The Broken Road - A. E. W. Mason
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THE BROKEN ROAD
BY A.E.W. MASON
AUTHOR OF "FOUR FEATHERS," "THE TRUANTS," "RUNNING WATER," ETC.
1907
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE BREAKING OF THE ROAD
II. INSIDE THE FORT
III. LINFORTH'S DEATH
IV. LUFFE LOOKS FORWARD
V. A MAGAZINE ARTICLE
VI. A LONG WALK
VII. IN THE DAUPHINE
VIII. A STRING OF PEARLS
IX. LUFFE IS REMEMBERED
X. AN UNANSWERED QUESTION
XI. AT THE GATE OF LAHORE
XII. ON THE POLO-GROUND
XIII. THE INVIDIOUS BAR
XIV. IN THE COURTYARD
XV. A QUESTION ANSWERED
XVI. SHERE ALI MEETS AN OLD FRIEND
XVII. NEWS FROM MECCA
XVIII. SYBIL LINFORTH'S LOYALTY
XIX. A GIFT MISUNDERSTOOD
XX. THE SOLDIER AND THE JEW
XXI. SHERE ALI IS CLAIMED BY CHILTISTAN
XXII. THE CASTING OF THE DIE
XXIII. SHERE ALI'S PILGRIMAGE
XXIV. NEWS FROM AJMERE
XXV. IN THE ROSE GARDEN
XXVI. THE BREAKING OF THE PITCHER
XXVII. AN ARRESTED CONFESSION
XXVIII. THE THIEF
XXIX. MRS. OLIVER RIDES THROUGH PESHAWUR
XXX. THE NEEDED IMPLEMENT
XXXI. AN OLD TOMB AND A NEW SHRINE
XXXII. SURPRISES FOR CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
XXXIII. IN THE RESIDENCY
XXXIV. ONE OF THE LITTLE WARS
XXXV. A LETTER FROM VIOLET
XXXVI. "THE LITTLE LESS--"
CHAPTER I
THE BREAKING OF THE ROAD
It was the Road which caused the trouble. It usually is the road. That
and a reigning prince who was declared by his uncle secretly to have sold
his country to the British, and a half-crazed priest from out beyond the
borders of Afghanistan, who sat on a slab of stone by the river-bank and
preached a _djehad_. But above all it was the road--Linforth's road. It
came winding down from the passes, over slopes of shale; it was built
with wooden galleries along the precipitous sides of cliffs; it snaked
treacherously further and further across the rich valley of Chiltistan
towards the Hindu Kush, until the people of that valley could endure it
no longer.
Then suddenly from Peshawur the wires began to flash their quiet and
ominous messages. The road had been cut behind Linforth and his coolies.
No news had come from him. No supplies could reach him. Luffe, who was in
the country to the east of Chiltistan, had been informed. He had gathered
together what troops he could lay his hands on and had already started
over the eastern passes to Linforth's relief. But it was believed that
the whole province of Chiltistan had risen. Moreover it was winter-time
and the passes were deep in snow. The news was telegraphed to England.
Comfortable gentlemen read it in their first-class carriages as they
travelled to the City and murmured to each other commonplaces about the
price of empire. And in a house at the foot of the Sussex Downs
Linforth's young wife leaned over the cot of her child with the tears
streaming from her eyes, and thought of the road with no less horror than
the people of Chiltistan. Meanwhile the great men in Calcutta began to
mobilise a field force at Nowshera, and all official India said uneasily,
"Thank Heaven, Luffe's on the spot."
Charles Luffe had long since abandoned the army for the political
service, and, indeed, he was fast approaching the time-limit of his
career. He was a man of breadth and height, but rather heavy and dull of
feature, with a worn face and a bald forehead. He had made enemies, and
still made them, for he had not the art of suffering fools gladly; and,
on the other hand, he made no friends. He had no sense of humour and no
general information. He was, therefore, of no assistance at a
dinner-party, but when there was trouble upon the Frontier, or beyond it,
he was usually found to be the chief agent in the settlement.
Luffe alone had foreseen and given warning of the danger. Even Linforth,
who was actually superintending the making of the road, had been kept in
ignorance. At times, indeed, some spokesman from among the merchants of
Kohara, the city of Chiltistan where year by year the caravans from
Central Asia met the caravans from Central India, would come to his tent
and expostulate.
