CHAPTER VII.
THE OLD ORDER CHANGES.
IT was late when Brian Delany found his way to Mrs Gibbons’s bungalow, so late that the good lady herself—pardonably weary after a long hot afternoon spent in looking up or improvising hospital equipment in the company of surgeons ignorant of the limited resources of the place—had begun to hint that invalids did well to go to bed early. But when he was heard dismounting at the verandah steps, she gave up her efforts in despair, contenting herself, as she took her departure, with the threat that if Brian stayed more than half an hour, she would get up again and come and turn him out. Eveleen hardly heard her, so much engrossed was she in greeting her brother.
“Well, Brian?” sitting up eagerly as he came in.
“Well, old Evie!” he stooped and kissed her. “Been more than a little bit seedy—eh?”
“Ah, what do I signify? Let me look at you, Brian. D’ye know, I believe you’re—grown!”
“Will you listen to the woman! Grown, am I? Grown thin, my dear, till you could count the bones of me!”
“Nonsense, then! You look far too well for that. But I do see, indeed—yes, there’s a look of hardness——”
“Hardness about me, would you say? No, indeed, but plenty about the little old horror you went and handed me over to! Little I thought ’twas a slave I was to be, when you blarneyed me into trying to get into the General’s family.”
“Sure it’s all for your good. You look twice the boy you did—twice the man, I’d say.”
“Do you tell me that, now? And how many yards of aide-de-camp is the General to entertain if we all stretch out this way? It’s not an increase of length, I tell you, but a decrease of girth—a shocking decrease!”
“My poor fellow! You look starved, indeed!”
“Starved, is it? That’s just what I am. How would you help it with a chief that drinks water as soon as whisky, and can live happy on country prog? No wine—no beer, even—on active service, and precious little other times. And hates the smell of a weed——”
“Ah, nonsense, nonsense! You mayn’t smoke?”
“Not on service. At Poonah Stewart and I would get away by ourselves when we couldn’t stand it any longer, and one keep ‘Cave!’ while t’other indulged. But as often as not the old lad would be after us before we were done.”
“Ah, Brian, it’s a reformed character you’ll be, and no thanks to yourself! And the poverty-stricken look that seems to hang about you—what of that, now?”
“That comes of wearing uniform always and all day long, my dear creature. And when your coat gets shabby, why—‘Hang it, sir! have it mended. An honest patch won’t shame either you or me, let me tell you.’”
“Well, you’re not quite come to that yet.”
“Am I not, indeed? This is my best coat, ma’am, put on to impress the ladies on landing. And even in having two, I’m breaking my General’s rules. What d’ye think is his allowance for a fellow on active service? Why, just what he stands up in, and nothing else but a pair of shoes, a second shirt and inexpressibles, a flannel waistcoat for chilly weather, a towel, and a piece of soap!”
“But what about coloured clothes?”
“They’re snakes, I tell you, and he St Patrick! Whether you may wear ’em on leave, I don’t know, for I’ve had no leave since I’ve been with him, but certainly not within a hundred miles of headquarters. A shooting-jacket is ‘a deformity of dress,’ and as for a blouse”—this was a kind of Norfolk coat made in thin materials—“if one met his eye, believe me, he’d tear it off you and kick it out of the house. Oh, he’s a holy terror, and no mistake!”
“The very person you needed to take you in hand, my dear fellow! And tell me, does he work you hard?”
“Don’t he, just!” with a hollow groan. “From morning to night—day in, day out—your nose is on the grindstone. ‘If I thought there was the remotest chance of your studying,’ says he, ‘I’d allow you time for it, the same as I do myself, but ’tis no use. So I’ll find you work instead, just to keep you out of mischief.’”
“Sure he’s the wise man! And what would he be studying?”
“Marlborough, Frederick, the Duke—all those old codgers full of plans of battles like starfishes, with a compass in the corner to show they’re upside-down! Much good they’d do me or anybody! I’d want to get them up-sided first, and then they’d be all wrong. And some great little old Latin book that he hammers bits out of at meals and all sorts of times, with Alexander’s campaigns in it—for an example and an incitement, says he.”
“You’ll be a wonder by the time he’s done with you! And the work—what’s that like?”
