The Broken Road Part 19

And then Violet sought to comfort him, her mind still working on what he had told her of his life in Chiltistan.

"But it will become easier," she said, beginning in that general way. "In time you will rule in Chiltistan. That is certain." But he checked her with a shake of the head.

"Certain? There is the son of Abdulla Mohammed, who fought against my father when Linforth's father was killed. It is likely enough that those old days will be revived. And I should have the priests against me."

"The Mullahs!" she exclaimed, remembering in what terms he was wont to speak of them to her.

"Yes," he answered, "I have set them against me already. They laid their traps for me while I was on the sea, and I would not fall into them. They would have liked to raise the country against my father and the English, just as they raised it twenty-five years ago. And they would have liked me to join in with them."

He related to Violet the story of his meeting with Safdar Khan at the Gate of Lah.o.r.e, and he repeated the words which he had used in Safdar Khan's hearing.

"It did not take long for my threats to be repeated in the bazaar of Kohara, and from the bazaar they were quickly carried to the ears of the Mullahs. I had proof of it," he said with a laugh.

Violet asked him anxiously for the proof.

"I can tell to a day when the words were repeated in Kohara. For a fortnight after my coming the Mullahs still had hopes. They had heard nothing, and they met me always with salutations and greetings. Then came the day when I rode up the valley and a Mullah who had smiled the day before pa.s.sed me as though he had not noticed me at all. The news had come. I was sure of it at the time. I reined in my horse and called sharply to one of the servants riding behind me, 'Who is that?' The Mullah heard the question, and he turned and up went the palm of his hand to his forehead in a flash. But I was not inclined to let him off so easily."

"What did you do?" Violet asked uneasily.

"I said to him, 'My friend, I will take care that you know me the next time we meet upon the road. Show me your hands!' He held them out, and they were soft as a woman's. I was close to a bridge which some workmen were repairing. So I had my friend brought along to the bridge. Then I said to one of the workmen, 'Would you like to earn your day's wage and yet do no work?' He laughed, thinking that I was joking. But I was not. I said to him, 'Very well, then, see that this soft-handed creature does your day's work. You will bring him to me at the Palace this evening, and if I find that he has not done the work, or that you have helped him, you will forfeit your wages and I will whip you both into the bargain.' The Mullah was brought to me in the evening," said Shere Ali, smiling grimly.

"He was so stiff he could hardly walk. I made him show me his hands again, and this time they were blistered. So I told him to remember his manners in the future, and I let him go. But he was a man of prominence in the country, and when the story got known he became rather ridiculous." He turned with a smile to Violet Oliver.

"My people don't like being made ridiculous--least of all Mullahs."

But there was no answering smile on Violet's face. Rather she was troubled and alarmed.

"But surely that was unwise?"

Shere Ali shrugged his shoulders.

"What does it matter?" he said. He did not tell her all of that story.

There was an episode which had occurred two days later when Shere Ali was stalking an ibex on the hillside. A bullet had whistled close by his ear, and it had been fired from behind him. He was never quite sure whether his father or the Mullah was responsible for that bullet, but he inclined to attribute it to the Mullah.

"Yes, I have the priests against me," he said. "They call me the Englishman." Then he laughed. "A curious piece of irony, isn't it?"

He stood up suddenly and said: "When I left England I was in doubt. I could not be sure whether my home, my true home, was there or in Chiltistan."

"Yes, I remember," said Violet.

"I am no longer in doubt. It is neither in England nor in Chiltistan. I am a citizen of no country. I have no place anywhere at all."

Violet Oliver stood up and faced him.

"I must be going. I must find my friends," she said, and as he took her hand, she added, "I am so very sorry."

The words, she felt, were utterly inadequate, but no others would come to her lips, and so with a trembling smile she repeated them. She drew her hand from his clasp and moved a step or two away. But he followed her, and she stopped and shook her head.

"This is really good-bye," she said simply and very gravely.

"I want to ask you a question," he explained. "Will you answer it?"

"How can I tell you until you ask it?"

He looked at her for a moment as though in doubt whether he should speak or not. Then he said, "Are you going to marry--Linforth?"

The blood slowly mounted into her face and flushed her forehead and cheeks.

"He has not even asked me to marry him," she said, and moved down into the courtyard.

Shere Ali watched her as she went. That was the last time he should see her, he told himself. The last time in all his life. His eyes followed her, noting the grace of her movements, the whiteness of her skin, all her daintiness of dress and person. A madness kindled in his blood. He had a wild thought of springing down, of capturing her. She mounted the steps and disappeared among the throng.