"We are better without the road, your Excellency. Will you kindly stop
it!" the merchant would say; and Linforth would then proceed to
demonstrate how extremely valuable to the people of Chiltistan a better
road would be:
"Kohara is already a great mart. In your bazaars at summer-time you
see traders from Turkestan and Tibet and Siberia, mingling with the
Hindoo merchants from Delhi and Lahore. The road will bring you still
more trade."
The spokesman went back to the broad street of Kohara seemingly well
content, and inch by inch the road crept nearer to the capital.
But Luffe was better acquainted with the Chiltis, a soft-spoken race of
men, with musical, smooth voices and polite and pretty ways. But
treachery was a point of honour with them and cold-blooded cruelty a
habit. There was one particular story which Luffe was accustomed to tell
as illustrative of the Chilti character.
"There was a young man who lived with his mother in a little hamlet close
to Kohara. His mother continually urged him to marry, but for a long
while he would not. He did not wish to marry. Finally, however, he fell
in love with a pretty girl, made her his wife, and brought her home, to
his mother's delight. But the mother's delight lasted for just five days.
She began to complain, she began to quarrel; the young wife replied, and
the din of their voices greatly distressed the young man, besides making
him an object of ridicule to his neighbours. One evening, in a fit of
passion, both women said they would stand it no longer. They ran out of
the house and up the hillside, but as there was only one path they ran
away together, quarrelling as they went. Then the young Chilti rose,
followed them, caught them up, tied them in turn hand and foot, laid them
side by side on a slab of stone, and quietly cut their throats.
"'Women talk too much,' he said, as he came back to a house unfamiliarly
quiet. 'One had really to put a stop to it.'"
Knowing this and many similar stories, Luffe had been for some while on
the alert. Whispers reached him of dangerous talk in the bazaars of
Kohara, Peshawur, and even of Benares in India proper. He heard of the
growing power of the old Mullah by the river-bank. He was aware of the
accusations against the ruling Khan. He knew that after night had fallen
Wafadar Nazim, the Khan's uncle, a restless, ambitious, disloyal man,
crept down to the river-bank and held converse with the priest. Thus he
was ready so far as he could be ready.
The news that the road was broken was flashed to him from the nearest
telegraph station, and within twenty-four hours he led out a small force
from his Agency--a battalion of Sikhs, a couple of companies of Gurkhas,
two guns of a mountain battery, and a troop of irregular levies--and
disappeared over the pass, now deep in snow.
"Would he be in time?"
Not only in India was the question asked. It was asked in England, too,
in the clubs of Pall Mall, but nowhere with so passionate an outcry as in
the house at the foot of the Sussex Downs.
To Sybil Linforth these days were a time of intolerable suspense. The
horror of the Road was upon her. She dreamed of it when she slept, so
that she came to dread sleep, and tried, as long as she might, to keep
her heavy eyelids from closing over her eyes. The nights to her were
terrible. Now it was she, with her child in her arms, who walked for
ever and ever along that road, toiling through snow or over shale and
finding no rest anywhere. Now it was her boy alone, who wandered along
one of the wooden galleries high up above the river torrent, until a
plank broke and he fell through with a piteous scream. Now it was her
husband, who could go neither forward nor backward, since in front and
behind a chasm gaped. But most often it was a man--a young Englishman,
who pursued a young Indian along that road into the mists. Somehow,
perhaps because it was inexplicable, perhaps because its details were so
clear, this dream terrified her more than all the rest. She could tell
the very dress of the Indian who fled--a young man--young as his
pursuer. A thick sheepskin coat swung aside as he ran and gave her a
glimpse of gay silk; soft leather boots protected his feet; and upon his
face there was a look of fury and wild fear. She never woke from this
dream but her heart was beating wildly. For a few moments after waking
peace would descend upon her.
"It is a dream--all a dream," she would whisper to herself with
contentment, and then the truth would break upon her dissociated from the
dream. Often she rose from her bed and, kneeling beside the boy's cot,
prayed with a passionate heart that the curse of the Road--that road
predicted by a Linforth years ago--might overpass this generation.
Meanwhile rumours came--rumours of disaster. Finally a messenger broke
through and brought sure tidings. Luffe had marched quickly, had come
within thirty miles of Kohara before he was stopped. In a strong fort at
a bend of the river the young Khan with his wife and a few adherents had
taken refuge. Luffe joined the Khan, sought to push through to Kohara and
rescue Linforth, but was driven back. He and his troops and the Khan were
now closely besieged by Wafadar Nazim.
The work of mobilisation was pressed on; a great force was gathered at
Nowshera; Brigadier Appleton was appointed to command it.
