by M. M. Kaye
The Guides and matters military obviously filled his thoughts to the exclusion of all else, and the gay, careless and largely one-sided love affairs of the 'Pindi days that had inspired so much bad verse were apparently a thing of the past. If Wally wrote poems now, thought Ash, they would not be addressed to some damsel's blue eyes, but would probably be concerned with such abstract subjects as Patriotism or Immortality. And the next time he fell in love it would be for ever: he would marry the girl and settle down and raise a family.
But that would not be for a long while yet. Because it was plain that at present he was in love with the Guides and with the romance of Empire – the warring tribesmen and the wild Khyber hills, the swift night marches and the sudden dawn attack on some fortified stronghold across the Border, and the discipline and comradeship of life in a Corps that had never known what it was like to live on a peace-time footing, but had always been ready to march at a moment's notice should trouble flare up on that perennially inflammable Frontier.
Wally did not ask what Ash had been doing with himself during his term of attachment to Roper's Horse; the routine activities of a regiment stationed in some peaceful spot such as Ahmadabad being of little interest to either of them; and as Ash had written reasonably often (and most of his letters had contained some reference to the dullness of army life in the peaceful peninsula) Wally concentrated on the more enlivening topic of the Frontier in general and the Guides in particular. Only when that subject had been covered fairly exhaustively did he demand to know why Ash was masquerading in this outfit, and what had possessed him to waste a valuable leave sweating up the Indus on a dundhi instead of going on trek as they had planned, or even coming fishing in the Kangan Valley?
‘I asked Gul Baz what you'd been up to,’ said Wally, ‘but all he would say was that “doubtless the Sahib had good reasons for his actions and would explain them to me himself”. Well, it's waiting for an explanation I am, ye spalpeen, and if you're wishful to be forgiven, it had better be a good one.’
It's a long story,’ Ash warned him.
‘We've got all day,’ returned Wally comfortably, and, rolling his coat into a ball to make a pillow, he lay down in the shade and prepared to listen. ‘Carry on, Sergeant-Major. You have our ear.’
The story as told to Wally had taken rather longer to tell than the one Zarin had heard on the previous day, for Zarin had known Kairi-Bai and so did not need to be told anything of her background or people, or her childish attachment to the boy, Ashok. But when Ash had first told Wally of his youth in Gulkote he had not thought to mention Kairi-Bai, and later he had purposely concealed the fact that the State of Karidkote, whose princesses he had been charged with escorting to Bhithor, was the same place under a different name. So there was more that had to be told now; and after the first two minutes Wally was no longer lying lazily on his back, but sitting bolt upright, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
Zarin had listened to that tale without any noticeable change of expression, but it was not so with Wally; he had never been adept at concealing his emotions, and now his handsome, mobile face betrayed his thoughts as clearly as though they had been written there in capital letters; and reading them Ash realized that he had been wrong in thinking that Wally had not changed.
The old Wally would have been enthralled by it and his sympathies would all have been with Ash and the sad little Princess of Gulkote who, like the heroine of a fairy-tale, had suffered much at the hands of a wicked stepmother and a jealous half-sister. But the present Wally had acquired new loyalties and put away many childish things. He had also, as Ash had surmised, fallen in love with the Guides.
The Guides were now his own Corps and an integral part of him, and he genuinely believed that the members of his own squadron were the pick of the Indian Army, and men such as Wigram Battye and Risaldar-Major Prem Singh the salt of the earth. He had been in action with them: learned in their company the terror and the fierce delight of battle, and seen men die – not just any men, the anonymous ones mentioned in brief official reports (‘Our casualties were two dead and five wounded’), but men he had known and cracked jokes with, and whose names and faces and problems were familiar to him.
He would no more dream of riding rough-shod over their customs and convictions, or doing anything that might bring the Regiment in which he and they had the honour to serve into disrepute, than he would consider pilfering from the mess funds or cheating at cards. Nor, in the first flush of his love-affair with the Guides and the Frontier, could he conceive of any worse fate than to be expelled from both. Yet if Ash had really married a Hindu widow, this was exactly what he was heading for – with whip and spur.
