CHAPTER XIII
THE INVIDIOUS BAR
Violet Oliver drove back to her camp in the company of her friends andthey remarked upon her silence.
"You are tired, Violet?" her hostess asked of her.
"A little, perhaps," Violet admitted, and, urging fatigue as her excuse,she escaped to her tent. There she took counsel of her looking-glass.
"I couldn't possibly have foreseen that he would be here," she pleaded toher reflection. "He was to have stayed in Chiltistan. I asked him and hetold me that he meant to stay. If he had stayed there, he would neverhave known that I was in India," and she added and repeated, "It's reallynot my fault."
In a word she was distressed and sincerely distressed. But it was notupon her own account. She was not thinking of the awkwardness to her ofthis unexpected encounter. But she realised that she had given pain whereshe had meant not to give pain. Shere Ali had seen her. He had beenassured that she sought to avoid him. And this was not the end. She mustgo on and give more pain.
Violet Oliver had hoped and believed that her friendship with the youngPrince was something which had gone quite out of her life. She had closedit and put it away, as you put away upon an upper shelf a book which youdo not mean to read again. The last word had been spoken eight months agoin the conservatory of Lady Marfield's house. And behold they had metagain. There must be yet another meeting, yet another last interview. Andfrom that last interview nothing but pain could come to Shere Ali.Therefore she anticipated it with a great reluctance. Violet Oliver didnot live among illusions. She was no sentimentalist. She never made upand rehearsed in imagination little scenes of a melting pathos whereeternal adieux were spoken amid tears. She had no appreciation of thewoeful luxury of last interviews. On the contrary, she hated to confrontdistress or pain. It was in her character always to take the easier waywhen trouble threatened. She would have avoided altogether this meetingwith Shere Ali, had it been possible.
"It's a pity," she said, and that was all. She was reluctant, but she hadno misgiving. Shere Ali was to her still the youth to whom she had saidgood-bye in Lady Marfield's conservatory. She had seen him in the flushof victory after a close-fought game, and thus she had seen him oftenenough before. It was not to be wondered at that she noted no differenceat that moment.
But the difference was there for the few who had eyes to see. He hadjourneyed up the broken road into Chiltistan. At the Fort of Chakdara, inthe rice fields on the banks of the Swat river, he had taken his luncheonone day with the English commandant and the English doctor, and there hehad parted with the ways of life which had become to him the only ways.He had travelled thence for a few hundred yards along a straight strip ofroad running over level ground, and so with the levies of Dir to escorthim he swung round to the left. A screen of hillside and grey rock movedacross the face of the country behind him. The last outpost was leftbehind. The Fort and the Signal Tower on the pinnacle opposite and theEnglish flag flying over all were hidden from his sight. Wretched as anyexile from his native land, Shere All went up into the lower passes ofthe Himalayas. Days were to pass and still the high snow-peaks whichglittered in the sky, gold in the noonday, silver in the night time,above the valleys of Chiltistan were to be hidden in the far North. Butalready the words began to be spoken and the little incidents to occurwhich were to ripen him for his destiny. They were garnered into hismemories as separate and unrelated events. It was not until afterwardsthat he came to know how deeply they had left their marks, or that he setthem in an ordered sequence and gave to them a particular significance.Even at the Fort of Chakdara a beginning had been made.
Shere Ali was standing in the little battery on the very summit of theFort. Below him was the oblong enclosure of the men's barracks, the stonelandings and steps, the iron railings, the numbered doors. He looked downinto the enclosure as into a well. It might almost have been a section ofthe barracks at Chatham. But Shere Ali raised his head, and, over againsthim, on the opposite side of a natural gateway in the hills, rose thesteep slope and the Signal Tower.
"I was here," said the Doctor, who stood behind him, "during the Malakandcampaign. You remember it, no doubt?"
"I was at Oxford. I remember it well," said Shere Ali.
"We were hard pressed here, but the handful of men in the Signal Towerhad the worst of it," continued the Doctor in a matter-of-fact voice. "Itwas reckoned that there were fourteen thousand men from the Swat Valleybesieging us, and as they did not mind how many they lost, even with theMaxims and our wire defences it was difficult to keep them off. We had tohold on to the Signal Tower because we could communicate with the peopleon the Malakand from there, while we couldn't from the Fort itself. TheAmandara ridge, on the other side of the valley, as you can see, justhides the Pass from us. Well, the handful of men in the tower managed tokeep in communication with the main force, and this is how it was done. ASepoy called Prem Singh used to come out into full view of the enemythrough a porthole of the tower, deliberately set up his apparatus, andheliograph away to the main force in the Malakand Camp, with the Swatisfiring at him from short range. How it was he was not hit, I could neverunderstand. He did it day after day. It was the bravest and coolest thingI ever saw done or ever heard of, with one exception, perhaps. Prem Singhwould have got the Victoria Cross--" and the Doctor stopped suddenlyand his face flushed.