“Like galloping hell-for-leather through the heat to surprise some wretched barracks where they ain’t prepared for inspection. And turning everything topsy-turvy, and hauling everybody over the coals, and putting up the private soldiers to make complaints, and swearing till all is blue that there ain’t an officer in the place fit to hold his commission, and the C.O. and the surgeon ought to be drummed out of the Army with ignominy! Oh, I tell you they love him down there!” Brian waved a hand in a direction supposed to be that of Bombay.
“You have great times indeed! Don’t you enjoy it all?”
“I believe you! To see a poor wretch of a private trying hard to think of some grievances, with one eye on the General, who’s so anxious for ’em, and t’other on his own officer, who’s safe to pass on to him the wigging he gets—it’s rich! But it ain’t what you may call fair play. Why, the very first thing I was taught when I got into the regiment was that an officer must never permit a private soldier an interview without he was full dressed and accompanied by a sergeant. But the General swears an officer must be accessible to his men day and night—in their shirt-sleeves if they choose—and no sergeant within a mile of ’em. D’ye wonder no one knows how he stands?”
“’Twas like that when they fought in Spain, I suppose.”
“Oh, no doubt; but this is India, and peace time. Not that I’d quarrel with anything that made people more friendly, but when you have to unlearn all you were ever taught——! It’s mad about the men the old lad is. The officers may go hang, but every private is his good comrade. The letters they send him! you’d laugh, I tell you—where you didn’t cry! Well, there y’are now; what d’ye expect these old colonels and brigadiers, who have spent all their lives in India, to think of it?”
“You mean they would not be pleased?”
“Pleased? Sure they hate the General as heartily as he hates them. And he hates the Civilians worse. And if there is anything he hates worse than a Civilian, it’s a Political. So now you see why it’s Old Harry and the rank and file against the Services and all the old Indians everywhere.”
“Ah, if he hates the Politicals—I heard him catch up Ambrose in the horridest way—— But how can he——”
“Oh, he don’t mean it a bit. If you sit mum and let him rage over your head, he’ll be smiling sweetly on you in another five minutes. But if you give it him back—my word, won’t he kick up a dust! And if you bear malice, so can he—for ever and ever. He’s the drollest old chap—like a child in some ways. You tip Ambrose the wink not to answer him back, and not to use Persian words in speaking or writing to him—he boasts he don’t understand a syllable of anything but plain English—and they’ll get on like a house afire.”
“But, Brian, he ain’t accustomed——”
“My dear creature, he’s got to get accustomed—or be broke. I do hope he and Bayard and all the fellows here ain’t going to get their noses in the air. If they do, the General will rub ’em tidily in the dust for ’em, and enjoy doing it. But if they’ll just take a little pains to keep on his soft side—and no man has a softer—we’ll all be the happiest family in the world.”
“You will have found the soft side, then?”
“With intervals, my dear creature—with intervals. Explosions, let us say, which take you by surprise all the more because you have been getting on so uncommon well the moment before. But I’m the lucky chap; only once have I been regularly blown sky-high—and that was your fault.”
“It’s trying to tease me y’are, you rude boy.”
“Not a bit of it. I was riding with him one day—up hill, so for once we couldn’t gallop, and the old fellow began to do the paternal—bad luck to him!—enquire into my private affairs, and so on. I was shaking in my shoes for fear what he might be asking next, when he suddenly comes out with the question how I got the money to pay my debts. ‘Oh, glory!’ says I, ‘safe this time, at any rate!’ and told him ’twas from my sister. And then there was a sort of earthquake and eruption of Vesuvius all in one, and me lying in little bits at the bottom. ‘Will you tell me,’ says he at the end, precious stern, ‘how y’ever dared face me after sponging on a female to get the means to enter my family?’ ‘And where would I get it,’ says I, plucking up courage for very desperation, ‘only from the woman from whom I’ve had everything since she first took care of me as an infant?’”
“That’s my dear boy!” Eveleen beamed on him. “I wouldn’t ask you to say better than that.”
“He saw it—I’ll grant him that—but he was uncommon stiff with me still. ‘And how much have you paid her back by now?’ he lets out at me all of a sudden. ‘Why, nothing, General!’ says I, astonished. ‘That, at least, we can put right,’ says he. ‘Fifty rupees a month, my fine fellow—and the first month you’re behindhand is your last away from your regiment.’ I swear to you I thought it cheap at the moment! Permit me, ma’am, to tender you payment of the first three months’ instalments.” With a low bow he presented a slip of paper.
