TOWARDSthe close of a wet afternoon two tongas discharged Lewis, George, two native servants, and a collection of gun-cases in the court-yard of the one hotel in Bardur. They had made a record journey up country, stopping to present no letters of introduction, which are the thieves of time. Now, as Lewis found himself in the strait valley, with the eternal snows where the sky should be, and sniffed the dry air from the granite walls, he glowed with the pleasure of recollection.
The place was the same as ever. The same medley of races perambulated the streets. Sheep-skinned Central Asians and Mongolian merchants from Yarkand still displayed their wares and their cunning; Hunza tribesmen, half-clad Chitralis, wild-eyed savages from Yagistan mingled in the narrow stone streets with the civilized Persian and Turcoman from beyond the mountains. Kashmir sepoys, an untidy race, still took their ease in the sun, and soldiers of South India from the Imperial Service Troops showed their odd accoutrements and queer race mixtures. The place looked and smelled like a kind of home, and Lewis, with one eye on the gun-cases and one on the great hills, forgot his heart-sickness and had leisure for the plain joys of expectation.
“I am going to get to work at once,” he said, when he had washed the dust out of his eyes and throat. “I shall go and call on the Logans this very minute, and I expect we shall see Thwaite and some of the soldiers at the club to-night.” So George, much against his will, was compelled to don a fresh suit and suffer himself to be conducted to the bungalow of the British Resident.
The Sahib was from home, at Gilgit, but Madame would receive the strangers. So the two found themselves in a drawing-room aggressively English in its air, shaking hands with a small woman with kind eyes and a washed-out complexion.
Mrs. Logan was unaffectedly glad to see them. She had that trick of dominating her surroundings which English ladies seem to bear to the uttermost ends of the globe. There, in that land of snows and rock, with savage tribesmen not thirty miles away, and the British frontier-line something less than fifty, she gave them tea and talked small talk with the ease and gusto of an English country home.
“It’s the most unfortunate thing in the world,” she cried. “If you had only wired, Gilbert would have stayed, but as it is he has gone down to Gilgit about some polo ponies, and won’t be back for two days. Things are so humdrum and easy-going up here that one loses interest in one’s profession. Gilbert has nothing to do except arrange with the foreman of the coolies who are making roads, and hold stupid courts, and consult with Captain Thwaite and the garrison people. The result is that the poor man has become crazy about golf, and wastes all his spare money on polo ponies. You can have no idea what a godsend a new face is to us poor people. It is simply delightful to see you again, Mr. Haystoun. You left us about sixteen months ago, didn’t you? Did you enjoy going back?”
Lewis said yes, with an absurd sense of the humour of the question. The lady talked as if home had been merely an interlude, instead of the crisis of his life.
“And what did you do? And whom did you see? Please tell me, for I am dying for a gossip.”
“I have been home in Scotland, you know. Looking after my affairs and idling. I stood for Parliament and got beaten.”
“Really! How exciting! Where is your home in Scotland, Mr. Haystoun? You told me once, but I have forgotten. You know I have no end of Scotch relatives.”
“It’s in rather a remote part, a place called Etterick, in Glenavelin.”
“Glenavelin, Glenavelin,” the lady repeated. “That’s where the Manorwaters live, isn’t it?”
“My uncle,” said Lewis.
“I had a letter from a friend who was staying there in the summer. I wonder if you ever met her. A Miss Wishart. Alice Wishart?”
Lewis strove to keep any extraordinary interest out of his eyes. This voice from another world had broken rudely in upon his new composure.
“I knew her,” he said, and his tone was of such studied carelessness that Mrs. Logan looked up at him curiously.
“I hope you liked her, for her mother was a relation of my husband, and when I have been home the small Alice has always been a great friend of mine. I wonder if she has grown pretty. Gilbert and I used to bet about it on different sides. I said she would be very beautiful some day.”
“She is very beautiful,” said Lewis in a level voice, and George, feeling the thin ice, came to his friend’s rescue. He could at least talk naturally of Miss Wishart.
“The Wisharts took the place, you know, Mrs. Logan, so we saw a lot of them. The girl was delightful, good sportswoman and all that sort of thing, and capital company. I wonder she never told us about you. She knew we were coming out here, for I told her, and she was very interested.”
“Yes, it’s odd, for I suppose she had read Mr. Haystoun’s book, where my husband comes in a good deal. I shall tell her about seeing you in my next letter. And now tell me your plans.”
Lewis’s face had begun to burn in a most compromising way. Those last days in Glenavelin had risen again before the eye of his mind and old wounds were reopened. The thought that Alice was not yet wholly out of his life, that the new world was not utterly severed from the old, affected him with a miserable delight. Mrs. Logan became invested with an extraordinary interest. He pulled himself together to answer her question.
“Oh, our errand is much the same as last time. We want to get all the sport we can, and if possible to cross the mountains into Turkestan. I am rather keen on geographical work just now, and there’s a bit of land up here which wants exploring.”
The lady laughed. “That sounds like poor dear Mr. Gribton. I suppose you remember him? He left here in the summer, but when he lived in Bardur he had got that northern frontier-line on the brain. He was a horrible bore, for he would always work the conversation round to it sooner or later. I think it was really Mr. Gribton who made people often lose interest in these questions. They had to assume an indolent attitude in pure opposition to his fussiness.”
“When will your husband be home?” Lewis asked.
“In two days, or possibly three. I am so sorry about it. I’ll wire at once, but it’s a slow journey, especially if he is bringing ponies. Of course you want to see him before you start. It’s such a pity, but Bardur is fearfully empty of men just now. Captain Thwaite has gone off after ibex, and though I think he will be back to-morrow, I am afraid he will be too late for my dance. Oh, really, this is lucky. I had forgotten all about it. Of course you two will come. That will make two more men, and we shall be quite a respectable party. We are having a dance to-morrow night, and as the English people here are so few and uncertain in their movements we can’t afford to miss a chance. Youmustcome. I’ve got the Thwaites and the Beresfords and the Waltons, and some of the garrison people who are down on leave. Oh, and there’s a man coming whom you must know. A Mr. Marker, a most delightful person. I don’t think you met him before, but you must have heard my husband talk about him. He is the very man for your purpose. Gilbert says he knows the hills better than any of the Hunza tribesmen, and that he is the best sportsman he ever met. Besides, he is such an interesting person, very much a man of the world, you know, who has been everywhere and knows everybody.”
Lewis congratulated himself on his luck. “I should like very much to come to the dance, and I especially want to meet Mr. Marker.”
“He is half Scotch, too,” said the lady. “His mother was a Kirkpatrick or some name like that, and he actually seems to talk English with a kind of Scotch accent. Of course that may be the German part of him. He is a Pomeranian count or something of the sort, and very rich. You might get him to go with you into the hills.”
“I wish we could,” said Lewis falsely. His curiosity was keenly excited.
“Why does he come up here such a lot?” George asked.
“I suppose because he likes to ‘knock about,’ as you call it. He is a tremendous traveller. He has been into Tibet and all over Turkestan and Persia. Gilbert says that he is the wonder of the age.”
“Is he here just now?”
“No, I don’t think so. I know he is coming to-morrow, because he wrote me about it, and promised to come to my dance. But he is a very busy man, so I don’t suppose he will arrive till just before. He wrote me from Gilgit, so he may find Gilbert there and bring him up with him.”