Shere Ali, however, was too keenly interested in the incident itself totake any note of the narrator's confusion. Baldly though it was told,there was the square, strong tower with its door six feet from theground, its machicoulis, its narrow portholes over against him, to givelife and vividness to the story. Here that brave deed had been done anddaily repeated. Shere Ali peopled the empty slopes which ran down fromthe tower to the river and the high crags beyond the tower with thehordes of white-clad Swatis, all in their finest robes, like men who havejust reached the goal of a holy pilgrimage, as indeed they had. He sawtheir standards, he heard the din of their firearms, and high above themon the wall of the tower he saw the khaki-clad figure of a single Sepoycalmly flashing across the valley news of the defenders' plight.
"Didn't he get the Victoria Cross?" he asked.
"No," returned the Doctor with a certain awkwardness. But still Shere Alidid not notice.
"And what was the exception?" he asked eagerly. "What was the other bravedeed you have seen fit to rank with this?"
"That, too, happened over there," said the Doctor, seizing upon thequestion with relief. "During the early days of the siege we were able tosend in to the tower water and food. But when the first of August came wecould help them no more. The enemy thronged too closely round us, we wereattacked by night and by day, and stone sangars, in which the Swatis layafter dark, were built between us and the tower. We sent up water to thetower for the last time at half-past nine on a Saturday morning, and itwas not until half-past four on the Monday afternoon that the relievingforce marched across the bridge down there and set us free."
"They were without water for all that time--and in August?" criedShere Ali.
"No," the Doctor answered. "But they would have been had the Sepoy notfound his equal. A bheestie"--and he nodded his head to emphasise theword--"not a soldier at all, but a mere water-carrier, a merecamp-follower, volunteered to go down to the river. He crept out of thetower after nightfall with his water-skins, crawled down between thesangars--and I can tell you the hill-side was thick with them--to thebrink of the Swat river below there, filled his skins, and returnedwith them."
"That man, too, earned the Victoria Cross," said Shere Ali.
"Yes," said the Doctor, "no doubt, no doubt."
Something of flurry was again audible in his voice, and this time ShereAli noticed it.
"Earned--but did not get it?" he went on slowly; and turning to theDoctor he waited quietly for an answer. The answer was given reluctantly,after a pause.
"Well! That is so."
"Why?"
The question was uttered sharply, close upon the words which had preced
edit. The Doctor looked upon the ground, shifted his feet, and looked upagain. He was a young man, and inexperienced. The question was repeated.
"Why?"
The Doctor's confusion increased. He recognised that his delay inanswering only made the answer more difficult to give. It could not beevaded. He blurted out the truth apologetically.
"Well, you see, we don't give the Victoria Cross to natives."
Shere Ali was silent for a while. He stood with his eyes fixed upon thetower, his face quite inscrutable.
"Yes, I guessed that would be the reason," he said quietly.
"Well," said his companion uncomfortably, "I expect some day that willbe altered."
Shere Ali shrugged his shoulders, and turned to go down. At the gatewayof the Fort, by the wire bridge, his escort, mounted upon their horses,waited for him. He climbed into the saddle without a word. He had beenlabouring for these last days under a sense of injury, and his thoughtshad narrowed in upon himself. He was thinking. "I, too, then, could neverwin that prize." His conviction that he was really one of the WhitePeople, bolstered up as it had been by so many vain arguments, was put tothe test of fact. The truth shone in upon his mind. For here was acoveted privilege of the White People from which he was debarred, he andthe bheestie and the Sepoy. They were all one, he thought bitterly, tothe White People. The invidious bar of his colour was not to be broken.
"Good-bye," he said, leaning down from his saddle and holding out hishand. "Thank you very much."
He shook hands with the Doctor and cantered down the road, with a smileupon his face. But the consciousness of the invidious bar was ranklingcruelly at his heart, and it continued to rankle long after he had swunground the bend of the road and had lost sight of Chakdara and theEnglish flag.
