The Ruby Sword: A Romance of Baluchistan

Campian was becoming frightfully exhausted. Not much longer could he support this strain. Would Upward never arrive? He had succeeded, providentially, in climbing up here, under stress of desperation, but to descend safely now, cramped and exhausted as they both were, would be impossible. A broken neck, or a broken limb or two, would be the sure and certain result of any such attempt.

As the moon-rays brightened, he could make out the bottom of the tangi, and it looked hideously far down, almost as if the rush of water had worn it deeper. It was all seamed and furrowed up, and the water was now babbling down in several little streams. Would help never arrive!

Ha! At last! Voices – native voices – then, although talking in an Oriental tongue, other voices, recognisable as European ones. The sound was coming down the tangi.

“Wake up, Nessita. Here they are, at last.”

But the girl had already heard, and started up with a suddenness which would have hurled her to the base of the cliff but for his restraining grasp.

“Wait, wait!” he urged. “Be doubly careful now. We don’t want to break our necks after a narrow shave of drowning.” Then lifting up his voice, he gave forth a mighty shout.

It was answered – answered by several voices. In the moonlight they could make out figures hurrying down the tangi.

“Where are you?” sung out Upward, who led the way. Then he stopped short, with an ejaculation of amazement, as the answer revealed the objects of his search high overhead. “Good heavens! how did you get up there?”

“Never mind now. What we want to know is how to get down.”

But with Bhallu Khan and one of his forest guard were two or three sturdy Baluchis, who had joined the party – all wiry mountaineers – and by dint of making a kind of human pyramid against the rock wall, the pair were landed safely beneath.

Then many were the questions and answers and ejaculations, as the full peril of the situation became apparent. Those who had undergone it had not much to say. Nesta seemed half dazed with exhaustion and recent terror, while Campian declared himself too infernally tired to talk. Fleming however produced a flask, which went far to counteract the cold and wet. The whole party was there. They had got safely through the tangi, when the rain began to come down in torrents, and in an incredibly short space of time the slab-like slopes of the hills had poured down a vast volume into the dry nullah, which drained the valley area. They themselves were through only just in time, but had felt no great anxiety on account of the other two, reckoning them so far behind that the impassability of the tangi would be obvious to them directly they reached it. Of course they would not attempt it. But to find them here, half way through – saved as by a miracle, and then with the loss of two horses – no, they had not reckoned upon that.

All this Upward explained. Then, looking up at their place of refuge:

“I don’t suppose there’s another place in the whole length of the tangi you could have taken refuge in, and how the mischief you ever got to this one is a mystery to me.”

“Well, for the matter of that, so it is to me, Upward,” rejoined Campian. “I’m perfectly certain I couldn’t do it again for a thousand pounds.”

“Why, that’s the place a man was swept off from the year before last. Isn’t it, Bhallu Khan?”

“Ha, Huzoor!” asserted the forester, taking in the burden of their talk.

“Well, you’ve had a narrow escape, old chap – both of you have. I don’t know how you did it, but here you are. We were coming back to look for you, thinking you had got turned round, and might get trying some other way back, and this isn’t an over-safe country for a couple of strangers to get lost in at night. By the way, I can’t make out why you got so far behind. More than once we kept signalling you to come on. It occurred to us you might miss the way. Didn’t you see us?”

“No.”

“None so blind as those who won’t see – ah – ha – ha – ha!” sneered Bracebrydge, tailing off his vacuous laugh in would-be significance. But of this remark Campian took absolutely no notice. It was not the first time Bracebrydge had rendered himself offensive and quarrelsome in the presence of ladies, and the inherent caddishness of this gallant worthy was best recognised by the silence of contempt.

It was late before the party reached camp – later still when they got to bed. All was well that ended well – so far, that is, for Nesta Cheriton’s nervous system had received a shock, which rendered her more or less out of sorts for some time, during which time, however, Bracebrydge and Fleming were recalled to Shâlalai.

Chapter Nine.

After Long Years

“Let’s get the ponies, and jog over and look up Jermyn. Shall we, Campian?” said Upward, during breakfast a few mornings later.

“I’m on. But – who’s Jermyn when he’s at home?”

“He isn’t at home. He’s out here now,” cut in Lily.

“Smart young party, Lil,” said Campian, with an approving nod. “And who is he when he’s out here now?”

