Part 53 (1/2)
”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.