CHAPTER XVI
SHERE ALI MEETS AN OLD FRIEND
The carriage which was to take Violet Oliver and her friends back totheir camp had been parked amongst those farthest from the door. Violetstood for a long while under the awning, waiting while the interminableprocession went by. The generals in their scarlet coats, the ladies intheir satin gowns, the great officers of state attended by their escorts,the native princes, mounted into their carriages and were driven away.The ceremony and the reception which followed it had been markedlysuccessful even in that land of ceremonies and magnificence. The voicesabout her told her so as they spoke of this or that splendour andrecalled the picturesque figures which had given colour to the scene. Butthe laughter, the praise, the very tones of enjoyment had to her aheartless ring. She watched the pageantry of the great IndianAdministration dissolve, and was blind to its glitter and conscious onlyof its ruthlessness. For ruthless she found it to-night. She had beenface to face with a victim of the system--a youth broken by it,needlessly broken, and as helpless to recover from his hurt as a woundedanimal. The harm had been done no doubt with the very best intention, butthe harm had been done. She was conscious of her own share in the blameand she drove miserably home, with the picture of Shere Ali's face as shehad last seen it to bear her company, and with his cry, that he had noplace anywhere at all, sounding in her ears.
When she reached the privacy of her own tent, and had dismissed her maid,she unlocked one of her trunks and took out from it her jewel case. Shehad been careful not to wear her necklace of pearls that night, and shetook it out of the case now and laid it upon her knees. She was verysorry to part with it. She touched and caressed the pearls with lovingfingers, and once she lifted it as though she would place it about herneck. But she checked her hands, fearing that if she put it on she wouldnever bring herself to let it go. Already as she watched and fingered itand bent her head now and again to scrutinise a stone, small insidiousvoices began to whisper at her heart.
"He asked for nothing when he gave it you."
"You made no promise when you took it."
"It was a gift without conditions hinted or implied."
Violet Oliver took the world lightly on the whole. Only this one passionfor jewels and precious stones had touched her deeply as yet. Of loveshe knew little beyond the name and its aspect in others. She wasfamiliar enough with that, so familiar that she gave little heed to whatlay behind the aspect--or had given little heed until to-night. Herhusband she had accepted rather than actively welcomed. She had livedwith him in a mood of placid and unquestioning good-humour, and she hadgreatly missed him when he died. But it was the presence in the housethat she missed, rather than the lover. To-night, almost for the firsttime, she had really looked under the surface. Insight had beenvouchsafed to her; and in remorse she was minded to put the thing shegreatly valued away from her.
She rose suddenly, and, lest the temptation to keep the necklace shouldprove too strong, laid it away in its case.
A post went every day over the passes into Chiltistan. She wrapped up thecase in brown paper, tied it, sealed it, and addressed it. There was needto send it off, she well knew, before the picture of Shere Ali, now sovivid in her mind, lost its aspect of poignant suffering and faded out ofher thoughts.
But she slept ill and in the middle of the night she rose from her bed.The tent was pitch dark. She lit her candle; and it was the light of thecandle which awoke her maid. The tent was a double one; the maid slept inthe smaller portion of it and a canvas doorway gave entrance into hermistress' room. Over this doorway hung the usual screen of green matting.Now these screens act as screens, are as impenetrable to the eye as adoor--so long as there is no light behind them. But place a light behindthem and they become transparent. This was what Violet Oliver had done.She had lit her candle and at once a part of the interior of her tent wasvisible to her maid as she lay in bed.
The maid saw the table and the sealed parcel upon it. Then she saw Mrs.Oliver come to the table, break the seals, open the parcel, take out ajewel case--a jewel case which the maid knew well--and carry it and theparcel out of sight. Mrs. Oliver crossed to a corner of the room whereher trunks lay; and the next moment the maid heard a key grate in a lock.For a little while the candle still burned, and every now and then adistorted shadow was flung upon the wall of the tent within the maid'svision. It seemed to her that Mrs. Oliver was sitting at a little writingtable which stood close by the trunk. Then the light went out again. Themaid would have thought no more of this incident, but on entering theroom next morning with a cup of tea, she was surprised to see the packetonce more sealed and fastened on the centre table.
"Adela," said Mrs. Oliver, "I want you to take that parcel to the PostOffice yourself and send it off."
The maid took the parcel away.
