CHAPTER XII.
AN ERROR OF JUDGMENT.
LIFE at Sahar after the departure of the expedition was every whit as dull as Eveleen had known it would be. For a whole week she held out obstinately against that tempting suggestion of Richard’s that she should buy another horse—for the sole reason that the suggestion was his. But involuntarily her mind was noting and registering the points of possible colts as she passed them, and when the week was over, she felt—relief mingling with triumph in having resisted for so long—that the curb of self-restraint might be relaxed. Perhaps the fact that she had just received a letter from Richard helped to lighten her spirits, though his letters might best be described by the term arid, while Brian’s—save for one scrawl on the back of an old official envelope—were represented by a postscript added to her husband’s, “Your brother desires his fond love, and will be certain to write to-morrow.” But Eveleen was aware of her own deficiencies as a letter-writer, and with unusual fairness, expected no better from other people.
She was just going to dress for her evening ride, intending to requisition the escort of one of the subalterns left unwillingly at Sahar for a visit to a tribal camp not far off, where she had taken note of a likely-looking steed, when the sound of an arrival outside, and a masculine voice enquiring for the Beebee, brought her hastily to the verandah, anticipating a messenger from the front. But it was Colonel Bayard who ran up the steps to greet her—debonair and friendly as ever, and with an air of increased cheerfulness which was almost elation.
“Yes, it is I myself!” he cried, shaking hands so vigorously as almost to forget to bow. “It’s good to be here again, Mrs Ambrose—I don’t even regret my lost furlough, though my passage home was taken for this week. But the delays in getting back from Bombay! I have been fretting like a war-horse—but not for his reason. I don’t want to plunge into a battle—far from it. My one desire is to prevent fighting. It was a horrid blow to hear at the landing-stage that Sir Henry had actually marched against the Khans, but I trust—I hope—I may yet be in time to put an end to this lamentable adventure. And how are you? but I need not enquire—your looks speak for you. Richard in good health, I trust? but unhappy, I am sure, about this madness of the General’s. Well, we shall put that right, I hope. I must start to-night to catch up the force. Can’t be too thankful I am not a day or two later.”
“Come in, come in!” said Eveleen, when she was allowed to utter a word, and she led the way, not sorry to turn her face from him for a moment. A dreadful suspicion was growing upon her that Colonel Bayard was under a wholly false impression as to the footing on which he stood and the object for which he had been recalled, but she could not dash his hopes by saying so. An Englishwoman might have told him bluntly Sir Harry’s views regarding him, but no Irishwoman could possibly bring herself to do more than hint at things in a roundabout way, leaving him to arrive at the truth for himself, if he could. “After all,” she said, rather nervously, “it might not have made much difference, d’ye think?”
“Every difference, so long as there has been no bloodshed, ma’am. If we can only avoid that, I don’t despair of accommodating the whole matter.”
“Ah, but if you knew the way the Khans have been playing fast and loose! Nothing will hold them to their engagements. How can you reach an accommodation?”
“They are puzzled and irritated by treatment they don’t understand,” he responded eagerly. “But it’s true I don’t know the precise position of affairs at this moment. That’s why I come to you, since I hear you had a letter from Ambrose this afternoon.”
“Ambrose believes Sir Harry will reach Sultankot, though not without loss.”
“But how? and what does he propose to do when he gets there?”
“His plan is to take his whole force to the edge of the desert, so they say, and then to mount five or six hundred men on camels and make a dash across. Two guns he means to carry with him, and they, he believes, will compel surrender. If not, he’ll storm the place.”
“Madness! midsummer madness!” cried Colonel Bayard sorrowfully. “Why, he can have no conception even of the number of camels needed for such a force.”
“There has been difficulty in getting camels, I know. The contractors have been fined for not bringing enough.”
“Of course! What could Lennox expect? They know the expedition is foredoomed to disaster, and they will keep their beasts out of it if they can. And with insufficient transport——”
“I wouldn’t say ’twas insufficient. Brian says”—Eveleen smiled at the remembrance of the note scrawled on the envelope—“that the General is reconsidering his high opinion of his dear nice camels now he sees them at work, and that he’d be sorely tempted to shorten them all by a neck if it could be done without diminishing their usefulness. There’s four miles and a half of them, so he says.”
