Читать книгу For Fortune and Glory - Lewis Hough - Страница 5

It is nice to go home, even from Harton, though we may be leaving all our sports behind us. It used to be specially nice in winter; but you young fellows are made so comfortable at school nowadays that you miss one great luxury of return to the domestic hearth. Why, they tell me that the school-rooms at Harton are warmed! And I know that the Senate House at Cambridge is when men are in for their winter examinations, so it is probable that the younger race is equally pampered; and if the present Hartonians’ teeth chatter at six o’clock lesson, consciousness of unprepared lessons is the cause, not cold.

But you have harder head-work and fewer holidays than we had, so you are welcome to your warm school-rooms. I am not sure that you have the best of it: at any rate, we will cry quits.

But the superior material comforts of home are but a small matter in the pleasure of going there after all. It is the affections centred in it which cause it to fill the first place in our hearts, “be it never so humble.”

Harry Forsyth was fond of Harton; fond of football, which was in full swing; fond of his two chums, Strachan and Kavanagh. He rather liked his studies than otherwise, and, indeed, took a real pleasure in some classical authors—Homer and Horace, for example—as any lad who has turned sixteen who has brains, and is not absolutely idle, is likely to do. He was strong, active, popular; he had passed from the purgatorial state of fag to the elysium of fagger. But still his blood seemed turned to champagne, and his muscles to watch-springs, when the cab, which carried him and his portmanteau, passed through the gate into the drive which curved up to the door of Holly Lodge. For Holly Lodge contained his mother and Trix, and the thought of meeting either of them after an absence of a school-term set his heart bounding, and his pulse throbbing, in a way he would not have owned to his best friends for the choice of bats in the best maker’s shop. He loved his father also, but he did not know so much of him. He was a merchant, and his business had necessitated his living very much abroad, while Cairo did not suit his wife’s health. His visits to England were for some years but occasional, and did not always coincide with Harry’s holidays. Two years previously, indeed, he had wound up his affairs, and settled permanently at home; but he was still a busy man—a director of the Great Transit Bank, and interested in other things, which took him up to London every day. He was also fond of club-life and public dinners; and, though he was affectionate with his wife and children, too much of their society rather bored him.

When she heard the cab-wheels crunching the gravel, Beatrice Forsyth ran out without a hat, and Harry seeing her, opened the door and “quitted the vehicle while yet in motion,” as the railway notices have it, whereby he nearly came a cropper, but recovered his balance, and was immediately fitted with a live necklace. Beatrice was a slight, fair, blue-eyed, curly-haired girl of fifteen; so light and springy that her brother carried her, without an effort, to the hall steps, where, being set down, she sprang into the cab and began collecting the smaller packages, rug, umbrella, and other articles, inside it, while Harry hugged his mother in the hall.

“Your father will be home by four,” said Mrs. Forsyth, when the first greetings and inquiries as to health were over.

“And Haroun Alraschid has taken possession of his study,” added Trix, with a sort of awe.

“Haroun, how much?” asked Harry.

“Don’t be absurd, Trix!” said Mrs. Forsyth. “It is only your uncle, Ralph Burke.”

“Burke, that was your name, mother; this uncle was your brother then?”

“Of course, Harry. Have you never heard me speak of your uncle Ralph?”

“Now you mention it, yes, mother. But I had a sort of idea that he was dead.”

“So we thought him for some time,” said Mrs. Forsyth, “for he left the Indian Civil Service, in which he had a good appointment, and disappeared for years. He met with disappointments, and had a sunstroke, and went to live with wild men in the desert, and, I believe, has taken up with some strange religious notions. In fact, I fear that he is not quite right in his head. But he talks sensibly about things too, and seems to wish to be kind. We were very fond of one another when we were children, and he seems to remember it in spite of all he has gone through.”

“I am frightened to death at him,” said Trix. “I know he has a large cupboard at home with the heads of all the wives he has decapitated hanging up in a row by the back hair!”

“I wonder at your talking so foolishly, Beatrice. You must not be prejudiced by what she says, Harry. Except your uncle in Ireland, he has no other relatives, and he may be very well off; and he is quite harmless.”

“You know that you were afraid of him yourself, mamma, when he first came.”

“A little, perhaps, because I did not recognise him, and thought him dead. And then, you know, I fear he is not quite orthodox. But go and see him, Harry, and never mind what any one says.”

“All right, mother; you have made me a bit curious, I confess,” said Harry, leaving the room.