Violet Oliver, with a sigh of relief, drank her tea. At last, shethought, the end was reached. Now, indeed, her life and Shere Ali's lifewould touch no more. But she was to see him again. For two days later, asthe train which was carrying her northwards to Lahore moved out of thestation, she saw from the window of her carriage the young Prince ofChiltistan standing upon the platform. She drew back quickly, fearingthat he would see her. But he was watching the train with indifferenteyes; and the spectacle of his indifference struck her as somethingincongruous and strange. She had been thinking of him with remorse as aman twisting like Hamlet in the coils of tragedy, and wearing like Hamletthe tragic mien. Yet here he was on the platform of a railway station,waiting, like any commonplace traveller, with an uninterested patiencefor his train. The aspect of Shere Ali diminished Violet Oliver'sremorse. She wondered for a moment why he was not travelling upon thesame train as herself, for his destination must be northwards too. Andthen she lost sight of him. She was glad that after all the last visionof him which she was to carry away was not the vision of a youth helplessand despairing with a trouble-tortured face.
Shere Ali was following out the destiny to which his character boundhim. He had been made and moulded and fashioned, and though he knew hehad been fashioned awry, he could no more change and rebuild himselfthan the hunchback can will away his hump. He was driven down the waysof circumstance. At present he saw and knew that he was so driven. Heknew, too, that he could not resist. This half-year in Chiltistan hadtaught him that.
So he went southwards to Calcutta. The mere thought of Chiltistan wasunendurable. He had to forget. There was no possibility of forgetfulnessamongst his own hills and the foreign race that once had been his ownpeople. Southwards he went to Calcutta, and in that city for a time waslost to sight. He emerged one afternoon upon the racecourse, and whilestanding on the grass in front of the Club stand, before the horsescantered down to the starting post, he saw an elderly man, heavy of buildbut still erect, approach him with a smile.
Shere Ali would have avoided that man if he could. He hesitated,unwilling to recognise and unable quite to ignore. And while hehesitated, the elderly man held out his hand.
"We know each other, surely. I used to see you at Eton, didn't I? I usedto run down to see a young friend of mine and a friend of yours, DickLinforth. I am Colonel Dewes."
"Yes, I remember," said Shere Ali with some embarrassment; and he tookthe Colonel's outstretched hand. "I thought that you had left Indiafor good."
"So did I," said Dewes. "But I was wrong." He turned and walked along bythe side of Shere Ali. "I don't know why exactly, but I did not find lifein London so very interesting."
Shere Ali looked quickly at the Colonel.
"Yet you had looked forward to retiring and going home?" he asked with akeen interest. Colonel Dewes gave himself up to reflection. He soundedthe obscurities of his mind. It was a practice to which he was notaccustomed. He drew himself erect, his eyes became fixed, and with apuckered forehead he thought.
"I suppose so," he said. "Yes, certainly. I remember. One used to buck atmess of the good time one would have, the comfort of one's club and one'srooms, and the rest of it. It isn't comfortab
le in India, is it? Notcompared with England. Your furniture, your house, and all that sort ofthing. You live as if you were a lodger, don't you know, and it didn'tmatter for a little while whether you were comfortable or not. The littlewhile slips on and on, and suddenly you find you have been in the countrytwenty or thirty years, and you have never taken the trouble to becomfortable. It's like living in a dak-bungalow."
The Colonel halted and pulled at his moustache. He had made a discovery.He had reflected not without result. "By George!" he said, "that'sright. Let me put it properly now, as a fellow would put it in a book,if he hit upon anything as good." He framed his aphorism in differentphrases before he was satisfied with it. Then he delivered himself of itwith pride.
"At the bottom of the Englishman's conception of life in India, there isalways the idea of a dak-bungalow," and he repeated the sentence tocommit it surely to memory. "But don't you use it," he said, turning toShere Ali suddenly. "I thought of that--not you. It's mine."
"I won't use it," said Shere Ali.
"Life in India is based upon the dak-bungalow," said Dewes. "Yes, yes";and so great was his pride that he relented towards Shere Ali. "You mayuse it if you like," he conceded. "Only you would naturally add that itwas I who thought of it."
Shere Ali smiled and replied:
"I won't fail to do that, Colonel Dewes."
"No? Then use it as much as you like, for it's true. Out here oneremembers the comfort of England and looks forward to it. But back there,one forgets the discomfort of India. By George! that's pretty good, too.Shall we look at the horses?"
