Peace with Honour

by Sydney C. Grier

“Yes,” said Stratford; “my only chance was a sudden attack by means of a tu quoque. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Jahan Beg is an Englishman, and he came to the Mission to visit the Envoy, who was an old friend of his. But he did not come with any view of interfering in public matters. He has never sought to engage our help in placing Rustam Khan upon the throne, nor in making any change in the government of Ethiopia, and we should not have granted it if he had. In fact, his coming was so entirely unofficial that we did not even take advantage of his visits to the Mission to seek his assistance in the negotiations which the Grand Vizier was carrying on with us at the time. When Fath-ud-Din used to visit the Envoy by night, and even when he came to try and arrange the secret agreement about Antar Khan’s succession to the throne, we did not invite Jahan Beg to be present, because we knew that the matter was not intended to be made public, and we feared to produce the impression that our friend was endeavouring to thrust himself uninvited into the King’s counsels.’ I saw in a moment that the shot had told. The King turned and glared at Fath-ud-Din, and then again at me. ‘What!’ he cried. ‘Fath-ud-Din desired to set my son Antar Khan upon my throne?’ ‘He came merely to attempt to secure the support of her Majesty’s Government for the Prince in case that should happen which England and Ethiopia would alike deplore,’ I said, as soothingly as I could; but the King was not mollified. ‘He sought to obtain assurance of English support in case of my death?’ he cried. ‘Yes,’ said I; ‘and when we refused to enter into the arrangement, saying that the matter was one for the King and his Amirs to settle among themselves, he threatened that he would seek the assistance we denied him from the Envoy of Scythia, who would not refuse it. Is it possible that he was not acting on behalf of your Majesty, after all?’ ‘Fath-ud-Din,’ said the King, ‘are the words of the Englishman true?’ ‘O my lord,’ said the old villain, flopping down on his face before the divan in an awful fright, ‘the Englishman’s tongue is forked. He seeks to save himself from the fate he merits by casting dirt upon the name of the meanest of my lord’s servants; but he shall yet eat his words.’ ‘The matter is in the hands of the King to prove,’ I said; ‘let him send and fetch Jahan Beg straight here from his dungeon, and let him be questioned as to all that has taken place. It is evident that he cannot have held communication with any member of the Mission since his arrest, and if his words agree with mine, mine must be seen to be true; if not, then let us both pay the penalty.’ The King seemed to think it rather a good idea, and was inclined to agree; but Fath-ud-Din interposed all sorts of objections as he lay grovelling on the floor, and at last I got tired. Some slave or chamberlain might have come in at any moment and spoilt everything. So I took out my box of lozenges, and said, ‘In this box I have food for several days, so that I can remain here without inconvenience. The King and Fath-ud-Din have no food, and cannot pass me to leave the room; therefore I would recommend that they follow my advice.’ The King saw the reason of it, and called one of the black fellows, whom he ordered to fetch Jahan Beg at once, without saying anything about what had been going on. You may judge that in spite of this I kept the revolver ready in case of any attempt to rush me; but none was made. I think the King felt that it was necessary to get to the bottom of the matter, for he even invited me to come and sit beside him; but I refused, ‘until my words were proved true,’ as I said. I don’t know whether Fath-ud-Din or I felt the more uncomfortable when the messenger was gone, for it struck me that Jahan Beg might think it advisable not to tell the exact truth, in which case I should find myself badly left; but I made a great parade of eating one of the lozenges, and I hope I dissembled my uneasiness better than the Vizier did. Happily, when poor old Jahan Beg was brought in—a perfect shadow, wasted and ill, and ragged, and chained—he gathered the significance of the questions the King asked him at once, and confirmed exactly what I had said, being able to corroborate my account of the Vizier’s earlier visits to the Mission. Of course, he did not know anything of the Antar Khan business, which did not happen until after his arrest; but I had an inspiration there. I suggested an examination of Fath-ud-Din’s servants, with the view of discovering whether he had really held communication with the Scythian agent and with us. The King jumped at the idea, and improved upon it by ordering a search of his house as well. I thought that it was not likely to be much good; but I was mistaken, for his scribe, on being arrested, displayed such great anxiety to be allowed to take his copy of the Koran to prison with him that suspicion was excited, and in the cover of it they found concealed a written promise from the Scythian agent, pledging his Government to support Antar Khan in case of the King’s death, and to pay Fath-ud-Din eight thousand pounds in return for his getting their treaty signed. The greedy old beast must have had the paper in his possession when he came to us this morning—was it really only this morning?—and tried to get us to outbid him by two thousand pounds. It was exactly the evidence we wanted, and its discovery is only another warning never to commit compromising agreements to writing.”