Marker, Marker. The air seemed full of the strange name. Lewis saw again Wratislaw’s wrinkled face when he talked of him, and remembered his words. “You were within an ace of meeting one of the cleverest men living, a cheerful being in whom the Foreign Office is more interested than in any one else in the world.” Wratislaw had never been in the habit of talking without good authority. This Marker must be indeed a gentleman of parts.
Then conversation dwindled. Lewis, his mind torn between bitter memories and the pressing necessities of his mission, lent a stupid ear to Mrs. Logan’s mild complaints, her gossip about Bardur, her eager questions about home. George manfully took his place, and by a fortunate clumsiness steered the flow of the lady’s talk from Glenavelin and the Wisharts. Lewis spoke now and then, when appealed to, but he was busy thinking out his own problem. On the morrow night he should meet Marker, and his work would reveal itself. Meanwhile he was in the dark, the flimsiest adventurer on the wildest of errands. This easy, settled place, these Englishmen whose minds held fast by polo and games, these English ladies who had no thought beyond little social devices to relieve the monotony of the frontier, all seemed to make a mockery of his task. He had fondly imagined himself going to a certainty of toil and danger; to his vexation this certainty seemed to be changing into the most conventional of visits to the most normal of places. But to-morrow he should see Marker; and his hope revived at the prospect.
“It is so pleasant seeing two fresh fellow-countrymen,” Mrs. Logan was saying. “Do you know, you two people look quite different from our men up here. They are all so dried up and tired out. Our complexions are all gone, and our eyes have got that weariness of the sun in them which never goes away even when we go home again. But you two look quite keen and fresh and enthusiastic. You mustn’t mind compliments from an old woman, but I wish our own people looked as nice as you. You will make us all homesick.”
A native servant entered, more noiseless and more dignified than any English footman, and announced another visitor. Lewis lifted his head, and saw the lady rise, smiling, to greet a tall man who had come in with the frankness of a privileged acquaintance. “How do you do, Mr. Marker?” he heard. “I am so glad to see you. We didn’t dare to expect you till to-morrow. May I introduce two English friends, Mr. Haystoun and Mr. Winterham?”
And so the meeting came about in the simplest way. Lewis found himself shaking hands cordially with a man who stood upright, quite in the English fashion, and smiled genially on the two strangers. Then he took the vacant chair by Mrs. Logan, and answered the lady’s questions with the ease and kindliness of one who knows and likes his fellow-creatures. He deplored Logan’s absence, grew enthusiastic about the dance, and produced from a pocket certain sweetmeats, not made in Kashmir, for the two children. Then he turned to George and asked pleasantly about the journey. How did they find the roads from Gilgit? He hoped they would get good sport, and if he could be of any service, would they command him? He had heard of Lewis’s former visit, and, of course, he had read his book. The most striking book of travel he had seen for long. Of course he didn’t agree with certain things, but each man for his own view; and he should like to talk over the matter with Mr. Haystoun. Were they staying long? At Galetti’s of course? By good luck that was also his headquarters. And so he talked pleasingly, in the style of a lady’s drawing-room, while Lewis, his mind consumed with interest, sat puzzling out the discords in his face.
“Do you know, Mr. Marker, we were talking about you before you came in. I was telling Mr. Haystoun that I thought you were half Scotch. Mr. Haystoun, you know, lives in Scotland.”
“Do you really? Then I am a thousand times delighted to meet you, for I have many connections with Scotland. My grandmother was a Scotswoman, and though I have never been in your beautiful land, yet I have known many of your people. And, indeed, I have heard of one of your name who was a friend of my father’s—a certain Mr. Haystoun of Etterick.”
“My father,” said Lewis.
“Ah, I am so pleased to hear. My father and he met often in Paris, when they were attached to their different embassies. My father was in the German service.”
“Your mother was Russian, was she not?” Lewis asked tactlessly, impelled by he knew not what motive.
“Ah, how did you know?” Mr. Marker smiled in reply, with the slightest raising of the eyebrows. “I have indeed the blood of many nationalities in my veins. Would that I were equally familiar with all nations, for I know less of Russia than I know of Scotland. We in Germany are their near neighbours, and love them, as you do here, something less than ourselves.”
He talked English with that pleasing sincerity which seems inseparable from the speech of foreigners, who use a purer and more formal idiom than ourselves. George looked anxiously towards Lewis, with a question in his eyes, but finding his companion abstracted, he spoke himself.
“I have just arrived,” said the other simply; “but it was from a different direction. I have been shooting in the hills, getting cool air into my lungs after the valleys. Why, Mrs. Logan, I have been down to Rawal Pindi since I saw you last, and have been choked with the sun. We northerners do not take kindly to glare and dust.”
“But you are an old hand here, they tell me. I wish you’d show me the ropes, you know. I’m very keen, but as ignorant as a babe. What sort of rifles do they use here? I wish you’d come and look at my ironmongery.” And George plunged into technicalities.
When Lewis rose to leave, following unwillingly the convention which forbids a guest to stay more than five minutes after a new visitor has arrived, Marker crossed the room with them. “If you’re not engaged for to-night, Mr. Haystoun, will you do me the honour to dine with me? I am alone, and I think we might manage to find things to talk about.” Lewis accepted gladly, and with one of his sweetest smiles the gentleman returned to Mrs. Logan’s side.
“I have heard of you so much,” Mr. Marker said, “and it was a lucky chance which brought me to Bardur to meet you.” They had taken their cigars out to the verandah, and were drinking the strong Persian coffee, with a prospect before them of twinkling town lights, and a mountain line of rock and snow. Their host had put on evening clothes and wore a braided dinner-jacket which gave the faintest touch of the foreigner to his appearance. At dinner he had talked well of a score of things. He had answered George’s questions on sport with the readiness of an expert; he had told a dozen good stories, and in an easy, pleasant way he had gossiped of books and places, people and politics. His knowledge struck both men as uncanny. Persons of minute significance in Parliament were not unknown to him, and he was ready with a theory or an explanation on the most recondite matters. But coffee and cigars found him a different man. He ceased to be the enthusiast, the omnivorous and versatile inquirer, and relapsed into the ordinary good fellow, who is no cleverer than his neighbours.
“We’re confoundedly obliged to you,” said George. “Haystoun is keen enough, but when he was out last time he seems to have been very slack about the sport.”
“Sort of student of frontier peoples and politics, as the newspapers call it. I fancy that game is, what you say, ‘played out’ a little nowadays. It is always a good cry for alarmist newspapers to send up their circulation by, but you and I, my friend, who have mixed with serious politicians, know its value.”
George nodded. He liked to be considered a person of importance, and he wanted the conversation to get back to ibex.
“I speak as of a different nation,” Marker said, looking towards Lewis. “But I find the curse of modern times is this mock-seriousness. Some centuries ago men and women were serious about honour and love and religion. Nowadays we are frivolous and sceptical about these things, but we are deadly in earnest about fads. Plans to abolish war, schemes to reform criminals, and raise the condition of woman, and supply the Bada-Mawidi with tooth-picks are sure of the most respectful treatment and august patronage.”
“I agree,” said Lewis. “The Bada-Mawidi live there?” And he pointed to the hill line.
Marker nodded. He had used the name inadvertently as an illustration, and he had no wish to answer questions on the subject.
“A troublesome tribe, rather?” asked Lewis, noticing the momentary hesitation.
“In the past. Now they are quiet enough.”
“But I understood that there was a ferment in the Pamirs. The other side threatened, you know.” He had almost said “your side,” but checked himself.
