The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [586]
But Wally's brow remained furrowed, and when he spoke again it was in an undertone that was barely audible above the noise of the wind and the rain, and as though he was speaking a thought aloud: ‘But he was right about… other things. And – and they are bigoted and barbaric. And they do hate us: they really hate us…’
‘Whisht now! it's making a mountain out of a mole-hill you are.’ Ambrose Kelly wagged an admonitory finger at the youthful Commander of the Escort and by way of showing that the subject was now closed, reached for a battered tin of tobacco and turned his attention to knocking out and re-filling his pipe. Wally laughed a little shamefacedly and leaning back in the creaking cane chair, felt the accumulated tensions of the last few hours seep away as his mind and his muscles relaxed under the peaceful influence of Rosie's optimism and the soothing sight of tobacco smoke weaving back and forth in the draught.
Outside the closed and shuttered windows the lightning flared and thunder rolled among the hills, while the rain and wind shook the fabric of the flimsy lath-and-plaster house, and from the next room came the plink, plink of water dripping into a tin basin that one of the doctor's servants had positioned below a leak in the ceiling. The flames of the two oil lamps bent and flickered in the draught that blew in under the ill-fitting doors and window frames, and Wally sat watching them with half-shut eyes as he listened gratefully to the noise of the rain and thought of what William Jenkyns had had to say earlier that evening on the subject of the unpaid troops and the advisability of paying them immediately, or at least promising that the Government of India would see to it that they were paid in full in the near future.
William had agreed that this would probably have to be done, and had told him in strict confidence that the Viceroy had already intimated his willingness to do so. ‘Everything will be all right, laddie. You'll see. There's precious little that goes on in Kabul that the Chief don't know about, and he'll have laid his plans and decided just how he means to deal with this particular problem long ago, I can tell you that.’
But though William's conviction that His Excellency the Envoy was aware of all that went on in Kabul was in the main justified, his confidence in his Chief was less well-founded.
Sir Louis was certainly very well informed, and the diary that he dispatched to Simla at the end of each week would have been an eye-opener for those who thought that his confident bearing indicated ignorance of the unrest in the Amir's capital city. Both he, and via him Lord Lytton, knew what was going on, but both treated the knowledge lightly, Lord Lytton for his part being so little troubled by it that he had allowed a full ten days to drift by before forwarding, without comment, Sir Louis' account of the behaviour of the mutinous Heratis to the Secretary of State, as though it was no more than another trivial piece of information to be filed and forgotten.
As for Sir Louis, despite the fact that he had learned early – and immediately informed the Viceroy – that the Kabulis appeared to expect him, among other things, to pay the arrears owed to the Afghan army, he made no move to deal with this particular problem; not even when he received a telegram from the Viceroy offering to provide financial assistance to the Amir if the money would help His Highness out of his present difficulties.
The offer had not been entirely altruistic (Lord Lytton having pointed out that if it was accepted, it would eventually provide the Government with a useful lever for obtaining certain administrative reforms that the Amir might be reluctant to concede), but at least it had been made. The money that Ash had seen as the only solution to the problem of the mutinous Heratis and the hatred and unrest that they