SHERE ALI'S PILGRIMAGE
There were times when Ralston held aloft his hands and cursed the Indian
administration by all his gods. But he never did so with a more
whole-hearted conviction than on the day when he received word that
Linforth had been diverted to Rawal Pindi, in order that he might take up
purely military duties. It took Ralston just seven months to secure his
release, and it was not until the early days of autumn had arrived that
Linforth at last reached Peshawur. A landau, with a coachman and groom in
scarlet liveries, was waiting for him at the station, and he drove along
the broad road through the cantonment to Government House. As the
carriage swung in at the gates, a tall, thin man came from the
croquet-ground on the left. He joined Dick in the porch.
"You are Mr. Linforth?" he said.
"Yes."
For a moment a pair of grey, tired eyes ran Dick over from head to foot
in a careless scrutiny. Apparently, however, the scrutiny was favourable.
"I am the Chief Commissioner. I am glad that you have come. My sister
will give you some tea, and afterwards, if you are not tired, we might go
for a ride together. You would like to see your room first."
Ralston spoke with his usual indifference. There was no intonation in his
voice which gave to any one sentence a particular meaning; and for a
particular meaning Dick Linforth was listening with keen ears. He
followed Ralston across the hall to his room, and disappointment gained
upon him with every step. He had grown familiar with disappointment of
late years, but he was still young enough in years and spirit to expect
the end of disappointment with each change in his fortunes. He had
expected it when the news of his appointment had reached him in Calcutta,
and disappointment had awaited him in Bombay. He had expected it again
when, at last, he was sent from Rawal Pindi to Peshawur. All the way up
the line he had been watching the far hills of Cashmere, and repeating to
himself, "At last! At last!"
The words had been a song at his heart, tuned to the jolt and rhythm of
the wheels. Ralston of Peshawur had asked for him. So much he had been
told. His longing had explained to him why Ralston of Peshawur had asked
for him, and easily he had believed the explanation. He was a Linforth,
one of the Linforths of the Road. Great was his pride. He would not have
bartered his position to be a General in command of a division. Ralston
had sent for him because of his hereditary title to work upon the Road,
the broad, permanent, graded Road which was to make India safe.
And now he walked behind a tired and indifferent Commissioner, whose very
voice officialdom had made phlegmatic, and on whose aspect was writ large
the habit of routine. In this mood he sat, while Miss Ralston prattled to
him about the social doings of Peshawur, the hunt, the golf; and in this
mood he rode out with Ralston to the Gate of the City.
They passed through the main street, and, turning to the right, ascended
to an archway, above which rose a tower. At the archway they dismounted
and climbed to the roof of the tower. Peshawur, with its crowded streets,
its open bazaars, its balconied houses of mud bricks built into wooden
frames, lay mapped beneath them. But Linforth's eyes travelled over the
trees and the gardens northwards and eastwards, to where the foothills of
the Himalayas were coloured with the violet light of evening.
"Linforth," Ralston cried. He was leaning on the parapet at the opposite
side of the tower, and Dick crossed and leaned at his side.
"It was I who had you sent for," said Ralston in his dull voice. "When
you were at Chatham, I mean. I worried them in Calcutta until they
sent for you."
Dick took his elbows from the parapet and stood up. His face took life
and fire, there came a brightness as of joy into his eyes. After all,
then, this time he was not to be disappointed.
"I wanted you to come to Peshawur straight from Bombay six months ago,"
Ralston went on. "But I counted without the Indian Government. They
brought you out to India, at my special request, for a special purpose,
and then, when they had got you, they turned you over to work which
anyone else could have done. So six months have been wasted. But that's
their little way."
"You have special work for me?" said Linforth quietly enough, though his
heart was beating quickly in his breast. An answer came which still
quickened its beatings.
"Work that you alone can do," Ralston replied gravely. But he was a man
who had learned to hope for little, and to expect discouragements as his
daily bread, and he added:
"That is, if you can do it."
Linforth did not answer at once. He was leaning with his elbows on the
parapet, and he raised a hand to the side of his face, that side on which
Ralston stood. And so he remained, shutting himself in with his thoughts,
and trying to think soberly. But his head whirled. Below him lay the city
of Peshawur. Behind him the plains came to an end, and straight up from
them, like cliffs out of the sea, rose the dark hills, brown and grey and
veined with white. Here on this tower of Northern India, the long dreams,
dreamed for the first time on the Sussex Downs, and nursed since in every
moment of leisure--in Alpine huts in days of storm, in his own quarters
at Chatham--had come to their fulfilment.
"I have lived for this work," he said in a low voice which shook ever so
little, try as he might to quiet it. "Ever since I was a boy I have lived
for it, and trained myself for it. It is the Road."
