, don’t you know? He’ll never give them up, however bad they are.”
“Despite their ‘fatal step of taking up arms against the British power,’ as he says. Well, we’ll all bear witness he did his best that the step would be fatal to us instead! You know he persuaded the General to allow ’em have their crowds of servants going freely in and out—spies, of course, every man of ’em. ’Twas so impossible to keep ’em in any sort of control, that after remonstrating with their masters in vain, at last I complained to the General, and he came to point out they had no shadow of reason for entertaining such a crew. Give you my word there were two hundred Arabits at least in the very tent where we sat talking to the Khans—all pressing close upon us and looking by no means pleasant. I confess it struck me that if they chose to fall on us we’d have a mighty poor chance. And what d’ye think Khair Husain had the impudence to say with a straight face? ‘Our people? But we have only a few Hindus—not enough to cook our victuals. Not an Arabit ever enters this garden.’ Now what could be the object of telling a silly lie like that? If y’ask me, I’d say ’twas simply impudence, and it riled the General. He said pretty sharply, ‘I won’t kill you as you’d have killed the English, but any further complaints, and I’ll clap y’all in irons and send y’on board a steamer!’ I wish he’d do it, too; I ain’t cut out for a jailer. They know now they can’t bribe me, but that’s about all, and one of our spies tells the General they please themselves with promising to cut me into little bits, beginning with my fingers and toes, when Kamal-ud-din comes. They’re a sweet lot, I tell you—able for anything. Why, when the General got up in a rage, as I said just now, and went out, who would come catching at his coat and whining to him for protection but old Gul Ali? The poor old beggar’s baggage was all lost at Mahighar, and he came to prison destitute, and destitute he remains. There he stood out in the sun, while the rest sat in their silken tent. They won’t give him food or clothes or money to buy ’em, and he swears they mean him to starve to death. Of course he got protection promised him—against his own brothers and nephews,—and the General sent him in a tent and some things. That’s what the fellows are—with jewels dropping from ’em whenever they move!”
“Ah, those jewels! Did y’ever find out whether they put that bundle on my dressing-table?”
“I did. Ambrose thought I’d better nip any further attempts in the bud by showing ’em this one had not come to anything, so one day when Khair Husain seemed inclined to be confidential I broke the truth to him. He was a good deal chagrined, but not a bit ashamed.”
“But did he say what they had hoped I’d do?”
“’Twas to secure your intercession with the General on behalf of their zenanas, so he said. But can you believe a word they’d say?”
“But I thought they had their zenanas with them?”
“Their wives and mothers and aunts and daughters and sisters—every conceivable sort of female relative—but not the slave-girls. The place wouldn’t hold ’em.”
“And they are allowed go back to their friends? That was one of the things made Ferrers angry. He said the General let the women stay in the Fort for days after the surrender, and there were hundreds of armed men there as well, and they plundered nearly all the treasure.”
“Well, what would y’have the poor old boy do? The armed men were there to guard the zenana, and Bayard and all the old Indians were dinning it into his ears that at the first sign of an attempt to expel ’em, they’d cut all the women’s throats and fight their way out of the city. They had to be got out of the Fort somehow, or there would have been no room for a garrison; and besides, it was not safe to leave ’em there uncontrolled. So he gave ’em three days, while he was collecting camels and palanquins to carry the women to the other palaces outside the city. He knew the ladies would get their fingers into the treasury, but he thought ’twas only fair they would have something to support themselves, as the Khans ain’t likely to be able to keep up such an establishment in future, and what d’ye think we find now they have walked off with? Two millions out of the three the Prize Agents saw in the treasury the first day!”
“No wonder the Khans are well off!” said Eveleen.
“Ah, it’s not all got to them, by any manner of means. Case of finding and keeping, I’d say. But it did sicken me to hear Bayard, when he was starting off down the river after the hoisting of the flag on the Fort, saying to the General, ‘Remember the Khans’ honour is bound up in their womenfolk. Indulge their prejudices, I entreat you. Their wives and daughters are as dear to them as yours to you.’ Half the army believes that Bayard was bribed by the Khans, I may tell you, because of all the delays he brought about. Of course we know that’s great nonsense, but if I’d been the General I’d have knocked him in the river for daring to mention those females in the same breath with little Sally and her sister!”
