The Broken Road by A. E. W. Mason (ebook reader txt) 📕

rather proud of them," said Sybil; and then she broke off suddenly and faced him.

"Is it true?" she whispered in a low passionate voice. "Is the road stopped? Will it not go beyond Kohara?"

Colonel Dewes attempted no evasion with Mrs. Linforth.

"It is true that it is stopped. It is also true that for the moment there is no intention to carry it further. But—but—"

And as he paused Sybil took up the sentence.

"But it will go on, I know. Sooner or later." And there was almost a note of hopelessness in her voice. "The Power of the Road is beyond the Power of Governments," she added with the air of one quoting a sentence.

They walked on between the alleys of rose-trees and she asked:

"Did you notice the book which Dick was reading?"

"It looked like a bound volume of magazines."

Sybil nodded her head.

"It was a volume of the 'Fortnightly.' He was reading an article written forty years ago by Andrew Linforth—" and she suddenly cried out, "Oh, how I wish he had never lived. He was an uncle of Harry's—my husband. He predicted it. He was in the old Company, then he became a servant of the Government, and he was the first to begin the road. You know his history?"

"No."

"It is a curious one. When it was his time to retire, he sent his money to England, he made all his arrangements to come home, and then one night he walked out of the hotel in Bombay, a couple of days before the ship sailed, and disappeared. He has never been heard of since."

"Had he no wife?" asked Dewes.

"No," replied Sybil. "Do you know what I think? I think he went back to the north, back to his Road. I think it called him. I think he could not keep away."

"But we should have come across him," cried Dewes, "or across news of him. Surely we should!"

Sybil shrugged her shoulders.

"In that article which Dick was reading, the road was first proposed.
Listen to this," and she began to recite:

"The road will reach northwards, through Chiltistan, to the foot of the Baroghil Pass, in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. Not yet, but it will. Many men will die in the building of it from cold and dysentery, and even hunger—Englishmen and coolies from Baltistan. Many men will die fighting over it, Englishmen and Chiltis, and Gurkhas and Sikhs. It will cost millions of money, and from policy or economy successive Governments will try to stop it; but the power of the Road will be greater than the power of any Government. It will wind through valleys so deep that the day's sunshine is gone within the hour. It will be carried in galleries along the faces of mountains, and for eight months of the year sections of it will be buried deep in snow. Yet it will be finished. It will go on to the foot of the Hindu Kush, and then only the British rule in India will be safe."

She finished the quotation.

"That is what Andrew Linforth prophesied. Much of it has already been justified. I have no doubt the rest will be in time. I think he went north when he disappeared. I think the Road called him, as it is now calling Dick."

She made the admission at last quite simply and quietly. Yet it was evident to Dewes that it cost her much to make it.

"Yes," he said. "That is what you fear."

She nodded her head and let him understand something of the terror with which the Road inspired her.

"When the trouble began fourteen years ago, when the road was cut and day after day no news came of whether Harry lived or, if he died, how he died—I dreamed of it—I used to see horrible things happening on that road—night after night I saw them. Dreadful things happening to Dick and his father while I stood by and could do nothing. Oh, it seems to me a living thing greedy for blood—our blood."

She turned to him a haggard face. Dewes sought to reassure her.

"But there is peace now in Chiltistan. We keep a close watch on that country, I can tell you. I don't think we shall be caught napping there again."

But these arguments had little weight with Sybil Linforth. The tragedy of fourteen years ago had beaten her down with too strong a hand. She could not reason about the road. She only felt, and she felt with all the passion of her nature.

"What will you do, then?" asked Dewes.

She walked a little further on before she answered.

"I shall do nothing. If, when the time comes, Dick feels that work upon that road is his heritage, if he wants to follow in his father's steps, I shall say not a single word to dissuade him."

Dewes stared at her. This half-hour of conversation had made real to him at all events the great strength of her hostility. Yet she would put the hostility aside and say not a word.

"That's more than I could do," he said, "if I felt as you do. By
George it is!"

Sybil smiled at him with friendliness.

"It's not bravery. Do you remember the unfinished letter which you brought home to me from Harry? There were three sentences in that which I cannot pretend to have forgotten," and she repeated the sentences:

"'Whether he will come out here, it is too early to think about. But the road will not be finished—and I wonder. If he wants to, let him.' It is quite clear—isn't it?—that Harry wanted him to take up the work. You can read that in the words. I can imagine him speaking them and hear the tone he would use. Besides—I have still a greater fear than the one of which you know. I don't want Dick, when he grows up, ever to think that I have been cowardly, and, because I was cowardly, disloyal to his father."

"Yes, I see," said Colonel Dewes.

And this time he really did understand.

"We will go in and lunch," said Sybil, and they walked back to the house.

