Part 42 (2/2)
And--and I saw someone else with them, Mrs. Erlton. I wasn't sure at first if I had better tell you; but I think I had. I saw your husband.”
”My husband,” she echoed faintly. In truth the past seemed to have slipped from her. She seemed to have forgotten so much; and then suddenly she remembered that the letter he had written must still be in the pocket of the dress Tara had hidden away. How strange! She must find it, and look at it again.
Jim Douglas watched her curiously with a quick recognition of his own rough touch. Yet it could not be helped.
”Yes. He was looking splendid, doing splendidly. I couldn't help wis.h.i.+ng---- Well! I wish you could have seen him; you would have been proud.”
She interrupted him with swift, appealing hand. ”Oh!--don't--please don't--what have I to do with it? Can't you see--can't you understand he was thinking of--of her--and doesn't she deserve it? while I--I----”
It was the first breakdown he had seen during those long weeks of strain, and he stood absolutely, wholly compa.s.sionate before it.
”My dear lady,” he said gently, as he walked away to give her time, ”if you good women would only recognize the fact which worse ones do, that most men think of many women in their lives, you would be happier.
But I doubt if Major Erlton was thinking of anyone in particular. He was thinking of the dead, and you are among them, for _him_; remember that. Come,” he continued, crossing over to her again and holding out his hand. ”Cheer up! Aren't you always telling me it is bad for a man to have one woman on the brain, and think, think how many there may be to avenge by this time!”
His voice, sounding a whole gamut of emotion, a whole cadence of consolation, seemed to find an echo in her heart, and she looked up at him gratefully.
It would have found one also in most hearts upon the Ridge, where men were beginning to think with a sort of mad fury of women and children in a hundred places to which this unchecked conflagration of mutiny was spreading swiftly. What would become of Lucknow, Cawnpore, Agra, if something were not done at Delhi? if the challenge so well given were not followed up? And men elsewhere telegraphed the same question, until, half-heartedly, the General listened, and finally gave a grudging a.s.sent to a plan of a.s.sault urged by four subalterns.
What the details were matters little. A bag of gunpowder somewhere, with fixed bayonets to follow. A gamester's throw for sixes or deuce-ace, so said even its supporters. But anything seemed better than being a target for artillery practice five times better than their own, while the mutiny spread around them.
The secret was well kept as such secrets must be. Still the afternoon of the 12th saw a vague stir on the Ridge, and though even the fighting men turned in to sleep, each man knew what the midnight order meant which sent him fumbling hurriedly with belts and buckles.
”The city at last, mates! No more playin' ball,” they said to each other as they fell in, and stood waiting the next order under the stars; waiting with growing impatience as the minutes slipped by.
”My G.o.d! where is Graves?” fumed Hodson. ”We can't go on without him and his three hundred. Ride, someone, and see. The explosion party is ready, the Rifles safe within three hundred yards of the wall. The dawn will be on us in no time--ride sharp!”
”Something has gone wrong,” whispered a comrade. ”There were lights in the General's tent and two mounted officers--there! I thought so! It's all up!”
All up indeed! For the bugle which rang out was the retreat. Some of those who heard it remembered a moonlight night just a month before when it had echoed over the Meerut parade ground; and if muttered curses could have silenced it the bugle would have sounded in vain.
But they could not, and so the men went back sulkily, despondently to bed. Back to inaction, back to target practice.
”Graves says he misunderstood the verbal orders, so I understand,”
palliated a staff-officer in a mess tent whither others drifted to find solace from the chill of dis-appointment, the heat of anger. A tall man with hawk's eyes and spa.r.s.e red hair paused for a moment ere pa.s.sing out into the night again. ”I dislike euphemisms,” he said curtly. ”In these days I prefer to call a spade a spade. Then you can tell what you have to trust to.”
”Hodson's in a towering temper,” said an artilleryman as he watched a native servant thirstily; ”I don't wonder. Well! here's to better luck next time.”
”I don't believe there will be a next time,” echoed a lad gloomily.
And there was not, for him, the target practice settling that point definitely next day.
”But why the devil couldn't--” began another vexed voice, then paused.
”Ah! here comes Erlton from the General. He'll know. I say, Major----”
he broke off aghast.
”Have a gla.s.s of something, Erlton?” put in a senior hastily, ”you look as if you had seen a ghost, man!”
The Major gave an odd hollow laugh. ”The other way on--I mean--I--I can't believe it--but my wife--she--she's alive--she's in Delhi.” The startled faces around seemed too much for him; he sat down hurriedly and hid his face in his hands, only to look up in a second more collectedly. ”It has brought the whole d----d business home, somehow, to have her there.”
”But how?” the eager voices got so far--no further.
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