It was heart-breaking work: for, in the soldier's vocabulary, there is no more unwelcome word than retreat; notwithstanding the fact that a retreat which covers all ranks with honour and glory is perhaps the finest achievement possible in the great game of war. Certain it is that the progress of Norton's broken escort through that veritable death-trap, to the _kotal_ where a second stand might prove feasible, was carried out by officers and men with the indomitable coolness and spirit that converts failure into 'an honourable form of victory.'

It is such crises which test the mettle of our native troops: adding fresh proof, if more were needed, of the magnificent fighting material that India has given into our hands. For Colonel Montague had again lost consciousness; and Martin having been shot in the calf as he entered the lane, the task of carrying out all the details of the retirement fell upon the senior Native officer, Subadar Hira Singh, under Desmond's orders. He and Norton, bearing the joint burden of responsibility, kept close together. The surface cynicism of the civilian had been burnt up in the fire of healthy savage action; and at odd moments, when ordinary speech was possible, his admiration for the conduct of all concerned vented itself in disjointed e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of approval that warmed the cavalryman's heart.

"Wait till I make out my report of all this," he said on one occasion.

"Be sure you Piffers will get all the kudos you deserve."

And five minutes later, he fell--shot through the body--into Desmond's arms.

"Nothing . . nothing serious," he protested, while his face wried with pain. "Don't delay matters . . on my account. I can pull along somehow, if you'll give me an arm."

But they got him on to a stretcher, none the less; and Courtenay did all he could till a definite halt was possible.

"Bad . . is it?" the civilian asked coolly, noting the concern in the other's eyes. "Well, a man might do worse than die . . . like a soldier. But by G.o.d, I'll hang on to life somehow,--till I can draft out my report."

And hang on to life he did, in defiance of mortal pain, with a tenacity worthy of his bull-dog jaw.

At the foot of the _kotal_, Desmond called a halt; and the rearguard under Hira Singh closed up, to hold the enemy in check, that the guns and wounded might get over in safety before the position should be finally abandoned.

And now began the toughest bit of fighting the day had yet seen. For the Waziris closed with the Sikhs and Punjabis in overwhelming numbers; exchanging the clatter of musketry for the clash of steel, the sickening thud of blows given and received. But neither numbers nor cold steel availed to break up that narrow wall of devoted men. With each gap in their ranks, they merely closed in, and fought the more fiercely: Hira Singh, with his brother the Jemadar, and a score of unconsidered heroes, flinging away their lives with less of hesitation than they would have flung away a handful of current coin, to gain time for those whose safety hung upon their power of resistance.

At last,--when all had pa.s.sed over the small hill behind them,--came the order to fall back: and not till that moment had any man among them yielded a foot of s.p.a.ce to the persistent foe, who now pressed after them; and, with renewed jubilations and flutterings of green standards, occupied every available position on the surrounding hills.

For two interminable hours the dreary game went on; till six ridges, that climbed to a commanding plateau, had been held and abandoned through shortage of ammunition. But thanks to the steadiness of the rearguard, and to their leader's genius for the art of war, no further lives were lost; no further advantage gained by the Waziris; and at length, heart-weary and leg-weary, they reached the plateau itself, to find Brownlow,--with shot and sh.e.l.l, and two hundred Sikhs thirsting for battle,--already there before them, having covered the nine miles in one and a half hours.

Perhaps only a soldier who has drunk his cup of blood and fire to the dregs, knows the strange mingling of emotions packed into that little word 'relieved': and a.s.suredly none but a soldier could enter into the joy with which Lenox stood swaying dizzily beside his beloved guns, while he and Brownlow pitched eight-and-twenty sh.e.l.ls into the fortified village below the last one, to their shameless satisfaction, lighting on the mosque itself, and lifting the Mullah, with his green flag of victory, twenty feet into the air.

It was a more or less damaged and dejected party of five which a.s.sembled in the small mess tent that night.