The garden in front of Holly Lodge was formal—just a carriage-drive, and a bit of shrubbery, and a grass-plat with prim beds on it, which had various flower eruptions at different periods of the year. First snowdrops, aconites, and crocuses, then tulips, then geraniums. The real garden was at the back, and the study looked out upon it. Not upon the lawn, where bowls, or lawn-tennis, or other disturbing proceedings might be going on; no, from the oriel window, which alone lighted the room, one saw a fountain, a statue, rose-bushes, and a catalpa tree, enclosed in a fringe of foliage, syringa, lilac, laurel, chestnut, high and thick enough to make it as private and quiet as any man with a speech to prepare, or sums to do, might require. Harry went along a passage, turned to the left up five steps, passed through a green-baize swing door, and knocked at that of the study.

A deep musical voice, which seemed, however, to come from a strange distance, told him to “come in,” and on opening the door, he found that he had to push aside a curtain hanging over it, and which had dulled the sound of the voice. Smoke wreaths floated about the apartment, bearing an aromatic odour quite different from ordinary tobacco, and a curious gurgling sound, like that of water on the boil, only intermittent, came from the direction of the broad low sofa, which had been brought from the drawing-room, and was placed between the fire and the window. Close to this was a small table with writing materials, a note-book, and a pile of letters ready for the post, upon it.

On the sofa reclined a man dressed in a black frock-coat, buttoned, and dark trousers, the only Oriental thing about him being the red cap with a silk tassel which he wore on his head. But smokers often have a fancy for wearing the fez, so there was nothing peculiar in that. And yet there was something different from other people about him. Most men lounging on a sofa are ungainly and awkward-looking, while the attitude of this one was easy and graceful, and the motion of his hand, with which he indicated the chair on which he wished his nephew to be seated, was courteous and yet commanding.

His complexion was sallow, and appeared the darker from the contrast afforded by the silvery whiteness of his long beard, moustache, and thick bushy eyebrows, from the deep cavities beneath which his dark eyes seemed literally to flash. His nose was aquiline, his cheek-bones prominent. His hands were small, but strong and nervous, with little flesh upon them, and the fingers were long and shapely.

When Harry was seated he resettled himself on the sofa, and, keeping his eyes fixed on the lad, placed the amber mouth-piece of a long spiral tube connected with a narghile which was smouldering on the floor to his lips, and the gurgling sound was once more produced. But to Harry’s astonishment, no cloud issued from his uncle’s mouth; like a law-abiding factory chimney, he appeared to consume his own smoke. Then, deliberately removing the amber tube which he held in his hand, he said—

“And you are my sister’s son? I like your looks, and my heart yearns towards you. Pity that she did not wed with one of her own land, so that you might not have had the blood of the accursed race in your veins. But it was the will of the All-Powerful, and what can we avail against fate?”

What these words meant Harry could not imagine. Were not his parents of the same land and race? His mother was Irish and his father English, and he had no more idea of Irish, Scotch, Welsh, or English being of different races than of the inhabitants of Surrey and Essex being so. They were all Englishmen he had always thought. His bewilderment was by no means diminished when, after this speech, and without again putting the stem of his narghile near his mouth, his uncle raised his head and poured out a volume of smoke, which it would have taken the united efforts of a couple of Germans about five minutes to produce. He was quite veiled by the cloud, through which the gleam of his eyes seemed to Harry to have an almost supernatural effect.

“You are nearly seventeen years of age, and will soon be leaving school,” he resumed. “What are they going to do with you then?”

“I have not quite made up my mind what profession I should like,” said Harry, somewhat hesitatingly. “I am fond of drawing, and like being out of doors, and so I have thought at times of getting articled to a civil engineer.”

“Ay, ay; to aid the march of civilisation, as the cant phrase goes; to bring nations closer together, that they may cut one another’s throats when they meet. To make machines do the work by which men earn their living, and so first drive them into cities, and then starve them. Or, perhaps, you will be a lawyer, and learn how to darken language into obscure terms, by which a simple, honest man may be made to sell his birthright without knowing what he is doing. Or a doctor, fighting madly against the decree of the Omnipotent, daring to try to stem the flowing tide of death. If your eyes were but opened, how gladly would you cast off the trammels of an effete society, and follow me to a land where a man can breathe freely. I will give you a horse fleet as the wind, and a sword that would split a hair or sever an iron bar, boy!”