“Four miles and a half? Fifteen feet each? Only fifteen hundred,” he calculated rapidly. “And the General’s own things must require a hundred at least—more probably two—and other officers in proportion. What is there left——?”
“Now there you’re wrong.” Eveleen smiled openly. “Four camels and no more—that’s the General’s share. A soldier’s tent—his fine grand one is left here—and everything else to match. And other people are cut down just the same.”
“This is more and more serious. I had hoped he might be held back by the inadequacy of his transport, but he may succeed in actually penetrating into the desert. And there—what with spies and false guides to lead him astray or into ambushes, and secret emissaries who will cut the water-skins at night and leave him destitute, and that dastardly practice of poisoning the wells—why, we have all the materials for the most shocking disaster that has ever befallen British arms!”
“But sure he has Shahbaz Khan with him, and he swears he’ll make him taste all the water first! It’s a pity it wouldn’t be that old wretch Gul Ali, but Ambrose says he has gone and made himself scarce again.”
“Made himself scarce? Do I understand Sir Henry was so ill-advised as to subject the poor old fellow to personal restraint?”
“Not a bit of it! He was staying with his brother Shahbaz—quite free, and as happy as possible. Sir Harry calls on Shahbaz, and sends word he’ll pay his respects to Gul Ali to-morrow. But when to-morrow comes the poor silly old creature is gone, leaving word that he never really meant to resign the Turban—’twas all a mistake.”
“A mistake! Of course; who could have thought otherwise? He hoped to placate Sir Henry by submission, and finding, as he must think, that his malice still pursues him, he withdraws his abdication and seeks safety in flight.”
“But ’twas all properly written out in his Koran, in the presence of all the holy men they could get together at Bidi,” persisted Eveleen. “Shahbaz Khan may have persuaded him to do it, but having done it, would you say he oughtn’t stick to it? Sometimes I wonder”—she stopped a moment—“will Shahbaz Khan be making mischief?”
“It’s possible. I have always thought him a fine fellow, and the injured rather than the injurer, but if he is hoping to secure the Turban by favour of the General—— Tell me what you mean, Mrs Ambrose.”
“Why,” said Eveleen, rather flattered, “I wondered mightn’t he have got Gul Ali to resign the Turban by telling him his life was in danger from the General? The old man is silly enough to believe it. Then when the General says he will be coming to call, Shahbaz humbugs the old creature with some tale that he’ll take him away prisoner. Do you see, it’s his interest that the two of them wouldn’t meet? So the old man gets away—his brother making things easy for him—and the General thinks worse of Gul Ali than ever, but only scolds Shahbaz for not keeping better guard over him.”
“You have it! That’s it, I’m convinced, Mrs Ambrose! Shahbaz is a villain, who is abusing the General’s confidence shockingly. Poor old Gul Ali has been shamefully treated. As for the General, he must be blind not to see the whole thing is a hum—but knowing no Persian, of course—— Well, I am tenfold thankful I came to you. A lady’s insight will often penetrate where our obtuser minds are at fault. But now to try and put this wrong right. A dash into the desert after the General—he must be stopped at any cost in his head long course——”
“I wonder wouldn’t you find that a little difficult?” suggested Eveleen. “When Sir Harry has made up his mind—and after thinking things over so long——”
“Ah, I see you are afraid I may speak too warmly! Nay, you need have no fear. I have not a word of blame for him. The fault lies with the delays which kept me from his side when he summoned me, and forced him, as he no doubt believes, to this rash attempt. But his is a noble mind. Few men, confronted with such a situation, would have realised themselves incompetent to deal with it, and called back to their councils the person they had superseded. Believe me, he shall know the honour I feel for him. Sir Henry’s march stopped, then—and Heaven grant it may be before there’s any loss of life!—I must return hither at once, and make all speed to Qadirabad. If I can arrive before the Khans, outraged by the General’s high-handed proceedings, have given orders for a universal muster and the extermination of the British, all will be well. I am their friend, and they recognise me as such. Continually, as I came up the river, messengers have intercepted me, bearing greetings from their Highnesses, and entreaties to come ashore. But I refused to land, even at the capital, merely sending a letter of apology to the durbar, pleading the necessity of consulting with the General before I could wait upon them. But now”—he was walking up and down, speaking in short hurried sentences—“I will go to them, and I humbly trust, take peace with me. They know me and trust me, and I go to them in complete confidence.”
