CHAPTER IV
LUFFE LOOKS FORWARD
It was the mine underneath the North Tower which brought the career ofLuffe to an end. The garrison, indeed, had lived in fear of this perilever since the siege began. But inasmuch as no attempt to mine had beenmade during the first month, the fear had grown dim. It was revivedduring the fifth week. The officers were at mess at nine o'clock in theevening, when a havildar of Sikhs burst into the courtyard with the newsthat the sound of a pick could be heard from the chamber of the tower.
"At last!" cried Dewes, springing to his feet. The six men hurried to thetower. A long loophole had been fashioned in the thick wall on a downwardslant, so that a marksman might command anyone who crept forward to firethe fort. Against this loophole Luffe leaned his ear.
"Do you hear anything, sir?" asked a subaltern of the Sappers who wasattached to the force.
"Hush!" said Luffe.
He listened, and he heard quite clearly underneath the ground below himthe dull shock of a pickaxe. The noise came almost from beneath his feet;so near the mine had been already driven to the walls. The strokes fellwith the regularity of the ticking of a clock. But at times the soundchanged in character. The muffled thud of the pick upon earth became aclang as it struck upon stone.
"Do you listen!" said Luffe, giving way to Dewes, and Dewes in his turnleaned his ear against the loophole.
"What do you think?" asked Luffe.
Dewes stood up straight again.
"I'll tell you what I am thinking. I am thinking it sounds like thebeating of a clock in a room where a man lies dying," he said.
Luffe nodded his head. But images and romantic sayings struck no responsefrom him. He turned to the young Sapper.
"Can we countermine?"
The young Engineer took the place of Major Dewes.
"We can try, but we are late," said he.
"It must be a sortie then," said Luffe.
"Yes," exclaimed Lynes eagerly. "Let me go, Sir Charles!"
Luffe smiled at his enthusiasm.
"How many men will you require?" he asked. "Sixty?"
"A hundred," replied Dewes promptly.
All that night Luffe superintended the digging of the countermine, whileDewes made ready for the sortie. By daybreak the arrangements werecompleted. The gunpowder bags, with their fuses attached, weredistributed, the gates were suddenly flung open, and Lynes raced out witha hundred Ghurkhas and Sikhs across the fifty yards of open ground to thesangar behind which the mine shaft had been opened. The work of thehundred men was quick and complete. Within half an hour, Lynes, himselfwounded, had brought back his force, and left the mine destroyed. Butduring that half-hour disaster had fallen upon the garrison. Luffe haddropped as he was walking back across the courtyard to his office. For afew minutes he lay unnoticed in the empty square, his face upturned tothe sky, and then a clamorous sound of lamentation was heard and anorderly came running through the alleys of the Fort, crying out that theColonel Sahib was dead.
He was not dead, however. He recovered conciousness that night, and earlyin the morning Dewes was roused from his sleep. He woke to find theDoctor shaking him by the shoulder.
"Luffe wants you. He has not got very long now. He has something to say."
Dewes slipped on his clothes, and hurried down the stairs. He followedthe Doctor through the little winding alleys which gave to the Fort theappearance of a tiny village. It was broad daylight, but the fortress wasstrangely silent. The people whom he passed either spoke not at all orspoke only in low tones. They sat huddled in groups, waiting. Fear wasabroad that morning. It was known that the brain of the defence wasdying. It was known, too, what cruel fate awaited those within the Fort,if those without ever forced the gates and burst in upon their victims.
Dewes found the Political Officer propped up on pillows on his camp-bed.The door from the courtyard was open, and the morning light pouredbrightly into the room.
"Sit here, close to me, Dewes," said Luffe in a whisper, "andlisten, for I am very tired." A smile came upon his face. "Do youremember Linforth's letters? How that phrase came again and again:'I am very tired.'"
The Doctor arranged the pillows underneath his shoulders, and thenLuffe said:
"All right. I shall do now."
He waited until the Doctor had gone from the room and continued:
"I am not going to talk to you about the Fort. The defence is safe inyour hands, so long as defence is possible. Besides, if it falls it's nota great thing. The troops will come up and trample down Wafadar Nazim andAbdulla Mahommed. They are not the danger. The road will go on again,even though Linforth's dead. No, the man whom I am afraid of is--the sonof the Khan."
Dewes stared, and then said in a soothing voice:
"He will be looked after."
"You think my mind's wandering," continued Luffe. "It never was clearerin my life. The Khan's son is a boy a week old. Nevertheless I tell youthat boy is the danger in Chiltistan. The father--we know him. A goodfellow who has lost all the confidence of his people. There is hardly anadherent of his who genuinely likes him; there's hardly a man in thisFort who doesn't believe that he wished to sell his country to theBritish. I should think he is impossible here in the future. And everyonein Government House knows it. We shall do the usual thing, I have nodoubt--pension him off, settle him down comfortably outside the bordersof Chiltistan, and rule the country as trustee for his son--until the soncomes of age."
