The Broken Road Part 46

"What is Luffe to me? What should I know of Luffe?"

"This," said Phillips, and he spoke in so arresting a voice that Shere Ali turned again to listen to him. "When Luffe was dying, he uttered an appeal--he bequeathed it to India, as his last service; and the appeal was that you should not be sent to England, that neither Eton nor Oxford should 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 his finger 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 met you in Calcutta one day upon the racecourse, seems dimly to have understood the words the dead man spoke."

Shere Ali was silent. He stood looking at the grave and the obelisk with a 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 ruin for Chiltistan."

"Did he say that?" said Shere Ali slowly, and there was something of awe in his voice. Then he recovered himself and cried defiantly. "Yet in one point he was wrong. It will not mean ruin for Chiltistan."

So far he had spoken in English. Now he turned quickly towards his friends and spoke in his own tongue.

"It is time. We will go," and to Captain Phillips he said, "You shall ride back with me to Kohara. I will leave you at the doorway of the Residency." And these words, too, he spoke in his own tongue.

There rose a clamour among the seven who waited in the doorway, and loudest of all rose the voice of the mullah, protesting against Shere Ali's promise.

"My word is given," said the Prince, and he turned with a smile to Captain Phillips. "In memory of my friend,"--he pointed to the grave--"For it seems I had a friend once amongst the white people. In memory of my friend, I give you your life."

CHAPTER x.x.xII

SURPRISES FOR CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

The young n.o.bles ceased from their outcry. They went sullenly out and mounted their horses under the ruined wall of the old fort. But as they mounted they whispered together with quick glances towards Captain Phillips. The Resident intercepted the glance and had little doubt as to the subject of the whispering.

"I am in the deuce of a tight place," he reflected; "it's seven to one against my ever reaching Kohara, and the one's a doubtful quant.i.ty."

He looked at Shere Ali, who seemed quite undisturbed by the prospect of mutiny amongst his followers. His face had hardened a little.

That was all.

"And your horse?" Shere Ali asked.

Captain Phillips pointed towards the clump of trees where he had tied it up.

"Will you fetch it?" said Shere Ali, and as Phillips walked off, he turned towards the n.o.bles and the old mullah who stood amongst them.

Phillips heard his voice, as he began to speak, and was surprised by a masterful quiet ring in it. "The doubtful quant.i.ty seems to have grown into a man," he thought, and the thought gained strength when he rode his horse back from the clump of trees towards the group. Shere Ali met him gravely.

"You will ride on my right hand," he said. "You need have no fear."

The seven n.o.bles cl.u.s.tered behind, and the party rode at a walk over the fan of shale and through the defile into the broad valley of Kohara.

Shere Ali did not speak. He rode on with a set and brooding face, and the Resident fell once more to pondering the queer scene of which he had been the witness. Even at that moment when his life was in the balance his thoughts would play with it, so complete a piece of artistry it seemed.

There was the tomb itself--an earth grave and a rough obelisk without so much as a name or a date upon it set up at its head by some past Resident at Kohara. It was appropriate and seemly to the man without friends, or family, or wife, but to whom the Frontier had been all these. He would have wished for no more himself, since vanity had played so small a part in his career. He had been the great Force upon the Frontier, keeping the Queen's peace by the strength of his character and the sagacity of his mind. Yet before his grave, invoking him as an unknown saint, the n.o.bles of Chiltistan had knelt to pray for the destruction of such as he and the overthrow of the power which he had lived to represent. And all because his advice had been neglected.

Captain Phillips was roused out of his reflections as the cavalcade approached a village. For out of that village and from the fields about it, the men, armed for the most part with good rifles, poured towards them with cries of homage. They joined the cavalcade, marched with it past their homes, and did not turn back. Only the women and the children were left behind. And at the next village and at the next the same thing happened. The cavalcade began to swell into a small army, an army of men well equipped for war; and at the head of the gathering force Shere Ali rode with an impa.s.sive face, never speaking but to check a man from time to time who brandished a weapon at the Resident.