Nearlya month after the battle of Mahighar part of the load was lifted from Sir Henry’s burdened mind by the Governor-General’s ordering the annexation of Khemistan and the deportation of the Khans to Bombay. Lord Maryport had not yet heard of the battle, but the shuffling of the Khans over the treaty, and the attack on the Agency, had convinced him that further delay was useless, and his action came in time to diminish the General’s anxieties by allowing him to get rid of his prisoners without fulfilling his threat to put them in irons. There was a slight difference of opinion over their departure. The Khans declared loudly that the Governor-General’s permission to take with them into exile their families and servants included the thousands of women for whom it had not been possible to find room in the garden-palace. The ladies, on the other hand, having enquired whether it was true that slavery was abolished under British rule, flatly refused to go, and the General declined to compel them. Eveleen triumphed ungenerously over Richard on the occasion.
“Didn’t I tell you the creatures were carried away to the Fort against their wills? and you declaring they liked it, and were provided for for life!”
“You forget, my dear, the conditions are altered. In the old days they would have settled down happily, and never have dreamt of leaving the palace.”
“As if that made it any better! If they were Arabit women ’twould be different—they’d have a right to go where their lords went. But these poor Hindu and Khemi girls, stolen away against their wills and shut up in the Fort, forbidden to see even their parents again on pain of death—would you so much aswishthem to be happy?”
“I fear my wishes would have precious little weight with ’em, my dear—as sometimes happens with another lady. But ain’t you satisfied now they are all at liberty to return to the parental roof? and I trust they’ll enjoy the change!”
“And why wouldn’t they? when each has got her little property to keep her till she can make her arrangements? I’m glad Sir Harry saw to it they wouldn’t be left destitute.”
“That they certainly were not, but I admire your unselfishness, since their gains have all come out of the prize-money we ought to have had.”
“Ah, y’old money-grubber!” said Eveleen affectionately. “It’s as bad as the General y’are, when he says he don’t mind how long Kamal-ud-din hangs off and on without attacking, because he’s spending all his money feeding his followers, and when it’s gone they’ll forsake him.”
“Precisely the sort of thing the General would say to you.”
The hint of superiority was intolerable. “And pray what does he say to you, Major Ambrose, that y’are so high and mighty about it?”
“Accept my apologies, my dear. I assure you I was not alluding to any confidential information imparted to me.”
“Then what were y’alluding to?”
“Mrs Ambrose, cross-examiner! Simply to the fact which the General is kind enough to leave out of sight when he seeks to raise your spirits, that though a certain amount of delay on Kamal-ud-din’s part may be of service to us in allowing our reinforcements to come up, yet too much of it will bring into the field against us an enemy far more deadly than any of the Khans—the hot weather.”
“But sure Sir Harry was counting up all the reasons he has for being thankful for the delay!”
“To reassure you, as I say. But believe me, the thought of the hot weather harasses him day and night. What could we do here, unable to march, with the river in flood, and the prevalence of sickness usual at that season? He has succeeded to a marvel in alluring the enemy from his fastnesses, whither we could not pursue him, and in keeping him amused in the prospect of overcoming our weakness with ease as soon as he tires of playing with us as a cat plays with a mouse. But that ain’t success as the people of this country understand it. They may hate Kamal-ud-din, with his horde of plundering Arabits sweeping off their cattle, and his design of re-establishing the late tyranny with himself as sole tyrant, but their main concern is to preserve their own lives and as much of their property as they can. They have hailed us as liberators, but when they see Kamal-ud-din’s rascals, encamped only five miles from our entrenchments, driving off our camels as they graze, while we don’t raise a finger to prevent ’em, it’s enough to set ’em thinking whether it ain’t time to turn against us.”
“And if they do?”
“Then it will be Ethiopia over again.”
“My dear Ambrose, d’ye think the General don’t know that as well as you do?”
Richard spoke rather stiffly. “I am sure of it. Possibly I may have wished to know whether you realised the situation.”
“I’m greatly obliged to you! Why not say at once you wanted to make my flesh creep? You forget, sir, y’are speaking to a female that had the honour of being present at the battle of Mahighar, when the Arabit chivalry, springing from its lair armed to the teeth, was hurled back in reluctant defeat by the might of British courage and endurance.” Her husband’s lips relaxed in an unwilling smile, for she was imitating the General in those moments when he indulged in what people of his day called admiringly “elevated language.” The present degenerate age would stigmatise it as “hot air” or “gas,” and ask kindly whether the poor old man was feeling quite well.
“Present in spirit, certainly. Yes, I had forgotten I was speaking to such a heroine. Renewed apologies!”
“Ah now, don’t tease! Just tell me, then, what’s the worst you expect?”
“The worst that might happen?” Eveleen’s eyes danced as she noticed that he altered the wording of her question. “All the spies tell us Kamal-ud-din’s design is to attack the Fort in such strength that the General must leave his camp undefended in order to succour the garrison, and thus lose the hospitals and baggage, even if he beats off the assault.”
