CHAPTER XXIII
SHERE ALI'S PILGRIMAGE
There were times when Ralston held aloft his hands and cursed the Indianadministration by all his gods. But he never did so with a morewhole-hearted conviction than on the day when he received word thatLinforth had been diverted to Rawal Pindi, in order that he might take uppurely military duties. It took Ralston just seven months to secure hisrelease, and it was not until the early days of autumn had arrived thatLinforth at last reached Peshawur. A landau, with a coachman and groom inscarlet liveries, was waiting for him at the station, and he drove alongthe broad road through the cantonment to Government House. As thecarriage swung in at the gates, a tall, thin man came from thecroquet-ground on the left. He joined Dick in the porch.
"You are Mr. Linforth?" he said.
"Yes."
For a moment a pair of grey, tired eyes ran Dick over from head to footin a careless scrutiny. Apparently, however, the scrutiny was favourable.
"I am the Chief Commissioner. I am glad that you have come. My sisterwill give you some tea, and afterwards, if you are not tired, we might gofor a ride together. You would like to see your room first."
Ralston spoke with his usual indifference. There was no intonation in hisvoice which gave to any one sentence a particular meaning; and for aparticular meaning Dick Linforth was listening with keen ears. Hefollowed Ralston across the hall to his room, and disappointment gainedupon him with every step. He had grown familiar with disappointment oflate years, but he was still young enough in years and spirit to expectthe end of disappointment with each change in his fortunes. He hadexpected it when the news of his appointment had reached him in Calcutta,and disappointment had awaited him in Bombay. He had expected it againwhen, at last, he was sent from Rawal Pindi to Peshawur. All the way upthe line he had been watching the far hills of Cashmere, and repeating tohimself, "At last! At last!"
The words had been a song at his heart, tuned to the jolt and rhythm ofthe wheels. Ralston of Peshawur had asked for him. So much he had beentold. His longing had explained to him why Ralston of Peshawur had askedfor him, and easily he had believed the explanation. He was a Linforth,one of the Linforths of the Road. Great was his pride. He would not havebartered his position to be a General in command of a division. Ralstonhad sent for him because of his hereditary title to work upon the Road,the broad, permanent, graded Road which was to make India safe.
And now he walked behind a tired and indifferent Commissioner, whose veryvoice officialdom had made phlegmatic, and on whose aspect was writ largethe habit of routine. In this mood he sat, while Miss Ralston prattled tohim about the social doings of Peshawur, the hunt, the golf; and in thismood he rode out with Ralston to the Gate of the City.
They passed through the main street, and, turning to the right, ascendedto an archway, above which rose a tower. At the archway they dismountedand climbed to the roof of the tower. Peshawur, with its crowded streets,its open bazaars, its balconied houses of mud bricks built into woodenframes, lay mapped beneath them. But Linforth's eyes travelled over thetrees and the gardens northwards and eastwards, to where the foothills ofthe Himalayas were coloured with the violet light of evening.
"Linforth," Ralston cried. He was leaning on the parapet at the oppositeside of the tower, and Dick crossed and leaned at his side.
"It was I who had you sent for," said Ralston in his dull voice. "Whenyou were at Chatham, I mean. I worried them in Calcutta until theysent for you."
Dick took his elbows from the parapet and stood up. His face took lifeand fire, there came a brightness as of joy into his eyes. After all,then, this time he was not to be disappointed.
"I wanted you to come to Peshawur straight from Bombay six months ago,"Ralston went on. "But I counted without the Indian Government. Theybrought you out to India, at my special request, for a special purpose,and then, when they had got you, they turned you over to work whichanyone else could have done. So six months have been wasted. But that'stheir little way."
"You have special work for me?" said Linforth quietly enough, though hisheart was beating quickly in his breast. An answer came which stillquickened its beatings.
"Work that you alone can do," Ralston replied gravely. But he was a manwho had learned to hope for little, and to expect discouragements as hisdaily bread, and he added:
"That is, if you can do it."
Linforth did not answer at once. He was leaning with his elbows on theparapet, and he raised a hand to the side of his face, that side on whichRalston stood. And so he remained, shutting himself in with his thoughts,and trying to think soberly. But his head whirled. Below him lay the cityof Peshawur. Behind him the plains came to an end, and straight up fromthem, like cliffs out of the sea, rose the dark hills, brown and grey andveined with white. Here on this tower of Northern India, the long dreams,dreamed for the first time on the Sussex Downs, and nursed since in everymoment of leisure--in Alpine huts in days of storm, in his own quartersat Chatham--had come to their fulfilment.