Linforth's evident emotion came upon Ralston as an unexpected thing. He
was carried back suddenly to his own youth, and was surprised to
recollect that he, too, had once cherished great plans. He saw himself
as he was to-day, and, side by side with that disillusioned figure, he
saw himself as he had been in his youth. A smile of friendliness came
over his face.
"If I had shut my eyes," he said, "I should have thought it was your
father who was speaking."
Linforth turned quickly to Ralston.
"My father. You knew him?"
"Yes."
"I never did," said Dick regretfully.
Ralston nodded his head and continued:
"Twenty-six years ago we were here in Peshawur together. We came up on
to the top of this tower, as everyone does who comes to Peshawur. He was
like you. He was dreaming night and day of the Great Road through
Chiltistan to the foot of the Hindu Kush. Look!" and Ralston pointed
down to the roof-tops of the city, whereon the women and children worked
and played. For the most part they were enclosed within brick walls, and
the two men looked down into them as you might look in the rooms of a
doll's house by taking off the lid. Ralston pointed to one such open
chamber just beneath their eyes. An awning supported on wooden pillars
sheltered one end of it, and between two of these pillars a child
swooped backwards and forwards in a swing. In the open, a woman, seated
upon a string charpoy, rocked a cradle with her foot, while her hands
were busy with a needle, and an old woman, with a black shawl upon her
shoulders and head, sat near by, inactive. But she was talking. For at
times the younger woman would raise her head, and, though at that
distance no voice could be heard, it was evident that she was answering.
"I remember noticing that roof when your father and I were talking up
here all those years ago. There was just the same family group as you
see now. I remember it quite clearly, for your father went away to
Chiltistan the next day, and never came back. It was the last time I saw
him, and we were both young and full of all the great changes we were to
bring about." He smiled, half it seemed in amusement, half in regret.
"We talked of the Road, of course. Well, there's just one change. The
old woman, sitting there with the shawl upon her shoulders now, was in
those days the young woman rocking the cradle and working with her
needle. That's all. Troubles there have been, disturbances, an
expedition or two--but there's no real change. Here are you talking of
the Road just as your father did, not ambitious for yourself," he
explained with a kindly smile which illumined his whole face, "but
ambitious for the Road, and the Road still stops at Kohara."
"But it will go on--now," cried Linforth.
"Perhaps," said Ralston slowly. Then he stood up and confronted Linforth.
"It was not that you might carry on the Road that I brought you out from
England," he skid. "On the contrary."
Once more disappointment seized upon Dick Linforth, and he found it all
the more bitter in that he had believed a minute since that his dreams
were to be fulfilled. He looked down upon Peshawur, and the words which
Ralston had lately spoken, half in amusement, half with regret, suddenly
took for him their full meaning. Was it true that there was no change
but the change from the young woman to the old one, from enthusiasm to
acquiescence? He was young, and the possibility chilled him and even
inspired him with a kind of terror. Was he to carry the Road no further
than his father had done? Would another Linforth in another generation
come to the tower in Peshawur with hopes as high as his and with the
like futility?
"On the contrary?" he asked. "Then why?"
"That you might stop the Road from going on," said Ralston quietly.
In the very midst of his disappointment Linforth realised that he had
misjudged his companion. Here was no official, here was a man. The
attitude of indifference had gone, the air of lassitude with it. Here was
a man quietly exacting the hardest service which it was in his power to
exact, claiming it as a right, and yet making it clear by some subtle
sympathy that he understood very well all that the service would cost to
the man who served.
"I am to hinder the making of that Road?" cried Linforth.
"You are to do more. You are to prevent it."
"I have lived so that it should be made."
"So you have told me," said Ralston quietly, and Dick was silent. With
each quiet sentence Ralston had become more and more the dominating
figure. He was so certain, so assured. Linforth recognised him no longer
as the man to argue with; but as the representative of Government which
overrides predilections, sympathies, ambitions, and bends its servants to
their duty.
"I will tell you more," Ralston continued. "You alone can prevent the
extension of the Road. I believe it--I know it. I sent to England for
you, knowing it. Do your duty, and it may be that the Road will stop at
Kohara--an unfinished, broken thing. Flinch, and the Road runs straight
to the Hindu Kush. You will have your desire; but you will have failed."
There was something implacable and relentless in the tone and the words.
