CHAPTER XXXI
AN OLD TOMB AND A NEW SHRINE
The messenger whom Ralston sent with a sealed letter to the Resident atKohara left Peshawur in the afternoon and travelled up the road by way ofDir and the Lowari Pass. He travelled quickly, spending little of histime at the rest-houses on the way, and yet arrived no sooner on thataccount. It was not he at all who brought his news to Kohara. Neitherletter nor messenger, indeed, ever reached the Resident's door, althoughCaptain Phillips learned something of the letter's contents a day beforethe messenger was due. A queer, and to use his own epithet, a dramaticstroke of fortune aided him at a very critical moment.
It happened in this way. While Captain Phillips was smoking a cheroot ashe sat over his correspondence in the morning, a servant from the greatPalace on the hill brought to him a letter in the Khan's ownhandwriting. It was a flowery letter and invoked many blessings upon theKhan's faithful friend and brother, and wound up with a single sentence,like a lady's postscript, in which the whole object of the letter wascontained. Would his Excellency the Captain, in spite of hisoverwhelming duties, of which the Khan was well aware, since they alltended to the great benefit and prosperity of his State, be kind enoughto pay a visit to the Khan that day?
"What's the old rascal up to now?" thought Captain Phillips. He replied,with less ornament and fewer flourishes, that he would come afterbreakfast; and mounting his horse at the appointed time he rode downthrough the wide street of Kohara and up the hill at the end, on theterraced slopes of which climbed the gardens and mud walls of the Palace.He was led at once into the big reception-room with the painted walls andthe silver-gilt chairs, where the Khan had once received his son with aloaded rifle across his knees. The Khan was now seated with his courtiersabout him, and was carving the rind of a pomegranate into patterns, likea man with his thoughts far away. But he welcomed Captain Phillips withalacrity and at once dismissed his Court.
Captain Phillips settled down patiently in his chair. He was well awareof the course the interview would take. The Khan would talk away withoutany apparent aim for an hour or two hours, passing carelessly fromsubject to subject, and then suddenly the important question would beasked, the important subject mooted. On this occasion, however, the Khancame with unusual rapidity to his point. A few inquiries as to theColonel's health, a short oration on the backwardness of the crops, alengthier one upon his fidelity to and friendship for the BritishGovernment and the miserable return ever made to him for it, and thencame a question ludicrously inapposite and put with the solemn _naivet,_of a child.
"I suppose you know," said the Khan, tugging at his great grey beard,"that my grandfather married a fairy for one of his wives?"
It was on the strength of such abrupt questions that strangers were aptto think that the Khan had fallen into his second childhood before histime. But the Resident knew his man. He was aware that the Khan waswatching for his answer. He sat up in his chair and answered politely:
"So, your Highness, I have heard."
"Yes, it is true," continued the Khan. "Moreover, the fairy bore him adaughter who is still alive, though very old."
"So there is still a fairy in the family," replied Captain Phillipspleasantly, while he wondered what in the world the Khan was driving at."Yes, indeed, I know that. For only a week ago I was asked by a poor manup the valley to secure your Highness's intercession. It seems that he ismuch plagued by a fairy who has taken possession of his house, and sinceyour Highness is related to the fairies, he would be very grateful if youwould persuade his fairy to go away."
"I know," said the Khan gravely. "The case has already been brought tome. The fellow _will_ open closed boxes in his house, and the fairyresents it."
"Then your Highness has exorcised the fairy?"
"No; I have forbidden him to open boxes in his house," said the Khan; andthen, with a smile, "But it was not of him we were speaking, but of thefairy in my family."
He leaned forward and his voice shook.
"She sends me warnings, Captain Sahib. Two nights ago, by the flat stonewhere the fairies dance, she heard them--the voices of an innumerablemultitude in the air talking the Chilti tongue--talking of trouble tocome in the near days."
