Читать книгу The Drum - A. E. W. Mason - Страница 4

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It was still early in the year when Carruthers reached the head of the Tokot valley. But in that long, deep combe spring had come over-night. The terraced fields were already green with young wheat, and the orchards in the wealth of their blossom repeated the tumbled snows of the upper passes.

“Forward,” he said and rode down the winding track. He had behind him an escort of sixteen Pathans of his old regiment, a section of the 15th Sikhs, a Captain Morris and a squad of Royal Engineers, a baggage-train of mules, a doctor and a drummer-boy and a bugler borrowed from the Middlesex Infantry, then stationed at Peshawur. On that night he camped by a village at the waterside and in two days’ time saw ahead of him the high towers of the Khan’s fort. In the afternoon a group of young nobles gay with Bokhara silks and long coats of velvet rode out to meet him. At the head of them was a boy of twelve years or so mounted on a great horse with trappings of silver. The boy set his horse to a gallop and, reining up by Carruthers, swung himself out of the saddle to the ground.

“I am Shuja-ul-Mulk, the Khan’s son,” he cried with a broad grin. “My father welcomes you to Tokot and prays you not to measure the welcome by the size of the messenger.”

“I will not,” Carruthers replied as he shook hands with the boy. “I will measure it by the width of his messenger’s smile.”

Shuja-ul-Mulk swung himself up again into his saddle, and riding on Carruthers’ left side led him towards a wooden platform set up under a walnut-tree at the gates of the Fort, where the Khan and his Court awaited him.

“A guide will take your men to your house,” said Shuja-ul-Mulk as he dismounted again.

Carruthers and Morris got off their horses too, and ascending to the platform shook hands with the Khan, Sher Afzul-ul-Mulk. He was a man of sixty, dressed in a quilted choga of flowered silk, a large, heavy man with a haggard and apprehensive look which even the warmth of his welcome could not quite conceal. He presented to the English officers his brother Nizam, a sleek, smiling person ten years younger than himself, and his Wasir, Dadu.

“Whilst they make your house ready,” said Sher Afzul, “I shall try to entertain you.”

Carruthers dropped into a seat at the right hand of the Khan with no more than a sigh. His years in the East had taught him to tolerate the long ceremonies of a reception. Below the dais, against a background of foaming river, orchards in blossom, hillsides black with forests of cedars and snowslopes glistening like silver soaring into the heavens over all, the villagers of Tokot sat about a semicircle of grass. There were but two kinds of entertainment in these regions—a wild polo-match with a dozen players on a side or a ballet of dancing boys. This afternoon it was obviously to be the ballet, and as the Khan clapped his hands, his troupe glided into the open space. They wore a special uniform of blue sleeveless coats over shirts of white muslin and red trousers. The leader threw a flower into the centre of the arena and about it the boys swung and twirled to the music of a pipe.

“It is a love story,” the Khan explained, whilst he nodded his head and beat his foot to the rhythm of the melody. “The flower represents a maiden and the boys her suitors.”

And indeed at that moment the music of the pipe rose to an ecstasy and the dance grew faster and more passionate.

“Here’s something, at all events, for Sir Arthur to put into his book,” Carruthers reflected, and having fixed the scene clearly in his mind, he fell to wondering why Sher Afzul had so pressingly invited this mission—what was “the something behind it all” of which the Governor of the North-West Province had spoken?

“There’s nothing to see but smiles and good humour and a gentle gaiety,” he argued. “But that means nothing too.... They’re a volatile people. The smiles can vanish, the good humour become anger, the gaiety a savage rage, in the course of an hour.... Every one of these sixpenny thrones is built up on blood and treachery. Brother murders brother, son murders father, father murders son.”

This last possibility, however, could be ruled out. Shuja-ul-Mulk sat on the dais at his father’s feet, and from time to time the old man’s hand fell caressingly upon the boy’s shoulder, as if he must needs make sure from time to time that his son was at his side.

“I shall conduct your Excellencies to your house,” said the Khan when, after an hour of it, the entertainment came to an end.

The Mission House stood upon a bluff above the river a quarter of a mile from the Fort. A couple of acres of ground had been cleared of boulders; stables and outhouses were built on the side away from the river; and the whole demesne was surrounded by a wall. At the gate the Khan stopped.

“Beyond this line you are upon your own territory,” he said with a smile. “To-morrow, when you have rested, I shall come and ask for your hospitality. For we have much to talk over.”

He was holding out his hand when something arrested him. He stood with his lips parted and his head thrown back, immobile, a man stricken to immobility. Yes, but by no ill-tidings. There came a rapt look upon his face, the lines upon it smoothed themselves out, he might have been hearing the music of the spheres. He was certainly listening; and certainly some message reached his ears which lifted him high above his troubles.

Carruthers listened too. For a few moments he could hear nothing but the roar of the river tumbling over the boulders below. But in a little while, very faintly, above that roar, he too heard just what Sher Afzul heard, but whereas the one was uplifted by the sound to ecstasy, Carruthers was plunged in amazement. For what he heard was the distant beating of a drum.