"I have lived for this work," he said in a low voice which shook ever solittle, try as he might to quiet it. "Ever since I was a boy I have livedfor it, and trained myself for it. It is the Road."
Linforth's evident emotion came upon Ralston as an unexpected thing. Hewas carried back suddenly to his own youth, and was surprised torecollect that he, too, had once cherished great plans. He saw himselfas he was to-day, and, side by side with that disillusioned figure, hesaw himself as he had been in his youth. A smile of friendliness cameover his face.
"If I had shut my eyes," he said, "I should have thought it was yourfather who was speaking."
Linforth turned quickly to Ralston.
"My father. You knew him?"
"Yes."
"I never did," said Dick regretfully.
Ralston nodded his head and continued:
"Twenty-six years ago we were here in Peshawur together. We came up onto the top of this tower, as everyone does who comes to Peshawur. He waslike you. He was dreaming night and day of the Great Road throughChiltistan to the foot of the Hindu Kush. Look!" and Ralston pointeddown to the roof-tops of the city, whereon the women and children workedand played. For the most part they were enclosed within brick walls, andthe two men looked down into them as you might look in the rooms of adoll's house by taking off the lid. Ralston pointed to one such openchamber just beneath their eyes. An awning supported on wooden pillarssheltered one end of it, and between two of these pillars a childswooped backwards and forwards in a swing. In the open, a woman, seatedupon a string charpoy, rocked a cradle with her foot, while her handswere busy with a needle, and an old woman, with a black shawl upon hershoulders and head, sat near by, inactive. But she was talking. For attimes the younger woman would raise her head, and, though at thatdistance no voice could be heard, it was evident that she was answering."I remember noticing that roof when your father and I were talking uphere all those years ago. There was just the same family group as yousee now. I remember it quite clearly, for your father went away toChiltistan the next day, and never came back. It was the last time I sawhim, and we were both young and full of all the great changes we were tobring about." He smiled, half it seemed in amusement, half in regret."We talked of the Road, of course. Well, there's just one change. Theold woman, sitting there with the shawl upon her shoulders now, was inthose days the young woman rocking the cradle and working with herneedle. That's all. Troubles there have been, disturbances, anexpedition or two--but there's no real change. Here are you talking ofthe Road just as your father did, not ambitious for yourself," heexplained with a kindly smile which illumined his whole face, "butambitious for the Road, and the Road still stops at Kohara."
"But it will go on--now," cried Linforth.
"Perhaps," said Ralston slowly. Then he stood up and confronted Linforth.
"It was not that you might carry on the Road that I brought you out fromEngland," he skid. "On the contrary."
Once more disappointment seized upon Dick Linforth, an
d he found it allthe more bitter in that he had believed a minute since that his dreamswere to be fulfilled. He looked down upon Peshawur, and the words whichRalston had lately spoken, half in amusement, half with regret, suddenlytook for him their full meaning. Was it true that there was no changebut the change from the young woman to the old one, from enthusiasm toacquiescence? He was young, and the possibility chilled him and eveninspired him with a kind of terror. Was he to carry the Road no furtherthan his father had done? Would another Linforth in another generationcome to the tower in Peshawur with hopes as high as his and with thelike futility?
"On the contrary?" he asked. "Then why?"
"That you might stop the Road from going on," said Ralston quietly.
In the very midst of his disappointment Linforth realised that he hadmisjudged his companion. Here was no official, here was a man. Theattitude of indifference had gone, the air of lassitude with it. Here wasa man quietly exacting the hardest service which it was in his power toexact, claiming it as a right, and yet making it clear by some subtlesympathy that he understood very well all that the service would cost tothe man who served.
"I am to hinder the making of that Road?" cried Linforth.
"You are to do more. You are to prevent it."
"I have lived so that it should be made."
"So you have told me," said Ralston quietly, and Dick was silent. Witheach quiet sentence Ralston had become more and more the dominatingfigure. He was so certain, so assured. Linforth recognised him no longeras the man to argue with; but as the representative of Government whichoverrides predilections, sympathies, ambitions, and bends its servants totheir duty.
"I will tell you more," Ralston continued. "You alone can prevent theextension of the Road. I believe it--I know it. I sent to England foryou, knowing it. Do your duty, and it may be that the Road will stop atKohara--an unfinished, broken thing. Flinch, and the Road runs straightto the Hindu Kush. You will have your desire; but you will have failed."