“As if I’d touch it, then! But I’ll always be proud——”
“You must touch it, and take it and keep it, if you don’t want me kicked out. Sure I’d lose more than you think——”
“Ah, well, Ambrose will be pleased. ’Twas his money, after all,” languidly. “And will you tell me, Mr Brian Delany”—with sudden animation—“what it is you’d lose if you went back to your regiment? You have not been falling in love, now? Brian!” with tremendous certainty, “you have dared to make love to Lucy Lennox? Oh dear, oh dear! these boys! What will they be doing next?”
“Not guilty, ma’am! Listen to me now. Stewart it is that’s sweet on Miss Lucy, and I playing gooseberry for them time and time again. So there!”
“Well, go on with you. What about yourself?”
“You’ll break my heart laughing at me.” But Eveleen read in the tone that Brian was at least as eager to confess as she was to hear.
“You know I won’t. Tell me, now. It can’t be Sally?”
“Sally it is. Sally’s the girl for my money.”
“But she’s nothing but a little bit of a child yet. Is it thirteen she is—or fourteen?”
“How’d I know—or care? That child is as old—as ancient. ‘My wise little Sally,’ her papa calls her, and she turns the stubborn old ruffian round her finger as easy as winkin’. And to hear her lecture your brother, my dear creature you’d think she was her own grandmother! Give her a year or two, and I’ll marry her without so much as a ‘by your leave!’ even if General is G.-G. by that time!”
“Perhaps she won’t have you, my dear fellow.”
“Then it’s a bachelor I’ll be all my born days. Do you take me, ma’am? It’s a case! What in the world’s that?”
“That” was a nightcapped head—the body presumably attached thereto remaining discreetly out of sight—which appeared at a doorway. “Three-quarters of an hour!” said a sepulchral voice. “And Mrs Ambrose still an invalid. Mr Delany, will you be so good as to return to your quarters, and let your sister go to bed?”
“I will, ma’am, I will!” Brian winked largely at Eveleen. “I’m a sad fellow to have brought you here to turn me out, but ask my sister if all I’ve told her ain’t worth it.”
“Begone, graceless wretch!” Eveleen was quoting from the melodrama—miscalled historical—recently staged by the Bab-us-Sahel Dramatic Club, and Brian, recognising the style common to melodrama, answered in the same vein.
“Cruel but virtuous dame, at thy command I go!” and went.
The few days which covered Sir Henry Lennox’s sojourn at Bab-us-Sahel were well filled. He saw the outbreak of cholera stamped out, he reviewed the troops, he set on foot plans for improving the landing conditions, providing a water-supply, and laying out large vegetable gardens, with a view to preventing the scurvy from which the garrison suffered. For the present a ration of lime-juice was to be served out, but it was clear, from the arrangements made for the future, that the town was to remain in British hands, and knowing people opined once more that Sir Harry’s visit was to end in the annexation of Khemistan. This did not appear to be his own opinion, however. He was come, he said quite frankly, to make the Khans keep their treaties—with such modification as might seem called for. He had not come to fight, and he did not for a moment believe that the Khans would provoke a rupture, but he was quite certain he was going to put an end to the anomalous condition of things that had obtained hitherto. It was in his mind, also, that the large British force at Sahar—far up the river—must be badly in need of inspection by a competent authority, and this need it was his purpose to supply. The requirements of Bab-us-Sahel having therefore been observed, noted and pigeon-holed at lightning speed, the General set out on his way up the river. To the relief of Richard Ambrose, who had been rather inclined to fear, from the tone of his references to the Khans, that his mode of dealing with them would be to knock their heads together and bid them listen to reason, Sir Harry consented to pay a visit of ceremony to Qadirabad in the course of his journey. Thus it was only natural that he should offer the Ambroses a passage in his steamer, since the Khans might well feel alarmed if he was not accompanied by any representative of their friend Colonel Bayard, and Eveleen and her husband returned up the river in state.
