“I certainly didn’t know you were listening, but I was not laughing at him. I merely said that he hadn’t given himself up. Would you wish me to say that he had?”
“You hinted that it was wrong and cowardly of him, and that he was saving himself at the expense of every one else here, when you ought to know it was only his strong sense of duty that kept him back. Would you have gone?”
“Certainly not, if the burden of the defence rested on me, as the Commissioner fancies it does on him.”
“You see! And you said yourself it would probably have been no good.”
“So I say still. Bahram Khan has more on hand than a piece of private revenge. If we trusted to his safe-conduct, we should be in for Cawnpore over again.”
“And after that you still make fun of Mr Burgrave for not going! It’s a shame! I know he has made mistakes in the past, from our point of view, but I won’t hear him called a coward. He is the most noble, lofty-minded man in the world, and I only wish I was more worthy of him!”
“You can’t expect me to indorse that, any more than the Commissioner himself would,” said Fitz. “If anything I have said about him has pained you, Miss North, I humbly beg your pardon; but please remember that I should never speak against him intentionally, simply because you think so highly of him.”
“I only want you to understand that I am not going to ask him to moderate his pretensions, as you call it,” went on Mabel, rather confused. “For one thing, he wouldn’t do it, and for another, now that Dick is gone, I must be guided by him.”
“Quite so,” said Fitz, somewhat dryly. Then his tone changed. “I wanted to ask you what you thought about telling poor Mrs North something the mullah said this morning. It struck me that perhaps we ought to keep it dark for a bit, as the doctor thinks it a good thing she can’t believe that the worst has happened. The poor old Amir wept as if for his own son when he heard that the Major was dead, and went himself to look for the body, intending to give it a state funeral. But when they got to the pass, it was gone. The Hasrat Ali Begum, who was in camp near, had broken pardah with her women as soon as the fight was over, and carried off the body and buried it. They were afraid of what Bahram Khan would do with it, you see, and at present they won’t tell even the Amir where the grave is, but he sent word that he meant to build a tomb over it later on. Now, ought Mrs North to know?”
“I shouldn’t think so, should you? I have never been much with people in trouble—I don’t know how to deal with them. But I think it will be better not to tell her unless she asks.”