There was something implacable and relentless in the tone and the words.There was more, too. There was an intimation, subtly yet most clearlyconveyed, that Ralston who spoke had in his day trampled his ambitionsand desires beneath his feet in service to the Government, and asked nomore now from Linforth than he himself had in his turn performed. "I,too, have lived in Arcady," he added. It twas this last intimation whichsubdued the protests in Linforth's mind. He looked at the worn face ofthe Commissioner, then he lifted his eyes and swept the horizon with hisgaze. The violet light upon the hills had lost its brightness and itsglamour. In the far distance the hills themselves were withdrawn.Somewhere in that great barrier to the east was the gap of the MalakandPass, where the Road now began. Linforth turned away from the hillstowards Peshawur.
"What must I do?" he asked simply.
Ralston nodded his head. His attitude relaxed, his voice lost itsdominating note.
"What you have to understand is this," he explained. "To drive the Roadthrough Chiltistan means war. It would be the cause of war if we insistedupon it now, just as it was the cause of war when your father went upfrom Peshawur twenty-six years ago. Or it might be the consequence ofwar. If the Chiltis rose in arms, undoubtedly we should carry it on tosecure control of the country in the future. Well, it is the lastalternative that we are face to face with now."
"The Chiltis might rise!" cried Linforth.
"There is that possibility," Ralston returned. "We don't mean on our ownaccount to carry on the Road; but the Chiltis might rise."
"And how should I prevent them?" asked Dick Linforth in perplexity.
"You know Shere Ali?" said Ralston
"Yes."
"You are a friend of his?"
"Yes."
"A great friend. His chief friend?"
"Yes."
"You have some control over him?"
"I think so," said Linforth.
"Very well," said Ralston. "You must use that control."
Linforth's perplexity increased. That danger should come from ShereAli--here was something quite incredible. He remembered their long talks,their joint ambition. A day passed in the hut in the Promontoire of theMeije stood out vividly in his memories. He saw the snow rising in aswirl of white over the Breche de la Meije, that gap in the rock-wallbetween the Meije and the Rateau, and driving down the glacier towardsthe hut. He remembered the eagerness, the enthusiasm of Shere Ali.
"But he's loyal," Linforth cried. "There is no one in India more loyal."
"He was loyal, no doubt," said Ralston, with a shrug of his shoulders,and, beginning with his first meeting with Shere Ali in Lahore, he toldLinforth all that he knew of the history of the young Prince.
"There can be no doubt," he said, "of his disloyalty," and he recountedthe story of the melons and the bags of grain. "Since then he has beenintriguing in Calcutta."
"Is he in Calcutta now?" Linforth asked.
"No," said Ralston. "He left Calcutta just about the time when you landedin Bombay. And there is something rather strange--something, I think,very disquieting in his movements since he left Calcutta. I have had himwatched, of course. He came north with one of his own countrymen, and thepair of them have been seen at Cawnpore, at Lucknow, at Delhi."
Ralston paused. His face had grown very grave, very troubled.
"I am not sure," he said slowly. "It is difficult, however long you stayin India, to get behind these fellows' minds, to understand the thoughtsand the motives which move them. And the longer you stay, the moredifficult you realise it to be. But it looks to me as if Shere Ali hadbeen taken by his companion on a sort of pilgrimage."
Linforth started.
"A pilgrimage!" and he added slowly, "I think I understand. A pilgrimageto all the places which could most inflame the passions of a nativeagainst the English race," and then he broke out in protest. "But it'simpossible. I know Shere Ali. It's not reasonable--"
Ralston interrupted him upon the utterance of the word.
"Reasonable!" he cried. "You are in India. Do ever white men actreasonably in India?" and he turned with a smile. "There was agreat-uncle of yours in the days of the John Company, wasn't there? Yourfather told me about him here on this tower. When his time was up, hesent his money home and took his passage, and then came back--came backto the mountains and disappeared. Very likely he may be sitting somewherebeyond that barrier of hills by a little shrine to this hour, an old, oldman, reverenced as a saint, with a strip of cloth about his loins, andforgetful of the days when he ruled a district in the Plains. I shouldnot wonder. It's not a reasonable country."
Ralston, indeed, was not far out in his judgment. Ahmed Ismail hadcarried Shere Ali off from Calcutta. He had taken him first of all toCawnpore, and had led him up to the gate of the enclosure, wherein arethe Bibigarh, where the women and children were massacred, and the wellinto which their bodies were flung. An English soldier turned them backfrom that enclosure, refusing them admittance. Ahmed Ismail, knowingwell that it would be so, smiled quietly under his moustache; but ShereAli angrily pointed to some English tourists who were within theenclosure.
"Why should we remain outside?" he asked.
