CHAPTER XVI.
“ENGLAND’S FAR, AND HONOUR A NAME.”
HIS arrival at the Mirza’s house was the beginning of what appeared, in contrast with the days that had gone before it, a period of perfect bliss to Ferrers. The extreme peril of his position, and the danger which would face him if he wished to leave the city, occurred to him only as considerations that enhanced the comfort of the present moment. He had nothing to do but to enjoy life within somewhat circumscribed limits, and to feel his strength returning day by day under the care of the Mirza and his household of obsequious slaves. From time to time the Mirza would appear perturbed, and a question would elicit the admission that a rigorous search was being made, now in one part of the city and now in another, for the escaped prisoner. But Ferrers thought this an excellent joke; and under its influence the gloomy brow of his host would also relax, for was not the Mirza the keeper of the prison, and was not his house the last place where the fugitive would be sought? Still, there were certain precautions to be taken, and for gratitude’s sake Ferrers was careful to observe them. He found that the Mirza was far more strict in the performance of his religious duties than he had ever known him—in fact, the man who had posed at Shah Nawaz as a freethinker was here the most orthodox of Moslems, and Ferrers, as became a disciple, also reformed his earlier heterodox behaviour. In the course of his adventures in disguise at Bab-us-Sahel he had gained a fair working knowledge of the points of Mohammedan ritual; now he became acquainted with its extremest minutiæ, even to the incessant use of the Fattha, or first verse of the Koran, with which, in the contracted form of “Allahu!” the devout Gamaris were wont to preface most of the actions of life. Even had any of the slaves been ill-disposed, they could have alleged nothing against the orthodoxy of their master and his disciple; but they seemed to vie with one another in showing a deference to Ferrers only second to the veneration with which they regarded the Mirza.
It was but to be expected that as Ferrers grew strong again he would begin to chafe against the close confinement which his host assured him was necessary, and even to hint that it was time he made some attempt to escape from the city. These hints were always turned aside by the Mirza, however, and it was impossible to know whether he had understood them or not; but he was more accommodating in the direction of providing for his guest a certain amount of recreation. At the beginning, when visitors appeared, Ferrers was always smuggled out of the way in good time; but by degrees he was allowed to remain, at one time only hovering on the outskirts of the circle, ready to do the Mirza’s commands like a dutiful disciple, then, keeping in the shadow, to lean against a pillar and listen to the words of wisdom that fell from his teacher, and at last to make one of the group. He had grown a beard by that time, and this, with the aid of various skilful touches from the Mirza, altered his appearance completely, while his earlier practice in behaving as an Oriental stood him in good stead. At length the Mirza considered that it was safe to take him out of doors, and they entered afresh on their old course of adventures, the zest of which was heightened now to Ferrers by the imminent presence of extreme peril. The scenes which they passed through were many and various, showing under-currents of life in the sacred city which it would be by no means profitable to describe. Ferrers was wont at first to salve his conscience by assuring himself that this all formed part of an exhaustive inquiry which would have important results when he returned to civilisation; but he soon began to feel a fascination in the life he was leading,—to feel that he was being gripped by something to which one side of his nature, and that not the highest, responded with fatal facility.
It was one night that this idea came to him, bringing with it the unpleasant conviction that he was a great deal happier in Gamara than he had any business to be; and in the morning he was moody and troubled, almost making up his mind to speak plainly to the Mirza and demand the means of escape, then deciding that it was better not to touch on a subject which his host so pointedly avoided. They were bidden to an entertainment that day at the house of Ghulam Nabi, one of the Mirza’s friends, an old and trusted servant of the Khan, and renowned even in Gamara for the strictness of his orthodoxy. The company was a very small one, for only a few could be trusted with the secret that besides the invariable tea and sherbets, fruit and sweetmeats, Ghulam Nabi was wont to amuse his confidential friends with entertainments of a more questionable character; but among them was a nephew of the old man’s who was a student at a neighbouring mosque, and who threatened to be a disturbing element. Ferrers had become by this time so used to his assumed character that he no longer took the precaution of seating himself with his back to the light under the pretence that his eyes were weak, as he had done at first, and he found the student’s gaze fastened on him almost continuously. Aware that to show agitation would be the worst possible policy, he nerved himself to maintain his usual calmness, and succeeded, as he believed, in dispelling the youth’s suspicions. But presently, as the guests rose to accompany their host to a pavilion in the garden, the student flung himself forward with a shout.