“It’s quite safe, would you say?” demanded Eveleen, a stupendous idea seizing her.
“Absolutely. Why not? I assure you you need have no fear for me, though I know your kind heart.” He smiled at her.
“But I have not. Tell me now, you would take Mrs Bayard with you if she was here?”
“Undoubtedly.” Colonel Bayard’s voice was valiant.
“Then would you take me?”
“Well, I’m afraid Ambrose might have some slight objection to that—eh?”
“Oh, if he was going—of course I meant that.”
“Then your presence could do nothing but good, as far as I can see. But he ain’t likely to be with me, I fear, so I must deny myself that pleasure as well. Many thanks for all you have told me. Now I am prepared. Good-bye, good-bye! If I succeed in curbing the General’s rashness, the credit will be largely yours.”
He was down the steps and off again before Eveleen had done more than realise he was still labouring under the delusion that he was the person who counted, and not the General. But her mind was so full of her new idea that she consoled herself with the assurance that ’twas not her fault; she had done what she could to put him right; and if he would only take the truth from Sir Harry’s own lips—why, he must. Apparently he snatched some sort of meal at the Club or the Mess-house while his baggage was being cut down to the General’s Spartan standard, for as she was returning from her ride—which she took alone after all, because she had plans to think out—she saw him going on board one of the flat-bottomed boats which plied across the river. Two men—evidently a servant and an orderly—were with him, and a camel and two horses were already on board. She waved him farewell, and rode on towards the landing-stage where the steamers moored, where she met the very man she wanted—the captain of the Asteroid. He had seen his vessel warped out again from the bank and all made snug on board, and was on his way to sup with his crony, the captain of the Nebula, on shore.
“Then you’ll be waiting here for orders—for days maybe?” she asked, when she had greeted him.
“That’s so, ma’am—with wood on board, and everything ready to get up steam at an hour’s notice. Colonel Bayard said he might be back any day, with orders to go to Qadirabad at once.”
“And did he tell you that if Major Ambrose or my brother was with him, you were to let me know, because I’ll be coming too?”
“Why, no, ma’am. To Qadirabad—just now?” He looked at her in astonishment, but Eveleen was not to be cowed by looks. She had realised that it was almost certain the General would send a member of his own staff with Colonel Bayard if he let him go to the Khans at all, and why not Richard or Brian? She looked sweetly at the sailor.
“And why wouldn’t I? Sure it’s just the proof of peace my presence will be—making it quite certain we have no warlike intentions. My going can do nothing but good—so the Colonel said to me himself just now.”
Captain Franks, like other men, was powerless against Eveleen when she really brought her batteries to bear, but he struggled gallantly. “You won’t like it much, I’m afraid, ma’am. There’s sure to be troops on board, and horses—a large escort.”
“I won’t mind—if you’ll pitch me a tent on deck again?”
“As you please, ma’am. But you’ll find it rarely chilly these nights—not like when you came up from Bab-us-Sahel.”
Eveleen shivered mentally, for she hated cold. Her own first impulse had been to take a high hand, and remark casually that the cabin—the only one—would suit her quite well, but it had been succeeded by another. Richard was always saying, or hinting, that she was unreasonable. She would show him how wrong he was by refusing to deprive him and his friend of the comfort—such as it was—of the cabin, and making martyrs of herself and Ketty on deck. She smiled heroically at the captain.
“As if I’d mind that! I’ll keep everything packed ready, and be on board as soon as I get your message.”
Ketty and the old butler could hardly be expected to look at things from her point of view, and by the tone of the long conversations she heard going on between them after her orders were given, she gathered that they objected strenuously to the proposed journey; but they knew better than to remonstrate with her, and she ignored their discontent callously. One more letter she received from Richard, written when the forlorn hope was about to strike into the desert:—
“Bayard arrived this evening, and accompanies us,” he wrote. “I fear he is disappointed by his interview with Sir Henry. He tells me he called upon you. Surely you might have taken the trouble to make him aware of his true position here?”