“Well, then, you won’t make me believe Sir Harry is going to walk into that trap! Tell me something worse.”
“If Kamal-ud-din is anything of a commander, and seriously desires to embarrass us, he has only to fall on Rickmer marching from Sahar. The General must endeavour to relieve him, and the farther off the action takes place the more unprotected he must leave things here—absolutely open to an attack from a second Arabit force. Why the Khan hasn’t attacked Rickmer already is a thing that puzzles me. One might almost believe he had little stomach for the fight. How is it he don’t see he’s playing the General’s game?”
“So there’s more method in Sir Harry’s madness than you’d allow just now? Sure you’ve forgot which side y’are arguing on! But I hear the horses coming round. Have you time to ride with me this evening?”
“If I may have the honour.”
“Ah, then, don’t be making fun of your old wife!” and Eveleen pulled his hair as she passed him. He looked after her with resigned amusement. She was like an indiarubber ball; nothing would crush her. Well, at any rate no one could say she was not happy. He had done his duty by her, in spite of those two or three embarrassing outbursts when her loudly asserted misery had made him doubt the wisdom of his action. For all her years, she was a child still, with a child’s sudden and unreasoning joy and sorrow, and a child she would remain. Now that he realised this, he knew what his own part must be—always a satisfaction to a man of his orderly, steady-going type of mind. Yes, that must be why he had found the path of duty easier to tread of late than when he had first brought his wife to Khemistan—he was getting used to it.
As they rode down to the flats by the river, they were joined by Brian—now released from his hated attendance on the Khans, who had been put in charge of a senior officer for their voyage to Bab-us-Sahel and thence to Bombay. He was bubbling over with delight.
“This is grand!” he cried. “Come with me and we’ll follow in the General’s footsteps. If we haunt the old boy faithfully, I’ll show you something worth seeing.”
“Anything new?” asked Richard.
“Rayther! Vakils with a letter from Kamal-ud-din—what d’ye think of that? They were fools enough to let it be known they were come to offer us terms of surrender, and when they arrived the General was ‘not at home.’ He had started on his evening ride, but if you’ll believe me—’twas a curious thing—he left word he’d be passing the Headquarters Mess about sunset. So they are to meet him there, and if we happen to find ourselves in the neighbourhood about the same time—well, the old lad has a tasty way of staging his scenes sometimes.”
Such an intimation was not to be disregarded, and by a pure coincidence the General had an audience of some size when he came suddenly upon the waiting ambassadors, and learned their errand. Receiving the letter at their hands, he gave it to Richard to read, remarking that it was convenient he should happen to be there. “Aloud, if you please,” he added.
The messengers clustered together a little more closely, as though for mutual support, as Richard ran his eye over the elaborate and inevitable compliments occupying the first part of the epistle. There was a look about them as of naughty boys—bold yet frightened—as he reached the business part. “I am to read his Highness’s letter aloud, sir?” he asked. “Then this is what he suggests—you are to be free to quit Khemistan with you troops and baggage, on condition of liberating the Khans now in captivity, and restoring the occupied territory and towns, and all spoil of every kind.”
A murmur of indignation rose and swelled among the European part of the group, but the General held up his hand for silence. Into the silence there came the heavy boom of the evening gun from the Fort. Sir Harry laughed. “There! d’ye hear that?” he said. “That’s my answer. Be off with it to your master!” and off the messengers went, hardly waiting for the words to be translated into Persian.
“Now Rickmer will have to look out for himself; or rather, we must look out for him,” said the General. “Kamal-ud-din has had a nasty snub, and in his naughty pride he will do his best to pay me back. Methinks it will cool his hot blood a little if we explore towards him to-morrow, and display an impolite curiosity as to the disposition of his forces.”
The “exploration”—which would now be called a reconnaissance in force—was carried out on three successive days, the General moving out with cavalry and guns in such warlike array that any young commander might have been excused for expecting an immediate assault. It was clear that Kamal-ud-din thought so, for he acted according to his lights in calling in his stragglers and raiding parties and waiting to be attacked. He was not attacked, but the General was able to get a very fair idea of the strong positions he had prepared. The secondary object of tempting him out into the open in order to ascertain his strength was not attained, but a far more important one was. It was three days before Kamal-ud-din realised that he had been kept so busy and so much interested in front that Colonel Rickmer and the Sahar column had got up behind him within two or three marches of the General. Thereupon he decided to treat frontal demonstrations with contempt in future, and take strong measures on his own account in his rear.
