Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/570

558 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; 