Shere Ali did not answer that question. With a quiet persistence he keptColonel Dewes to the conversation. Colonel Dewes for his part was notreluctant to continue it, in spite of the mental wear and tear which itinvolved. He felt that he was clearly in the vein. There was no knowingwhat brilliant thing he might not say next. He wished that some of thoseclever fellows on the India Council were listening to him.
"Why?" asked Shere Ali. "Why back there does one forget the discomfortof India?"
He asked the question less in search of information than to discoverwhether the feelings of which he was conscious were shared too by hiscompanion.
"Why?" answered Dewes wrinkling his forehead again. "Because one missesmore than one thought to miss and one doesn't find half what one thoughtto find. Come along here!"
He led Shere Ali up to the top of the stand.
"We can see the race quite well from here," he said, "although that isnot the reason why I brought you up. This is what I wanted to show you."
He waved his hand over towards the great space which the racecourseenclosed. It was thronged with natives robed in saffron and pink, in blueand white, in scarlet and delicate shades of mauve and violet. The wholeenclosure was ablaze with colour, and the colours perpetually moved andgrouped themselves afresh as the throng shifted. A great noise of criesrose up into the clear air.
"I suppose that is what I missed," said Dewes, "not the noise, not themere crowd--you can get both on an English racecourse--but the colour."
And suddenly before Shere Ali's eyes there rose a vision of the Paddockat Newmarket during a July meeting. The sleek horses paced within thecool grove of trees; the bright sunlight, piercing the screen of leavesoverhead, dappled their backs with flecks of gold. Nothing of thesunburnt grass before his eyes was visible to him. He saw the green turfof the Jockey Club enclosure, the seats, the luncheon room behind withits open doors and windows.
"Yes, I understand," he said. "But you have come back," and a note ofenvy sounded in his voice. Here was one point in which the parallelbetween his case and that of Colonel Dewes was not complete. Dewes hadmissed India as he had missed England. But Dewes was a free man. Hecould go whither he would. "Yes, you were able to come back. How long doyou stay?"
And the answer to that question startled Shere Ali.
"I have come back for good."
"You are going to live here?" cried Shere Ali.
"Not here, exactly. In Cashmere. I go up to Cashmere in a week's time. Ishall live there and die there."
Colonel Dewes spoke without any note of anticipation, and without anyregret. It was difficult for Shere Ali to understand how deeply he felt.Yet the feeling must be deep. He had cut himself off from his own people,from his own country. Shere Ali was stirred to yet more questions. He wasanxious to understand thoroughly all that had moved this commonplacematter-of-fact man at his side.
"You found life in England so dull?" he asked.
"Well, one felt a stranger," said Dewes. "One had lost one'sassociations. I know there are men who throw themselves into public lifeand the rest of it. But I couldn't. I hadn't the heart for it even if Ihad the ability. There was Lawrence, of course. He governed India andthen he went on the School Board," and Dewes thumped his fist upon therail in front of him. "How he was able to do it beats me altogether. Iread his life with amazement. He was just as keen about the School Boardas he had been about India when he was Viceroy here. He threw himselfinto it with just as much vigour. That beats me. He was a big man, ofcourse, and I am not. I suppose that's the explanation. Anyway, theSchool Board was not for me. I put in my winters for some years at Corfushooting woodcock. And in the summer I met a man or two back on leave atmy club. But on the whole it was pretty dull. Yes," and he nodded hishead, and for the first time a note of despondency sounded in his voice."Yes, on the whole it was pretty dull. It will be better in Cashmere."
"It would have been still better if you had never seen India at all,"said Shere Ali.
"No; I don't say that. I had my good time in India--twenty-five years ofit, the prime of my life. No; I have nothing to complain of," said Dewes.
Here was another difference brought to Shere Ali's eyes. He himself wasstill young; the prime years were before him, not behind. He looked down,even as Dewes had done, over that wide space gay with colours as a gardenof flowers; but in the one man's eyes there was a light of satisfaction,in the other's a gleam almost of hatred.
"You are not sorry you came out to India," he said. "Well, for my part,"and his voice suddenly shook with passion, "I wish to heaven I had neverseen England."
Dewes turned about, a vacant stare of perplexity upon his face.
"Oh, come, I say!" he protested.
"I mean it!" cried Shere Ali. "It was the worst thing that could havehappened. I shall know no peace of mind again, no contentment, nohappiness, not until I am dead. I wish I were dead!"