“Ah yes, there are rumours of a rising, but that is further west. The Bada-Mawidi are too poor to raise two swords in the whole tribe. You will come across them if you go north, and I can recommend them as excellent beaters.”
“Is the north the best shooting quarter?” asked Lewis with sharp eyes. “I am just a little keen on some geographical work, and if I can join both I shall be glad. Due north is the Russian frontier?
“Due north after some scores of the most precipitous miles in the world. It is a preposterous country. I myself have been on the verge of it, and know it as well as most. The geographical importance, too, is absurdly exaggerated. It has never been mapped because there is nothing about it to map, no passes, no river, no conspicuous mountain, nothing but desolate, unvaried rock. The pass to Yarkand goes to the east, and the Afghan routes are to the west. But to the north you come to a wall, and if you have wings you may get beyond it. The Bada-Mawidi live in some of the wretched nullahs. There is sport, of course, of a kind, but not perhaps the best. I should recommend you to try the more easterly hills.”
The speaker’s manner was destitute of all attempt to dissuade, and yet Lewis felt in some remote way that this man was trying to dissuade him. The rock-wall, the Bada-Mawidi, whatever it was, something existed between Bardur and the Russian frontier which this pleasant gentleman did not wish him to see.
“Our plans are all vague,” he said, “and of course we are glad of your advice.”
“And I am glad to give it, though in many ways you know the place better than I do. Your book is the work of a very clever and observant man, if you will excuse my saying so. I was thankful to find that you were not the ordinary embryo-publicist who looks at the frontier hills from Bardur, and then rushes home and talks about invasion.”
“You think there is no danger, then?”
“On the contrary, I honestly think that there is danger, but from a different direction. Britain is getting sick, and when she is sick enough, some people who are less sick will overwhelm her. My own opinion is that Russia will be the people.”
“But is not that one of the old cries that you object to?” and Lewis smiled.
“It was; now it is ceasing to be a cry, and passing into a fact, or as much a fact as that erroneous form of gratuity, prophecy, can be. Look at Western Europe and you cannot disbelieve the evidence of your own eyes. In France you have anarchy, the vulgarest frivolity and the cheapest scepticism, joined with a sort of dull capacity for routine work. Germany, the very heart of it eaten out with sentiment, either the cheap military or the vague socialist brand. Spain and Italy shadows, Denmark and Sweden farces, Turkey a sinful anachronism.”
“And Britain?” George asked.
“My Scotch blood gives me the right to speak my mind,” said the man, laughing. “Honestly I don’t find things much better in Britain. You were always famous for a dogged common sense which was never tricked with catch-words, and yet the British people seem to be growing nervous and ingenuous. The cult of abstract ideals, which has been the curse of the world since Adam, is as strong with you as elsewhere. The philosophy of ‘gush’ is good enough in its place, but it is the devil in politics.”
“That is true enough,” said Lewis solemnly. “And then you are losing grip. A belief in sentiment means a disbelief in competence and strength, and that is the last and fatalest heresy. And a belief in sentiment means a foolish scepticism towards the great things of life. There is none of the blood and bone left for honest belief. You hold your religion half-heartedly. Honest fanaticism is a thing intolerable to you. You are all mild, rational sentimentalists, and I would not give a ton of it for an ounce of good prejudice.” George and Lewis laughed.
“And Russia?” they asked.
“Ah, there I have hope. You have a great people, uneducated and unspoiled. They are physically strong, and they have been trained by centuries of serfdom to discipline and hardships. Also, there is fire smouldering somewhere. You must remember that Russia is the stepdaughter of the East. The people are northern in the truest sense, but they have a little of Eastern superstition. A rational, sentimental people live in towns or market gardens, like your English country, but great lonely plains and forests somehow do not agree with that sort of creed. That slow people can still believe freshly and simply, and some day when the leader arrives they will push beyond their boundaries and sweep down on Western Europe, as their ancestors did thirteen hundred years ago. And you have no walls of Rome to resist them, and I do not think you will find a Charlemagne. Good heavens! What can your latter-day philosophic person, who weighs every action and believes only in himself, do against an unwearied people with the fear of God in their hearts? When that day comes, my masters, we shall have a new empire, the Holy Eastern Empire, and this rotten surface civilization of ours will be swept off. It is always the way. Men get into the habit of believing that they can settle everything by talk, and fancy themselves the arbiters of the world, and then suddenly the great man arrives, your Caesar or Cromwell, and clears out the talkers.”
“I’ve heard something like that before. In fact, on occasions I have said it myself. It’s a pretty idea. How long do you give thisVolkerwanderungto get started?”
“It will not be in our time,” said the man sadly. “I confess I am rather anxious for it to come off. Europe is a dull place at present, given up to Jews and old women. But I am an irreclaimable wanderer, and it is some time since I have been home. Things may be already changing.”
“Scarcely,” said Lewis. “And meantime where is this Slav invasion going to begin? I suppose they will start with us here, before they cross the Channel?”
“Undoubtedly. But Britain is the least sick of the crew, so she may be left in peace till the confirmed invalids are destroyed. At the best it will be a difficult work. Our countrymen, you will permit the name, my friends, have unexpected possibilities in their blood. And even this India will be a hard nut to crack. It is assumed that Russia has but to find Britain napping, buy a passage from the more northerly tribes, and sweep down on the Punjab. I need not tell you how impossible such a land invasion is. It is my opinion that when the time comes the attack will be by sea from some naval base on the Persian Gulf. It is a mere matter of time till Persia is the Tsar’s territory, and then they may begin to think about invasion.”
“You think the northern road impossible! I suppose you ought to know.”
“I do, and I have some reason for my opinion. I know Afghanistan and Chitral as few Europeans know it.”
“But what about Bardur, and this Kashmir frontier? I can understand the difficulties of the Khyber, but this Kashmir road looks promising.”
Marker laughed a great, good-humoured, tolerant, incredulous laugh. “My dear sir, that’s the most utter nonsense. How are you to bring an army over a rock wall which a chamois hunter could scarcely climb? An invading army is not a collection of winged fowl. I grant you Bardur is a good starting-point if it were once reached. But you might as well think of a Chinese as of a Russian invasion from the north. It would be a good deal more possible, for there is a road to Yarkand, and respectable passes to the north-east. But here we are shut off from the Oxus by as difficult a barrier as the Elburz. Go up and see. There is some shooting to be had, and you will see for yourself the sort of country between here and Taghati.”
“But people come over here sometimes.”
“Yes, from the south, or by Afghanistan.”
“Not always. What about the Korabaut Pass into Chitral? Ianoff and the Cossacks came through it.”
“That’s true,” said the man, as if in deep thought. “I had forgotten, but the band was small and the thing was a real adventure.”
“And then you have Gromchevtsky. He brought his people right down through the Pamirs.”
For a second the man’s laughing ease deserted him. He leaned his head forward and peered keenly into Lewis’s face. Then, as if to cover his discomposure, he fell into the extreme of bluff amusement. The exaggeration was plain to both his hearers.
“Oh yes, there was poor old Gromchevtsky. But then you know he was what you call ‘daft,’ and one never knew how much to believe. He had hatred of the English on the brain, and he went about the northern valleys making all sorts of wild promises on the part of the Tsar. A great Russian army was soon to come down from the hills and restore the valleys to their former owners. And then, after he had talked all this nonsense, and actually managed to create some small excitement among the tribesmen, the good fellow disappeared. No man knows where he went. The odd thing is that I believe he has never been heard of again in Russia to this day. Of course his mission, as he loved to call it, was perfectly unauthorized, and the man himself was a creature of farce. He probably came either by the Khyber or the Korabaut Pass, possibly even by the ordinary caravan-route from Yarkand, but felt it necessary for his mission’s sake to pretend he had found some way through the rock barrier. I am afraid I cannot allow him to be taken seriously.”
