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But Lenox, knowing well that hardships and perils loom larger in an easy-chair than on the slope of a glacier, had asked for little, beyond permission to depart, and that speedily. A few days at Pindi had sufficed for the collecting of stores and equipment.
When we talked over plans with Colonel and Mrs. Smithson at Pindi, the general idea had crystallised into a scheme for going into Astor to shoot, immediately upon our arrival in Kashmir, and, in order to reach Srinagar before April 1st the date of issue of shooting passes we had struggled hard to make our way into the country before it was really attractive to the ordinary visitor.
We had got up before dawn to see the sunrise, but afterwards took things leisurely, as the march is short to Baramula, and our boats were to be in waiting there, and we had made all arrangements for a landau and ekkas to be in readiness to take us down to Rawal Pindi, while the Colonel returned up the Jhelum for more shooting before rejoining his wife at Bandipur.
On this occasion he crossed the Indus, marched into the part known now as the Ráwal Pindí division, crossed the Jehlam, reached Siálkót, which he spared, and then marched on Saiyidpur, which he plundered. He was called from this place to Kábul to meet a threatened attack upon that capital.
As we drew nearer, the rampart of mountains that guards India on the north, took form and substance, until at Jhelum we fairly left the plain and began to ascend the lower foothills. Between Jhelum and Rawal Pindi the line runs through a country that can best be described by that much abused word "weird."
On the road Herbert Edwardes passed the corps, and drove Daly on into Rawul Pindi, there to meet the great hearts of the Punjab, John Lawrence, Neville Chamberlain, and John Nicholson. A day was spent here in consultation on the broad aspect of affairs, and locally as to the advisability, or otherwise, of using the Guides to disarm the native artillery in garrison.
But he never did so with a more whole-hearted conviction than on the day when he received word that Linforth had been diverted to Rawal Pindi, in order that he might take up purely military duties. It took Ralston just seven months to secure his release, and it was not until the early days of autumn had arrived that Linforth at last reached Peshawur.
Yet it was in the Punjab, at Lahore and at Rawal Pindi, that the first serious disturbances occurred in 1907 which aroused public opinion at home to the reality of Indian unrest, and stirred the Government of India to such strong repressive measures as the deportation of two prominent agitators under an ancient Ordinance of 1818 never before applied in such connexion.
It was soon evident, from the sale of the transport animals, that the war was over; and the regiment shortly afterwards returned to their old quarters, at Rawal Pindi, and fell into the old routine of drill. In the middle of the following summer Lisle, while fielding at cricket in a match with another regiment, suddenly staggered and fell.
I deliberately brought them together, so the birth was not accidental, and my interest in it quite legitimately maternal. We always had tea in the veranda in Rawul Pindi, the drawing-room was painted blue, blue for thirty feet up to the whitewashed cotton ceiling; nothing of any value in the way of a human relation, I am sure, could have originated there.
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