A LONG WALK
The footsteps sounded overhead with a singular regularity. From the
fireplace to the door, and back again from the door to the fireplace. At
each turn there was a short pause, and each pause was of the same
duration. The footsteps were very light; it was almost as though an
animal, a caged animal, padded from the bars at one end to the bars at
the other. There was something stealthy in the footsteps too.
In the room below a man of forty-five sat writing at a desk--a very tall,
broad-shouldered man, in clerical dress. Twenty-five years before he had
rowed as number seven in the Oxford Eight, with an eye all the while upon
a mastership at his old school. He had taken a first in Greats; he had
obtained his mastership; for the last two years he had had a House. As he
had been at the beginning, so he was now, a man without theories but with
an instinctive comprehension of boys. In consequence there were no
vacancies in his house, and the Headmaster had grown accustomed to
recommend the Rev. Mr. Arthur Pollard when boys who needed any special
care came to the school.
He was now so engrossed with the preparations for the term which was to
begin to-morrow that for some while the footsteps overhead did not
attract his attention. When he did hear them he just lifted his head,
listened for a moment or two, lit his pipe and went on with his work.
But the sounds continued. Backwards and forwards from the fireplace to
the door, the footsteps came and went--without haste and without
cessation; stealthily regular; inhumanly light. Their very monotony
helped them to pass as unnoticed as the ticking of a clock. Mr. Pollard
continued the preparation of his class-work for a full hour, and only
when the dusk was falling, and it was becoming difficult for him to see
what he was writing, did he lean back in his chair and stretch his arms
above his head with a sigh of relief.
Then once more he became aware of the footsteps overhead. He rose and
rang the bell.
"Who is that walking up and down the drawingroom, Evans?" he asked of
the butler.
The butler threw back his head and listened.
"I don't know, sir," he replied.
"Those footsteps have been sounding like that for more than an hour."
"For more than an hour?" Evans repeated. "Then I am afraid, sir, it's the
new young gentleman from India."
Arthur Pollard started.
"Has he been waiting up there alone all this time?" he exclaimed. "Why in
the world wasn't I told?"
"You were told, sir," said Evans firmly but respectfully. "I came into
the study here and told you, and you answered 'All right, Evans.' But I
had my doubts, sir, whether you really heard or not."
Mr. Pollard hardly waited for the end of the explanation. He hurried out
of the room and sprang up the stairs. He had arranged purposely for the
young Prince to come to the house a day before term began. He was likely
to be shy, ill-at-ease and homesick, among so many strange faces and
unfamiliar ways. Moreover, Mr. Pollard wished to become better acquainted
with the boy than would be easily possible once the term was in full
swing. For he was something more of an experiment than the ordinary
Indian princeling from a State well under the thumb of the Viceroy and
the Indian Council. This boy came of the fighting stock in the north. To
leave him tramping about a strange drawing-room alone for over an hour
was not the best possible introduction to English ways and English life.
Mr. Pollard opened the door and saw a slim, tall boy, with his hands
behind his back and his eyes fixed on the floor, walking up and down in
the gloom.
"Shere Ali," he said, and he held out his hand. The boy took it shyly.
"You have been waiting here for some time," Mr. Pollard continued, "I am
sorry. I did not know that you had come. You should have rung the bell."
"I was not lonely," Shere Ali replied. "I was taking a walk."
"Yes, so I gathered," said the master with a smile. "Rather a long walk."
"Yes, sir," the boy answered seriously. "I was walking from Kohara up the
valley, and remembering the landmarks as I went. I had walked a long way.
I had come to the fort where my father was besieged."
"Yes, that reminds me," said Pollard, "you won't feel so lonely to-morrow
as you do to-day. There is a new boy joining whose father was a great
friend of your father's. Richard Linforth is his name. Very likely your
father has mentioned that name to you."
Mr. Pollard switched on the light as he spoke and saw Shere All's face
flash with eagerness.
"Oh yes!" he answered, "I know. He was killed upon the road by my
uncle's people."
"I have put you into the next room to his. If you will come with me I
will show you."
Mr. Pollard led the way along a passage into the boys' quarters.
"This is your room. There's your bed. Here's your 'burry,'" pointing to a
bureau with a bookcase on the top. He threw open the next door. "This is
Linforth's room. By the way, you speak English very well."
"Yes," said Shere Ali. "I was taught it in Lahore first of all. My father
is very fond of the English."
"Well, come along," said Mr. Pollard. "I expect my wife has come back and
she shall give us some tea. You will dine with us to-night, and we will
try to make you as fond of the English as your father is."
The next day the rest of the boys arrived, and Mr. Pollard took the
occasion to speak a word or two to young Linforth.
"You are both new boys," he said, "but you will fit into the scheme of
things quickly enough. He won't. He's in a strange land, among strange
people. So just do what you can to help him."
Dick Linforth was curious enough to see the son of the Khan of
Chiltistan. But not for anything would he have talked to him of his
father who had died upon the road, or of the road itself. These things
were sacred. He greeted his companion in quite another way.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Shere Ali," replied the young Prince.
"That won't do," said Linforth, and he contemplated the boy solemnly. "I
shall call you Sherry-Face," he said.
And "Sherry-Face" the heir to Chiltistan remained; and in due time the
name followed him to College.