There was more, too. There was an intimation, subtly yet most clearly
conveyed, that Ralston who spoke had in his day trampled his ambitions
and desires beneath his feet in service to the Government, and asked no
more now from Linforth than he himself had in his turn performed. "I,
too, have lived in Arcady," he added. It twas this last intimation which
subdued the protests in Linforth's mind. He looked at the worn face of
the Commissioner, then he lifted his eyes and swept the horizon with his
gaze. The violet light upon the hills had lost its brightness and its
glamour. In the far distance the hills themselves were withdrawn.
Somewhere in that great barrier to the east was the gap of the Malakand
Pass, where the Road now began. Linforth turned away from the hills
towards Peshawur.
"What must I do?" he asked simply.
Ralston nodded his head. His attitude relaxed, his voice lost its
dominating note.
"What you have to understand is this," he explained. "To drive the Road
through Chiltistan means war. It would be the cause of war if we insisted
upon it now, just as it was the cause of war when your father went up
from Peshawur twenty-six years ago. Or it might be the consequence of
war. If the Chiltis rose in arms, undoubtedly we should carry it on to
secure control of the country in the future. Well, it is the last
alternative that we are face to face with now."
"The Chiltis might rise!" cried Linforth.
"There is that possibility," Ralston returned. "We don't mean on our own
account to carry on the Road; but the Chiltis might rise."
"And how should I prevent them?" asked Dick Linforth in perplexity.
"You know Shere Ali?" said Ralston
"Yes."
"You are a friend of his?"
"Yes."
"A great friend. His chief friend?"
"Yes."
"You have some control over him?"
"I think so," said Linforth.
"Very well," said Ralston. "You must use that control."
Linforth's perplexity increased. That danger should come from Shere
Ali--here was something quite incredible. He remembered their long talks,
their joint ambition. A day passed in the hut in the Promontoire of the
Meije stood out vividly in his memories. He saw the snow rising in a
swirl of white over the Breche de la Meije, that gap in the rock-wall
between the Meije and the Rateau, and driving down the glacier towards
the hut. He remembered the eagerness, the enthusiasm of Shere Ali.
"But he's loyal," Linforth cried. "There is no one in India more loyal."
"He was loyal, no doubt," said Ralston, with a shrug of his shoulders,
and, beginning with his first meeting with Shere Ali in Lahore, he told
Linforth all that he knew of the history of the young Prince.
"There can be no doubt," he said, "of his disloyalty," and he recounted
the story of the melons and the bags of grain. "Since then he has been
intriguing in Calcutta."
"Is he in Calcutta now?" Linforth asked.
"No," said Ralston. "He left Calcutta just about the time when you landed
in Bombay. And there is something rather strange--something, I think,
very disquieting in his movements since he left Calcutta. I have had him
watched, of course. He came north with one of his own countrymen, and the
pair of them have been seen at Cawnpore, at Lucknow, at Delhi."
Ralston paused. His face had grown very grave, very troubled.
"I am not sure," he said slowly. "It is difficult, however long you stay
in India, to get behind these fellows' minds, to understand the thoughts
and the motives which move them. And the longer you stay, the more
difficult you realise it to be. But it looks to me as if Shere Ali had
been taken by his companion on a sort of pilgrimage."
Linforth started.
"A pilgrimage!" and he added slowly, "I think I understand. A pilgrimage
to all the places which could most inflame the passions of a native
against the English race," and then he broke out in protest. "But it's
impossible. I know Shere Ali. It's not reasonable--"
Ralston interrupted him upon the utterance of the word.
"Reasonable!" he cried. "You are in India. Do ever white men act
reasonably in India?" and he turned with a smile. "There was a
great-uncle of yours in the days of the John Company, wasn't there? Your
father told me about him here on this tower. When his time was up, he
sent his money home and took his passage, and then came back--came back
to the mountains and disappeared. Very likely he may be sitting somewhere
beyond that barrier of hills by a little shrine to this hour, an old, old
man, reverenced as a saint, with a strip of cloth about his loins, and
forgetful of the days when he ruled a district in the Plains. I should
not wonder. It's not a reasonable country."
Ralston, indeed, was not far out in his judgment. Ahmed Ismail had
carried Shere Ali off from Calcutta. He had taken him first of all to
Cawnpore, and had led him up to the gate of the enclosure, wherein are
the Bibigarh, where the women and children were massacred, and the well
into which their bodies were flung. An English soldier turned them back
from that enclosure, refusing them admittance. Ahmed Ismail, knowing
well that it would be so, smiled quietly under his moustache; but Shere
Ali angrily pointed to some English tourists who were within the
enclosure.
"Why should we remain outside?" he asked.
