LUFFE LOOKS FORWARD
It was the mine underneath the North Tower which brought the career of
Luffe to an end. The garrison, indeed, had lived in fear of this peril
ever since the siege began. But inasmuch as no attempt to mine had been
made during the first month, the fear had grown dim. It was revived
during the fifth week. The officers were at mess at nine o'clock in the
evening, when a havildar of Sikhs burst into the courtyard with the news
that 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 the
tower. A long loophole had been fashioned in the thick wall on a downward
slant, so that a marksman might command anyone who crept forward to fire
the fort. Against this loophole Luffe leaned his ear.
"Do you hear anything, sir?" asked a subaltern of the Sappers who was
attached to the force.
"Hush!" said Luffe.
He listened, and he heard quite clearly underneath the ground below him
the 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 fell
with the regularity of the ticking of a clock. But at times the sound
changed in character. The muffled thud of the pick upon earth became a
clang as it struck upon stone.
"Do you listen!" said Luffe, giving way to Dewes, and Dewes in his turn
leaned 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 the
beating of a clock in a room where a man lies dying," he said.
Luffe nodded his head. But images and romantic sayings struck no response
from 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, while
Dewes made ready for the sortie. By daybreak the arrangements were
completed. The gunpowder bags, with their fuses attached, were
distributed, the gates were suddenly flung open, and Lynes raced out with
a hundred Ghurkhas and Sikhs across the fifty yards of open ground to the
sangar behind which the mine shaft had been opened. The work of the
hundred men was quick and complete. Within half an hour, Lynes, himself
wounded, had brought back his force, and left the mine destroyed. But
during that half-hour disaster had fallen upon the garrison. Luffe had
dropped as he was walking back across the courtyard to his office. For a
few minutes he lay unnoticed in the empty square, his face upturned to
the sky, and then a clamorous sound of lamentation was heard and an
orderly came running through the alleys of the Fort, crying out that the
Colonel Sahib was dead.
He was not dead, however. He recovered conciousness that night, and early
in the morning Dewes was roused from his sleep. He woke to find the
Doctor 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 followed
the Doctor through the little winding alleys which gave to the Fort the
appearance of a tiny village. It was broad daylight, but the fortress was
strangely silent. The people whom he passed either spoke not at all or
spoke only in low tones. They sat huddled in groups, waiting. Fear was
abroad that morning. It was known that the brain of the defence was
dying. 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 poured
brightly into the room.
"Sit here, close to me, Dewes," said Luffe in a whisper, "and
listen, for I am very tired." A smile came upon his face. "Do you
remember Linforth's letters? How that phrase came again and again:
'I am very tired.'"
The Doctor arranged the pillows underneath his shoulders, and then
Luffe 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 in
your hands, so long as defence is possible. Besides, if it falls it's not
a great thing. The troops will come up and trample down Wafadar Nazim and
Abdulla 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 son
of 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 clearer
in my life. The Khan's son is a boy a week old. Nevertheless I tell you
that boy is the danger in Chiltistan. The father--we know him. A good
fellow who has lost all the confidence of his people. There is hardly an
adherent of his who genuinely likes him; there's hardly a man in this
Fort who doesn't believe that he wished to sell his country to the
British. I should think he is impossible here in the future. And everyone
in Government House knows it. We shall do the usual thing, I have no
doubt--pension him off, settle him down comfortably outside the borders
of Chiltistan, and rule the country as trustee for his son--until the son
comes of age."
Dewes realised surely enough that Luffe was in possession of his
faculties, 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 would
say a word more to this Major who in India talked of twenty-one years as
a long span of time. But there was no one else to whom he could confide
his fears. If Dewes was not brilliant, he was at all events all that
there was.
"I wish I was going to live," he cried in a low voice of exasperation. "I
wish 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 likely
you'll believe me wrong yourself, eh? Poor old Luffe, a man with a bee in
his 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 all
stumbling in the dark among these peoples, with their gentle voices and
their cut-throat ways. The most that you can know is that you are
stumbling in the dark. Well, let's get back to the boy here. This country
will be kept for him, for twenty-one years. Where is he going to be
during those twenty-one years?"
Dewes caught at the question as an opportunity for reassuring the
Political Officer.
"Why, sir, the Khan told us. Have you forgotten? He is to go to Eton and
Oxford. He'll see something of England. He will learn--" and Major Dewes
stopped short, baffled by the look of hopelessness upon the Political
Officer's face.
"I think you are all mad," said Luffe, and he suddenly started up in his
bed and cried with vehemence, "You take these boys to England. You train
them in the ways of the West, the ideas of the West, and then you send
them back again to the East, to rule over Eastern people, according to
Eastern ideas, and you think all is well. I tell you, Dewes, it's sheer
lunacy. Of course it's true--this boy won't perhaps suffer in esteem
among his people quite as much as others have done. He belongs and his
people belong to the Maulai sect. The laws of religion are not strict
among them. They drink wine, they eat what they will, they do not lose
caste so easily. But you have to look at the man as he will be, the
hybrid 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 time
in a low, pleading voice, which was very unusual in him, and which kept
the words he spoke vivid and fresh in Dewes' memory for many years to
come. Indeed, Dewes would not have believed that Luffe could have spoken
on any subject with so much wistfulness.
"Listen to me, Dewes. I have lived for the Frontier. I have had no other
interest, almost no other ties. I am not a man of friends. I believed at
one time Linforth was my friend. I believed I liked him very much. But I
think now that it was only because he was bound up with the Frontier. The
Frontier has been my wife, my children, my home, my one long and lasting
passion. And I am very well content that it has been so. I don't regret
missed opportunities of happiness. What I regret is that I shall not be
alive in twenty-one years to avert the danger I foresee, or to laugh at
my fears if I am wrong. They can do what they like in Rajputana and
Bengal and Bombay. But on the Frontier I want things to go well. Oh, how
I 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 table
beside the bed.