Unfortunately, the added grandeur did nothing to mitigate the inconveniences of the voyage, but the General himself was so absolutely unconscious of these that no one else durst refer to them. Eveleen had her tent on deck as before, and having once made certain that such comfort as was possible was secured to her, Sir Harry dismissed the subject from his mind. If they had only been privates, the officers on board confided ruefully to one another, the General would have thought no pains too much to make them comfortable, but the higher ranks were expected to be content with the meagre accommodation that sufficed for himself. To the honour of his staff be it said that they loved him too much to grumble at hardships shared with him, and it must be confessed that no one who did not love him could have remained in his family for a week.
Eveleen studied him appreciatively day by day, but from a point of view other than that of the quaint companionship of Mahabuleshwar. Half unconsciously, she had acquired something of the Anglo-Indian attitude of mind in her sojourn up the country, and it helped her to understand the alarm and dislike with which he was viewed by old Indians generally. It was perfectly true that he knew nothing of India, and prided himself on the fact, which in some curious way he had brought himself to regard as a merit. In fact, ignorance of India seemed to him an essential qualification for dealing successfully with Indian affairs—a conviction shared with him by many less simple-hearted egoists both before and since. Curiously enough, he was always on the watch to pick up information about things Indian—historical, geological, agricultural, linguistic,—but the information must be surprised and as it were snatched from the people who knew, at moments when they were off their guard. Not only did he keep his eyes open, but he was not too proud to confess he had been mistaken. The little book on the Campaigns of Alexander, to which Brian had alluded, was his constant companion, and he had succeeded to his own complete satisfaction in reconstructing the itinerary of the Greek forces, and identifying the various places mentioned with existing towns. But the whole scheme collapsed under the shock of the discovery that the river was wont to change its course from year to year—sometimes from month to month—and that it would be unreasonable to expect to find a town where it had stood a century ago, much more two thousand years. This was a severe blow, and for a day or two the little book was less in evidence. Brian and Eveleen asked one another wickedly whether the report on the condition of Khemistan—which Sir Harry was compiling at alarming length—would likewise prove to be founded on imagination rather than knowledge of the country, but by degrees they began to perceive a method in the little man’s madness, and to watch for the lightning questions by means of which he would inform himself.
The fame of the General had reached Qadirabad before him, and the anxiety of the Khans to produce a good impression was shown by their assiduity in offering him a welcome. A high official was deputed to meet the steamer before it came in sight of the city, and the river bank was studded with bearers of enormous trays of sweetmeats, so many from each Khan. At the Residency other officials were waiting, with more sweetmeats and a polite offering of ten fat sheep, and it was clear to Richard and his colleagues of the Agency that the rulers were both puzzled and nervous. Here was an abrupt little man of terrible aspect, reputed to be the most ferocious fighter Europe could produce, and a disciple—if not a relative—of the world-famous Wellington. He was armed with vague powers—all that was known was that they were greater than those of any General who had hitherto visited the country,—but how he meant to use them no one could say. It was not even known whether he and the Resident Sahib were friends or enemies—bitterly did the Khans regret that the two men had not met, that sharp eyes unseen might have observed and reported their demeanour—nor whether the Resident was still in authority or not. The one obvious thing seemed to be to make sure of the favour of the alarming Unknown, and the obvious way of doing it was to show him every possible honour. A scarlet palanquin of state, with green velvet cushions, was sent to convey him to the Fort, his staff and that of the Agency following on richly-caparisoned camels. Besides his own escort of fifty Khemistan Horse, he had a guard of honour of Arabit Sardars and their retainers, and at the city gate the younger Khans—each in his palanquin—met him and escorted him in. Curious crowds fought for a sight of him and acclaimed him enthusiastically, and as he mounted the rise to the gateway of the Fort every one salamed to the ground. Khemistan was doing its best to conciliate the intruder.
“And how did he get on with them at all?” asked Eveleen eagerly of her husband, when the procession had returned, and he was thankfully divesting himself of the trappings of full dress.
“So-so. He meant to be all that was charming, but he hasn’t a notion how to take ’em, and they don’t know what to make of him. He looks upon ’em as a set of children, because they would have his spectacles passed round for ’em all to try on, and that’s how he talks to ’em. Of course the Munshi put all he said into proper form, but they judge by the tone much more than the words. That dry hard way he has of barking things out was what impressed ’em, I could see, though he was trying his utmost to put them at their ease. They don’t like him, and they’re precious frightened of him—that’s about it, I should say.”
“If only the Colonel had been here, now!” sighed Eveleen. Richard looked at her queerly.