Lewis yawned and reached out his hand for the cigars. “In any case it is merely a question of speculative interest. We shall not fall just yet, though you think so badly of us.”
“You will not fall just yet,” said Marker slowly, “but that is not your fault. You British have sold your souls for something less than the conventional mess of pottage. You are ruled in the first place by money-bags, and the faddists whom they support to blind your eyes. If I were a young man in your country with my future to make, do you know what I would do? I would slave in the Stock Exchange. I would spend my days and nights in the pursuit of fortune, and, by heaven, I would get it. Then I would rule the market and break, crush, quietly and ruthlessly, the whole gang of Jew speculators and vulgarians who would corrupt a great country. Money is power with you, and I should attain it, and use it to crush the leeches who suck our blood.”
“Good man,” said George, laughing. “That’s my way of thinking. Never heard it better put.”
“I have felt the same,” said Lewis. “When I read of ‘rings’ and ‘corners’ and ‘trusts’ and the misery and vulgarity of it all, I have often wished to have a try myself, and see whether average brains and clean blood could not beat these fellows on their own ground.”
“Then why did you not?” asked Marker. “You were rich enough to make a proper beginning.”
“I expect I was too slack. I wanted to try the thing, but there was so much that was repulsive that I never quite got the length of trying. Besides, I have a bad habit of seeing both sides of a question. The ordinary arguments seemed to me weak, and it was too much fag to work out an attitude for oneself.”
Marker looked sharply at Lewis, and George for a moment saw and contrasted the two faces. Lewis’s keen, kindly, humorous, cultured, with strong lines ending weakly, a face over-bred, brave and finical; the other’s sharp, eager, with the hungry wolf-like air of ambition, every line graven in steel, and the whole transfused, as it were, by the fire of the eyes into the living presentment of human vigour.
It was the eternal contrast of qualities, and for a moment in George’s mind there rose a delight that two such goodly pieces of manhood should have found a meeting-ground.
“I think, you know, that we are not quite so bad as you make out,” said Lewis quietly. “To an outsider we must appear on the brink of incapacity, but then it is not the first time we have produced that impression. You will still find men who in all their spiritual sickness have kept something of that restless, hard-bitten northern energy, and that fierce hunger for righteousness, which is hard to fight with. Scores of people, who can see no truth in the world and are sick with doubt and introspection and all the latter-day devils, have yet something of pride and honour in their souls which will make them show well at the last. If we are going to fall our end will not be quite inglorious.”
Marker laughed and rose. “I am afraid I must leave you now. I have to see my servant, for I am off to-morrow. This has been a delightful meeting. I propose that we drink to its speedy repetition.”
They drank, clinking glasses in continental fashion, and the host shook hands and departed.
“Good chap,” was George’s comment. “Put us up to a wrinkle or two, and seemed pretty sound in his politics. I wish I could get him to come and stop with me at home. Do you think we shall run across him again?”
Lewis was looking at the fast vanishing lights of the town. “I should think it highly probable,” he said.
THEREis another quarter in Bardur besides the English one. Down by the stream side there are narrow streets built on the scarp of the rock, hovels with deep rock cellars, and a wonderful amount of cubic space beneath the brushwood thatch. There the trader from Yarkand who has contraband wares to dispose of may hold a safe market. And if you were to go at nightfall into this quarter, where the foot of the Kashmir policeman rarely penetrates, you might find shaggy tribesmen who have been all their lives outlaws, walking unmolested to visit their friends, and certain Jewish gentlemen, members of the great family who have conquered the world, engaged in the pursuit of their unlawful calling.
Marker speedily left the broader streets of the European quarter, and plunged down a steep alley which led to the stream. Half way down there was a lane to the left in the line of hovels, and, after stopping a moment to consider, he entered this. It was narrow and dark, but smelt cleanly enough of the dry granite sand. There were little dark apertures in the huts, which might have been either doors or windows, and at one of these he stopped, lit a match, and examined it closely. The result was satisfactory; for the man, who had hitherto been crouching, straightened himself up and knocked. The door opened instantaneously, and he bowed his tall head to enter a narrow passage. This brought him into a miniature courtyard, about thirty feet across, above which gleamed a patch of violet sky, sown with stars. Below a door on the right a light shone, and this he pushed open, and entered a little room.
The place was richly furnished, with low couches and Persian tables, and on the floor a bright matting. The short, square-set man sitting smoking on the divan we have already met at a certain village in the mountains. Fazir Khan, descendant of Abraham, and father and chief of the Bada-Mawidi, has a nervous eye and an uneasy face to-night, for it is a hard thing for a mountaineer, an inhabitant of great spaces, to sit with composure in a trap-like room in the citadel of a foe who has many acts of rape and murder to avenge on his body. To do Fazir Khan justice he strove to conceal his restlessness under the usual impassive calm of his race. He turned his head slightly as Marker entered, nodded gravely over the bowl of his pipe, and pointed to the seat at the far end of the divan.
“It is a dark night,” he said. “I heard you stumbling on the causeway before you entered. And I have many miles to cover before dawn.”
Marker nodded. “Then you must make haste, my friend. You must be in the hills by daybreak, for I have some errands I want you to do for me. I have to-night been dining with two strangers, who have come up from the south.”
The chief’s eyes sparkled. “Do they suspect?”
“Nothing in particular, everything in general. They are English. One was here before and got far up into your mountains. He wrote a clever book when he returned, which made people think. They say their errand is sport, and it may be. On the other hand I have a doubt. One has not the air of the common sportsman. He thinks too much, and his eyes have a haggard look. It is possible that they are in their Government’s services and have come to reconnoitre.”
“Then we are lost,” said Fazir Khan sourly. “It was always a fool’s plan, at the mercy of any wandering Englishman.”
“Not so,” said Marker. “Nothing is lost, and nothing will be lost. But I fear these two men. They do not bluster and talk at random like the others. They are so very quiet that they may mean danger.”
“They must remain here,” said the chief. “Give me the word, and I will send one of my men to hough their horses and, if need be, cripple themselves.”
Marker laughed. “You are an honest fool, Fazir Khan. That sort of thing is past now. We live in the wrong times and places for it. We cannot keep them here, but we must send them on a goose-chase. Do you understand?”
“I understand nothing. I am a simple man and my ways are simple, and not as yours.”
“Then attend to my words, my friend. Our expedition must be changed and made two days sooner. That will give these two Englishmen three days only to checkmate it. Besides, they are ignorant, and to-morrow is lost to them, for they go to a ball at the Logan woman’s. Still, I fear them with two days to work in. If they go north, they are clever and suspicious, and they may see or fancy enough to wreck our plans. They may have the way barred, and we know how little would bar the way.”
“Ten resolute men,” said the chief. “Nay, I myself, with my two sons, would hold a force at bay there.”
“If that is true, how much need is there to be wary beforehand! Since we cannot prevent these men from meddling, we can give them rope to meddle in small matters. Let us assume that they have been sent out by their Government. They are the common make of Englishmen, worshipping a god which they call their honour. They will do their duty if they can find it out. Now there is but one plan, to create a duty for them which will take them out of the way.”
The chief was listening with half-closed eyes. He saw new trouble for himself and was not cheerful.
