The Mating of the Blades/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
In which it is proved that Eton, Oxford, and the Army are not necessarily fatal to success in life.
“Hansua ke hiyah, khurpa ke git!” remarked Wahab al-Shaitan, the chief executioner, to Mahsud Hakki, the head eunuch, meaning by the gliding, purring words that it was “the wedding of the sickle, but that all the song was for the hoe”—an extravagant Oriental simile immediately understood by the other, who untucked his fat legs from beneath his fat haunches, rose, and stretched himself.
“Yes,” he said. “It is Al Nakia who rules. It is Al Nakia who gives forth pearls of wisdom and justice and shining equity, judiciously tempered by the swish of the sword when it is red. It is Al Nakia whose eyes fatten the cattle and frighten the wolves. Yet is it Aziza Nurmahal whose praise is babbled in bazaar and mosque and mart. Al Nakia wants nothing except—he told me so himself when I asked him—the personal satisfaction of knowing that he is doing a measure of good, that he is achieving a measure of success. He said so—by Allah!”
A great, naïve wonder overspread Wahab al-Shaitan's plum-colored features.
“Last night,” he said, a little hesitatingly, like a man who does not expect to be believed, “the princess offered to raise him to the rank and title of Itizad el-Dowleh, 'Grandeur of the State,' since it is evident that Hajji Akhbar Khan will never return from the far places. But Al Nakia refused. He wants no higher title than his present one: Sadr Azem, 'Prime Minister.' Strange, isn't it?”
“Strange indeed. He is the government. He controls the finances, the palace household, and the army. He works like a beaver and sleeps like a hare. He is a deer in running, a tiger in pouncing, a hawk in clutching. And he does not intrigue for the throne. He does not ask the princess' hand in marriage. He does not even want money or fame. Strange—as strange as the ancient prophecy of the swords!”
And Mahsud Hakki shook his kinky poll.
Yet, had the two Nubians known or, knowing, been able to understand, the strangest aspect of the whole affair was less the actuality of Hector's success as de facto ruler of Tamerlanistan than the contrast of this success with his, of course hypothetical, failure had Fate thrown him to a different corner of the earth.
For, had he taken his father's quite well-meant suggestion and gone to Canada or South Africa, he would by this time have become a remittance man, including all that the term implies—he would have been crushed beneath the wheels of that juggernaut like so many other of Britain's younger sons who leave home “for a reason.”
But it is a racial, almost a historical, phenomenon that these same younger sons who go under in the far places colonized by their own countrymen, make often supremely good when circumstance forces them to live and work amongst either inferior peoples, as in Africa, or a people of a different civilization and culture, as in Asia.
Perhaps it is because they feel that, amongst foreign races, it is up to them to uphold the traditions of their own country; perhaps there is at the back of it some scientific or quasi-scientific reason not yet discovered, dissected, and codified ad absurdum by those enthusiastically illogical and intolerant atheists who call themselves biologists.
But the fact of it remains; and Hector Wade was a living example.
Quite untrammeled by the clogging traditions of Tamerlanistan's past, yet careful not to rough-ride over any of those customs and prejudices which, in the swing of the centuries, had become endowed with an almost religious sanction, he gripped the helm of the ship of state and proceeded to navigate it amongst the swirls and shoals and eddies of the turbulent political waters.
Soberly English, he began with the department of the treasury. English, too, in his willingness to compromise instead of dragooning, he retransferred the treasury to the capable hands of Gulabian, whom he released from prison. English, finally, in his constructive though rather cynical belief that the best preventive against corruption is money, he raised the Armenian's salary to such a high figure that it would not have paid him to accept bribes. The result was as he had expected: Gulabian became a faithful supporter of the new administration. Within a few weeks, the taxes were again commencing to flow in; not, of course, with the methodical regularity as during the life-time of the old Ameer and the stewardship of Hajji Akhbar Khan, but sufficiently smoothly to keep the country out of bankruptcy; and in this, as in the other administrative departments, it was the primitive simplicity of Tamerlanistan which permitted Hector to accomplish in a few weeks what, in a more hectic, a more highly organized, a more complicated European country, would have taken him as many months or years.