So much had been lost, so little gained by the day's disaster: an epitome of too many 'regrettable incidents' beyond the Border. The costliest item of Frontier defence is this unavoidable waste of the lives of picked soldiers. The Sikhs had lost heavily in Native officers and men. Colonel Montague had succ.u.mbed to his wounds during the retirement. Norton and Richardson, both too severely hurt to appear at mess, were officially in hospital,--that is to say, on stretchers in two field service tents: and three out of the five men at the mess table had brought away superfluous mementoes of Waziri marksmanship.

Lenox himself had suffered more from loss of blood than from the flesh wound in his shoulder, which was not a serious affair; and to Desmond's broken wrist had been added a disfiguring slash across his cheek. No doubt orders and commendation awaited them: but their elation at the prospect was hushed by the very present shadow of death. For the soldier, inured as he is, does not count death a little thing. He cannot, any more than the rest of us, 'go out of the warm sunshine easily.' And the thought of Montague's wife and children, of Unwin's 'No more dancing attendance on Waziris,' intruded unsought, breaking the thread of common speech.

No doubt, also, Desmond and Lenox were thinking, manlike, of their own wives; and thanking G.o.d for wounds that would only let loose the woman's divine reserves of tenderness, her pa.s.sion for 'mothering' the man she loves. Once during the evening they exchanged a glance of comprehension,--the freemasonry of those who love,--and the same question sprang simultaneously to their minds. "How about poor Norton?

Would the news bring that wife of his back to Dera Ishmael in the last week of March?" And Desmond decided that if it did not, Norton must be persuaded to put up with them, and submit to Honor's ministrations, in whose power to soothe and bless he had the faith of a little child, or of a great man; for the two are so nearly allied as to be almost identical.

As for Norton himself, he was too much engrossed in the painful task of 'hanging on to life' to trouble his head about any other matter. The news of his serious hurt spread through the neighbouring villages as news only speeds in India, without help of post or wire: and when, on the following morning, a deputation of friendly Khans waited upon the Burra Sahib, to express their sorrow and shame at so flagrant a breach of the great Border law of hospitality, and to offer help with the bringing in of dead bodies, Norton insisted on receiving them, propped up on a chair: a broken, but unconquered remnant of the man whom they had feared, and loved, and obeyed, with that mixture of independence and loyal allegiance which is perhaps England's greatest triumph in India.

But all his courage could not conceal the truth from their eyes: and with one accord, these hardened men--who had no regard for death in the abstract, and an unlimited veneration for strength in any form--bowed themselves at the Englishman's feet, and wept like children.

"Oh, Sahib, . . Father of the District, . . this is an evil thing that hath befallen," the oldest among them wailed, in deep-toned lamentation. "How will it be with us who have so long been ruled by your wisdom, when the light of your Honour's countenance is withdrawn?

And whom will the _Sirkar_[6] send us in thy stead?"

"In less than a month the Sirkar will send fire and sword," Norton answered sternly. "Smoking villages, and blackened crops. A gift for a gift, a blow for a blow, is straight dealing. But for one life taken yesterday the _Sirkar_ will exact ten: of that ye may rest a.s.sured."

"Nay, but let it not be forgotten, Hazur, that we, who are present, be men of one word, true to our salt; not as those murderers, upon whom the wrath of Allah will be poured out like water, even upon the man-child at the breast, for yesterday's black work."

Which comfortable prediction Norton received with rather a bitter smile. It did not square with his own experience of the ironical tangle men call Life. But for all that, it is possible that, in his extremity, he envied these savage Sons of the Prophet their faith in the rough justice of Allah's dispensations.

[1] Hill.

[2] Tribal council.

[3] Meaning.

[4] Chopped straw.

[5] Fanatical slaughter.

[6] Government.

CHAPTER XXIX.

"The man was my whole world, all the time, With his flowers and praise, and his weeds to blame; And either, or both, to love."

--Browning.

The Father of the District never saw his unruly children again; nor did Mrs Dudley Norton ever return to Dera Ishmael Khan. The telegram he despatched to her on arrival, made light of his wound, and its possible result; perhaps because pride urged him to take the initiative rather than submit to the culminating proof of her total detachment from him; perhaps because he shrewdly guessed that she could not reach him in time.

It had needed all the reserves of strength that are the reward of clean and temperate living, to keep him alive throughout the return marches.

