“To be sure you will, Master Robin,” and the notion that Robin was going to ride abroad after his dinner tickled her out of all reason.
“And Kate, will you send Dakcombe to me? He shall tell me the news whilst I dress.”
Dakcombe, I am afraid, was listening at the door, for he came at once into the room.
“Master Robin’s riding out after his dinner,” said Kate. “So he’ll want his long boots and a riding dress.”
And to Dakcombe the notion was as comical as it had been to Kate.
He grinned from ear to ear.
“Aye, surely, woman! Master Robin’ll go ridin’ this afternoon,” said he.
“That he will, John Dakcombe,” said Kate, nodding her head.
“We might ha’ knowed it, we might,” said Dakcombe.
He was a staid, elderly man, not given to laughter. Now he was convulsed with it.
“We might have and we do,” said Kate.
“Here, you two,” cried Robin, blushing furiously and hoping that the tan of his cheeks would hide the blushes. He was not going to be rallied because he chose to make a call at Winterborne Hyde. “That’s quite enough. Stop it!”
They stopped it, and Robin, whilst he brushed his hair, asked Dakcombe for the news. There was no fear of the Spaniard in England. The queen had reviewed her troops at Tilbury and made a speech to them so simple and so straight from the heart, she the mistress of intricate phrases and meaningless meanings, that all of wide England had been moved by the love and pride of it.
“My great bonfire was lit, Dakcombe?”
“Aye, that it was, Master Robin. ’Twas the finest bonfire on the coast. And who do you think, Master Robin, stood beside it and cheered the loudest?”
“Tell me!” said Robin, smiling. He had not a doubt what name he was going to hear. But he was wrong.
“Who but them papistical sycophanters, Sir Robert Bannet and his son Humphrey.”
Robin turned round in the act of pulling on his stockings.
“They were there?”
“And singing very loud to keep their heads safe upon their shoulders, Master Robin.”
“And Mr Stafford too, no doubt,” said Robin.
“Oh no, sir. Mr Stafford’s to be tried at the assizes and hanged.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, all accordin’ to law, Master Robin. None of them Spanish tricks here. Tried first and not hanged till afterwards — hanged and quartered. Very particular they’re goin’ to be about the quarterin’, I hear. People are sayin’ the queen’s too kindly, and only hangs ’em as often as not, and people are wonderin’ what the world’s comin’ to. But ’tis all right with Mr Stafford, Master Robin. It’ll all be done before Her Majesty can hear of it. Tried accordin’ to law and hanged afterwards.”
Robin was very silent after that and sent Dakcombe from the room. He dressed himself as Kate the housekeeper had bidden him, in a doublet and breeches of dark-blue velvet, with gold buttons to fasten it, long white silk stockings and shoes of white velvet with white roses. He fixed a small white ruff of cambric about his throat and a gold chain upon his shoulders. Then he took up a sheathed dagger, whichever since his last night in Madrid he had carried under his shirt.
When he came out into the corridor he found Kate and Dakcombe awaiting his appearance, and Kate made her best curtsy and Dakcombe his best bow, and then they both clapped their hands. Certainly with his brown, shining hair, his sun-burnt face above his snowy ruff and his brave attire, the lad looked wholesome and gracious enough to enrapture a princess in a fairy tale. And there was besides something very moving in the gravity of his face and eyes.
“I shall not be long,” he said gently. “But I have something to do, and I must do it before I break my fast.”
He went into the library where the prie-dieu stood from which he had taken an ivory crucifix that Cynthia might hold him in remembrance. It had been the crucifix of George Aubrey, his father. Robin closed the door gently, and drawing from its stained velvet sheath the dagger with his father’s blood encrusted on the blade, he hung it reverently where the crucifix had hung. A memorial, but more than a memorial. A symbol that revenge and punishment were for God, not for him, a prayer lest he should sully his homecoming with resentments.
The two years of servitude and exile and endeavour had brought their benefit with their suffering. Imagination had come with them. As a boy in front of the lower school at Eton, when his great mistress had deigned to call him forth, he had been able to stand outside himself, watch what he did and assess it. Since then he had learnt to stand behind others as separate from him as the poles, and see with their different eyes the strange and different shapes of things which they beheld. Santa Cruz, his father, the actors on the road from Badajoz, even the slow, joyless, priest-ridden Philip — he had learnt from them all something of the multiplication of points of view and the infinite variety of judgments.
Standing there before that dagger, now transfigured into a cross, he saw again the vision which had been revealed to him in the great Church of the Escorial — altar, priests, candles, steps, the church itself, melting away and leaving nothing but the gigantic figure of Christ crucified looming out of the darkness. The message which had been hidden from him then was clear now in this room with its windows looking down the chine and over Warbarrow Bay. The cry of the Man in the God triumphant over his man’s anguish and crying aloud, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Very humbly he sat down at his table and wrote a letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, praying him that if he, Robin, had done anything to earn his favour, it might be shown in the remission of Stafford’s crime. He wrote the letter with a great care to say all that he had to say in the fewest words — with so much care, indeed, that he did not notice a certain bustle and movement in the court, or even the opening of his door.
