Читать книгу Mirror of Dreams - Martin Louis Alan Gompertz - Страница 3

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This is the story of Tom Carruthers, who dreamed dreams when he was a child, continued them during his schooldays, dreamed the same dreams after he had left school, and, as far as one knows, may still be dreaming them, although, having by now translated most of them into fact, possibly he has given up dreaming. During those years, really before the main part of this story opens, he found a mirror when he was wandering on the edge of Central Asia, and the finding of it was the key that opened his dream country.

It is also in some sense a portion of the story of Major John Oxley, who was a school friend of Tom Carruthers, and remained his friend ever after, although he disbelieved whole-heartedly and completely in Tom’s dreams—indeed, in most of Tom’s ideas, and said so flippantly and openly. Needless to say, he equally disbelieved in everything Tom thought about the queer-shaped mirror—he could not disbelieve in the thing’s existence, because he saw it many times.

It is, further, the story, or extracts from the stories, of various other people of different types.

For instance, it is partly the story of Tarzi—an honest cut-throat of Turkestan—and of his friend, Tor Bez, by descent a riever and brigand, who lived in the same part of the world, although racially the latter belonged to the Indian border hills north of Peshawur. There was Jane Prentis, a spinster, who hailed from the north of England, only she followed the wrong road early in her life, and so comes into the story. Then there is a page from the story of Krishna Rao, a Hindu gentleman who had studied engineering in London, obtained a temporary commission in the Great War, stopped a couple of bullets, and got himself mentioned in despatches a few times—a very excellent example of the modern India, which dreams of combining the old virtues of that country with such good things as the West can teach it. Unfortunately, trouble had come upon him and his, and, for a time, he retired from the world that knew him. Some day he will be in the Legislative Assembly, which is our name for Parliament in India, and be a power for good in the land. He is a cultured person, an excellent tennis player, and popular with most folk who know him, British or Indian, Mussulman, Parsi, or Hindu, as is also his attractive little wife, who speaks English like an Englishwoman, but refuses to alter her picturesque national costume, except in the minor detail of wearing Paris shoes. But this extract from his story is quite unsuitable for the civilised life of Parliaments, which do not believe in people taking the law into their own hands, even when the cumbrous edifice erected to blindfold justice fails to work. The polite, neatly dressed Krishna, who will some day make telling speeches in the Assembly, pouring buckets of horse-sense over the visionaries who think ancient countries and old peoples can be altered in shape and manners by strokes of the pen, would hardly be connected with the distinctly primitive man whom anyone who has the patience to read this story will meet in its pages.

There is also a Muhammedan or two whose actions enter into the story, not to mention a few Buddhists, such as Rinpoche, a really learned priest, who at one time, before he sought greater things, held an office of rank in the Buddhist hierarchy of monks.

Lastly, the story is particularly concerned with that foul blot on the world’s fair surface—Dhyanand—an unhealthy excrescence of a kind that occasionally disfigures the face of India and so brings into disrepute the enormous mass of Hindus of all kinds who are law-abiding, kindly, well-living folk, among whom are quite a large number of proper men such as Krishna Rao or Thakur Singh, or priests of the type of Rinpoche. By birth the latter happened to be a Buddhist, but if he had been born in India he would certainly have been a Hindu priest of the best type; in fact, he said he had been one in a past life—for Buddhism, like Hinduism, believes in transmigration.

Dhyanand, perhaps, is as good a thread as any to catch hold of, if one wants to find one’s way into this possibly rather intricate story in the fashion of the Greek youth, Theseus, whose lady-love threw him a skein of wool when he went into the labyrinth, to the subsequent great profit of her lover. One of the incidents from Dhyanand’s varied career will serve to open this story as well as any happening from the lives of the other people who come into it.

The point that seems to be the best to select is some two years before the main action starts, perhaps eighteen to twenty months before Major John Oxley met with the one misfortune which he had never reckoned with in his scheme of life, and which, therefore, duly befell him. The locality of this particular adventure of Dhyanand’s was in Northern Ladakh, where for various reasons he happened to be, though his proper country was Southern India. The reasons were many, some connected with his own personal profit and certain grandiose schemes he was projecting, others to do with his comfort and even safety, and also, possibly, his religious prejudices, for Dhyanand, as he called himself when the story begins—he had many names at different times—had a prejudice against being hanged. He was twice born—a Brahmin by birth—and the thought of being hanged by the neck by people of lower caste under the order of the hated Indian Police offended his susceptibilities. He knew that such would be his fate on at least three counts if they caught him.

