On the Face of the Waters Part 53

"I did, indeed, sir," replied Jim Douglas, smiling again.

Nicholson gave him a sharp look. "And he is a wonderfully fine soldier too, sir; one of the finest we have. Wilson is sending him out this afternoon to punish those Ringhars at Rohtuck. I don't know why I should present you with this information, Mr. Douglas?"

"Don't you, sir?" was the cool reply; "I think I do. Major Hodson may have his faults, sir, but the Ridge couldn't do without him. And I'm glad to hear he is going out. It is time we punished those chaps; time we got some grip on the country again."

The General's face cleared. "Hm," he said, "you don't mince matters; but I don't think we lost much grip in the Punjab. And as for punishments! Do you know over two thousand have been executed already?"

"I don't, sir; though I knew Sir John's hand was out. But if you'll excuse me, we don't want the hangings now--they can come by-and-by. We want to lick them--show them we are not really in a blind funk."

"You use strong language too, sir--very strong language."

"I did not say we _were_ in one----" began Jim Douglas eagerly, when a voice asking if General Nicholson were within interrupted him.

"He is," replied the sonorous voice calmly. "Come in, Hodson, and I hope you are prepared to fight." The bright hazel eyes met Jim Douglas' with a distinct twinkle in them; but Major Hodson entering--a perfect blaze of scarlet and fawn and gold, loose, lank, lavish--gave the speech a different turn.

"I hope you'll excuse the intrusion, sir," he said saluting, as it were, loudly, "but being certain I owed this piece of luck to your kind offices, I ventured to follow you. And as for the fighting, sir, trust Hodson's Horse to give a good account of itself."

"I do, Major, I do," replied Nicholson gravely, despite the twinkle, "but at present I want you to fight Mr. Douglas for me. He suggests we are all in a blind funk."

With anyone else Jim Douglas might have refused this cool demand, for it was little else, that he should defend his statement against a man who in himself was a refutation of it, who was a type of the most reckless, dare-devil courage and dash; but the thought of that umpire, ready to give an overwhelming thrust at any time, roused his temper and pugnacity.

"I'm not conscious of being in one myself," said the Major, turning with a swing and a brief "How do, Douglas." He was the most martial of figures in the last-developed uniform of the Flamingoes, or the Ring-tailed Roarers, or the _Aloo Bokhara's_, as Hodson's levies were called indiscriminately during their lengthy process of dress evolution. "And what is more, I don't understand what you mean, sir!"

"General Nicholson does, I think," replied the other. "But I will go further than I did, sir," he added, facing the General boldly: "I only said that the natives thought we were in a blind funk. I now a.s.sert that they had a right to say so. We never stirred hand or foot for a whole month."

"Oh! I give you in Meerut," interrupted Hodson hastily. "It was pitiable. Our leaders lost their heads."

"Not only our leaders. We all lost them. From that moment to this it seems to me we have never been calm."

"Calm!" echoed Hodson disdainfully. "Who wants to be calm? Who would be calm with those ma.s.sacred women and children to avenge."

"Exactly so. The horrors of those ghastly murders got on our nerves, and no wonder. We exaggerated the position from the first; we exaggerate the dangers of it now."

"Of taking Delhi, you mean?" interrupted Nicholson dryly.

Jim Douglas smiled. "No, sir! Even you will find that difficult. I meant the ultimate danger to our rule----"

"There you mistake utterly," put in Hodson magnificently. "We mean to win--we admit no danger. There isn't an Englishman, or, thank Heaven, an Englishwoman----"

"Is the crisis so desperate that we need levy the ladies?" asked his adversary sarcastically. "Personally I want to leave them out of the question as much as I can. It is their intrusion into it which has done the mischief. I don't want to minimize these horrors; but if we could forget those ma.s.sacres----"

"Forget them! I hope to G.o.d every Englishman will remember them when the time comes to avenge them! Ay! and make the murderers remember them, too."

"If I had them in my power to-day," put in the sonorous voice, "and knew I was to die to-morrow, I would inflict the most excruciating tortures I could think of on them with an easy conscience."

"Bravo! sir," cried Hodson, "and I'd do executioner gladly."

John Nicholson's face flinched slightly. "There is generally a common hangman, I believe," he said; then turned on Jim Douglas with bent brows: "And you, sir?"