"They are Bilati," said Ahmed Ismail in a smooth voice as they movedaway. "They are foreigners. The place is sacred to the foreigners. It isIndian soil; but the Indian may not walk on it; no, not though he wereborn next door. Yet why should we grumble or complain? We are the dirtbeneath their feet. We are dogs and sons of dogs, and a hireling willturn our Princes from the gate lest the soles of our shoes should defiletheir sacred places. And are they not right, Huzoor?" he asked cunningly."Since we submit to it, since we cringe at their indignities and fawnupon them for their insults, are they not right?"
"Why, that's true, Ahmed Ismail," replied Shere Ali bitterly. He was inthe mood to make much of any trifle. This reservation of the enclosure atCawnpore was but one sign of the overbearing arrogance of the foreigners,the Bilati--the men from over the sea. He had fawned upon them himself inthe days of his folly.
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"But turn a little, Huzoor," Ahmed whispered in his ear, and led himback. "Look! There is the Bibigarh where the women were imprisoned. Thatis the house. Through that opening Sirdar Khan and his four companionswent--and shut the door behind them. In that room the women of Meccaknelt and prayed for mercy. Come away, Huzoor. We have seen. Those weredays when there were men upon the plains of India."
And Shere Ali broke out with a fierce oath.
"Amongst the hills, at all events, there are men today. There is nosacred ground for them in Chiltistan."
"Not even the Road?" asked Ahmed Ismail; and Shere Ali stopped dead,and stared at his companion with startled eyes. He walked away insilence after that; and for the rest of that day he said little toAhmed Ismail, who watched him anxiously. At night, however, Ahmed wasjustified of his policy. For Shere Ali appeared before him in the whiterobes of a Mohammedan. Up till then he had retained the English dress.Now he had discarded it. Ahmed Ismail fell at his feet, and bowedhimself to the ground.
"My Lord! My Lord!" he cried, and there was no simulation in his outburstof joy. "Would that your people could behold you now! But we have much tosee first. To-morrow we go to Lucknow."
Accordingly the two men travelled the next day to Lucknow. Shere Ali wasled up under the broken archway by Evans's Battery into the grounds ofthe Residency. He walked with Ahmed Ismail at his elbow on the greenlawns where the golden-crested hoopoes flashed in the sunlight and theruined buildings stood agape to the air. They looked peaceful enough, asthey strolled from one battery to another, but all the while Ahmed Ismailpreached his sermon into Shere Ali's ears. There Lawrence had died; hereat the top of the narrow lane had stood Johannes's house whence Nebo theNailer had watched day after day with his rifle in his hand. Hardly aman, be he never so swift, could cross that little lane from one quarterof the Residency to another, so long as daylight lasted and so long asNebo the Nailer stood behind the shutters of Johannes's house. Shere Aliwas fired by the story of that siege. By so little was the garrisonsaved. Ahmed Ismail led him down to a corner of the grounds and once morea sentry barred the way.
"This is the graveyard," said Ahmed Ismail, and Shere Ali, looking up,stepped back with a look upon his face which Ahmed Ismail did notunderstand.
"Huzoor!" he said anxiously, and Shere Ali turned upon him with animperious word.
"Silence, dog!" he cried. "Stand apart. I wish to be alone."
His eyes were on the little church with the trees and the wall girdingit in. At the side a green meadow with high trees, had the look of aplaying-ground--the playing-ground of some great public school inEngland. Shere Ali's eyes took in the whole picture, and then saw it butdimly through a mist. For the little church, though he had never seen itbefore, was familiar and most moving. It was a model of the Royal Chapelat Eton, and, in spite of himself, as he gazed the tears filled his eyesand the memory of his schooldays ached at his heart. He yearned to beback once more in the shadow of that chapel with his comrades and hisfriends. Not yet had he wholly forgotten; he was softened out of hisbitterness; the burden of his jealousy and his anger fell for awhilefrom his shoulders. When he rejoined Ahmed Ismail, he bade him followand speak no word. He drove back to the town, and then only he spoke toAhmed Ismail.
"We will go from Lucknow to-day," he said. "I will not sleep inthis town."
"As your Highness wills," said Ahmed Ismail humbly, and he went into thestation and bought tickets for Delhi. It was on a Thursday morning thatthe pair reached that town; and that day Ahmed Ismail had an unreceptivelistener for his sermons. The monument before the Post Office, thetablets on the arch of the arsenal, even the barracks in the gardens ofthe Moghul Palace fired no antagonism in the Prince, who so short a timeago had been a boy at Eton. The memories evoked by the little church atLucknow had borne him company all night and still clung to him that day.He was homesick for his school. Only twice was he really roused.