“Taken the trouble, indeed! As if I hadn’t tried! And when he wouldn’t listen to a word!” said Eveleen indignantly, and passed on to another scrawl from Brian, written like the first on the back of a huge envelope:—
“Don’t quarrel with my stationery,” he said. “The General has an economy fit on, and has locked up all the writing-paper, and I must send you a few lines. Why would I always be writing to you about camels, I wonder? but believe me, I’d give a year of my life for you to have seen the things that have left me near dead with laughing at this moment. Three hundred and fifty men of the Queen’s —th mounted on camels, two to a camel, and camels and men all strangers to one another. But they were not mounted long. I give you my word, the whole country was speckled over with spots of scarlet and dun, wrestling in every variety of contention, and whether the language of the soldiers or of the camels was the worst, I would not like to say. And there was poor old Colonel Plummer looking at the scene with the liveliest disgust I ever saw depicted on a human phiz—he was in the Dragoons once, you may remember. But he plucked up heart and plunged into the fray, reconciling his men to their mounts, and the camels to one another, till he got ’em into some sort of order, and he is now putting his fantastic force through a few simple evolutions. He’s a great old sportsman—almost as great as my old lad, who is near bent double with rheumatism when he crawls out of his little tent to mount his horse, and unstiffens bit by bit as he rides, till you’d swear he was the model for a statue of the Duke. A fine set we are, I assure you—with our camel-men and our two howitzers drawn by camels, and our detachment of horse to frighten off the desert banditti from our slow-moving column. We have provisions for a fortnight, water for four days, our tents—common soldiers’ tents—and nothing in the world else. Won’t we be a sight to make the ladies stare when we come through this?”
That was the last news from the column for nearly three weeks, though messengers still arrived from the main body, which was encamped about Shahbaz Khan’s fortress of Bidi—thus holding his family hostage, though this was not stated, in case of any attempt at treachery on his part. But there was no call to dash into the desert and rescue Sir Harry and his force, and even the tongue of rumour was silent in face of his daring move. Then at last there came a summons from Captain Franks to Eveleen. He had been warned by an express messenger to start at once for a wooding-station about thirty miles down the river, there to pick up Colonel Bayard and Major Ambrose and take them on to Qadirabad. If Mrs Ambrose wished to go too, would she kindly lose no time? Mrs Ambrose was at the landing-stage little more than an hour after receiving the message, and found everything in a bustle, horses being embarked in flat-bottomed boats, which the Asteroid was to tow, and the troops to whom they belonged crowded on board the vessel herself. There did not seem to be an inch of room to spare anywhere.
“Are your horses to go, ma’am?” asked Captain Franks distractedly, as he welcomed her to her tent, and in the same breath bade the mate beware lest the lubbers on board that flat should knock all the ship’s paint off.
Once more Eveleen showed herself triumphantly reasonable. “No, I’ll borrow,” she said, and told the syces to go back. It was a very disturbed night that lay before her, for even when the Asteroid cast off at last, the human cargo squabbled grievously over its scanty accommodation. But in the morning the trials of the past hours were forgotten when she was invited up to the paddle-box to look out over the plain covered with stunted trees which extended southwards, and watch for the arrival of the envoys. The Asteroid reached the meeting-place first, and it was not till some hours later that a moving cloud of dust in the distance heralded the appearance of mounted men at the far end of the clearing which was due to the insatiable demands of the steamers for wood. There were three men perched on camels, looking perilously high up and absurdly unsafe, and a small body of horse.
“Sure it can’t be them!” cried Eveleen, as the camels knelt and the three riders dismounted and limped towards the primitive wharf. “These are blacks—not Europeans.”
“Never seen a European fresh from a desert trip before, ma’am?” asked Captain Franks jovially. “Look at their hair and eyes, and you’ll see.”
“It is, it is. And my brother too. Sure it’s a nice little family party you’ll be carrying this voyage, captain!” and she waved her hand gaily to the advancing three. They ought to have been pleased when they recognised the white figure welcoming them from the paddle-box, but it was quite obvious they were not. Richard Ambrose pulled up suddenly, and said something to Colonel Bayard, who shook his head, and Brian gave a subdued yell, and tried to hide behind the other two.
“I don’t want female society!” he wailed. “I want baths, and baths, and baths, and clean things, and to lie in the shade with a cheroot and a bottle of beer and all the saltpetre in Khemistan to cool it. Why would a man have to talk and behave pretty when he don’t want to? Major Ambrose, sir”—imitating the General at his gruffest—“pray why don’t you keep that wife of yours in better order?”