“What good would that have done? He couldn’t have shortened this man’s huge beak, or got him to go about without spectacles—which frighten them because they think his eyes are so savage that he wears ’em to deaden the expression,—or made him speak soft and slow. It ain’t in the old chap, and he don’t know enough about India to try and cultivate it if he hasn’t got it. And they know well enough that he’s been sent here over Bayard’s head—the only thing they can’t make out yet is whether they’re in it together or not.”
If Sir Harry were aware of the alarming impression he had produced, he showed no sign of it, but continued his journey up the river the next day, leaving with Richard the letter which was to call the Khans’ attention to the breaches of treaty of which they had been guilty, and the advisability of mending their ways forthwith. At Sahar he was to be met by Colonel Bayard, who had been enjoying himself vastly—free from the responsibility and respectability of the Agency—in his mission to the wild country on the Ethiopian border. He had made long journeys on camel-back in disguise, provided for the safety and sustenance of the British force retiring from Iskandarbagh, settled various outstanding matters in connection with the small state of Nalapur—and incidentally embroiled himself with the Governor-General, who was a bad person to quarrel with. The occasion was the affairs of Nalapur. Not only did Lord Maryport consider Colonel Bayard had exceeded his powers in reorganising the government—that was merely presumption,—but he accused him of deluding the durbar deliberately by laying claim to powers he knew he did not possess, and then indeed Colonel Bayard was touched in his tenderest point. An acrimonious correspondence was in progress, of which he assured himself happily that he had so far carried off all the honours; but the drawback in quarrelling with authority is that authority is always in a position to have the last word—and that word had not yet been spoken. Both Colonel Bayard and his friends—to whom he read or repeated what he considered the most telling portions of his letters—forgot this, and when the news came that Sir Harry Lennox and he had taken a fancy to one another at first sight, and were working together in the most amicable way, the Political Establishment in Khemistan forgot its fears, and settled down contentedly in the conviction that, after all, things were going on much in the old way.
The Khans also were hugging this amiable delusion to their souls. Richard was kept busy with visiting them and receiving their Vakils, now delivering the papers sent to him from Sahar for the purpose, and then transmitting the answers. Knowing Colonel Bayard to be their friend—though without feeling it necessary to requite his friendship otherwise than in word,—they were quite happy since he still remained in the country, and bent all their energies, which were small, and their ingenuity, which was infinite, to the task of enabling him on their behalf to hoodwink the intruder. With the aid of a judicious rattling together of shields and tulwars—to give the hint of unpleasant possibilities in the background if things were pressed to extremities—they looked forward to tiding over this crisis as they had done others. Richard was a good deal worried by their attitude. He could not bring them to realise that they had a second person—and a very different one—to deal with now, and whenever he tried it they replied with the warlike demonstrations intended especially for the General’s benefit. It was quite certain that there was an unusual amount of coming and going about the Fort. Fresh bands of Arabit horsemen seemed to be arriving continually, and while some of them departed again, others remained. Moreover, Richard doubted very much whether those who went away returned to Arabitistan. From the reports brought him by his spies, he believed that they were reinforcements for the garrisons of the desert fortresses of which the Khans boasted as unreachable and impregnable, and from which Sahar itself might be assailed in case of need. He could only pass on his observations to Sir Harry, and try to convince the Khans of the seriousness of the situation, while doing his utmost to bring them to reason by peaceful means.
Eveleen had returned from Bab-us-Sahel full of good resolutions, determined to take Mrs Gibbons as her model from henceforth. She would never want to ride at unorthodox hours—virtue was assisted in this respect by the heat,—and she would benefit society by starting a farmyard and kitchen-garden. Unfortunately for her good intentions, Qadirabad was a very different place from Bab-us-Sahel, since mutton, poultry, and vegetables were all easy to get. She relinquished with a sigh the idea of a sheep-farm and chicken-run, but a garden she would have, and achieved—with the aid of the Residency mali and his underlings—success of a sort. The mali had an unfair advantage in the perpetual contests waged between them, since he knew his own mind and did not change it from day to day, while Eveleen’s continual visions of newer and better arrangements led to weird apparitions of onions in the flower-beds and violets among the lettuces. Happily the mali was able, with conscious rectitude, to show that he had a proper supply of vegetables coming on in regions to which the Beebee had not penetrated, and instead of starving the Agency staff, Eveleen escaped with a good deal of teasing on her peculiar horticultural tastes. But those who had planted the garden were not destined to eat its fruits.