“Do you know how many men Holm has with him at the Forza camp?”
“A score and a half. Some of my people passed that way yesterday, when the soldiers were parading.”
“And there are two more camps?
“There are two beyond the Nazri Pass, on the fringe of the Doorab hills. We call the places Khautmi-sa and Khautmi-bana, but the English have their own names for them.”
Marker nodded.
“I know the places. They are Gurkha camps. The officers are called Mitchinson and St. John. They will give us little trouble. But the Forza garrison is too near the pass for safety, and yet far enough away for my plans.” And for a moment the man’s eyes were abstracted, as if in deep thought.
“I have another thing to tell of the Forza camp,” the chief interrupted. “The captain, the man whom they call Holm, is sick, so sick that he cannot remain there. He went out shooting and came too near to dangerous places, so a bullet of one of my people’s guns found his leg. He will be coming to Bardur to-morrow. Is it your wish that he be prevented?
“Let him come,” said Marker. “He will suit my purpose. Now I will tell you your task, Fazir Khan, for it is time that you took the road. You will take a hundred of the Bada-Mawidi and put them in the rocks round the Forza camp. Let them fire a few shots but do no great damage, lest this man Holm dare not leave. If I know the man at all, he will only hurry the quicker when he hears word of trouble, for he has no stomach for danger, if he can get out of it creditably. So he will come down here to-morrow with a tale of the Bada-Mawidi in arms, and find no men in the place to speak of, except these two strangers. I will have already warned them of this intended rising, and if, as I believe, they serve the Government, they will let no grass grow below their feet till they get to Forza. Then on the day after let your tribesmen attack the place, not so as to take it, but so as to make a good show of fight and keep the garrison employed. This will keep these young men quiet; they will think that all rumours they may have heard culminate in this rising of yours, and they will be content, and satisfied that they have done their duty. Then, the day after, while they are idling at Forza, we will slip through the passes, and after that there will be no need for ruses.”
The chief rose and pulled himself up to his full height. “After that,” he said, “there will be work for men. God! We shall harry the valleys as our forefathers harried them, and we shall suck the juicy plains dry. You will give us a free hand, my lord?”
“Your hand shall be free enough,” said Marker. “But see that every word of my bidding is done. We fail utterly unless all is secret and swift. It is the lion attacking the village. If he crosses the trap gate safely he may ravage at his pleasure, but there is first the trap to cross. And now it is your time to leave.”
The mountaineer tightened his girdle, and exchanged his slippers for deer-hide boots. He bowed gravely to the other and slipped out into the darkness of the court. Marker drew forth some plans and writing materials from his great-coat pocket and spread them before him on the table. It was a thing he had done a hundred times within the last week, and as he made his calculations again and traced his route anew, his action showed the tinge of nervousness to which the strongest natures at times must yield. Then he wrote a letter, and, yawning deeply, he shut up the place and returned to Galetti’s.
WHENLewis had finished breakfast next morning, and was sitting idly on the verandah watching the busy life of the bazaar at his feet, a letter was brought him by a hotel servant. “It was left for you by Marker Sahib, when he went away this morning. He sent his compliments to the sahibs and regretted that he had to leave too early to speak with them, but he left this note.” Lewis broke the envelope and read:
DEAR MR. HAYSTOUN,When I was thinking over our conversation last night, chance put a piece of information in my way which you may think fit to use. You know that I am more intimate than most people with the hill tribes. Well, let this be the guarantee of my news, but do not ask how I got it, for I cannot betray friends. Some of these, the Bada-Mawidi to wit, are meditating mischief. The Forza camp, which I think you have visited—a place some twenty miles off—is too near those villages to be safe. So to-morrow at latest they have planned to make a general attack upon it, and, unless the garrison were prepared, I should fear for the result, for they are the most cunning scoundrels in the world. What puzzles me is how they have ever screwed up the courage for such a move, for lately they were very much in fear of the Government. It appears as if they looked for backing from over the frontier. You will say that this proves your theory; but to me it merely seems as if some maniac of the Gromchevtsky type had got among them. In any case I wish something could be done. My duties take me away at once, and in a very different direction, but perhaps you could find some means of putting the camp on their guard. I should be sorry to hear of a tragedy; also I should be sorry to see the Bada-Mawidi get into trouble. They are foolish blackguards, but amusing.Yours most sincerely,ARTHUR MARKER.
DEAR MR. HAYSTOUN,
When I was thinking over our conversation last night, chance put a piece of information in my way which you may think fit to use. You know that I am more intimate than most people with the hill tribes. Well, let this be the guarantee of my news, but do not ask how I got it, for I cannot betray friends. Some of these, the Bada-Mawidi to wit, are meditating mischief. The Forza camp, which I think you have visited—a place some twenty miles off—is too near those villages to be safe. So to-morrow at latest they have planned to make a general attack upon it, and, unless the garrison were prepared, I should fear for the result, for they are the most cunning scoundrels in the world. What puzzles me is how they have ever screwed up the courage for such a move, for lately they were very much in fear of the Government. It appears as if they looked for backing from over the frontier. You will say that this proves your theory; but to me it merely seems as if some maniac of the Gromchevtsky type had got among them. In any case I wish something could be done. My duties take me away at once, and in a very different direction, but perhaps you could find some means of putting the camp on their guard. I should be sorry to hear of a tragedy; also I should be sorry to see the Bada-Mawidi get into trouble. They are foolish blackguards, but amusing.
Yours most sincerely,
ARTHUR MARKER.
Lewis read the strange letter several times through, then passed it to George. George read it with difficulty, not being accustomed to a flowing frontier hand. “Jolly decent of him, I call it,” was his remark.
“I would give a lot to know what to make of it. The man is playing some game, but what the deuce it is I can’t fathom.”
“I suppose we had better get up to that Forza place as soon as we can.”
“I think not,” said Lewis.
“The man’s honest, surely?”
“But he is also clever. Remember who he is. He may wish to get us out of the way. I don’t suppose that he can possibly fear us, but he may want the coast clear from suspicious spectators. Besides, I don’t see the good of Forza. It is not the part of the hills I want to explore. There can be no frontier danger there, and at the worst there can be nothing more than a little tribal disturbance. Now what on earth would Russia gain by moving the tribes there, except as a blind?”
“Still, you know, the man admits all that in his letter. And if the people up there are going to be in trouble we ought to go and give them notice.”
“I’ll take an hour to think over it, and then I’ll go and see Thwaite. He was to be back this morning.”
Lewis spread the letter before him. It was a simple, friendly note, giving him a chance of doing a good turn to friends. His clear course was to lay it before Thwaite and shift the responsibility for action to his shoulders. But he felt all the while that this letter had a personal application which he could not conceal. It would have been as easy for Marker to send the note to Thwaite, whom he had long known. But he had chosen to warn him privately. It might be a ruse, but he had no glimpse of the meaning. Or, again, it might be a piece of pure friendliness, a chance of unofficial adventure given by one wanderer to another. He puzzled it out, lamenting that he was so deep in the dark, and cursing his indecision. Another man would have made up his mind long ago; it was a ruse, therefore let it be neglected and remain in Bardur with open eyes; it was good faith and a good chance, therefore let him go at once. But to Lewis the possibilities seemed endless, and he could find no solution save the old one of the waverer, to wait for further light.
He found Thwaite at breakfast, just returned from his travels.
“Hullo, Haystoun. I heard you were here. Awfully glad to see you. Sit down, won’t you, and have some breakfast.” The officer was a long man, with a thin, long face, a reddish moustache, and small, blue eyes.
