“LOOK AFTER MY WIFE WHILE I’M AWAY”
“LOOK AFTER MY WIFE WHILE I’M AWAY”
“All right!” said the doctor cheerfully; “and don’t you be frightened about her. Mrs North is a sensible woman, and knows better than to go and make herself ill with fretting.”
“The Memsahib parted from the sahib without kissing him!” said one of the servants wonderingly to the rest.
“What foolish talk is this?” asked Mabel’s bearer scornfully. “My last Memsahib never kissed the Sahib unless he had gained her favour by a gift of jewels.”
The tone implied that the subject might be dismissed as beneath contempt, but the man’s actions did not altogether tally with it, for after loftily waving aside the assurance of the first speaker that this Sahib and Memsahib were not as others, he retired precipitately to his own quarters. Here a lanky youth, who was slumbering peacefully in the midst of a miscellaneous collection of goods, some of them Mabel’s, and others the bearer’s own, was suddenly roused by a kick.
“Hasten to Dera Gul with a message of good omen!” said the bearer, impelling his messenger firmly in the desired direction. “Nāth Sahib and the doctor lady have quarrelled, and until they meet again he is without the protection of her magic.”
“Awake, Miss Sahib, awake!”
“Miss North! Miss North!”
Mabel sat up in bed. Her window was being shaken violently, and outside on the verandah were those two persistent voices.
“See what it is, Tara,” she called to her ayah, but the woman was crouching in a corner, her teeth chattering with terror. Seeing that she was too frightened to move, Mabel threw on a dressing-gown and went to the window. Outside stood Fitz Anstruther, his face pale in the moonlight, and Ismail Bakhsh, who was armed with his old regimental carbine and tulwar. Thus accoutred, he was wont to mount guard over the house and its inmates when Dick was absent, patrolling the verandahs at intervals; but he had never hitherto found it necessary to alarm his charges at midnight.
“What is it?” asked Mabel, opening the window.
“You must get dressed at once, and bring anything that you particularly value,” said Fitz hurriedly. “We were attacked on the way to Nalapur, and there was no durbar. I’m come instead of the Major to fetch you to the old fort, for Bahram Khan and his cut-throats may be here at any moment. Will you speak to Mrs North, please? I was afraid of startling her if I knocked at her window or came into the house. Winlock is outside with twenty sowars, and he and I will see after the papers in the Major’s study.”
Mabel dropped the blind and went towards Georgia’s room, twisting up her hair mechanically as she did so. Rahah was already on the alert, and met her at the door with gleaming eyes.
“I know, Miss Sahib. The evil is at hand at last. Awake, O my lady!” She laid a hand gently on Georgia’s forehead. “The time has come to take refuge in the fort. The Sahib bade me be prepared.”
“Dick has sent Mr Anstruther to fetch us, Georgie,” said Mabel, unconsciously altering Fitz’s words, as Georgia, half awake, looked sleepily from her to Rahah. “I think he wants us to be quick.”
“Of course,” said Georgia, rousing herself. “Now, Rahah, you will be happy at last. We’ll come and help you, Mab, before Tara’s ready. Oh, but the papers!—I must see that they are safe.”
“Mr Anstruther is looking after them,” said Mabel.
“I wonder whether Dick thought of giving him the key of the safe? Very likely he forgot it in his hurry. He had better have my duplicate. Oh, thanks, Mab! There’s a tin despatch-box standing by the safe which will hold all the most important papers.”
With the key in her hand, Mabel hurried down the passage, her slippers making no sound on the matting. There was a light in Dick’s den, and Fitz and Captain Winlock were shovelling armfuls of papers and various small articles into a huge camel-trunk which stood open in the middle of the floor. As Mabel reached the door, Winlock held out something to Fitz. “Not much good taking this, at any rate,” he said, and a cold hand seemed to grip Mabel’s heart as she saw that it was Dick’s tobacco-pouch, which Georgia, with what his sister considered a reprehensible toleration of her husband’s pleasant vices, had worked for him.
“No, put it in,” said Fitz gruffly. “It may comfort her to have it.”
A slight sound at the door, half gasp, half groan, made both men jump, and looking round they saw Mabel, her eyes wide with terror.
“Mr Anstruther, what has happened to Dick?”
The words were barely audible. Fitz stood guiltily silent.
“Tell me,” she said.
“He was wounded,” growled Winlock.
“It’s worse than that, I know. Is he taken prisoner?”
“No,” was the unwilling reply.
“Then he’s killed! Oh!——” but before Mabel could utter another word, Fitz’s hand was upon her mouth.
“Miss North, you mustn’t scream. For Heaven’s sake, think of his wife! Remember what those two are—have been—to one another, and remember—everything. Let us get her safe to the fort, and let Mrs Hardy break it to her gently. A sudden shock like this might kill her.”
Mabel freed herself from the restraining hand, and stood shivering as if with cold. “Oh, Dick, Dick!” she wailed pitifully, in a tone that went to the men’s hearts, and then she crept back in silence along the passage. Once in her own room, she dropped helplessly into a chair and sat rigid, staring straight before her. Dick dead! Georgia a widow! that perfect comradeship at an end for ever!—and Georgia did not know it. Mabel wrung her hands feebly. It was the only movement she had strength to make. All power of thought and action seemed to have forsaken her. Dick was dead and Georgia was left.
“My beloved Mab!” Georgia came hurrying in, equipped for driving. “I said I should be ready first, but I didn’t expect to find you quite so far behind. I believe Rahah keeps half my things packed, all ready for a night alarm of this kind, but of course your ayah is not accustomed to these little excitements. Are you quite overwhelmed by the amount that has to be done?”
“Yes; I don’t know what to pack first,” said Mabel, with a forced laugh, keeping her face turned away.
“Well, Rahah and I will see to that while you dress. We may be some days in the fort, and you don’t want to go about in an amber dressing-gown the whole time. We’ll begin with your jewel-case. Where is it?”
“Oh, I don’t know! What’s the good of taking that sort of thing?”
“It might be invaluable—to buy food, or bribe the enemy, or ransom a prisoner—or anything. Whereisit, Mab? I thought you kept it in here?”
“Yes, I do.” Mabel looked up from the shoe she was tying, as Georgia ransacked a drawer in vain. “But no doubt Tara has taken it out to the cart already. She has always been instructed to save it first of all if the house was on fire.”
Mabel spoke wearily. The awful irony of Georgia’s fussing over a box of trinkets while Dick lay dead almost destroyed her self-control. How was it that she did not guess the truth without being told?
“But why hasn’t she come back to help you to dress? I hope it’s all right, Mab, but I doubt if you’ll see that jewel-case again. She has had time to slip away with it and hide somewhere. Here, Rahah, put all these things in the box. It’s well to take plenty of clothes, Mab, for we are not likely to be able to get much washing done.”
“Don’t!” burst from Mabel.
“Why not?” asked Georgia, in astonishment.
“Why, it sounds as if you thought we were going to spend the rest of our lives in the fort,” said Mabel lamely.
“I don’t see why. Surely you would like to save as many of your things as possible, whether we stay there long or not?”
“Oh yes, of course.” Mabel turned away to fasten her dress at the glass, conscious that in Georgia’s eyes she must be playing a sorry part. Georgia thought her dazed with fright, whereas her mind was full of that dreadful revelation which must be made sooner or later.