"Luffe will hold out," said official India, trying to be cheerful.
Perhaps the only man who distrusted Luffe's ability to hold out was
Brigadier Appleton, who had personal reasons for his views. Brigadier
Appleton was no fool, and yet Luffe had not suffered him gladly. All the
more, therefore, did he hurry on the preparations. The force marched out
on the new road to Chiltistan. But meanwhile the weeks were passing, and
up beyond the snow-encumbered hills the beleaguered troops stood
cheerfully at bay behind the thick fort-walls.
CHAPTER II
INSIDE THE FORT
The six English officers made it a practice, so far as they could, to
dine together; and during the third week of the siege the conversation
happened one evening to take a particular turn. Ever afterwards, during
this one hour of the twenty-four, it swerved regularly into the same
channel. The restaurants of London were energetically discussed, and
their merits urged by each particular partisan with an enthusiasm which
would have delighted a shareholder. Where you got the best dinner, where
the prettiest women were to be seen, whether a band was a drawback or an
advantage--not a point was omitted, although every point had been
debated yesterday or the day before. To-night the grave question of the
proper number for a supper party was opened by Major Dewes of the 5th
Gurkha Regiment.
"Two," said the Political Officer promptly, and he chuckled under his
grey moustache. "I remember the last time I was in London I took out to
supper--none of the coryphees you boys are so proud of being seen about
with, but"--and, pausing impressively, he named a reigning lady of the
light-opera stage.
"You did!" exclaimed a subaltern.
"I did," he replied complacently.
"What did you talk about?" asked Major Dewes, and the Political Officer
suddenly grew serious.
"I was very interested," he said quietly. "I got knowledge which it was
good for me to have. I saw something which it was well for me to see. I
wished--I wish now--that some of the rulers and the politicians could
have seen what I saw that night."
A brief silence followed upon his words, and during that silence certain
sounds became audible--the beating of tom-toms and the cries of men. The
dinner-table was set in the verandah of an inner courtyard open to the
sky, and the sounds descended into that well quite distinctly, but
faintly, as if they were made at a distance in the dark, open country.
The six men seated about the table paid no heed to those sounds; they had
had them in their ears too long. And five of the six were occupied in
wondering what in the world Sir Charles Luffe, K.C.S.I., could have
learnt of value to him at a solitary supper party with a lady of comic
opera. For it was evident that he had spoken in deadly earnest.
Captain Lynes of the Sikhs broke the silence:
"What's this?" he asked, as an orderly offered to him a dish.
"Let us not inquire too closely," said the Political Officer. "This is
the fourth week of the siege."
The rice-fields of the broad and fertile valley were trampled down and
built upon with sangars. The siege had cut its scars upon the fort's
rough walls of mud and projecting beams. But nowhere were its marks more
visible than upon the faces of the Englishmen in the verandah of that
courtyard.
Dissimilar as they were in age and feature, sleepless nights and the
unrelieved tension had given to their drawn faces almost a family
likeness. They were men tired out, but as yet unaware of their
exhaustion, so bright a flame burnt within each one of them. Somewhere
amongst the snow-passes on the north-east a relieving force would surely
be encamped that night, a day's march nearer than it was yesterday.
Somewhere amongst the snow-passes in the south a second force would be
surely advancing from Nowshera, probably short of rations, certainly
short of baggage, that it might march the lighter. When one of those two
forces deployed across the valley and the gates of the fort were again
thrown open to the air the weeks of endurance would exact their toll. But
that time was not yet come. Meanwhile the six men held on cheerily,
inspiring the garrison with their own confidence, while day after day a
province in arms flung itself in vain against their blood-stained walls.
Luffe, indeed, the Political Officer, fought with disease as well as with
the insurgents of Chiltistan; and though he remained the master-mind of
the defence, the Doctor never passed him without an anxious glance. For
there were the signs of death upon his face.
"The fourth week!" said Lynes. "Is it, by George? Well, the siege won't
last much longer now. The Sirkar don't leave its servants in the lurch.
That's what these hill-tribes never seem to understand. How is Travers?"
he asked of the Doctor.
Travers, a subaltern of the North Surrey Light Infantry, had been shot
through the thigh in the covered waterway to the river that morning.
"He's going on all right," replied the Doctor. "Travers had bad luck. It
must have been a stray bullet which slipped through that chink in the
stones. For he could not have been seen--"
As he spoke a cry rang clearly out. All six men looked upwards
through the open roof to the clear dark sky, where the stars shone
frostily bright.
