CHAPTER XXII
THE CASTING OF THE DIE
Ahmed Ismail crossed the threshold behind Shere Ali. He closed the doorquietly, bolted and locked it. Then for a space of time the two men stoodsilent in the darkness, and both listened intently--Ahmed Ismail for thesound of someone stirring in the house, Shere Ali for a quiet secretmovement at his elbow. The blackness of the passage gaping as the dooropened had roused him to suspicion even while he had been standing in thestreet. But he had not thought of drawing back. He had entered withoutfear, just as now he stood, without fear, drawn up against the wall.There was, indeed, a smile upon his face. Then he reached out his hand.Ahmed Ismail, who still stood afraid lest any of his family should havebeen disturbed, suddenly felt a light touch, like a caress, upon hisface, and then before he could so much as turn his head, five strong leanfingers gripped him by the throat and tightened.
"Ahmed, I have enemies in Chiltistan," said Shere Ali, between a whisperand a laugh. "The son of Abdulla Mohammed, for instance," and he loosenedhis grip a little upon Ahmed's throat, but held him still with a straightarm. Ahmed did not struggle. He whispered in reply:
"I am not of your Highness's enemies. Long ago I gave your Highness asign of friendship when I prayed you to pass by the Delhi Gate ofLahore."
Shere Ali turned Ahmed Ismail towards the inner part of the house andloosed his neck.
"Go forward, then. Light a lamp," he said, and Ahmed moved noiselesslyalong the passage. Shere Ali heard the sound of a door opening upstairs,and then a pale light gleamed from above. Shere Ali walked to the end ofthe passage, and mounting the stairs found Ahmed Ismail in the doorway ofa little room with a lighted lamp in his hand.
"I was this moment coming down," said Ahmed Ismail as he stood aside fromthe door. Shere Ali walked in. He crossed to the window, which wasunglazed but had little wooden shutters. These shutters were closed.Shere Ali opened one and looked out. The room was on the first floor, andthe window opened on to a small square courtyard. A movement of AhmedIsmail's brought him swiftly round. He saw the money-lender on his kneeswith his forehead to the ground, grovelling before his Prince's feet.
"The time has come, oh, my Lord," he cried in a low, eager voice, andagain, "the time has come."
Shere Ali looked down and pleasure glowed unwontedly within him. He didnot answer, he did not give Ahmed Ismail leave to rise from the ground.He sated his eyes and his vanity with the spectacle of the man'sabasement. Even his troubled heart ached with a duller pain.
"I have been a fool," he murmured, "I have wasted my years. I havetortured myself for nothing. Yes, I have been a fool."
A wave of anger swept over him, drowning his pride--anger againsthimself. He thought of the white people with whom he had lived.
"I sought for a recognition of my equality with them," he went on. "Isought it from their men and from their women. I hungered for it like adog for a bone. They would not give it--neither their men, nor theirwomen. And all the while here were my own people willing at a sign tooffer me their homage."
He spoke in Pushtu, and Ahmed Ismail drank in every word.
"They wanted a leader, Huzoor," he said.
"I turned away from them like a fool," replied Shere Ali, "while I soughtfavours from the white women like a slave."
"Your Highness shall take as a right what you sought for as a favour."
"As a right?" cried Shere Ali, his heart leaping to the incense of AhmedIsmail's flattery. "What right?" he asked, suddenly bending his eyes uponhis companion.