“Are you nearly ready, Mrs North?” asked Fitz’s voice in the passage.
“Quite,” replied Georgia, stuffing Mabel’s dressing-gown ruthlessly into a full trunk. “Tell the servants to come and fetch the boxes, please.”
“Well, I’m afraid the servants have stampeded to a certain extent. Ismail Bakhsh and the rest of thechaprasisand one or two others are left, and that’s all, but of course they’ll make themselves useful.”
“You see, Mab!” said Georgia, and Mabel understood that she need not expect to see her jewel-case again. They followed Fitz out into the verandah, in front of which were ranged all the vehicles belonging to the establishment, drawn by everything that could be found even remotely resembling a horse.
“I told Ismail Bakhsh to get them out,” said Fitz. “There are the wives and children to bring, and I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course not,” said Georgia. “Wait a moment, please; I have forgotten something,” and she ran back into the drawing-room. Mabel knew what it was she had suddenly remembered.
“I hope she won’t be long,” said Fitz anxiously. “We’ve been here a quarter of an hour already.”
Only a quarter of an hour! To Mabel it seemed hours since she had been awakened by those voices on the verandah. She looked out beyond the line of troopers sitting motionless on their horses, and noticed, without perceiving the significance of the fact, that there were two or three of their number acting as scouts farther off in the moonlight.
“I daren’t lose any more time,” Fitz went on, fidgeting up and down the steps. “I can’t think how it is they have left us so long.”
Ismail Bakhsh, stowing Mabel’s dressing-bag under the seat of the dog-cart, looked round. “Sahib,herides to-night. They will not cross the border until he has passed.”
“Then whoever or whateverhemay be, he has probably saved all our lives,” said Fitz, as Georgia came out of the house. While he was helping her into the dog-cart, Mabel caught once more the sound of the tramp of the galloping horse, which the old trooper’s quick ear had perceived some minutes before. The sowars straightened themselves suddenly in their saddles, and the horses pricked their ears in the direction of the noise.
“Old boy seems somewhat agitated to-night,” muttered Winlock to Fitz, as the invisible rider pulled up abruptly, then galloped on again.
“There’s enough to make him so,” returned Fitz, who was helping to hoist the last terrified native woman, with her burden of two children and several brass pots, into the last cart. “All right now?” he demanded, looking down the row of vehicles. “We had better be off, then.”
Was it fancy, or did Mabel see the sparks struck from the stone on which the unseen horse stumbled as the sound came nearer? She could have screamed for sheer terror; but Rahah, who was her companion on the back seat of the dog-cart, laughed aloud as she wrapped the end of herchadarround the great white Persian cat she held in her arms.
“What is there to fear, Miss Sahib? No man has ever stood against Sinjāj Kīlin, and he is close at hand. The rule of the Sarkar will continue.”
“Now do tell me what has happened,” Mabel heard Georgia saying to Fitz, as he drove out of the gate. “I’m sure I am a model soldier’s wife, for Dick suddenly sends me a bare message ordering me to abandon all my household goods and take refuge in the fort, and I do it without asking why! But I must confess I should like to know the reason. Did the durbar break up in disorder, or were you attacked on the way back?”
“There was no durbar at all. The attack came off on the way there. But I say, Mrs North,” said Fitz desperately, anticipating Georgia’s question, “I can’t tell you what happened then, for I wasn’t there. Won’t it do if I recount my own experiences, and you ask the other fellows about the rest of it when we get to the fort?” He left her no time to answer, but went on hurriedly:—
“Yesterday we got as far as the entrance to the Akrab Pass, some way beyond Dera Gul, and camped there for the night. The Major chose the site of the camp himself, in an awfully good position commanding the mouth of the pass, and arranged everything just as if it was war-time. I knew, of course, that he was looking out for treachery of some sort, and I was awfully sick when he told me this morning that I was to stay and do camp-guard with Winlock, and not go with him to the durbar. I yearned horribly to disobey orders, but, you see, he left me certain things to do if—if anything went wrong.” Fitz cleared his throat, muttered that he thought he must have got a cold, and hastened on. “Beltring had come down from Nalapur to meet the Commissioner, as he thought, and the Sardar Abd-ul-Nabi was waiting just inside the pass with an escort of the Amir’s troops. We in camp had nothing to do but kick our heels all day, for the Major left strict orders against going out of sight of the pass. He meant to get through his work by daylight, so as to sleep at the camp to-night, and come back here in the morning, you see. There were no caravans passing, and the place seemed deserted, which we thought a bad sign. But about eleven this morning one of our scouts brought in a small boy, who had come tearing down the pass and asked for the English camp. We had the little chap up before us, and I recognised him as a slave-boy I saw at Dera Gul the day Miss North and I were there. He knew me at once, and began to pour out what he had to say so fast that we could scarcely follow him. It seems that the Hasrat Ali Begum had managed in some way to get an inkling of Bahram Khan’s plot, and she despatched one of her confidential old ladies to warn you and the Major. Unfortunately, the old lady got caught, and Bahram Khan was so enraged with his mother that he promptly packed his whole zenana off to Nalapur, to be out of mischief, I suppose. On the way through the pass this boy, by the Begum’s orders, managed to hide among the rocks when they broke camp, and so escaped with her message. He hoped to catch the Major before he started, but, most unhappily, he durst not ask the only man he met whether he had passed, and he was behind him instead of in front. So he came down the pass, missing him entirely, of course, and warned us instead. The Major’s force was to be attacked in the worst part of the defile, he told us, and as soon as a messenger could reach Dera Gul to say that the attack had taken place, Bahram Khan would set out to raid Alibad. It was an awful dilemma for Winlock and me. It was no use sending after the Major to warn him, for whatever was to happen must have happened by that time, and if we tried to warn the town, Bahram Khan was safe to intercept the messenger and start on his raid at once, and of course we couldn’t evacuate the camp without orders. We decided to strike the tents and get everything ready for a start at any moment, and we posted our best shots on either side of the entrance to the pass, in case the Major’s party should be pursued. Then we waited, and at last the—the force turned up. Thanks to the Major’s suspicions and precautions, the surprise was a good deal of a fizzle. But as I said, I can’t tell you about that. Well, we had to get back here. The enemy were supposed not to be far behind, so we left Beltring and twenty-five men to hold the mouth of the pass at all hazards, and see that no messenger got through until we were safely past Dera Gul. After that it was left to them to seize the moment for retreating on Shah Nawaz, which Haycraft was to evacuate, so that both detachments might return here by the line of the canal. We put our wounded and baggage in the middle, and started—”
“No, wait!” cried Georgia, for hitherto Fitz had spoken so fast that she had found it impossible to get in a word. “Who were the wounded? You said nothing about them before. Was any one killed?”
“I—I really can’t give you any particulars,” returned Fitz, at his wits’ end. “Please let me finish my tale. I’m getting to the most exciting part. It was fearfully thrilling when we had to pass under the very walls of Dera Gul. Of course we were all ready for action at a moment’s notice, but the men were told to ride at ease, and talk if they liked, to give the impression that all was well. I know Winlock and I exchanged the most appalling inanities at the top of our voices, till the Dera Gul people must have thought we were drunk. As we expected, pretty soon there came a hail from the walls, asking who we were, and Ressaldar Badullah Khan, who was nearest, called out that we were coming back from Nalapur without holding the durbar. ‘But what has happened?’ asked the voice from the wall. ‘What should happen, save that the Superintendent Sahib won’t hold the durbar?’ said the Ressaldar, and we went on. Of course they must have been awfully puzzled, for they couldn’t see our wounded in the dark, and the only thing they could do was to send some one off to the pass to find out what had happened. Beltring was to look out for that, and if possible to seize the messenger and get his men away at once, before Bahram Khan could come up and take him in the rear.”
