The Ruby Sword: A Romance of Baluchistan

To him who watched it, while not seeming to, there was an entire revelation in Vivien’s face during that momentary lifting of the veil. She was as anxious to prolong the time as – he was. Yes, that is what it amounted to. The experiment, from its coldblooded side, seemed to have failed.

“We shall be up here some weeks longer, Campian” – went on the Colonel – “but of course if you have to go, it is easy enough to get to Shâlalai. Meanwhile my boy, as long as you can make yourself happy here we are only too glad.”

“Oh, I can do that all right, Colonel. And I’m not tied to time in any way either.”

Again that relieved look on Vivien’s face. Some weeks! What might not be the result of those weeks was the thought that was in the minds of both of them? What might not transpire within those weeks? Ah, if they had only known.

“By the way there’s another item of kubbar in Upward’s letter,” went on the Colonel, fumbling for that missive. “A budmâsh named Umar Khan has started out on a Ghazi expedition down Sukkâf way. He and several others rode out along the road and cut down a couple of poor devils of gharri-wallahs. Killed ’em dead as a door nail. There was a mûllah in one of the gharris, and they plundered him. He got out a Korân and put it on his head – singing out that he was a mûllah. ‘Mûllah or not,’ says Umar Khan – ‘hand out those seven hundred rupees you’ve got on board.’ And he had to hand them out. Sacrilegious scamps – ha, ha! But if he hadn’t been a mûllah they’d have cut him up too. Well these budmâshes will have to swing for it. They’ll soon be run to earth. Nice country this, eh, Campian?”

“Rather. It seems to me only half conquered, and not that.”

“Yes. It’s run at a loss entirely. A mere buffer State. We hold it on the principle of grabbing as much as we can and sticking to it, all the world over – and in this particular instance putting as much as we can between the Russians and India.”

“And what if Umar Khan is not speedily run to earth?”

“Oh, then he’ll knock around a bit and make things generally unpleasant. Do a little dacoity from time to time. But we are bound to bone him in the long run.”

“There’s an uncommonly queer closeness in the air this evening,” said the Colonel as they were sitting out under the verandah a little later. “As if there was a storm of sorts working up. Yet there’s no sign of thundercloud anywhere. Don’t you notice it, Vivien?”

“I think so. It has a dispiriting effect on one, as if something was going to happen.”

The sun had gone down in a lurid haze, which was not cloud, and the jagged peaks of the opposite range were suffused in a hot, vaporous afterglow, while the dark depth of juniper forest in the deep, narrow valley seemed very far down indeed. What little air there was came in warm puffs.

“We all seem rather chûp this evening,” said the Colonel. “Viv, how would it be to play us something lively to wake us up?”

She rose and went inside. Campian could still see her as she sat at the piano, rattling off Gilbert and Sullivan at their liveliest. He could continue the very favourite occupation in which he had been indulging – that of simply watching her – noting every movement, the turn of the head, the droop of the eyelids, the sweet and perfect grace which characterised her most trivial act. This woman was simply perfect in his sight – his ideal. Yet to all outward intent they were on the easy, friendly terms of two people who merely liked each other and no more.

“Come and have a ‘peg,’ Campian,” said the Colonel presently.

“No thanks – not just now.”

“Well, I’m going to,” and away he went to the dining room.

Then Campian, sitting there, was conscious of a very strange and startling phenomenon. There was a feeling as though the world were falling away from beneath his feet, together with a dull rumble. There was a clatter of glass and table ornaments in the drawing room, and he could see Vivien sway and nearly fall from the music-stool. He sprang to his feet to rush to her aid, and seemed hardly able to preserve his own balance. Both staggering they met in the doorway.

“Oh, Howard, what is it?” she cried, seizing in both of hers the hand which he had stretched out to help her.

“Quick. Come outside,” was all he said. They were able to walk now, and he drew her outside the verandah, right into the open. Then again came that cavernous rumble, and the earth fairly reeled beneath their feet.

“That’s what all this heaviness in the air has been about,” he said, as the ground felt firm again. “A shock of earthquake.”

“Is it over? Will there be any more?” she gasped, her white face and dilated eyes turned up to his. She still held his hands, in her sudden terror, casting all considerations of conventionality to the winds.

“I don’t think so,” he answered, a very tremble of tenderness in his voice as he strove to reassure her. “These shocks generally go in twos or threes, like waves. And even if there are any more we are all right outside.”

Here the humorous element asserted itself, in the shape of Colonel Jermyn choking and coughing in the verandah. In his hand he held a tall tumbler, nearly empty.

“Look at this, Campian,” he cried. “A man can’t even have a ‘peg’ in his own house without the whole world rising up against it. Flinging it in his face, and half choking him, by George.”

“Some awful big teetotaler must have gone below, Colonel, to raise racket enough to knock your ‘peg’ out of your hand. I hope you’ll take warning and forswear ‘pegs.’”

“Ha, ha! Well, Viv? Badly scared, child?”