"The right of a conqueror," cried Ahmed Ismail, and he bowed himselfagain at his Prince's feet. He had spoken Shere Ali's wild and secretthought. But whereas Shere Ali had only whispered it to himself, AhmedIsmail spoke it aloud, boldly and with a challenge in his voice, like oneready to make good his words. An interval of silence followed, a fatefulinterval as both men knew. Not a sound from without penetrated into thatlittle shuttered room, but to Shere Ali it seemed that the air throbbedand was heavy with unknown things to come. Memories and fancies whirledin his disordered brain without relation to each other or consequence inhis thoughts. Now it was the two Englishmen seated side by side behindthe ropes and quietly talking of what was "not good for us," as thoughthey had the whole of India, and the hill-districts, besides, in theirpockets. He saw their faces, and, quietly though he stood and impassiveas he looked, he was possessed with a longing to behold them withinreach, so that he might strike them and disfigure them for ever. Now itwas Violet Oliver as she descended the steps into the great courtyard ofthe Fort, dainty and provoking from the arched slipper upon her foot tothe soft perfection of her hair. He saw her caught into the twilightswirl of pale white faces and so pass from his sight, thinking that atthe same moment she passed from his life. Then it was the Viceroy in hisbox at the racecourse and all Calcutta upon the lawn which swept past hiseyes. He saw the Eurasian girls prinked out in their best frocks to lureinto marriage some unwary Englishman. And again it was Colonel Dewes, theman who had lost his place amongst his own people, even as he, Shere Ali,had himself. A half-contemptuous smile of pity for a moment softened thehard lines of his mouth as he thought upon that forlorn and elderly mantaking his loneliness with him into Cashmere.
"That shall not be my way," he said aloud, and the lines of his mouthhardened again. And once more before his eyes rose the vision ofViolet Oliver.
Ahmed Ismail had risen to his feet and stood watching his Prince witheager, anxious eyes. Shere Ali crossed to the table and turned down thelamp, which was smoking. Then he went to the window and thrust theshutters open. He turned round suddenly upon Ahmed.
"Were you ever in Mecca?"
"Yes, Huzoor," and Ahmed's eyes flashed at the question.
"I met three men from Chiltistan on the Lowari Pass. They were going downto Kurachi. I, too, must make the pilgrimage to Mecca."
He stood watching the flame of the lamp as he spoke, and spoke in amonotonous dull voice, as though what he said were of little importance.But Ahmed Ismail listened to the words, not the voice, and his joy wasgreat. It was as though he heard a renegade acknowledge once more thetrue faith.
"Afterwards, Huzoor," he said, significantly. "Afterwards." Shere Alinodded his head.
"Yes, afterwards. When we have driven the white people down from thehills into the plains."
"And from the plains into the sea," cried Ahmed Ismail. "The angels willfight by our side--so the Mullahs have said---and no man who fights withfaith will be hurt. All will be invulnerable. It is written, and theMullahs have read the writing and translated it through Chiltistan."
"Is that so?" said Shere Ali, and as he put the question there was anirony in his voice which Ahmed Ismail was quick to notice. But Shere Aliput it yet a second time, after a pause, and this time there was notrace of irony.
"But I will not go alone," he said, suddenly raising his eyes from theflame of the lamp and looking towards Ahmed Ismail.
Ahmed did not understand. But also he did not interrupt, and Shere Alispoke again, with a smile slowly creeping over his face.
"I will not go alone to Mecca. I will follow the example of Sirdar Khan."
The saying was still a riddle to Ahmed Ismail.
"Sirdar Khan, your Highness?" he said. "I do not know him."
Shere Ali turned his eyes again upon the flame of the lamp, and the smilebroadened upon his face, a thing not pleasant to see. He wetted his lipswith the tip of his tongue and told his story.
"Sirdar Khan is dead long since," he said, "but he was one of the fivemen of the bodyguard of Nana, who went into the Bibigarh at Cawnpore onJuly 12 of the year 1857. Have you heard of that year, Ahmed Ismail, andof the month and of the day? Do you know what was done that day in theBibigarh at Cawnpore?"
Ahmed Ismail watched the light grow in Shere Ali's eyes, and a smilecrept into his face, too.
"Huzoor, Huzoor," he said, in a whisper of delight. He knew very wellwhat had happened in Cawnpore, though he knew nothing of the month or theday, and care
d little in what year it had happened.
"There were 206 women and children, English women, English children,shut up in the Bibigarh. At five o'clock--and it is well to remember thehour, Ahmed Ismail--at five o'clock in the evening the five men of theNana's bodyguard went into the Bibigarh and the doors were closed uponthem. It was dark when they came out again and shut the doors behindthem, saying that all were dead. But it was not true. There was anEnglishwoman alive in the Bibigarh, and Sirdar Khan came back in thenight and took her away."
"And she is in Mecca now?" cried Ahmed Ismail.