CHAPTER VI A LONG WALK

The footsteps sounded overhead with a singular regularity. From the fireplace to the door, and back again from the door to the fireplace. At each turn there was a short pause, and each pause was of the same duration. The footsteps were very light; it was almost as though an animal, a caged animal, padded from the bars at one end to the bars at the other. There was something stealthy in the footsteps too.

In the room below a man of forty-five sat writing at a desk—a very tall, broad-shouldered man, in clerical dress. Twenty-five years before he had rowed as number seven in the Oxford Eight, with an eye all the while upon a mastership at his old school. He had taken a first in Greats; he had obtained his mastership; for the last two years he had had a House. As he had been at the beginning, so he was now, a man without theories but with an instinctive comprehension of boys. In consequence there were no vacancies in his house, and the Headmaster had grown accustomed to recommend the Rev. Mr. Arthur Pollard when boys who needed any special care came to the school.

He was now so engrossed with the preparations for the term which was to begin to-morrow that for some while the footsteps overhead did not attract his attention. When he did hear them he just lifted his head, listened for a moment or two, lit his pipe and went on with his work.

But the sounds continued. Backwards and forwards from the fireplace to the door, the footsteps came and went—without haste and without cessation; stealthily regular; inhumanly light. Their very monotony helped them to pass as unnoticed as the ticking of a clock. Mr. Pollard continued the preparation of his class-work for a full hour, and only when the dusk was falling, and it was becoming difficult for him to see what he was writing, did he lean back in his chair and stretch his arms above his head with a sigh of relief.

Then once more he became aware of the footsteps overhead. He rose and rang the bell.

"Who is that walking up and down the drawingroom, Evans?" he asked of the butler.

The butler threw back his head and listened.

"I don't know, sir," he replied.

"Those footsteps have been sounding like that for more than an hour."

"For more than an hour?" Evans repeated. "Then I am afraid, sir, it's the new young gentleman from India."

Arthur Pollard started.

"Has he been waiting up there alone all this time?" he exclaimed. "Why in the world wasn't I told?"

"You were told, sir," said Evans firmly but respectfully. "I came into the study here and told you, and you answered 'All right, Evans.' But I had my doubts, sir, whether you really heard or not."

Mr. Pollard hardly waited for the end of the explanation. He hurried out of the room and sprang up the stairs. He had arranged purposely for the young Prince to come to the house a day before term began. He was likely to be shy, ill-at-ease and homesick, among so many strange faces and unfamiliar ways. Moreover, Mr. Pollard wished to become better acquainted with the boy than would be easily possible once the term was in full swing. For he was something more of an experiment than the ordinary Indian princeling from a State well under the thumb of the Viceroy and the Indian Council. This boy came of the fighting stock in the north. To leave him tramping about a strange drawing-room alone for over an hour was not the best possible introduction to English ways and English life. Mr. Pollard opened the door and saw a slim, tall boy, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the floor, walking up and down in the gloom.

"Shere Ali," he said, and he held out his hand. The boy took it shyly.

"You have been waiting here for some time," Mr. Pollard continued, "I am sorry. I did not know that you had come. You should have rung the bell."

"I was not lonely," Shere Ali replied. "I was taking a walk."

"Yes, so I gathered," said the master with a smile. "Rather a long walk."

"Yes, sir," the boy answered seriously. "I was walking from Kohara up the valley, and remembering the landmarks as I went. I had walked a long way. I had come to the fort where my father was besieged."

"Yes, that reminds me," said Pollard, "you won't feel so lonely to-morrow as you do to-day. There is a new boy joining whose father was a great friend of your father's. Richard Linforth is his name. Very likely your father has mentioned that name to you."

Mr. Pollard switched on the light as he spoke and saw Shere All's face flash with eagerness.

"Oh yes!" he answered, "I know. He was killed upon the road by my uncle's people."

"I have put you into the next room to his. If you will come with me I will show you."

Mr. Pollard led the way along a passage into the boys' quarters.

"This is your room. There's your bed. Here's your 'burry,'" pointing to a bureau with a bookcase on the top. He threw open the next door. "This is Linforth's room. By the way, you speak English very well."

"Yes," said Shere Ali. "I was taught it in Lahore first of all. My father is very fond of the English."

"Well, come along," said Mr. Pollard. "I expect my wife has come back and she shall give us some tea. You will dine with us to-night, and we will try to make you as fond of the English as your father is."

The next day the rest of the boys arrived, and Mr. Pollard took the occasion to speak a word or two to young Linforth.

"You are both new boys," he said, "but you will fit into the scheme of things quickly enough. He won't. He's in a strange land, among strange people. So just do what you can to help him."

Dick Linforth was curious enough to see the son of the Khan of Chiltistan. But not for anything would he have talked to him of his father who had died upon the