And they wanted him to marry--to marry one of his own people. Shere Ali suddenly saw the face of the Deputy Commissioner at Lah.o.r.e calmly suggesting the arrangement, almost ordering it. He sat down again upon the couch and once more began to laugh. But the laughter ceased very quickly, and folding his arms upon the high end of the couch, he bowed his head upon them and was still.

CHAPTER XVI

SHERE ALI MEETS AN OLD FRIEND

The carriage which was to take Violet Oliver and her friends back to their camp had been parked amongst those farthest from the door. Violet stood for a long while under the awning, waiting while the interminable procession went by. The generals in their scarlet coats, the ladies in their satin gowns, the great officers of state attended by their escorts, the native princes, mounted into their carriages and were driven away.

The ceremony and the reception which followed it had been markedly successful even in that land of ceremonies and magnificence. The voices about her told her so as they spoke of this or that splendour and recalled the picturesque figures which had given colour to the scene. But the laughter, the praise, the very tones of enjoyment had to her a heartless ring. She watched the pageantry of the great Indian Administration dissolve, and was blind to its glitter and conscious only of its ruthlessness. For ruthless she found it to-night. She had been face to face with a victim of the system--a youth broken by it, needlessly broken, and as helpless to recover from his hurt as a wounded animal. The harm had been done no doubt with the very best intention, but the harm had been done. She was conscious of her own share in the blame and she drove miserably home, with the picture of Shere Ali's face as she had last seen it to bear her company, and with his cry, that he had no place anywhere at all, sounding in her ears.

When she reached the privacy of her own tent, and had dismissed her maid, she unlocked one of her trunks and took out from it her jewel case. She had been careful not to wear her necklace of pearls that night, and she took it out of the case now and laid it upon her knees. She was very sorry to part with it. She touched and caressed the pearls with loving fingers, and once she lifted it as though she would place it about her neck. But she checked her hands, fearing that if she put it on she would never bring herself to let it go. Already as she watched and fingered it and bent her head now and again to scrutinise a stone, small insidious voices began to whisper at her heart.

"He asked for nothing when he gave it you."

"You made no promise when you took it."

"It was a gift without conditions hinted or implied."

Violet Oliver took the world lightly on the whole. Only this one pa.s.sion for jewels and precious stones had touched her deeply as yet. Of love she knew little beyond the name and its aspect in others. She was familiar enough with that, so familiar that she gave little heed to what lay behind the aspect--or had given little heed until to-night. Her husband she had accepted rather than actively welcomed. She had lived with him in a mood of placid and unquestioning good-humour, and she had greatly missed him when he died. But it was the presence in the house that she missed, rather than the lover. To-night, almost for the first time, she had really looked under the surface. Insight had been vouchsafed to her; and in remorse she was minded to put the thing she greatly valued away from her.

She rose suddenly, and, lest the temptation to keep the necklace should prove too strong, laid it away in its case.

A post went every day over the pa.s.ses into Chiltistan. She wrapped up the case in brown paper, tied it, sealed it, and addressed it. There was need to send it off, she well knew, before the picture of Shere Ali, now so vivid in her mind, lost its aspect of poignant suffering and faded out of her thoughts.

But she slept ill and in the middle of the night she rose from her bed.

The tent was pitch dark. She lit her candle; and it was the light of the candle which awoke her maid. The tent was a double one; the maid slept in the smaller portion of it and a canvas doorway gave entrance into her mistress' room. Over this doorway hung the usual screen of green matting.

Now these screens act as screens, are as impenetrable to the eye as a door--so long as there is no light behind them. But place a light behind them and they become transparent. This was what Violet Oliver had done.

She had lit her candle and at once a part of the interior of her tent was visible to her maid as she lay in bed.

The maid saw the table and the sealed parcel upon it. Then she saw Mrs.

Oliver come to the table, break the seals, open the parcel, take out a jewel case--a jewel case which the maid knew well--and carry it and the parcel out of sight. Mrs. Oliver crossed to a corner of the room where her trunks lay; and the next moment the maid heard a key grate in a lock.

For a little while the candle still burned, and every now and then a distorted shadow was flung upon the wall of the tent within the maid's vision. It seemed to her that Mrs. Oliver was sitting at a little writing table which stood close by the trunk. Then the light went out again. The maid would have thought no more of this incident, but on entering the room next morning with a cup of tea, she was surprised to see the packet once more sealed and fastened on the centre table.

"Adela," said Mrs. Oliver, "I want you to take that parcel to the Post Office yourself and send it off."