Next he turned his attention to the household, the palace. Many of the customs there went against his grain. But he said to himself that the Orient is the Orient, and that the harem, the intimacy of the house and family, is absolutely inviolable. Nor did he fancy himself in the rôle of a reformer. He was tolerant enough to admit that that which is right in London may well be wrong in Pekin, and vice versa, and so he attempted no changes in the household, with the single exception that he did away with the multitude of spies, telling tales about each other. Otherwise he left the intimate palace affairs in the hands of the old nurse.
When it came to the reform of the army, he not only used the military lessons he had learned in the Dragoons and at war college, but also the sober psychological wisdom—though he himself referred to it as horse sense—he had acquired through his human relations with the troopers in his half-squadron.
He remembered chiefly the case, including the morals of the case, of one Bill Dockeray, a Liverpool wharfinger who had donned the blue and silver of the Dragoons in a moment of patriotism not altogether untainted by three fingers of gin which a pal had put in his fifteenth glass of beer—to regret his martial decision promptly and profanely as soon as he had discovered that the King's Shilling, a gay tunic, and the regimental band tuning up “The Dashing White Sergeant” were not all there was to life in barracks; that there was, also, drill and route marching and sobriety—and discipline.
Bill Dockeray had decided that he was a “free-born bloody Englishman,” had emphasized this assertion by flattening out a lance-jack's aquiline nose, and had been sent to “clink” for three days.
Which had not chastened him in the least.
On the contrary, he had grown steadily worse, until the colonel had become bored with the monotonous, almost weekly:
“Private William Dockeray, C Squadron, two days for insubordination!” and, after a particularly mutinous outbreak had threatened him with brigade court-martial.
It was then that Hector Wade had interfered.
“Let me have a talk with Bill Dockeray,” he had asked the colonel.
The latter had shaken his head.
“You'll never make a soldier out of him,” he had said.
“It won't do any harm to try, sir.”
“All right. Please yourself.”
And Hector had gone to the guard-house and interviewed the lawless trooper.
“Look here,” he had said, “you'll get jolly well kicked out of the service in disgrace.”
“A fat bloomin' lot I'd care,” had come the sneering reply.
“But you will also get two years' hard labor,” Hector had continued—which put a different complexion altogether on the matter and made the argument much more persuasive.
“You're in for it,” he had said, “either jail—or you behave yourself and stay with the colors. Why, man, the army isn't so bad. Of course you have to do what you are told. So have I. So has the colonel. So has everybody.”
“I 'ytes the army,” Bill Dockeray had insisted, stubbornly, aggressively.
“Take some interest in your work,” Hector had replied. “Make the best of it. Why, there must be something about the service that you like. Let's see if we can find it between us.”
And, after fifteen minutes' careful and tactful questioning, he had discovered that the lawless recruit took quite a little interest in farriery, his father having been a veterinary in the Midlands—with the ultimate result, that, half a year later, Private Bill Dockeray had become Farrier Sergeant William Dockeray, had been heard to speak about the honor of the “bloomin' old rag,” meaning the Union Jack, with a great deal of proprietary pride, and had severely manhandled one Bert Simmonds, trooper, for having said in canteen that all “them orficers are lousy, bleedin', cocky swine.”
Now Hector used practically the identical tactics with regard to Koom Khan, the ex-commander-in-chief, whom Wahab al-Shaitan had put in jail during his term of office.
He visited him there and found him in decidedly bad humor. But he said to himself that this man who glared at him out of hasheesh reddened eyes without a word in answer to his courtly greeting, was an Oriental and, by the same token, a man hard to manage yet easy to inspire; a man, moreover, who preferred a certain subtle brutality to all the logic in the world and believed profoundly that casuistry was the final essence of ratiocination.
Wherefore he studied him as he might an exotic and nauseating beetle, not sure whether he should crush it under foot or simply ignore its existence, and said, ironically, with pauses between the words:
“Koom Khan, thou and I must either be friends—or enemies.”
The other blinked his swollen eyelids and waved a negligent hand.
“Very well,” He replied. “Let us be enemies, Al Nakia.”
“Agreed.” Hector rose and walked to the door. There he turned and added, quite gently, “But we shall not be enemies for long.”
“For as long as there is breath in my body!” burst out Koom Khan.