“And I suppose Dick is helping to prepare the fort for defence?” asked Georgia. “There must be a dreadful amount to do.”
“Oh, that reminds me, Miss North,” cried Fitz quickly, turning round to Mabel. “The Commissioner was most anxious to come and fetch you himself, but we pointed out to him that he could do no good, and being so lame, might hinder us a good deal. Excuse me, Mrs North, but I think I must give all my attention to driving just here. I don’t know why the whole population should have turned their possessions out into the street, unless it was to make it awkward for us.”
They were approaching the fort, and the roadway was almost blocked with carts, cattle, household goods, and terrified people. Several vedettes, to whom Winlock gave a countersign, had been passed at various points, and it was evident that the sudden danger had not taken the military authorities, at any rate, by surprise. The space in front of the fort gates was a blaze of light from many torches, and several officers in uniform were resolutely bringing order out of the general chaos. Gangs of coolies, bearing sand-bags and loads of furniture, fuel, provisions, and forage, seemed inextricably mixed up with shrill-voiced women and crying children, ponies, camels, and goats; and it needed a good deal of shouting and some diplomacy, with not a little physical force, to separate the various streams and set them flowing in the right directions. As the dog-cart stopped, Woodworth, the adjutant, came up.
“We want volunteers to help destroy the buildings round the fort,” he said. “You’ll go, Anstruther? What about your servants, Mrs North?”
“There are seven who have come with us, nearly all old soldiers,” said Georgia. “If you will speak to Ismail Bakhsh, who is a host in himself, I will see that their wives and children are safely lodged while they set to work.”
“Awfully sorry to trouble you about this sort of thing just now,” said Woodworth awkwardly.
“Trouble? I am delighted they should help, of course. Where shall I find my husband?”
“Good heavens! You haven’t heard——?” The adjutant stopped suddenly.
“You blighted idiot!” muttered Fitz under his breath. “Fact is, Mrs North, the Major’s hurt—rather badly—” this reluctantly; “but I didn’t want to frighten you sooner than I could help——”
“Where is he? Take me to him at once,” was all she said.
Woodworth stepped forward mechanically to help her out of the cart, but found himself forestalled. The Commissioner had come hurrying up, preceded by two huge Sikhs, who cleared a passage for him through the throng, and now, supporting himself upon his crutch, he held out his hand to Georgia.
“Believe me, Mrs North,” he said, “you have the sympathy of every man here at this terrible time. Surely it must be some consolation to you that your noble husband fell fighting, as he would have wished, and that the smallness of our losses is entirely owing to his prudence and self-sacrifice?”
Georgia, on the ground now, looked about her like one dazed, finding, wherever she looked, fresh confirmation of the cruel tidings. In Mr Burgrave’s sympathising face, in Woodworth’s pitying eyes, in the sorrowful glances of the stern troopers who had closed up round the group, she read the truth of what she had just heard. Her hand went quickly from her heart to her eyes, as though to shut out the sight. Then it dropped again.
“Oh, you might have told me at once!” she cried bitterly to Fitz. “I could have borne it better from you than from the man who has done it all.”
“When you are more yourself, Mrs North, I know you will regret this injustice,” said Mr Burgrave, without anger. “Allow me to take you to your quarters in the fort.”
Georgia shook from head to foot as he offered her his arm. She was on the point of refusing it, of yielding to the sickening sense of aversion with which his presence inspired her, when the scowling gaze of the mounted troopers arrested her attention, and awakened her to the deadly peril in which the Commissioner stood. These men idolised Dick, and they had heard her accuse Mr Burgrave of causing his death. A word from her would mean that his last moment had come. Even to turn her back upon him would be taken to show that she left him to their vengeance, which might not follow immediately, but would be certain to fall sooner or later. With a great effort she conquered her repugnance, and laid her hand upon his arm.
“At a time like this there are no private quarrels,” she said hoarsely, addressing the troopers rather than the Commissioner. “We must all stand together for the honour of England.”
“Of course, of course!” agreed Mr Burgrave, wondering what on earth had called forth such a melodramatic remark, for he had missed the growl of disappointed rage with which the troopers let their ready blades fall back into the scabbards. “Most admirable spirit, I’m sure.”
“Upon my word!” muttered Woodworth to Fitz, “the man would have been cut to pieces before our eyes in another moment, and he never saw it.”
“Oh, ignorance is bliss,” returned Fitz shortly. “What’s to happen to the carts?”
“Broken up for firewood, I suppose. We can’t make room for everything.”
“I fear you will find your quarters somewhat confined,” Mr Burgrave was saying kindly to Georgia, as with the help of his Sikhs he piloted her through the gateway, “but we cannot expect palatial accommodation in our present circumstances. Our good friends Mrs Hardy and Miss Graham are taking pains to make things comfortable for you, I know, and you must be kind enough to excuse the deficiencies due to lack of time and means.”
Georgia gave a short fierce laugh. The Commissioner’s tone suggested that if he had been consulted sooner there would have been a perfect Hôtel Métropole in readiness to receive the fugitives. She broke away from him, and laid her hand lovingly upon one of the new gates, for his presentation of which to a presumably ruined fort all the newspapers of the province had made Dick their butt only the week before. The echoes of their Homeric laughter were even at this moment resounding in Bombay on the one hand and Lahore on the other.
“If your life—any of our lives—are saved, it will all be due to him!” she cried, and the Commissioner marvelled at the lack of sequence so characteristic of a woman’s mind. He led Georgia through the labyrinth of curiously involved passages and courts at the back of the club-house, in which Government stores and stray pieces of private property were lying about pell-mell, until they could be separated and reduced to some sort of order by the overworked officer in charge of the housing arrangements. Mabel followed with Rahah, and at last they reached a tiny oblong courtyard not far from the rear wall of the fort. Here, in the middle of the paved space, was Mrs Hardy, sorting a confused heap of her possessions with the assistance of an elderly Christian native, Mr Hardy’s bearer.
“Oh, my dear! my poor dear!” she cried, running to Georgia, and for a moment the two women held each other locked in a close embrace.
“This room,” said Mr Burgrave, who seemed to feel it incumbent upon him to do the honours of the place, “has been allotted to Miss Graham, as it communicates by a passage with the Colonel’s quarters in the next courtyard. The two on the right are Mr and Mrs Hardy’s, the two on the left are intended for you, Mrs North, and the one opposite is for you, Mabel. I believe the arrangement was suggested to Colonel Graham by Major North himself.”
Mrs Hardy raised her head and gave him a fiery glance. “Miss North, will you be so kind as to request Mr Burgrave to go away?” she said viciously.
“No; wait, please,” said Georgia. “Which of the officers were with my husband when he—was hurt, Mr Burgrave?”
“There were several, I believe, but the only one not seriously wounded was Mr Beltring, and he will not come in until the Shah Nawaz contingent gets here—if at all.”