Yet the feat was accomplished, and his official report--a lucid, vigorous bit of work--drawn up in full; with the result that, in leisurely course of time--a mere trifle of seven months or so after the event--there appeared in the 'Army Gazette' the names of Major Desmond, V.C., Captain Lenox, C.I.E., and Lieutenant Richardson, as officers on whom her Majesty had been graciously pleased to bestow the Distinguished Service Order. The princ.i.p.al Native officers, whose gallantry had been so notable a feature of that grim day's work, received the coveted Order of Merit; Hira Singh and his brother being gazetted, though killed, that their widows might draw a larger pension.

For England is rarely unmindful of her heroes; notwithstanding her superb dilatoriness in honouring the men who risk death and disablement for the maintenance of her scattered Empire.

With the completion of the report, on which his heart was set, the will to live deserted Dudley Norton. To drop in harness was, as he had said to Quita, a kinder fate than the dismal disintegration of a loveless old age; and the loosening of his grip on life brought reaction sharp and sudden, from which he never rallied again.

His death, following close upon that of the two Sikh officers, cast a temporary gloom over the station; and on the occasion of its announcement, the two chief papers of Upper India broke out into journalistic eulogies on the notable qualities of the man's work and character; extolling his strength and breadth of purpose and of view; his daring disregard for red-tape and all the paraphernalia of mechanical officialdom; and above all, his remarkable hold upon the Frontier tribes; administering, too late--with true human perversity--the praise that had been so grudgingly dealt out to him when ambition was at its height, when a word or two of generous recognition would have atoned in some measure for the failure and embitterment of his private life. Finally, they commiserated with the man on whom would devolve the insuperable task of replacing a Dudley Norton.

He arrived in due course:--a stop-gap from an obscure down-country station; a man of hide-bound conventionalism, who brought with him three children and a washed-out, subdued-looking wife, and who spoke magnanimously of Norton as "a clever fellow, of course, but deplorably casual officially." With such haphazard shifting of p.a.w.ns on the chess-board is the momentous game of Empire played. Yet long after Dudley Norton's name had been almost forgotten by the overtasked, fluctuating world of Anglo-India, it still remained a household word among the Mahsud Waziris, whose brothers in blood had so treacherously taken his life.

And while Norton lay dying at the Desmonds' bungalow, Richardson was established under his friend's roof as a matter of course. For this is India: the land of the Good Samaritan, as those who have lived there longest know best. It has been well said that "an Englishman's house in India is not his castle, but a thousand better things--a casual ward, a convalescent home, a rest-house for the strayed traveller; and he himself is the steward of it merely." That this is no exaggeration but simple fact, Quita had already seen; and now, when she herself was called upon to obey the unwritten law of her husband's country and service, Lenox noted, with a throb of pride, that for all her artist's tendency to shrink from pain and suffering, she rose to the situation like a high-mettled horse to a fence.

On their first evening together, when d.i.c.k, under the merciful influence of morphia, had forgotten pain in sleep, Lenox spoke to her of the thought that troubled his mind.

He was lying back luxuriously in his deep chair--the wounded shoulder and left arm scientifically bandaged--while Quita hovered about him, or knelt at his side; her every tone and gesture, and the misty shining of her eyes, enveloping him in so exquisite an atmosphere of tenderness that, like Stevenson, Lenox felt inclined to vote for separations (not to say wounds) when they were both safely over!

"Come here a minute, darling," he said at length, drawing her down beside him. "I want to tell you about d.i.c.k. There's no getting at the rights of it, of course. He won't say a word himself; and I went all to pieces for the moment. I only know that when the firing was hottest, he managed to cross in front of me; that the bullet in his leg ought by rights to have gone into mine; and it's quite bad enough to know that."

Quita's eyes swam in sudden tears. "I always thought him a dear fellow," she said softly. "Just a dear fellow; not much more. But now--one begins to admire your 'd.i.c.k.'"

Lenox nodded. "You never quite know what stuff a fellow's made of till he gets his chance."

But Quita, crouching lower, had bowed her forehead upon his hand.