The Yudeni drum, then! It couldn’t be that there was any truth in that pretty legend. Yet how else account for the rapture upon Sher Afzul’s face?

“You hear it,” said the Khan in a whisper of awe. “Yes, you hear it. The drum lies on the roof of the tower of my Fort. No man ever touches it. Yet it is beaten when great things are impending for my house. You are here sent by your Government! Could there be a better omen?”

Carruthers turned his eyes towards the tower, but Sher Afzul gripped his arm in a panic.

“Look away!” he cried roughly. “For your life’s sake, for my honour’s sake, look away! No harm must come to you whilst you are my guest. But no man can avoid disaster who sees the ghostly beater of the drum.”

Carruthers, gazing around at the little throng of courtiers who were clustered at the gate, saw that every eye was averted from the direction of the tower.

“Until to-morrow,” said the Khan, and he shook Carruthers by the hand. “My son, come and say good-bye——”

But Shuja-ul-Mulk was not amongst that throng.

“Yet he came with us,” said Sher Afzul. “My hand was upon his shoulder for awhile.”

And thereupon Dadu the Wasir cried with a curious inflection in his voice:

“No, his Highness is not here.”

He was a smallish man with the broad face of a Tartar and small, cunning eyes, which were now agleam.

“He shall beg your pardon for his ill manners to-morrow,” said the Khan to Carruthers, and he turned to the Wasir happily:

“You hear the drum, Dadu!”

And Dadu, with a sudden violence, answered:

“Do I hear? Do I not? Is it true? Is it false? The dark lies to the light, the day lies to the darkness. It may be. Yes, I hear.”

And with this outburst he followed his master away from the gate. Carruthers watched him go with some disquietude. There had been an arrogance and a challenge in his voice—yes, the challenge of a man so sure of the ground he stood on that he could afford the luxury of slipping off his mask to get a breath of fresh air. Carruthers turned to find Morris at his elbow, with a broad grin upon his face.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Morris. “The fairy drummer is a rank amateur at his job. It’s all spluttery and unsteady and muddled. If I was the fairy bandmaster, I’d use the drumsticks for a bit on the drummer’s own particular little drum.”

But Carruthers was not amused. He answered “Yes” absently and, turning, walked quickly into the house. A few minutes later Morris found him upon the roof gazing through his field-glasses at the tower of the Fort.

“It’s the old man’s boy, eh?” Morris stated a fact rather than asked a question.

“Yes.”

Carruthers handed the field-glass to his companion.

“See for yourself! If you can tell me that I’m mistaken, I shall be glad.”

Morris took the glass, surprised at the gravity of Carruthers’ voice. The lenses were powerful and drew the tower across the quarter-mile of brush until it seemed to stand within arm’s reach. There was no doubt possible. Standing back from the parapet to get what concealment he could, and with his boy’s face concentrated in a frown, the old Khan’s son was beating the drum, now quietly so that at this distance the sound of it was quite lost, now furiously so that it rose above the noise of the Tokot river.

“The young rascal!” said Morris with a laugh. “He’s working away as if his life hung upon it.”

Carruthers turned his face quickly to the engineer.

“But doesn’t it?” he asked.

“He’s just having a lark,” said Morris.

“Is he? A dangerous lark, then. Who likes to discover that the things he believes are tricks? Who laughs when he’s shown up for a fool? Not a Mussulman fanatic, anyway.”

“Oh, I see!” Morris returned. Here was an aspect of the affair which he had overlooked. “And there’s more to it, isn’t there? That old ruffian Dadu is getting wise to the trick. Did you notice him?”

“And heard him,” Carruthers agreed.

“But I am wondering,” he added slowly, “whether that boy is having a lark. Whether he isn’t saving his own life, and his father’s life, and the continuance of his house.”

He stood for a little while longer in doubt. Underneath the smiles and the friendly chatter was there really trouble and treachery in Tokot? Was that the secret of the invitation to the Government in India?

“I had a very knowledgeable orderly in the 20th Punjab,” he said. “And I have got him as my orderly now.”

He went down to the living-rooms on the first floor, where he found the orderly, a tall and intelligent Pathan from a village in the Khyber Pass, laying the table for dinner.

“Zarulla,” he said, “you must hand this job over to someone else. I want to know how things are in Tokot. Is there peace? Is there danger? And I want to know to-night.”

He did not have very long to wait. Before midnight Zarulla was standing before the two officers telling them his story. The Khan’s brother Nizam was plotting the murder of the Khan and his son. He was making promises, he had a party. It was believed that Dadu the Wasir was on his side. Certainly there was a Mullah who was preaching rebellion at night on the river-side close beneath this Mission House. The moment was near. It would come after the mission had gone back to Peshawur. In all Zarulla’s story there was but one small point of comfort for Carruthers. It was not known that the Khan’s son was the drummer on the top of the tower.