“Why, Jermyn, of course.”

“Thanks. That’s precisely what I wanted to know. Thanks, fair Lilian. Thine information is as terse as it is precise.”

“I should say Colonel Jermyn if I were you, Lily,” expostulated that young person’s mother; whereat Hazel crowed exultantly, and Campian laughed. The latter went on:

“As I was saying, Upward, before we were interrupted, who is Jermyn?”

“Oh, he’s a Punjab cavalry man up here on furlough. He’s had fever bad, and even Shâlalai wasn’t high enough for him, though he doesn’t want to go home, so he rented my forest bungalow for the summer. It’s about eight miles in the Gushki direction. You haven’t been that way yet.”

“So? And what does Jermyn consist of?”

“Eh? Ah, I see. Himself and a niece.”

“What sort of a niece?”

“Hideous,” cut in Hazel.

“Really, I can’t allow that sort of libel to pass, even for a joke,” said Mrs Upward. “She isn’t hideous at all. Some people admire her immensely.”

“Pff!” ejaculated Lily, tip tilting her nose in withering scorn. “Too black.”

“Mr Campian likes them that way,” cackled Hazel. “At least, he used to,” added this imp, with a meaning look across the table at Nesta. “I was only humbugging. She isn’t really hideous. We’ll ride over too, eh, Lil?”

“No, you won’t – not much,” retorted Upward decisively. “You two are a precious deal too fond of running wild as it is, and you can just stay at home for once. Besides, we don’t want you at all. We may take on some chikór on the way, or start after some from Jermyn’s. Shall you be ready in half an hour, Campian?”

The latter replied in the affirmative, and they rose from the table. While they were preparing to start, he observed Nesta standing alone under the trees.

“Well, Nessita, and of what art thou thinking?” he said, coming behind her unnoticed. She started.

“Of nothing. I never think. It’s too much trouble.”

“Phew! Don’t take it so much to heart. They’ll soon be back.”

“What a tease you are,” she retorted petulantly. “I hope they won’t. If you only knew how sick I am of the pair of them.”

“That so? I was going to say you’d have to make shift with me for the next few days, but – There, it’s a sin to tease her. What’s the matter? You’re not looking up to your usual brilliancy of form and colouring, little girl.”

“Oh, I’ve got a most beastly headache. I’m going to try and go to sleep all day, if those two wretched children will let me.”

“Poor little girl! Shall I persuade Upward to let them come with us?”

“No, no. It doesn’t matter. You’d better go now, or you’ll start Mr Upward fussing.”

“And cussing?”

“Yes, that too. I’m going in now. Good-bye.”

“Nesta looks very much below par this morning, Upward,” said Campian, as they rode along.

“Does she? Finds it dull, perhaps, now, without those two jokers. She’s never happy without a lot of them strung around her.”

“So? These blue-eyed, fluffy headed girls usually are that way, I have observed. They are wonderfully taking, but – lacking in depth.”

“Thought at one time she was rather stringing yours on to her collection of scalps, old chap,” said Upward, with a sly chuckle.

“Because we went out chikór shooting together once or twice?” replied Campian tranquilly. “Talk of the devil – there are some chikór.” And the next few minutes were spent in dismounting – a rapid fifty paces through the sparse herbage – a whirr of wings – the triple crack of guns – and a brace and a half of birds retrieved by the attendant forest guard; while the remainder of the covey, having gained the mountain side, was crawling up the rock slopes like spiders on a wall.

“See that hole, Campian?” said Upward, soon after they had resumed their way. “That’s the markhôr cave. There’s always a markhôr there, the people say.”

“Let’s go and see if he’s at home now, except that we’ve only got shot guns,” replied Campian, looking up at the black fissure pointed out, and which cleft the rock face some distance overhead, seeming to start from a grassy ledge. It looked by no means an inaccessible sort of place.

“Bhallu Khan says he wouldn’t be in now,” said Upward, who had been talking in Hindustani to the old Pathân. “He only sleeps there.”

“So? Well, I don’t believe in his markhôr then, Upward. If the brute was so regular in his habits as all that, he’d have been shot long ago.”

“Very likely. But Bhallu Khan says the people are afraid of him. They don’t believe he is a real markhôr, but a spirit that takes the form of one. He is guarding some buried treasure, and it’s unlucky to go near the place.”

