When the men were dismissed Terrington called Walcot and Dore into the women's durbar hall and sent for Hussain Shah and Afzul Singh, who were the two senior native officers.
"Of her husband's death," Walcot explained.
Terrington's face showed a certain blankness of apprehension10. He had forgotten that there was any one in the Fort, whose hopes or fears could be affected11 by the confirmation12 obtained of that morning's tragedy.
"Oh, certainly," he said.
The room was a long gloomy one on the ground floor, used by Langford partly as an office, partly as a store. Bales and boxes still filled two of its corners, and the space in front of them was littered with Sir Colvin's and the Chantrys' belongings13, which were being removed from the Residency with ostentation14. One dark window in the further wall lent what dim light the room had, and the table at which Terrington seated himself was drawn15 somewhat towards it.
He was writing when the two native officers entered, and he assigned to them the two seats on his right, with the grave silent courtesy with which the East had coloured so curiously16 his English manner. Dore, nervously17 tired by the excitement of the morning, had dropped limply on to a bale of clothing, and lit a cigarette, but the two Sikhs sat erect18 and impassive beside the table. Clones came in to requisition some stores, and reported Langford to be insensible and sinking.
"If you can spare a few moments you might spend them here," said Terrington.
The doctor nodded, and sat down on a packing-case beside Dore, rising again at once as Mrs. Chantry, followed by Walcot, entered the room.
She was wearing still the frock of creamy lace in which she was to have watched the polo that afternoon. Her face looked listless and white and faded above it like a broken flower. Her eyes sought Terrington's in the dim room with a sort of frightened submissiveness.
"May I come in?" she said.
"Of course," he answered, getting out of his chair to hand it to her; but Walcot had already drawn forward a seat of Sari rush from the relics19 of the Residency, and she dropped into it limply, with a nod of acknowledgment to Terrington, amid all the crushed and huddled20 fragments of her own lost little home. Walcot sat down on a box beside her. A tiny jade21 god slid down the pile of rugs and bowls and cushions, and lay at her feet with a severed22 arm. He had been for years the very dearest of her household treasures, and now to find him maimed and friendless moved in her a despondent23 misery24 which she had not felt at her husband's death. She hid the little broken body in the hollow of her hand, and sat there, her head bent25 over it, shaking with sobs26. It was the very smallness of the grief that brought her tears.
Terrington blotted27 the notes he had written and laid down his pen. He made no sort of preamble28: for anything in his manner the occasion might have been the most ordinary in the world.
"I wish," he said, "to explain my plans. Some of us may not come through the next few weeks, and I don't want those who do to be saddled with my mistakes. So I'll enter any protest, to cover you in case I'm not with you at the finish. We leave Sar to-night."
Even the two dark impassive faces on his right reflected the unexpectedness of his announcement, and Walcot half rose to his feet.
"Abandon the Fort?" he exclaimed.
"Abandon the Fort, and everything we cannot carry, and retire by the Palári upon Rashát," said Terrington quietly.
"But I understood, if you'll excuse me," continued Walcot, trying to control his excitement, "that all the defences of the Fort which we've been at for the last month were your idea."
"They were," said Terrington.
"Have you changed your mind then?" asked the other sharply.
"No," said Terrington slowly, "but I've changed my position. I've only so far had to decide how to make the Fort defensible if it had to be defended."
"Yes, but!" Walcot objected, "the clearing of the Residency, the blowing down of these trees; all that has taken place since! What's been the object of that if you didn't mean to stay?"
"In war," said Terrington quietly, "it's sometimes as well to keep your intentions from the enemy."
"Did Sir Colvin mean us to stay here, sir?" enquired Dore.
"Yes," said Terrington. "Sir Colvin intended to hold out in Sar if anything went wrong till a relieving force could get up here from Sampur."
"You absolutely disagree with him, then?" Walcot rapped out.
Terrington looked at him thoughtfully.
"I have another point of view," he said.
"And what's that?" snapped the other.
"He was a political officer and I am a soldier," said Terrington simply.
"Don't you think we could hold Sar, sir?" he asked with boyish eagerness for a stand-up fight.
"Yes," said Terrington, kindling30 sympathetically at the thought of the fight he too had longed for, "I think we just could, though it might be a near thing. I've decided31 to clear out," he went on, addressing the others, "because the value of being penned up here doesn't impress me politically, and because digging us out of this in mid-winter would mean a horrible waste of life. There are only a few hundred of us to be wiped out at the worst, but it might take thousands of the men who came to save us. These little sieges are often very costly32 things."
"I shouldn't think our retirement33 will be very popular at home," Clones suggested.
"I don't suppose it will," said Terrington; "at home they're rather fond of a siege; it makes the paper more interesting."
"And how about the intentions of the Government, Colonel," Clones continued in his reasonable way; "I suppose you were sent up here to carry them out."
"No doubt," said Terrington with his grave smile, "but without being told what its intentions were. Consequently one rather seems to be here to make intentions for the Government, and I'm very possibly making them all wrong. But that's their fault for not having sent a better man."
"There's one point, Terrington, you don't seem to have considered," Walcot interjected; "that you've got to take a woman over passes which even the natives won't cross at this time of year."
"I haven't considered it for a moment," said Terrington shortly.
"That's hardly been the habit of Englishmen hitherto out here," he exclaimed.