“That is just what I meant when I said that it would not be for long. For—I have never trusted a living enemy—and I have never feared a dead one!”
Koom Khan gave a slight start, but controlled himself almost immediately, and said, with the utmost, arrogant nonchalance:
“Death is not such a savory mouthful that one should gulp it down whole. I have changed my mind, my lord. I shall hereafter be thy friend.”
And then, with a disconcertingly sudden swing to deep seriousness, he went on:
“Al Nakia! Fools—such fools as I—lose their way amongst the pitfalls of ambition. The pathway that is straight and clear is hidden to fools—such fools as I—by the mud of our greed, by the tangled undergrowth of our wayfaring desires. A handful of dust blinded my eyes to the signal whose meaning I know well.”
“What signal?” asked Hector, rather embarrassed, and quite at a loss what to make of the other's almost tragic earnestness of gesture and expression.
“The prophecy, my lord! I set the flame of my sinful, foolish, greedy ambition against the words of the ancient prophecy! I forgot that thou, my lord, art the 'Expected One,' that thou camest out of the West, the blade in thy hand—the blade that will mate with the other blade, whenever the time is propitious and Allah gives the word!”
And Hector suppressed an impatient exclamation as, nearly automatically, he drew the sword from his waist shawl and tended it, hilt foremost, for Koom Khan to touch with his lips and swear fealty on, as Tagi Khan had done that morning, and the Sheik-ul-Islam the day before.
“Of all the confounded, mystifying darned poppycock—I'll be jolly well blowed!” he said to himself, in plain, colloquial English, as he returned to his quarters in the left wing of the palace.
For in almost every instance when Hector, since he had begun to take charge of the affairs of Tamerlanistan, combining flattery and unvarnished brutality, brought the leaders and sub-leaders and henchmen of the different warring factions into line with his administrative policy, sooner or later the blades and the ancient prophecy were referred to, as the final argument.
And Hector was prey to natural curiosity. He wanted to know what it was all about.
But he did not dare.
At first his congenital stubbornness and, too, a certain fatalistic resolve to accept this new life of his and all it might bring without question or doubt or mental reservations, had sealed his lips. Now the very fact that he had accepted all without asking, that thus he had admitted indirectly that he was familiar with the prophecy and its meaning, made it impossible for him to demand an explanation.
What puzzled him most was that reference was always made to two blades.
He might have understood had they spoken of only one, the one he had found in the old lumber room near Dealle Castle; might have figured out that originally it had belonged to one of the Gengizkhani family and that his bringing it here, back to Tamerlanistan, was considered a good omen by these superstitious people.
But—what was the other blade?
Too, who was this mad old Oriental in Coal Yard Street, near Drury Lane, who had lent him money on the sword and had sent him, indirectly, with that cryptic note to the house in the Colootallah where he had seen the princess?
Was he perhaps Hajji Akhbar Khan, the dead Ameer's prime minister, the Itizad el-Dowleh, of whom he heard whispers now and then, and who, shortly before his master's death, had gone to Europe on some secret mission?
And what then was the answer to it all?
How did this puzzle picture of twisted, painted, crazy Asian life dovetail into a whole?
For it did dovetail—to everybody's satisfaction, except his own. The very gipsies and donkey boys and beggars and dervishes seemed to accept it.
He would have asked Aziza Nurmahal. He trusted her implicitly, and liked her just as he would have liked some wholesome English “county” girl whose interests were entirely taken up with bringing baskets to the aged and ailing villagers, playing croquet on the curate's lawn, and going for a run with the harrier hounds, in short skirts and puttees.
Even if he had not been in love with Jane Warburton, Aziza Nurmahal would have had no sex appeal, no emotional message, for him.
He simply liked her. Liked her tremendously, and he would have asked her, as he might a pal:
“I say, tell me what all this drivel about swords and prophecies signifies—there's a dear!”
But the freedom and comradeship of the open road had ceased the moment she had set foot in the palace of the Gengizkhani, and once more she had become the Oriental princess, hedged in by ancient customs, submitting to the traditions of purdah and harem, of veil and woman's seclusion, putting aside the former only when she was surrounded by her servants and eunuchs, and never seeing him without palace officials and courtiers hovering about—and listening.