“If—when he comes, I should like to see him, please,” said Georgia, and the Commissioner departed.
“Now come in, dear, and lie down,” said Mrs Hardy. “Your rooms are ready, and I see Rahah, like a thoughtful girl, has even brought the cat to make it look homelike. Anand Masih will bring you some tea in a minute, and then I hope you will just go to bed again.”
“Dear Mrs Hardy, you have given us all your own furniture,” protested Georgia, recognising a well-worn writing-table; but Mrs Hardy shook her head vigorously.
“Nonsense, my dear, nonsense! We had far more brought in than we can possibly use in this little place, and as soon as I have seen you settled, Anand Masih and I will look after my two rooms. Mr Hardy is helping Dr Tighe in the reading-room, which they have turned into a hospital, or I know he would have come to see if he could do anything for you.”
Never silent for a moment, Mrs Hardy administered tea without milk to Mabel and Georgia, and then tried vainly again to induce them to go to bed. Just as she was departing in despair, Flora Graham ran in.
“I am helping to arrange the hospital—I can’t stay,” she panted. “Oh, Mrs North, Mabel darling, I am so sorry! I can’t tell you how much—” She stopped, unable to speak. “I know a little what it is like,” she added, with a sob; “Fred and his men are not in yet.”
She dashed away, and Georgia and Mabel sat silent, hand in hand, until the sound of a cheer from the hard-worked garrison heralded the arrival of the Shah Nawaz detachment. Presently the clink of spurs on the verandah announced young Beltring, who was Dick’s most trusted pupil among the military officers desiring political employment, and as a man after his chief’s own heart, had been allowed to earn experience, if not fame, as his assistant at Nalapur. He came in slowly and reluctantly, scarcely daring to look at Georgia, his torn and bloodstained clothes and bandaged head bearing eloquent testimony to the fighting he had seen that day.
“Sit down, Mr Beltring,” said Georgia, holding out her hand to him. “You got here without further loss, I hope?”
“Yes, the enemy were on both flanks, but they never came near enough to do any harm,” he answered, dropping wearily into a chair.
“Now tell us, please. You were with him—at the end?”
“I was the nearest, but not with him. He was riding with that treacherous scoundrel Abd-ul-Nabi, and we had orders to keep a few paces to the rear. We thought he wanted to speak to Abd-ul-Nabi privately, but now I believe it was because he foresaw what was coming. The rest of us were still in that part of the pass where the walls are too steep for any ambush, while he, on in front with Abd-ul-Nabi, was rounding the corner where the track goes down suddenly into a wide rocky nullah. He must have seen something that he was not meant to see—the glitter of weapons among the rocks perhaps—for he turned suddenly and shouted, ‘Back! back! an ambuscade!’ Abd-ul-Nabi spurred his horse across the pathway to prevent his getting back to us, but the Major came straight at him, and the ruffian pulled out a pistol and fired at him point-blank. I cut the wretch down the next moment, but the Major had dropped like a log, and before we could get him up there was a rush round the corner in front, while Abd-ul-Nabi’s escort, who had been riding last, attacked us in the rear. Leyward took command, and the fellows behind were soon disposed of, but in front we had a pretty hard time. At last we drove them back far enough to get at the Major’s body. He was lying under a heap of dead. I got him out, and his head fell back on my shoulder. No, there could be no mistake, Mrs North. Do you think I would ever have left him while there was any breath in his body? I tried to get him on to my horse, and Badullah Khan helped me. Just as we had got him up, there was another rush, and the wretched beast broke away. I was thrown off on my head, and when I came to myself the Ressaldar was holding me in front of him on his horse, and we were in full retreat down the pass. We had lost eight killed beside the Major, and Leyward and the two other fellows were all badly wounded, besides almost every one of the men, and—and they wouldn’t go back.”
“No, no; it would have been wrong,” murmured Georgia. “Thank you for telling me this. There could be no message.”
“No message,” repeated Beltring, answering the unasked question.
“He could not send me any message,” wailed Georgia, as the young man went out, “and I parted from him in anger. Oh, Dick, my darling, my darling—forgive me!”
“Oh, Georgie, don’t!” sobbed Mabel.
“Poor Mab! I forgot you were there. Lie down here on my bed. I can’t sleep.”
“I’m sure I can’t,” protested Mabel.
It was not long before she cried herself to sleep, however, but Georgia sat where she was until the morning.
“Mab!” Mabel awoke from her uneasy slumbers to wonder where she was, and why Georgia was sitting there, her face silhouetted against the square of grey light that represented a window. “Mab! Dick is not dead.”
“Why—oh, Georgie!—have you heard anything?”
“No; but I know it. We always agreed that if either of us died when the other was not there, the one that was dead should come back to say good-bye. And I have waited for him all night, and he has not come.”
Mabel gazed at her in dismay. “Oh, but you are not building upon that, Georgie? How can it be any proof that he is alive? He might not be allowed to come.”
“He promised. Besides, I know he is alive,” persisted Georgia obstinately. “If he was dead, I should feel it.”
“Georgie dear, you mustn’t go on like this. You will make yourself ill. Come and lie down a little, and try to go to sleep. I will tell you if he comes.” Mabel ended with a sob.
“If he does, I shall know,” murmured Georgia, as she lay down. “Thanks, Mab; I am so tired.”
Mabel waited only until she was asleep, and then, summoning Rahah to watch beside her, went in search of Dr Tighe. It so happened that she met him in the passage which led into the courtyard.
“Bad business this, Miss North. We can ill spare your brother. How is his poor wife?”
“She has borne up wonderfully so far, but—oh, Dr Tighe, I’m afraid her mind is going. She will persist that Dick is not dead.”
“Poor thing! can’t realise it yet,” said the doctor compassionately.
“No; it is quite a delusion. She says he is still alive, or she would know it. What can we do? I thought perhaps if she could see his body——”
“No, no. Better that the delusion should last for ever than she should see his body after those fiends have had to do with it.”
“But she must give up hope soon, and it will be such a fearful disappointment——”
“If the hope keeps her up through the next few days, so much the better. Afterwards, please God, she’ll have more effectual comfort than we could give her.”
“But I can’t help hoping too, and it will make the reality so much worse,” confessed Mabel, with an irrepressible sob.
“Woman alive! who cares about you?” cried the doctor furiously. “What do your little bits of feelings matter compared with hers? No, no; I beg your pardon, Miss North,” his tone softening. “I’d get a fine wigging if the Commissioner heard me, wouldn’t I? But you must remember how much you have got left, and your sister has nothing. For God’s sake, let her please herself with thinking that he’s all right for the present, if that comforts her at all. By-and-by the truth will come to her gradually, but she will have the child to think of, and the worst bitterness will be gone. Come, now, you’re brave enough for that, aren’t you? How is she—asleep just now? I’ll look in again later on. Now make up your mind to be unselfish about this.”
“Does he mean that generally I am selfish?” mused Mabel. “It never struck me before. But nobody seems to care about me. They all think that I have Eustace left. As if he could ever make up to me for Dick!” she laughed mirthlessly at the mere idea. “He will be coming in presently and making appropriate remarks. Oh dear, oh dear! if he had gone to the durbar and been killed instead of Dick, I believe I should have beenglad. How dreadful it is! How can I ever marry him? But I know I shall never have the courage to tell him I want to give him up. What can I do?”
