Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  Dick nodded his head.

  “That’s true, mother. You never questioned me. You never tried to dissuade me.”

  Sybil’s face shone with a wan smile. She unlocked a drawer in her writing-table, and took out an envelope. From the envelope she drew a sheet of paper covered with a faded and yellow handwriting.

  “This is the last letter your father ever wrote to me,” she said. “Harry wrote on the night that he — that he died. Oh, Dick, my boy, I have known for a long time that I would have one day to show it to you, and I wanted you to feel when that time came that I had not been disloyal.”

  She had kept her face steady, even her voice calm, by a great effort. But now the tears filled her eyes and brimmed over, and her voice suddenly shook between a laugh and a sob. “But oh, Dick,” she cried, “I have so often wanted to be disloyal. I was so often near to it — oh, very, very near.”

  She handed him the faded letter, and, turning towards the window, stood with her back to him while he read. It was that letter, with its constant refrain of “I am very tired,” which Linforth had written in his tent whilst his murderers crouched outside waiting for sleep to overcome him.

  “I am sitting writing this by the light of a candle,” Dick read. “The tent door is open. In front of me I can see the great snow-mountains. All the ugliness of the shale-slopes is hidden. By such a moonlight, my dear, may you always look back upon my memory. For it is all over, Sybil.”

  Then followed the advice about himself and his school; and after that advice the message which was now for the first time delivered:

  “Whether he will come out here, it is too early to think about. But the Road will not be finished — and I wonder. If he wants to, let him! We Linforths belong to the Road.”

  Dick folded the letter reverently, and crossing to his mother’s side, put his arm about her waist.

  “Yes,” he said. “My father knew it as I know it. He used the words which I in my turn have used. We Linforths belong to the Road.”

  His mother took the letter from his hand and locked it away.

  “Yes,” she said bravely, and called a smile to her face. “So you must go.”

  Dick nodded his head.

  “Yes. You see, the Road has not advanced since my father died. It almost seems, mother, that it waits for me.”

  He stayed that day and that night with Sybil, and in the morning both brought haggard faces to the breakfast table. Sybil, indeed, had slept, but, with her memories crowding hard upon her, she had dreamed again one of those almost forgotten dreams which, in the time of her suspense, had so tortured her. The old vague terror had seized upon her again. She dreamed once more of a young Englishman who pursued a young Indian along the wooden galleries of the road above the torrents into the far mists. She could tell as of old the very dress of the native who fled. A thick sheepskin coat swung aside as he ran and gave her a glimpse of gay silk; soft high leather boots protected his feet; and upon his face there was a look of fury and wild fear. But this night there was a difference in the dream. Her present distress added a detail. The young Englishman who pursued turned his face to her as he disappeared amongst the mists, and she saw that it was the face of Dick.

  But of this she said nothing at all at the breakfast table, nor when she bade Dick good-bye at the stile on the further side of the field beyond the garden.

  “You will come down again, and I shall go to Marseilles to see you off,” she said, and so let him go.

  There was something, too, stirring in Dick’s mind of which he said no word. In the letter of his father, certain sentences had caught his eye, and on his way up to London they recurred to his thoughts, as, indeed, they had more than once during the evening before.

  “May he meet,” Harry Linforth had written to Sybil of his son Dick— “may he meet a woman like you, my dear, when his time comes, and love her as I love you.”

  Dick Linforth fell to thinking of Violet Oliver. She was in India at this moment. She might still be there when he landed. Would he meet her, he wondered, somewhere on the way to Chiltistan?