“That man is a Kafir!” he cried, pointing at Ferrers. “I have been to India, and seen the Sahibs, and he is one. He does not eat like us, he rises from his seat differently. He is here in the holy city to spy upon us!”
There was a stir among the guests, and they fell away from Ferrers as if he had been denounced as plague-stricken. He himself, as if by a sudden inspiration, attempted no defence. He looked at the Mirza, then bowed his head, and stood in a submissive attitude. The Mirza came to his rescue at once.
“The man is my disciple, and no Sahib,” he said. “Is this the way that the Sahibs receive an accusation, O far-travelled one? Nay, but I have been training this disciple of mine in patience and submission, until I verily believe he thinks I have devised this scene to test him. Truly he has learnt his lesson, and when I go hence, my mantle shall be his. Is he not a worthy successor, brethren?”
“He is no true believer,” protested the student, but less confidently than before. The rest of the company were evidently coming over to Ferrers’ side, and Ghulam Nabi clinched the matter.
“It can easily be proved,” he said. “I am not wont to put tests to those who come under my roof; but in order to quiet the foolish tongue of this low-born nephew of mine, let the Mirza’s disciple repeat the Kalima, that the ill-spoken boy may bow down in the dust before him.”
Much relieved by so easy a solution of the difficulty, Ferrers repeated promptly the Moslem creed, without hurry and with the proper intonation. The confusion of the student was complete, and his uncle and the other elders heaped reproaches upon him, while the Mirza’s face beamed. No further incident disturbed the harmony of the evening, and Ferrers returned home with his host in good spirits. His nerve, at any rate, must be untouched by the trials through which he had passed, since he could confront such an emergency without a single tremor. He had forgotten all about the remonstrance he had intended to address to the Mirza, and was going straight to his own room, when he was called back.
“A load has been removed from my mind to-day,” said the Mirza. “I had not looked to hear Firoz Sahib confess himself of his own free will a follower of Islam, and it has often grieved me to think of his returning to the dungeons whence I took him.”
“It was merely a joke, of course,” said Ferrers lightly, “but it served its purpose. Good thing I remembered the words all right!”
“There can be no jest in repeating the Kalima in the presence of witnesses,” was the reply. “It saved Firoz Sahib’s life to-day.”
“And will save it a good many times yet, I daresay; but of course it’s nothing but a joke. Hang it, Mirza! you don’t expect me to go on pretending to be a Mussulman when I get back to India?”
“You will never get back to India, sahib. Those that have seen the things that have been shown to you do not leave Gamara.”
“What in the world do you mean? I shall leave Gamara as soon as I can—in a few days, I suppose.”
“When you leave this house you will either leave it as a Mussulman, in which case honour and riches await you, or as a Christian, when you will return to the dungeon from which I brought you. Or rather, as one who has once professed the faith of Islam and afterwards denied it, you will pass to such tortures as are reserved for renegades. But you will never leave Gamara.”
Ferrers stood gazing at him, unable to utter a word, and the Mirza went on, speaking in a meditative tone—
“Yet is there no cause for sorrow in this, for there is greater honour for you here than you would ever have attained in India. And when the alternative is death—— Nay, is it not better to command the Khan’s bodyguard, and to receive at his Highness’s hand houses, and riches, and fair women, and all marks of favour, than to be roasted alive, or flung headlong from the minaret of the Great Mosque, only to fall upon the sharp hooks set midway in the wall, there to hang in torture until you die?”
“You don’t seem to think it worth while to enter upon the religious side of the question,” sneered Ferrers savagely.