Dewes realised surely enough that Luffe was in possession of hisfaculties, but he thought his anxiety exaggerated.
"You are looking rather far ahead, aren't you, sir?" he asked.
Luffe smiled.
"Twenty-one years. What are twenty-one years to India? My dear Dewes!"
He was silent. It seemed as though he were hesitating whether he wouldsay a word more to this Major who in India talked of twenty-one years asa long span of time. But there was no one else to whom he could confidehis fears. If Dewes was not brilliant, he was at all events all thatthere was.
"I wish I was going to live," he cried in a low voice of exasperation. "Iwish I could last just long enough to travel down to Calcutta and _make_them listen to me. But there's no hope of it. You must do what you can,Dewes, but very likely they won't pay any attention to you. Very likelyyou'll believe me wrong yourself, eh? Poor old Luffe, a man with a bee inhis bonnet, eh?" he whispered savagely.
"No, sir," replied Dewes. "You know the Frontier. I know that."
"And even there you are wrong. No man knows the Frontier. We are allstumbling in the dark among these peoples, with their gentle voices andtheir cut-throat ways. The most that you can know is that you arestumbling in the dark. Well, let's get back to the boy here. This countrywill be kept for him, for twenty-one years. Where is he going to beduring those twenty-one years?"
Dewes caught at the question as an opportunity for reassuring thePolitical Officer.
"Why, sir, the Khan told us. Have you forgotten? He is to go to Eton andOxford. He'll see something of England. He will learn--" and Major Dewesstopped short, baffled by the look of hopelessness upon the PoliticalOfficer's face.
"I think you are all mad," said Luffe, and he suddenly started up in hisbed and cried with vehemence, "You take these boys to England. You trainthem in the ways of the West, the ideas of the West, and then you sendthem back again to the East, to rule over Eastern people, according toEastern ideas, and you think all is well. I tell you, Dewes, it's sheerlunacy. Of course it's true--this boy won't perhaps suffer in esteemamong his people quite as much as others have done. He belongs and hispeople belong to the Maulai sect. The laws of religion are not strictamong them. They drink wine, they eat what they will, they do not losecaste so easily. But you have to look at the man as he will be, thehybrid mixture of East and West."
He sank back among his pillows, exhausted by the violence of his outcry,and for a little while he was silent. Then he began again, but this timein a low, pleading voice, which was very unusual in him, and which
keptthe words he spoke vivid and fresh in Dewes' memory for many years tocome. Indeed, Dewes would not have believed that Luffe could have spokenon any subject with so much wistfulness.
"Listen to me, Dewes. I have lived for the Frontier. I have had no otherinterest, almost no other ties. I am not a man of friends. I believed atone time Linforth was my friend. I believed I liked him very much. But Ithink now that it was only because he was bound up with the Frontier. TheFrontier has been my wife, my children, my home, my one long and lastingpassion. And I am very well content that it has been so. I don't regretmissed opportunities of happiness. What I regret is that I shall not bealive in twenty-one years to avert the danger I foresee, or to laugh atmy fears if I am wrong. They can do what they like in Rajputana andBengal and Bombay. But on the Frontier I want things to go well. Oh, howI want them to go well!"
Luffe had grown very pale, and the sweat glistened upon his forehead.Dewes held to his lips a glass of brandy which stood upon a tablebeside the bed.
"What danger do you foresee?" asked Dewes. "I will remember what yousay."
"Yes, remember it; write it out, so that you may remember it, and din itinto their ears at Government House," said Luffe. "You take these boys,you give them Oxford, a season in London--did you ever have a season inLondon when you were twenty-one, Dewes? You show them Paris. You givethem opportunities of enjoyment, such as no other age, no other placeaffords--has ever afforded. You give them, for a short while, a life ofcolour, of swift crowding hours of pleasure, and then you send themback--to settle down in their native States, and obey the orders of theResident. Do you think they will be content? Do you think they will havetheir heart in their work, in their humdrum life, in their elaborateceremonies? Oh, there are instances enough to convince if only peoplewould listen. There's a youth now in the South, the heir of an Indianthrone--he has six weeks' holiday. How does he use it, do you think? Hetravels hard to England, spends a week there, and travels back again. InEngland he is treated as an _equal_; here, in spite of his ceremonies, heis an _inferior_, and will and must be so. The best you can hope is thathe will be merely unhappy. You pray that he won't take to drink and makehis friends among the jockeys and the trainers. He has lost the taste forthe native life, and nevertheless he has got to live it.Besides--besides--I haven't told you the worst of it."
Dewes leaned forward. The sincerity of Luffe had gained upon him. "Let mehear all," he said.
"There is the white woman," continued Luffe. "The English woman, theEnglish girl, with her daintiness, her pretty frocks, her good looks,her delicate charm. Very likely she only thinks of him as a picturesquefigure; she dances with him, but she does not take him seriously. Yes,but he may take her seriously, and often does. What then? When he istold to go back to his State and settle down, what then? Will he becontent with a wife of his own people? He is already a stranger amonghis own folk. He will eat out his heart with bitterness and jealousy.And, mind you, I am speaking of the best--the best of the Princes andthe best of the English women. What of the others? The English women whotake his pearls, and the Princes who come back and boast of theirsuccess. Do you think that is good for British rule in India? Give mesomething to drink!"
