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"Go out with him for a couple of days," and when the shikari had retired, he explained the reason of his advice. "That fellow will talk to you, and you might find out which way Shere Ali went. He wasn't among the dead, so far as we can discover, and I think he has been headed off from Afghanistan. But it is important that we should know.
Shere Ali raised his head and said with a smile, "I am glad they are not playing the tune which I once heard on the Lake of Geneva, and again in London when I said good-bye to you." And then Violet sought to comfort him, her mind still working on what he had told her of his life in Chiltistan. "But it will become easier," she said, beginning in that general way.
Shere Ali came on to the stage while the sailors were at work. He exchanged a nod with "Colonel Joe," and took his seat in the front row of chairs behind the ropes. It was a rough gathering on the whole, though there were some men in evening-dress besides Colonel Joe, and of these two sat beside Shere Ali. They were talking together, and Shere Ali at the first paid no heed to them.
But he spoke like one in doubt. "You see he realised very soon that I was not after all acceptable to the English. I wouldn't quite do what they wanted," and the humour died out of his face. "What did they want?" Shere Ali looked at her in hesitation. "Shall I tell you? I will. They wanted me to marry one of my own people. They wanted me to forget," and he broke out in a passionate scorn.
"Does this mark Shere Ali's return to the ways of his fathers?" he asked himself. "Is this his renunciation of the White People?" He moved forward slowly towards the inner archway, and the Pathan at his side gave a new turn to his thoughts. "Sir, that will be talked of for many months," the Pathan said. "The Prince will gain many friends who up till now distrust him."
"I am going," he said. "You can take that thing away." His sense of humour failed him altogether. He would have liked furiously to kick and trample upon that glossy emblem of the civilised world; he had much ado to refrain. The syce carried back the silk hat to Shere Ali's smart trap, and Shere Ali drove home in his helmet.
In the Eton and Oxford days he had given and given and given so much of himself to Shere Ali that he could not now lightly and easily lose him altogether out of his life. Yet he must so lose him, and even then that was not all the truth. For they would be enemies, Shere Ali would be ruined and cast out, and his ruin would be the opportunity of the Road. He turned quickly to his companion.
"The man lying there said that?" "Yes." "And no one listened, I suppose?" said Shere Ali bitterly. "Or listened too late," said Phillips. "Like Dewes, who only since he met you in Calcutta one day upon the racecourse, seems dimly to have understood the words the dead man spoke." Shere Ali was silent. He stood looking at the grave and the obelisk with a gentler face than he had shown before.
In fact it is at this moment particularly desirable that you should throw your influence on the side of the native observances." "Indeed," said Shere Ali, as he rode along the Mall by the Commissioner's side. "Then why was I sent to Oxford?" The Commissioner was not surprised by the question, though it was abruptly put. "Surely that is a question to ask of his Highness, your father," he replied.
A pilgrimage to all the places which could most inflame the passions of a native against the English race," and then he broke out in protest. "But it's impossible. I know Shere Ali. It's not reasonable " Ralston interrupted him upon the utterance of the word. "Reasonable!" he cried. "You are in India. Do ever white men act reasonably in India?" and he turned with a smile.
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