Barclay of the Guides Page 7

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

  Jan Larrens

  It was early morning when Ahmed, riding through the level plain, amonggardens which, though it was autumn, still scented the air, came to thecantonments outside the walls of Peshawar. What he saw filled him withamazement. The ground was studded with tents, amid which soldiers of allraces--tall bearded Sikhs, active little Gurkhas, red-coatedEnglishmen--swarmed like bees in a hive. And there in the distance hesees a lady galloping, followed by a sais, and she is not veiled, aswere all the women in Shagpur, save those of low caste; Ahmed had rarelyseen the faces of Rahmut Khan's wives for a year or two. And here comesa carriage drawn by two horses, and in it are a lady, she too unveiled,and a Feringhi man in spotless white clothes. And as it dashes past him,the lady turns to the officer at her side and says--

  "What a fine-looking young fellow! Who is he, Fred?"

  "He? A Pathan from the hills, Alice, and a most accomplished brigand,you may be sure."

  Ahmed hears the words, and though he does not understand them, they sethim thrilling with a strange excitement. Long-forgotten scenes arecoming back to him; he remembers ladies just like this one--ladies whoused to speak in the same clear low tones, and men, sometimes in redcoats, sometimes in white, who used to dance him up and down on theirknees. His brain was in a whirl; recollection came to him like the dimremembrance of things seen in dreams. These were people of hisblood--and he was a stranger among them.

  He rode on dizzily, and entering the Kabul gate, found himself in a widestreet, thronged with folk of every race of the borderland. The size ofthe place staggered him; Shagpur was a kennel compared with it. Howcould he find his way about this huge town? And among so many people,what place could there be for him? He knew not which way to turn, and asfor seeking an interview with the great sahib, Jan Larrens, of whom hehad heard, his heart sank at the mere thought of it. The speech he heardaround him was not his speech; he began to fear lest he should be unableto make the least of his wants understood. But catching sight by and byof a man in the chogah of the hill-men, he rode up to him eagerly, andasked him where he might find a serai in which to stable his horse. Tohis joy the man answered in his own tongue.

  "You are a stranger. Whence do you come?"

  "From Shagpur, in the hills."

  "Hai! the village of Rahmut Khan."

  "I am his son. Where is he?"

  "That Allah knows. He is gone from here. The foolish one! He is even asthe ass that tried to get horns and lost his ears. Why was he sofoolish?"

  "But tell me, where is he gone? 'Twas told us in Shagpur that theFeringhis had put him in prison for five years. Where is the prison?"

  "Did I not say that Allah knows? He was taken from this prison and sentto some other. He is not my chief: why should I trouble about him? Andif you have come to see him, your journey is vain. Go back to Shagpur;in five years you will see him again, if Allah wills."

  "Show me a place where I may stable my horse, and then I will go and seethe Feringhi Jan Larrens; perhaps he will tell me that which I wish toknow."

  "A stone will not become soft, nor Jan Larrens a friend. But you are abold youth, that is certain. And that is a good horse of yours; have acare lest it be stolen. If a stranger may give counsel, I say stable himnot, but keep him always with you--though to be sure you cannot rideinto the room where Jan Larrens is. Wah! no matter; leave the beast withthe sentry at the door; he will keep him safe."

  "Then tell me where this Jan Larrens is to be found. I would see him atonce."

  "And there is little time to lose, for when the sun is high theFeringhis cannot be seen any more till night. Come with me; I will showthe way. 'Tis without there, towards the west."

  He turned the horse's head, and led the way out again by the gate, andso on for two miles until they came to the British cantonments whichAhmed had already passed. He stopped at a small and unpretentiousbuilding, at the door of which stood a red-coated sepoy. After a briefconversation with him the Pathan hitched the bridle of Ahmed's horse toa nail in the wall, and bade him go forward into the lobby. Several menwere squatting on the floor, Hindus in one part, Mohammedans in another,awaiting audience with the Englishman, who devoted certain hours of themorning to personal interviews with the natives. Ahmed found a placeamong the Mohammedans, and squatted upon his heels to wait his turn. Hefelt strangely depressed and forlorn. He was the youngest among thewaiting company, the most of whom ranged in age from the prime ofmanhood to white old age. Some talked of their affairs with theirfriends, others maintained silence; every now and then one would besummoned to the room beyond, and the door opened to let out one and letin another. These interviews were brief, and hardly an hour had passedwhen Ahmed received his call. He rose and followed the servant, quakingwith nervous anticipation, and found himself in the presence of astern-looking, bronzed and bearded man, in plain clothes of the Europeansort, his coat off, his shirt-sleeves tucked up to his elbows, seated ata table strewn with papers. A younger man stood beside him.