  CHAPTER XIX

  A GIFT MISUNDERSTOOD

  THE MONTH WAS over before Linforth at last steamed out of the harbour at Marseilles. He was as impatient to reach Bombay as a year before Shere Ali had been reluctant. To Shere Ali the boat had flown with wings of swiftness, to Linforth she was a laggard. The steamer passed Stromboli on a wild night of storm and moonlight. The wrack of clouds scurrying overhead, now obscured, now let the moonlight through, and the great cone rising sheer from a tempestuous sea glowed angrily. Linforth, in the shelter of a canvas screen, watched the glow suddenly expand, and a stream of bright sparkling red flow swiftly along the shoulder of the mountain, turn at a right angle, and plunge down towards the sea. The bright red would become dull, the dull red grow black, the glare of light above the cone contract for a little while and then burst out again. Yet men lived upon the slope of Stromboli, even as Englishmen — the thought flashed into his mind — lived in India, recognising the peril and going quietly about their work. There was always that glare of menacing light over the hill-districts of India as above the crater of Stromboli, now contracting, now expanding and casting its molten stream down towards the plains.

  At the moment when Linforth watched the crown of light above Stromboli, the glare was widening over the hill country of Chiltistan. Ralston so far away as Peshawur saw it reddening the sky and was the more troubled in that he could not discover why just at this moment the menace should glow red. The son of Abdulla Mohammed was apparently quiet and Shere Ali had not left Calcutta. The Resident at Kohara admitted the danger. Every despatch he sent to Peshawur pointed to the likelihood of trouble. But he too was at fault. Unrest was evident, the cause of it quite obscure. But what was hidden from Government House in Peshawur and the Old Mission House at Kohara was already whispered in the bazaars. There among the thatched booths which have their backs upon the brink of the water-channel in the great square, men knew very well that Shere Ali was the cause, though Shere Ali knew nothing of it himself. One of those queer little accidents possible in the East had happened within the last few weeks. A trifling gift had been magnified into a symbol and a message, and the message had run through Chiltistan like fire through a dry field of stubble. And then two events occurred in Peshawur which gave to Ralston the key of the mystery.

  The first was the arrival in that city of a Hindu lady from Gujerat who had lately come to the conclusion that she was a reincarnation of the Goddess Devi. She arrived in great pomp, and there was some trouble in the streets as the procession passed through to the temple which she had chosen as her residence. For the Hindus, on the one hand, firmly believed in her divinity. The lady came of a class which, held in dishonour in the West, had its social position and prestige in India. There was no reason in the eyes of the faithful why she should say she was the Goddess Devi if she were not. Therefore they lined the streets to acclaim her coming. The Mohammedans, on the other hand, Afghans from the far side of the Khyber, men of the Hassan and the Aka and the Adam Khel tribes, Afridis from Kohat and Tirah and the Araksai country, any who happened to be in that wild and crowded town, turned out, too — to keep order, as they pleasantly termed it, when their leaders were subsequently asked for explanations. In the end a good many heads were broken before the lady was safely lodged in her temple. Nor did the trouble end there. The presence of a reincarnated Devi at once kindled the Hindus to fervour and stimulated to hostility against them the fanatical Mohammedans. Futteh Ali Shah, a merchant, a municipal councillor and a landowner of some importance, headed a deputation of elderly gentlemen who begged Ralston to remove the danger from the city.

  Danger there was, as Ralston on his morning rides through the streets could not but understand. The temple was built in the corner of an open space, and upon that open space a noisy and excited crowd surged all day; while from the countryside around pilgrims in a mood of frenzied piety and Pathans spoiling for a fight trooped dai
ly in through the gates of Peshawur. Ralston understood that the time had come for definite steps to be taken; and he took them with that unconcerned half-weary air which was at once natural to him and impressive to these particular people with whom he had to deal.

  He summoned two of his native levies and mounted his horse.

  “But you will take a guard,” said Colonel Ward, of the Oxfordshires, who had been lunching with Ralston. “I’ll send a company down with you.”

  “No, thank you,” said Ralston listlessly, “I think my two men will do.”

  The Colonel stared and expostulated.

  “You know, Ralston, you are very rash. Your predecessor never rode into the City without an escort.”

  “I do every morning.”

  “I know,” returned the Colonel, “and that’s where you are wrong. Some day something will happen. To go down with two of your levies to-day is madness. I speak seriously. The place is in a ferment.”