“My misfortune!” responded Richard briefly, as he came up the gangway. “No, my dear, pray don’t touch me”—warding Eveleen off as she ran down to the deck. “I will come to you again presently. At this moment I am not fit to speak to anybody. I did not expect to see you—or any lady—on board here.”
“I am to blame, I fear,” said Colonel Bayard, evidently calling to mind that last conversation. “But I own”—with a gentle reproof which would have stricken most women to the heart—“I had not looked to find my anxieties doubled by the honour of Mrs Ambrose’s company on our expedition.”
“Ah, now, won’t you say the pleasure?” Eveleen called after him, as the three were met and eagerly welcomed by the officers on board, and disappeared with them.
“Seems almost as if they weren’t expecting to see you, ma’am,” said Captain Franks, in a puzzled voice.
“That’s just it. They never thought I’d come. But that only shows they don’t know me—eh?” said Eveleen cheerfully.
But she did not return to the paddle-box, choosing rather to sit at her tent-door, on the little piece of deck that was sacred to her use, in case Richard should be in the same mind when he returned. Not that she would mind Captain Franks—or any one else hearing anything he had to say; but if the poor man was determined to make an exhibition of himself, ’twas kinder to let him do it in private. It was also kinder, no doubt, to take the initiative in the conversation when he appeared, that he might have another moment in which to recover his temper.
“That’s better—a thousand times better!” she was looking at him critically. “You were quite coffee-coloured—black coffee—just now. Now y’are tea-coloured, and I suppose the tea will get weaker and weaker till you have your natural complexion again? And it’s nice to see you looking respectable and like yourself. Did you—ah, now, did you really come back in those rags expecting I’d mend them?”
“Not quite such a fool!” snapped Richard. He was really very angry, that was clear, and any sense of guilt Eveleen might have felt evaporated promptly. “Is it quite beyond you to understand that I am exceedingly displeased to find you here?”
“Didn’t I tell you I’d come the next time without asking your leave? Sure y’ought have known.”
“Perhaps I ought. At any rate, pray believe that if it had been possible to go back and put you on shore again it should have been done.”
“But there’s no difficulty in believing that!” innocently.
He restrained himself with an effort. “Can’t you realise that were you a child, these mad escapades would be viewed more leniently? But for a female of what should be a discreet age——”
“Discreet?” she snatched the word out of his mouth. “When I behave the way you’d consider suitable to a female of discreet age I’ll be dead and gone! Maybe you’ll be satisfied with me then, Major Ambrose!”
“Not I. I shall be dead long before that,” sardonically, and Eveleen screamed with laughter. Perhaps it was as well that Brian came round the tent into the reserved space at the moment.
“Sorry to interrupt your private conversation,” he said, “but positively there’s nowhere else to go.”
“It’s not private,” cried Eveleen, still overcome with mirth—“except on Major Ambrose’s part. He’s just made a joke, and he never will do that when any one else is there, though he knows how I delight in his jokes. But sit down, Brian boy, and tell me all about everything, while Ambrose thinks of some more jokes for the next time we are alone together. Did y’ever get to Sultankot, now?”
“We did,” responded Brian promptly. “But nobody else ever will.”
“Do you tell me that, now? And why?”
“Because we blew it up. I wonder wouldn’t you have heard the noise at Sahar. Sure we were all bothered in our hearing for days after.”
“But what a thing to go all that way to capture the place, and then blow it up! Was the garrison inside?”
“All the garrison there was—which was none. No, ’twas a mighty fine place for all the young Khans to escape to, and talk big about what they’d do when they met the General. But when they got his card, and his message that he proposed to do himself the honour of paying ’em a visit—why, they were not at home.”
“But tell us now how it happened. Did you see them running away?”