"What was that?" asked one of the six.
"Hush," said Luffe, and for a moment they all listened in silence, with
expectant faces and their bodies alert to spring from their chairs. Then
the cry was heard again. It was a wail more than a cry, and it sounded
strangely solitary, strangely sad, as it floated through the still air.
There was the East in that cry trembling out of the infinite darkness
above their heads. But the six men relaxed their limbs. They had
expected the loud note of the Pathan war-cry to swell sonorously, and
with intervals shorter and shorter until it became one menacing and
continuous roar.
"It is someone close under the walls," said Luffe, and as he ended a Sikh
orderly appeared at the entrance of a passage into the courtyard, and,
advancing to the table, saluted.
"Sahib, there is a man who claims that he comes with a message from
Wafadar Nazim."
"Tell him that we receive no messages at night, as Wafadar Nazim knows
well. Let him come in the morning and he shall be admitted. Tell him that
if he does not go back at once the sentinels will fire." And Luffe nodded
to one of the younger officers. "Do you see to it, Haslewood."
Haslewood rose and went out from the courtyard with the orderly. He
returned in a few minutes, saying that the man had returned to Wafadar
Nazim's camp. The six men resumed their meal, and just as they ended it a
Pathan glided in white flowing garments into the courtyard and bowed low.
"Huzoor," he said, "His Highness the Khan sends you greeting. God has
been very good to him. A son has been born to him this day, and he sends
you this present, knowing that you will value it more than all that he
has"; and carefully unfolding a napkin, he laid with reverence upon the
table a little red cardboard box. The mere look of the box told the six
men what the present was even before Luffe lifted the lid. It was a box
of fifty gold-tipped cigarettes, and applause greeted their appearance.
"If he could only have a son every day," said Lynes, and in the laugh
which followed upon the words Luffe alone did not join. He leaned his
forehead upon his hand and sat in a moody silence. Then he turned towards
the servant and bade him thank his master.
"I will come myself to offer our congratulations after dinner if his
Highness will receive me," said Luffe.
The box of cigarettes went round the table. Each man took one, lighted
it, and inhaled the smoke silently and very slowly. The garrison had run
out of tobacco a week before. Now it had come to them welcome as a gift
from Heaven. The moment was one of which the perfect enjoyment was not to
be marred by any speech. Only a grunt of satisfaction or a deep sigh of
pleasure was now and then to be heard, as the smoke curled upwards from
the little paper sticks. Each man competed with his neighbour in the
slowness of his respiration, each man wanted to be the last to lay down
his cigarette and go about his work. And then the Doctor said in a
whisper to Major Dewes:
"That's bad. Look!"
Luffe, a mighty smoker in his days of health, had let his cigarette go
out, had laid it half-consumed upon the edge of his plate. But it seemed
that ill-health was not all to blame. He had the look of one who had
forgotten his company. He was withdrawn amongst his own speculations, and
his eyes looked out beyond that smoke-laden room in a fort amongst the
Himalaya mountains into future years dim with peril and trouble.
"There is no moon," he said at length. "We can get some exercise
to-night"; and he rose from the table and ascended a little staircase on
to the flat roof of the fort. Major Dewes and the three other officers
got up and went about their business. Dr. Bodley, the surgeon, alone
remained seated. He waited until the tramp of his companions' feet had
died away, and then he drew from his pocket a briarwood pipe, which he
polished lovingly. He walked round the table and, collecting the ends of
the cigarettes, pressed them into the bowl of the pipe.
"Thank Heavens I am not an executive officer," he said, as he lighted his
pipe and settled himself again comfortably in his chair. It should be
mentioned, perhaps, that he not only doctored and operated on the sick
and wounded, but he kept the stores, and when any fighting was to be
done, took a rifle and filled any place which might be vacant in the
firing-line.
"There are now forty-four cigarettes," he reflected. "At six a day they
will last a week. In a week something will have happened. Either the
relieving force will be here, or--yes, decidedly something will have
happened." And as he blew the smoke out from between his lips he added
solemnly: "If not to us, to the Political Officer."
Meanwhile Luffe paced the roof of the fort in the darkness. The fort was
built in the bend of a swift, wide river, and so far as three sides were
concerned was securely placed. For on three the low precipitous cliffs
overhung the tumbling water. On the fourth, however, the fertile plain of
the valley stretched open and flat up to the very gates.