On the evening of the day of the third reconnaissance, the General was giving a dinner-party. It was clear by this time that Kamal-ud-din had perceived the real nature of the entertainment devised for his benefit, for the spies brought word that a large body of his men had marched into the desert in a north-easterly direction, evidently with the intention of making a circuit and falling upon Colonel Rickmer’s column from an unexpected quarter. It was an anxious moment for Sir Harry—not merely on the column’s account, but on his own. Until Colonel Rickmer arrived, he had merely the less than three thousand men of Mahighar—their numbers now sadly diminished by casualties and sickness, as well as by the necessity of furnishing a garrison for the Fort and guards for the camp and for the Khans on their voyage. True, victory was possible even with this remnant—he would have knocked any man down for denying it,—but the prudence which was so curiously blended with his rashness made him loath to contemplate fighting without the help of the northern column. The other reinforcements coming by water might almost safely be discounted, for they could not be expected for five days or even a week. Therefore the situation was critical in the extreme, and because the General knew it, and knew that his army knew it, and knew that the enemy must at least guess it, he invited his officers to dinner to celebrate one of the Duke of Wellington’s victories in the Peninsular War. He remembered and observed them all religiously, as he did everything connected with his old chief, but otherwise it is to be feared that few in camp could have told when or where the battle of Tarbes was fought. The increasing heat of the weather had obliged Sir Harry to give up his favourite habit of eating and doing business in the open air, and theburra khanatook place in a large double tent, its magnificent lining of brocaded silk showing that it was part of the spoil taken from the Khans. The table furniture was unchanged, however, consisting of contributions from the Headquarters Mess and the canteens of the staff. Above the General’s place simpered the portrait of the girl Queen which had once hung in the reception-room in the Fort. By day it was covered with a curtain—because, said Sir Harry, servants and common people must not look upon the royal features—and exhibited only as a high honour to loyal chiefs.
Eveleen, as the only lady present, was handed gallantly to the seat on the General’s right, and the meal had not been long in progress before she saw Richard, who was nearly opposite, receive a whispered message from his servant and leave the table quietly. It was his duty to translate or decode any messages that might arrive, and she was not surprised when presently he reappeared at Sir Harry’s elbow, and handed him a small piece of tissue paper, creased as though it had been rolled up lengthways very small. As the General took it up, she saw that there were two of these pieces of paper, both covered with writing.
“From Colonel Rickmer, General, brought in a quill by acossidof Colonel Welborne’s,” murmured Richard. Colonel Welborne was in modern phrase Director of Intelligence, organising the elaborate system of espionage and counter-espionage on which so much depended.
“And enclosing a message from Welborne, I see. Why, what’s this?” Sir Harry’s growl of rage startled the table, and the diners who had been politely pretending not to notice what was passing looked at him quickly. He pulled himself together in an instant, and laughed harshly.
“See here, gentlemen; this is good, ain’t it? Poor Rickmer desires me to tell him what on earth he is to do, for Welborne sends him word, ‘For God’s sake, halt! You will be attacked to-morrow by forty thousand men at least. Entrench yourself until the General can arrive to your relief.’ Is he to halt or not, he asks me, since I have sent him no orders to that effect. Here’s my answer—a pencil, Ambrose.” He turned the note over and wrote in his sprawling characters on the back, “‘Welborne’s men are all in buckram. Come on.’ Be good enough to have that sent off at once. How does it strike you, gentlemen?”
A roar of laughter went round the table, and if the General had wished to punish Colonel Welborne for his hesitancy in charging at Mahighar, he must have felt that he was avenged when he heard the jokes and quips levelled at the unfortunate man throughout the rest of the meal. Moreover, every man present would impart the jest to others, and the camp as well as the tent would quickly be ringing with the news of Welborne’s nervousness and the General’s drastic treatment of it. But though he laughed with the rest, he found a moment to growl to Eveleen under cover of the talk—
“By no means sure Welborne ain’t correct. But he had no business to tell Rickmer. I’m looking after him—watching Kamal-ud-din as a cat watches a mouse. What reason has he for funk? Long before the Arabits could walk over him I should be upon their rear.”
That he meant what he said was clear the next morning, when Captain Stewart rode out with a squadron of native cavalry, under orders to skirt round the enemy’s position and join Colonel Rickmer. If the enemy came out in force to prevent him, he was to send back a message at once, when the General would march to his assistance with horse, foot, and guns. In any case Colonel Rickmer was to be informed that Sir Henry would meet him on the morrow on the field of Mahighar—where nothing would induce the Arabits to tempt fortune a second time—and escort him into camp.
To every one’s astonishment this promise was kept to the letter, though—as Brian told his sister—the column commander had lost his head to such an extent that he might have been asking to be annihilated. Probably Colonel Welborne’s message persisted in recurring to his mind, despite the General’s cavalier comment, for his one idea seemed to be to get into safety with a run. He had brought with him from Sahar the women and children of his brigade, and a mass of baggage that would have made Sir Harry tear his hair, and how they had managed to get so far was a mystery.