So for the moment, as he had upon occasion done before, he was sojourning in the vicinity of the Central Asian trade route which leads from Northern Ladakh over the Karakorum Mountains into the heart of Central Asia—one of the most barren bits of the world with few, often no, inhabitants, a tangle of immense mountains and glaciers and wild rock gorges, where there are no roads other than pony tracks, no telephones or telegraphs, no police or other kindred annoyances of civilisation. It had the serious disadvantage that women were few, and, such as there were, were unattractive to Dhyanand’s cultured taste, a taste he had educated through the fifty years of life he had passed at the time he first appears in the story.

In nearly all civilised countries there exist a small number of people who really worship evil as evil, quite earnestly and seriously, not merely as the savage indulges in childish devil-worship. India has its share, and Dhyanand belonged to that small portion which disfigures, or rather tries to disfigure, the old and kindly Hinduism of which the essence is something entirely opposite, being concerned with the search for good. Such cults invariably tend to lust as an accompaniment to bloodshed, the two actions which, by common consensus of opinion, seem to be inseparable from the proper worship of the powers of darkness. Whatever the devotees of such cults do gain, they undoubtedly seem to obtain from their masters an inexhaustible vitality of the senses and powers mistakenly called animal, which is a libel on animals, since these are governed by laws in such matters just as strictly as decent living men. Dhyanand certainly had this vitality and used it to the utmost.

India, which is a hotch-potch of peoples and creeds and tongues, contains some three hundred and twenty million inhabitants. Census figures are hard to remember accurately, but one is probably safe in saying that at least one hundred and seventy million of these are women, and therefore Dhyanand did not hate that portion—one does not hate one’s toys or those whom one thinks can possibly be made one’s toys; one may despise or torture them—Dhyanand did and had done both—but he hated no women. Of the remaining one hundred and fifty million inhabitants of India, Dhyanand disliked, despised, or hated all except a few thousand of his own type. He hated the few Europeans, he loathed the Mussulmans, and he had a solid detestation of a very large number of Hindus. And all for the same reason, to wit, that they all disapproved fiercely of the cult which Dhyanand practised, and although they might disagree among themselves over various parochial matters, politics, votes, positions, laws, money, they were quite united on the opinion of Dhyanand and that tiny fraction of India which was of his way of life.

However, he hoped that presently things would brighten, that that excellent régime in Russia would shortly upset India and overthrow his arch-enemies, the British. In the subsequent mess he trusted that the Muhammedans would probably go under and thereafter all progressive Hindus could be eliminated by various stratagems, from poison downwards, and the rest of India be brought to its proper state of obedience to him and the powers he followed. Dhyanand worked hard to that end, and it was the main reason at the moment for his being where he was, sitting in a most dilapidated shelter in the lee of a rough stone wall at Pangdongtsa in the Thalambuti ravine on the Central Asian trade route beyond the point where the so-called road leaves the last vestiges of human life in the Nubra Valley and turns east to the bleak desolation of the Upper Shyok and the Depsang plains. He was talking with his most reliable agent, one Tarzi of Khotan—a burly, Turki-speaking gentleman of Kashgaria, who was nominally a thriving Kirya Kash, owning a large caravan. Dhyanand, as a matter of fact, referred to him in private as Bakhtiyan, and sometimes they talked a strange tongue which no one else would probably have understood. But then continuity of names had never been Dhyanand’s failing. They were hatching a very nice little scheme connected with a certain hidden valley which both of them knew. From Dhyanand’s point of view that valley was going to be his future headquarters from which to work, since it gave convenient access to the north whereby he could keep in touch with his friends—he really considered them friends—the real Communists of Russia. Although Dhyanand recognised their limitations—it requires a superb brain to be really evil, and Dhyanand had one—he recognised the goodwill they displayed in pursuing the aims he himself followed. In time, if they acquired the knowledge which he possessed, they might get nearer to his standard. The valley also held gold, as he had learned. That was essential to him to possess, and would require a little elimination among the foolish folk in the valley. Fortunately they had accepted Dhyanand whole-heartedly, and he had attained to some eminence among them, for he had a great knowledge of many things—not the least useful of which had been his vast erudition concerning the more esoteric details of what is vaguely termed theosophy. Dhyanand rarely smiled, but his face brightened as he thought of that little colony of earnest men and women who looked up to him verily as one of the great Masters to come. With one exception, the women did so even more than the men. He was a great bull of a man, most powerfully built, of fine features and presence, with a silver tongue.

Tarzi had also been there—a fervent convert from Islam to the true religion. He had been exemplary in his bearing. Tarzi, who was more genial than Dhyanand, smiled frankly at the thought, the more so as he flattered himself that even Dhyanand believed in him. He also intended profit in that valley; Dhyanand, who regarded Tarzi as a fool, thought that a little gold was all that he really wanted. Not that he intended him to get it in the end. In actual fact, Tarzi proposed to take all the gold and everything else and to slit Dhyanand’s throat into the bargain when the Hindu had served his turn.