He spoke with burning eyes fixed upon the Resident and with his fingersplaying nervously in and out among the hairs of his beard. Whether theKhan really believed the story of the fairies--there is nothing moreusual than a belief in fairies in the countries bordered by thesnow-peaks of the Hindu Kush--or whether he used the story as a blind toconceal the real source of his fear, the Resident could not decide. Butwhat he did know was this: The Khan of Chiltistan was desperately afraid.A whole programme of reform was sketched out for the Captain's hearing.
"I have been a good friend to the English, Captain Sahib. I have kept myMullahs and my people quiet all these years. There are things which mightbe better, as your Excellency has courteously pointed out to me, and thewords have never been forgotten. The taxes no doubt are very burdensome,and it may be the caravans from Bokhara and Central Asia should pay lessto the treasury as they pass through Chiltistan, and perhaps I dounjustly in buying what I want from them at my own price." Thus hedelicately described the system of barefaced robbery which he practisedon the traders who passed southwards to India through Chiltistan. "Butthese things can be altered. Moreover," and here he spoke with an air ofdistinguished virtue, "I propose to sell no more of my people intoslavery--No, and to give none of them, not even the youngest, as presentsto my friends. It is quite true of course that the wood which I sell tothe merchants of Peshawur is cut and brought down by forced labour, butnext year I am thinking of paying. I have been a good friend to theEnglish all my life, Colonel Sahib."
Captain Phillips had heard promises of the kind before and accounted themat their true value. But he had never heard them delivered with soearnest a protestation. And he rode away from the Palace with thedisturbing conviction that there was something new in the wind of whichhe did not know.
He rode up the valley, pondering what that something new might be.Hillside and plain were ablaze with autumn colours. The fruit in theorchards--peaches, apples, and grapes--was ripe, and on the river bankthe gold of the willows glowed among thickets of red rose. High up on thehills, field rose above field, supported by stone walls. In the bosom ofthe valley groups of great walnut-trees marked where the villages stood.
Captain Phillips rode through the villages. Everywhere he was met withsmiling faces and courteous salutes; but he drew no comfort from them.The Chilti would smile pleasantly while he was fitting his knife in underyour fifth rib. Only once did Phillips receive a hint that something wasamiss, but the hint was so elusive that it did no more than quicken hisuneasiness.
He was riding over grass, and came silently upon a man whose back wasturned to him.
"So, Dadu," he said quietly, "you must not open closed boxes any more inyour house."
The man jumped round. He was not merely surprised, he was startled.
"Your Excellency rides up the valley?" he cried, and almost hebarred the way.
"Why not, Dadu?"
Dadu's face became impassive.
"It is as your Excellency wills. It is a good day for a ride," said Dadu;and Captain Phillips rode on.
It might of course have been that the man had been startled merely by theunexpected voice behind him; and the question which had leaped from hismouth might have meant nothing at all. Captain Phillips turned round inhis saddle. Dadu was still standing where he had left him, and wasfollowing the rider with his eyes.
"I wonder if there is anything up the valley which I ought to knowabout?" Captain Phillips said to himself, and he rode forward now with awatchful eye. The hills began to close in; the bosom of the valley tonarrow. Nine miles from Kohara it became a defile through which the riverroared between low precipitous cliffs. Above the cliffs on each side alevel of stony ground, which here and there had been cleared andcultivated, stretched to the mountain walls. At one point a great fan ofdeb
ris spread out from a side valley. Across this fan the track mounted,and then once more the valley widened out. On the river's edge a rooflessruin of a building, with a garden run wild at one end of it, stood apart.A few hundred yards beyond there was a village buried among bushes, andthen a deep nullah cut clean across the valley. It was a lonely and adesolate spot. Yet Captain Phillips never rode across the fan of shaleand came within sight of it but his imagination began to people it withliving figures and a surge of wild events. He reined in his horse as hecame to the brow of the hill, and sat for a moment looking downwards.Then he rode very quickly a few yards down the hill. Before, he and hishorse had been standing out clear against the sky. Now, against thebackground of grey and brown he would be an unnoticeable figure.
