Guns to the Far East Page 2

  “Yes, indeed, dear,” Lady Hazard agreed.

  “Well, then?” the Admiral challenged. “You are surely not suggesting that it was Phillip whom Catriona wanted, are you?”

  His wife denied it. “Oh, no, nothing of the kind. But, if you remember, it was Phillip who brought her to the house initially, not Graham. I thought then that it was his intention to ask for her hand.”

  “But he didn’t, did he?” the Admiral countered unanswerably. “In any case, it’s worked out for the best for both boys, m’dear. Graham knew he couldn’t make a career in the Service—Their Lordships may have restored his commission but they have long memories, they’d never have given him a command in peacetime. And what sort of future is it for a Lieutenant on half-pay these days, especially one with a black mark against his name?” He sighed. “I’m glad he did what he did, deuced glad … and proud of him! Because—if you’ll pardon the expression, m’dear—it took guts. For an ex-officer to volunteer to serve on the lower deck when his country’s at war is … damme, it’s more than admirable.”

  “I am sure that it was for your sake that he did so,” Lady Hazard said. “He wanted so desperately to win back your regard, you know. After his court martial, he—”

  “Yes, yes,” the Admiral agreed testily. “I was hard on the boy, I admit. But as I said, it’s all worked out for the best, has it not?”

  Perhaps it had, his wife thought. For a moment, tears filled her eyes as she remembered how, for years after their elder son’s dismissal from the Navy, his father had refused sternly to see or communicate with or even to acknowledge him. She—and Phillip—had kept in touch, of course, but they had been compelled to do so secretly, like conspirators, keeping Graham’s infrequent letters from the Admiral’s knowledge, never so much as mentioning his name in the old man’s hearing. And for Graham himself they had been cruel and bitter years, lost years, during which he had wandered the world, sometimes as mate but more often as a seaman in the merchant service, earning a precarious livelihood on long voyages to India and Australia, with no family to welcome him when he returned to a British port. But … Lady Hazard touched her handkerchief to her eyes, surreptitiously wiping away her tears.

  The war with Russia had offered Graham his chance of redemption and he had seized upon it tenaciously and with courage. His commission had been restored to him—on merit, Phillip had told her proudly, and thanks to the personal intervention of the British Commander-in-Chief in the Black Sea, Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, now the first Baron Lyons. So far as his father was concerned, all was now forgiven and forgotten. On his return from the Crimea, Graham had been welcomed back to the family circle and now, possessed of a charming and attractive wife, he had gone back to the merchant service, this time as the Commander of a fine Indiaman, owned by Mr Mark Pendleton, the wealthy and kindly East India Company Director, whose young daughters Catriona had companioned during a visit to the theatre of war.

  As her husband had said, Lady Hazard reflected, it had all worked out for the best, for all three of them. Catriona was obviously happy, Graham ecstatically so and Phillip … She bit back a sigh, wishing for perhaps the thousandth time that a letter might come from him soon. They had heard nothing since the terse Admiralty message stating that the Raleigh had been sunk off Macao, without loss of life. But now, with war clouds looming in China and rumours of trouble in India, she was anxious—they both were—for news. Letters took weeks, even by the overland route, and the newspaper reports, based on brief accounts transmitted by telegraph, told very little. What they did tell—with two married daughters in India and two sons and a daughter-in-law on their way to the Far East— was frankly alarming but … Augusta Hazard came of a naval family and had married into one and, if she had learnt nothing else over the years, she had learnt to hide her feelings behind the appearance of optimism.

  “Let’s pause for a minute to get our breath, George dear,” she suggested, sensing, from the weight he was putting on her arm, that her husband was again tiring. The Admiral halted gratefully, letting the crowd surge past them, as he mopped his heated brow.

  “Never get a cab in all this rush, anyway,” he said, gesturing with a gnarled hand in the direction of Kensington Road where, it was evident, from the number of people waving vainly from the pavements, hansom cabs were at a premium. “Have to walk, I suppose.”

  “Yes, I expect we shall,” his wife agreed, without rancour. “But it’s a lovely day. If we walk slowly and stay in the Park, dear, it won’t be too bad. How are you feeling?”