“Stewart says the fellow might have intended all the time making a present of ’em to Kamal-ud-din,” said Brian—“like the Russian chap that dropped his children out of the sledge to divert the attention of the wolves from himself. There was the whole caravan strung out over the desert, straggling at its own sweet will, and Rickmer miles away in front, swearing at his drivers to hurry, for all the world as though he had been badly beat and was trying to get his guns off the field. Happily the enemy was a good match to him for foolishness, for one detachment only—just one—of Arabits turned up and began to be nasty when Stewart was trying to get the stragglers into line and protect their rear. When they opened a matchlock fire on the women and baggage, he thought it was getting beyond a joke, and sent an express to beg Rickmer to detach a troop for the rear. He had only six sowars with him—the rest were guarding the flanks,—but he charged with ’em and drove off the Arabits. Of course they came back when they saw they had him unsupported, and ’twas near an hour before the cavalry he had asked for turned up, bringing the cheerful news that Rickmer was still pushing hard for Qadirabad—he’d cot sight of the tower of the Fort, and it drew him like a magnet, you might say,—leaving the baggage and the non-combatants to look after themselves. Stewart’s blood was up—d’ye wonder?—and he told his horsemen to do their best while he went hell-for-leather after Rickmer, and found him uncommonly busy and excited getting his guns over a nullah. There was some plain speaking, I gather—I wonder now was there just a scrap or two of language unbecoming in a junior officer to his superior in rank?—and Stewart got two field-pieces, and galloped back with ’em helter-skelter. A few shots drove off the Arabits, and what was better, the sound reached the General and brought us all out to the rescue; we met Rickmer’s galloper on the way with the news he was attacked—but if Kamal-ud-din and his chiefs were not the most incapable set of muffs that ever had the cheek to stand up to a British army, Rickmer would be eternally disgraced—and rightly.”
Kamal-ud-din’s extraordinary failure to seize his opportunity was the talk of the camp that evening. The general opinion was that the young Khan shared the weakness of his elders for intoxicating drugs, and was incapable of giving orders at the moment, whilst his subordinates durst not act without them; but Sir Harry had found an explanation far more to his taste.
“It was chivalry—pure chivalry!” he told Eveleen, in all seriousness. “The spies tell me that as soon as he heard there were European women and children with the column he called off his troops and countermanded the attack which had been ordered. He said the Bahadar Jang had treated the Khans’ women with consideration, and he would treat the Feringhee women the same.”
“But sure he did attack,” objected Eveleen.
“That was a body of horse that had already started—not his fault. A fine fellow that—a young man after my own heart. It does one good to be able to respect one’s enemy—as we did in the Peninsula, where the British soldier thought far more of his French opponents than of his bloodthirsty and treacherous allies.”
“And did the Spaniards know what you thought of them?” It seemed to Eveleen that this attitude must have led to difficulties.
“They couldn’t very well help it. We had trouble with ’em now and then. But how did it matter what they thought? We turned Napoleon out for ’em, worse luck!”
“I wonder are all allies so trying to the people that are helping them?” Eveleen spoke feelingly, for she had been doing her best to help the ladies from Sahar to settle down after their long march and final exciting experience, and they did not seem to her to be properly grateful. She did not realise that it was highly disconcerting to ladies of higher military rank to find “that Mrs Ambrose” established in the best set of rooms in the Residency—their wrath was not mollified by the explanation that it had been her home when her husband was Assistant to Colonel Bayard,—while they were relegated to less imposing apartments, or quartered in the garden-palace lately vacated by the Khans. Everything was in such a bad state of repair, too—with shot-holes in the walls very imperfectly patched up, and roofs far from water-tight,—and there were no European comforts to be had. It seemed to Eveleen that these good ladies thought considerably more about their furniture and food than about the impending crisis, and they declared that no one but a wild Irishwoman could have expected them to settle down contentedly amid such surroundings. To crown their misdeeds, they observed sympathetically, one after the other, that Richard was not looking at all well, and that men of his complexion were always the first to be affected by the sun. They followed this up by a recital of the precautions with which they pursued their own husbands—with the obvious implication that Mrs Ambrose was sadly lacking in this respect,—and when Eveleen replied with a furious denunciation of coddling, they shook their heads with a pleased solemnity that could only mean, “Just as I thought!” She relinquished her self-imposed duty at last in a huff, and during the evening—with natural inconsistency—tormented Richard, who had work to do, with sudden enquiries whether he was certain he really felt quite well.