“Sure there’s a steamer coming down the river!” Running out on the verandah dressed for the evening ride, Eveleen stood still to listen. “Ambrose, d’ye hear?”
“A steamer to-day? Nonsense!” cried Richard, joining her hastily. “No, by Jove, it is!”
“What will it be, I wonder?” in much excitement. “Oh, send the horses back, and let us go down to the strand.”
Other people joined them as they neared the path down the low cliff on which the Residency stood, and waited on the landing-stage. The Asteroid came round the bend with the light of the setting sun full on her.
“Well, now; if it’s not the Resident!” cried Eveleen, as a figure on the paddle-box took off his hat and waved it to the group in the shadows. “He must be invalided. See how ill he looks!”
“As if you could tell at this distance!” said Richard, in his superior way; but as the steamer drew round to the landing-stage, he had to acknowledge that Colonel Bayard did look very ill.
“That attack of fever we heard of will likely have been worse than we knew. He must go to bed at once.” Eveleen spoke with all the determination of Mrs Gibbons herself, and Colonel Bayard, hurrying to shake hands with them as soon as he set foot on shore, heard her.
“What have I done, Mrs Ambrose, that I am to be sent to bed like a naughty child? I know there are plenty of people who have the worst possible opinion of me, but I didn’t expect to find them here.”
“Sure it’s for your own sake,” she said seriously. “You don’t look fit to be up.”
“Morally I may not be, but physically I assure you I am. But I have had a heavy time this hot weather, and no doubt it’s told upon me. And I have had a bit of a blow just lately.”
“Ah!” said Richard quickly.
“Yes—to make a long story short, I am remanded to my regiment.”
They stopped in climbing the path, and looked at him incredulously. Colonel Bayard, the prince of Politicals, deprived of his acting rank and sent back to do duty with native infantry! The man who had ruled kingdoms and dispensed lakhs was to return to a despised calling and its scanty pay. He read their horrified amazement in their eyes, and raised his hand brusquely.
“No, don’t pity me too much; keep a little for yourselves. I wish I were the only person affected, but the fact is—the Political Establishment is dissolved.”
“Dissolved?” echoed Richard hoarsely.
“Destroyed, broken up, cast aside, kicked out. By the fiat of my Lord Maryport, without the ghost of a reason given.”
“Lennox!” the word sounded like a curse. Colonel Bayard saw Eveleen’s mute gesture of protest, and smiled at her.
“No, Mrs Ambrose, you are right. Old Harry had nothing to do with it—was as much taken aback as I was. He told me frankly he had been on the point of writing to recommend the reduction of the Agency, but certainly not its abolition. Like all those bustling energetic people just out from home, he thinks we do nothing for our money. Let him wait till he has had two or three hot weathers in Khemistan! At any rate, his view of it is that we spend our time drinking beer and smoking cheroots”—with a rather conscious laugh, for his friends would hardly have recognised him without a fat cigar in his mouth,—“and occasionally signing the papers our black clerks bring us, and he is going to work without any clerks at all. You will be the victim of his economy, Richard. Even he acknowledges that he must have some sort of political officer to consult when he’s quite out of his depth, so I put in a word for you.”
“As though I would stay here a day without you!”
“My dear fellow, you must. You are married, you have your wife here——” he smiled again at Eveleen as she looked back at him from the verandah steps with brimming eyes. “You can’t take her back to your regiment. The life would kill her. It ain’t as if she were a young girl,” he added in a whisper before he followed.
“True; she ain’t a young girl.” The tone was savage, but Richard knew his friend was right. A girl who knew India, brought up by a managing mother accustomed to Indian ways, might have faced the life which had been his for so many painful years; but Eveleen, knowing as little of the country as she did of method and contrivance—what would there be before her but a miserable struggle ending in ruined health and spirits for both? He was not free to cut loose from Khemistan.
“So you must swallow the bitter pill, you see,” Colonel Bayard was saying as they mounted the steps, “and do what you can for my poor Khans from a distance. By the bye, I didn’t tell you that—this place is to be closed for the present; you are to go up to Sahar. I shall have to break it all to them to-morrow. I couldn’t go down the river without