In front of the forts a line of sangars extended, the position of each
being marked even now by a glare of light above it, which struck up from
the fire which the insurgents had lit behind the walls of stone. And from
one and another of the sangars the monotonous beat of a tom-tom came to
Luffe's ears.
Luffe walked up and down for a time upon the roof. There was a new sangar
to-night, close to the North Tower, which had not existed yesterday.
Moreover, the almond trees in the garden just outside the western wall
were in blossom, and the leaves upon the branches were as a screen, where
only the bare trunks showed a fortnight ago.
But with these matters Luffe was not at this moment concerned. They
helped the enemy, they made the defence more arduous, but they were
trivial in his thoughts. Indeed, the siege itself was to him an
unimportant thing. Even if the fortress fell, even if every man within
perished by the sword--why, as Lynes had said, the Sirkar does not forget
its servants. The relieving force might march in too late, but it would
march in. Men would die, a few families in England would wear mourning,
the Government would lose a handful of faithful servants. England would
thrill with pride and anger, and the rebellion would end as rebellions
always ended.
Luffe was troubled for quite another cause. He went down from the roof,
walked by courtyard and winding passage to the quarters of the Khan. A
white-robed servant waited for him at the bottom of a broad staircase in
a room given up to lumber. A broken bicycle caught Luffe's eye. On the
ledge of a window stood a photographic camera. Luffe mounted the stairs
and was ushered into the Khan's presence. He bowed with deference and
congratulated the Khan upon the birth of his heir.
"I have been thinking," said the Khan--"ever since my son was born I have
been thinking. I have been a good friend to the English. I am their
friend and servant. News has come to me of their cities and colleges. I
will send my son to England, that he may learn your wisdom, and so return
to rule over his kingdom. Much good will come of it." Luffe had expected
the words. The young Khan had a passion for things English. The bicycle
and the camera were signs of it. Unwise men had applauded his
enlightenment. Unwise at all events in Luffe's opinion. It was, indeed,
greatly because of his enlightenment that he and a handful of English
officers and troops were beleaguered in the fortress.
"He shall go to Eton and to Oxford, and much good for my people will come
of it," said the Khan. Luffe listened gravely and politely; but he was
thinking of an evening when he had taken out to supper a reigning queen
of comic opera. The recollection of that evening remained with him when
he ascended once more to the roof of the fort and saw the light of the
fires above the sangars. A voice spoke at his elbow. "There is a new
sangar being built in the garden. We can hear them at work," said Dewes.
Luffe walked cautiously along the roof to the western end. Quite clearly
they could hear the spades at work, very near to the wall, amongst the
almond and the mulberry trees.
"Get a fireball," said Luffe in a whisper, "and send up a dozen Sikhs."
On the parapet of the roof a rough palisade of planks had been erected to
protect the defenders from the riflemen in the valley and across the
river. Behind this palisade the Sikhs crept silently to their positions.
A ball made of pinewood chips and straw, packed into a covering of
canvas, was brought on to the roof and saturated with kerosene oil. "Are
you ready?" said Luffe; "then now!" Upon the word the fireball was lit
and thrown far out. It circled through the air, dropped, and lay blazing
upon the ground. By its light under the branches of the garden trees
could be seen the Pathans building a stone sangar, within thirty yards of
the fort's walls.
"Fire!" cried Luffe. "Choose your men and fire."
All at once the silence of the night was torn by the rattle of musketry,
and afar off the tom-toms beat yet more loudly.
Luffe looked on with every faculty alert. He saw with a smile that the
Doctor had joined them and lay behind a plank, firing rapidly and with a
most accurate aim. But at the back of his mind all the while that he
gave his orders was still the thought, "All this is nothing. The one
fateful thing is the birth of a son to the Khan of Chiltistan." The
little engagement lasted for about half an hour. The insurgents then
drew back from the garden, leaving their dead upon the field. The rattle
of the musketry ceased altogether. Behind the parapet one Sikh had been
badly wounded by a bullet in the thigh. Already the Doctor was attending
to his hurts.
"It is a small thing, Huzoor," said the wounded soldier, looking upwards
to Luffe, who stood above him; "a very small thing," but even as he spoke
pain cut the words short.
"Yes, a small thing"; Luffe did not speak the words, but he thought them.
He turned away and walked back again across the roof. The new sangar
would not be built that night. But it was a small thing compared with all
that lay hidden in the future.
As he paced that side of the fort which faced the plain there rose
through the darkness, almost beneath his feet, once more the cry which
had reached his ears while he sat at dinner in the courtyard.