“Y’are to dine with us, by the way,” he said. “The General will take no denial. We tried to put it to him that you’d rather be getting comfortable in your own quarters the first night, but the old lad said that was just it—the servants would be settling your things for you while you were being properly fed. So we saw him safely established with dear Munshi—he always calls the chap that, as if ’twas his name—and Stewart started out to borrow crockery fit for a lady to eat off, while I came down to meet you.”
“Who will he be borrowing from?” asked Eveleen curiously.
“How’d I know? The Mess, I suppose, or some of the civilians—they’re the boys for style. Don’t be afraid—Stewart will do things for you as they ought be done, or die.”
“Has the General picked up the country talk yet?”
“Has he not, indeed!—in spite of all his sarcastic remarks! He came out t’other day with bundibus—meaning bandobast, I suppose as pat as you please, and Stewart and I winked the other eye behind his back till we nearly burst. But listen now, how he’ll be leaving his mark on the map. There’s some forsaken place up beyond Pagipur, where the Khemistan Horse are to have a post to keep the tribes in order. Just a heap of ruins—old fort and so on, but I suppose it had some sort of name once. Anyhow, the General says it shall have a new one now, and he’ll compliment Gul Ali Khan by naming it after him. Quite so—Gul Aliabad; everybody agreeable—most neat and appropriate. ‘Not a bit of it!’ says the old lad; ‘far too long; call it Alibad and be done with it.’ Munshi and your humble servant venture to point out that ain’t grammar—or whatever you call it. Quick as lightning the old fellow barks out, ‘The Lennoxes make their own grammar. Alibad’s the name, and be hanged to it and you!’ So there you are, hukm hai, [it is an order] unless future ages dare to correct old Harry’s grammar—which the present one won’t while he’s alive.”
“D’ye expect us to believe that yarn, Brian?” asked Richard, shifting his cheroot lazily for an instant.
“Just as you please. Sure it won’t hurt me if you don’t—only yourself. Now, Evie, be on the watch for the first sight of your new home. Between this island and the next you’ll get the full view of it in all its sandiness.”
Undoubtedly the prospect was a sandy one—particularly so after the rich black soil of the Qadirabad district, with its countless villages embowered in the vivid green of the nîm groves. Immediately ahead was a long low island—fortified within an inch of its life, as Brian pointed out; the great battlemented walls and bastions rising from the very edge of the water—to the right a shapeless collection of mud hovels straggling out into the desert, and to the left an assemblage of similar buildings, not quite so aimless-looking, since it centred round a more or less ruinous fort on a low hill. This was Sahar, the fortified island was Bahar, and the native town on the farther bank Bori—a name which naturally lent itself to innumerable puns on the lips of the young gentlemen quartered at Sahar. If military exigencies left any room on Bahar for vegetation, it did not venture to show itself over the battlements, but the plumes of scattered date-palms mitigated a little the prevailing sand-colour of the buildings on either bank.
“I wonder why would it all look so dead and ruined?” said Eveleen, in some dismay, as they drew in to the shore. “Like some place in Egypt that nobody has lived in for two thousand years.”
“Pray, my dear, say something original,” said her husband impatiently. “It’s impossible for anybody to mention Khemistan without comparing it with Egypt.”