“I came to ask you questions, if you don’t mind. I have the regular globe-trotter’s trick of wanting information. What’s the Forza camp like? Do you think that the Bada-Mawidi, supposing they stir again, would be likely to attack it?”
“Not a bit of it. That was the sort of thing that Gribton was always croaking about. Why, man, the Bada-Mawidi haven’t a kick in them. Besides, they are very nearly twenty miles off and the garrison’s a very fit lot. They’re all right. Trust them to look after themselves.”
“But I have been hearing stories of Bada-Mawidi risings which are to come off soon.”
“Oh, you’ll always hear stories of that sort. All the old women in the neighbourhood purvey them.”
“Who are in charge at Forza?”
“Holm and Andover. Don’t care much for Holm, but Andy is a good chap. But what’s this new interest of yours? Are you going up there?
“I’m out here to shoot and explore, you know, so Forza comes into my beat. Thanks very much. See you to-night, I suppose.”
Lewis went away dispirited and out of temper. He had been pitchforked among easy-going people, when all the while mysterious things, dangerous things, seemed to hang in the air. He had not the material for even the first stages of comprehension. No one suspected, every one was satisfied; and at the same time came those broken hints of other things. He felt choked and muffled, wrapped in the cotton-wool of this easy life; and all the afternoon he chafed at his own impotence and the world’s stupidity.
When the two travellers presented themselves at the Logans’ house that evening, they were immediately seized upon by the hostess and compelled, to their amusement, to do her bidding. They were her discoveries, her new young men, and as such, they had their responsibilities. George, who liked dancing, obeyed meekly; but Lewis, being out of temper and seeing before him an endless succession of wearisome partners, soon broke loose, and accompanied Thwaite to the verandah for a cigar.
The man was ill at ease, and the sight of young faces and the sound of laughter vexed him with a sense of his eccentricity. He could never, like George, take the world as he found it. At home he was the slave of his own incapacity; now he was the slave of memories. He had come out on an errand, with a chance to recover his lost self-respect, and lo! he was as far as ever from attainment. His lost capacity for action was not to be found here, in the midst of this petty diplomacy and inglorious ease.
From the verandah a broad belt of lawn ran down to the edge of the north road. It lay shining in the moonlight like a field of snow with the highway a dark ribbon beyond it. Thwaite and Lewis walked down to the gate talking casually, and at the gate they stopped and looked down on the town. It lay a little to the left, the fort rising black before it, and the road ending in a patch of shade which was the old town gate. The night was very still, cool airs blew noiselessly from the hills, and a jackal barked hoarsely in some far-off thicket.
The men hung listlessly on the gate, drinking in the cool air and watching the blue cigar smoke wreathe and fade. Suddenly down the road there came the sound of wheels.
“That’s a tonga,” said Thwaite. “Wonder who it is.”
“Do tongas travel this road?” Lewis asked.
“Oh yes, they go ten miles up to the foot of the rocks. We use them for sending up odds and ends to the garrisons. After that coolies are the only conveyance. Gad, I believe this thing is going to stop.”
The thing in question, which was driven by a sepoy in bright yellow pyjamas, stopped at the Logans’ gate. A peevish voice was heard giving directions from within.
“It sounds like Holm,” said Thwaite, walking up to it, “and upon my soul it is Holm. What on earth are you doing here, my dear fellow?”
“Is that you, Thwaite?” said the voice. “I wish you’d help me out. I want Logan to give me a bed for the night. I’m infernally ill.”
Lewis looked within and saw a pale face and bloodshot eyes which did not belie the words.
“What is it?” said Thwaite. “Fever or anything smashed?”
“I’ve got a bullet in my leg which has got to be cut out. Got it two days ago when I was out shooting. Some natives up in the rocks did it, I fancy. Lord, how it hurts.” And the unhappy man groaned as he tried to move.
“That’s bad,” said Thwaite sympathetically. “The Logans have got a dance on, but we’ll look after you all right. How did you leave things in Forza?”
“Bad. I oughtn’t to be here, but Andy insisted. He said I would only get worse and crock entirely. Things look a bit wild up there just now. There has been a confounded lot of rifle-stealing, and the Bada-Mawidi are troublesome. However, I hope it’s only their fun.”
“I hope so,” said Thwaite. “You know Haystoun, don’t you?”
“Glad to meet you,” said the man. “Heard of you. Coming up our way? I hope you will after I get this beastly leg of mine better.”
“Thwaite will tell you I have been cross-examining him about your place. I wanted badly to ask you about it, for I got a letter this morning from a man called Marker with some news for you.”
“What did he say?” asked Holm sharply.
“He said that he had heard privately that the Bada-Mawidi were planning an attack on you to-morrow or the day after.”
“The deuce they are,” said Holm peevishly, and Thwaite’s face lengthened.
“And he told me to find some way of letting you know.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me earlier?” said Thwaite. “Marker should know if anybody does. We should have kept Holm up there. Now it’s almost too late. Oh, this is the devil!”
Lewis held his peace. He had forgotten the solidity of Marker’s reputation.
“What’s the chances of the place?” Thwaite was asking. “I know your numbers and all that, but are they anything like prepared?”
“I don’t know,” said Holm miserably. “They might get on all right, but everybody is pretty slack just now. Andy has a touch of fever, and some of the men may get leave for shooting. I must get back at once.”
“You can’t. Why, man, you couldn’t get half way. And what’s more, I can’t go. This place wants all the looking after it can get. A row in the hills means a very good possibility of a row in Bardur, and that is too dangerous a game. And besides myself there is scarcely a man in the place who counts. Logan has gone to Gilgit, and there’s nobody left but boys.”
“If you don’t mind I should like to go,” said Lewis shamefacedly.
“You,” they cried. “Do you know the road?”
“I’ve been there before, and I remember it more or less. Besides, it is really my show this time. I got the warning, and I want the credit.” And he smiled.
“The road’s bound to be risky,” said Thwaite thoughtfully. “I don’t feel inclined to let you run your neck into danger like this.”
Lewis was busy turning over the problem in his mind. The presence of the man Holm seemed the one link of proof he needed. He had his word that there were signs of trouble in the place, and that the Bada-Mawidi were ill at ease. Whatever game Marker was playing, on this matter he seemed to have spoken in good faith. Here was a clear piece of work for him. And even if it was fruitless it would bring him nearer to the frontier; his expedition to the north would be begun.
“Let me go,” he said. “I came out here to explore the hills and I take all risks on my own head. I can give them Marker’s message as well as anybody else.”
Thwaite looked at Holm. “I don’t see why he shouldn’t. You’re a wreck, and I can’t leave my own place.”
“Tell Andy you saw me,” cried Holm. “He’ll be anxious. And tell him to mind the north gate. If the fools knew how to use dynamite they might have it down at once. If they attack it can’t last long, but then they can’t last long either, for they are hard up for arms, and unless they have changed since last week they have no ammunition to speak of.”
“Marker said it looked as if they were being put up to the job from over the frontier.”
“Gad, then it’s my turn to look out,” said Thwaite. “If it’s the gentlemen from over the frontier they won’t stop at Forza. Lord, I hate this border business, it’s so hideously in the dark. But I think that’s all rot. Any tribal row here is sure to be set down to Russian influence. We don’t understand the joint possession of an artificial frontier,” he added, with an air of quoting from some book.
“Did you get that from Marker?” Holm asked crossly. “He once said the same thing to me.” His temper had suffered badly among the hills.