  “Me? Never felt better in me life,” the Admiral assured her. He drew himself up to his full, impressive height, as if to prove his words, but Lady Hazard—whilst careful not to dispute them—led the way to a park bench which had just been vacated and seated herself firmly on its hard wooden boards. Since the attack of pneumonia that had brought him to death’s door two years ago, the Admiral’s health was another cause for anxiety. But, as a devoted wife, this concern was the one which, above all others, she went to great pains to conceal from him … although it was not always easy. Three hours’ standing in the packed and airless spectators’ gallery this morning had, she was uneasily aware, taken its toll of him. But at least they were in no hurry; they could linger here for a while, until the crowds thinned and then make their way, at a leisurely pace, to their house in Kensington Gore.

  Quite a number of private carriages were passing them, leaving the Park nose to tail and, as she watched the slowmoving procession, Augusta Hazard found herself wishing that their limited means, coupled with the expense of bringing up a family and marrying off their two elder daughters, had not compelled them to give up the unpretentious equipage they had once owned. She had derived much pleasure from ownership of the carriage, had enjoyed the afternoon drives, the visits to her friends in the country when her husband was at sea and, in their palmier days, it had not seemed so great an extravagance as it did now.

  Not that they had ever been rich, of course. Contrary to the advice he had so assiduously drummed into his son, the Admiral himself had not waited to attain post-rank before taking a wife. He had married her when still a lieutenant—in command of his own sloop-of-war, it was true—and, promoted to a post-captaincy during the latter part of the Napoleonic war, had spent almost ten years on half pay when it ended, before being given another command. That had been the fate of all too many of the promising young sea officers of the Nelson era, alas … even Phillip’s much-lauded Chief, Admiral Lyons, had been driven to abandon the Navy for the Diplomatic Service for this reason, and his exile had lasted over twenty years before Their Lordships had again found need for him. Augusta Hazard stifled a sigh. As her husband had said, a little while ago, wars offered the only real chance of advancement for ambitious young officers; when no enemy threatened the British coast or the sea-lanes of Empire, ships were laid up and the crews who manned them paid off and left to eke out a living as best they might on shore, whilst a parsimonious government conveniently forgot their existence. Yet no one wanted war, least of all the Queen and her ministers: the campaign in the Crimea had been a disaster which had cost nearly twenty thousand British lives, while those in Burma and Persia had also been costly and had achieved little. If there was now to be war with China and if the threat of a sepoy mutiny in India were not averted, then …

  “Look, Augusta—” the Admiral’s voice broke into Lady Hazard’s troubled thoughts. “There’s a carriage stopping and … damme, if it’s not Lord George Melgund of the Foreign Office! Haven’t seen him for over a year—ran into him at the St James’s the night Phillip’s award of the Victoria Cross was gazetted and we had a glass of champagne together, to celebrate.”

  “Lord George Melgund?” Lady Hazard echoed uncertainly. A footman had jumped down from the box to lower the steps of the carriage which had halted just in front of them and she studied the tall, good looking, grey-haired man who descended from it, top hat in hand. “I don’t think I—”

  “Nonsense, m’
dear, of course you remember him,” her husband reproached her. “Gave him passage to Rio in the Hogue, when he was Third Secretary at our Embassy there. Told you all about him, I’m quite sure. He went back in ’48, as Chargé d’Affaires under Howden. Phillip met him then, when the Maeander called at Rio, on passage to the East Indies.” He rose, smiling, to his feet, his own hat doffed, all trace of his earlier weariness gone. “Good day to you, Lord George!”

  The newcomer extended his hand. “Admiral … I thought I recognised you! And Lady Hazard.” He bowed, and added, gesturing to the waiting carriage, “Permit me to offer you a lift.”

  He ushered them into the luxuriously appointed vehicle, brushing aside the Admiral’s protestations. “My dear sir, it is on my way, I assure you. And a coincidence I can’t ignore, meeting you like this, on what must be a very proud day for you both. Your son was decorated by Her Majesty, was he not?”

