CHAPTER XVIII.
A few more idle days were passed in the torpor of heat and false security, before the great storm broke out, engulfing at once some of the small European communities in India scattered over the country, surprised and defenceless, while others for a time endured only the bitterness of expectation. Rumours of the outbreak at Meerut and Delhi reached Mustaphabad in a few hours, and to the horror and indignation aroused by the first news, there soon followed unspeakable dread and suspense as the tidings came from one station after another of treacherous risings and murder and anarchy, and those who had so far escaped felt that the same catastrophe might at any moment overtake themselves. Here, as in every place where there were both white and black troops, the gravity of the situation was vastly aggravated by the difficulty of framing a plan of action; for to make preparations might have been to accelerate the outbreak. And the position of the officers of the native regiments was peculiarly embarrassing; for while they seemed to be regarded by the rest of the community as if in some way unwittingly the cause of the calamity, and shared for the time the odium aroused by the misconduct of the sepoys in other places, they for their part were not only precluded by their position from taking the precautions which the other European residents made, against a treacherous outbreak of their men — they would also certainly be the first victims. Right bravely, however, they faced the danger, professing unlimited confidence in their men — a confidence which, whatever they felt, they exemplified by sending their beds down to the parade-ground, and sleeping there unarmed in front of the men's huts on the edge of the plain, the armed sentries marching to and fro beside them. And at times, indeed, when talking to the men — men who had never before been otherwise than docile and respectful, it seemed impossible to doubt their protestations of loyalty, their declarations even of detestation at the conduct of the regiments which had mutinied, and their professions of eagerness to be led against the common enemy. And yet a change had come over them which could not but be observed — a certain sullenness of manner, a look as if of suspicion that they were suspected, which the officers in vain endeavoured by their own appearance of confidence to ignore. Nobody else, however, expressed any confidence in the sepoys, or hesitated to avow the expectation that sooner or later they would follow the example of the mutineers elsewhere; and the officers of the hussars and European artillery were all for marching down on the native lines and disarming the sepoys by force, with sabres and grape ad libitum if the latter should show their teeth; and Brigadier Polwheedle, who was ready to hear advice from every one who offered it, although quite unable to make up his mind about it, received numerous proposals to this effect from the self-constituted critics of the situation; for military etiquette had disappeared for a time under the first excitement of the crisis, and people walked in and out of the brigade-office as if it were a tap-room. The brigadier, however, at this juncture was disabled from active duty by a fall from his grey cob, which had happened three weeks before, causing fracture of the small bone of the leg; and the command of the station practically devolved on Colonel Tartar. Tartar was a man of decision; but while the European force at his disposal consisted only of cavalry and artillery, he was desirous of avoiding extreme measures which might precipitate an outbreak of so large a body of sepoys. In ten days a regiment of European infantry and another of Ghoorkhas, with a supply of ammunition, would arrive at Mustaphabad, when it was his intention to disarm the native regiments, and then, having made his rear safe, to march with the remainder of his force to what was now the seat of war. Meanwhile the needful measures were hurried on for taking the field, and all the soldiers' wives and children were sent off in bullock-carts to the hills, under escort of the few European soldiers who were not fit for active service, and a detachment of the nawab's troops, who were believed to be stanch. Most of the married officers took advantage of the opportunity to send off their families also.
During this time the outward aspect of the place remained unchanged; during the day-time the roads bore the same deserted aspect as usual, and the fierce hot wind had them to itself, while at sunset the residents took their customary ride or drive along the mall. But in the European barracks the guards were strengthened, and strong pickets were always on duty, while the hussars and artillery horses stood saddled in their stables. The miscellaneous European residents were all privately warned to make their way to the hussar barracks if any firing should be heard; and a cordon of observation was drawn between the European and native lines, the officers of the native regiments remaining alone with their suspected sepoys. Their tents were pitched with those of the men on the regimental parades, for the native regiments had been formally warned that they were to make part of the field force, and the officers had sent their baggage to the camp and slept there every night; but they still spent the days in their bungalows to avoid the fierce May heat, and dined in their respective mess-houses — for even among men expecting to be murdered, the formalities of life must be gone through. Ten weary, dreary days. In the European quarters there was plenty to be done, for the camp-equipment of Europeans is multifarious, and hot-weather campaigning-clothes had to be improvised; but the sepoy's wants are simple and few, and after the tents were duly pitched and camels provided for carrying them, there was little remaining to be done; and the days passed slowly enough for the officers in their bungalows, now looking cheerless and dismantled, or in the mess-house discussing such items of news as found their way to Mustaphabad despite interrupted posts and telegraphs — news ever growing blacker; simulating a confidence which no one felt, talking over the details of the duty which they professed to have before them, of leading their men against the mutineers, to wipe out the stain which rested on the army; half hoping that their particular regiments might prove an exception to the rule of treachery then paramount, half expecting to be shot down suddenly, unarmed and defenceless.