“We’d better get you to bed, my dear fellow,” said Thwaite, looking down at him. “You look remarkably cheap. Would you mind going in and trying to find Mrs. Logan, Haystoun? I’ll carry this chap in. Stop a minute, though. Perhaps he’s got something to say to you.”
“Mind the north gate ... tell Andy I’m all right and make him look after himself ... he’s overworking ... if you want to send a message to the other people you’d better send by Nazri ... if the Badas mean business they’ll shut up the road you go by. That’s all. Good luck and thanks very much.”
Lewis found Mrs. Logan making a final inspection of the supper-room. She ran to the garden, to find the invalid Holm in Thwaite’s arms at the steps of the verandah. The sick warrior pulled off an imaginary cap and smiled feebly.
“Oh, Mr. Holm, I’m so sorry. Of course we can have you. I’ll put you in the other end of the house where you won’t be so much troubled with the noise. You must have had a dreadful journey.” And so forth, with the easy condolences of a kind woman.
When Thwaite had laid down his burden, he turned to Lewis.
“I wish we had another man, Haystoun. What about your friend Winterham? One’s enough to do your work, but if the thing turns out to be serious, there ought to be some means of sending word. Andover will want you to stay, for they are short-handed enough.”
“I’ll get Winterham to go and wait for me somewhere. If I don’t turn up by a certain time, he can come and look for me.”
“That will do,” said Thwaite, “though it’s a stale job for him. Well, good-bye and good luck to you. I expect there won’t be much trouble, but I wish you had told us in the morning.”
Lewis turned to go and find George. “What a chance I had almost missed,” was the word in his heart. The errand might be futile, the message a blind, but it was at least movement, action, a possibility.
HEfound George sitting down in the verandah after waltzing. His partner was a sister of Logan’s, a dark girl whose husband was Resident somewhere in Lower Kashmir. The lady gave her hand to Lewis and he took the vacant seat on the other side.
He apologized for carrying off her companion, escorted her back to the ballroom, and then returned to satisfy the amazed George.
“I want to talk to you. Excuse my rudeness, but I have explained to Mrs. Tracy. I have a good many things I want to say to you.”
“Where on earth have you been all night, Lewis? I call it confoundedly mean to go off and leave me to do all the heavy work. I’ve never been so busy in my life. Lots of girls and far too few men. This is the first breathing space I’ve had. What is it that you want?”
“I am going off this very moment up into the hills. That letter Marker sent me this morning has been confirmed. Holm, who commands up at the Forza fort, has just come down very sick, and he says that the Bada-Mawidi are looking ugly, and that we should take Marker’s word. He wanted to go back himself but he is too ill, and Thwaite can’t leave here, so I am going. I don’t expect there will be much risk, but in case the rising should be serious I want you to do me a favour.”
“I suppose I can’t come with you,” said George ruefully. “I know I promised to let you go your own way before we came out, but I wish you would let me stick by you. What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing desperate,” said Lewis, laughing. “You can stay on here and dance till sunrise if you like. But to-morrow I want you to come up to a certain place at the foot of the hills which I will tell you about, and wait there. It’s about half distance between Forza and the two Khautmi forts. If the rising turns out to be a simple affair I’ll join you there to-morrow night and we can start our shooting. But if I don’t, I want you to go up to the Khautmi forts and rouse St. John and Mitchinson and get them to send to Forza. Do you see?”
Lewis had taken out a pencil and began to sketch a rough plan on George’s shirt cuff. “This will give you an idea of the place. You can look up a bigger map in the hotel, and Thwaite or any one will give you directions about the road. There’s Forza, and there are the Khautmis about twenty miles west. Half-way between the two is that long Nazri valley, and at the top is a tableland strewn with boulders where you shoot mountain sheep. I’ve been there, and the road between Khautmi and Forza passes over it. I expect it is a very bad road, but apparently you can get a little Kashmir pony to travel it. To the north of that plateau there is said to be nothing but rock and snow for twenty miles to the frontier. That may be so, but if this thing turns out all right we’ll look into the matter. Anyway, you have got to pitch your tent to-morrow on that tableland just above the head of the Nazri gully. With luck I should be able to get to you some time in the afternoon. If I don’t turn up, you go off to Khautmi next morning at daybreak and give them my message. If I can’t come myself I’ll find a way to send word; but if you don’t hear from me it will be fairly serious, for it will mean that the rising is a formidable thing after all. And that, of course, will mean trouble for everybody all round. In that case you’d better do what St. John and Mitchinson tell you. You’re sure to be wanted.”
George’s face cleared. “That sounds rather sport. I’d better bring up the servants. They might turn out useful. And I suppose I’ll bring a couple of rifles for you, in case it’s all a fraud and we want to go shooting. I thought the place was going to be stale, but it promises pretty well now.” And he studied the plan on his shirt cuff. Then an idea came to him.
“Suppose you find no rising. That will mean that Marker’s letter was a blind of some sort. He wanted to get you out of the way or something. What will you do then? Come back here?”
“N—o,” said Lewis hesitatingly. “I think Thwaite is good enough, and I should be no manner of use. You and I will wait up there in the hills on the off-chance of picking up some news. I swear I won’t come back here to hang about and try and discover things. It’s enough to drive a man crazy.”
“It is rather a ghastly place. Wonder how the Logans thrive here. Odd mixture this. Strauss and hill tribes not twenty miles apart.”
Lewis laughed. “I think I prefer the hill tribes. I am not in the humour for Strauss just now. I shall have to be off in an hour, so I am going to change. See you to-morrow, old man.”
George retired to the ballroom, where he had to endure the reproaches of Mrs. Logan. He was an abstracted and silent partner, and in the intervals of dancing he studied his cuff. Miss A talked to him of polo, and Miss B of home; Miss C discovered that they had common friends, and Miss D that she had known his sister. Miss E, who was more observant, saw the cause of his distraction and asked, “What queer hieroglyphics have you got on your cuff, Mr. Winterham?”
George looked down in a bewildered way at his sleeve. “Where on earth have I been?” he asked in wonder. “That’s the worst of being an absent-minded fellow. I’ve been scribbling on my cuff with my programme pencil.”
Soon he escaped, and made his way down to the garden gate, where Thwaite was standing smoking. Asaisheld a saddled pony by the road-side. Lewis, in rough shooting clothes, was preparing to mount. From indoors came the jigging of a waltz tune and the sound of laughter, while far in the north the cliffs of the pass framed a dark blue cleft where the stars shone. George drew in great draughts of the cool, fresh air. “I wish I was coming with you,” he said wistfully.
“You’ll be in time enough to-morrow,” said Lewis. “I wish you’d give him all the information you can about the place, Thwaite. He’s an ignorant beggar. See that he remembers to bring food and matches. The guns are the only things I can promise he won’t forget.”
Then he rode off, the little beast bucking excitedly at the patches of moonlight, and the two men walked back to the house.
“Hope he comes back all right,” said Thwaite. “He’s too good a man to throw away.”
THEroad ran in a straight line through the valley of dry rocks, a dull, modern road, engineered and macadamized up to the edge of the hills. The click of hoofs raised echoes in the silence, for in all the great valley, in the chain of pools in the channel, the acres of sun-dried stone, the granite rocks, the tangle of mountain scrub, there seemed no life of bird or beast. It was a strange, deathly stillness, and overhead the purple sky, sown with a million globes of light, seemed so near and imminent that the glen for the moment was but a vast jewel-lit cavern, and the sky a fretted roof which spanned the mountains.