He passed through Jandol and climbed the Lowari Pass among the fir treesand the pines, and on the very summit he met three men clothed in brownhomespun with their hair clubbed at the sides of their heads. Each mancarried a rifle on his back and two of them carried swords besides, andthey wore sandals of grass upon their feet. They were talking as theywent, and they were talking in the Chilti tongue. Shere Ali hailed themand bade them stop.
"On what journey are you going?" he asked, and one of the three bowed lowand answered him.
"Sir, we are going to Mecca."
"To Mecca!" exclaimed Shere Ali. "How will you ever get to Mecca? Haveyou money?"
"Sir, we have each six rupees, and with six rupees a man may reach Meccafrom Kurrachee. Till we reach Kurrachee, there is no fear that we shallstarve. Dwellers in the villages will befriend us."
"Why, that is true," said Shere Ali, "but since you are countrymen of myown and my father's subjects, you shall not tax too heavily your friendsupon the road."
He added to their scanty store of rupees, and one after another theythanked him and so went cheerily down the Pass. Shere Ali watched them asthey went, wondering that men should take such a journey and endure somuch discomfort for their faith. He watched their dwindling figures andunderstood how far he was set apart from them. He was of their faithhimself, nominally at all events, but Mecca--? He shrugged hisshoulders at the name. It meant no more to him than it did to the WhitePeople who had cast him out. But that chance meeting lingered in hismemory, and as he travelled northwards, he would wonder at times by nightat what village his three countrymen slept and by day whether their faithstill cheered them on their road.
He came at last to the borders of Chiltistan, and travelled thenceforwardthrough a country rich with orchards and green rice and golden amaranth.The terraced slopes of the mountains, ablaze with wild indigo, closed inupon him and widened out. Above the terraces great dark forests of pinesand deodars, maples and horse chestnuts clung to the hill sides; andabove the forests grass slopes stretched up to bare rock and thesnowfields. From the villages the people came out to meet him, and hereand there from some castle of a greater importance a chieftain would rideout with his bodyguard, gay in velvets, and silks from Bokhara and chogasof gold kinkob, and offer to him gold dust twisted up in the petal of aflower, which he touched and remitted. He was escorted to polo-groundsand sat for hours witnessing sports and trials of skill, and at night tothe music of kettledrums and pipes men and boys danced interminablybefore him. There was one evening which he particularly remembered. Hehad set up his camp outside a large village and was sitting alone by hisfire in the open air. The night was very still, the sky dark but studdedwith stars extraordinarily bright--so bright, indeed, that Shere Alicould see upon the water of the river below the low cliff on which hiscamp fire was lit a trembling golden path made by the rays of a planet.And as he sat, unexpectedly in the hush a boy with a clear, sweet voicebegan to sing from the darkness behind him. The melody was plaintive andsweet; a few notes of a pipe accompanied him; and as Shere Ali listenedin this high valley of the Himalayas on a summer's night, the music tookhold upon him and wrung his heart. The yearning for all that he had leftbehind became a pain almost beyond endurance. The days of his boyhood andhis youth went by before his eyes in a glittering procession. His schoollife, his first summer term at Oxford, the Cherwell with the shadows ofthe branches overhead dappling the water, the strenuous week of theEights, his climbs with Linforth, and, above all, London in June, aLondon bright with lilac and sunshine and the fair faces of women,crowded in upon his memory. He had been steadily of late refusing toremember, but the sweet voice and the plaintive melody had caught himunawares. The ghosts of his dead pleasures trooped out and took life andsubstance. Particular hours were lived through again--a motor ride alonewith Violet Oliver to Pangbourne, a dinner on the lawn outside the inn,the drive back to London in the cool of the evening. It all seemed veryfar away to-night. Shere Ali sat late beside his fire, nor when he wentinto his tent did he close his eyes.
The next morning he rode among orchards bright with apricots andmulberries, peaches and white grapes, and in another day he looked downfrom a high cliff, across which the road was carried on a scaffolding,upon the town of Kohara and the castle of his father rising in terracesupon a hill behind. The nobles and their followers came out to meet himwith courteous words and protestations of good will. But they looked himover with curious and not too friendly eyes. News had gone before ShereAli that the young Prince of Chiltistan was coming to Kohara wearing thedress of the White People. They saw that the news was true, but no wordor comment was uttered in his hearing. Joking and laughing they escortedhim to the gates of his father's palace. Thus Shere Ali at the last hadcome home to Kohara. Of the life which he lived there he was to tellsomething to Violet Oliver.