In the morning she had forgotten her anxieties, and when Richard returned from office, was far more concerned to know whether the General was intending to review the newly arrived troops—which he could not tell her. They were breakfasting on the verandah, and as Eveleen expressed somewhat vigorously her opinion of people who could hear and remember everything but what was interesting, there came from the bigshamianaopposite such a shout as made them both jump up and run to the steps. The General and his aides were rushing out—one man had still his fork in his hand,—snatching up any hats or caps available, and making for the cliff overlooking the river. Brian had the grace to tarry long enough to call out “Boats!” and Eveleen, always ready for any excitement, whether she understood its nature or not, promptly ran down after them. Richard came after her, and presented her reprovingly with her sun-hat, which she accepted without gratitude, since his forethought obliged her to stop and put it on. Arriving panting at the head of the path, she looked down the river, like all the rest. There was still a broad expanse of dry sandy ground below, but the channel was a little wider than on the day when theAsteroidand theNebulahad carried the besieged garrison into safety, for the snows were just beginning to melt on the Roof of the World. Up the channel from the direction of Bab-us-Sahel boats were coming, one after the other, their gunwales lined with scarlet-coated men who waved their caps and cheered as they saw the figures on the cliff. The General and his staff responded as joyfully as boys.
“The boats! the boats! the reinforcements from Bombay!” everybody called out to everybody else, and people began to run together from all parts of the camp. But while nearly all eyes were fixed on the boats coming up from the left hand, Frederick Lennox was looking fixedly in exactly the opposite direction, over the scrubby jungle which covered the low-lying land on the right.
“Hillo!” he said presently, then touched his uncle on the arm. “D’ye see those masts, sir? What can they be?”
The General looked and looked again, unable to believe his eyes. “As I’m a sinful man, the reinforcements by water from Sahar!” he cried. “Was ever anything so neat? ’Pon my honour, I’d march against Napoleon and the Grand Army now!”
“Really the old boy’s luck is positively amazing!” said Brian, as Sir Harry went a little way down the path to feast his eyes on the approaching craft. “Give you my word, he was in the very act of saying, ‘Now if only my reinforcements from Bombay and Sahar would come in! But that can’t be for a week at least, and I won’t let this chap bully me within five miles of my camp all that time, so Rickmer’s brigade must do my business.’ The words would hardly be out of his mouth when Stewart, who was sitting where he could see out of the tent door, called out, ‘There are boats—look!’ and we all tore out of the place as you saw us. Sure the General will be as happy now as the day is long—only the day won’t be half long enough for all he’ll want to be doing.”
Never, surely, had even Sir Harry, that champion hustler, put in such a day’s work. The new troops were out of their boats before they knew they had arrived, and the General was inspecting them and gloating over the howitzers and other war material they brought with them. A host of coolies was at work pitching their tents while they enjoyed an afternoon’s rest under the trees of the Khans’ garden, and then came combined manœuvres, in which the new arrivals and Colonel Rickmer’s force were brigaded with the General’s original troops, and ordered about and handled by the redoubtable veteran until they began to know their places and his methods. When they were at last dismissed to their well-earned repose, the General’s day was not done. Vakils had again arrived from Kamal-ud-din, and at his command been given a place whence they could see all the movements of the troops, then taken up and down the lines and bidden look well at everything, and finally dismissed with the order to go and tell their master all they had seen. But they were reluctant to depart, and reinforced by the young Khan’s Diwan or Chief Minister, who arrived late at night, they sat on the ground in Sir Harry’s tent, and talked and talked. This time it was his turn to offer Kamal-ud-din his life, and his chiefs their possessions, if they surrendered unconditionally on the morrow, but they were no more prepared to accept such terms than he had been. It was obvious they were trying to find out all they could, for they stayed on though there was nothing more to say, and started fresh quibbles whenever they were given leave to depart, until the General, his Munshi, and Richard Ambrose were all worn out with parrying their various questions. It was two in the morning before Sir Harry succeeded in inducing them to accept his dismissal as genuine, and they were ceremoniously escorted out. The General was wrapping his old cloak about him as Richard returned.
“I suppose they thought they would finish me with fatigue,” he grumbled. “This sort of thing tells on a man of sixty-one. Two hours’ sleep, Ambrose. Lie down anywhere and don’t waste any of it. We march at four.”
Itseemed only natural to Eveleen, who had learnt the hour of the start from Brian, to bind Ketty by promises and threats to wake her at half-past three, so that she was able not merely to ply Richard with coffee and sandwiches—an attention he received with tolerance rather than enthusiasm,—but to ride a short way with the army on its march. Unfortunately Richard did not take the same view. He was not going to be made a fool of before the new reinforcements by his wife’s sticking to him as if he was not to be trusted out by himself! Eveleen looked at him critically.
