“An English girl married to a native?” cried Georgia.
“She is only half English, at any rate.”
“But isn’t Rustam Khan a Mohammedan?”
“Of course; so is she, so is my wife, so am I—in so far as I am anything. I told you that I was a renegade, and now you know the worst of me.”
“But how did you find your way here, Bigg?” asked Sir Dugald, while Georgia was silent in dismay.
“You know I was always fond of disguising myself and going about among the natives. Well, when I left Tajpur I made up my mind to wander about for a time as a fakir, and at last I got into Khemistan. Things were not so settled there then as they are now; St George Keeling was hard at work pacifying the country. I fell among thieves—that is, among the hillmen—who would not believe me when I said I was an Englishman, but were afraid to kill me lest it should turn out to be true after all. They compromised matters by making me a slave, and gave me a wretched time of it. At last the Ethiopians made a raid upon their villages, and I was so glad to see the tables turned that I joined the invaders, and helped them to get possession of the various strongholds. The hillmen were wiped out, and when the fighting was over the Ethiopians thought of me. They never imagined I was an Englishman, and I didn’t tell them. Well—I may as well make a clean breast of it—they offered me lands, and so on, and a command in their army if I would turn Mohammedan, thinking that I was an idolater, like the hillmen, and I had had time to recover a little from the knockdown blow Beatrice gave me, and life seemed worth living again, and I consented. It’s a sordid affair enough, you see—just a bartering of one’s conscience against life and wealth—and it was not worth it. I have tried it, and I have come to the conclusion that one’s wretched life is a poor exchange for country and religion. Another warning for you, young men.”
“Then you rose to power after all?” said Sir Dugald.
“I did. It doesn’t sound a moral arrangement—to any one who only looks on the surface. My lands lie near the frontier of the Scythian sphere of influence, and before my day they were always liable to incursions from the tribes under Scythian protection. I put a stop to that, and my fame spread. One Ethiopian chief after another made alliance with me, until I was at the head of a confederation extending all along that frontier. Then it was that the King acknowledged my power. Old Fath-ud-Din, who had taken a dislike to me from the very first, pointed out to him that the position I had built up for myself was a menace to the throne. Consequently his advice was that I should be summoned to Court and quietly put out of the way. Fortunately for me, however, the King took some one else’s advice that time. He knew that I was the only man that could hold that frontier, and he preferred to consolidate my power and attach my interests to his own by offering me his cousin’s hand. I knew better than to refuse, and from that time I became generally known as the Amir Jahan Beg, one of the pillars of the state. At least I can say that I have done my best for my district. The people are better governed there than anywhere else in the kingdom, and the chiefs under me have taken to copying some of my ways. That is something, but I can’t pretend that the game is worth the candle. I used to feel it more than I do now, especially when my daughter was a child. There was so much that was English about her that it nearly broke my heart to think of her growing up and leading the life of an Ethiopian woman. I used to plan to take her with me and make a dash for liberty through Scythian territory, but it seemed mean to go away and leave my wife, and I shouldn’t have known what to do with her if I had got her to come too. Then Rustam Khan, who was a delicate boy, and pined in the city, came to live with us, and I grew as fond of him as if he had been my own son. He is the only person here who knows that I am an Englishman, but I have taught him a little English, and we talk it together sometimes. When he grew up, he wished to marry my daughter, and though I knew it would make Fath-ud-Din and all his crew my open enemies, instead of merely my ill-wishers, I could not refuse him, for he promised to take no other wife if I would give her to him.”
“Then is that the origin of the rivalry between Rustam Khan and Fath-ud-Din?” asked Sir Dugald.
“No, it has merely aggravated it. Rustam Khan is the son of the King’s first wife, but Antar Khan’s mother, the Vizier’s sister, has royal blood in her veins through her mother, and no one can decide which of the two sons has the best right to succeed. Consequently the King gives them each a turn of favour, and plays them off one against the other, to prevent either of them from forming a party. Just now, Antar Khan, which of course means Fath-ud-Din, is uppermost.”