A LAST THROW
Get place and wealth; if possible, with grace;
If not, by any means get wealth and place.
Daylight broke next morning in a snow-storm, and a thin sprinkling lay
over all the hills, clothing them in spotless white.
General Michael was among the first astir, seeing in person to all the
details of the retreat. The men looked in vain towards the tent where
their late youthful leader had been wont to sit, nibbling the end of his
golden pocket-penholder, wrestling manfully in the throes of literary
composition.
When at last the order was given to strike tents the faces of the rank
and file fell like the face of one man.
Major James Edward Makerstone Agar had simply disappeared. His limited
baggage was attached to the smaller belongings of General Michael, and no
explanation was offered by that dreaded officer. To him the cold seemed
to be a matter of indifference; for he stood about watching every
movement of the men with a supreme disregard for the driving snow or the
knife-like wind that whistled over the northern scarp.
Under his calculating eye they worked to such effect that by nine o'clock
the little column was on the downward march. Again General Michael rode
through that lone, lorn country lying between India and Russia. Again his
melancholy face with keen but hopeless eyes passed through the darksome
valleys where, if legend be true, a race as old as his has lived since
the children of Abraham set forth to wander over the earth.
For twenty years this man had haunted these vales and hills, seeking,
ever seeking, his own aggrandisement and nothing else. Accounted a
patriot, he was no patriot; for the homeless blood was mingled in his
veins. Held to be a hero by some, he was none; for he hated danger for
its own sake, just as some men love it.
But his lines had been cast in this unpleasant place, from whence flight
or retreat was rendered almost impossible, by the laws of discipline and
the freak of circumstance. Despite his titles, in face of his great
reputation, he knew himself to be a failure, and as he rode southward
through the mountain barrier that frowns down over India he was conscious
of the knowledge that in all human probability he would never look upon
this drear land again. His time was up, he was about to be set on the
shelf, life was over. And he had all his powers yet--all his marvellous
quickness at the mastery of tongues, all the restless energy which had
urged him on to overrun the race, to dodge and bore and break his stride
instead of holding steadily on the straight course.
He it was who had discovered Jem Agar's talent for this rough, peculiar
soldiering of the frontier. He it was to whom the simple-minded young
officer had owed promotion after promotion. General Michael had fixed
upon Agar as his last hope--his last chance of doing something brilliant
in this deathly country, which moved with a slowness that nearly drove
him mad.
This last attempt was thrown down like a defiance in the face of Fortune;
but still the risk was not his own. It never had been. Men had been sent
to their certain death by this sallow-faced commander, for no other
object than his own aggrandisement. It would almost seem that a just
Providence had ever turned away in loathing from the schemes of this man
who would have all and risk nothing.
Should Jem Agar succeed in the dangerous secret mission on which he had
been sent by a subtle underhand pressure of discipline, the glory would
never be his. This, under the grasping fingers of General Michael, would
never appear to the world as the wonderful individual feat of an intrepid
man, but as a masterly stroke of strategy dealt by a great general.
Seymour Michael had long ago found out that Jem Agar was the step-son of
the woman whom he had wronged in bygone years. But the name failed to
touch his conscience, partly because that conscience was not of much
account, and partly because time heals all things, even a sore sense of
wrong. Truth to tell, he had not thought much of Anna Agar during the
last twenty years, and the mere coincidence that this simple tool should
be her step-son was insufficient to deter him from making use of Agar.
But with that careful attention to detail which in such a man betrayed
innate weakness, he took care to make sure that Jem Agar had learnt
nothing of the past from the lips of his father's second wife.
General Michael did not disguise from himself the fact that the mission
on which he had despatched Jem Agar was what the life insurance companies
call hazardous. But he had lived by the sword, and that mode of gaining a
livelihood makes men wondrously indifferent to the lives of others.
Moreover, this was in a sense a speciality of his. He was getting
hardened to the game, and played it with coolness and precision.
All through that day the little band retreated through an enemy's
country, watchful, alert, almost nervous. There were absurdly few of
them--a characteristic of that frontier warfare which the sallow, silent
leader had waged nearly all his life. And in the evening there was not
peace.