"Yes. An old, old woman," said Shere Ali, dwelling upon the words with aquiet, cruel pleasure. He had the picture clear before his eyes, he sawit in the flame of the lamp at which he gazed so steadily--an old,wizened, shrunken woman, living in a bare room, friendless and solitary,so old that she had even ceased to be aware of her unhappiness, and socoarsened out of all likeness to the young, bright English girl who hadonce dwelt in Cawnpore, that even her own countryman had hardly believedshe was of his race. He set another picture side by side with that--thepicture of Violet Oliver as she turned to him on the steps and said,"This is really good-bye." And in his imagination, he saw the one picturemerge and coarsen into the other, the dainty trappings of lace andribbons change to a shapeless cloak, the young face wither from itsbeauty into a wrinkled and yellow mask. It would be a just punishment, hesaid to himself. Anger against her was as a lust at his heart. He hadlost sight of her kindness, and her pity; he desired her and hated her inthe same breath.
"Are you married, Ahmed Ismail?" he asked.
Ahmed Ismail smiled.
"Truly, Huzoor."
"Do you carry your troubles to your wife? Is she your companion as wellas your wife? Your friend as well as your mistress?"
Ahmed Ismail laughed.
"Yet that is what the Englishwomen are," said Shere Ali.
"Perhaps, Huzoor," replied Ahmed, cunningly, "it is for that reason thatthere are some who take and do not give."
He came a little nearer to his Prince.
"Where is she, Huzoor?"
Shere Ali was startled by the question out of his dreams. For it had beena dream, this thought of capturing Violet Oliver and plucking her out ofher life into his. He had played with it, knowing it to be a fancy. Therehad been no settled plan, no settled intention in his mind. But to-nighthe was carried away. It appeared to him there was a possibility his dreammight come true. It seemed so not alone to him but to Ahmed Ismail too.He turned and gazed at the man, wondering whether Ahmed Ismail playedwith him or not. But Ahmed bore the scrutiny without a shadow ofembarrassment.
"Is she in India, Huzoor?"
Shere Ali hesitated. Some memory of the lessons learned in England wasstill alive within him, bidding him guard his secret. But the memory wasno longer strong enough. He bowed his head in assent.
"In Calcutta?"
"Yes."
"Your Highness shall point her out to me one evening as she drives in theMaidan," said Ahmed Ismail, and again Shere Ali answered--
"Yes."
But he caught himself back the next moment. He flung away from AhmedIsmail with a harsh outburst of laughter.
"But this is all folly," he cried. "We are not in the days of theuprising," for thus he termed now what a month ago he would have called"The Mutiny." "Cawnpore is not Calcutta," and he turned in a gust of furyupon Ahmed Ismail. "Do you play with me, Ahmed Ismail?"
"Upon my head, no! Light of my life, hope of my race, who would dare?"and he was on the ground at Shere Ali's feet. "Do I indeed speak follies?I pray your Highness to bethink you that the summer sets its foot uponthe plains. She will go to the hills, Huzoor. She will go to the hills.And your people are not fools. They have cunning to direct theirstrength. See, your Highness, is there a regiment in Peshawur whoserifles are safe, guard them howsoever carefully they will? Every weekthey are brought over the hills into Chiltistan that we may be ready forthe Great Day," and Ahmed Ismail chuckled to himself. "A month ago,Huzoor, so many rifles had been stolen that a regiment in camp lockedtheir rifles to their tent poles, and so thought to sleep in peace. Buton the first night the cords of the tents were cut, and while the menwaked and struggled under the folds of canvas, the tent poles with therifles chained to them were carried away. All those rifles are now inKohara. Surely, Huzoor, if they can steal the rifles from the middle of acamp, they can steal a weak girl among the hills."
Ahmed Ismail waited in suspense, with his forehead bowed to the ground,and when the answer came he smiled. He had made good use of thisunexpected inducement which had been given to him. He knew very well thatnothing but an unlikely chance would enable him to fulfil his promise.But that did not matter. The young Prince would point out theEnglishwoman in the Maidan and, at a later time when all was ready inChiltistan, a fine and obvious attempt should be made to carry her off.The pretence might, if occasion served, become a reality, to be sure, butthe attempt must be as public as possible. There must be no doubt as toits author. Shere Ali, in a word, must be committed beyond anypossibility of withdrawal. Ahmed Ismail himself would see to that.