“Nay, Firoz Sahib and I have lived and talked together too long for that. He knows that among unbelievers I am even as they, among Sufis I am a Sufi, among the Brotherhood of the Mountains I am one of themselves. To Rāss Sahib I have even presented myself as an inquirer into Christianity. In Persia I should be a Shiah, here in Gamara I am the most orthodox of Sunnis. To the wise man all creeds are the same, and he adopts that one which is most expedient for the moment. And as it is with me, so is it with Firoz Sahib, my disciple. To no man is it pleasant to change the customs in which he has grown up. When Firoz Sahib came to Gamara he put on the garments of this land; when he came into this house he shaved his head, according to the custom of the people, and these things he did of his own free will for a protection. But had any man ordered him to do them with threats, he would have stiffened his neck and refused with curses. So is it with this matter of creeds. Christianity is to Firoz Sahib as the garments of his own land, which he will lay aside of his own free will, for the sake of his own safety. He is too wise a man to see in the change anything but a matter of expediency.”
“And faith? and honour? and my friends?” demanded Ferrers fiercely, with bloodless lips.
“To your friends you died the day you entered Gamara. Nothing that now happens to you can reach their ears. Whether you live long and enjoy his Highness’s favour, or brave his wrath and die the deaths of a hundred men, they will know nothing of it. The matter is one for yourself; they can have no part in it.”
“This is your doing!” burst from Ferrers.
“And why not? When you destroyed in a moment all my labours, refusing me the means of justifying myself to those that had employed me in Nalapur, so that having failed to slay the Sheikh-ul-Jabal, the accursed, it was needful for me to flee from their wrath also, I said to you that we should meet again. I thought to journey at some future time to Khemistan, and finding you in high place and established with a wife, trouble your tranquillity by whispers of what I might tell if I chose. I did not expect you to come to me here, where all was at hand for a vengeance of which I had not dreamt. But when I heard you were coming to Gamara, I knew that destiny had delivered you into my hand. You are here, and being such as you are, you will choose life and happiness, having only lately been very close to Death, and gladly turned your back on him. So that my vengeance has nothing in it that is cruel, but the truest kindness, for your life will be saved in this world, and your soul in the world to come, if there be such a thing.”
“I won’t do it!” cried Ferrers. “Call in your slaves and denounce me. Then you will have your precious vengeance after all.”
“Nay,” said the Mirza musingly, “it would be long in coming. Death is not all that is in store for the renegade, nor is it swift. Moreover, his Highness desires a Farangi to train his guard in the manner of Europe, and I would not willingly disappoint a second master. You are young, and life is sweet, and before you are war and wealth and the love of women on the one side. On the other—nay, but I will show you what is on the other. Come with me, but utter no word, for your own sake.”
The Mirza took up a lantern and a long cord, and led the way towards the door by which he had first brought Ferrers into his house.
“To the prison?” asked Ferrers, with a shudder which he could not repress at the thought of entering again the place where he had suffered so much.
“To the prison. But fear not, you shall return hither. After that, it will be for you to do as you choose.”
Once more they passed through the low doorway, crossed the filthy courtyard, received the salutations of the sleepy watchers in the guardroom, and entered the dark passage, Ferrers trembling from head to foot as the full recollection of what he had suffered there returned to him. But instead of opening the door of his cell, the Mirza turned aside into a second passage, and led the way through a labyrinth of narrow corridors and winding staircases, the trend of the route being always downwards. The air grew thick and damp, and the lantern burned dimly. There was a smell of mould, and where the light fell on the walls, they seemed to move. Ferrers stumbled on after the Mirza, who appeared to know his way perfectly. At last their nostrils were assailed by a horrible stench, and the Mirza, moving the lantern from side to side, showed that they were in a cave or room of some size, hollowed in the rock. In the middle of the floor was a hole or well, from which the stench seemed to come, and above it in the roof was another hole.
“Not a word!” whispered the Mirza, leading the way to what looked like a doorway on the farther side of the place. He lifted the lantern and threw the light inside. Horrible things wriggled and ran along the floor and crept upon the walls as he did so. He put one foot inside the doorway, and there was a kind of stampede. Small bright eyes and sharp teeth shone in every corner. But Ferrers’ gaze was fixed upon a crouching heap, which might have been a wild animal, at the very back of the cell. It moved, and disclosed the face of a man, gaunt, wasted, fever-stricken, with bleached unkempt hair and beard.