“Sure y’have got up too early, Ambrose, and your temper is spoilt for the day! It’s Brian I’ll ride with, don’t be afraid, and you can be cross all to yourself.”
“D’ye think I don’t know you have set your heart on emulating Lady Cinnamond by riding in the ranks, Mrs Ambrose? But this ain’t Salamanca, and I ain’t old Cinnamond. I tell you plainly I won’t have it.”
“Wouldn’t you better wait till y’are asked?” sweetly.
Richard snorted furiously. “Well, just understand this, if you please. If you attempt it, I’ll go sick and come straight back, rather than look like a figure of fun before the whole army.”
“Indeed and you have got your way now. Will I let my husband shame himself and me, and fail the General? Make your mind easy; I’ll not come. But listen now; my mind is easy too. I might have been afraid for y’if y’had started out this morning like a decent reasonable man, but now y’are so cross I need have no fear at all that anything will happen you.”
This assurance failed to mollify Richard to any particular extent, and he took his leave of her with distinct coldness. Nor was he specially pleased, when the force was at length in motion, marching eastwards through a blind maze of wooded nullahs andshikargahscut up by canals, in which the whole enemy army might have been concealed close at hand, to hear Brian laugh suddenly, and on looking up to see Eveleen sitting on her horse on a hillock which commanded some approach to a view. She leaned forward eagerly and waved her handkerchief as they passed beneath her, and the General saluted and shook his fist at her in the same breath. It was to please Richard that she turned and rode back to camp as soon as the staff had gone by, but the ungrateful Richard, having saluted with extreme stiffness, was unaware of her consideration, since he refused to look at her again. Sir Harry and the rest thought he was anxious lest she might fall into the hands of the enemy—for the spies had brought word that Kamal-ud-din had moved from the position reconnoitred three days ago, and might be lying in wait in this tangle of woods and ravines, instead of waiting at his old headquarters to be attacked,—and tried to console him with assurances that, much as she deserved it, nothing worse was likely to happen to her, even if the Arabit scouts did appear, than a good fright. Sir Harry’s force, numbering five thousand men, was double that which he had led to victory at Mahighar, and he had been able to leave eight hundred to guard the camp and five hundred in garrison in the Fort, so that Kamal-ud-din would certainly keep his men well together, and not allow desultory raiding. But had Eveleen known what the General learned from a herdsman after a weary march of some miles, she might have had the fright Brian kindly desired for her. Kamal-ud-din had moved, not towards his original position, but towards Qadirabad, so that he was now on the left rear of the column, and threatening not only its communications, but also the city and the camp. But since she did not know, she was not alarmed, and unaware that the column had turned aside at right angles from its first line of march, only wondered, when the boom of the guns began, that the sound should seem so near.
She wandered about the house restlessly all morning, trying to guess at the changing course of the battle by the varying cannonade, and sorely tempted to ride out again and find her way to the hospital tents, that she might be as close to the fighting as she had been at Mahighar. Now and then an officer passed, from whom she learned that the battle was certainly taking place well to the north of the General’s line of march, but that there was no sign of the attack on the city which had been anticipated for the same moment. Tired out with anxiety, she sat down wearily at last on the verandah, looking out over the wooded country, and distinguishing in impossible places clouds of smoke that could only come from the guns. Then at last her waiting was rewarded, for two men rode into the compound—Brian, a gruesome figure in aggressive bandages and a deeply stained coat, and a native orderly who was keeping so close at hand as to suggest he had been supporting him on his horse. Eveleen dashed out—hatless, of course, but happily by this time there was shade on this side of the house.
“Brian, what’s happened you? Is it wounded y’are?”
“Not a bit of it.” Brian grinned languidly from the saddle. “Pricked my finger, that’s all.”
“Ah then, don’t try to tease now! Will I bring a chair to help you get down?”
“You willnot. Go in and get a nice comfortable chair ready for me, and Nizam Ali will help me get to it. And—I say—salts or something!”
That this last request was a heartless ruse on Brian’s part to get her out of the way while he was helped down and into the house was clear to her when she heard him whistling “Jim Crow” as she rummaged for the salts, and on returning breathless found him established in a long chair and again grinning. He rewarded her efforts so far as to take a tremendous sniff at the salts and declare that he was “kilt,” even before he thanked and dismissed the trooper, and then lay back in the chair and laughed quietly.
“Oughtn’t you go to bed, Brian?” asked Eveleen anxiously.