  "What does this youngster want?" said John Lawrence to the other, andAhmed again felt that strange thrill at the sound of English words. Theofficer, recognizing his costume, asked him in the Pashtu tongue hisname and his business.

  "I am Ahmed, son of Rahmut Khan of Shagpur," said the boy, "and I cometo ask Jan Larrens of my father's welfare."

  The officer stared a little at this plain and simple statement, notprefaced by "Hazur!" or any other title of respect.

  "He's the son of that rascally freebooter we caught the other day," saidthe officer. "Wants to know how the old villain is. Shall I tell him?"

  "Oh yes, tell him, but not where we have sent him; we don't want a gangof Pathans prowling round on the chance of breaking into the jail."

  The officer then told Ahmed what he already knew--that his father wasimprisoned for five years.

  "I wish to see him," said Ahmed. "Tell me where he is."

  "Come, my boy, this is your first meeting with an Englishman, I take it,and you don't know our ways. Your father is in prison: we cannot tellyou where he is; but if your tribe behaves itself and gives us no moretrouble, it is possible that his Excellency may reduce the sentence."

  "I want to ask Jan Larrens to set him free. That is why I came."

  The officer smiled as he translated this to Lawrence. The governor didnot smile. Had it been Sir Henry Lawrence instead of Sir John, theinterview might have ended differently; the former had a sympatheticmanner and understood the natives; the latter was of sterner stuff.

  "Tell him it's absurd," he said gruffly. "The man is well out of theway, and if his people try any more tricks, we'll serve them the same.The youngster has no claim on us; make that clear, and send him abouthis business."

  And thus it happened that within five minutes of his entering the roomAhmed was outside again, disheartened but not abashed. The officer hadspoken to him not unkindly, toning down the governor's sternness, and ashe was speaking Ahmed felt a momentary impulse to blurt out that he toowas English. But he was held back by the same consideration as had movedhim when discussing the matter with Ahsan, and by another motive--thefeeling that such a statement now would savour an appeal to charity. ThePathans are a proud race; and Ahmed had, besides the pride fosteredamong them, a pride that was his birthright. As he stood before hisfellow-countrymen that pride surged within him; there was no humblenessor subservience in his bearing, and when he left them his unspokenthought was: "They shall know some day that I am even as theythemselves, and they shall be proud to know it."

  He was tingling with excitement, too; some of the words used by theEnglishmen had fallen familiarly upon his ear. "Boy," "business"--thesewere two of the words that woke echoes in his memory, and he glowed withthe thought that, if he could spend a little time among Englishmen, hemight soon recover his native speech. So it was with a light in his eyesthat he stepped forth into the street again--a light that deceived hisPathan friend who had been awaiting him at the door.

  "Wah! were the words
of Jan Larrens words of honey, then?" he said.

  "No; he would tell me nothing that I knew not already, but he willassuredly tell me more some day. And now let us go to the serai, for Iwould fain eat, having some few pice to pay withal. But stay, friend,canst tell me whether among all these soldiers here there are those thatserve one Lumsden Sahib? I have a friend among them I should like tosee."

  "No, they are not here, but at Hoti-Mardan, two days' march towards thenorth-east. Two days, I say; but with this horse of yours you could getthere in one. What is your friend's name?"

  "Sherdil. Do you know him?"

  "No. Well, we will go into the bazar and get food, and then I will putyou in the way for Hoti-Mardan. But if you think to become one of thoseGuides of Lumsden Sahib yourself, 'twill be a waste of time; for therebe many now waiting to put on the khaki for whom there is no room. Hai!I do not understand it; I am a swordsmith and will make swords for them,receiving a fair price, but Allah forbid I should ever give up myfreedom to serve the sahibs."

  He trudged beside Ahmed into the town again, chattering all the way.They had a simple meal together, Ahmed keeping a watchful eye on hishorse tethered at the door; and then the swordsmith took his leave, witha sententious maxim by way of parting counsel.

  "Friends are serpents: they bite. Strangers are best. May God go withyou."