Fortune is a playful soul. She keeps men waiting a lifetime, and then,
when it is too late, she suddenly opens both her hands. Seymour Michael
had waited twenty years for one of those chances of easy distinction
which seemed to fall to the lot of all his comrades in arms. This chance
was vouchsafed to him on the last evening he ever passed in an enemy's
country--when it was too late--when that which he did was no more than
was to be expected from a man of his experience and fame.
The little band was attacked at sunset by the victorious savages who had
annihilated the advance column three days earlier, and with half the
number of men, fatigued and hungry, Seymour Michael beat them back and
cut his way to the south. He knew that it was good, and the men knew it.
They looked upon this keen-faced little man as something approaching a
demi-god; but they had no love for him as they had for Major Agar. The
knowledge was theirs that to him their lives were of no account--they
were not men, but numbers. He brought them out of a dire strait by sheer
skill, by that heartless grip of discipline which a true general
exercises over his troops even at that critical moment when a common
death seems to reduce all lives to an equal value.
But in the thick of it the Goorkhas--keen little Highlanders of the
Indian army--looked in vain for the fighting light in their leader's
eyes. They listened in vain for the encouraging voice--now low and steady
in warning, now trumpet-like and maddening with the infection of
excitement.
In the midst of that wild, apparently disorderly _mêlée_ in the narrow
valley, while the hush of mountain sunset settled over the battle, the
leader sat imperturbable, cold, and infinitely wise. He was pale, and his
lips were quite colourless, but his eyes were vigilant, ready,
resourceful. An ideal general but no soldier. He played this game with a
skill that never faced the possibility of failure--and won.
Far overhead, many miles to the northward, a solitary wanderer heard the
sound of firing and paused to listen. He was a big man, worthy to be
accounted such even among the strapping mountaineers of that district,
and as he leant on the long barrel of his quaintly ornamental rifle his
sheepskin cloak fell back from a long sinewy arm of deep-brown hue.
As he listened to the far-off rumble of independent firing he muttered to
himself indications of anxiety. Strange to say, the eyes that looked out
over the hollow of the gorge-like valley were blue. They were, however,
hardly visible through the tangle of unkempt hair and raw wool that fell
over his forehead. The high sheepskin cap was dragged forward, and the
lower part of his face was almost hidden by the indiscriminate folds of
hood, cloak, and scarf affected by the shepherds hereabout.
James Agar was perfectly happy. There must have been somewhere in his
sporting soul that love of Nature which drives men into solitude--making
gamekeepers and fishermen and explorers of them. It was in this man's
character to wait passive until responsibility came to him, when he
accepted it readily enough; but he never went out to meet it. He was not
as the sons of Levi, who took too much upon themselves; but rather was he
happiest when he had only his own life and his own self to take care of.
Here he was now an outcast, an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand raised
against him. It was not the first time. For this quiet-going man had
unobtrusively learnt many tongues, and, while no one heeded him, he had
studied the ways of this Eastern land with no mean success.
He waited there during an hour while the firing still continued, and
then, when at last silence reigned again and the wind whispered
undisturbed through the dark pines, he turned his wandering footsteps
northward to a land where few white men have passed.
So night fell upon these two men thus hazardously brought together, and
every moment stretched longer the distance between them--James Agar going
north, Seymour Michael passing southward.
Agar wondered vaguely whether his toilsome diary would ever reach home,
but he was not anxious as to the result of the fight which had evidently
taken place in the valley. He too seemed to share the belief of all who
came in contact with him that General Michael could not do wrong in
warfare.
That night the Master of Stagholme laid him down to rest in the shadow of
a big rock, strong in himself, strong in his faith. And as he slumbered,
those who slumber not nor cease their toil by day or night sat with
crooked backs over a little ticking, spitting, restless machine that
spelt out his name across half the world. While the moon rose over the
mountains, and looked placidly down upon this strange man lying there
peacefully sleeping in a world of his own, two men who had never seen
each other talked together with nimble fingers over a thousand miles of
wire. And one told the other that James Edward Makerstone was dead.
The sleeper slept on. He smiled quietly beneath the moon. Perhaps he
dreamt of the home-coming, of that time when he could say at last, “I
have fought my fight, and now I come with a clear conscience to enjoy the
good things given to me.” He never dreamt of treason. He never knew that
for their own gain men will sacrifice the happiness of their neighbours
without so much as a pang of self-reproach. There are some people, thank
Heaven, who never learn these things, who go on believing that men are
good and women better all their lives.