"What danger do you foresee?" asked Dewes. "I will remember what you
say."
"Yes, remember it; write it out, so that you may remember it, and din it
into 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 in
London when you were twenty-one, Dewes? You show them Paris. You give
them opportunities of enjoyment, such as no other age, no other place
affords--has ever afforded. You give them, for a short while, a life of
colour, of swift crowding hours of pleasure, and then you send them
back--to settle down in their native States, and obey the orders of the
Resident. Do you think they will be content? Do you think they will have
their heart in their work, in their humdrum life, in their elaborate
ceremonies? Oh, there are instances enough to convince if only people
would listen. There's a youth now in the South, the heir of an Indian
throne--he has six weeks' holiday. How does he use it, do you think? He
travels hard to England, spends a week there, and travels back again. In
England he is treated as an _equal_; here, in spite of his ceremonies, he
is an _inferior_, and will and must be so. The best you can hope is that
he will be merely unhappy. You pray that he won't take to drink and make
his friends among the jockeys and the trainers. He has lost the taste for
the 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 me
hear all," he said.
"There is the white woman," continued Luffe. "The English woman, the
English girl, with her daintiness, her pretty frocks, her good looks,
her delicate charm. Very likely she only thinks of him as a picturesque
figure; 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 is
told to go back to his State and settle down, what then? Will he be
content with a wife of his own people? He is already a stranger among
his 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 and
the best of the English women. What of the others? The English women who
take his pearls, and the Princes who come back and boast of their
success. Do you think that is good for British rule in India? Give me
something to drink!"
Luffe poured out his vehement convictions to his companion, wishing with
all his heart that he had one of the great ones of the Viceroy's Council
at his side, instead of this zealous but somewhat commonplace Major of a
Sikh regiment. All the more, therefore, must he husband his strength, so
that all that he had in mind might be remembered. There would be little
chance, perhaps, of it bearing fruit. Still, even that little chance must
be grasped. And so in that high castle beneath the Himalayas, besieged by
insurgent tribes, a dying Political Officer discoursed upon this question
of high policy.
"I told you of a supper I had one night at the Savoy--do you
remember? You all looked sufficiently astonished when I told you to
bear it in mind."
"Yes, I remember," said Dewes.
"Very well. I told you I learned something from the lady who was with me
which it was good for me to know. I saw something which it was good for
me to see. Good--yes, but not pleasant either to know or see. There was a
young Prince in England then. He dined in high places and afterwards
supped at the Savoy with the _coryphées;_ and both in the high places and
among the _coryphées_ his jewels had made him welcome. This is truth I am
telling you. He was a boaster. Well, after supper that night he threw a
girl down the stairs. Never mind what she was--she was of the white
ruling race, she was of the race that rules in India, he comes back to
India 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 can
come of it, while ruin and disasters very well may. There are many ways
of disaster. Suppose, for instance, this boy were to turn out a strong
man. Do you see?"
Dewes nodded his head.
"Yes, I see," he answered, and he answered so because he saw that Luffe
had come to the end of his strength. His voice had weakened, he lay with
his eyes sunk deep in his head and a leaden pallor upon his face, and his
breath 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 understood
the trouble which was then stirring in Luffe's mind. And even then, when
he did see and understand, he wondered how much Luffe really had
foreseen. Enough, at all events, to justify his reputation for sagacity.
Dewes went out from the bedroom and climbed up on to the roof of the
Fort. 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. The
leaves of those trees now actually brushed against the Fort walls. Five
weeks ago there had been bare stems and branches. Suddenly a rifle
cracked, a little puff of smoke rose close to a boulder on the far side
of the river, a bullet sang in the air past Dewes' head. He ducked behind
the 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 relieving
force was already on the march.
Late that afternoon Luffe died, and his body was buried in the Fort. He
had done his work. For two days afterwards the sound of a battle was
heard to the south, the siege was raised, and in the evening the
Brigadier-General in Command rode up to the gates and found a tired and
haggard group of officers awaiting him. They received him without cheers
or indeed any outward sign of rejoicing. They waited in a dead silence,
like beaten and dispirited men. They were beginning to pay the price of
their 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 his
tribute rather to the class to which Luffe belonged than to the man
himself. Luffe was a man of independent views, Brigadier Appleton a
soldier clinging to tradition. Moreover, there had been an encounter
between the two in which Luffe had prevailed.
The Brigadier paid a ceremonious visit to the Khan on the following
morning, and once more the Khan expounded his views as to the education
of 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 to
think that Luffe's views were not always sound. Certainly let the boy go
to Eton and Oxford. A fine idea, your Highness. The training will widen
his mind, enlarge his ideas, and all that sort of thing. I will myself
urge upon the Government's advisers the wisdom of your Highness'
proposal."
Moreover Dewes failed to carry Luffe's dying message to Calcutta. For on
one point--a point of fact--Luffe was immediately proved wrong. Mir Ali,
the Khan of Chiltistan, was retained upon his throne. Dewes turned the
matter over in his slow mind. Wrong definitely, undeniably wrong on the
point of fact, was it not likely that Luffe was wrong too on the point
of theory? Dewes had six months furlong too, besides, and was anxious to
go home. It would be a bore to travel to Bombay by way of Calcutta. "Let
the boy go to Eton and Oxford!" he said. "Why not?" and the years
answered him.