‘Well?’ asked Ash when he had finished and Wally had still not spoken. ‘Aren't you even going to wish me happy?’
Wally flushed like a girl and said quickly: ‘Of course I do. It's only…’ He did not seem to know how to end the sentence, and abandoned it.
‘That I have taken your breath away?’ said Ash with an edge on his voice.
‘Well, what did you expect?’ asked Wally defensively. ‘You must admit it's a bit of a facer. After all, I had no idea that those girls you were taking to Bhithor had anything to do with Gulkote, because you never said a word about that, and so I never imagined… Well, how could I? Of course I hope you'll be happy; you know that. But… but you're still well short of thirty and you know very well that you're not supposed to marry before then without the consent of the Commandant, and –’
‘But I have married,’ said Ash gently. ‘I am married, Wally. No one can alter that now. But you needn't worry; I'm not giving up the Guides. Did you really think I would?’
‘But once they know –’ began Wally.
‘They won't know,’ said Ash, and explained why.
‘Thank God for that!’ sighed Wally devoutly when he had finished. ‘How dare you frighten the daylights out of me?’
‘You're as bad as Zarin. He doesn't give himself away like you, but I could see that even though he knew Juli when she was a little girl, the fact that I had married her shocked him, because she is a Hindu. But I must admit I thought you'd be less prejudiced.’
‘What, me? An Irishman?’ Wally gave a short and mirthless laugh. ‘Why, a cousin of mine once wanted to marry a fellow who happened to be a Catholic, and you've no idea the row that blew up over that. The Protestants all went into hysterics about Anti-Christ and the Scarlet Woman of Rome, while the other lot called Mary a heretic and told Michael that if he married her he'd be excommunicated and everlastingly damned, because she wasn't prepared to turn papist herself and wouldn't sign an undertaking that any children she bore should be brought up as Catholics. Yet these were all adult and presumably intelligent people, and every one of them regarded themselves as Christians. Don't talk to me of prejudice! We're all riddled with it, whatever the colour of our skins; and if you haven't found that out yet, faith, I'm thinking you must have been born with blinkers.’
‘No, just without that particular form of prejudice,’ said Ash thoughtfully. ‘And it's too late for me to acquire it now.’
Wally laughed and observed that Ash did not know how lucky he was; and after an appreciable pause, said a little uncertainly and with an unaccustomed hint of diffidence in his voice: ‘Could you… can you tell me about her? What is she like? – I don't mean what does she look like, I mean what is it you see in her?’
‘Integrity. And tolerance – bardat, which Koda Dad once told me was a “rare flower”. Juli doesn't make harsh judgements, she tries to understand, and make allowances.’
‘What else? There must be something else.’
‘Of course – though I should have thought that by itself would have been enough for most people. She is…’ Ash hesitated, searching for words that would describe what Anjuli meant to him, and then said slowly: ‘She is the other half of me. Without her, I am not complete. I don't know why this should be, I only know it is so; and that there is nothing I can't tell her, or talk to her
about. She can ride like a Valkyrie and she has all the courage in the world, yet at the same time she is like – like a quiet and beautiful room where one can take refuge from noise and storms and ugliness, and sit back and feel peaceful and happy and completely content: a room that will always be there and always the same… Does that sound very dull to you? It doesn't to me. But then I don't want constant change and variety and stimulation in a wife; I can get plenty of that in everyday life and see it happening all around me. I want love and companionship, and I've found that in Juli. She is loving and loyal and courageous. And she is my peace and rest. Does that tell you what you want to know?’
‘Yes,’ said Wally, and smiled at him. ‘I'd like to meet her.’
‘So you shall. This evening, I hope.’
