Then there came a thrilling pause. These men had the entire British staff at Lucknow before them at point-blank distance! A single gesture, a shout, and that line of muskets would have poured its deadly fire upon the group on the Residency steps, and with the sound of that one volley Lucknow must have fallen, and perhaps the course of history been changed.
These brave men standing there under the very shadow of death knew this, and not a figure stirred! Had there been the least sign of agitation or fear, perhaps the Sepoys would have fired. But the cool, steadfast bearing of that group of Englishmen put a strange spell on the Sepoys. Another moment of intensest strain, and the native officer gave a sharp word of command. The magic of discipline prevailed: the men swung round and marched off into the darkness. But the fate of Lucknow and a thousand British lives hung on those few critical moments. It was the haughty, ice-cold courage of that heroic group on the Residency steps which, for the moment, averted a great disaster.
Sir Henry Lawrence is the hero of the earlier stages of the siege of Lucknow, and it is difficult to imagine a loftier or more gallant character. He came of that sturdy, strong-brained North of Ireland stock, which has given to the British Empire so many gallant soldiers and famous administrators, so many great engineers and captains of labour. Lawrence’s face, with its long features, thin-flowing beard, deep-set, meditative, not to say dreamy eyes, and high cheek bones, was an odd compound of, say, Don Quixote and Abraham Lincoln. His valour was “a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper”; but he had better qualities than even valour of that fine edge. He was an administrator of the first order. His intellect had in it a curious penetrating quality, and perhaps his brain alone forecast, in its true scale, the great Mutiny which shook almost to its fall the British rule in India. His courtesy, his unselfishness, his passionate scorn of injustice, his generous pity for the oppressed, gave a strange charm to Lawrence’s character, while his meditative piety added gravity and depth to it. The whole interval between the tragedy of Cawnpore and the glory of Lucknow is to be measured by the single personality of Henry Lawrence. That he was of a different type from Wheeler, explains how Lucknow escaped while Cawnpore perished.