She laughed, but the colour had not yet come back to her cheeks.

“I predicted something was going to happen, didn’t I?” she said.

“And it has happened – and now there’s another thing going to happen, and that is dinner, so we’d better go inside and begin to think about it. What? Is it safe? Of course, though, my dear, I don’t wonder at it if you were a little scared. It’s an experience that is apt to be alarming at first.”

The while the speaker was chuckling to himself. He had been a witness both by ear and eye to the foregoing scene, having overheard Vivien’s alarmed apostrophe.

“So? It has come to that, has it?” he was saying to himself. “‘Howard,’ indeed? But how dark they’ve kept it. Well, well. They’re both of them old enough to look after themselves. ‘Howard,’ indeed!” and the jolly Colonel chuckled to himself, as with kindly eyes he watched the pair that evening, reading their easy unrestrained intercourse in an entirely new light.

Chapter Fourteen.

The Tragedy at Mehriâb

Mehriâb station, on the Shâlalai line of railway, was situated amid about as wild, desolate and depressing surroundings as the human mind could possibly conceive.

A narrow treeless plain – along which the track lay, straight as a wall – shut in by towering arid mountains, rising to a great height, cleft here and there by a chasm overhung by beetling cliffs – black, frowning and forbidding. At the lower end of the plain rose sad-hued mud humps, streaked with gypsum. There was nothing to relieve the eye, no speck of vivid green standing out from the parched aridity prevailing; but on the other hand all was on a vast scale, and the little station and rest-house looked but a tiny toy planted there beneath the stupendous sweep of those towering hills.

In the latter of the buildings aforesaid, a tolerably lively party was assembled, discussing tiffin, or rather having just finished discussion of the same. It had been done picnic fashion, and the room was littered with plates, and knives and forks, and lunch baskets, and paper, and all the accompaniments of an itinerant repast.

“Have another ‘peg,’ Campian,” Upward was saying. “No? Sure? You will, Colonel? That’s right. We’ve plenty of time. No hurry whatever. Hazel, don’t kick up such a row, or you’ll have to go outside. Miss Wymer, don’t let them bother you. What was I saying just now?”

He took up the thread of what he had been saying, and in a moment he and the Colonel were deep in reminiscences of shikàr. Vivien and Nesta had risen and were strolling outside, and there Campian joined them. The dâk bungalow extended its accommodation to travelling natives, for whom there was a department opposite. Camels – some standing, some kneeling, but all snarling – filled the open space in front of this, and wild looking Baluchis in their great white turbans and loose garments were squatting around in groups, placidly chatting, or standing alone in melancholy silence.

“Look at this!” said Campian. “It makes quite a picture, taken against the background of that loop-holed mud wall, with the great sweep of mountain rising behind.”

Several camels, some ready laden, some not, were kneeling. On one a man was adjusting its load. He was a tall, shaggy, hook-nosed black bearded ruffian, who from time to time cast a sidelong, malevolent glance at the lookers on as he continued his work. In business-like manner he proceeded to adjust each bale and package, then when all was complete, he lifted from the ground a Snider carbine and hung it by its ring to a hook on the high wooden pack saddle. Then he took up his curved sword; but this he secured to the broad sabretache over his shoulder.

“Isn’t that a picture in itself?” went on Campian. “Why, adequately reproduced it would bring back the whole scene – the roaring of the camels, the midday glow, the burning heat of this arid hole. I wonder who they are by the way” – for others who had similarly accoutred their camels were jerking the animals up, and preparing for the start.

Vivien turned to Bhallu Khan who was just behind, and translated his answer.

“He says they are Brahuis from the Bolân side, going further in.”

“Why are they all armed like that? Don’t they trust their own people?”

“He says they may have heard that Umar Khan is on the warpath, and they are not of his tribe. Nobody knows who anybody is who is not of his tribe – meaning that he doesn’t trust them.”

It was something of a contrast to turn from these scowling, brigandish looking wayfarers, to the beaming, benevolent, handsome countenance of the old forest guard. They strolled around a little more, then voted it too hot, and returned to the welcome coolness of the dâk bungalow.

Campian, always analytical, was conscious of a change, or rather was it a development? Now that they were together – in a crowd – as he put it to himself, there was a certain feeling of proprietary right that seemed to assert itself in his relations with Vivien. It was something akin to the feeling which was over him in the old time when they moved about together. And yet, why? Well, the close intimate intercourse of the last ten days or so had not been without its effect. Not without an inward thrill either, could he recognise that this intercourse had but begun. They were returning together, and to be candid with himself that hot stifling arid afternoon here on one of the wildest spots on earth’s surface, he could not but recognise that this elation was very real, very exhilarating indeed.

“I think we’d better stroll quietly up to the station,” said Upward, as they re-entered. “We may as well have plenty of time to get all this luggage weighed and put right.” Then relapsing into the vernacular: “Khola, you know what goes in and what has to be weighed.”

“Ha, Huzoor,” assented the bearer.