Thus Hector had never an opportunity of asking her, and found himself in the awkward and, from his straight-grained English point of view distasteful, predicament of forever playing a rôle, forever, silently, indirectly, admitting that he was perfectly familiar with a mystery of which in reality he hardly under stood the outer fringes.
Tamerlanistan accepted him and though, naturally, amongst the older generation there were many who grumbled a little, who criticized, who compared him, of course unfavorably, with Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, the younger men praised the superior wisdom of the new prime minister, Al Nakia, the Sadr Azem.
He was not one of those cocksure Europeans and Americans who, delegated by circumstance to rule over Asiatics, decide immediately that all their traditions and customs are wrong and must therefore be promptly changed.
He knew that the thing which the Oriental dislikes most in the European system is its dawdling, minute sloth in the manner of meting out justice. The Oriental holds that, when he is wronged, it is the business of the ruler or his executive delegate to right him at once, without delay, without expense, without wearying process of law, fully and finally. He appeals to his ruler loudly in the market-place, the mosque, or the hall of audience, expects that justice be dealt out then and there, that the decision may be inexorably, cruelly just, but must be reached irrespective of rules of evidence, precedent, customs or laws other than religious ones—and that all judgments must be made instantly executive and must under no conditions be subject to appeal.
So, as the princess' delegate, Hector held open court in front of the palace every morning, with Koom Khan and Gulabian as his advisers and often, when it came to settling domestic squabbles between husband and wife or master and servant, the old nurse contributing valuable, frequently profane, and always ruthlessly constructive counsel; and, in consequence, he was busy all day and half the night.
But he liked it. He forgot himself, his past work, his past disgrace and bitterness, in this work, and in the clean satisfaction of achieving which resulted from it.
The yellow wold of Sussex was forgotten.
All was forgotten except Jane Warburton.
In regard to the pacification and subjugation of the western marches, he progressed with the utmost slowness and caution, very much to the disappointment of Koom Khan and Gulabian, the former advocating swift action for military, the latter for financial reasons.
Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, the governor, had not fulfilled his braggart threat, had not advanced to the capital at the head of his armed men to claim the hand of Aziza Nurmahal in marriage. On the other hand, he had declared his absolute independence, was now openly the ally of Hajji Musa Al-Mutasim, surnamed Al-Ghadir, 'The Basin,' the leader of the Persian border ruffians, and was levying ever-increasing toll on the caravans that went up the Darh-i-Sultani, “The King's Highway,” with the argricultural produce of Tamerlanistan, to return with the wares of Persia, Bokhara, Khiva, and the Caucasus.
When the Sheik-ul-Islam, on a spiritual journey to Isfahan, was held up by the robbers and deprived of his sacerdotal green silk robe, his purse, and his rosary of flawless emeralds, with the ironically courtly words: “Take off that robe, O Certain Person, and remove the rosary. Also turn over thy purse. All three are wanted by the daughter of my maternal uncle!”; when, threatening the robbers with excommunication and similar dire theological consequences, he was answered with the insolent pun that religion was all very well for the Ahl Hayt, the Dwellers of Towns, but had no effect on the Ahl Bayt, the Dwellers of the Black Tents; when, on his return to the capital, he poured out the tale of his grievance and demanded that a punitive expedition be sent immediately to the western marches, Hector cut the lamentations short by saying that he himself was the siper salar, the captain general, and that the interference of the church in matters military was his pet dislike.
“But, Al Nakia,” protested the Sheik-ul-Islam, “be pleased to consider my losses.”
“A new robe of state shall be given thee, also some money, and a rosary …”
“Of emeralds—like the one I lost?” came the quick, greedy query.
“No. God hears prayers even though they be clicked on simple wooden beads.”
“But my loss of dignity, my lord! My loss of prestige!”
Hector smiled sardonically. From the very first, he had felt an antipathy for the suave, hypocritical priest.
“Worldly thoughts for a holy man,” he suggested; and when the other again spoke about his loss of dignity and, with a general appeal to the courtiers who crowded the hall of audience, repeated his demand that an expedition be sent to punish Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, Hector burst forth with a thunderous “Silence! I follow my own counsel, even though the robbers cut off the nose of the Commander of the Faithful himself.”