“I have thought I should like the army, too, sir,” said bewildered Harry, trying vainly to understand, and catching at the sword and horse as something tangible.

“The army! To be a European soldier! A living machine—the slave of slaves! To fight without a cause, even without an object! To waste your blood in the conquest of a country and the ruin and slaughter of its inhabitants, and then to leave it! Madmen! Ye kill and are killed for nothing; not even plunder.”

He drew several long inhalations, repeating the conjuring trick of swallowing the smoke and emitting it several seconds afterwards, for quite ten minutes before he spoke again.

“But the ties of home and kindred are strong,” he continued in a calmer tone. “Your mother, your sister, will draw you back from the nobler lot. I know what the love of family is; I, who have returned to this seething cauldron of misery, vice, disease, and degradation which fools call civilisation, and take a pride in, in order to see my sister once more. Partly for that at least. And you are her son, and you have the stamp of the Burke upon your face. Hark you, boy! In the time of Cromwell, not two hundred and fifty years ago, your direct ancestor was a powerful Irish chief, with large domains and many brave men to follow him to battle. When the English came with the cold-blooded, preconceived scheme of pacifying Ireland once and for all by the wholesale massacre of the inhabitants, our grandsire was overpowered by numbers, betrayed, surprised, and driven to his last refuge, a castle but little capable of defence. He was surrounded; his wife and children were with him, all young, one an infant at the breast; and there were other women, helpless and homeless, who had sought shelter within the walls. Therefore, resistance being quite hopeless, our chief offered to surrender. But the English leader replied, ‘Give no quarter; they are wild beasts, not men. Burn up the wasps’ nest, maggots and all!’ They did it; faggots were piled round the building and set on fire, and those who attempted to escape were received on the English spears and tossed back into the flames. The eldest son was away with a detachment at the time, and so escaped the fate which would otherwise have annihilated our race. But his estates were stolen from him and conferred on the murderers, whose descendants hold them to the present day. Have the Burkes best reason to love the English or to hate them?”

Harry Forsyth was a practical youth, who took things as he found them, and he could not even understand how anybody’s feelings, much less their actions, should be affected by anything which happened in the days of Oliver Cromwell. He might just as well refuse a penny to an Italian organ-grinder, because Julius Caesar ill-treated the ancient Britons. Besides, he was half a Forsyth, and the Forsyths were probably all English. For all he knew, some old Forsyth might have had a hand in burning up the Burkes. He did not offer any such suggestion, however, but sat somewhat awe-stricken, wondering what this strange uncle would say or do next.

He relapsed into thought, and for some time the silence was only broken by the bubbling of the water in the narghile. When at last he spoke again, it was in a calmer tone of voice, and with eyes withdrawn from his nephew’s face.

“Serve not the English Government, civil or military,” he said. “Or, if you do, confine yourself to your allotted task. That which is exactly due for the pay you receive, do for honour and honesty’s sake. But do no more; show no zeal: above all, trust not to any sense of justice for reward of any work done in excess of the bargain. Incur no responsibility, or you will be made a cat’s-paw of.

“Listen. At the time of the Crimean War a young man in the Indian service had a severe illness which obliged him to return to England on furlough. At one of the stations where his ship touched a number of women and children and invalids belonging to a regiment which had gone on to the seat of war were taken on board, and he, according to previous arrangement, was placed in charge of them.

“It came on to blow hard in the Gulf of Lyons, and the old transport strained so that she sprang a leak, which put her fires out. Later on her masts went, and after beating about for several wretched days, she went ashore on a desolate part of the coast of Spain. The officers and crew of the ship behaved well enough, and though many of them, including the captain and chief mate, were lost, nearly all the passengers were safely landed. But though rescued from the sea, there seemed to be every prospect of their perishing from exposure and famine. With great difficulty the officer in charge managed to find some rude shelter and insufficient food for immediate succour, and then, making his way to the nearest town, he applied to the authorities, and being a linguist who included something of the language in which Don Quixote was written amongst his acquisitions, he obtained clothes, food, and a sum of money for present necessities, with the promise of a vessel to transfer the unfortunates to Gibraltar.

“Of course he had lost everything when the ship went to pieces, and he could only get this aid by signing bills and making himself personally responsible. True, he was engaging himself for more than he could perform, but he could neither desert these people who were entrusted to his care, nor stand idly by to see them perish. And he never doubted but that the authorities at home would take the responsibility off his hands. They refused to do so, or rather, worse than that, they drove him about from pillar to post, one official directing him to a second, the second to a third, the third to the first again. And they made him fill up forms, and returned them as incorrect, and broke his heart with subterfuges.

