The Sirdar's Oath: A Tale of the North-West Frontier. Mitford Bertram

up now, he thought. As a matter of fact his main reason for endeavouring to avoid going to church that morning was that it would be one opportunity the less for her to miss that unlucky article.

      “No, I haven’t. The fact is I’ve lost it.”

      “Lost it? Oh, Herbert!”

      She looked so genuinely hurt that he felt almost guilty.

      “Yes. I’m awfully sorry, Cynthia. I wouldn’t have lost it for anything, but even as it is I’m sure to get it back again. I’m having inquiries made, and offering rewards, in short doing all I can do. It’ll turn up again. I’m certain of that.”

      “But – how did you lose it, and where?”

      He told her how; that being a detail he had purposely omitted in previous narration of the incident. It was but frowningly received.

      “I didn’t think you would attach so little value to anything I had given you, and yet I might have known you better.”

      What is there about the English Sunday atmosphere that is apt to render contentious people more quarrelsome still, and those not naturally contentious – well, a little prickly? Raynier felt his patience ebbing. She was very unreasonable over the matter, and, really – she was quite old enough to have more sense.

      “I don’t think you’re altogether fair to me, Cynthia,” he answered, his own tone getting rather short. “The thing was unavoidable, you see. Unless you mean you would rather the man’s brains had been knocked out by that bestial mob than that I should have given him some means of defending himself. I value the stick immensely, and am doing all I can to recover it, but I should have thought even you would hardly have valued it at something beyond the price of a man’s life.”

      “Only a blackamoor’s,” she retorted, now white and tremulous with anger.

      “Sorry I can’t agree with you,” he answered shortly, for he was thoroughly disgusted. “I have seen rather too much of that sort of ‘blackamoor,’ as you so elegantly term it, not to recognise that he, like ourselves, has his place and use in his own part of the world. I repeat, I am as sorry as you are the stick should have been lost, but I should have thought that, under the circumstances, no woman – with the feelings of a woman – would have held me to blame.”

      “That’s right. Sneer at me; it’s so manly,” she retorted, having reached the tremulous point of rage. “But why didn’t you tell me of it at first? Rather underhand, wasn’t it?”

      “Oh, no. I don’t deal in that sort of ware, thanks. I did not tell you, solely out of consideration for your feelings. I had hoped the thing might have been recovered by this time – then I would have told you. And look here, Cynthia. Would it surprise you to learn that I am getting more than a little sick of this sort of thing. I am not accustomed to being found fault with and hectored every minute of the day. In fact, I’m too old for it, and much too old ever to grow used to it. And since I’ve been down here this time there’s hardly a moment you haven’t been setting me to rights and generally finding fault with me. Well, if that’s the order of the day now, what will it be if we are to spend our lives together? Really, I think we’d better seriously reconsider that programme.”

      She looked at him. Just her father’s warning. But she was too angry for prudent counsel to prevail.

      “Do you mean that?” she said, breathing quickly.

      “Certainly I do. It is not too late to warn you that mine is not the temperament to submit to perpetual dictation.”

      “Very well, then. It is your doing, your choice, remember.” And turning from him she passed into the house.

      Chapter Five

      Murad Afzul, Terror

      Peaks – jagged and lofty, peaks – stark and pointed, cleaning up into the unclouded but somewhat brassy blue. Rock-sides, cleft into wondrous, criss-cross seams; loose rocks again, scattering smoother slopes of shale, where the white gypsum streaks forced their way through. Beneath – far beneath – winding among these, a mere thread – the white dust of a road. Of vegetation none, save for coarse, sparse grass bents, and here and there a sorry attempt at a pistachio shrub. A great black vulture, circling on spreading wing, over this chaos of cliff and chasm, of desolation and lifelessness, turns his head from side to side and croaks; for experience tells him that its seeming lifelessness is but apparent.

      “Ya, Allah! and are we to wait here until the end of the world? In truth, brother, we had better seek to serve some other chief.”

      Thus one dirty-white-clad figure to another dirty-white-clad figure – both resembling each other marvellously. The same bronze visage, the same hooked nose and rapacious eyes, the same jetty tresses on each side of the face, and the same long and shaggy beard, characterised these two no less than the score and a half other precisely similar figures lying up among the interstices of this serrated ridge, watching the way beneath. The dirty-white turbans had been laid aside in favour of a conical dust-coloured kulla, the neutral hue of which headgear blended with the sad tints of the surrounding rocks and stones.

      “I know not, brother,” rejoined the second hook-nosed son of the wilderness. “Yet it seems that since the Sirkar1 has been changed at Mazaran, a great change too has come over our father the Nawab.”

      “Nawab!” repeated the first speaker, with disgust. “Nawab! How can our chief take such a dirty title, only fit for swine of Hindu idolators. It is an insult on the part of the accursed Feringhi to offer such a title to a freeborn son of the mountains; and such a one as the chief of the Gularzai. Nawab!” and the speaker spat from between his closed teeth, with a sort of hiss of contempt.

      “Yet, if it serves to place him higher in the estimation of the Feringhi and of the tribes our neighbours, what matter?” returned the other. “The Nawab Mahomed Mushîm Khan sounds great in the ears of such.”

      The sneering laugh which rattled from the other’s throat was checked, for now the attention of all became concentrated on a cloud of dust coming into view, and advancing along the thread of road winding beneath. Eagerly now, thirty pairs of fierce eyes were bent on that which moved beneath their gaze – a passing of men, mounted and armed, to the number of about three score; and fierce brows bent in hatred, as they scowled upon the representative of that irresistible Power, which, with all its failings and errors of judgment, yet in the long run held in salutary restraint the excesses of their wild and predatory race. For this was the escort of the British Political Agent, returning from an official visit to their tribal chieftain.

      A squad of Levy Sowars rode in front, and a larger one of Native Cavalry, the official himself, with two or three attendants being between; the servants with camp necessaries and furniture bringing up the rear, yet taking apparent care to keep somewhat close upon the heels of the armed escort. Upon this array the wild hillmen gazed with many a muttered curse. The time for that might come, in the orderings of Allah and His Prophet; but it was not to-day – was the thought that possessed several of their minds.

      The cavalcade held on its way, winding round a high precipitous spur, to reappear again further on, small and distant, then to vanish entirely where a great tangi cleft the heart of the mountain. And look! Below, once more, in the direction whence it had first appeared, whirled another cloud of dust, insignificant this time compared with before.

      The eyes of the marauders gleamed from beneath shaggy brows, and a stir ran through their numbers. Brown, claw-like hands gripped the barrels of firearms – no antiquated, if picturesque jezails these, but Lee-Metford magazine rifles up to date, save for a few Martinis – while tulwars were half drawn from their scabbards, and gazed at with lovingly murderous graze ere being replaced again. Yet the group of figures which emerged into view on the road beneath was not formidable, consisting in fact of but four human beings.

      Two were mounted, and two on foot, and between them they were driving several pack animals, laden to their fullest capacity. At sight of these, the band, all its tactics prearranged, moved down from its eyrie-like lurking place, dividing, as it did so, into three.

      Chand

1

Government ordinarily. In this instance the representative of Government.