The Sheik-ul-Islam rose and walked away, angry, mortified, throwing over his shoulder the Parthian shot that Al Nakia was setting up to be a warrior, a fighter, a swashbuckler, a leader of men, but that “the more we approach the enemy, the more the tiger in our heart becomes a lamb!”
“Thou hast made an enemy of the priest,” said Koom Khan to Hector, that night, as the two, in the company of the Armenian treasurer, were smoking peaceful hubble-bubbles on the balcony of the palace, looking out into the spring night where fire starlight drifted through budding boughs into budding earth.
Hector made a negligent gesture, while the other continued that, too, there was some truth in what the Sheik had said:
“The army is ready, is eager to fight. Let us strike, Al Nakia.”
And Gulabian, though an Armenian and thus, congenitally, a man of peace, agreed to it and advocated a quick, smashing attack on the governor of the western marches. He went on to say that, through the good offices of spies and also of the local agent of the Cable Company, the Babu Chandra, who had intercepted and deciphered several cable messages sent from India, via Tamerlanistan, to Isfahan, and thence to the headquarters of the rebel chief, he had found out that the latter was preparing a great military coup, for which he had not only the support of the renegade Arab, Musa Al-Mutasim, but also of certain Europeans who seemed to have enough influence with the British-Indian government to have been granted a permit to ship rifles and ammunition in large quantities through the Persian Gulf.
“England takes no interest in the affairs of Tamerlanistan,” continued Hector. “It is outside their sphere of interests.”
“Yet the fact remains. The rifles are being shipped.”
“But who are the Europeans with Abderrahman Yahiah Khan? And what have they to do with this land?”
“Everything. For remember, there is the old question of the 'concessions,' and one of the Europeans—his name is Mr. Preserved Higgins …”
Hector sat up straight. “Preserved Higgins?”
He thought, puzzled. Why, he said to himself as he had done once before, it was this same Cockney millionaire who had been the first to mention the name of Tamerlanistan to him, who had wanted him to go there, who had spoken of the princess, of Aziza Nurmahal, and …
“My lord,” Gulabian's terse, low voice cut through his thoughts, “Mr. Preserved Higgins is a careful man. He holds to the ancient maxim that among the sages, Narudu; among the beasts, the jackal; among the birds, the crow; among men, the barber; and among wise men, he who thinks twice—is the most crafty. Thinks twice! Acts twice! Thus he is also shipping rifles and ammunition from Bokhara and Khiva and Russian Turkestan, in case an enemy whisper a word into the ears of the British-Indian Raj. Too, there is the other European whom he brought with him, and my spies tell me that he is a soldier like thyself, trained in the art of war, quick and energetic and courageous. Nor is that all. For—thou knowest the old prophecy—of the sword and the wooing of the swords …?”
“Yes. Of course,” said Hector, blushing slightly for the white lie. “What about it?”
“The governor of the western marches is spreading the news that thou art not the man meant in the prophecy, that thou art an impostor, that the other, the Englishman whom Mr. Preserved Higgins brought with him, is the real Al Nakia, the real 'Expected One,' and …”
“Then Mr. Preserved Higgins knows of the prophecy?” sharply demanded Hector.
“Yes. He knows, it through his agent, the Babu Bansi.”
Hector was about to accept the explanation, when, suddenly, looking up and seeing the expression of sardonic amusement that flitted over Koom Khan's vulpine features, he remembered that this was Tamerlanistan, the heart of the Moslem Orient, and that the Moslems, as a religious body, have that strange characteristic which the Chinese have racially; namely, an unwritten, uncodified, but absolutely compelling freemasonry which makes it possible that a secret known to all the Moslems of the community, from the highest dignitary of the mosque olema to the lowest, raggedest donkey boy, from the head of the Rakaiz Al-Utab, the “Merchants' Guild,” to a recently and forcefully converted plum-colored Nubian slave, that a secret which is whispered in the coffee-houses, the opium shops, the palace yards, the camel markets, the caravanserais, and behind the flopping curtains of the harem, remains a sealed book to the non-Moslem members of the community. He knew that it was this peculiar characteristic which, next to the centripetal influence of the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca and Madina, is the power which holds Islam together and which, in spite of the many races which compose it, makes of Islam a fighting, thinking, to-be-reckoned- with whole.
