“Why, did y’interpose to prevent a blow and receive it yourself, Sir Harry?” with interest.
“Not precisely. A scoundrel was knocking his poor camel about, and my fist found its way to his forehead. The fellow had a head like a rock! It was my hand that was smashed; he remained unhurt. Munshi tells me that the rascals have a game of running at one another with their heads down, butting like rams, and I believe it—save that the sport must be too harmless to be profitable.”
“I’m glad ’twas for a camel you did it,” said Eveleen. “Anybody would defend a horse, but y’are the only one that’s really fond of camels, don’t you know?”
Sir Henry looked at her suspiciously, and took advantage of circumstances to change the subject with finality. “Here we are, you see. We have managed to find a tent for you, but furniture was beyond us. I call it the one advantage of Indian travelling, that each visitor brings his own four-poster along with him.”
He dismounted with amazing agility, and came to help Eveleen from her saddle, but was interrupted by Colonel Bayard.
“Ambrose has been telling me your plans, General, and I can’t say how glad I am to find you share my view that it ain’t bloodshed, but a moral effect, that’s called for. May I be permitted to do my part? Lend me a couple of hundred Europeans and the steamers, and give me one more day, and we will fire the shikargahs and drive the game towards you. No Orientals can stand being taken in flank, and where they would fight desperately if assailed in front, it would not surprise me did they surrender without fighting at all.”
“H’m!” grunted Sir Harry. “Presently, presently! We don’t hold councils of war in public, my good fellow. But Europeans? Certainly not. I have but four hundred in my whole army, and each man is worth his weight in diamonds to me. And no more delay—not an hour! You must be back in time. Can’t put off the battle to suit you. Sorry to keep you waiting, ma’am.”
The day wore itself away slowly enough. Eveleen was tired after the excitements of the last forty-eight hours, but she found it difficult to rest. It was the cold weather, but at midday the heat made a tent a very inadequate shelter, and the many sounds of a camp suggested such interesting things which might be happening that she was for ever jumping up to look out. Richard and Brian were busy outside the General’s little tent close by. It was pitched under a rather inadequate tree, in the shade of which the office work was necessarily done, since it could not possibly have been accomplished inside. Messengers came and went, officers arrived with reports of various kinds, deputations of men with representations to make, offenders to receive admonition—and the General dealt with them in patriarchal style. Late in the afternoon Colonel Bayard and his two hundred Native Infantry left for the steamers, the officers not disguising their dissatisfaction at the possibility of missing the battle. At sunset there was a far more picturesque spectacle, when the Khemistan Horse rode out to reconnoitre from the land side the hunting-forest in which the enemy was supposed to be concealed, and thus distract their attention from Colonel Bayard’s operations by water. The camp woke up as the sun went down. Fires were lighted, and the men who had grumbled at the heat in their tents all day came out gladly to enjoy the warmth. Sitting round the fires, they watched their meal cooking, and exulted in the thought of the morrow. The British Army groused in those days as in these, but the nil admirari pose had not yet become fashionable—or if it had, it had passed by these Irish lads and left them unscathed. The General had a wood fire in front of his tent like the rest, and its smoke served as a much-needed deterrent from the attentions of the mosquitoes. He and Eveleen and his staff sat on small boxes round a large box for a table, and when the resources of his two canteens were exhausted, shared tumblers and even plates. Sir Henry was in a reminiscent mood. He talked about his parents—his father a giant both in mind and body, who would have been the greatest General of the age had a bat-like Government but taken advantage of his powers; his mother at once the best and the most beautiful woman of her time. Then he turned to his brothers, of whom there were several, each remarkable in his particular sphere, but none to compare with the two who were soldiers like himself, and like him, had fought and bled in the Peninsula. They had attained a certain measure of recognition, but nothing to what they should have received had they been treated fairly: there was a cross-grained fate pursuing every Lennox which robbed him of the due reward of his deeds. In all this he called upon his nephew—son to one of the ill-used soldiers—for confirmation, which was dutifully given. But when the General’s attention was distracted for a moment by the arrival of a message, Frederick Lennox spoke in a hollow whisper to Eveleen.
“It’s all quite true, and yet there ain’t a word of it true! What’s wrong with us Lennoxes is that we are all of us such queer cross-grained fellows that we make our own enemies.”
Eveleen was greatly interested, for the Lennox temperament seemed to have an affinity with her own—as Richard had once hinted,—and she would fain have pursued the subject, but the General’s eye was upon them again. The message had apparently recalled him from the past to the present.