“In the meantime he had to meet the claims, and was impoverished. Then, excited by this infamous treatment, he forced his way into a great man’s presence, and was violent, and the consequence of his violence was that he lost his Indian appointment. It was well for him that he did so; but his story will none the less show you what a country England is to serve.”

Again there was a long period of stillness, broken only by the hubble-bubble. Gradually the smoker raised his eyes in the direction of his nephew, but Harry saw that he was looking beyond him, not at him. And this gaze became so steadfast and eager that he turned his head to see what attracted it, almost expecting to see a face on the other side of the window.

There was nothing, but still the intense look remained, and it made Harry feel as if cold water was running down his back. His uncle spoke at length, low and slowly at first, more energetically as he went on.

“I see it; the crescent rises; the sordid hordes of the West fall in ruin around. The squalid denizens of cities find the fiendish devices of destruction to which they trust for putting the weak over the strong fail them. Man to man they have to stand, and they fall like corn before the scythe.”

He dropped his pipe tube, and slowly rose to his feet, still gazing fixedly at nothing in particular in the same uncanny manner, and bringing his right-hand round towards his left hip, as if ready to grasp a sword-hilt.

“One prophet,” he continued, “was raised up for the destruction of idolatry, and wherever he appeared the false gods vanished. There were those who worshipped the True God, but received not his Prophet, and with them Islam has for centuries waged equal war, for their time was not yet come, and the mission of Mohammed was not for them. But the years of probation have expired, and the nations of the West remain in wilful darkness. They receive not the commandments of the Prophet; they drink fermented liquor, they eat the unclean beast, their worship of gold and science has become a real idolatry. Another prophet has arisen for their destruction, and Asia and Africa shall, ere another generation has come and gone, be swept clean of the Infidel. Swept clean! Swept clean! With the scimitar for a besom!”

He remained with his eyes fixed and his lips parted, and Harry did not quite know what to do next. But he summoned courage to rise and say that he hoped his father would have come home by now and as he had not seen him yet, he thought he would go.

Filial affection might surely be taken as a valid excuse for withdrawal. And yet, having had no experience of the etiquette due to prophets when the orgy of vaticination is upon them, he was not quite comfortable on the question of being scathed. There was no need for fear; Sheikh Burrachee was too rapt to heed his presence or absence. He heard not his voice, and knew not when he crossed the room and closed the door softly behind him. He found Trix in the hall looking out for him.

“Well?” she cried.

“Oh, my prophetic uncle!” ejaculated Harry.

“That is a mis-quotation.”

“It is not a quotation at all; it is an exclamation, and a very natural one under the circumstances.”

“Has he been telling your fortune?” asked Beatrice, her large eyes expanding with the interest which is begotten of mystery.

“Not exactly,” replied Harry; “except that he hinted something about the propriety of my choosing the profession of a Bedouin, and, I suppose, making a fortune by robbing caravans. But he told the misfortunes of other people with a vengeance. The Mohammedans are going to turn the Christians out of Asia and Africa everywhere.”

“Good gracious, Harry! Why, papa’s a director of the Great Transit Bank, and all our money is in it, and it does all its business in the East.”

“By Jove! Let us hope the prophet doesn’t know, then. But, upon my word, he looked like seeing into futurity. At least, I could not make out what else he was looking at.”

“Poor man, he had a sunstroke when he was quite young in India, and has led a queer life amongst savages ever since. But papa has come home and been asking for you. You will find him in the drawing-room.”

Harry thought his father thinner and older than when he had last seen him, and asked how he was in a more earnest and meaning manner than is customary in the conventional “How do you do?”

“Do I look altered?” asked Mr. Forsyth, quickly.

“Oh, no, father, only a little pale; tired-looking, you know,” said Harry, rather hesitatingly, in spite of the effort made to speak carelessly.

“I have not been quite the thing, and have seen a physician about it. Only a little weakness about the heart, which affects the circulation. But do not mention it to your mother or sister; women are so easily frightened, and their serious faces would make me imagine myself seriously ill. Well, how did you get on with your uncle? You see he has turned me out of my private den.”

“Is he at all—a little—that is, a trifle cracked, father?”