The only exception to this freemasonic rule of secrecy is made in the case of a non-Moslem whose advice and help is absolutely essential and who has become an integral part of the community, and that was why Gulabian though an Armenian and a Christian, but a member of the intimate palace household and of the late Ameer's cabinet, would have heard about the prophecy of the blades.
But Babu Bansi was a Hindu, an infidel—and an outsider, working for outside interests.
How then had the man found out?
And Hector voiced the question.
“How did Bansi find out?” he demanded.
Thus interrogated, the Armenian seemed horribly startled and confused, while Koom Khan broke into raucous, disagreeable laughter—laughter presently echoed in a cracked falsetto from the room in back of the balcony whence Ayesha Zemzem, the old nurse, stepped out with a clanking of brass anklets and a low, ironic salaam to Gulabian, who was momentarily becoming more unhappy.
“Al Nakia,” she said, “there are three things the effects of which upon himself no man can foretell—namely, desire of woman, the dice box, and the drinking of ardent spirits—”
"And,” gently cooed Koom Khan, with a glance at the uneasy Armenian, “our Gulabian likes not the dice box, being a man faithfully mated to his swollen purse, and sacrificing daily to the swag-bellied god of compound interest. Nor does he care for ardent spirits, being in that respect—and in that respect only!—like a True Believer. But—ahee!—the desire of woman smells sweetly, pungently, intoxicatingly in his nostrils!”
“Indeed!” the old nurse took up the tale. “The desire of woman! Our Gulabian knows not the truth of the saying that the beauty of the nightingale is its song, science the beauty of an ugly man, forgiveness the beauty of a devotee, and the beauty of a decent man steadfastness in love. Shameless dancing girls from the stinking, yellow Southland—bold-eyed, red-haired hussies from Georgia and the Caucasus—raven-locked maidens from Bokhara—in a never-ending procession, they dance across the heart of our Gulabian. They sweep with perfumed fingers the impetuous harp strings of his soul. And,” she went on mercilessly, while the Armenian stammered and blushed, while Koom Khan guffawed crudely, and even Hector, for all his preoccupation, joined in the merriment, “there was talk, at the time of the Ameer's death, of one Jayashri, a golden-skinned beauty from far Bengal. 'Sister,' the Babu Bansi called her—but a naughty sister she was, finding but little joy in sisterly devotion, in minding her fat and indecent brother's household pots, but instead whispering words of sweetness and love and soft passion into the ear of our …”
“Peace, Leaky-Tongue!” cut in the Armenian, thoroughly exasperated. “Peace, Parrot-Face! I admit it. Jayashri's beauty was overpowering—as the moon's on the fourteenth day. Her little, white feet were lisping twin flowers, her little nose was …”
“Spare us the enumeration of her physical perfections,” laughed Hector. Then, seriously: “Thou didst tell her?”
“Yes. A word or two about the prophecy of the blades. She said that true love means utter trust, utter confidence, and so just a word or two I told her, my lord!”
“But sufficient to give a clue to her—brother, the Babu!”
“Enough, too,” croaked the old nurse, “to throw this land into turmoil, to cause the Babu Bansi to send messages along the devil wires to Belait—to Europe—and then to smash the devil machinery, so that the other son of a noseless mother, the Babu Chandra, stalks into the presence of Aziza Nurmahal and speaks words bloated with arrogance! Yes! Thou didst tell her enough, O Armenian, to plant the seeds of rebellion in this land—”
And she gave a terse and vituperative history of the events that had disturbed the peace of Tamerlanistan, just about the time of the memorable card game at Dealle Castle when Hector had lived up to the traditions of the Wade family and had shouldered the guilt of his elder brother … the memory came to him now, and with it a slight bitterness, too, a slight elation.
For, after all, he said to himself, if it had not been for the card scandal, for the Wade traditions, he would still be in England, living an entirely honorable and entirely innocuous life as a subaltern of Dragoons, while here he was standing on his own feet—independent—and …
He shut off his rambling thoughts and turned to Ayesha Zemzem who was still emptying the vials of her abuse on the head of Gulabian, to the accompaniment of Koom Khan's rumbling laughter.