  After resting a while, Ahmed set off on his ride to Hoti-Mardan, thehead-quarters of the Guides. He had always intended to visit Sherdil,and see for himself whether his position was so ignominious as hisfather Assad had made out. But now, as he left the suburban gardens ofPeshawar behind, and came into the wide sandy plain, over which he mustride for thirty miles or more, other ideas came into his mind. JanLarrens had said that he had no claim on the Government of the Panjab:that was true; but what if he should establish a claim? What if he coulddo something for the sahibs as a Pathan, and so not merely attain aposition in which he might serve his father, but also prove his right tothe name of Englishman? It was clear that he could not go back toShagpur; he was surprised to find himself glad that he could not. Newfeelings were springing within him. To be chief of Shagpur seemed novery desirable thing; to win his title of Englishman, to prove himselfworthy to stand among these white men, who ruled, not villages, butempires--this seemed to him a goal worth striving towards.

  And how could it be accomplished? The obvious answer to the questionwas: Join the Guides as Sherdil had done. But there were twodifficulties. His friend the swordsmith had said that there were alreadymany candidates waiting for admission to the corps; it was very unlikelythat room could be made for a new-comer, and one so young. It might beyears before he could be enrolled, and he was loath to wait; the littlemoney he had would soon be gone, and then the only course open to himwould be to join some band of freebooters in the hills, for to earn hisliving by any menial occupation would never have entered his head. Thatwas a matter of caste.

  The second difficulty was also a matter of caste. Sherdil was the son ofa man who, while not of the lowest caste, like the washermen andsweepers and musicians, was certainly not of a high caste. If all theGuides were like him, Ahmed felt that he, as the son of a chief, woulddemean himself by joining them. His bringing-up made him very sensitiveto caste distinctions. No doubt the Englishmen he had lately left wereof high caste: no doubt his own real father had been one of them; hemust certainly do nothing that would make him lose caste in Englisheyes.

  These problems occupied his mind as he rode. They dropped from histhoughts by and by when he came in sight of his destination. He saw,standing in a clearing amid jungle and scrub, a walled fort, with atower on which a flag was flying. Beyond rose the great mountain mass ofthe Himalayas. Outside the walls were huts and tents of every sort andsize. As he rode among them up to the gate Ahmed saw men of every borderrace in their different costumes; none of them was in khaki, so thatthese were apparently not members of Lumsden Sahib's corps. He wonderedwhether they were the candidates of whom the swordsmith had spoken, andhis heart sank, for they were strong, stalwart fellows of all ages, noneso young as he, and looked as if they had been men of war from theiryouth.

  Challenged at the gate, he asked for Sherdil, the son of Assad. And in afew minutes the man came swaggering to him in his khaki, not a bit likethe downtrodden wretch his father had lamented. He hailed Ahmedeffusively, and invited him proudly into the fort. It was, as Ahmedfound, in the shape of a five-pointed star. Sherdil showed him theofficers' quarters on four of the points, and the magazine and armouryon the fifth; the rude huts of the infantry tucked away under theparapets; the hornwork in which the cavalry portion of the corps hadtheir quarters. Two British officers happened to cross the parade-groundas Sherdil was showing Ahmed round. Sherdil saluted.

  "That is Lumsden Sahib," he said--"the tall one. The other is BellewSahib, the hakim. Hai! his powders are terrible: they bite the tongue,and make, as it were, an earthquake in one's inside."

  And then he went on to describe an ailment from which he had recentlysuffered, and Dr. Bellew's drastic treatment. But Ahmed only halflistened: he was more interested in Lumsden Sahib, the commander of thiscorps of Guides. He saw a tall, athletic figure, surmounted by a finehead--much handsomer than Jan Larrens, he thought, almost as handsome asRahmut Khan. Ahmed was struck with a sudden fancy: allowing fordifferences of dress, Rahmut must in his young manhood have borne astriking resemblance to this Feringhi. Harry Burnett Lumsden was at thistime thirty-five years of age. He had come to India at the age ofseventeen, with a cadetship in the Company's service, and while still alieutenant, at the age of twenty-five, had been ordered by Sir HenryLawrence to raise the corps of Guides, which he had commanded ever sinceexcept for a brief period when Lieutenant Hodson held the command. Hisrank was now that of captain, with a brevet majority.

  Sherdil was so taken up with his task of showman that he did not at onceask Ahmed's purpose in visiting him. But when he learnt what hadhappened at Shagpur since the capture of the chief, he cried--

  "Wah! Ahmed-ji, I will get leave and go and kill that dog Dilasah. Itcannot be yet, alas! for I have already had my leave for this year. ButDilasah shall die, and you shall be chief; by my beard, it shall be so."

  "I do not want to be chief, Sherdil," said Ahmed; then, brought face toface with his thoughts, "I want to join the Guides--if I lose no casteby it."