“Not the least taste of a sight of one of ’em. ’Twas the most mysterious, queerest thing in the world—Ambrose will tell you so too”—Richard grunted. “’Twas like coming suddenly on the stage of a theatre without any actors. There we stood—Sir Harry and the staff—on the edge of the sandhills. Down below us—like as if ’twas in a cup, and near enough to touch with your finger—was the fortress, beautifully built, all the towers and ramparts so clean-cut you’d say it had only been finished the night before, and the morning sun shining on it in a sort of romantic way made you think of something in Scott. There! I meant to ask Keeling what it was—he knows Scott off by heart—and I forgot. The road down the cliff was full in sight, and there were the troops moving down into the valley, the camels’ feet making no sound, the soldiers struck with awe, or something of the sort. At any rate they were all dumb too, but ’twas ‘Eyes right!’ with every man as he came out of the shadow of the cliff, as if they were approaching the saluting-point at a review. I never saw anything like it. And still there was no sound from the fort, no sign of a human being even, while the troops formed up and advanced—no answer to our summons. So at last we found the gates open, the cannon all freshly loaded and primed, huge quantities of powder, grain enough to feed an army, wells of good water—and not a soul anywhere! ’Twas like an enchanted place. You longed for the sound of a bugle to break the spell, even if it meant a rush of the enemy upon us out of hiding. But there was no enemy to rush out; they had all made themselves scarce a few hours before, when they saw we were really coming, and it seemed we had nothing to do but leave our friend Shahbaz in possession, and come back. But the General didn’t see it that way. He likes Shahbaz all right, but he had a shrewd notion that his heart wouldn’t precisely have been broke if we had all been swallowed up in the desert, and that he’d be just as well without a strong place like that all to himself—so difficult to get at, too. So Sultankot was sentenced to be destroyed, and I will say this for Shahbaz, that he took it like a sportsman! We had uncommon fun doing the business, for we plugged shell into the place—just so that we mightn’t have dragged the guns all that way for nothing—till it reached the powder, and pop! Shahbaz was as busy as any of us, taking his turn to lay the gun, and we all shouted and laughed like mad, while the General stood by, grieving over the place like an old prophet in spectacles, because it had taken so much trouble to build, and the builder must have been so pleased with his job. It’s the wonderful old chap he is! Y’ought have seen him on the way there, Evie—coming straight from writing his endless letters with his hands all crippled to turning out Her Majesty’s Europeans to drag the guns up the sandhills that were too much for the camels. They run ’em up one steep place of a thousand feet or so in five minutes, all joking and cheering, and old Harry dashing the briny drops from his manly eyes, and swearing he loved the British soldier more than any man on earth. Where the ground was not so steep we used teams of sixty men and fourteen camels to each gun, and got ’em up like winkin’. The men turned the least bit rusty on the way back, and I don’t wonder at it, after all they had gone through,—but he can do anything with ’em. Y’ought have heard ’em cheer him when he went for a Madras Sapper who was pretending to make a road for the guns—knocked him down, took his spade from him and set to work himself, and talked to him—my word! the fellow was green with fright though he couldn’t understand a syllable!”
“But why would the men turn rusty?” enquired Eveleen anxiously, for Her Majesty’s —th was an Irish regiment.
“And why wouldn’t they, with a fortnight of such marches and such work, and sand to eat and drink and breathe—and very little else? Why, the dry air cracks your boots so that you carry about with you a private desert on each foot, and the sand gets between you and your clothes till you feel your shirt is made of sandpaper! And talking of your clothes, you may be thankful you and they are well scoured with sand, for there’s no such thing as a clean shirt. You turn the one you have on your back inside-out when it gets too shockingly dirty, and when t’other side has got considerably worse you turn it back again, and so on till you’re like a set of colliers.”
“Now do you wonder we are the colour of coffee?” demanded Richard suddenly.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you were as black as a coal! And no wonder y’are thin, poor creatures, if sand is all you’ve had to eat!”
“Well, not all,” admitted Brian. “But we calculate that each man’s teeth have been ground down a quarter of an inch by the sand he’s chewed with his food—more or less according to his appetite. And never, never will we get the last of the sand out of our hair till we’re all bald! D’ye wonder then the General had no difficulty in getting complaints when he went round hunting for ’em as usual? But he turned the men round his little finger easily, and they went back to duty as meek as lambs when he had fired ’em off one of his heroic orations, full of Assaye and Corunna.”
“Well, but now, what will have been the good of it all?” cried Eveleen. “You have destroyed a place that was not doing anybody any harm, and the people that were doing the harm have all escaped.”
“Don’t say that to Bayard, I beg of you!” said Richard quickly. “To his mind the one good point of a bad business is that no lives have been sacrificed.”