"They are Bilati," said Ahmed Ismail in a smooth voice as they moved
away. "They are foreigners. The place is sacred to the foreigners. It is
Indian soil; but the Indian may not walk on it; no, not though he were
born next door. Yet why should we grumble or complain? We are the dirt
beneath their feet. We are dogs and sons of dogs, and a hireling will
turn our Princes from the gate lest the soles of our shoes should defile
their sacred places. And are they not right, Huzoor?" he asked cunningly.
"Since we submit to it, since we cringe at their indignities and fawn
upon them for their insults, are they not right?"
"Why, that's true, Ahmed Ismail," replied Shere Ali bitterly. He was in
the mood to make much of any trifle. This reservation of the enclosure at
Cawnpore was but one sign of the overbearing arrogance of the foreigners,
the Bilati--the men from over the sea. He had fawned upon them himself in
the days of his folly.
"But turn a little, Huzoor," Ahmed whispered in his ear, and led him
back. "Look! There is the Bibigarh where the women were imprisoned. That
is the house. Through that opening Sirdar Khan and his four companions
went--and shut the door behind them. In that room the women of Mecca
knelt and prayed for mercy. Come away, Huzoor. We have seen. Those were
days when there were men upon the plains of India."
And Shere Ali broke out with a fierce oath.
"Amongst the hills, at all events, there are men today. There is no
sacred ground for them in Chiltistan."
"Not even the Road?" asked Ahmed Ismail; and Shere Ali stopped dead,
and stared at his companion with startled eyes. He walked away in
silence after that; and for the rest of that day he said little to
Ahmed Ismail, who watched him anxiously. At night, however, Ahmed was
justified of his policy. For Shere Ali appeared before him in the white
robes of a Mohammedan. Up till then he had retained the English dress.
Now he had discarded it. Ahmed Ismail fell at his feet, and bowed
himself to the ground.
"My Lord! My Lord!" he cried, and there was no simulation in his outburst
of joy. "Would that your people could behold you now! But we have much to
see first. To-morrow we go to Lucknow."
Accordingly the two men travelled the next day to Lucknow. Shere Ali was
led up under the broken archway by Evans's Battery into the grounds of
the Residency. He walked with Ahmed Ismail at his elbow on the green
lawns where the golden-crested hoopoes flashed in the sunlight and the
ruined buildings stood agape to the air. They looked peaceful enough, as
they strolled from one battery to another, but all the while Ahmed Ismail
preached his sermon into Shere Ali's ears. There Lawrence had died; here
at the top of the narrow lane had stood Johannes's house whence Nebo the
Nailer had watched day after day with his rifle in his hand. Hardly a
man, be he never so swift, could cross that little lane from one quarter
of the Residency to another, so long as daylight lasted and so long as
Nebo the Nailer stood behind the shutters of Johannes's house. Shere Ali
was fired by the story of that siege. By so little was the garrison
saved. Ahmed Ismail led him down to a corner of the grounds and once more
a sentry barred the way.
"This is the graveyard," said Ahmed Ismail, and Shere Ali, looking up,
stepped back with a look upon his face which Ahmed Ismail did not
understand.
"Huzoor!" he said anxiously, and Shere Ali turned upon him with an
imperious word.
"Silence, dog!" he cried. "Stand apart. I wish to be alone."
His eyes were on the little church with the trees and the wall girding
it in. At the side a green meadow with high trees, had the look of a
playing-ground--the playing-ground of some great public school in
England. Shere Ali's eyes took in the whole picture, and then saw it but
dimly through a mist. For the little church, though he had never seen it
before, was familiar and most moving. It was a model of the Royal Chapel
at Eton, and, in spite of himself, as he gazed the tears filled his eyes
and the memory of his schooldays ached at his heart. He yearned to be
back once more in the shadow of that chapel with his comrades and his
friends. Not yet had he wholly forgotten; he was softened out of his
bitterness; the burden of his jealousy and his anger fell for awhile
from his shoulders. When he rejoined Ahmed Ismail, he bade him follow
and speak no word. He drove back to the town, and then only he spoke to
Ahmed Ismail.
"We will go from Lucknow to-day," he said. "I will not sleep in
this town."
"As your Highness wills," said Ahmed Ismail humbly, and he went into the
station and bought tickets for Delhi. It was on a Thursday morning that
the pair reached that town; and that day Ahmed Ismail had an unreceptive
listener for his sermons. The monument before the Post Office, the
tablets on the arch of the arsenal, even the barracks in the gardens of
the Moghul Palace fired no antagonism in the Prince, who so short a time
ago had been a boy at Eton. The memories evoked by the little church at
Lucknow had borne him company all night and still clung to him that day.
He was homesick for his school. Only twice was he really roused.