He halted again, but this time his eyes, instead of roving over thevalley, were fixed intently upon one particular spot. Under the wall ofthe great ruined building he had seen something move. He made sure now ofwhat the something was. There were half a dozen horses--no, seven--sevenhorses tethered apart from each other, and not a syce for any one ofthem. Captain Phillips felt his blood quicken. The Khan's protestationsand Dadu's startled question, had primed him to expectation. Cautiouslyhe rode down into the valley, and suspense grew upon him as he rode. Itwas a still, windless day, and noise carried far. The only sound he heardwas the sound of the stones rattling under the hoofs of his horse. But ina little while he reached turf and level ground and so rode forward insilence. When he was within a couple of hundred yards of the ruin hehalted and tied up his horse in a grove of trees. Thence he walked acrossan open space, passed beneath the remnant of a gateway into a court and,crossing the court, threaded his way through a network of narrow alleysbetween crumbling mud walls. As he advanced the sound of a voice reachedhis ears--a deep monotonous voice, which spoke with a kind of rhythm. Thewords Phillips could not distinguish, but there was no need that heshould. The intonation, the flow of the sentences, told him clearlyenough that somewhere beyond was a man praying. And then he stopped, forother voices broke suddenly in with loud and, as it seemed to Phillips,with fierce appeals. But the appeals died away, the one voice again tookup the prayer, and again Phillips stepped forward.
At the end of the alley he came to a doorway in a high wall. There was nodoor. He stood on the threshold of the doorway and looked in. He lookedinto a court open to the sky, and the seven horses and the monotonousvoice were explained to him. There were seven young men--nobles ofChiltistan, as Phillips knew from their _chogas_ of velvet and Chinesesilk--gathered in the court. They were kneeling with their backs towardshim and the doorway, so that not one of them had noticed his approach.They were facing a small rough-hewn obelisk of stone which stood at thehead of a low mound of earth at the far end of the court. Six of themwere grouped in a sort of semi-circle, and the seventh, a man clad fromhead to foot in green robes, knelt a little in advance and alone. Butfrom none of the seven nobles did the voice proceed. In front of them allknelt an old man in the brown homespun of the people. Phillips, from thedoorway, could see his great beard wagging as he prayed, and knew him forone of the incendiary priests of Chiltistan.
The prayer was one with which Phillips was familiar: The Day was at hand;the infidels would be scattered as chaff; the God of Mahommed wasbesought to send the innumerable company of his angels and to make hisfaithful people invulnerable to wounds. Phillips could have gone on withthe prayer himself, had the Mullah failed. But it was not the prayerwhich held him rooted to the spot, but the setting of the prayer.
The scene was in itself strange and significant enough. These seven gailyrobed youths assembled secretly in a lonely and desolate ruin nine milesfrom Kohara had come thither not merely for prayer. The prayer would bebut the seal upon a compact, the blessing upon an undertaking where lifeand death were the issues. But there was something more; and thatsomething more gave to the scene in Phillips' eyes a very startlingirony. He knew well how quickly in these countries the actual record ofevents is confused, and how quickly any tomb, or any monument becomes ashrine before which "the faithful" will bow and make their prayer. Butthat here of all places, and before this tomb of all tombs, the God ofthe Mahommedans should be invoked--this was life turning playwright witha vengeance. It needed just one more detail to complete the picture andthe next moment that detail was provided. For Phillips moved.
His boot rattled upon a loose stone. The prayer ceased, the worshippersrose abruptly to their feet and turned as one man towards the doorway.Phillips saw, face to face, the youth robed in green, who had knelt atthe head of his companions. It was Shere Ali, the Prince of Chiltistan.
Phillips advanced at once into the centre of the group. He was wiseenough not to hold out his hand lest it should be refused. But he spokeas though he had taken leave of Shere Ali only yesterday.
"So your Highness has returned?"