“It wouldn’t be unlucky if they found the treasure, by Jove! What does it consist of?”

Upward spoke again to the old forester, whose answer, translated to Campian, caused the latter fairly to start in his saddle, his scepticism dispersed.

“He says it is supposed to be old sword hilts and things, encrusted with the most priceless jewels. Hallo! You seem to believe in it, old chap?”

“Not I. Only it reminded me of something else. But I suppose they have a yarn of the kind attached to pretty nearly every hole and corner of the land, eh?”

“Yes. I have heard of others; but, curiously enough, now I think of it, this jewelled sword hilt idea doesn’t seem to come into them. It’s generally a case of tons of gold mohurs, and all that sort of thing.”

“I suppose so,” asserted Campian tranquilly. But his tranquillity was all outward, for as they continued their way, his mind was very lively indeed. Was there really something in the legend? Had he struck upon the clue at last – not merely a clue, but the actual spot? How he wished he had learned Hindustani, so as to be able to communicate, at first hand, with those who might be able to furnish other clues. All save the wild Baluchis of the more remote and nomad clans spoke that language, and it was of primary importance to obtain information of this kind at first hand, and unfiltered through a third party.

“Campian’s very chûp to-day,” thought Upward, peering furtively at his companion, who, during the last couple of miles, had hardly spoken, except in monosyllables. “I wonder if the sly old dog is really smashed on Nesta, and is thinking it over – I wonder?”

He would have wondered more could he have read the thoughts of “the sly old dog” aforesaid, for they ran not upon love but upon lucre.

“There’s the bungalow,” said Upward presently, pointing out a white low-roofed dwelling high up on the hillside. “Not a bad little place for a while, but most confoundedly out of the way.”

The path wound around the spurs, ascending more abruptly, mostly in the shade of the junipers, here growing to greater size, and more thickly. Presently they came out upon a small plateau, and the bungalow.

“Hallo, Upward! Glad to see you. Don’t get many visitors up here.”

“How do, colonel? This is Mr Campian – stopping with me. Nearly got shot by some Pathân budmashes, and then drowned by the tangi coming down, on the night he arrived. You may have heard about it.”

“Not a word – not a word. Haven’t seen a soul for weeks. Glad to meet you, Mr Campian. Fine view from here, isn’t there?”

“Splendid,” assented Campian, who had been taking in both the speaker and the view. The former was of the pleasant, genial type of soldier – elderly, grizzled, upright, well-groomed. The latter – well, it was fine – uncommonly so. From its eyrie-like position, the bungalow commanded a vast sweep of mountain and valley. Embedded against a background of juniper slope the front of the plateau looked out upon a scene, the leading idea conveyed by which was that of altitude and vastness. Opposite, a line of great mountains shot up in craggy heads to the sky; their slopes alternating in slab-like cliffs and gloomy chasms running up into lateral valleys. Juniper forest, more or less sparse, straggled along the base; and but for the aridity of the all prevailing stone and the scattered vegetation, the view would have been lovely. As it stood, it was only immense. Circling kites, uttering their plaintive whistle, floated in clouds against the blue of the sky, or, gracefully steering themselves with their long forked tails, soared out over the valley.

“Fine air, too,” went on Colonel Jermyn. “After the awful heat of some of those plains stations you can appreciate it, I can tell you. But I daresay, you got a taste of that on your way up?”

“Rather. Coming through Sindh, for instance, if you leaned back suddenly in the train against the back of the seat, it was like leaning against a lot of fizzling Vesuvian heads.”

“Ah, prickly heat. We know what that is down below – don’t we, Upward?”

But the reply was lost in the soft rustle of draperies, and a softer voice:

“How do you do, Mr Upward?” As the three rose, it needed not the formal introduction. The colonel’s words seemed to sound from far away in Campian’s ears. “My niece – Miss Wymer.”

The first utterance had been enough for Campian. There was no other such voice in the world. And as he stood there, exchanging the formal hand-clasp of ordinary every-day greeting with Vivien Wymer, small wonder that his self-possession should be shaken to the core. For, five years earlier, these two had parted – in anger and bitterness on the side of one, a whole world of heart-consuming love on that of both. They had parted, agreeing to be strangers thenceforward, and had been so, nor had they set eyes on each other since. Now, by the merest of chances, and totally unprepared, they met again amid the craggy mountain ranges of wild Baluchistan.