“Enough!” Hector raised an impatient hand. “The harm is done. Mr. Preserved Higgins knows of the prophecy, knows enough of it at least to turn it to his advantage, and he will doubtless try and force our hands in the matter of the 'concessions.' All right. We'll make the best of a bad bargain.”
“A very bad bargain,” commented Koom Khan, with a sidelong glance at the treasurer.
The latter smiled.
“Fight poison with poison,” he suggested. “The Babu Chandra, too, represents European interests. If thou, O Al Nakia, sayest the word …”
“I know. If I say the word, the sahebs who employ the Babu Chandra will some to my support with money and rifles and ammunition—but they, too, will demand 'concessions.' No—there is no choice between the Devil and Satan. No 'concessions' shall be granted until we—the princess and I—have thoroughly considered the matter from every angle. I do not trust the sahebs.”
“And thou a saheb thyself!” softly said the Armenian.
“Thus so much better able to judge the strength—and the weaknesses of the saheb-log!”
“But remember!” argued Koom Khan. “Abderrahman Yahiah Khan is spreading the tale that thou art an impostor—that the Englishman whom Higgins saheb has brought is the true 'Expected One!'”
Again Hector played up to his rôle, which by this time had become second nature to him. He drew the ancient sword from its sheath with a dramatic flourish.
“Here is the proof that I am the 'Expected One!'” he said.
“Proof enough for us,” rejoined Koom Khan. “But—thou knowest how it is. The masses, the people, are like sheep. If the governor of the western marches, with the help of Higgins saheb's money bags and the unknown saheb's war prowess, should make a sudden descent upon us and snatch victory out of our fingers, then, before we shall be able to rally for a counter-stroke, the masses will swing to him. They will say that, blade or no blade, thou art an impostor. And then”—he shrugged his massive shoulders—“I love thee well, my lord—I would not care to see the little, little jackals gorge themselves on thy bleeding, headless trunk—”
“Nor shalt thou see it,” replied Hector. “I tell thee I have considered everything. When I fight Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, I shall fight him on ground of my own choosing, and not on ground of his choosing”—and he whispered certain instructions to Koom Khan, which sent the latter to his headquarters with a chuckle and the parting words that Al Nakia was indeed a warrior amongst the warriors, swift as a snake, keen as a tiger, and shrewd as a bull elephant in spring.
The Armenian's final plea that the country needed the safety of the western road, that the caravan men were afraid of robbers, that traffic with Persia, Khiva, and Bokhara had practically stopped and with it the tax receipts. Hector dismissed by asking the other to develop the eastern trade.
“There is Afghanistan,” he said, “and India, both ready to buy our produce, and a good road leads there, the Darb-al-Sharki, 'The Eastern Highway,' and our kafilas can trade there as easily and as profitably as they used to with Persia. All that is needed is a little pluck, a little persistency, and a great deal of initiative—and I rely on thee, friend Gulabian, to supply all three!”—a broad flattery which fully served its purpose and sent the Armenian on his way, as pleased with Hector as Koom Khan had been.
“A clever man is Al Nakia,” the old nurse said that night to Aziza Nurmahal. “He does not draw the sword of foolish audacity, nor does he throw away the scabbard of precaution, and it has indeed been said by a very wise man that the brain, not the body, is the proof of love. The body? The face? By the red pig's bristles!—am I a fool or a moon-sick virgin of thirteen to call a thing made up of impure matter a face, to drink its charms as a drunkard swallows the ardent liquor from his cup? Not that Al Nakia is ugly. For there is a hidden fire of passion in his eyes that promises—ah!—promises!”
“Hai—hai—hai!” exclaimed the princess, her words choked with gurgling, irrepressible laughter. “By the Prophet—art thou then in love with Al Nakia, old woman? Why—when thou speakest of him, thy eyes roll about like the tail of the water-wagtail, thy shriveled old lips pout to resemble ripe pomegranates, thy ancient, flat bosom heaves like the lotus-bud awakening to the winds of spring. Truly, Al Nakia will feel flattered when he hears that the happiness of all thy desires and the desires of all thy happiness are concentrated in the touch of his hand, the touch of his lips!”