"They have got a capital opportunity for polishing us off this evening, if they want to do so," observed Spragge, cheerily, who with all other officers on leave had rejoined at the first tidings of the outbreak, as they sat down to mess-dinner on the first evening of his return; "half-a-dozen of them could do the trick nicely, if they feel so disposed; "but the joke fell somewhat flat — this particular fate of a massacre while at the mess-table having already befallen the officers of another regiment down country; the suggestion was considered ill-timed in the presence of the servants, who might understand what was said; moreover, the mess-orderly sepoy was standing in the veranda — and the dinner passed off without any further attempt at jests or badinage.
One morning, after more than a week had dragged itself out in this fashion, Yorke received orders to march to the residency with two companies to strengthen the guard there. In the state of combined suspense and monotony which made up life at that time, a movement of any sort was an acceptable change. Everything being ready for marching, the detachment started half-an-hour after the order was received; and Yorke, as he mounted his horse to follow it, was for the moment in good spirits, although he could not but be struck by the change in the European mode of life made in the last ten days, as typified by the manner of his march. When last he set out for the residency, the authorities had been careful to choose the cool of the evening for the march. Now it was made in the full glare of a May sun at mid-day. And as he rode along in the rear of the detachment, and to windward of it to keep out of the dust made by the men's feet, it came upon him suddenly that he had been untrue to the memory of his love. During the last ten days his thoughts had scarcely once been occupied with the past; was this, he thought bitterly, to be the end of the great passion he had been hugging to his breast, and was it fear or excitement that had deadened his senses? But now, as he drew near the house, his old feelings came up again. Yet no! not the same feelings. To cherish a common sort of love for the woman who could now never be his, would, he felt, be desecration. She must now be, it seemed to him, as a saint to be worshipped rather than a woman to be loved, and his heart bounded at the thought that he might now have the opportunity of proving his devotion in a way that could give no offence to the purest mind. Yet he did not even know if she were still at the residency, or whether she had been sent away with the other ladies to a place of safety in the hills.
The detachment marched into the residency enclosure, and halted in the same place where Yorke had encamped before — the very spot of which, only three months ago, Olivia had made the pretty sketch, and when Yorke, standing by her while she plied her brush, had bewailed the monotony of military life, audits want of reality. No want of reality now, at any rate, and the only monotony that of suspense. Letting the detachment pile arms and break off, to take shelter under the trees which skirted the park wall, Yorke walked across the grounds to the house, under the portico of which divers scarlet-coated attendants were lounging as usual, and followed the man who went forward to announce him into the house. As he entered the large drawing-room, Mrs. Falkland came out of a side room and advanced to meet him. It was just here that they parted the last time he saw her, when he went off, credulous young fool, burning with love and elate with hope, to be crushed to the earth presently with shame and despair. But three short months had passed, and now hope and love had been crushed together — and yet not love. Yorke felt in his heart that his love for the beautiful woman before him was as deep as ever; but he felt also with honest pride that it was love of a different kind; that for the future devotion must be given without acknowledgment or return; and, mingled with his anxiety at seeing her thus exposed to the threatening danger, was a feeling of elation that he might be near to share, perhaps even to shield her from it.
As Olivia came forward, Yorke noticed that she looked paler, and the rich colour and tasteful ornaments in which she had been wont to attire herself were replaced by a simple white muslin dress trimmed with a little blue ribbon, in keeping with the weather, but which made her, he thought, look taller and thinner. But he thought her also lovelier than ever.
Olivia blushed slightly, as she came forward and held out her hand. Did she at all guess what wild work she had made with his poor heart? "You have come with the troops, I suppose?" she said; "my husband is very anxious to see you; will you step into his room?" And she led the way to Colonel Falkland's office.
Falkland was writing at a table in his shirt-sleeves, for the heat was intense, and the punkah was not at work. Hot though it was, Yorke thought he would never have sat down in that guise before Mrs. Falkland, if she had been his wife. The colonel held out his hand to greet him, but without rising. He wanted Yorke and his detachment, he said, to strengthen the residency guard. The greater part of the treasure had been sent into cantonments for the use of the field force about to march, but there were still about three lakhs of rupees — a considerable temptation to the roughs in the city, who were quite ready to rise on the smallest provocation, but would keep quiet so long as the troops on guard remained stanch, which they would probably do, so long as the main body at headquarters stuck by their colours. What did Yorke think about his own regiment?
Yorke said that they were well-conducted and steady enough so far, but he could not help admitting that a change had come over the manner of the sepoys, as in men who knew they were suspected, and deserved to be, after the treachery displayed at other places. Still, foolish though it might be, he could not help believing that they would prove an exception to the wholesale treachery everywhere manifested.
