God Is an Englishman Read Free Page B

thinks and needs? Great God, man, of course we have a mission! Did Cawnpore and Lucknow give you the impression these people could be left to themselves, to bloody-minded tyrants like Nana Sahib and the Ranee? Is this place, and every other place where we have a trading post and a missionary to be left to their dominion?”
    “You’ll need more than trained officers to prevent the same thing happening again. It isn’t possible to uphold our kind of law by the Bible and sword, Roberts.
    God knows, it was difficult enough in my father’s time, but today there are so many new factors. Empire building isn’t a matter of occupation and annexation any longer. You have to take these people one by one and train them. As administrators, as doctors, as shipwrights, as ironmasters. You have to bring them sanita-tion and check the endemic killer diseases in their filthy towns and villages. You need roads, telegraph systems and, above all, railways. Mercenaries like us don’t know a damned thing about any one of these bare necessities so what qualifies to deputise for God Almighty all over the world? Hand me that valise.” Roberts lifted the valise from the bench and set it on the bed. He said, tolerantly, “Why do I always let myself be drawn into this kind of discussion with you?
    Marryatt said you needed rest and we march at first light.” He stood up stiffly, his back to the light, small, erect and indomitable, the way he had always appeared to Adam; Roberts, a man who, in thought and temperament, belonged more to the fourteenth century than the nineteenth. He was five hundred years behind the times but lovable for all that.
    “Then this is good-bye, Bobs?”
    “If you mean what you say, it is.”
    “I mean it. This time I mean it.” For a moment the claims exerted by many years’
    comradeship tempted him to confess about the necklace, but he checked the impulse. Roberts would see the rubies as loot, and both of them had seen troopers and sepoys hanged for looting. For other reasons he left the valise unopened, rejecting the means of hammering his point home. Even given plenty of luck on Roberts’
    part it might be years before they met again. If seven years had not convinced Roberts that he was living in an age of steam and tremendous technical advances what could be achieved in the few minutes left to them? The heat went out of the GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 7
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    8 G O D I S A N E N G L I S H M A N
    day and out of their conflict of ideas. Roberts said, “It’s going to be lonely without you, Adam.”
    “Not so lonely. Replacements will be coming in on every boat.”
    “Ah, yes, but what kind of replacements? The real business is finished. From now on it will be pigsticking, whist, bandit-hunting.”
    “Not for you, Bobs. Or for anyone else with a Victoria Cross.”
    “You’ll write?”
    “When I have something worth writing about.”
    “You’re going home like that? Like a blind man?”
    “I’ve had a dream, Bobs. A small one that might expand, but it required reconnaissance, of the kind our masters overlooked when they detailed me to block a beleaguered city with a single squadron. Study the ground. At least that’s one thing the Army has taught me.”
    “The only thing, apart from how to ride, shoot, and live rough, and that won’t avail you much at home.”
    “I think it will, given capital.”
    “And where will a stray like you find capital?” Adam grinned. “I can smell it, and it’s a sweeter smell than blood, Bobs.” He held out his left hand and Roberts shook it, lightly. It was typical of the man, Swann thought, that he made so light of handshakes and partings. At the low door he paused, turned, and saluted with comic gravity.
    3
    Surgeon-Major Marryatt had been optimistic. It was ten days before Adam Swann could shuffle round his quarters without leaning on the shoulder of an orderly, or his gap-toothed servant, Trooper Dawkins. But the interval of solitude was worth the