The first instance took place when he was driving along the Chandni
Chauk, the straight broad tree-fringed street which runs from the Lahore
Gate to the Fort. Ahmed Ismail sat opposite to him, and, leaning forward,
he pointed to a tree and to a tall house in front of the tree.
"My Lord," said he, "could that tree speak, what groans would one hear!"
"Why?" said Shere Ali listlessly.
"Listen, your Highness," said Ahmed Ismail. Like the rest of his
countrymen, he had a keen love for a story. And the love was the keener
when he himself had the telling of it. He sat up alertly. "In that house
lived an Englishman of high authority. He escaped when Delhi was seized
by the faithful. He came back when Delhi was recaptured by the infidels.
And there he sat with an English officer, at his window, every morning
from eight to nine. And every morning from eight to nine every native who
passed his door was stopped and hanged upon that tree, while he looked
on. Huzoor, there was no inquiry. It might be some peaceable merchant,
some poor man from the countryside. What did it matter? There was a
lesson to be taught to this city. And so whoever walked down the Chandni
Chauk during that hour dangled from those branches. Huzoor, for a week
this went on--for a whole week."
The story was current in Delhi. Ahmed Ismail found it to his hand, and
Shere Ali did not question it. He sat up erect, and something of the
fire which this last day had been extinct kindled again in his sombre
eyes. Later on he drove along the sinuous road on the top of the ridge,
and as he looked over Delhi, hidden amongst its foliage, he saw the
great white dome of the Jumma Musjid rising above the tree-tops, like a
balloon. "The Mosque," he said, standing up in his carriage. "To-morrow
we will worship there."
Before noon the next day he mounted the steep broad flight of steps and
passed under the red sandstone arch into the vast enclosure. He performed
his ablutions at the fountain, and, kneeling upon the marble tiles,
waited for the priest to ascend the ladder on to the wooden platform. He
knelt with Ahmed Ismail at his side, in the open, amongst the lowliest.
In front of him rows of worshippers knelt and bowed their foreheads to
the tiles--rows and rows covering the enclosure up to the arches of the
mosque itself. There were others too--rows and rows within the arches, in
the dusk of the mosque itself, and from man to man emotion passed like a
spark upon the wind. The crowd grew denser, there came a suspense, a
tension. It gained upon all, it laid its clutch upon Shere Ali. He ceased
to think, even upon his injuries, he was possessed with expectancy. And
then a man kneeling beside him interrupted his prayers and began to curse
fiercely beneath his breath.
"May they burn, they and their fathers and their children, to the last
generation!" And he added epithets of a surprising ingenuity. The while
he looked backwards over his shoulder.
Shere Ali followed his example. He saw at the back of the enclosure, in
the galleries which surmounted the archway and the wall, English men and
English women waiting. Shere Ali's blood boiled at the sight. They were
laughing, talking. Some of them had brought sandwiches and were eating
their lunch. Others were taking photographs with their cameras. They were
waiting for the show to begin.
Shere Ali followed the example of his neighbour and cursed them. All his
anger kindled again and quickened into hatred. They were so careful of
themselves, so careless of others!
"Not a Mohammedan," he cried to himself, "must set foot in their
graveyard at Lucknow, but they come to our mosque as to a show."
Suddenly he saw the priest climb the ladder on to the high wooden
platform in front of the central arch of the mosque and bow his forehead
to the floor. His voice rang out resonant and clear and confident over
that vast assemblage.
"There is only one God."
And a shiver passed across the rows of kneeling men, as though
unexpectedly a wind had blown across a ripe field of corn. Shere Ali was
moved like the rest, but all the while at the back of his mind there was
the thought of those white people in the galleries.
"They are laughing at us, they are making a mock of us, they think we
are of no account." And fiercely he called upon his God, the God of the
Mohammedans, to root them out from the land and cast them as weeds in
the flame.
The priest stood up erect upon the platform, and with a vibrating voice,
now plaintive and conveying some strange sense of loneliness, now loud in
praise, now humble in submission, he intoned the prayers. His voice rose
and sank, reverberating back over the crowded courtyard from the walls of
the mosque. Shere Ali prayed too, but he prayed silently, with all the
fervour of a fanatic, that it might be his hand which should drive the
English to their ships upon the sea.
When he rose and came out from the mosque he turned to Ahmed Ismail.
"There are some of my people in Delhi?"
Ahmed Ismail bowed.
"Let us go to them," said Shere Ali; he sought refuge amongst them from
the thought of those people in the galleries. Ahmed Ismail was well
content with the results of his pilgrimage. Shere Ali, as he paced the
streets of Delhi with a fierce rapt look in his eyes, had the very aspect
of a Ghazi fresh from the hills and bent upon murder and immolation.