But when he looked up at the end of it, Cynthia was in the doorway watching him.
THE END
The Drum (1937)
CONTENTS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
The first edition
The 1938 film adaptation, directed by Zoltan Korda
1
CAPTAIN FRANK CARRUTHERS, lately transferred from the 20th Punjab Infantry to the Political Department, went home upon long leave, where nature in its ordinary course startled him, humbled him and lifted him beyond the stars. In other words, Frank Carruthers, aged thirty-one, met Marjorie Drew, aged twenty-two, for the first time on Lord’s Cricket Ground at the Eton and Harrow match; proposed to her between drives in a butt on a Yorkshire moor towards the end of August; married her at St. George’s in October; and brought her out to Peshawur with pride and exultation at the end of the year.
The Governor of the North-West Province, however, so far from sharing that pride and exultation, was distinctly annoyed. It was his business to keep the rickety wheel of Administration revolving, and to him young officials’ young wives were no better than spanners put ready to be thrown into the works. He sent for Carruthers on the day following his return to Peshawur, and ignoring this ill-timed marriage altogether, began very heartily:
“I am delighted that you are back, Carruthers. For there’s some interesting work for you. Just sit down, will you? The Khan of Tokot has invited the Government to send him a small mission, and the Government has accepted the invitation. As a preliminary,” he added after a pause.
“A preliminary?”
Carruthers repeated the word with his heart sinking just a little.
“Yes,” Sir Arthur Brooke, the Governor, continued easily. “As a preliminary to establishing a permanent British Agency there. There’s always unrest up there, there’s selling the people into slavery, there are raids and blood-feuds — but why should I tell you? Year after year you have had permission to go shootin
g in those valleys. You have shot red bear and ibex, and you’ve never got into trouble. You speak Pushtu and you’ve learnt some of the dialects. Yes, I have got your reports.”
He turned away to his big table and his fingers flicked the reports, which young Carruthers had been at such pains to compile, of his travels amongst the little, treacherous, and savage kingdoms between the borders of India and the Hindu Khush.
“So the Government has done you the honour of choosing you to be its representative — at all events on this first mission.”
“Me!” Carruthers exclaimed.
A year before he would have uttered his exclamation with shining eyes and an incredulous enthusiasm. Freedom from the routine of his desk, authority following him and not squatting on his shoulders, the opportunity to prove himself alone, to do something real and fresh and valuable, the chance to write a memorable name like Robertson’s or Durand’s or Warburton’s on the records of the Frontier, and tip-top shooting thrown in — a year ago he would by now have been upon his feet, crying “When do I start?” But he had married a young wife since then, and if there was a lower pit into which his heart could sink than that into which it had sunk, Carruthers could not imagine its location.
“Me?” he repeated.
His Excellency failed entirely to notice the consternation in the voice and looks of his subordinate.
“You, yes,” he answered cheerfully. “But of course you must have guessed some while ago that you were being groomed for a job of this kind.”
Carruthers, indeed, had been a little astonished at the official complacency which had permitted his shooting expeditions into those debatable bad lands where the least want of tact, the smallest act of rashness might start a little war which would strain the resources of the Government in India and bring thunder and lightning from the Parliament at home.
“So you will set out for Tokot as soon as the snow has melted on the passes,” His Excellency resumed. “We shall send an Engineer Officer with you and a suitable escort. You will arrange with the Khan for the establishment of the Agency. We have a house there, for we sent a Mission to Tokot a few years ago, although nothing came of it. But the house will want reconditioning. You’ll see to that.”
Sir Arthur Brooke rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other.
“The Khan’s invitation — Sher Afzul-ul-Mulk, that’s his name — was urgent — unusually urgent. We know that he has a Chieftain, a Kafiristan on his border, Umra Beg, threatening him. But there’s probably something more behind which we don’t know. But remember we don’t interfere in their internal affairs. Tokot must rule Tokot in its own way. No doubt it won’t be a very good way, but alteration can only come through the peaceful extension of British Influence. Got that?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Carruthers.
“And don’t get into trouble yourself! For if anything happens” — the Governor alluded to murder— “to an agent of ours, such as has happened here and there, we have to march in and take over. That’s to be avoided. You ought to be back within four or five months from the date of setting out. But Captain Morris will discuss the details with you. Good morning.” With a nod of his head he dismissed Captain Carruthers, but when Carruthers was fumbling with the handle of the door like a man who has gone blind, he spoke again.
“By the way, Carruthers.”
Sir Arthur Brooke had a passion for folk-lore, and there is no richer field for the study of folk-lore than the northern borders of India. On some distant day he meant to sit at his ease in a study looking out upon the South Downs and write a book about the folk-lore of the tribes of the Hindu Khush.
“By the way, you might find out the story of the Yudeni drum, and how much truth there is in it.”
Carruthers was perplexed. The legends of the Hindu Khush were innumerable. The dwellers in those deep valleys between dark forests and glistening scarps of snow had other gods besides the Allah of their official creed — gods of the ice and the storm, and in a lower hierarchy the imps and the goblins whom witchcraft could appease. Carruthers had heard many a story about his camp-fire of their malevolence and the devices by which it might be diverted. But the Yudeni drum was new to him.
