G. gave another great dinner to fifty colonels, majors, &c., and F. and I dined in my tent. His man-dinner for once turned out pleasant and talkative. St. Cloup maintained his reputation, and I think G. and W. came over after dinner rather merry than otherwise.
This is a dreadfully noisy camp. The cavalry have pitched themselves just behind our tents: one horse gets loose, and goes and bites all the others, and then they kick and get loose too, and all the syces wake and begin screaming, and the tent pitchers are called to knock in the rope pins, and the horses are neighing all the time, till they are tied up again. Then the infantry regiment has got a mad drummer (or two or three). He begins drumming at five in the morning and never intermits till seven. I suppose it is some military manœuvre, but I wish he would not. It was so like dear Shakespeare, specifying the ‘neighing steed and the spirit-stirring drum,’ both assisting to make ambition virtue, the particular virtue of patience being what he had in his eye, of course.
I have got Captain X. and Captain M. to make a nightly round before they go to bed, and I think the horses are a few yards further off, but any good sleep is quite out of the question.
Yesterday G. went off at three with B., C., and W., for a private talk with Runjeet, but the old fellow did not talk much business, he likes gossip so much better, and he said he thought the fakeer and B. might meet and talk business without interrupting G. and him. F. got Sir W. C. to come here and chaperon her to the nautch that was to be given in the evening. She says it was very pretty, but not near so splendid as what we saw at Benares or Lucknow. Runjeet gave her a string of small pearls, a diamond ring, and a pair of diamond bangles.
G. has given her leave to buy any of them from the Tosha Khanna as a keepsake, but the ring is the only tempting article.
Monday Evening, Dec. 3.
G. went to meet Runjeet at seven this morning, and F. joined them on her elephant as they went through our street. I did not set off in the carriage till past eight, and when I got to the ground I was still too early, for Runjeet, instead of being satisfied with a general view of the line, insisted on riding down the whole of it, about three miles, and inspecting every man.
F., Major W., C., and I waited at the flagstaff till their return, which was a beautiful sight (I mean their return was beautiful, not our waiting).
Old Runjeet looks much more personable on horseback than in durbar, and he is so animated on all military matters that he rides about with the greatest activity. G. and he, and their interpreter, finally settled themselves at the flagstaff, and there G. sent for F. and me to come on our elephants to them.
In front there was the army marching by. First, the 16th Hussars, then a body of native cavalry, then the Queen’s Buffs, then a train of Artillery drawn by camels, then Colonel Skinner’s wild native horsemen with their steel caps and yellow dresses—the band of each regiment wheeling off as they passed, and drawing up to play opposite to Runjeet.