"I dare say not," said Terrington with dry indifference35.
Rose Chantry, with her hand still closed about the little broken god in her lap, looked up at him through the tears that hung across her eyes. Beyond the cool darkness of the entrance door, against the far wall of the blazing courtyard she could see the row of charpoys with their burden of dead men, mere1 rolls of sallow dungari cloth, waiting till the grave being dug beside the Residency gate should be wide enough to hold them. It was the most dreadful moment of her life, when she needed above all to be petted and comforted into a sense of her importance, but the man who should have done it was indifferent even to her safety. She had already begun to cheer herself with the thought of a siege; the delicacy36 of her position; the solicitous37 homage38 of all the men; her cheerful and inspiring effect upon them; the excitement in England so intensified39 by the presence of a woman among the besieged40; the accounts of her in the papers, made more touching41 by her loss; and then the thrill of the relief—she took the relief for granted—the sound of the guns, the fight through the streets of Sar, the cheers of the British troops, the ardent42 congratulations, the soft abandonment of that moment at the end of the suspense43, and herself the one woman in a British army. And the coming home after such an experience; the woman of the moment, every one wanting to meet her; perhaps a command from the Queen.
All her dream was shattered by Terrington's implacable decree. She looked at him with despairing hate. She thought of the reckless sacrifices Englishmen had made for women during the Mutiny, and hated him the more. She felt sure that she could never live through the snows of those passes about which she had heard such awful stories. The cold would kill her; the cold always shrivelled her up; and she had nothing to wear, nothing warmer than was wanted for an Indian winter.
And that very morning, only a few hours back, as the party started for the Durbar, she had exulted44 in her triumph over him, she whose folly45 had given everything into his hand!
What ages it seemed since Lewis had swung buoyantly into his saddle, and Sir Colvin, ruddy and cheery, had waved her an "au revoir." Now they were rolls of yellow dungari lying out there in the sun.
In her absorption of self-pity she scarcely heard Captain Walcot's expressions of dissent46 from his leader's plans, which were more forcible than soldierly. He was seething47 with wrath48 at Terrington's treatment of her, and Terrington, aware of his excitement, but quite at fault as to its cause, heard him with determined49 patience.
"And by which pass do you mean to retire?" he exclaimed at last, unable to shake Terrington's resolve.
"By the Palári," said the other.
"The Palári!" cried Walcot derisively50. "Why, it's the worst pass on this side of the Pamir. May I ask why you've chosen it?"
"Have you been through the Palári or Darai?" Terrington enquired.
"No."
"Then you can hardly appreciate why I've chosen it," said Terrington quietly. "The Palári is the only one which we've a chance of reaching without being cut off; it's the only one not commanded from above at this time of year, and Freddy Gale51, holding this end of it at Rashát, is absolutely done for unless we dig him out."
"Is this a council of war?"
"No," said Terrington; "it's an opportunity for protest. I wished to put your advice on record, but I didn't propose to take it."
Walcot thereupon declared himself emphatically in favour of remaining in Sar; Dore followed him less assertively53. Clones gave a shrug54 of his shoulders.
"It's all one to me where I doctor you," he smiled.
Terrington turned to the two men beside him, who had sat, immovably attentive55, throughout the discussion.
"We are as the print of thy footsteps," said Afzul Shah, and Hussain nodded.
Terrington wrote for some moments, then read aloud his own dispositions56 and the objections which had been urged against retirement. His own plans and reasons were very bluntly outlined, but he gave the case for the occupation of Sar with a fulness and cogency57 that astonished its advocates, who did not suspect how dear the scheme had been to his ambition, nor what its abandonment had cost him.
He handed the paper to Walcot.
"Will you sign it?" he said.
The best that was in the other man responded instinctively58 to such treatment:
"You've put it a long way stronger than I could myself," he said, taking up the pen.
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1
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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subtlety
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| n.微妙，敏锐，精巧；微妙之处，细微的区别 | |
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foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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bazaar
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| n.集市，商店集中区 | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7
sentries
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| 哨兵，步兵( sentry的名词复数 ) | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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enquired
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| 打听( enquire的过去式和过去分词 )； 询问； 问问题； 查问 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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ostentation
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| n.夸耀，卖弄 | |
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15
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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jade
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| n.玉石；碧玉；翡翠 | |
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severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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despondent
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| adj.失望的，沮丧的，泄气的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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sobs
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| 啜泣（声），呜咽（声）( sob的名词复数 ) | |
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blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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preamble
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| n.前言；序文 | |
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annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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30
kindling
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| n. 点火, 可燃物 动词kindle的现在分词形式 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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curdled
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| v.（使）凝结( curdle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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solicitous
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| adj.热切的，挂念的 | |
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homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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intensified
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| v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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besieged
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| 包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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41
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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42
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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43
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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exulted
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| 狂喜，欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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45
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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dissent
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| n./v.不同意，持异议 | |
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seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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48
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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49
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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50
derisively
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| adv. 嘲笑地，嘲弄地 | |
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51
gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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blurted
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| v.突然说出，脱口而出( blurt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
assertively
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| 断言地，独断地 | |
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54
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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56
dispositions
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| 安排( disposition的名词复数 )； 倾向； （财产、金钱的）处置； 气质 | |
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57
cogency
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| n.说服力；adj.有说服力的 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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