“Mabel, my poor little girl!” Mr Burgrave emerged from the passage, and limped towards her as she stood listlessly on the verandah. “You have slept badly, I fear? How is Mrs North?”
“She won’t believe that he is dead.” And with her eyes full of tears, Mabel repeated to him Georgia’s words.
“Very touching, very touching!” remarked the Commissioner, his tone breathing the deepest sympathy. “Poor thing! it is unspeakably sad to see so strong a mind overthrown. You must find it very trying, poor child! I hope you are taking care of yourself?” His glance travelled over her, and Mabel remembered for the first time that she had slept in her clothes, and that her hair had not been touched since she had twisted it up roughly the night before on the first alarm.
“Oh, I know I’m not fit to be seen!” she cried impatiently. “But what does that signify?”
“It signifies very much. You must remember the natives in the fort. Their endurance—even their loyalty—may hang upon our success in keeping up appearances during the next few days. And we white men, also—surely it is a poor compliment to us to make such a sorry ob—figure—of yourself? Then there is your unfortunate sister. Is it likely to restore her mental balance to see you in such a dishevelled condition? Oblige me by changing your dress and doing something to your hair. It is a public duty at such a time.”
“I wish you wouldn’t bother!” said Mabel, weeping weakly. “I have no black things, and I can’t bear to put on colours.”
“My dear girl, is it for me to advise you as to your clothes?” The tone, half severe and half humorous, stung Mabel with a recollection of their conversation of ten days before. “Considering poor Mrs North’s delusion, might it not be advisable to humour her, in so far as not to insist upon wearing mourning immediately?”
“Oh, very well,” was the grudging reply, of which Mabel repented the next moment, adding contritely, “I’m sorry to have been so cross, Eustace. I will try to be brave.”
“That is what I expect of my little girl. She would never bring discredit upon my choice by showing the white feather. I rely upon her to set an example of cheerfulness to the whole garrison.”
He bestowed upon her what Mabel inwardly stigmatised as a lofty kiss of encouragement before departing, and she obeyed him meekly, going at once to her room to change her dress. She was so angry with herself for having deserved his rebuke that she forgot to be angry with him. After all, it was well for her to have this severe master to please, if she was in danger of bringing reproach upon her country by her faint-heartedness. She was taking herself to task in this strain, when the sound of voices in the outermost of Georgia’s two rooms, which was next to her own, interrupted her meditations.
“Oh dear! Georgie hasn’t slept long,” she lamented to herself. “Who is that talking to her, I wonder? Oh, Mr Anstruther, of course.”
“I came in to see if there was anything I could do for you,” she heard Fitz say. “I’m ashamed to have been so long in coming, but the fact is, I was up all night knocking down houses and setting coolies to cart away the remains, and when we had got the space all round pretty clear and came in, I was so dead tired that I just lay down and went to sleep where I was.”
“Oh, you should have gone on resting while you had the chance,” said Georgia. “Everybody is only too kind to me, and there’s nothing I want done. Then we are really besieged now?”
“I suppose we might say that we are in a state of siege. At present all the tribes are holdingjirgahsto consider the matter. Our outer circle of vedettes was driven in soon after we got here last night, but we held the houses facing the fort against a few spasmodic rushes until we had got the zone of fire cleared. The enemy are too close for comfort as it is, but at any rate they have a space to cross before they can get up to the walls.”
“Then they are occupying the town?”
“Decidedly, if that means looting all the houses and firing most of them.”
“Is our house burnt?”
“Almost as soon as you were out of it. I noticed the fire when I looked round once as we were driving. But I don’t think the enemy can have been as close behind us as that. I fancy the servants who shirked coming with us were looting, and some one had knocked over a lamp.”
“And how are things going with us here?”
“So-so. But you know, Mrs North, if it hadn’t been for the Major and Colonel Graham, we might as well have taken refuge in a fowl-house as in this place. Long ago they got in all the stores they could without attracting attention, and everything else was ready to be moved at a moment’s notice. They had their plans all cut and dried, too, and every man found his post assigned to him. The walls are good against anything but artillery, and the towers and loopholes and gates have all been put into some sort of repair.”
“Yes,” said Georgia, “and that is the best of the situation. Now for the worst.”
“Well, you know, it would all have been worst but for the Major, and every soul inside the walls is blessing him. The worst is that we have scraped together a preposterous number of non-combatants—some of them the wives and children of the sowars, of course, but a good many of them Hindus and bazaar-people of that sort, whom it would have been sheer murder to leave outside, but who will be no good to us whatever. All the old soldiers have been re-enlisted, and the boys are to make themselves useful, but there is a helpless crowd of women and children and elderly people to dispose of somehow. That’s the secret of your close quarters here. We can’t have the poor wretches anywhere near the walls, so they are put away in the central courts, where we can keep an eye upon them, and overawe them if necessary.”
“Poor things! I must go and see after them,” murmured Georgia.
“Of course, with all these extra mouths, we are not provisioned for a regular siege, unless we eat the horses, which ought to be saved in case we have to cut our way out at last. But the worst thing is that we have no artillery, not so much as a field-gun, and very little of anything else. The regiment have their carbines, of course, but the Commissioner’s Sikhs are the only men with rifles—except those of us who go in for big game shooting. However, as a set-off against that, the enemy have no big guns either. And then, it’s about the best season of the year for moving troops on this frontier, so that we ought to be relieved before very long.”
“But that’s only if the enemy don’t cut the canals.”
“Yes, I’m afraid they’re too sharp not to do that. It looks as if a dust-storm was coming on, which would help them if they set to work at once.”
“Have they made any pretence of offering terms?”
“The Amir sent his mullah this morning with a flag of truce. He couldn’t be allowed inside, so the Commissioner and Colonel Graham spoke to him from the walls. But there was no accepting what he offered.”
“What was it?”
“Poor old Ashraf Ali was awfully cut up about—what happened yesterday. He explained through the mullah that he arranged the ambuscade entirely for the benefit of the Commissioner, whom he really was anxious to have out of the way. It was a pure accident that the very last thing he could have wished happened instead. However, in order that his trouble mightn’t be wasted, he suggested that we should hand him over the Commissioner now. He will see that he gives no more trouble on this frontier, and it is open to the rest of us either to stay here unmolested, or to return to civilisation under a safe-conduct, just as we like.”
“You mean that he actually offers to guarantee the safety of every one else if the Commissioner gives himself up?”
“Practically that. Doesn’t it strike you as a little quaint?”
“Was that the Commissioner’s view of it?”
“I believe so. He remarked what a preposterous demand it was, when he had the responsibility of the fort and the whole community on his shoulders. He doesn’t intend to shirk his duty. The Colonel said it was a tremendous relief to hear how sensibly he took it. Some men would have insisted on giving themselves up forthwith, but he has too much to think of.”
A wan smile showed itself on Georgia’s face. “Well, if he intends to interpret his duty very strictly, we may wish he had gone,” she said.
“I don’t believe he is even technically in the right, and certainly I think the Colonel will have to organise a little mutiny if he insists upon bossing the show. Couldn’t you turn on Miss North to induce him to moderate his pretensions a bit?” Mabel, in the next room, shook her fist unseen at the speaker.
“After all,” said Georgia, “it’s most unlikely that they would have kept their promise to protect us, even if he had given himself up.”