“Be off! I won’t do it!” The words were uttered with difficulty, but they were in English. Ferrers started violently, and the Mirza threw him a menacing look. The captive, seeming to recollect himself, repeated the words in Persian, but the Mirza made no reply. After turning the light of the lantern once more on the man and his surroundings, he motioned Ferrers back. Ferrers obeyed. The moment before, it had been in his mind to say some word of cheer to the prisoner, at whatever risk to himself, if only to let him know that there was another Englishman—another Christian—within those terrible walls. But the words remained unspoken, and with a clank of chains the prisoner sank back into his former position, his chin supported on his knees.
Meanwhile the Mirza had been fastening to the lantern the cord he had brought with him, and now he let it down into the well, ordering Ferrers to look over the edge, but not to go too near. Once more he obeyed, to behold a sickening chaos of human bones and dead bodies in all stages of decomposition, among which moved and scampered obscene creatures such as he had seen on the walls and floor of the cell.
“All that die in the prison are cast here,” said the Mirza, and Ferrers realised that the hole in the roof must communicate with the courtyard above-ground.
“And who was—that?” he asked fearfully, as they began to retrace their steps. The Mirza gave him a glance full of satisfied malignity.
“That,” he said slowly, and as if enjoying each word, “is Whybrow Sahib.”
“Whybrow, whom I came here to——?”
“Whom you came to save. He is not a wise man, like Firoz Sahib. He will neither embrace the faith of Islam nor enter his Highness’s army. Therefore he lives here, with the rats and the scorpions.”
“And what—what will become of him?”
“Who can say? Perhaps he will die—the rats are often hungry—or he might be forgotten. Or it may be his cell will be needed for some other prisoner,—then he will be thrown into the well and left there. But that may not be for years.”
Years—years of such captivity as that! Ferrers laughed harshly. “You should have brought him up into your house and made life mean as much to him as you have done to me,” he said.
“We have,” was the answer; “and even into the very palace of his Highness, where one of the dancing-girls, pitying him, pleaded for his life with her lord and with him, but he would not yield. He returned hither, and she died, as a warning to her companions.”
Again they made their way through the passages and up the stairs, again crossed the courtyard and entered the Mirza’s house. Ferrers turned aside to the steps which led up to the roof.
“Take counsel with yourself,” the Mirza called after him. “To-morrow you must decide.”
Take counsel! Ferrers had meant to do it; but even as he began to pace to and fro, with the sleeping city outspread all around him, he knew that the matter was decided already—had been decided from the moment when he withheld the words he had tried to utter to Whybrow. The test was more than flesh and blood could stand. In open day, Ferrers could have charged alone into an overwhelming host of enemies, and died gloriously. Had he lived in earlier days, he could have faced the lions in the amphitheatre, unarmed, and not have flinched, or have fought as a gladiator and received his death-blow by command of the audience without a sign of fear. But die slowly by inches underground, submit to be eaten alive by vermin, perish unknown, unhonoured, this he could not do. If only he had had companions in misfortune, if even Whybrow and he could have stood shoulder to shoulder from the first, and encouraged one another, it would have been different, but there was not a creature within hundreds of miles to whom steadfastness on his part would seem anything but foolishness. As the Mirza had said, no one in the world he had left would ever know whether he had died a hero or lived a craven; and if they did, what good would it do him? Penelope, who ought to care, would expect him to hold out. He felt angrily that if Penelope had loved him better he might have been a better man, even able to hold out, perhaps. It would have been something, on the other hand, to be able to assure himself that she would wish him to yield, but he could not take this comfort. And, after all, what was he giving up? To trample on the cross, to curse the claims of Christ—these were disagreeable things to do, but, as the Mirza had said, they had no particular poignancy for him. With Colin it would have been different, of course. Christ was more than a name to him, Christianity other than a mere set of formulæ. But how could it be expected of Ferrers—could any one in his senses ask it—that he should die for Colin’s faith?