The first instance took place when he was driving along the ChandniChauk, the straight broad tree-fringed street which runs from the LahoreGate to the Fort. Ahmed Ismail sat opposite to him, and, leaning forward,he pointed to a tree and to a tall house in front of the tree.
"My Lord," said he, "could that tree speak, what groans would one hear!"
"Why?" said Shere Ali listlessly.
"Listen, your Highness," said Ahmed Ismail. Like the rest of hiscountrymen, he had a keen love for a story. And the love was the keenerwhen he himself had the telling of it. He sat up alertly. "In that houselived an Englishman of high authority. He escaped when Delhi was seizedby the faithful. He came back when Delhi was recaptured by the infidels.And there he sat with an English officer, at his window, every morningfrom eight to nine. And every morning from eight to nine every native whopassed his door was stopped and hanged upon that tree, while he lookedon. Huzoor, there was no inquiry. It might be some peaceable merchant,some poor man from the countryside. What did it matter? There was alesson to be taught to this city. And so whoever walked down the ChandniChauk during that hour dangled from those branches. Huzoor, for a weekthis went on--for a whole week."
The story was current in Delhi. Ahmed Ismail found it to his hand, andShere Ali did not question it. He sat up erect, and something of thefire which this last day had been extinct kindled again in his sombreeyes. Later on he drove along the sinuous road on the top of the ridge,and as he looked over Delhi, hidden amongst its foliage, he saw thegreat white dome of the Jumma Musjid rising above the tree-tops, like aballoon. "The Mosque," he said, standing up in his carriage. "To-morrowwe will worship there."
Before noon the next day he mounted the steep broad flight of steps andpassed under the red sandstone arch into the vast enclosure. He performedhis ablutions at the fountain, and, kneeling upon the marble tiles,waited for the priest to ascend the ladder on to the wooden platform. Heknelt with Ahmed Ismail at his side, in the open, amongst the lowliest.In front of him rows of worshippers knelt and bowed their foreheads tothe tiles--rows and rows covering the enclosure up to the arches of themosque itself. There were others too--rows and rows within the arches, inthe dusk of the mosque itself, and from man to man emotion passed like aspark upon the wind. The crowd grew denser, there came a suspense, atension. It gained upon all, it laid its clutch upon Shere Ali. He ceasedto think, even upon his injuries, he was possessed with expectancy. Andthen a man kneeling beside him interrupted his prayers and began to cursefiercely beneath his breath.
"May they burn, they and their fathers and their children, to the lastgeneration!" And he added epithets of a surprising ingenuity. The whilehe looked backwards over his shoulder.
Shere Ali followed his example. He saw at the back of the enclosure, inthe galleries which surmounted the archway and the wall, English men andEnglish women waiting. Shere Ali's blood boiled at the sight. They werelaughing, talking. Some of them had brought sandwiches and were eatingtheir lunch. Others were taking photographs with their cameras. They werewaiting for the show to begin.
Shere Ali followed the example of his neighbour and cursed them. All hisanger kindled again and quickened into hatred. They were so careful ofthemselves, so careless of others!
"Not a Mohammedan," he cried to himself, "must set foot in theirgraveyard at Lucknow, but they come to our mosque as to a show."
Suddenly he saw the priest climb the ladder on to the high woodenplatform in front of the central arch of the mosque and bow his foreheadto the floor. His voice rang out resonant and clear and confident overthat vast assemblage.
"There is only one God."
And a shiver passed across the rows of kneeling men, as thoughunexpectedly a wind had blown across a ripe field of corn. Shere Ali wasmoved like the rest, but all the while at the back of his mind there wasthe thought of those white people in the galleries.
"They are laughing at us, they are making a mock of us, they think weare of no account." And fiercely he called upon his God, the God of theMohammedans, to root them out from the land and cast them as weeds inthe flame.
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bsp; The priest stood up erect upon the platform, and with a vibrating voice,now plaintive and conveying some strange sense of loneliness, now loud inpraise, now humble in submission, he intoned the prayers. His voice roseand sank, reverberating back over the crowded courtyard from the walls ofthe mosque. Shere Ali prayed too, but he prayed silently, with all thefervour of a fanatic, that it might be his hand which should drive theEnglish to their ships upon the sea.
When he rose and came out from the mosque he turned to Ahmed Ismail.
"There are some of my people in Delhi?"
Ahmed Ismail bowed.
"Let us go to them," said Shere Ali; he sought refuge amongst them fromthe thought of those people in the galleries. Ahmed Ismail was wellcontent with the results of his pilgrimage. Shere Ali, as he paced thestreets of Delhi with a fierce rapt look in his eyes, had the very aspectof a Ghazi fresh from the hills and bent upon murder and immolation.