“Very little doubt about that. From what the mullah said, it’s clear that there are two parties in their camp, and I shouldn’t care to say which is the stronger. Bahram Khan’s following, besides his own men, who did all the looting last night, comprises the more troublesome of the frontier tribes and the chiefs who have grudges against the Amir, while Ashraf Ali has his loyal Sardars and the tribes which have always been friendly to us. If only we had the Major here!”
“You mean that he would play them off against one another?”
“Yes, and there’s no one else to do it. Beltring and I wanted to try, because there’s just the chance that the tribes would listen to us, as we have been with him so much, but the Colonel won’t let us leave the fort.”
“No, it would be no good. You would only be risking your lives uselessly,” said Georgia. “He has more influence over them than any man I ever knew, except my father.”
“Ah, but, Mrs North, there’s no time to lose. As soon as we have killed two or three of the lot, they’ll all be against us, and the longer we hold out the worse it will be. Even if Bahram Khan doesn’t succeed in bringing them over to his side at once, he will be intriguing against his uncle in secret.”
“I know, but what can we do? I dare not make inquiries about Dick, for if the Amir is keeping him safe somewhere, it might put him into Bahram Khan’s power. We can only wait.”
“Oh, Mrs North, don’t count on that,” pleaded Fitz sorrowfully. “It’s no good, believe me. Ashraf Ali knows he is dead as well as we do.”
“But I know that he is not dead,” said Georgia, and Fitz went out hastily. In the verandah he met Mabel.
“Oh, Miss North, I wanted to speak to you,” he said, but she beckoned him imperiously aside.
“You seem to think it rather a fine thing to abuse a man who isn’t there to defend himself,” she said.
“Indeed?” he said, in astonishment. “I wasn’t aware of it.”
“Perhaps you didn’t know that I could hear you when you were laughing at Mr Burgrave?”
“I certainly didn’t know you were listening, but I was not laughing at him. I merely said that he hadn’t given himself up. Would you wish me to say that he had?”
“You hinted that it was wrong and cowardly of him, and that he was saving himself at the expense of every one else here, when you ought to know it was only his strong sense of duty that kept him back. Would you have gone?”
“Certainly not, if the burden of the defence rested on me, as the Commissioner fancies it does on him.”
“You see! And you said yourself it would probably have been no good.”
“So I say still. Bahram Khan has more on hand than a piece of private revenge. If we trusted to his safe-conduct, we should be in for Cawnpore over again.”
“And after that you still make fun of Mr Burgrave for not going! It’s a shame! I know he has made mistakes in the past, from our point of view, but I won’t hear him called a coward. He is the most noble, lofty-minded man in the world, and I only wish I was more worthy of him!”
“You can’t expect me to indorse that, any more than the Commissioner himself would,” said Fitz. “If anything I have said about him has pained you, Miss North, I humbly beg your pardon; but please remember that I should never speak against him intentionally, simply because you think so highly of him.”
“I only want you to understand that I am not going to ask him to moderate his pretensions, as you call it,” went on Mabel, rather confused. “For one thing, he wouldn’t do it, and for another, now that Dick is gone, I must be guided by him.”
“Quite so,” said Fitz, somewhat dryly. Then his tone changed. “I wanted to ask you what you thought about telling poor Mrs North something the mullah said this morning. It struck me that perhaps we ought to keep it dark for a bit, as the doctor thinks it a good thing she can’t believe that the worst has happened. The poor old Amir wept as if for his own son when he heard that the Major was dead, and went himself to look for the body, intending to give it a state funeral. But when they got to the pass, it was gone. The Hasrat Ali Begum, who was in camp near, had brokenpardahwith her women as soon as the fight was over, and carried off the body and buried it. They were afraid of what Bahram Khan would do with it, you see, and at present they won’t tell even the Amir where the grave is, but he sent word that he meant to build a tomb over it later on. Now, ought Mrs North to know?”
“I shouldn’t think so, should you? I have never been much with people in trouble—I don’t know how to deal with them. But I think it will be better not to tell her unless she asks.”
“But she isn’t likely to ask, is she? Oh, Miss North, if she might only be right! I don’t believe there’s a man in the fort that wouldn’t gladly die to bring him back.”
The expected dust-storm did not begin until the afternoon, and in the interval the besieged continued to strengthen their defences, disturbed only by an intermittent rifle-fire. A party of the enemy had taken possession of General Keeling’s old house, and lying down behind the low wall which surrounded the roof, were firing at any one they saw on the ramparts. Thanks to the efforts of Colonel Graham and Dick, the ruined parapet here had been repaired, but when there were messages to be sent from one point to another, the cry was “Heads down!” So skilfully were the enemy posted that no response to their annoying attentions was possible until a party of Sikhs, at considerable risk to life and limb, scaled the turrets flanking the gateway, the repair of which had not been completed owing to lack of time, and succeeded in commanding the roof of the old house. They had scarcely cleared it before the storm came on, and they were ordered down again, since it was generally believed that an assault would be attempted under cover of the wind and darkness. Nothing of the kind took place, however, and the garrison, who were kept under arms, chafed at their enforced inaction, and tried in vain to pierce the obscurity which surrounded them, while the wind howled and the dust rattled on the roofs. When, last of all, the rain poured down in sheets, and the air cleared sufficiently to allow the buildings beyond the zone of fire to become dimly visible, it was seen that the enemy had taken advantage of the storm for a different purpose. On the roof of General Keeling’s house was now a rough stone breastwork, so constructed as to shelter its occupants even against the fire from the towers, and provided with loopholes so arranged as to allow the barrel of a rifle to be pointed through them in any direction.
“It looks to me as though we should have to rush the General’s house and blow it up,” said the Commissioner to Colonel Graham, as they stood in one of the turrets, peering into the sweeping rain, during the last few minutes of daylight. “That sangar makes our walls untenable.”
“Then we shall have to raise them,” was the laconic reply, as Colonel Graham passed his field-glass to his companion. “You may not have noticed that though the General’s old stone house is the only one strong enough to support a sangar on the roof, the brick houses on both sides of it have been loop-holed. The place is a regular death-trap.”
“Do you mean to say that in this short time they have prepared a position impregnable to our whole force?” asked Mr Burgrave incredulously.
“Quite possibly, but that isn’t the question. Their numbers are practically unlimited; ours are not. I should be glad if you and I could come to an understanding at once. We are not here to exhibit feats of arms, but to keep the flag flying until we can be relieved, and to protect the unfortunate women and children down below there. Nothing would please me better than to lead an assault on the house yonder, but who’s to defend the fort when the butcher’s bill is paid? If we had only ourselves to consider, I might cut my way out with the troops, and make a historic march to Rahmat-Ullah, but with the non-combatants it would be impossible. You see this?—or perhaps you don’t see it, but I do. Well, are we to work together, or not?”
“You are asking me to subordinate my judgment to yours?”
“Politically, you are supreme here. From a military point of view——”
“You think you ought to be? Considering the office I hold, doesn’t that strike you as rather a large order?”
“Would you propose to occupy an independent and superior position from which to criticise my measures? Surely you must see that is out of the question? You may be Commissioner for the province, but I am commandant of this fort, and the troops are under my orders. The conclusion is pretty obvious, isn’t it? In such a situation as this, a single head is essential, and there must be no hint of divided counsels. You and I have both got everything we prize in the world at stake here. Can we squabble over our relative positions in face of what lies before us?”
