“By all means, if you wish it. But I don’t quite——”
“You would not. I’d have y’understand, Ambrose, that you never will see to your dying day! Ah, then, it’s a cross wife you have, isn’t it? Why don’t you give me a box on the ear?”
To any one but Sir Harry Lennox, his position at this time would have inevitably recalled that of the original Austrian who caught the Tartar. With his little force hanging on gallantly to the river front of Qadirabad, he was powerless to exercise any control on the land side, and it did not need much shrewdness to guess that the Arabits defeated at Mahighar were slipping out of the city in a continuous stream to join Kamal-ud-din and strike a return blow under his leadership. But it might have been more dangerous to keep them than to let them go, and the General remained untroubled by their defection. His concern at the moment was with bricks and mortar—or rather, in this locality, earth and mud. In the course of ten strenuous days, the ramshackle old Fort was put into such a state of repair as it had not known since it was first built; an entrenched camp was constructed about the battered Residency, and a small fortification erected on the other side of the river, where the steamers lay, to protect them and the precious stores they carried. But no one knew better than Sir Harry how very inadequate was his force even to guard what he held—much more to take the field again; and he had not only ordered reinforcements up from Bab-us-Sahel and down from Sahar, but had put his pride in his pocket so far as to ask the Governor-General for the regiments from British India which he had refused earlier. Pending the arrival of relief, he sat tight, presenting a spectacle of prudent inactivity which was as surprising as it was trying to his officers, who knew that Kamal-ud-din’s hopes must be rising with every messenger that reached him from Qadirabad. What could be more obvious than that the Bahadar Jang was distracted by the necessity of holding so much ground with such small numbers, that he durst not show his nose outside his fortifications, and that an attack in force on any portion of them must oblige him either to concentrate his entire strength in its defence and abandon the rest, or to hold the whole so weakly that it would fall an easy prey? Gloomy reports went round, leading to gloomier prognostications. The right bank of the river was wholly hostile. In the north the wild tribes were coming down from their hills, like vultures lured by the hope of being in at the death of the old lion. Down in the delta the wild tribes of the plains were waxing bold—interfering with the dâks, raiding the outlying houses of Bab-us-Sahel. The river itself might be considered safe wherever there was water for the steamers, but beyond the range of their guns Kamal-ud-din could do whatever he liked even on the left bank. He would know of the reinforcements marching from Sahar—of course he would swoop upon them from his desert eyrie and annihilate them by sheer weight of numbers.
“’Deed and y’are kindly welcome, as old Biddy used to say!” Eveleen greeted her brother one afternoon. “Mr Ferrers and Sir Dugald Haigh have been calling, and made me miserable entirely. Sir Dugald never says anything, but he sits and looks so solemn you’d be certain things were at their very worst. And Ferrers said any amount—that the General had lost his opportunity once for all when he let Kamal-ud-din escape and planted himself down here. But if only he was given the chance, says he, he’d engage to beat up Kamal-ud-din’s headquarters and bring him back prisoner, and so end the war at one blow.”
“Lieutenant Ferrers is a very great officer,” said Brian sardonically, “and if ’twas only his own life, and not the lives of other men and horses, would pay the price, I’d like well to see him sent out on just that easy bit of business. But we must hope to get rid of him cheaper than that.”
“Sure you may be as sarcastic as you please, but that don’t give me an answer to hurl at the man. Here I am, knowing nothing but what he and the rest say, and Ambrose looking virtuous and shocked when I ask him will he tell me anything, and talking about matters of duty and official secrets. Why, I believe the common soldiers know more of the General’s plans than I do! Often I see a knot of them, and in the middle his old helmet and Black Prince tossing his lovely little head, and it don’t need to be a prophet to know they’re asking him all sorts of questions, and he answering them as if he liked it.”
“And you never asked a question in your life, and the old lad wouldn’t like it if you did!”
“That he would not—or at any rate, I’m on my best behaviour, and trying not to tease him. Besides, wouldn’t I seem to be reflecting on the state of his mind if I asked him did ever any General before lay out a beautiful camp, and then move all his soldiers out of it into the desert, and only leave the hospitals and the baggage and headquarters and the prisoners and Ambrose and me inside?”
“You can’t say you have no neighbours!” laughed Brian. “But see here, Evie, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t know what he’s after. Now then, let me think how can I wrap up the truth in an Oriental apologue, so that any unauthorised listeners may be puzzled to find it? Listen, now; will you think y’are an old lady, poor and proud, like our cousin Gracia, living out Donnybrook way on her little bit of an annuity?” Eveleen looked mystified, but nodded. “Well, then, she has prosperous relatives living in Merrion Square—Counsellor Sullivan and his lady,—and she likes greatly to keep up the family feeling. But she has no money for coach-hire, and how would she walk all that way, even if she wasn’t terrified her little house would be robbed while she was gone? Will you tell me what she’d do?”
“I’d say she’d ask them would they come and see her,” entering into the spirit of the fable.