It was the voice of Sir Redmond Sleath, and it was his astonished and certainly bewildered face that she found close to her own when she opened her eyes, only to shut them once more, as weakness and horror took away her senses again.
Sleath!
CHAPTER XIX.
THE HAKIM ABOU AYOUB.
'I am on the eve of departing with Sir Louis Cavagnari to Cabul,' Colville had written. 'With his mission the chances of future war are over, and then I can come home with honour—home to you, love Mary.'
But while the British troops were now retiring from every point within the new frontier, Colville, to whom activity or action of any kind was a species of relief till he could once again see her whose varying expression of feature defied alike artist or photographer to fix or do justice to, gladly undertook to convey to the viceroy at Simla that letter from the Ameer which brought the embassy into existence—the embassy which was doomed to have such a fatal end—and a portion of that fulsome, false, and deluding document ran as follows, after the usual solemn invocation which preludes every chapter of the Koran, and the words of which, when sent down from Heaven, caused, says Giaab, the clouds to fly eastward, the winds to lull, the sea to moan, all the animals of the earth to erect their ears and listen, while the devils fell headlong from the celestial spheres:—
'Be it known unto your High Excellency that since the day of my arrival in Cabul from the British camp at Gundamuck I have been happy and pleased with the reception accorded me by the British officers. I had resolved to visit Simla and give myself the boundless pleasure of a joyous interview with your Excellency, for the purpose of strengthening our friendly relations, but circumstances prevented me carrying my intention into effect... After completing my tour through the country, during which I shall inspect the frontiers, I intend, God willing, to have a joyful meeting with your Excellency, for the purpose of making firmer the basis of our friendship and drawing closer the bonds of our amity and affection.
'Further, what can I write, beyond expressions of friendship?'
So, encouraged by this letter, which was framed in the genuine Oriental spirit of fraud and treachery, a brilliant embassy was arranged.
After delivering to the viceroy, the letter with which he had been entrusted at head-quarters, Leslie Colville lingered for a few days at beautiful Simla, where the Court Sanatorium is in a deep and woody dell, called—doubtless by some old Scottish officer—Annandale, where the forests are thickly inhabited by grinning baboons, having white bodies with black hands and feet, and where a savage tribe, named the Puharries, dwell among the hills, some of which are so vast—though mere vassals of the Himalayas—as to seem like the barriers of the world on the left bank of the Indus, from which they slope down to the steppes of Tartary, the deserts of Gobi, and the marshes of Siberia; and then he hastened again to the front to join Cavagnari.