And though he spoke in a low voice, he spoke with so much violence thatColonel Dewes was quite astounded. He was aware of no similiarity betweenhis own case and that of Shere Ali. He had long since forgotten theexhortations of Luffe.
"Oh, come now," he repeated. "Isn't that a little ungrateful--what?"
He could hardly have chosen a word less likely to soothe the exasperatednerves of his companion. Shere Ali laughed harshly.
"I ought to be grateful?" said he.
"Well," said Dewes, "you have been to Eton and Oxford, you have seenLondon. All that is bound to have broadened your mind. Don't you feelthat your mind has broadened?"
"Tell me the use of a broad mind in Chiltistan," said Shere Ali. AndColonel Dewes, who had last seen the valleys of that remote country morethan twenty years before, was baffled by the challenge.
"To tell the truth, I am a little out of touch with Indian problems," hesaid. "But it's surely good in every way that there should be a man upthere who knows we have something in the way of an army. When I wasthere, there was trouble which would have been quite prevented byknowledge of that kind."
"Are you sure?" said Shere Ali quietly; and the two men turned and wentdown from the roof of the stand.
The words which Dewes had just used rankled in Shere Ali's mind, quietlythough he had received them. Here was the one definite advantage of hiseducation in England on which Dewes could lay his finger. He knew enoughof the strength of the British army to know also the wisdom of keepinghis people quiet. For that he had been s
acrificed. It was anadvantage--yes. But an advantage to whom? he asked. Why, to thosegoverning people here who had to find the money and the troops tosuppress a rising, and to confront at the same time an outcry at homefrom the opponents of the forward movement. It was to their advantagecertainly that he should have been sent to England. And then he was toldto be grateful!
As they came out again from the winding staircase and turned towards thepaddock Colonel Dewes took Shere Ali by the arm, and said in a voice ofkindliness:
"And what has become of all the fine ambitions you and Dick Linforth usedto have in common?"
"Linforth's still at Chatham," replied Shere Ali shortly.
"Yes, but you are here. You might make a beginning by yourself."
"They won't let me."
"There's the road," suggested Dewes.
"They won't let me add an inch to it. They will let me do nothing, andthey won't let Linforth come out. I wish they would," he added in asofter voice. "If Linforth were to come out to Chiltistan it might make adifference."
They had walked round to the rails in front of the stand, and Shere Alilooked up the steps to the Viceroy's box. The Viceroy was present thatafternoon. Shere Ali saw his tall figure, with the stoop of the shoulderscharacteristic of him, as he stood dressed in a grey frock-coat, with theladies of his family and one or two of his _aides-de-camp_ about him.Shere Ali suddenly stopped and nodded towards the box.
"Have you any influence there?" he asked of Colonel Dewes; and he spokewith a great longing, a great eagerness, and he waited for the answer ina great suspense.
Dewes shook his head.
"None," he replied; "I am nobody at all."
The hope died out of Shere Ali's face.
"I am sorry," he said; and the eagerness had changed into despair. Therewas just a chance, he thought, of salvation for himself if only Linforthcould be fetched out to India. He might resume with Linforth his oldcompanionship, and so recapture something of his old faith and of hisbright ideals. There was sore need that he should recapture them. ShereAli was well aware of it. More and more frequently sure warnings came tohim. Now it was some dim recollection of beliefs once strongly clung to,which came back to him with a shock. He would awaken through some chanceword to the glory of the English rule in India, the lessening poverty ofthe Indian nations, the incorruptibility of the English officials andtheir justice.
"Yes, yes," he would say with astonishment, "I was sure of these things;I knew them as familiar truths," even as a man gradually going blindmight one day see clearly and become aware of his narrowing vision. Orperhaps it would be some sudden unsuspected revulsion of feeling in hisheart. Such a revulsion had come to him this afternoon as he had gazed upto the Viceroy's box. A wild and unreasoning wrath had flashed up withinhim, not against the system, but against that tall stooping man, wornwith work, who was at once its representative and its flower. Up therethe great man stood--so his thoughts ran--complacent, self-satisfied,careless of the harm which his system wrought. Down here upon the grasswalked a man warped and perverted out of his natural course. He had beensent to Eton and to Oxford, and had been filled with longings and desireswhich could have no fruition; he had been trained to delicate thoughtsand habits which must daily be offended and daily be a cause of offenceto his countrymen. But what did the tall stooping man care? Shere Ali nowknew that the English had something in the way of an army. What did itmatter whether he lived in unhappiness so long as that knowledge was theprice of his unhappiness? A cruel, careless, warping business, thisEnglish rule.