For the first time Lewis felt the East. Hitherto he had been unable to see anything in his errand but its futility. A stupider man, with a sharp, practical brain, would have taken himself seriously and come to Bardur with an intent and satisfied mind. He would have assumed the air of a diplomatist, have felt the dignity of his mission, and in success and failure have borne himself with self-confidence. But to Lewis the business which loomed serious in England, at Bardur took on the colour of comedy. He felt his impotence, he was touched insensibly by the easy content of the place. Frontier difficulties seemed matters for romance and comic opera; and Bardur resolved itself into an English suburb, all tea-parties and tennis. But at times an austere conscience jogged him to remembrance, and in one such fitful craving for action and enterprise he had found this errand. Now at last, astride the little Kashmir pony, with his face to the polestar and the hills, he felt the mystery of a strange world, and his work assumed a tinge of the adventurer. This was new, he told himself; this was romance. He had his eyes turned to a new land, and the smell of dry mountain sand and scrub, and the vault-like, imperial sky were the earnest of his inheritance. This was the East, the gorgeous, the impenetrable. Before him were the hill deserts, and then the great, warm plains, and the wide rivers, and then on and on to the cold north, the steppes, the icy streams, the untrodden forests. To the west and beyond the mountains were holy mosques, “shady cities of palm trees,” great walled towns to which north and west and south brought their merchandise. And to the east were latitudes more wonderful, the uplands of the world, the impassable borders of the oldest of human cultures. Names rang in his head like tunes—Khiva, Bokhara, Samarkand, the goal of many boyish dreams born of clandestine suppers and the Arabian Nights. It was an old fierce world he was on the brink of, and the nervous frontier civilization fell a thousand miles behind him.
The white road turned to the right with the valley, and the hills crept down to the distance of a gun-shot. The mounting tiers of stone and brawling water caught the moonlight in waves, and now he was in a cold pit of shadow and now in a patch of radiant moonshine. It was a world of fantasy, a rousing world of wintry hill winds and sudden gleams of summer. His spirits rose high, and he forgot all else in plain enjoyment. Now at last he had found life, rich, wild, girt with marvels. He was beginning to whistle some air when his pony shied violently and fell back, and at the same moment a pistol-shot cracked out of a patch of thorn.
He turned the beast and rode straight at the thicket, which was a very little one. The ball had wandered somewhere into the void, and no harm was done, but he was curious about its owner. Up on the hillside he seemed to see a dark figure scrambling among the cliffs in the fretted moonlight.
It is unpleasant to be shot at in the dark from the wayside, but at the moment the thing pleased this strange young man. It seemed a token that at last he was getting to work. He found a rope stretched taut across the road, which accounted for the pony’s stumble. Laughing heartily, he cut it with his knife, and continued, cheerful as before, but somewhat less fantastic. Now he kept a sharp eye on all wayside patches.
At the head of the valley the waters of the stream forked into two torrents, one flowing from the east in an open glen up which ran the road to Yarkand, the other descending from the northern hills in a wild gully. At the foot stood a little hut with an apology for stabling, where an old and dirty gentleman of the Hunza race pursued his calling till such time as he should attract the notice of his friends up in the hills and go to paradise with a slit throat.
Lewis roused the man with a violent knocking at the door. The old ruffian appeared with a sputtering lamp which might have belonged to a cave man, and a head of matted grey hair which suggested the same origin. He was old and suspicious, but at Lewis’s bidding he hobbled forth and pointed out the stabling.
“The pony is to stay here till it is called for. Do you hear? And if Holm Sahib returns and finds that it is not fed he will pay you nothing. So good night, father. Sound sleep and a good conscience.”
He turned to the twisting hill road which ran up from the light into the gloom of the cleft with all the vigour of an old mountaineer who has been long forced to dwell among lowlands. Once a man acquires the art of hill walking he will always find flat country something of a burden, and the mere ascent of a slope will have a tonic’s power. The path was good, but perilous at the best, and the proximity of yawning precipices gave a zest to the travel. The road would fringe a pit of shade, black but for the gleam of mica and the scattered foam of the stream. It was no longer a silent world. Hawks screamed at times from the cliffs, and a multitude of bats and owls flickered in the depths. A continuous falling of waters, an infinite sighing of night winds, the swaying and tossing which is always heard in the midmost mountain solitudes, the crumbling of hill gravel and the bleat of a goat on some hill-side, all made a cheerful accompaniment to the scraping of his boots on the rocky road.
He remembered the way as if he had travelled it yesterday. Soon the gorge would narrow and he would be almost at the water’s edge. Then the path turned to the right and wound into the heart of a side nullah, which at length brought it out on a little plateau of rocks. There the road climbed a long ridge till at last it reached the great plateau, where Forza, set on a small hilltop, watched thirty miles of primeval desert. The air was growing chilly, for the road climbed steeply and already it was many thousand feet above the sea. The curious salt smell which comes from snow and rock was beginning to greet his nostrils. The blood flowed more freely in his veins, and insensibly he squared his shoulders to drink in the cold hill air. It was of the mountains and yet strangely foreign, an air with something woody and alpine in the heart of it, an air born of scrub and snow-clad rock, and not of his own free spaces of heather. But it was hill-born, and this contented him; it was night-born, and it refreshed him. In a little the road turned down to the stream side, and he was on the edge of a long dark pool.
The river, which made a poor show in the broad channel at Bardur, was now, in this straitened place, a full lipping torrent of clear, green water. Lewis bathed his flushed face and drank, and it was as cold as snow. It stung his face to burning, and as he walked the heartsome glow of great physical content began to rise in his heart. He felt fit and ready for any work. Life was quick in his sinews, his brain was a weathercock, his strength was tireless. At last he had found a man’s life. He had never had a chance before. Life had been too easy and sheltered; he had been coddled like a child; he had never roughed it except for his own pleasure. Now he was outside this backbone of the world with a task before him, and only his wits for his servant. Eton and Oxford, Eton and Oxford—so it had been for generations—an education sufficient to damn a race. Stocks was right, and he had all along been wrong; but now he was in a fair way to taste the world’s iron and salt, and he exulted at the prospect.
It was hard walking in the nullah. In and out of great crevices the road wound itself, on the brink of stupendous waterfalls, or in the heart of a brushwood tangle. Soon a clear vault of sky replaced the out-jutting crags, and he came out on a little plateau where a very cold wind was blowing. The smell of snow was in the air, a raw smell like salt when carried on a north wind over miles of granite crags. But on the little tableland the moon was shining clearly. It was green with small cloud-berries and dwarf juniper, and the rooty fragrance was for all the world like an English bolt or a Highland pasture. Lewis flung himself prone and buried his face among the small green leaves. Then, still on the ground, he scanned the endless yellow distance. Mountains, serrated and cleft as in some giant’s play, rose on every hand, while through the hollows gleamed the farther snow-peaks. This little bare plateau must be naked to any eye on any hill-side, and at the thought he got to his feet and advanced.
At first sight the place had looked not a mile long, but before he got to the farther slope he found that it was nearer two. The mountain air had given him extraordinary lightness, and he ran the distance, finding the hard, sandy soil like a track under his feet. The slope, when he had reached it, proved to be abrupt and boulder-strewn, and the path had an ugly trick of avoiding steepness by skirting horrible precipices. Luckily the moon was bright, and the man was an old mountaineer; otherwise he might have found a grave in the crevices which seamed the hill.