Walcot's face curdled with anger.
"That's hardly been the habit of Englishmen hitherto out here," he exclaimed.
"I dare say not," said Terrington with dry indifference.
Rose Chantry, with her hand still closed about the little broken god in her lap, looked up at him through the tears that hung across her eyes. Beyond the cool darkness of the entrance door, against the far wall of the blazing courtyard she could see the row of charpoys with their burden of dead men, mere rolls of sallow dungari cloth, waiting till the grave being dug beside the Residency gate should be wide enough to hold them. It was the most dreadful moment of her life, when she needed above all to be petted and comforted into a sense of her importance, but the man who should have done it was indifferent even to her safety. She had already begun to cheer herself with the thought of a siege; the delicacy of her position; the solicitous homage of all the men; her cheerful and inspiring effect upon them; the excitement in England so intensified by the presence of a woman among the besieged; the accounts of her in the papers, made more touching by her loss; and then the thrill of the relief—she took the relief for granted—the sound of the guns, the fight through the streets of Sar, the cheers of the British troops, the ardent congratulations, the soft abandonment of that moment at the end of the suspense, and herself the one woman in a British army. And the coming home after such an experience; the woman of the moment, every one wanting to meet her; perhaps a command from the Queen.
All her dream was shattered by Terrington's implacable decree. She looked at him with despairing hate. She thought of the reckless sacrifices Englishmen had made for women during the Mutiny, and hated him the more. She felt sure that she could never live through the snows of those passes about which she had heard such awful stories. The cold would kill her; the cold always shrivelled her up; and she had nothing to wear, nothing warmer than was wanted for an Indian winter.
And that very morning, only a few hours back, as the party started for the Durbar, she had exulted in her triumph over him, she whose folly had given everything into his hand!
What ages it seemed since Lewis had swung buoyantly into his saddle, and Sir Colvin, ruddy and cheery, had waved her an "au revoir." Now they were rolls of yellow dungari lying out there in the sun.
In her absorption of self-pity she scarcely heard Captain Walcot's expressions of dissent from his leader's plans, which were more forcible than soldierly. He was seething with wrath at Terrington's treatment of her, and Terrington, aware of his excitement, but quite at fault as to its cause, heard him with determined patience.
"And by which pass do you mean to retire?" he exclaimed at last, unable to shake Terrington's resolve.
"By the Palári," said the other.