  “Unhappily, no,” the Admiral admitted with regret. The coachman whipped up his horses and, as they rejoined the procession, Lady Hazard gave a brief explanation of Phillip’s absence.

  Lord George Melgund listened sympathetically. “Back with Henry Keppel is he … and seemingly on his way to another war? I can understand how you must feel, dear lady—my heart goes out to you. I recall most vividly the occasion when I saw young Phillip off to the Crimea.”

  “You saw him off?” the Admiral queried.

  “Yes, indeed, Admiral. From Paddington Station, in March of ’54. I handed over to his escort a member of the Russian Royal family, a charming young Archduchess, a niece of the Tsar, whose presence in this country had somehow been overlooked.” Lord George smiled reminiscently. “We had to send her back as fast as we could, before hostilities broke out, so she and her governess were given passage in the Trojan. She was finally delivered—by another ship, I believe—to Odessa, under a flag of truce, just before the declaration of war reached the Fleet.”

  “Good Gad!” Admiral Hazard exclaimed. “The mysterious female passengers Phillip was waiting for when I dropped him off at Paddington! His ‘Mademoiselle Sophie,’ Augusta … at first, he mentioned her often in his letters and then”—he shrugged—“not a word about her. Even when he came home on leave, he never spoke of her, did he?”

  “No,” Augusta Hazard confirmed, her interest quickening. She had always wondered about Mademoiselle Sophie. Phillip was not, as a rule, secretive where his friends and acquaintances were concerned and his sudden silence had puzzled her. Socially, of course, a Russian Archduchess could scarcely be described as a friend but … She leaned forward in her seat. “Do you, by any chance, know what happened to the Archduchess, Lord George?”

  Lord George Melgund smiled. “Oddly enough, I do, Lady Hazard. She married, soon after reaching Odessa. She had been betrothed in childhood to the Prince Andrei Narishkin but he was killed at Balaclava, I understand, and died in the British camp leaving Sophia Mihailovna tragically widowed. As possibly you are aware, I returned to St Petersburg with the Peace Mission last year and I saw her there. Only once and that almost by chance. The Princess told me that she had a son, born after her husband’s death and she asked me, quite seriously, if—as a favour to her—I could arrange for the boy to enter the Royal Navy when he was old enough for a cadetship. Her voyage out in the Trojan must have impressed her very favourably, I can only suppose.”

  “Best training in the world for any boy,” the Admiral said, with conviction. “Whoever he is … I trust you acceded to the lady’s request, Melgund?”

  “I told her I was sure that it could be arranged. There’s time yet—the boy’s only about two years old.”

  “It was a strange request,” Lady Hazard said thoughtfully. “Strange for a niece of the Tsar to make. Russia has her own Navy and, after so bitter a war, one would hardly imagine …” Catching her husband’s eye, she broke off and Lord George put in smoothly, “We are at peace with Russia under her new Tsar now, Lady Hazard, and pray God it will be a lasting peace. Not that we’ll be allowed to enjoy it for very long, alas! Undeterred by Admiral Seymour’s attack on Canton last November, Commissioner Yeh grows in insolence and appears to be spoiling for a fight with us.”

  “Pah!” The Admiral snorted his contempt. “Junks and gingalls will be no match for our gunboats. They weren’t in ’42, as I know from firsthand experience. Once Lord Elgin gets to Hong Kong and starts things moving, Yeh will be kowtowing for all he’s worth, mark my words.”

  “True, Admiral … but the news from India is becoming increasingly grave, you know. The Governor-General, Lord Canning, is recalling troops from Burma and Persia and now he’s requested that those on their way to China should be diverted to his aid in India.”

  “Will he get them, d’you suppose?” the Admiral asked.

  Melgund shrugged. “He will if Disraeli gets his way, certainly … and the House listens to him. He takes a graver view of the Indian crisis than the Government does and his last speech stirred up a good deal of feeling. John Russell really couldn’t answer him. My own view is that Canning is yielding to panic. He’s only just gone to India and …” He embarked on a lengthy dissertation on the possible consequences if troops were diverted from China, to which the Admiral offered well-informed comment and the assurance that, with or without additional troops, the Royal Navy could deal with Commissioner Yeh.

