The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [594]
‘Not servants' quarters,’ said Rosie thoughtfully. ‘A large dispensary. I could do with one. Yes, it's not a bad scheme, and provided the Chief approves –’
‘Of course he'll approve. Why shouldn't he? He can't feel any happier than we do about living in such a hopelessly vulnerable spot as this. He merely didn't want to upset the Amir by demanding defensive walls all round the shop, and I see his point. But this idea is quite different, and if anyone can bring the Amir round to it, he can. They get on together like a house on fire and hardly a day goes by without their having a long friendly blarney together – in fact they're having one now. So as we're obviously going to need extra storage space anyway, the whole thing should be plain sailing. I'll see if I can have a word with the Chief when he gets back from the palace. He's always in a good mood after a chat with the Amir.’
But as William's favourite poet and fellow-countryman had so truly said, ‘the best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley’. Sir Louis had returned unexpectedly late from the palace, and in such a noticeably bad temper that Wally had decided that this was definitely one of those times when junior officers should be seen and not heard.
Normally when Sir Louis paid a social call at the palace, he stayed for about an hour and returned in the best of spirits, particularly on those occasions when, as today, the subject under discussion was the projected tour of the northern provinces, which the Amir had been as enthusiastic about as he himself was. This evening they were to have settled the final details; yet now, with the date of their departure set and endless arrangements already in train, the Amir had suddenly chosen to announce that he could not possibly go –
It was, declared Yakoub Khan, out of the question that he should leave his capital at a time of grave unrest: how could he possibly do so when his regiments in Kabul could not be trusted to behave in an orderly manner? When a number of his provinces were in open revolt, his cousin Abdur Rahman (a protégé of the Russians and living under their protection) plotting to invade Kandahar and take his throne, and his brother, Ibrahim Khan, intriguing against him with the same object in view? He had no money and little authority, and were he to leave Kabul for so much as a week he was very certain that he would never be able to return again. In the circumstances he was sure that his good friend Sir Louis would fully appreciate the difficulties of his situation, and agree with him that any idea of a tour at this juncture must be abandoned.
One would have thought that Sir Louis (who was equally well aware of those difficulties and had himself reported on them in a number of official telegrams and dispatches during the past few weeks) would have been the first to agree that the tour must be called off: but this was not so. He was seriously upset, for he had visualized this tour as a combination of a Royal Progress under his personal aegis – a public demonstration of the friendship and trust that now existed between Great Britain and Afghanistan – and a subtle reminder that it was the British who had won the recent war. Also, having lavished a great deal of time and thought on plans and arrangements for it, his anger at the Amir's sudden volte face was aggravated by an uncomfortable suspicion that he would be made to look foolish when the various officials he had written to, or to whom William had written on his behalf, learned that the tour would not take place after all.
As a result, he had argued with the Amir and done his best to make him change his mind. But nothing he could say had served to make Yakoub Khan budge an inch, and eventually, realizing that if he were not very careful he would lose his temper, he had brought the interview to a