  “Oh, I think I’ll be all right,” said Ralston, and he rode at a trot down from Government House into the road which leads past the gaol and the Fort to the gate of Peshawur. At the gate he reduced the trot to a walk, and so, with his two levies behind him, passed up along the streets like a man utterly undisturbed. It was not bravado which had made him refuse an escort. On the contrary, it was policy. To assume that no one questioned his authority was in Ralston’s view the best way and the quickest to establish it. He pushed forward through the crowd right up to the walls of the temple, seemingly indifferent to every cry or threat which was uttered as he passed. The throng closed in behind him, and he came to a halt in front of a low door set in the whitewashed wall which enclosed the temple and its precincts. Upon this door he beat with the butt of his crop and a little wicket in the door was opened. At the bars of the wicket an old man’s face showed for a moment and then drew back in fear.

  “Open!” cried Ralston peremptorily.

  The face appeared again.

  “Your Excellency, the goddess is meditating. Besides, this is holy ground. Your Excellency would not wish to set foot on it. Moreover, the courtyard is full of worshippers. It would not be safe.”

  Ralston broke in upon the old man’s fluttering protestations. “Open the door, or my men will break it in.”

  A murmur of indignation arose from the crowd which thronged about him. Ralston paid no heed to it. He called to his two levies:

  “Quick! Break that door in!”

  As they advanced the door was opened. Ralston dismounted, and bade one of his men do likewise and follow him. To the second man he said,

  “Hold the horses!”

  He strode into the courtyard and stood still.

  “It will be touch and go,” he said to himself, as he looked about him.

  The courtyard was as thronged as the open space without, and four strong walls enclosed it. The worshippers were strangely silent. It seemed to Ralston that suspense had struck them dumb. They looked at the intruder with set faces and impassive eyes. At the far end of the courtyard there was a raised stone platform, and this part was roofed. At the back in the gloom he could see a great idol of the goddess, and in front, facing the courtyard, stood the lady from Gujerat. She was what Ralston expected to see — a dancing girl of Northern India, a girl with a good figure, small hands and feet, and a complexion of an olive tint. Her eyes were large and lustrous, with a line of black pencilled upon the edges of the eyelids, her eyebrows arched and regular, her face oval, her forehead high. The dress was richly embroidered with gold, and she had anklets with silver bells upon her feet.

  Ralston pushed his way through the courtyard until he reached the wall of the platform.

  “Come down and speak to me,” he cried peremptorily to the lady, but she took no notice of his presence. She did not move so much as an eyelid. She gazed over his head as one lost in meditation. From the side an old priest advanced to the edge of the platform.

  “Go away,” he cried insolently. “You have no place here. The goddess does not speak to any but her priests,” and through the throng there ran a murmur of approval. There, was a movement, too — a movement towards Ralston. It was as yet a hesitating movement — those behind pushed, those in front and within Ralston’s vision held back. But at any moment the movement might become a rush.

  Ralston spoke to the priest.

  “Come down, you dog!” he said quite quietly.

  The priest was silent. He hesitated. He looked for help to the crowd below, which in turn looked for leadership to him. “Come down,” once more cried Ralston, and he moved towards the steps as though he would mount on to the platform and tear the fellow down.

  “I come, I come,” said the priest, and he went down and stood before Ralston.

  Ralston turned to the Pathan who accompanied him. “Turn the fellow into the street.”

  Protests rose from the crowd; the protests became cries of anger; the throng swayed and jostled. But the Pathan led the priest to the door and thrust him out.

  Again Ralston turned to the platform.

  “Listen to me,” he called out to the lady from Gujerat. “You must leave Peshawur. You are a trouble to the town. I will not let you stay.”

  But the lady paid no heed. Her mind floated above the earth, and with every moment the danger grew. Closer and closer the throng pressed in upon Ralston and his attendant. The clamour rose shrill and menacing. Ralston cried out to his Pathan in a voice which rang clear and audible even above the clamour:

  “Bring handcuffs!”