“Yes; and then?” asked Fitz, eagerly, seeing that Stratford appeared inclined to moralise.

“Then? Why, a grand transformation scene, of course. Fath-ud-Din’s signet was taken from him, and he was conducted to the dungeon which Jahan Beg had just vacated. Jahan Beg was taken to the bath, and rigged out at the King’s expense, and formally invested with the Grand Vizier’s signet. He was another man after a little care and attention. As for me, I was favoured with a seat by the King’s side, publicly thanked for exposing a traitor and saving the King (evidently he held the same opinion as to his chances of life under Fath-ud-Din’s fostering care that we did), and asked whether I had a copy of our treaty at hand. That was the crowning moment. I produced the treaty from inside my coat. Jahan Beg signed it—his first act in his new capacity—I followed, and the King put his seal to it. And that is all.”

“And now?” asked Lady Haigh.

“Now we have only to get back to Khemistan as fast as we can,” said Stratford.

CHAPTER XVI.
A CESSATION OF HOSTILITIES.

If, after Stratford had told his story, the party at the Mission had been informed that the most anxious portion of their stay in Kubbet-ul-Haj was still to come, the idea would have seemed absurd, and yet the joyful night on which the treaty was signed proved to be merely the prelude to a fresh period of uneasiness. Far from being able to pack up and start at once on the return journey to the British frontier, the members of the Mission found that their departure must necessarily be delayed for at least a week. The camels and other baggage-animals which had been taken from them had been sent for safe-keeping to a town three days’ journey off, the governor of which was a creature of Fath-ud-Din’s. It was therefore needful to send after them, and, if the governor would consent to give them up, then to bring them back, which in itself involved a considerable delay. But this was not all. Jahan Beg in Fath-ud-Din’s place bore a certain resemblance to the ass in the lion’s skin. As he said himself, he laboured under the great disadvantage, as compared with his predecessor, of being too scrupulous for the post.

“I should have thought I had learnt by this time to do in Ethiopia as the Ethiopians do,” he grumbled one day to Stratford and Dick, who were entertaining him on the verandah of the Durbar-hall with coffee and conversation; “but I find now that I have some remnants of a Christian conscience left somewhere about me still, old renegade though I am. I simply haven’t got it in me to take the measures which the situation demands. Fath-ud-Din in my place would have had no difficulty. He would merely have had his predecessor brought before him, and tortured until things went smoothly. But he knows that I am not the man to do that, and it gives him a tremendous pull over me when I want to find out something he knows, or when some of his people have to be kept quiet. It isn’t dignified for me to be always going to the mouth of the dungeon and shouting down questions which he refuses to answer, and I have put it to the King that we must try another plan.”

This meant that Fath-ud-Din was to be released from the dungeon and kept as a kind of state-prisoner in the Palace. The new plan was successful in so far as he was more disposed to answer questions relating to his past stewardship; but it worked badly when it emboldened his adherents to resist the new Vizier on the ground that he was still afraid of his predecessor, and could not act without his help. The mob of the city, who had always been Fath-ud-Din’s warmest friends, resented his downfall keenly, and lost no opportunity of testifying their hatred to Jahan Beg and the English strangers, to whose influence that downfall was to be ascribed. Once more the Mission was guarded on all sides by soldiers, this time in order to prevent a murderous attack by the mob, whose attitude was extremely threatening. A further danger arose from the fact that there was reason to believe that the soldiers themselves were not altogether to be depended upon, and this added enormously to the anxiety of Stratford and of Jahan Beg. So long as the soldiers could keep down the townspeople, and the Grand Vizier could keep down the soldiers, things were fairly safe; but at any moment a chance spark might fire the train, and an explosion occur, the first results of which would be the murder of Jahan Beg and the massacre of the British Mission. No one left the house during these days of terror, and the gates were barely opened to admit traders and messengers. Within, every man had his revolver ready to his hand, and heaps of sand-bags were in readiness to barricade the entrance to the archway in Bachelors’ Buildings and the windows of the Durbar-hall. The Mission premises were in a state of siege.

During all this anxious time, however, no change was made in the social life of the little colony. In spite of alarms from without, and the abiding sorrow of Sir Dugald’s speechless and unconscious condition, the usual routine of work and meals remained unbroken, and the gatherings on the terrace after dinner were not abandoned. To Georgia there seemed at first something heartless, almost wicked, in keeping up appearances in this way at such a crisis; but it was Lady Haigh herself who pointed out to her the reasons for the insensibility which she was inclined to reprobate.