His eyes wandered instinctively toward the woman on the couch.
"Yes, you were quite right." He went to the curtained doorway, where he found Mrs. Carmichael waiting for him, a quaint figure enough with her sleeves rolled back, her skirts tucked up above her ankles, the revolver stuck brigand-wise in her belt.
"I'm coming with you," she said coolly. "I can shoot as straight as most of you, and a good deal better than George. I might be of some use."
"You would be of use anywhere," he returned sincerely, "but, if I may say so, you will be of more use here. Your courage will help the others. As for us, we have fifty of my Gurkhas, and they will do all that can be done. I will let you know what is happening. At present you are safest here."
She sighed.
"Very well. And if any one is hurt, send him around. I have plenty of bandages."
"Yes, of course."
It was a merely formal offer and acceptance. Both knew that it would be scarcely worth while to bandage men already in their full health and strength marked out for death. Nicholson went out, closing the door after him, and once more an absolute stoic silence fell upon the little company. In moments of crisis, it is the strict adherence to the habits of a lifetime which keeps the mind clear and the nerve firm. Lois went on quietly preparing some sandwiches, which in all probability would never be eaten, and Mrs. Carmichael resigned martial occupation for the cutting-out of a baby's pinafore for an East-end child whom she had under her special patronage. But her mind was active and, stern, self-opinionated martinet that she was, she could not altogether crush the regrets that swarmed up in this last reckoning up of her life's activity. Better had her charity and interest been centered on the dirty little children whom she had indignantly tolerated on her compound! Better for them all would it have been had each one of them sought to win the love and respect of the subject race! Then, perhaps, they would not have been deserted in this last hour of peril.
Mrs. Carmichael glanced at Beatrice Cary with a fresh pricking of conscience. What, after all, had she done to deserve the chief condemnation? She had played with fire. Had they not all played with fire? She had looked upon a native as a toy fit to play with, to break and throw away. Did they not all, behind their seeming tolerance and Christian principles, hide an equal depreciation? Was she even as bad as some? How many men revealed to their syces their darkest moods, their lowest passions? How many women were to their ayahs subjects for contemptuous Bazaar gossip. They were all to blame, and this was the harvest, the punishment for the neglect of a heavy responsibility. The thought that she had been unjust was iron through Mrs. Carmichael's soul, for above all things she prided herself on her fairness. She pushed her work away and went over to Beatrice's side. Mrs. Cary's head still rested against the aching shoulder, and Mrs. Carmichael made a sign to let her improvize a cushion substitute. Beatrice shook her head.
"No, thank you," she whispered, glancing down at the flushed, sleeping face. "We have done each other so little real service that I am glad to be able to do even this much. I don't suppose it will be for long. How quiet everything is!"