  "Hush! do not speak of caste. We are all high caste--we Guides."

  "But you, Sherdil?"

  "Hush! no one knows. Lumsden Sahib will only take men of good caste. Ihad to lie: lying is an honest man's wings, you know. Hai! you will loseno caste. We are all good men. But you are young, Ahmed, and there aremany waiting. Those outside the walls: you saw them: they have encampedthere to wait until there is room for them. And they are good men--someof the finest brigands of the hills, and sons of chiefs among them. Ifear me you are too young. There are thirty waiting, and they live outthere with their friends, spending their money in feeding themselves andtheir horses; can you do the same?"

  "For a month; no more."

  Sherdil drew a long face.

  "A month! it is very little. Yet it may be well. Wah! it shall be well.Maybe there will be room for one or two in a month. And a month willgive us time. I will teach you."

  "Teach me what?"

  And then Sherdil explained Lumsden's way of filling the vacancies asthey occurred. He held a competition among the candidates, and took themto the rifle range to shoot it off among themselves: the best shots gotthe places.

  "And if there are some who shoot equally well, what then?" asked Ahmed.

  "Oh, then he does as Hodson Sahib did. He makes them ride unbackedhorses, and the man that rides furthest before being thrown off, that isthe man for the Guides."

  "I can shoot, and I can ride, Sherdil," said Ahmed, with a smile. "I donot fear the tests."

  "That may well be: but you are young, we have no boys in the Guides. Yetit may be possible. If we could give you a moustache and the beginningsof a beard!"

&
nbsp; "That may not be until Allah wills."

  "Nay, there is a very cunning magician in the bazar at Peshawar, whowith some few touches of a stick can make the semblance of hair on theface. So we might add a few years to you till the tests are over: afterthat it will be as Heaven wills."

  Ahmed thought over this suggestion for a minute, and then said--

  "Nay, it cannot be so, Sherdil. Dost thou want me to be shamed? What ifthe shooting and riding be good and then it is proved that the hair isfalse? It would make my face fall before my countrymen."

  "Thy countrymen! Hai! If thou thinkest so, better go straightway toLumsden Sahib and say, 'I am a Feringhi, of the sahib-log like yourself.Give me clothes such as the sahibs wear, and a portion of pig to eat.'"

  "Silence, son of a dog!" cried Ahmed. "I will tell all at a fittingtime. And thou, Sherdil, wilt lock thy tongue and say nothing of thesematters, or verily it will be a sad day for thee. Swear by the grave ofthy grandmother."

  Sherdil looked astonished at the sudden vigour of Ahmed's speech. Hetook the oath required. Then ensued a long conversation, at the end ofwhich Ahmed rode back to Peshawar and Sherdil sought an interview withhis commander.

  "Well, what can I do for you?" shouted Lumsden in his breezy way asSherdil stood before him, saluting humbly.

  "If it please the heaven-born," said Sherdil, "I have a friend whowishes to put on the khaki and serve the Kumpani."

  "Aha! another son of a dyer, like Sherdil, son of Assad?"

  Sherdil gasped. Was his origin known after all?

  "The heaven-born knows everything," he said, with a sigh. "No; thisfriend is of high caste and the son of a chief--a good man."

  "His name?"

  "Ahmed, son of Rahmut Khan."

  "The villain we chased not long ago!"

  "The heaven-born says; and the same villain is my own chief, and is nowlaid up in the sahibs' prison, and can make no more trouble; but thereis trouble in the village----"

  "Disputed succession, I suppose?"

  "Hazur! Dilasah, a fat rascal, makes himself chief until I can slay him,and Ahmed wishes to serve the heaven-born until such time as his fatheris mercifully set free."

  "How old is he?"

  "I cannot tell that to a day, heaven-born. He seems somewhat youngerthan Sherdil thy servant, but he is well-grown, and can ride a horse andhit a mark. Moreover, he is exceeding skilful in the nazabaze."

  "Well, well, I have put his name down. He makes the thirty-second. Is hehere? Is he the boy I saw with you on the parade-ground?"

  "Heaven-born, how could it be? Ahmed is in Peshawar: that boy was hiscousin." Sherdil lied without a blush.

  "Well, take yourself off now. I will let you know when a vacancy occurs,and then your friend must take his chance with the rest."

  And next day, in the serai where he had put up in Peshawar, Ahmed learntfrom Sherdil that his name stood thirty-second on the list of candidatesfor the Guides.