“We were talking about the prickly heat, Vivien,” went on the colonel. “Mr Campian says it was like leaning against burning match-heads coming up in the train – ha, ha! You look a trifle below par even now,” turning to Campian. “Won’t you have a ‘peg’? Upward, excuse me – what a forgetful ass I am. So seldom I see anyone up here I’m forgetting my manners. After your long, hot ride, too!”

“Not feeling fit to-day. A new climate sometimes does knock me out at first,” replied Campian mendaciously, he being both by constitution and practice as hard as nails. He was savage with himself for losing his self-possession, even for a moment. “No lack of that article on the other side, anyway,” he thought bitterly.

Outwardly there was not. Vivien Wymer’s manner in greeting him had been so perfectly free and unconcerned that not one in ten thousand would have dreamed she had ever set eyes on him before. Nor, as she sat there talking to Upward, could the keenest ear have detected a trace of flurry in her soft-voiced, flowing tones; and what ear could be keener than that of the man who sat there, straining to catch every word – every tone – while endeavouring to avoid replying at random to the conversation of his host.

“That’ll pick you up,” said the latter, as the bearer appeared with a tray containing very tall tumblers and a bottle and syphons. “Nothing like a ‘peg’ after a hot ride. We can’t get ice up here, but I always have the stuff kept in a cooler. Mix for yourself.”

“You must come down to our camp for a day or two, Miss Wymer,” Upward was saying. “You’ll come, too, won’t you, colonel? There are still some birds left. It’s rotten shooting, but all there is here.”

Thereupon the conversation turned on shikar in general, and tiger in particular, and Campian felt relieved, for now he could drop out of it. Five years ago it was that he and Vivien had parted – yes, exactly five years – and now, as he sat watching her, it seemed as though but five days had passed over her, for all the change they had brought – outwardly, at any rate. All was the same – the poise of the head – even the arrangement of the rippling waves of soft dark hair had undergone but slight alteration; the quick lifting of the eyelids, the glance, straight and full, of the heavily fringed eyes. Yet, if taken feature by feature, Vivien Wymer could not have been summed up as beautiful. Was it a certain grace of movement inseparable from a perfect symmetry of form – an irresistible, sensuous attractiveness side by side with a rare refinement – that would have set her on the highest pinnacle, while other women, beautiful as a dream, would have been passed by unnoticed? He could not say. He only knew that she had appealed to him as no other woman had ever done before or since; that the possession of her would fill every physical and mental want – we desire to emphasise the latter phase, in that it was a question of no wild whirlwind of infatuated passion. She had drawn out in him – as regarded herself, at any rate – all that was best; had even been the means of implanting within him qualities wholly beneficial, and which he would have repudiated all capacity for entertaining. In her he had recognised his destined counterpart. He might live a thousand years and never again meet with such. He was no longer young. He had known varied and eventful experiences, including a sinister matrimonial one, mercifully for himself, comparatively short. But Vivien Wymer had been the one love of his life, and the same held good of him as regarded herself, yet they met again now as strangers. One thing he decided. They were to keep up the rôle. Since she wished it – and evidently she did wish it – he would offer no enlightenment.

“Is your friend keen on sport, Upward?” the colonel was saying. “You ought to take him to try for a markhôr.”

“Don’t know that I care much for sport in that form,” cut in Campian. “It represents endless bother and clambering; all for the sake of one shot, and that as likely as not a miss. The knowledge that it is going to be your one and only chance is bound to make you shoot nervous. Now, I like letting off the gun a great deal, not once only.”

“Yes, it means a lot of hard work. Well, you’ve come to the wrong country for sport.”

“By the way, colonel,” said Upward, “my head forester points out a cave on the way here, where they say there’s always a markhôr. It doesn’t seem difficult to get at I don’t believe in it myself, because there’s a legend attached.” And thereupon he went into the whole story.

Vivien was listening with deepening interest.

“I should like to see that place,” she said. “Anything to do with the legends of the people and country is always interesting. Could we not arrange to go and explore it? You say it is easy to get at?”

“I think so,” answered Upward. “We might make a picnic of it. Two fellows from Shâlalai who joined camp with me are coming back to-morrow or the next day, and we might all go together. What do you say, colonel?”