  Their conversation involved strategic technicalities which had little meaning for Lady Hazard so, as the carriage turned into Kensington High Street and gathered speed, she leaned back against the well-padded upholstery, still giving the appearance of an attentive listener, but in fact, busy with her own thoughts. Her anxiety had been in no way allayed by Lord George Melgund’s earlier observations. The situation in India must be very bad indeed, she reflected unhappily, for Lord Canning to request the diversion of troops intended for China. He, after all, was the man on the spot and as Governor-General, the one on whom the responsibility rested, and if the astute and far-seeing Benjamin Disraeli supported his request—even from the Opposition benches—the Prime Minister and his Colonial Secretary, Lord John Russell, would have to give it serious consideration.

  The news that Delhi had been seized by mutinous sepoy regiments from Meerut, early in May, had only recently been received in detail and reported in the London newspapers. All England had been stunned and shocked when it was revealed that British civil and military officers of the East India Company—in many cases with their wives and children—had been savagely murdered in both cities and that, in Delhi, a wholesale massacre of native Christians had taken place as a ghastly prelude to the restoration of the King of Delhi to the throne of his Mogul ancestors.

  Public opinion had been outraged as never before, even dignitaries of the Church joining in the demands for retribution and the severe punishment of the miscreants when letters, sent by overland mail, told of Christian places of worship desecrated and put to the torch in what, it seemed, the mutineers claimed was a holy war in defence of their own heathen beliefs. Moslem and Hindu, the enemies of centuries, had united together in the Bengal Presidency’s Army with the avowed intent of ridding all India of her Christian rulers, and their initial success in taking Delhi—achieved by treachery— had dealt a very serious blow to British authority and prestige.

  But that, the leader-writers insisted, was all the outbreak had done. Whilst not attempting to minimise the crime of mutiny, few of the influential journals had suggested that India was in serious danger of anarchy—many indeed, had criticised Disraeli for taking such a view, stating that he had no shadow of justification for so doing and even hinting that his motives were political. Delhi, the newspapers asserted, must at all costs be retaken and the self-styled Emperor deposed without delay. He was in his eighties, senile and almost certainly a puppet, who posed no real threat to the Company’s rule. The Commander-in-Chief, General Anson, was reported by telegraph to be marching at the head of a European force for the purpose of driving the mutineers from Delhi. News of his death from cho
lera on 27th May had been followed by that of the appointment of General Barnard in his place and there was jubilation when it was learned that the new Commander-in-Chief had continued to march and, after defeating the rebels at the Hindan River, was now preparing to lay siege to Delhi.

  Barnard was an experienced Crimean General; he would make short work of the siege, most of the newspapers agreed and, when Delhi was once again in British hands, the attempted mutiny would come to a swift and final end. It was the rebellion of a few disgruntled regiments, whose soldiers— drawn mainly from Oudh and resentful of the recent annexation of their corrupt and ill-governed kingdom—had stirred up trouble. An example would have to be made of them; innocent blood had been shed and mutiny was a crime punishable by death. It was even possible, one Whig newspaper declared, that the whole of the Bengal native army might have to be disbanded and … Augusta Hazard stifled a sigh. Until now she had believed all she had read on the leader-pages and in the news reports but now her faith was shaken, although … She glanced uneasily at Lord George Melgund and this time made no attempt to stifle her sigh. The most recent letters from her daughters had been calm and reassuring but they had been written almost six weeks ago and much could have happened in the interim.

  The elder, Harriet, was in Sitapur—one of the Oudh out-stations some sixty miles north of Lucknow—where her husband was a regimental Commander and which, Lady Hazard knew, had an entirely native garrison. According to Harriet, all the native regiments were behaving perfectly and, although news of the Meerut outbreak and the loss of Delhi had reached the station, all the officers continued to repose complete confidence in the loyalty of their men. “If the worst should happen, Sir Henry Lawrence has given instructions that we are to repair to Lucknow,” Harriet had written. “Of course, we are all horrified by what has happened in Delhi but here, I feel sure, all will be well …” Please God she was right, her mother prayed silently. Please God that she and dear Jemmy and their three little ones would be safe …