For the present, however, they were loyal allies, and when Dhyanand broached the subject of threatened danger to himself, Tarzi was all attention. He thought Dhyanand had been a little anxious the last two nights, and to-day at Pangdongsta was obviously on the qui vive for something or other.

“I am certain that I am right, Bakhtiyan,” said Dhyanand. “The man is something other than what he appears to be. Moreover, I have a feeling that I have seen him somewhere before. He is said to have come up from Kashmir in the tail of the Set Goculdass and I do not trust Goculdass over much—not, of course, that he knows anything. But I know he wants to stand well with the Government, and quite likely he has been approached to give this man a place as one of his servants and told that it will be noted in his favour if the man is able to do his work. It would cost Goculdass nothing, he risks nothing and has naught to do himself. On the other hand, if successful, then he has a claim to some mark of favour—I know he would lick a Feringhi’s boots for one of the smaller titles which they shower out on occasions of festivities.”

“But what could one man hope to do?” queried Tarzi.

“Much, if he definitely located me. You know as well as I do how the man who killed the trader, Dalgleish, was tracked right across Central Asia by a single British officer, and had to commit suicide in a Chinese prison to save himself being brought back to be hanged.”

“True, Dhyanand.”

Tarzi remembered that tale, albeit it was an old one. It had considerably enhanced British prestige over half a continent.

“Moreover, in finding me the man might also come to know of the valley, and that would not be well—in no way would it be well.”

Tarzi considered this seriously. It would certainly not be well. He wanted no one poking round there until he had, as he expressed it, squeezed the lemon dry. Moreover, he did not want Dhyanand to be caught or forced to flee. There was work for Dhyanand to do first to clear the ground for him, Tarzi.

“That is certainly serious, Dhyanand,” he agreed. “What like is this man and why do you suspect?”

“A lean, thin man, tallish, a Rajput, I should say. He speaks somewhat as though his mouth were full, and appears to be rather unintelligent. This is obviously a blind. Moreover, only last night I observed him not so far from our things; he moved away when I came out, but I recognised him. He is able to write, for I saw him scanning a piece of paper the other day, a letter I dropped on purpose, one of no import. Later he brought it to me and said he had seen me drop it, which was true. I think he came to see me more closely and to speak with me. To-night we shall see, for I believe he seeks to hear us talk together. I propose, therefore, that we give the men a sheep for dinner, and let none of them be about here so as to leave the road open. We two will sit and talk together in Hindi that all may hear with ease. One desiring to eavesdrop would come behind that wall where usually Ahmad sleeps. He will not be there to-night if the men have a feast. I will arrange a simple means whereby I shall know if anyone comes there, and when I give you the signal we will begin to talk about the arms—discreetly, of course, but sufficiently clearly that one listening who suspects something will immediately take greater interest. Thereafter you will get up and say you will bring the list to read it to me and go out. The man, if he be there, will lie close, awaiting your return to hear the details, but you will go round behind quietly and fall upon him and I will come directly I hear you speak.”

“It might succeed,” said Tarzi reflectively. “And after?”

“Rope were simplest,” said Dhyanand, with a shrug. “Cleanly also.”

Incidentally, it was a favoured method in use among the more exotic and old-fashioned portion of Dhyanand’s cult.

That evening they carried out their little scheme. Tarzi’s men rejoiced in the gift of a whole sheep and made merry over the fires, for they would be on scanty fare for the next fortnight in the utterly uninhabited tract ahead, and it behoved them to loosen their belts and stuff while they might.

A thin, wiry Hindu looked upon the occasion as favourable when he worked himself noiselessly up towards the stone wall at the back of the shelter Dhyanand had erected for himself for the night. He cursed very silently at a small pile of brushwood which caught him, and which he had to push out of the way before he could reach the wall itself, through whose chinks he could see the light on the further side and hear two men talking, in one of whom he was deeply interested. They were talking in Hindustani, too, which made it easier. The man smiled quietly as he pressed himself to the wall, thankful that the slight noise of the brushwood had attracted no attention. Then, as he listened, he realised that he was, indeed, in luck, for they were talking openly now, confirming his suspicions about their plans. He wished that he had not despatched the short letter he had sent off only the previous day by a sure hand to those who sent him—it could have been far fuller to-morrow. Then Tarzi got up, saying he was going to fetch a list of the arms from his shelter just opposite and check it over with Dhyanand, and the hidden man realised that he was going to get the very kernel of the matter. Maybe he would not have to go much farther. He heard the Turki stumbling out in his heavy clothes, then a rustling in the shelter, as though Dhyanand were also getting out some papers. He lifted himself a little to see better, and the next thing he knew was that he was crushed to the ground by a heavy weight while two hands like steel had fastened about his throat, effectually muffling the least sound. Tarzi could be very quiet in his movements when he chose. The Hindu fought desperately—he was a tough man and wiry—but he had no chance even before Dhyanand appeared, ran a rope round his ankles and then caught his hands, bending them back behind him until one of the bones snapped, and his wrists were fastened together. He lost consciousness just as a thin cord replaced the hands round his throat.