"Very well. I will point her out to you," said Shere Ali, and AhmedIsmail rose to his feet. He waited before his master, silent andrespectful. Shere Ali had no suspicion that he was being jockeyed by thatrespectful man into a hopeless rebellion. He had, indeed, lost sight ofthe fact that the rebellion must be hopeless.
"When," he asked, "will Chiltistan be ready?"
"As soon as the harvest is got in," replied Ahmed Ismail.
Shere Ali nodded his head.
"You and I will go northwards to-morrow," he said.
"To Kohara?" asked Ahmed Ismail.
"Yes."
For a little while Ahmed Ismail was silent. Then he said: "If yourHighness will allow his servant to offer a contemptible word of advice--"
"Speak," said Shere Ali.
"Then it might be wise, perhaps, to go slowly to Kohara. Your Highnesshas enemies in Chiltistan. The news of the melons and the bags of grainis spread abroad, and jealousy is aroused. For there are some who wish tolead when they should serve."
"The son of Abdulla Mohammed," said Shere Ali.
Ahmed Ismail shrugged his shoulders as though the son of Abdulla Mohammedwere of little account. There was clearly another in his mind, and ShereAli was quick to understand him.
"My father," he said quietly. He remembered how his father had receivedhim with his Snider rifle cocked and laid across his knees. This time theSnider would be fired if ever Shere Ali came within range of its bullet.But it was unlikely that he would get so far, unless he went quickly andsecretly at an appointed time.
"I had a poor foolish thought," said Ahmed Ismail, "not worthy a moment'sconsideration by my Prince."
Shere Ali broke in impatiently upon his words.
"Speak it."
"If we travelled slowly to Ajmere, we should come to that town at thetime of pilgrimage. There in secret the final arrangements can be made,so that the blow may fall upon an uncovered head."
"The advice is good," said Shere Ali. But he spoke reluctantly. He wantednot to wait at all. He wanted to strike now while his anger was at itshottest. But undoubtedly the advice was good.
Ahmed Ismail, carrying the light in his hand, went down the stairs beforeShere Ali and along the passage to the door. There he extinguished thelamp and cautiously drew back the bolts. He looked out and saw that thestreet was empty.
"There is no one," he said, and Shere Ali passed out to the mouth of theblind alley and turned to the left towards the Maidan. He walkedthoughtfully and did not notice a head rise cautiously above the side ofa cart in the mouth of the alley. It was the head of the reporter ofBande Mataram, whose copy would be assuredly too late for the press.
Shere Ali walked on through the streets. It was late, and he met no one.There had come upon him during the last hours a great yearning for hisown country. He ran over in his mind, with a sense of anger againsthimself, the miserable wast
ed weeks in Calcutta--the nights in theglaring bars and halls, the friends he had made, the depths in which hehad wallowed. He came to the Maidan, and, standing upon that empty plain,gazed round on the great silent city. He hated it, with its statues ofViceroys and soldiers, its houses of rich merchants, its insolence. Hewould lead his own people against all that it symbolised. Perhaps, someday, when all the frontier was in flame, and the British power rolledback, he and his people might pour down from the hills and knock evenagainst the gates of Calcutta. Men from the hills had come down to Tonk,and Bhopal, and Rohilcund, and Rampur, and founded kingdoms forthemselves. Why should he and his not push on to Calcutta?
He bared his head to the night wind. He was uplifted, and fired with mad,impossible dreams. All that he had learned was of little account to himnow. It might be that the English, as Colonel Dewes had said, hadsomething of an army. Let them come to Chiltistan and prove their boast.
"I will go north to the hills," he cried, and with a shock he understoodthat, after all, he had recovered his own place. The longing at his heartwas for his own country--for his own people. It might have been bred ofdisappointment and despair. Envy of the white people might have cradledit, desire for the white woman might have nursed it into strength. But itwas alive now. That was all of which Shere Ali was conscious. Theknowledge filled all his thoughts. He had his place in the world. Greatlyhe rejoiced.