“The question would come more gracefully from me to you, in the circumstances,” said Mr Burgrave, “but I see your point. Let it be understood that the conduct of all military operations is vested in you, then. I reserve, of course, the right of private criticism, and of offering advice.”
“And of putting the blame on me if things go wrong!” thought Colonel Graham, but he was too wise to give utterance to the remark. “Do you care to make the round of the defences with me?” he asked. “I should like to see how the new brickwork stands this deluge.”
As they emerged from the shelter of the tower into the rainy dusk, they were met by Fitz, who, like the other civilians in the place, had enrolled himself as a volunteer. When he first spoke, his voice was inaudible, owing to a rushing, roaring sound which filled the air.
“Why, what’s this?” shouted the Colonel.
“The canal, sir,” answered Fitz, as loudly. “Winlock sent me to ask you to come and look at it.”
“Is it in flood? Can the reservoir have burst?”
“We think the enemy have opened the sluices. The dead body of a white man was washed down just now. We saw it, though we couldn’t reach it, and some one said it was Western, who was in charge at the canal works.”
The Colonel and Mr Burgrave hurried along the rampart, sheltered from the enemy’s fire by the gathering darkness, to the rear wall of the fort, the base of which was washed by the canal. The canal itself was part of the great system of irrigation-works by means of which, as the Commissioner had once complained, General Keeling had made Khemistan. A huge reservoir was constructed in the hills to receive the torrents of water which rushed down every ravine after a storm, and which, after carrying ruin and destruction in their path, ran fruitlessly to waste. By means of sluices the outflow was regulated with the minutest care, and the precious water husbanded so jealously that even in the hottest seasons it was possible to supply the canal which, with its many effluents, had converted the immediate surroundings of Alibad from a sandy waste into a garden. In view of the possible necessity of coping with an occasional rush of water, the banks were artificially raised, and the one opposite the south-west angle of the fort, where the canal took a sudden bend, had been strengthened to a considerable height with masonry, to protect the cultivated land beyond it from inundation. This change in its course largely increased the force of the current at this point.
After a storm the placid canal always became a rushing torrent, on account of the accessions it received after leaving the reservoir, but none of those in the fort had ever seen it rise to the height it had reached on the present occasion. Colonel Graham uttered an exclamation of dismay when he looked out over the turbid stream, which seemed to be flung back from the opposite bank against the fort wall with even increased violence. Presently there was a lull in the storm, and by the aid of a lantern, which was lowered from the rampart, he was able to see that the current was actually scouring away the lower courses of the wall. The next moment the lantern was violently swept from the hand of the man who held the cord, as another rush of water came swirling round the tower at the angle of the wall, dashing its spray into the faces of the watchers. Every one of them felt the wall shake under the blow, and there was a murmur of uneasiness. Colonel Graham recovered himself first.
“Turn out all the servants and coolies, Winlock,” he said, “and shore up the wall with props and sand-bags as far as possible. We will stay here and watch whether the water rises any higher. It’s clear they hope that this south curtain will go,” he added to Mr Burgrave, “and that then they will only have to walk in.”
“They must have a clever head among them,” said the Commissioner; “for they are evidently letting the water out a little at a time.”
“Ah, that’s the native engineer, no doubt. They would keep him alive to manage the machinery for them when they murdered poor Western. Look out, here’s another!”
Again the wall trembled perceptibly, but by this time the courtyard was full of eager workers, piling up earth and stones and beams and bags of sand, and anything else that could be found. Presently the Colonel called out to them to stop, for there was now the danger that the wall might fall outwards instead of inwards, and they waited in unwilling idleness, while the two men on the rampart watched the current anxiously, and measured the distance of its surface from the parapet. Then came a more violent rush of water than any before, and to Colonel Graham and Mr Burgrave the wall seemed to rock backwards and forwards under them. When they looked into each other’s faces once more, they could scarcely believe that it was still standing.
“That’s the last, evidently,” said the Colonel, “a final effort. The water’s getting lower already. We’re safe for to-night, but if they had only had the patience to wait till this rain was over, we could never have stood the force of water they could have turned on. And as it is, a child’s popgun might almost account for this bit of wall now.”
“Why, Mrs North!” Disturbed in his task of supervising the proceedings of a nervous native assistant, whose mind was less occupied with his dispensing than with the bullets which flattened themselves occasionally upon the pavement outside the surgery, Dr Tighe had turned suddenly to find Georgia at his elbow. “Can I do anything for you?” he asked kindly, looking with professional disapproval at her pale face and weary eyes.
“I want you to let me help you in the hospital.”
“And I thought you were a sensible woman! Will you tell me if you call this wise, now?”
“I think it would help me to have something to do.”
“But not this. What am I to say to the Major when—if—when I see him again, if you overtask your strength?”
“I see you think I am mad,” she said earnestly, “but Iknowhe is alive. But the suspense is so dreadful, doctor. It’s certain that he is wounded, and I can scarcely doubt he is a prisoner; and what may be happening to him at any moment? It is killing me, and I must live—for both their sakes.” The doctor nodded quickly. “And I thought if I could do something to help those who were suffering as he is, it might—oh, I don’t know—it might make me tired enough to sleep again.”
“A good idea!” said Dr Tighe, in his most matter-of-fact tones. “You shall relieve me of half my dressings, by all means, and I’ll turn over to you the out-patient work among these unfortunate women and children. You can leave that dispensing, Babu”—the assistant, who had been listening for the thud of the bullets, started violently—“and go round the wards with the Memsahib.”
From his own cases on the opposite side of the improvised wards Dr Tighe glanced across at Georgia several times, remarking with approval that her face and figure were losing their look of utter weariness as she went about her work. She was giving her whole mind to it, that was evident, and for the time her own anxiety was pushed into the background. The number of patients to be treated was considerable, for besides the men who had been wounded at the fight in the Akrab Pass, there were a good many casualties due to the enemy’s fire since the siege had begun. The work was therefore heavy, but as soon as the dressings were finished Dr Tighe bustled up to Georgia and pointed out a new opening for her energies.
“The Colonel wants sacks made—millions of ’em—for sand-bags,” he said. “He was at his wits’ end about it this morning, tried to get the native women to sew them, and they wouldn’t.”
“Oh, why didn’t he ask us?” cried Georgia. “We would have worked our fingers to the bone.”
“I’m sure you would, and it’s likely he’d ask it of you, isn’t it? But why all the refugees should have board and lodging given them free, I don’t know. Why, they wouldn’t even make the sacks for payment! A lot of them said they couldn’t sew, and the rest seemed to think they were being persecuted when they were asked to do it. But you know how to get round them, Mrs North. We can’t very well say that if a woman doesn’t sew a sack a day out she goes—sounds a bit brutal—but you’ll manage to set them to work, I’m sure. I’ll tell Colonel Graham you’ve taken the matter in hand, and he’ll be for ever grateful.”