Dhyanand and Tarzi considered the man when they had hauled him quietly into cover. He was still unconscious, but on the point of coming to. They bound a thick cloth about his mouth as a precaution.

“No, I cannot recognise him,” said Dhyanand at last to Tarzi, who was busily engaged in running over the prisoner, on whom, so far, he found nothing. He stripped him clean and examined his garments. The man, who had come to by now, watched him quietly, despite the pain of his broken left arm. The only thing at the moment was silence, for even if he could call, there were none to help—he was playing a lone hand. With a thin knife-blade Tarzi slit the various seams of the garments, and the prisoner shivered a little involuntarily, for the night was very cold. In the distance he could hear the cheerful talk of Tarzi’s men around their fires. Possibly he also shivered somewhat when the man examined his loincloth, a garment that the Hindu only takes off to replace immediately by another. He hoped that might escape. Tarzi, however, was thorough, and from the seams of it dropped some little slips of oilskin and silk, hidden away with some small squares of fine paper carefully rolled up—such things as men might use who desired to send messages by hidden routes.

“I thought so,” said Dhyanand, with satisfaction, after scrutinising the papers to see if there were anything written upon them. They were blank, however. “Loose his feet, Tarzi.”

These last remarks were in the strange tongue. It is sometimes easier to make a man walk than to carry him. Probably the Hindu knew what was coming as he was forced out into the night, but he was a man of noted courage, and he was glad now that he had sent off that other message. It gave some definite news, and he knew now that he would have no chance to send another.

Pandongtsa camping-ground was some way off when they finally stopped near some big rocks surrounding a softer patch of ground a good distance from anyone. Dhyanand carried a couple of mattocks. Tarzi sheathed the knife, which he had kept pressed into the man’s ribs, and drew the cord tight again about his throat, while Dhyanand knocked his feet from under him so that he fell on his face.

“I would like to have had more time—we might have made him speak,” remarked Dhyanand, as he knelt down over the man. “But it must be done quickly, before the men come back. Hold his legs.”

Dhyanand slipped back his long sleeves to free his muscular arms and twisted the cords about his hand. Then he put out his great strength—the body between his knees gave a convulsive jerk that nearly pulled it free of Tarzi’s grip, and then lay still. Dhyanand smiled a little, thinking that he had not lost his skill, despite lack of practice of late years. He gathered the cords into one hand and felt for the man’s pulse. It had stopped. Dhyanand, among his other accomplishments, was a doctor, and he was not likely to make a mistake in the matter.

He loosed the cords and stood up to receive Tarzi’s honest appreciation.

“Art really skilful, Dhyanand,” the latter remarked as he picked up a mattock and began to dig, Dhyanand following his example. The hole should really have been dug ready before, but there had been no time. It was hard work, of a type which Dhyanand did not love, but he stuck to it manfully until the last earth was rammed back and the ground round about cleared so as to show no traces. In any case, the next snow would hide anything, and the clouds had been banking up heavily; indeed, snow fell before morning, and the journey over the pass promised to be bad.

The Set Goculdass wondered what had happened to his recently engaged servant, but as the early morning had been rather a rush to get over the pass before the snow got too heavy, he thought he would find him on the further side, and, when he did not, presumed the man had come to grief in the snow. But one could not hold up a caravan for a thing like that on the Central Asian road; the snow was now heavy and likely to continue.

Two days later Dhyanand, after crossing the Shyok fords, sat in his shelter looking through his things, and became aware that he had mislaid a certain mirror on which he set some store for its mysterious powers, in which he firmly believed. He wondered, at first, if he had lost it in the snow. Then he remembered the passage of the fords where, being absorbed in thought, he had gone too far down-stream and had been lucky to escape with his life, thanks to a quickly flung rope by one of Tarzi’s men. He usually carried that mirror on him, and, presumably, it must have fallen out in the water. He looked at the Shyok torrent and realised that the mirror had gone for good, and was extremely annoyed about it. But he was philosopher enough to see that there was nothing to be done in the matter.