  The words were heard and silence fell upon all that crowd, the sudden silence of stupefaction. That such an outrage, such a defilement of a holy place, could be contemplated came upon the worshippers with a shock. But the Pathan levy was seen to be moving towards the door to obey the order, and as he went the cries and threats rose with redoubled ardour. For a moment it seemed to Ralston that the day would go against him, so fierce were the faces which shouted in his ears, so turbulent the movement of the crowd. It needed just one hand to be laid upon the Pathan’s shoulder as he forced his way towards the door, just one blow to be struck, and the ugly rush would come. But the hand was not stretched out, nor the blow struck; and the Pathan was seen actually at the threshold of the door. Then the Goddess Devi came down to earth and spoke to another of her priests quickly and urgently. The priest went swiftly down the steps.

  “The goddess will leave Peshawur, since your Excellency so wills it,” he said to Ralston. “She will shake the dust of this city from her feet. She will not bring trouble upon its people.” So far he had got when the goddess became violently agitated. She beckoned to the priest and when he came to her side she spoke quickly to him in an undertone. For the last second or two the goddess had grown quite human and even feminine. She was rating the priest well and she did it spitefully. It was a crestfallen priest who returned to Ralston.

  “The goddess, however, makes a condition,” said he. “If she goes there must be a procession.”

  The goddess nodded her head emphatically. She was clearly adamant upon that point.

  Ralston smiled.

  “By all means. The lady shall have a show, since she wants one,” said he, and turning towards the door, he signalled to the Pathan to stop.

  “But it must be this afternoon,” said he. “For she must go this afternoon.”

  And he made his way out of the courtyard into the street. The lady from Gujerat left Peshawur three hours later. The streets were lined with levies, although the Mohammedans assured his Excellency that there was no need for troops.

  “We ourselves will keep order,” they urged. Ralston smiled, and ordered up a company of Regulars. He himself rode out from Government House, and at the bend of the road he met the procession, with the lady from Gujerat at its head in a litter with drawn curtains of tawdry gold.

  As the procession came abreast of him a little brown hand was thrust out from the curtains, and the bearers and the rabble behind came to a halt. A man in a rough brown h
omespun cloak, with a beggar’s bowl attached to his girdle, came to the side of the litter, and thence went across to Ralston.

  “Your Highness, the Goddess Devi has a word for your ear alone.” Ralston, with a shrug of his shoulders, walked his horse up to the side of the litter and bent down his head. The lady spoke through the curtains in a whisper.

  “Your Excellency has been very kind to me, and allowed me to leave Peshawur with a procession, guarding the streets so that I might pass in safety and with great honour. Therefore I make a return. There is a matter which troubles your Excellency. You ask yourself the why and the wherefore, and there is no answer. But the danger grows.”

  Ralston’s thoughts flew out towards Chiltistan. Was it of that country she was speaking?

  “Well?” he asked. “Why does the danger grow?”

  “Because bags of grain and melons were sent,” she replied, “and the message was understood.”

  She waved her hand again, and the bearers of the litter stepped forward on their march through the cantonment. Ralston rode up the hill to his home, wondering what in the world was the meaning of her oracular words. It might be that she had no meaning — that was certainly a possibility. She might merely be keeping up her pose as a divinity. On the other hand, she had been so careful to speak in a low whisper, lest any should overhear.

  “Some melons and bags of grain,” he said to himself. “What message could they convey? And who sent them? And to whom?”

  He wrote that night to the Resident at Kohara, on the chance that he might be able to throw some light upon the problem.

  “Have you heard anything of a melon and a bag of grain?” he wrote. “It seems an absurd question, but please make inquiries. Find out what it all means.”

  The messenger carried the letter over the Malakand Pass and up the road by Dir, and in due time an answer was returned. Ralston received the answer late one afternoon, when the light was failing, and, taking it over to the window, read it through. Its contents fairly startled him.