Wally had been sitting with his legs drawn up and his hands clasped about them, and now he dropped his chin on his knees, and staring ahead of him at the sun-glare on the white dust of the road and the back-drop of the foothills that lay shimmering in the heat, said contentedly: ‘You don't know how much I've been looking forward to you coming back to us. And so have a lot of others; the men still talk about you, and they are always asking for news of you and when you'll be coming back. They have a name for you – they call you “Pelham-Dulkhan” – did you know that? and when we are out on an exercise or on manoeuvres, they tell tales about your doings in Afghanistan round the camp fires at night. I've heard them at it…. and now you really are coming back at last – I can't believe it…!’ He drew a long, slow breath and let it out as slowly.
‘Is it kissing the Blarney Stone you've been?’ jeered Ash, grinning at him. ‘Stop spreading on the butter and talk sense for a change. Tell me about this Afghan business.’
Wally returned the grin, and putting personal matters aside, talked instead, and with considerable knowledge and acumen, of the problem posed by Afghanistan – a subject which at that time was much on the minds of men who served in the Peshawar Field Force.
Ash had been out of touch with Frontier matters for many months, and very little of this had so far penetrated to Gujerat, where men had less reason to trouble themselves over the doings of the Amir of a wild and inaccessible country far and far to the north, beyond the Khyber hills and the mountains of the Safed Koh. But now he was reminded again of what Koda Dad had said to him at their last meeting – and Zarin only yesterday – and as he listened to Wally, he felt as though he had been living in a different world…
During the past few years the Amir of Afghanistan, Shere Ali, had found himself in the unenviable position of the ‘corn between the upper and the lower millstones' – the simile was his own; the northern and uppermost one being Russia and the lower Great Britain, both of whom had designs on his country.
The latter had already annexed the Punjab and the Border-land beyond the Indus, while the former had swallowed the ancient principalities of Tashkent, Bokara, Kohkund and Kiva. Now Russian armies were massing on the northern frontiers of Afghanistan, and a new Viceroy, Lord Lytton, who combined obstinacy and a lofty ignorance of Afghanistan with a determination to extend the bounds of Empire to the greater glory of his country (and possibly of himself?) had been instructed by Her Majesty's Government to lose no time in sending an Envoy to Afghanistan charged with the task of overcoming the Amir's ‘apparent reluctance’ to the establishment of British Agencies within his dominions.
That the Amir might not wish to establish anything of the sort, or receive any foreign envoy, apparently did not occur to anyone; or if it did, was dismissed as unimportant. Lord Lytton was to impress upon the Amir that ‘Her Majesty's Government must have for their own agents undisputed access to its (Afghanistan's) frontier positions’, together with ‘adequate means of confidentially conferring with the Amir upon all matters as to which the proposed declaration would recognize a community of interests’. They must also be entitled to ‘expect becoming attention to their friendly councils’, while the Amir himself ‘must be made to understand that subject to all allowances for the condition of the country and the character of its population, territories ultimately dependent upon British Power for their defence must not be closed to those of the Queen's officers, or subjects, who may be duly authorized to enter them by the British Government’.
In return for accepting these humiliating terms, Shere Ali would be given advice from British officers as to how he could improve his military resources, together with the promise of British aid against any unprovoked attack by a foreign power, and (if the Viceroy* thought fit) a subsidy.
Lord Lytton was wholly convinced that only by bringing Afghanistan under British influence, and thereby turning that turbulent country into a buffer-state, could the advance of Russia be checked and the safety of India assured. And when the Amir proved reluctant to accept a British Mission in his capital of Kabul, the Viceroy warned him that if he refused he would be alienating a friendly power who could pour an army into his country ‘before a single Russian soldier could reach Kabul’ – a threat that merely reinforced Shere Ali's suspicions that the British intended to take over his country and extend their borders to the far side of the Hindu Kush.
The Russians too were pressing the Amir to accept a mission of their own, and both powers offered to sign a treaty with him which included a promise to come to his assistance if the other should attack him. But Shere Ali complained, with some truth, that if he were to ally himself with either power, his people would certainly object to foreign soldiers marching into their country, whatever the pretext, as they had never at any time been kindly disposed towards interlopers.