Unpromising though the task seemed, Georgia succeeded in finding six women who consented to sew if the Memsahibs would do so too, and a working-party was organised in the little courtyard, from which Mr Hardy and the men-servants were rigorously banished for the time. Since the need of sand-bags—at any rate in such numbers—had not been foreseen, the proper material was lacking, but all the tents in the fort were promptly requisitioned, and their canvas utilised. The regimental tailors cut out the sacks, delivering them into the charge of Rahah, and inside the courtyard Mrs Hardy and Georgia superintended the unskilled workers, while Flora and Mabel took a pride in proving their willingness to blister their fingers for their country. It was fortunate that fine needlework was not required, for the native women’s ideas of sewing were rudimentary in the extreme, but their two instructresses succeeded at last in convincing them, by precept and example, that to sew one side only of a seam was unnecessary as a decoration and not calculated materially to further the usefulness of a sack. When this lesson had been sufficiently impressed upon the pupils, Georgia sat down in the doorway of her room to divide thepicewhich Colonel Graham had entrusted to her for distribution among them. The sun was setting over the hill beyond the fort, and the women, as they sat cross-legged on the floor, seized the fact that the light was in their eyes as an excuse for turning round to gaze greedily at the money which Georgia was apportioning on a chair. Suddenly there was a whizz and a noisy clatter. A bullet had grazed Georgia’s hand and struck the chair, sending the coins flying, and it was followed by a burst of firing, which caused the terrified workwomen to drop their sacks and exclaim with one voice that they were dead.
“Down! down!” cried Georgia, setting the example herself, “and crawl round to the other verandah. They are firing from the hill, but they won’t be able to see us there.”
Dragging with her one woman who was paralysed with fright, she induced the others to follow her, and when they were out of the line of fire, proceeded to examine the terrific wounds from which one and all declared themselves to be suffering. Curiously enough, no one was badly hurt. Two had scratches, and one a nasty bruise from a ricochet shot, but of severe injuries there were none. Georgia dressed the wounds and comforted the sufferers with one or twopiceextra, and then sent them back to their own quarters, thus allowing admittance to Colonel Graham, Mr Hardy, the Commissioner, and Fitz, who had been informed by the horrified servants that the enemy were firing into the Memsahibs’ courtyard. Their anxiety raised to the highest pitch by the shrieks from within, the four gentlemen were held at bay in the passage by the heroic Rahah, who informed them that they must pass over her body before they should break thepardahof the women assembled under her mistress’s protection. Just as they were at last admitted a cry from behind made them look round, to see an unfortunate water-carrier who had been passing along the rampart falling into the courtyard.
“We must get up a parados on that side,” said Colonel Graham, when the wounded man had been sent to the hospital. “They command the inside of the whole east curtain from that hill. Your sand-bags will be made useful sooner than we expected, Mrs North.”
“But what is to happen to us?” cried Mabel. “Are we to stay here to be shot at?”
“Calm yourself, my dear girl,” said Mr Burgrave, in gently reproving tones. “You are in no danger at the present moment.”
“You see, Miss North,” said the Colonel, “I don’t want to have to put you either in the hospital courtyard or among the native refugees, and there is nowhere else. After all, this court is so small that the enemy can’t possibly command more than the east side, and we’ll put that right by hanging curtains along the verandah.”
“Why, what good would that be against bullets?”
“The curtain wouldn’t stop them, certainly, but our friends up there are very careful of their ammunition, and never waste a shot. Not being able to see whether any one is in the verandah, they won’t aim at it. It was the sight of a whole party assembled here that was irresistible.”
“But is Georgia to live in darkness?” demanded Georgia’s self-constituted champion.
“Nonsense, Mab! There are three other verandahs to sit in. After all, one expects bullets in a siege,” said Georgia.
“That’s the right spirit, Mrs North,” said Colonel Graham heartily. “As soon as it’s dusk we’ll have the matting up from the club-house—messroom, I mean—floor, and nail it along the roof of this verandah and across the corner where the passage is. Then you’ll be safe from anything but chance shots, and those, I’m afraid, we can none of us guard against.”
“But are those fellows up there to pot at the ladies without our ever having a chance to pay them back, sir?” cried Fitz.
“I was coming to that. Of course the plan is to clear us off the east rampart so that a force from the town may rush it under cover of the fire from the hill, and therefore the parados must be our first care. Still, I think we can spare a few sand-bags for the two western towers, and if we arrange a little sangar on the top of each when it is dark, we can show our chivalrous friends the snipers to-morrow what it feels like to be sniped. Tell Winlock to set all the servants to work filling bags and baskets, and anything else they can find, with earth at once.”
“We seem to hold our own fairly well at present,” said Mr Burgrave, as Fitz departed, and the Colonel stood looking narrowly at the threatened verandah and the scattered work-materials with which it was strewn.
“We seem to—yes, but it is simply because we have not been tried as yet. There is far too great a length of wall for us to hold against a well-planned attack—say from two sides at once. Why they haven’t put us to the test before I can’t imagine. It’s not like their usual tactics to let things drag on in this way.”
“I am of opinion that they dislike crossing the cleared space, and intend to remain at a discreet distance and starve us out. If only they stick to that, we ought to be relieved long before matters come to a crisis.”
“No, it’s not that!” cried the Colonel irritably. “There’s something behind that we don’t see. If there was any possibility of their having guns, I should say they were waiting for them. But where are they to get them from unless they have surprised Rahmat-Ullah, which we have no reason to suppose? They have some dodge on hand, though, I’m certain.”
“Is there any weak point at which they could be aiming?”
“Man, this place is nothing but weak points. If those fellows on the hill knew what they were about, they could enfilade our north and south ramparts as well as cover the eastern one. The south curtain is so weak now that an elephant or a battering-ram—let alone a well-planted shell or two—could knock it over, and the canal on that side is getting lower every day. The water-carriers have to go down a dozen steps now, and it’s only the enemy’s fear for their own precious skins that prevents their picking them off from the opposite bank. We could pepper them from the rampart, they know that, and they haven’t the sense to pour in an oblique fire from the hill. I suppose, too, it hasn’t occurred to you that if they took it into their heads to blow us up, one or two plucky fellows could get close up to the walls under cover of a general attack, and lay a train at their leisure. It’s impossible to fire transversely from the loopholes in the towers without exposing pretty nearly one’s whole body, and as to depressing a rifle and firing point-blank down from the parapet, well——”
Mr Burgrave understood the pause to mean that the consequences would probably be very uncomfortable for the holder of the rifle, and said no more. The night passed without further alarm, save that Georgia found it would be dangerous to have a light in her rooms unless door and shutters were both closed. The glimmer from the window, even when only seen through the matting curtain, attracted two or three bullets immediately, and it was evident that the choice must be made between air and light. During the hours of darkness the besieged worked hard at their defences, and succeeded in erecting a more or less effectual shelter along the inside of the east rampart, and also a sand-bag parapet at the summit of the two western towers. The gateway turrets on the north-east, which were now exposed to the fire from the hill in the rear as well as to that from General Keeling’s house in front, were strengthened in the same way. Behind these shelters the best marksmen of the garrison took up their posts, and as soon as the bullets began to fly from the hill, seized the opportunity of pointing out to the enemy that the state of things had altered to some extent in the night. Since it was impossible for a man on either side to fire without exposing himself slightly, a return shot was the instant comment on this imprudence, and hence, before the morning was over, both parties were lying low and glaring at their opponents’ sangars, ready to shoot but not caring to be shot. Helmets on the one side and turbans on the other, raised cautiously on rifle-barrels above the breastwork, drew a few shots, but the nature of the trick was quickly perceived by both parties, and the sniping continued to languish.