“I’m afraid not.” Richard spoke gravely. “I doubt if he would return to find himself nothing but an underling.”
“You think they’ll not work well together?”
“I think the best chance of it would be for the treaty to be signed—if signed it is to be—before Bayard gets back. Then he’ll find plenty to do in alleviating the feelings of the Khans, knowing that the thing is done and can’t be undone, and their best hope is to submit gracefully. Something must have happened to detain him in Bombay, or we should have had him back before this. Whatever it be, I trust it may detain him a little longer.”
It was not often that Richard spoke so openly and so seriously, and Eveleen was duly impressed. For the moment, that is—for the life going on around her was so interesting and engrossing that it was hard to realise Colonel Bayard as a possible disturbing influence. Sir Harry might expect to carry through the treaty peacefully, but his troops were longing for the Khans to refuse to sign. A new spirit had been breathed into the disintegrated force when the Peninsular veteran took it in hand. The bonds of discipline were tightened, something like esprit de corps was growing up between Queen’s and Company’s men, which were traditionally at daggers drawn, and the native regiments—in looking down upon which they had been wont to find their sole point of agreement; life might be harder, but it was incomparably more thrilling. The two or three thousand men at Sahar would have charged cheering upon the great hosts of Granthistan next door, and gone through them with the bayonet, so said Sir Harry, who realised—no one better—the change he had brought about in the spirit of his command. He said it to Eveleen and her husband, when they came upon him by the river, watching the tents and heavy baggage of a native regiment, which was due to cross on the morrow, being ferried over in haste before darkness fell to the camp which was in process of formation outside Bori.
“Almost a pity to see ’em so full of fight, with no enemy handy!” he added, a little gloomily. “But what a bloodthirsty wretch I am—almost as bad as the Bombay chaps make me out—to be regretting the strife I have strained every nerve to avert! If the poor fellows themselves know no better than to desire war, their commander at least should be superior to such a passion.” He was talking as though to himself, and Richard broke in rather hastily—
“Do I understand you, General, that the Khans have decided to submit? Is there news from Stewart?”
“Yes, a cossid [messenger] came in after you left. The Khans are sending Vakils to sign the treaty—under protest, naturally enough, but still to sign.”
“Then the rumours were nothing at all but talk?” said Eveleen.
“Nothing whatever. If there had been even some attempt at resistance I should have felt—foolishly enough—less unjust, but these poor Khans are so meek, so submissive, that one has the impression of behaving in the most shockingly arbitrary fashion. Had there been any truth in last week’s story of Gul Ali’s actual resignation of the Turban to that violent youth, his son, I could almost have welcomed the chance of an honest tussle, but it’s like raining blows on a feather bed. You don’t feel this?” he turned sharply on Richard. “You still believe they mean to fight?”
“I can’t believe they have assembled sixty thousand men for nothing, General—nor yet that the younger Khans have invited those armed bands we hear about into the desert solely to enjoy a picnic in their company.”