He could have added, with even more truth, that they were a fanatically independent people, much addicted to intrigue, treachery and murder, and that among their other national traits was an intolerance of rulers (or, if it came to that, of any form of authority whatsoever, other than their own desires). The Viceroy's insistence therefore put the Amir in a very awkward position, and he took the only course he could think of. He temporized, hoping that if he could only spin out the negotiations for long enough, something might turn up to save him from the indignity of being forced to accept and protect a permanent British Mission in Kabul, which could not fail to earn him the contempt of his proud and turbulent subjects.
But the more Shere Ali prevaricated, the more determined the Viceroy became to force a British Mission upon him. Lord Lytton saw Afghanistan as an uncivilized backwater inhabited by savages, and that their ruler should have the impertinence to object to a powerful nation such as Great Britain establishing a Mission in his barbarous country was not only insulting, but laughable.
Shere Ali's Prime Minister, Nur Mohammed, travelled to Peshawar to put his master's case, and though sick and ageing and bitterly resentful of the cruel pressures that were being put upon his Amir, no man could have done more. But all to no avail. The new Viceroy had not hesitated to wriggle out of any promises and obligations entered into during negotiations with his predecessor, while at the same time accusing the Amir of failing to keep to the letter of his own undertakings. And when Nur Mohammed would not give way, the Viceroy's spokesman, Sir Neville Chamberlain, turned on him in a rage, and the Amir's insulted Prime Minister and long-time friend left the Conference Chamber in despair, knowing that his arguments and pleadings had failed and there was nothing left to keep alive for.
The British negotiators had chosen to believe that his illness was merely another excuse to gain time. But Nur had been a dying man when he arrived in Peshawar; and when he died there the rumour spread throughout Afghanistan that the feringhis had poisoned him. The Amir sent word to say that he was sending a new Envoy to replace him, but the Viceroy ordered that the negotiations be discontinued for lack of any common ground of agreement, and the new Envoy was sent back, while Lord Lytton turned his attention to subverting the Border tribes with a view to bringing about the collapse of Shere Ali by less open means.
Some of this Ash already knew, for the Peshawar Conference had been in session before he
had left for Gujerat, and the issues that had been discussed there had been known and hotly debated in every British mess, Club and bungalow throughout the northern Punjab and the Frontier provinces, in addition to the streets and shops of cities, towns and villages – the British taking the view that the Amir was a typically treacherous Afghan, who was intriguing with the Russians and planning to sign a treaty of alliance with the Tsar that would permit free passage through the Khyber Pass to his armies, while Indian opinion held that the British Raj, in typically treacherous fashion, was plotting to overthrow the Amir and add Afghanistan to the Empire.
But once Ash had left the Punjab behind him, he had found that men talked less of the ‘Russian menace’ than of their own affairs; while from the time he reached Bombay and boarded the slow train that chugged and puffed along the palm-fringed coast towards Surat and Baroda, he had hardly ever heard it mentioned, let alone seriously discussed despite the fact that the two leading English-language newspapers wrote an occasional leader on the subject, criticizing the Government for its failure to take action, or attacking ‘alarmists’ who talked of war.
Insulated by distance and the slower pace of life in Gujerat, Ash had soon lost interest in the political wrangling between the High Gods in Simla and the unhappy ruler of the Land of Cain, and it had come as something of a shock to him to discover from Zarin that here in the north men took the matter seriously, and spoke openly of a second Afghan war:
‘But I don't suppose it will come to that,’ said Wally, not without a tinge of regret. ‘Once the Amir and his advisers realize that the Raj is not prepared to take “No” for an answer, they'll give in gracefully and let us send a Mission to Kabul, and that'll be the end of it. Pity, really – No, I don't mean that of course. But it would have been a terrific experience, fighting one's way through those passes. I'd like to be in a real battle.’