“Not dis nigger. Why, d’ye think I’d be here but that my old lad said I was making too much mess of his nice clean battlefield, and ordered me off? The sawbones who tied me up wanted to put me in a doolie, regardless of the other poor chaps waiting, but I says in my best English History manner, ‘Brother,’ says I, ‘their need is greater than mine,’ beckoned to Nizam Ali, and came away on my own four feet—leastways on little Bawn’s. And here I am.”
“I’m sure y’are over-excited. Y’oughtn’t be talking so much. Brian!” a horrible suspicion darting into her mind—“what about Ambrose?”
“Riding hard, when I saw him last, with a message from the General to the cavalry not to chase the enemy too far, lest they’d be cut off before the infantry could come up.”
“Then ’twas another victory?”
“Will you listen to the woman! Another victory? Of course it is—as big as Mahighar, if not bigger. But it’s got to have a name found for it, for did y’ever hear of such a name for a victory as Mussuck?”
“Mussuck? There’s some little bit of a village called that, I remember. So ’twas there you fought? But sure you were all going quite wrong when I saw you, then.”
“And would have done, but for a decent man minding cattle, who saved us a big disappointment, and Kamal-ud-din a big triumph. We had to turn almost straight back and march full two miles before we found him in the position he’d prepared for himself.”
“The one you explored the other day?”
“No, much nearer the city. Didn’t I tell ye ’twas at Mussuck? Place very like Mahighar. ‘Not much originality aboutthem?’ says the General. Same little river, even—except that it had a bit of water in it by now, not just mud,—but farther down, of course, and ’twas on our left instead of across our front. It was two nullahs they had chosen for stopping us this time—one behind the other, tremendous places;shikargahsto right and left, village behind the left one, as per usual. Nullahs scarped everywhere, and every scrap of jungle and cover cleared away in front, of course, to give ’em a clear field of fire. They do know their business, those chaps, if they can find the place to suit ’em. Some fellow said he saw a European among ’em, but that ain’t like——”
“Now oughtn’t you be quiet and rest a little? I love to hear about it, but I’m afraid——”
“You needn’t be that. Why wouldn’t I get it clear in my own mind? We had a bit of a check just at first, for after all the jungle and the nullahs we’d been traversing, the army came out on the plain a good deal mixed up, and the General had to go from regiment to regiment straightening ’em out, instead of reconnoitring as he did at Mahighar. That might have done for us, for Keeling, who was exploring under fire, couldn’t get near enough to make certain how things lay. Somehow we all had the notion that the village behind the enemy’s right wasn’t held—the spies swore it. And what seemed to show they were concentrated on their left was that men would keep on running out from the edge of the wood there, take a good look at us, and run back again—we could see ’em through our glasses. What would be more natural than that they’d have an ambush there, as they did before, but without any wall to keep ’em from coming out and falling on us? So the General avoided that side, meaning to give ’em a good run under fire across the cleared space before they could reach us. Through an opening in the trees beyond the two nullahs, we could see the Arabits in great numbers hurrying to their right, and it looked for all the world as though the same idea had come to them and the General at the same moment—each determined to rush the village before t’other side could get there. But it was a trap again, though a different kind of one. They had the place packed with men already, and the men that were running were only in support. Eleven guns they brought to bear on us, and before ours could get into position to reply, our line wavered a bit, but there was never anything like falling back. The queer thing was that the moment we stuck, off went our cavalry on the right in a tremendous charge straight at the wood. Whether Keeling and Rickmer had taken to heart the General’s remarks on the slackness of the Bengallers at Mahighar, and thought he was in straits again and now was their time I don’t know, but ’twas the finest sight I ever saw. They plunged right down the nullahs and up again, all shouting their war-cries, and we stood staring after ’em till the red turbans and the gleaming swords were lost in the trees. If the wood had been held as we thought, ’twould have been madness and destruction, that charge, but ’twas not, and seeing the enemy as confounded as ourselves, the General rallied the infantry and led ’em on. I give you my word not a man faltered. The Queen’s —th led, as was their right after Mahighar, and they marched straight up to the entrenchments as steady as on parade. The Arabits tried to jump out on us with a howl, as they did that first time, but ’twas a mighty poor imitation. ’Twas our men jumped down among them instead, and we had a hand-to-hand fight all along that nullah and the next. We had ’em much more at our mercy this time—if you can call it that when they must have been six times our numbers,—for Keeling and Rickmer were pressing ’em from the right, and as fast as they got out of the nullah and ran for their lives, they only ran into the arms of the rest of our cavalry, which had skirted round theshikargahon the left, and was waiting to receive ’em and turn ’em back. We had a frightful time in the village, clearing ’em out of every house in turn, for they fought like tigers, and of course our guns could do nothing for fear of hurting us.”