“Oh, I don’t mind. Getting rather old for clambering, though. Come along in to tiffin; that’s the second gong.”

Throughout that repast, Vivien addressed most of her conversation to Upward. Campian, however, who had pulled himself together effectually by now, was observing her keenly. When she did have occasion to answer some remark of his, it was as though she were talking to a perfect stranger, beheld that morning for the first time. Very good. If that were the line she desired to keep to, not in him was it to encroach upon it. He had his share of pride, likewise of vindictiveness, and some of the aggrieved bitterness of their parting was upon him now. But he remembered also that the ornamental sex are consummate actors, and felt savage with himself for having let down his own guard. And this impassiveness he kept up throughout the ordeal of again saying good-bye.

“Well, and what did you think of Colonel Jermyn, Mr Campian?” queried Mrs Upward, when they were seated at dinner that evening. The two men had returned late, having fallen in with more chikór on the way, and she had had no opportunity of catechising him before.

“He seems a pleasant sort of man,” returned Campian. “There was some scheme of cutting them into a kind of exploration picnic, wasn’t there, Upward?” he went on, with the idea of diverting an inevitable cross-examination.

“Them! You saw the niece, then?” rapped out Hazel. “What did you think of her?”

“Think? Why, that you are a shocking little libellist, Hazel, remembering your pronouncement.”

“It wasn’t me who said she was too black; it was Lily.”

“He’s mashed too,” crowed that young person, grinning from ear to ear.

“Why ‘too,’ Lilian? Is the name of those in that hapless plight legion?”

“Rather. You haven’t a ghost of a show. Down at Baghnagar she had three regiments at her feet. But she wouldn’t have anything to say to any of them.”

“That looks as if one had a ghost of a show, Lil,” replied Campian, serenely bantering. In reality, he had two objects to serve – one to cover the situation from all eyes, the other, haply to extract from the chatter of this hapless child anything that might throw light on Vivien’s life since they parted.

“Pff! not you,” came the reply, short and sharp. “There was one– once. She chucked him. No show for anybody now.”

“What a little scandalmonger it is,” said Campian, going off into a shout of laughter. He had to do it, if only to relieve his feelings. The information thus tersely rapped out by Lily, and which drew down upon the head of that young person a mild maternal rebuke for slanginess, had sent his mind up at the rebound. “Where did she get hold of that for a yarn, Mrs Upward?”

“Goodness knows. Things leak out. Even children like that get hold of them in this country;” whereupon Lily sniffed scornfully, and Hazel fired off a derisive cackle. “Do you think her good looking, Mr Campian?”

“Decidedly; and thoroughbred at every point.” The humour of the situation came home to the speaker. Here he was, called upon to give a verdict offhand as to the one woman who for years had filled all his thoughts, who still – before that day to wit – had occupied a large portion of them, and he did so as serenely and unconcernedly as though he had never beheld her before that day. “Why did she chuck – the other fellow?” he went on, moved by an irresistible impulse to keep them to the subject.

“He turned out a rip, I believe,” struck in Upward. “Lifted his elbows too much, most likely. A lot of fellows out here do.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Ernest,” said his wife. “You really shouldn’t spread such stories. It was for nothing of the sort, but for family reasons, I believe; and the man was all right. And it wasn’t out here either.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know anything about it, and I’ll be hanged if I care,” laughed Upward. “I asked them to come down here for a few days soon, and they said they would. Then you can get it out of her yourself.”

Chapter Ten.

The Markhôr Cave

“There is a large section of our fellow subjects that votes Alpine climbing the most incomprehensible form of lunacy known to science, on the ground that to spend half one’s life, and putting the whole of it in pawn, scrambling up rocks and ice and snow, for the sake of getting to the top of some pinnacle which a hundred people have already got to, and thousands more eventually will, is to place one’s self beyond the pale of ordinary intelligence. But I wonder what such would say of a being of mature age, and laying claim to the possession of ordinary intelligence, who skips up in the middle of the night, and under the guidance of an Asiatic whom he can’t understand, and who can’t understand him, spends several hours crawling over boulders and along blood curdling precipices, on the off-chance of one shot – and the certainty of a miss – at an infernal wild goat, which is of no earthly use to you when you get him, except to stick up his head and brag about it ever after. The Alp-climber would have to cede to him the proud distinction of prize imbecile, I guess.”