“I think it is fairly certain that they will, believing that we have been thrown off our guard by their friendliness to-day. As soon as Fath-ud-Din is about again, we shall probably have him here, trying his old tricks once more; but I have a pleasant little surprise in store for him. I shall make it clear that all negotiations are to be carried on at this house, and that neither I nor any of you will go to the Palace on any business whatever connected with the treaty. I am not going to risk the loss of any more lives by dividing our force, but I shall not tell him that. It will be a disagreeable shock to him to find that we only become stiffer in our demands as our position grows more precarious, and he will think we possess some sort of moral support behind the scenes of which he is ignorant.”
“What a fire-eater the Chief is!” said Stratford later to Dick. “He ought to have commanded one of Nelson’s line-of-battle ships, and engaged a whole French fleet before he went down with guns double-shotted and colours flying.”
“A regular old fighting-cock!” said Dick, affectionately. “If we hadn’t had the ladies with us, we should have seen him bearding the King in the Palace itself, and defying Fath-ud-Din and the whole Ethiopian army to their faces, I’m convinced. As it is—well, our prospects don’t look particularly brilliant just now, but I feel that if there is a man on earth who can get us out of this fix, it’s the Chief.”
They were superintending the removal of the collection from Dr Headlam’s desolate house to the Mission, and gathering together such poor scraps of personal property as the marauders had overlooked or left behind as worthless, to take home to his mother. When the place was cleared they locked the door and delivered the key to the landlord, who received it with a gloomy face, remarking that he never expected to be able to find another tenant. Dick thought that he was attempting to gain an increase of the substantial rent (as things go in Ethiopia), which had already been paid him, but the landlord had gauged correctly the character of his fellow-citizens. The house stood empty for a long time, gaining a bad reputation without any tangible reason; but at last, for an ample remuneration, a man was found bold enough to sleep there, in order to prove that there was nothing wrong about the place. But that bold man let himself down over the wall into the street in the middle of the night by means of his turban, leaving his mattress behind him; and the next day he told his friends that he had been awakened by hearing the well-known clink of a medicine-bottle against the measuring-glass, and, cautiously uncovering his head, had looked out to see the ghost of the English doctor standing at a phantom table and mixing immaterial drugs. That was enough, and the house was left desolate until it ultimately fell into decay.
But this is anticipating, and we must return to the days when the presence of a British envoy was an abiding reality in Kubbet-ul-Haj, and not the shadowy tradition which it has since become. For a day or two the party at the Mission were left undisturbed, although the absence of any message from Jahan Beg robbed their tranquillity of some of its attractiveness. The enforced seclusion within the walls of the house could not fail to tell on the spirits of most of them; but it was a point of honour with all to maintain an appearance of cheerfulness for the sake of the rest, and those who possessed hobbies found them a great help in this endeavour. Stratford studied Ethiopian, Dick laboured at the map of the country which he had begun during the journey from the frontier to the city, and Fitz, who was the unresisting victim of a camera which accompanied him wherever he went, photographed everything and everybody. Georgia had an object of interest peculiarly her own in the perplexing conduct of Dick, who had changed his place at meals, and contrived always to secure a seat between Lady Haigh and herself, so that he could appropriate the first cup of tea or coffee poured out, which it was naturally his duty to pass on to Miss Keeling. Georgia pondered over this behaviour of his for some little time without gaining any light upon it, and at last opened her mind to her usual confidante.
“Lady Haigh, have you noticed the queer way in which Major North behaves at meals? He won’t pass things, and I am sure it isn’t through absence of mind, for he apologises at the time, and looks so dreadfully confused.”
“Well, my dear child, I am sure there is nothing in all this for which to blame him. Certainly you ought to be the very last person to complain.”
“I, Lady Haigh?”
“Is it possible that you don’t guess his reason, Georgie?”
“Really and truly I haven’t an idea what it can be.”