Thus Shere Ali felt rather than thought, and realised the while thedanger of his bitter heart. Once more he appealed to Colonel Dewes,standing before him with burning eyes.
"Bring Linforth out to India! If you have any influence, use it; if youhave none, obtain it. Only bring Linforth out to India, and bring himvery quickly!"
Once before a passionate appeal had been made to Colonel Dewes by a manin straits, and Colonel Dewes had not understood and had not obeyed. Now,a quarter of a century later another appeal was made by a man sinking, assurely as Luffe had been sinking before, and once again Dewes did notunderstand.
He took Shere Ali by the arm, and said in a kindly voice:
"I tell you what it is, my lad. You have been going the pace a bit, eh?Calcutta's no good. You'll only collect debts and a lot of things you arebetter without. Better get out of it."
Shere Ali's face closed as his lips had done. All expression died from itin a moment. There was no help for him in Colonel Dewes. He said good-byewith a smile, and walked out past the stand. His syce was waiting for himoutside the railings.
Shere Ali had come to the races wearing a sun-helmet, and, as the fashionis amongst the Europeans in Calcutta, his syce carried a silk hat forShere Ali to take in exchange for his helmet when the sun went down.Shere Ali, like most of the Europeanised Indians, was more scrupulousthan any Englishman in adhering to the European custom. But to-day, withan angry gesture, he repelled his syce.
"I am going," he said. "You can take that thing away."
His sense of humour failed him altogether. He would have liked furiouslyto kick and trample upon that glossy emblem of the civilised world; hehad much ado to refrain. The syce carried back the silk hat to ShereAli's smart trap, and Shere Ali drove home in his helmet. Thus he beganpublicly to renounce the cherished illusion that he was of the whitepeople, and must do as the white people did.
But Colonel Dewes pointed unwittingly the significance of that trivialmatter on the same night. He dined at the house of an old friend, andafter the ladies had gone he moved up into the next chair, and so satbeside a weary-looking official from the Punjab named Ralston, who hadcome down to Calcutta on leave. Colonel Dewes began to talk of hismeeting with Shere Ali that afternoon. At the mention of Shere Ali's namethe official sat up and asked for more.
"He looked pretty bad," said Colonel Dewes. "Jumpy and feverish, and withthe air of a man who has been sitting up all night for a week or two. Butthis is what interested me most," and Dewes told how the lad had imploredhim to bring Linforth out to India.
"Who's Linforth?" asked the official quickly. "Not the son of thatLinforth who--"
"Yes, that's the man," said the Colonel testily. "But you interrupt me.What interested me was this--when I refused to help, Shere Ali's facechanged in a most extraordinary way. All the fire went from his eyes, allthe agitation from his face. It was like looking at an open box full ofinteresting things, and then--bang! someone slaps down the lid, and youare staring at a flat piece of wood. It was as if--as if--well, I can'tfind a better comparison."
"It was as if a European suddenly changed before your eyes into anOriental."
Dewes was not pleased with Ralston's success in supplying the simile hecould not hit upon himself.
"That's a little fanciful," he said grudgingly; and then recognisedfrankly the justness of its application. "Yet it's true--a Europeanchanging into an Oriental! Yes, it just looked like that."
"It may actually have been that," said the official quietly. And headded: "I met Shere Ali last year at Lahore on his way north toChiltistan. I was interested then; I am all the more interested now, forI have just been appointed to Peshawur."
He spoke in a voice which was grave--so grave that Colonel Dewes lookedquickly towards him.
"Do you think there will be trouble up there in Chiltistan?" he asked.
The Deputy-Commissioner, who was now Chief Commissioner, smiled wearily.
"There is always trouble up there in Chiltistan," he said. "That I know.What I think is this--Shere Ali should have gone to the Mayo College atAjmere. That would have been a compromise which would have satisfied hisfather and done him no harm. But since he didn't--since he went to Eton,and to Oxford, and ran loose in London for a year or two--why, I think heis right."
"How do you mean--right?" asked the Colonel.
"I mean that the sooner Linforth is fetched out to India and sent up toChiltistan, the better it will be," said the Commissi
oner.