"Yes," replied Shere Ali, and he spoke in the same indifferent tone.
But both men knew, however unconcernedly they spoke, that Shere Ali'sreturn was to be momentous in the history of Chiltistan. Shere Ali'sfather knew it too, that troubled man in the Palace above Kohara.
"When did you reach Kohara?" Phillips asked.
"I have not yet been to Kohara. I ride down from here this afternoon."
Shere Ali smiled as he spoke, and the smile said more than the words.There was a challenge, a defiance in it, which were unmistakable. ButPhillips chose to interpret the words quite simply.
"Shall we go together?" he said, and then he looked towards the doorway.The others had gathered there, the six young men and the priest. Theywere armed and more than one had his hand ready upon his swordhilt. "Butyou have friends, I see," he added grimly. He began to wonder whether hewould himself ride back to Kohara that afternoon.
"Yes," replied Shere Ali quietly, "I have friends in Chiltistan," and helaid a stress upon the name of his country, as though he wished to showto Captain Phillips that he recognised no friends outside its borders.
Again Phillips' thoughts were swept to the irony, the tragic irony of thescene in which he now was called to play a part.
"Does your Highness know this spot?" he asked suddenly. Then he pointedto the tomb and the rude obelisk. "Does your Highness know whose bonesare laid at the foot of that monument?"
Shere Ali shrugged his shoulders.
"Within these walls, in one of these roofless rooms, you were born," saidPhillips, "and that grave before which you prayed is the grave of a mannamed Luffe, who defended this fort in those days."
"It is not," replied Shere Ali. "It is the tomb of a saint," and hecalled to the mullah for corroboration of his words.
"It is the tomb of Luffe. He fell in this courtyard, struck down not by abullet, but by overwork and the strain of the siege. I know. I have thestory from an old soldier whom I met in Cashmere this summer and whoserved here under Luffe. Luffe fell in this court, and when he died wasburied here."
Shere Ali, in spite of himself was beginning to listen to CaptainPhillips' words.
"Who was the soldier?" he asked.
"Colonel Dewes."
Shere Ali nodded his head as though he had expected the name. Then hesaid as he turned away:
"What is Luffe to me? What should I know of Luffe?"
"This," said Phillips, and he spoke in so arresting a voice that ShereAli turned again to listen to him. "When Luffe was dying, he uttered anappeal--he bequeathed it to India, as his last service; and the appealwas that you should not be sent to England, that neither Eton nor Oxfordshould know you, that you should remain in your own country."
The Resident had Shere Ali's attention now.
"He said that?" cried the Prince in a startled voice. Then he pointed hisfinger to the grave. "The man lying there said that?"
"Yes."
"And no one listened, I suppose?" said Shere Ali bitterly.
"Or listened too late," said Phillips. "Like Dewes, who only since he metyou in Calcutta one day upon the racecourse, seems dimly to haveunderstood the words th
e dead man spoke."
Shere Ali was silent. He stood looking at the grave and the obelisk witha gentler face than he had shown before.
"Why did he not wish it?" he asked at length.
"He said that it would mean unhappiness for you; that it might mean ruinfor Chiltistan."
"Did he say that?" said Shere Ali slowly, and there was something of awein his voice. Then he recovered himself and cried defiantly. "Yet in onepoint he was wrong. It will not mean ruin for Chiltistan."
So far he had spoken in English. Now he turned quickly towards hisfriends and spoke in his own tongue.
"It is time. We will go," and to Captain Phillips he said, "You shallride back with me to Kohara. I will leave you at the doorway of theResidency." And these words, too, he spoke in his own tongue.
There rose a clamour among the seven who waited in the doorway, andloudest of all rose the voice of the mullah, protesting against ShereAli's promise.
"My word is given," said the Prince, and he turned with a smile toCaptain Phillips. "In memory of my friend,"--he pointed to thegrave--"For it seems I had a friend once amongst the white people. Inmemory of my friend, I give you your life."