“The drum and the fairy drummer,” the Governor repeated.
“I’ll make enquiries,” said Carruthers.
“There’s another thing,” and His Excellency switched his thoughts away from his hobby. “The Khan is an oldish man, but he has a young son, a boy about twelve years old, to whom he’s devoted. The old man, in his love of English ways, sent the boy to the school at Ajmere for a year or two. He was his heir, so he had to be brought back. They spoke well of him at Ajmere and he knows some English.”
“I’ll look out for him, Sir,” said Carruthers, and he went home to his wife.
Half-way through luncheon Marjorie asked:
“Something has happened to you this morning, Frank?”
Frank nodded his head.
“I shall have to leave you for a time.”
“Now?”
“No. But early in the spring.”
Marjorie nodded her head, looking down at her plate. “We have till then together at all events. You’ll be long away?”
“Four to five months. You’ll have to go up to Murree, Marjorie, as soon as the hot weather begins.”
Marjorie Carruthers dismissed that consideration as of no importance.
“Dangerous?” she asked.
“My journey?” Carruthers shrugged his shoulders. “In the day’s work.”
Marjorie had now the control of her voice. She reached out her hand and laid it on her husband’s.
“My dear, I didn’t marry you to interfere with it.”
At the luncheon-table of the Residency His Excellency also was talking to his wife of Carruthers’ new appointment.
“I hope he succeeds in getting what I want.”
“The Agency established,” said his wife.
“Oh yes, that, of course,” remarked the Governor. “I was thinking of the story of the Yudeni drum. Anyone who sees the fairy drummer on the top of the tower is booked, it seems, for a sticky end. I wonder whether that happens.”
“I don’t know, my dear,” said Lady Brooke indulgently. “But before it does, we had better have Captain Carruthers and his pretty wife to dinner. It’s the least we can do.”
2
IT WAS STILL early in the year when Carruthers reached the head of the Tokot valley. But in that long, deep combe spring had come over-night. The terraced fields were already green with young wheat, and the orchards in the wealth of their blossom repeated the tumbled snows of the upper passes.
“Forward,” he said and rode down the winding track. He had behind him an escort of sixteen Pathans of his old regiment, a section of the 15th Sikhs, a Captain Morris and a squad of Royal Engineers, a baggage-train of mules, a doctor and a drummer-boy and a bugler borrowed from the Middlesex Infantry, then stationed at Peshawur. On that night he camped by a village at the waterside and in two days’ time saw ahead of him the high towers of the Khan’s fort. In the afternoon a group of young nobles gay with Bokhara silks and long coats of velvet rode out to meet him. At the head of them was a boy of twelve years or so mounted on a great horse with trappings of silver. The boy set his horse to a gallop and, reining up by Carruthers, swung himself out of the saddle to the ground.
“I am Shuja-ul-Mulk, the Khan’s son,” he cried with a broad grin. “My father welcomes you to Tokot and prays you not to measure the welcome by the size of the messenger.”
“I will not,” Carruthers replied as he shook hands with the boy. “I will measure it by the width of his messenger’s smile.”
Shuja-ul-Mulk swung himself up again into his saddle, and riding on Carruthers’ left side led him towards a wooden platform set up under a walnut-tree at the gates of the Fort, where the Khan and his Court awaited him.
“A guide will take your men to your house,” said Shuja-ul-Mulk as he dismounted again.
Carruthers and Morris got off their horses too, and ascending to the platform shook hands with the Khan, Sher Afzul-ul-Mulk. He was a man of sixty, dressed in a quilted choga of flowered silk, a large, heavy man with a haggard and apprehensive look which even the warmth of his welcome could not quite conceal. He presented to the English officers his brother Nizam, a sleek, smiling person ten years younger than himself, and his Wasir, Dadu.
“Whilst they make your house ready,” said Sher Afzul, “I shall try to entertain you.”
Carruthers dropped into a seat at the right hand of the Khan with no more than a sigh. His years in the East had taught him to tolerate the long ceremonies of a reception. Below the dais, against a background of foaming river, orchards in blossom, hillsides black with forests of cedars and snowslopes glistening like silver soaring into the heavens over all, the villagers of Tokot sat about a semicircle of grass. There were but two kinds of entertainment in these regions — a wild polo-match with a dozen players on a side or a ballet of dancing boys. This afternoon it was obviously to be the ballet, and as the Khan clapped his hands, his troupe glided into the open space. They wore a special uniform of blue sleeveless coats over shirts of white muslin and red trousers. The leader threw a flower into the centre of the arena and about it the boys swung and twirled to the music of a pipe.
“It is a love story,” the Khan explained, whilst he nodded his head and beat his foot to the rhythm of the melody. “The flower represents a maiden and the boys her suitors.”
And indeed at that moment the music of the pipe rose to an ecstasy and the dance grew faster and more passionate.
“Here’s something, at all events, for Sir Arthur to put into his book,” Carruthers reflected, and having fixed the scene clearly in his mind, he fell to wondering why Sher Afzul had so pressingly invited this mission — what was “the something behind it all” of which the Governor of the North-West Province had spoken?
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 687