“I am thinking of thee, Little Dream by the Gift of Thy Face,” gently rejoined the nurse, “and not of myself. What has an old witch like myself to do with love—what can a pig do with a rose bottle? But thou and he should mate, Little Moon of Fulfillment, thus finishing the old prophecy—the wooing of swords!”
Aziza Nurmahal shook her head.
“I like him well,” she said softly, “but I do not love him. Love is a question—but one cannot force the answer to it. Love is a lampless pilgrim, wandering through the black night—and looking for the moon-rays that never come. Love is a drifting in the stream of vague, sweet things—a stretching of longing arms at the shadowy fringe of the never-to-be!”
“Melancholy thoughts for the heart of a babe,” said Ayesha Zemzem.
And, like many another girl, before and since, East and West, the princess whispered, with a distinct note of not at all distressing self-pity:
“I shall never love anybody!”
A statement which, at least subconsciously, she withdrew three days later, when walking through the Bazaar of the Goldsmiths, followed by a retinue of servants and eunuchs, her little face more disclosed than hidden by the diaphanous veil that covered her features from the soft curve of her chin to the tip of her nose, her lithe young body robed in the mysteriously feminine folds of a rose-red sari embroidered with tiny seed pearls, she saw a lean, hawkish, black-eyed stranger standing there, dressed in the costume of a rich Persian gentleman; evidently a sightseer, a traveler, for he was watching the shifting crowd interestedly.
He saw her and stared—frankly, rudely stared. But Aziza Nurmahal smiled, with all the shrewd demureness of her girlhood and with all the ancient wisdom of her sex, as she heard Mahsud Hakki, the head eunuch, make grumbling complaint that these were Persian manners, the manners of bad Moslems, of swine-fed heretics and similar base-born cattle, to ogle women in the bazaars and market-places.
That night, pledging her to secrecy by the gift of a handful of gold coins and half-a-dozen silk saris, she instructed Kumar Zaida, a pert little Tajik slave girl whose love affairs were the scandal of the whole palace, to make the rounds of the caravanserais and to find out the name of the Persian stranger:
“A lean man, with high cheek bones, an aquiline, nose, clean-shaven, dressed in a scarlet silk khalat, a white Persian lamb cap on his head. He carries his cartridge belt in the Circassian manner, from right shoulder to left hip;” which was a remarkably faithful description, chiefly considering that she had only seen him in the fleeting fraction of a second!
And when the next day Zaida reported that the stranger had left town to return to his own country, and that in spite of all warnings he had taken the western highway which was infested with the robbers of Abderrahman Yahiah Khan and “The Basin,” Aziza Nurmahal's heart felt heavy within her, and her fingers wandered aimlessly over the strings of her rubabah, her Persian guitar.
The stranger, meanwhile, was spurring his Balkh stallion up the western highway, beneath the purple depths of the night sky where hung tiny points of light that glittered and glistened with the cold gleam of diamonds.
“That Babu factotum of Mr. Preserved Higgins knows a jolly lot about Tamerlanistan,” he said to himself, whimsically, “but he does not know the most important thing. He does not know that the little princess has the blackest eyes in all the world. The wooing of swords? The fulfilling of the old prophecy? All right—'Barkis is willin’'—now more than ever!”
And he kept on toward the west, where a faint, silver gray mountain was flung like a cloud against the sky. All night he rode, and through the soft spring morning that dropped over the land with a brocaded mantle of rose and gold, down the Darb-i-Sultani that was flanked by huge piles of bare rock, standing detached upon the surface of sand and clay … an immense expanse of land, a scalped, flayed wilderness where, to use the Arab saying, there lived nobody but Allah. Yet a land that had once been a granary, that had once been green with wheat and yellow with pulse, that had once fed hundreds of thousands—and that would again bear fruit, given irrigation, development, the granting of—“concessions.”
And it was of “concessions” that, three days later, the stranger talked to Mr. Preserved Higgins, who was stretched at ease beneath the silken dome of Abderrahman Yahiah Khan's tent of state, the Babu Bansi squatting at his feet and looking up at the eccentric Cockney millionaire with adoring eyes.