Luffe poured out his vehement convictions to his companion, wishing withall his heart that he had one of the great ones of the Viceroy's Councilat his side, instead of this zealous but somewhat commonplace Major of aSikh regiment. All the more, therefore, must he husband his strength, sothat all that he had in mind might be remembered. There would be littlechance, perhaps, of it bearing fruit. Still, even that little chance mustbe grasped. And so in that high castle beneath the Himalayas, besieged byinsurgent tribes, a dying Political Officer discoursed upon this questionof high policy.
"I told you of a supper I had one night at the Savoy--do youremember? You all looked sufficiently astonished when I told you tobear it in mind."
"Yes, I remember," said Dewes.
"Very well. I told you I learned something from the lady who was with mewhich it was good for me to know. I saw something which it was good forme to see. Good--yes, but not pleasant either to know or see. There was ayoung Prince in England then. He dined in high places and afterwardssupped at the Savoy with the _coryphees;_ and both in the high places andamong the _coryphees_ his jewels had made him welcome. This is truth I amtelling you. He was a boaster. Well, after supper that night he threw agirl down the stairs. Never mind what she was--she was of the whiteruling race, she was of the race that rules in India, he comes back toIndia and insolently boasts. Do you approve? Do you think that good?"
"I think it's horrible," exclaimed Dewes.
"Well, I have done," said Luffe. "This youngster is to go to Oxford.Unhappiness and the distrust of his own people will be the best that cancome of it, while ruin and disasters very well may. There are many waysof disaster. Suppose, for instance, this boy were to turn out a strongman. Do you see?"
Dewes nodded his head.
"Yes, I see," he answered, and he answered so because he saw that Luffehad come to the end of his strength. His voice had weakened, he lay withhis eyes sunk deep in his head and a leaden pallor upon his face, and hisbreath laboured as he spoke.
"I am glad," replied Luffe, "that you understand."
But it was not until many years had passed that Dewes saw and understoodthe trouble which was then stirring in Luffe's mind. And even then, whenhe did see and understand, he wondered how much Luffe really hadforeseen. Enough, at all events, to justify his reputation for sagacity.Dewes went out from the bedroom and climbed up on to the roof of theFort. The sun was up, the day already hot, and would have been hotter,but that a light wind stirred among the almond trees in the garden. Theleaves of those trees now actually brushed against the Fort walls. Fiveweeks ago there had been bare stems and branches. Suddenly a riflecracked, a little puff of smoke rose close to a boulder on the far sideof the river, a bullet sang in the air past Dewes' head. He ducked behindthe palisade of boards. Another day had come. For another day the flag,manufactured out of some red cloth, a blue turban and some white cotton,floated overhead. Meanwhile, somewhere among the passes, the relievingforce was already on the march.
Late that afternoon Luffe died, and his body was buried in the Fort. Hehad done his work. For two days afterwards the sound of a battle washeard to the south, the siege was raised, and in the evening theBrigadier-General in Command rode up to the gates and found a tired andhaggard group of officers awaiting him. They received him without cheersor indeed any outward sign of rejoicing. They waited in a dead silence,like beaten and dispirited men. They were beginning to pay the price oftheir five weeks' siege.
The Brigadier looked at the group.
"What of Luffe?" he asked.
"Dead, sir," replied Dewes.
"A great loss," said Brigadier Appleton solemnly. But he was paying histribute rather to the class to which Luffe belonged than to the manhimself. Luffe was a man of independent views, Brigadier Appleton asoldier clinging to tradition. Moreover, there had been an encounterbetween the two in which Luffe had prevailed.
The Brigadier paid a ceremonious visit to the Khan on the followingmorning, and once more the Khan expounded his views as to the educationof his son. But he expounded them now to sympathetic ears.
"I think that his Excellency disapproved of my plan," said the Khan.
"Did he?" cried Brigadier Appleton. "On some points I am inclined tothink that Luffe's views were not always sound. Certainly let the boy goto Eton and Oxford. A fine idea, your Highness. The training will widenhis mind, enlarge his ideas, and all that sort of thing. I will myselfurge upon the Government's advisers the wisdom of your Highness'proposal."
Moreover Dewes failed to carry Luffe's dying message to Calcutta. For onone point--a point of fact--Luffe was immediately proved wrong. Mir Ali,the Khan of Chiltistan, was retained upon his throne. Dewes turned thematter over in his slow mind. Wrong definitely, undeniably wrong on thepoint of fact, was it not likely that Luffe was wrong too on the pointo
f theory? Dewes had six months furlong too, besides, and was anxious togo home. It would be a bore to travel to Bombay by way of Calcutta. "Letthe boy go to Eton and Oxford!" he said. "Why not?" and the yearsanswered him.