“A good deal, I should say. And yet he is a very clever man, and sensible enough at times, and upon some subjects. He was most useful to me out in Egypt on several occasions when we happened to meet. A great traveller and a wonderful linguist.”

“Was he badly treated by Government? He told me a story in the third person, but I expect that he referred to himself all the time,” said Harry.

“Well,” replied Mr. Forsyth, “it is difficult to tell all the rights of the story. Ever since he had an illness in India, as a very young man, he has been subject to delusions. No doubt he behaved well on the occasion of a certain shipwreck—if that is what you allude to—and incurred heavy expense, which ought to have been made up to him. But I doubt if he went the right way to work, and suspect that his failure was due very much to impatience and wrong-headedness, and the mixing up of political questions with his personal claims. He wrote a book, which made some noise, and caused him to lose his appointment. Then he came to me in Egypt, and was very useful.

“I should have liked him for a partner, but he went off to discover the source of the Nile. He thought he had succeeded, and after a disappearance of some years came back triumphant. But he had followed the Blue Nile instead of the real branch, and the discoveries of Speke, Grant, Livingstone, and Stanley were terribly bitter to him—drove him quite mad, I think. Since then he has identified himself with the Arab race, and seems to hate all Europeans, except his sister and her family. With me he has never quarrelled, and I think remembers that I offered him a home and employment when his career was cut short. What he is in England for now I do not know. Perhaps only to see your mother once more, but I suspect there is something else.

“He writes many letters, and makes a point of posting them himself. I fear that he takes opium, or some drug of that kind, and altogether, though it is inhospitable perhaps to say so, it will be a relief when he is gone, and that will not be many days now.”

After leaving his uncle in such a rapt state, it was curious to Harry to see him walk into the drawing-room before dinner in correct evening costume, and not wearing his fez. He was somewhat taciturn, ate very little, and drank nothing but water, but his manners were those of a perfect gentleman. After dinner he retired, and they saw no more of him that evening.

Harry Forsyth had several other interviews with his uncle, who showed more fondness for his company than he had for that of any other member of the family, but who kept a greater guard over himself, and was more reticent than he had been on the occasion of his first interview. He spoke of Eastern climes, war, sport, and scenery, with enthusiasm indeed, but rationally, and Harry grew interested, and liked to hear him, though he never got over the feeling that there was something uncanny about him.

One night, after dinner, when a fortnight of Harry’s holidays had elapsed, the uncle, on retiring, asked his nephew to come and see him in the study at eleven on the following morning, and Harry, punctually complying, found him seated on a chair before the large table with three packets before him.

“Sit down, my lad,” he said, and the deep musical tones of his voice had an affectionate sadness in them.

“I am going back to my own land to-morrow, and shall never leave it again. But we shall meet, for such is the will of the All-Powerful, unless the inward voice deceives me, as it has never hitherto done. You will, or let us say you may, need my aid. You will learn where and how to find the Sheikh Burrachee—which is my real name—from Yusuff, the sword dealer, in the armourers’ bazaar, at Cairo. But you will more certainly do so by applying to the head Dervish at the mosques of Suakim, Berber, or Khartoum. At the last town, indeed, you will have no difficulty in learning where I am, and being conducted to me; and, indeed, in any considerable place above the second cataract of the Nile, you will probably learn at the mosque how and where to obtain the required direction, even if they cannot give it you themselves. If there is hesitation, show the holy man this ring, and it will be removed at once. Should you meet with hindrance in your journey from any desert tribe, ask to be led to the chief, and give him this parchment. He may not be an ally to help you, but he may, and if not, he will probably not hinder you. Lastly, take these three stones, and see that you keep them securely in a safe place, and that no one knows that you possess them. They are sapphires of some value I exact no promise, but I bid you not to part with these for any purpose but that of coming to me. For that, sell them. Should you hear of my death, or should ten years elapse without your coming to me, they are yours to do what you like with. Lest you should forget any part of my directions, I have written them on a paper which is at the bottom of the box containing the sapphires. Come.”

Harry rose and stood by his side. His uncle fitted the ring on his fore-finger, put the morocco box containing the sapphires, and the thin silver case, like a lady’s large-sized card-case, that protected the written document, into his breast pocket, and then rising himself, rested his two hands on the lad’s shoulders, and gazed long and earnestly into his face.

Then turning his eyes upwards, he muttered a prayer in Arabic, after which he gently drew him to the door, and, releasing him, opened it, and said, “Farewell.”