"I would kill them, sir; as I would kill a mad dog in the quickest way handy; as I'd kill every man found with arms in his hands. Treason is a worse crime than murder to us now; and by G.o.d! if I tortured anyone it would be the men who betrayed the garrison at Cawnpore. Yet even there, in our only real collapse, what has happened? It is reoccupied already--the road to it is hung with dead bodies. Havelock's march is one long procession of success. Yet we count ourselves beleaguered.

Why? I can't understand it! Where has an order to charge, to advance boldly, met with a reverse? It seems to me that but for these ma.s.sacres, this fear for women and children, we could hold our own gayly. Look at Lucknow----"

"Yes, Lucknow," a.s.sented Hodson savagely. "Sir Henry, the bravest, gentlest, dead! Women and children pent up--by Heaven! it's sickening to think what may have happened."

John Nicholson shot a quick glance at Jim Douglas.

"It proves my contention," said the latter. "Think of it! Fifteen hundred, English and natives, in a weak position with not even a palisade in some places between them and five times their number of trained soldiers backed by the wildest, wickedest, wantonest town rabble in India! What does it mean? Make every one of the fifteen hundred a paladin, and, by Heaven! they are heroes. Still, what does it mean?"

He spoke to the General, but he was silent.

"Mean?" echoed Hodson. "Palpably that the foe is contemptible. So he is. Pandy can't fight----"

"He fought well enough for us in the past. I know my regiment----" Jim Douglas caught himself up hard. "I believe they will fight for us again. The truth is that half, even of the army, does not want to fight, and the country does not mean fight at all."

"Delhi?" came the dry voice again.

"Delhi is exceptional. Besides, it can do nothing else now. Remember we condemned it, unheard, on the 8th of June."

"I told you that before, sir; didn't I?" put in Hodson quickly. "If we had gone in on the 11th, as I suggested."

"You wouldn't have succeeded," replied Jim Douglas coolly. Nicholson rose with a smile.

"Well, we are going to succeed now. So, good-luck in the meantime, Hodson. Put bit and bridle on the Ranghars. Show them we can't have 'em disturbing the public peace, and kicking up futile rows. Eh--Mr.

Douglas?"

"No fear, sir!" said Hodson effusively. "The Ring-tailed Roarers are not in a blind funk. I only wish that I was as sure that the politicals will keep order when we've made it. I had to do it twice over at Bhagput. And it is hard, sir, when one has f.a.gged horses and men to death, to be told one has exceeded orders----"

"If you served under me, Major Hodson," said the General with a sudden freeze of formality, "that would be impossible. My instructions are always to do everything that can be done."

Jim Douglas felt that he could well believe it, as with a regret that the interview was over, he held the flap of the tent aside for the imperial figure to pa.s.s out. But it lingered in the blaze of sunshine after Major Hodson had jingled off.

"You are right in some things, Mr. Douglas," said the sonorous voice suddenly: "I'd ask no finer soldiers than some of those against us. By and by, unless I'm wrong, men of their stock will be our best war weapons; for, mind you, war is a primitive art and needs a primitive people. And the country isn't against us. If it were, we shouldn't be standing here. It is too busy plowing, Mr. Douglas; this rain is points in our favor. As for the women and children--poor souls"--his voice softened infinitely--"they have been in our way terribly; but--we shall fight all the better for that, by and by. Meanwhile we have got to smash Delhi. The odds are bigger than they were first. But Baird Smith will sap us in somehow, and then----" He paused, looking kindly at Jim Douglas, and said, "You had better stop and go in with--with the rest of us."

"I think not, sir----"

"Why? Because of that poor lady? Woman again--eh?"

"In a way; besides, I really have nothing else to do."

John Nicholson looked at him for a moment from head to foot; then said sharply:

"I didn't know, sir. I give my personal staff plenty of work."

For an instant the offer took his hearer's breath away, and he stood silent.

"I'm afraid not, sir," he said at last, though from the first he had known what his answer would be. "I--I can't, that's the fact. I was cashiered from the army fifteen years ago."

General Nicholson stepped back, with sheer anger in his face. "Then what do you mean, sir, by wearing Her Majesty's uniform?"