"Your Highness has counted the cost?" Captain Phillips asked. "There will be but the one end to it."

Shere Ali turned to the Resident, and though his face did not change from its brooding calm, a fire burned darkly in his eyes.

"From Afghanistan to Thibet the frontier will rise," he said proudly.

Captain Phillips shook his head.

"From Afghanistan to Thibet the Frontier will wait, as it always waits.

It will wait to see what happens in Chiltistan."

But though he spoke boldly, he had little comfort from his thoughts. The rising had been well concerted. Those who flocked to Shere Ali were not only the villagers of the Kohara valley. There were shepherds from the hills, wild men from the far corners of Chiltistan. Already the small army could be counted with the hundred for its unit. To-morrow the hundred would be a thousand. Moreover, for once in a way there was no divided counsel. Jealousy and intrigue were not, it seemed, to do their usual work in Chiltistan. There was only one master, and he of unquestioned authority. Else how came it that Captain Phillips rode amidst that great and frenzied throng, unhurt and almost unthreatened?

Down the valley the roof-tops of Kohara began to show amongst the trees.

The high palace on the hill with its latticed windows bulked against the evening sky. The sound of many drums was borne to the Resident's ears.

The Residency stood a mile and a half from the town in a great garden. A high wall enclosed it, but it was a house, not a fortress; and Phillips had at his command but a few levies to defend it. One of them stood by the gate. He kept his ground as Shere Ali and his force approached. The only movement which he made was to stand at attention, and as Shere Ali halted at the entrance, he saluted. But it was Captain Phillips whom he saluted, and not the Prince of Chiltistan. Shere Ali spoke with the same quiet note of confident authority which had surprised Captain Phillips before, to the seven n.o.bles at his back. Then he turned to the Resident.

"I will ride with you to your door," he said.

The two men pa.s.sed alone through the gateway and along a broad path which divided the forecourt to the steps of the house. And not a man of all that crowd which followed Shere Ali to Kohara pressed in behind them.

Captain Phillips looked back as much in surprise as in relief. But there was no surprise on the face of Shere Ali. He, it was plain, expected obedience.

"Upon my word," cried Phillips in a burst of admiration, "you have got your fellows well in hand."

"I?" said Shere Ali. "I am nothing. What could I do who a week ago was still a stranger to my people? I am a voice, nothing more. But the G.o.d of my people speaks through me"; and as he spoke these last words, his voice suddenly rose to a shrill trembling note, his face suddenly quivered with excitement.

Captain Phillips stared. "The man's in earnest," he muttered to himself.

"He actually believes it."

It was the second time that Captain Phillips had been surprised within five minutes, and on this occasion the surprise came upon him with a shock. How it had come about--that was all dark to Captain Phillips. But the result was clear. The few words spoken as they had been spoken revealed the fact. The veneer of Shere Ali's English training had gone.

Shere Ali had reverted. His own people had claimed him.

"And I guessed nothing of this," the Resident reflected bitterly.

Signs of trouble he had noticed in abundance, but this one crucial fact which made trouble a certain and unavoidable thing--that had utterly escaped him. His thoughts went back to the nameless tomb in the courtyard of the fort.

"Luffe would have known," he thought in a very bitter humility. "Nay, he did know. He foresaw."

There was yet a third surprise in store for Captain Phillips. As the two men rode up the broad path, he had noticed that the door of the house was standing open, as it usually did. Now, however, he saw it swing to--very slowly, very noiselessly. He was surprised, for he knew the door to be a strong heavy door of walnut wood, not likely to swing to even in a wind.

And there was no wind. Besides, if it had swung to of its own accord, it would have slammed. Its weight would have made it slam. Whereas it was not quite closed. As he reined in his horse at the steps, he saw that there was a c.h.i.n.k between the door and the door-post.