"Well, everything depends on General Slough; he has been sent down to take command, and arrived in cantonments this morning. And yet not everything. A blockhead may easily precipitate matters, but a Hannibal could not keep the sepoys from mutiny if they are bent on it. I am going down to cantonments presently to see what plans are determined upon, as soon as I can get my letter-writing done. This is the misfortune for us civilians," continued the colonel, looking wearily over his table covered with papers;" we have to be writing when we ought to be acting. I have been sitting here quill-driving ever since day break, and have not got through half the work yet. There are fifty things still to be done for the troops, and expresses to be sent in all directions."
"Cannot I act as your private secretary, sir?" asked Yorke; "I shall only be too happy to be of use."
"Thank you very much, my dear boy, but I think you should keep by the treasury with your men just for the present. Here is my private secretary," he added, taking his wife's right hand, as she stood beside him, with his left, without looking up; and as Yorke quitted the room to join his detachment, he thought to himself that he could never have ventured to make her his drudge, or to holdout a left hand in that way. With him she must always have been as one superior, to be treated like a queen; and he could not but admit in his state of self-abasement that Falkland was the more fitting husband for such a bride. Yet what a honeymoon for her!
Passing out of the portico, Yorke met Captain Sparrow coming on foot towards the house, and they stopped to exchange a few words, standing on the brown surface, which at that season did duty for grass, in the full blaze of the mid-day sun. Sparrow was pale and anxious and excited, nor had the arrival of the detachment tended to reassure him. It was perfect madness of Falkland, he exclaimed, to send for more sepoys, and to think of holding the place by force, instead of giving up the residency and falling back on cantonments. The troops were to march eastward that night, and then the city would rise, and they would all be murdered, as sure as fate. "He won't even agree," continued the captain, "to my giving up my own house and joining him in the residency, lest it should seem to invite a rising; and for the same reason he wouldn't send Mrs. Falkland away. It's all very well to show a bold front, but to my mind a few reasonable precautions would be better. I don't fancy being caught like a rat in a trap. All this pretence of confidence where you don't feel any seems simple infatuation. But it is no good remonstrating with him." And so saying. Sparrow passed on into the house.
The court-house, which Yorke had to guard — a long one-storeyed building with an arched veranda on each side, situated on the open plain a short distance beyond the residency enclosure-wall — was not this day the scene of much business, the commissioner being absent in the cantonments, and Captain Sparrow too busy, as he said, to attend, so that only the East-Indian assistant was present to conduct the treasury routine; and the suitors who, having come out from the city, seemed disposed as they were there to make a day of it, sat squatting for the most part under the clumps of trees which surrounded the building, where also their ponies and the bullocks which had conveyed their carriages were tethered, discussing like the rest of the world the news of the day, momentous enough in itself, and not likely to have lost in importance from being retailed through the country by word of mouth; and Yorke fancied that they looked curiously at him as he passed by at the head of his men, as if wondering languidly how soon the latter would set on him.
As soon as the camel-borne tents came up, Yorke had them pitched under these trees; and, having posted his sentries in the veranda of the rooms occupied by the treasure, he passed the day himself in the commissioner's waiting-room. Society was still so far organized that punkah-pullers were obtained; but it was symptomatic of the state of the times that the attendants had forgotten to lower the rush-blinds according to custom, so that the room swarmed with flies. At one o'clock his servant brought luncheon, cooked under a tree; but the beer was almost as hot as the curry; and flies, heat, and suspense combined, made eating almost impossible. Thus went the long day, Yorke ever and anon scanning the prospect from the veranda, looking through the trees towards the residency to see if he could trace aught of what was happening to its inmates. It seemed impossible to realize the condition of affairs. Life all around was as quiet as ever. The sepoys not on guard lay undressed and asleep in their tents; such of the suitors as had remained were for the most part also asleep under the trees; the different court-messengers were trying to get to sleep on the shady side of the veranda. Towards the residency not a soul was stirring. Even the crows were overcome by the fierce afternoon heat, and sat still on the boughs with their beaks open, gasping for breath. And yet how enviable his position at present compared with that of so many of his countrymen, who, if still alive, were wandering outcasts over these burnt-up plains, struggling under the fierce heat to find some place of shelter! And his turn was coming. Yet could it be that peaceful aspect was the forerunner of another such tragedy as had already occurred in other parts of India? The events of the past three months — the races and balls and other small events which then made up the business of life — seemed already to have faded away into the distance like a dream. The monotonous peace of those times had been found fault with as dreary and dull; how gladly would such dulness be welcomed back again in place of the dread expectancy of their present state! And, thought the young man bitterly at times, am I not to be permitted to have even the chance of dying like a man after striking a blow in self-defence — must it be my fate to wait here inactive till it is my turn to be shot down like a dog? Then again to these despondent feelings would succeed a sensation almost of joy, as he recollected where he was, and that he had come back near to the presence of his old love; could it be, after all, that their fates were bound together?