第58章

"But though Tommy was no good at his job, he was a tremendous swell at other things.He was an uncommonly good linguist, and had always about a dozen hobbies which he slaved at; and when he found himself at Deira with a good deal of leisure, he became a bigger crank than ever.He had a lot of books which used to follow him about the world in zinc-lined boxes--your big paper-backed German books which mean research,--and he was a Fellow of the Koyal Society, and corresponded with half a dozen foreign shows.India was his great subject, but he had been in the Sudan and knew a good deal about African races.When I went out to him, his pet hobby was the Bantu, and he had acquired an amazing amount of miscellaneous learning.He knew all about their immigration from the North, and the Arab and Phoenician trade-routes, and the Portuguese occupation, and the rest of the history of that unpromising seaboard.The way he behaved in his researches showed the man.He worked hard at the Labonga language-which, I believe, is a linguistic curiosity of the first water-from missionary books and the conversation of tame Kaffirs.

But he never thought of paying them a visit in their native haunts.I was constantly begging him to do it, but it was not Tommy's way.He did not care a straw about political experience, and he liked to look at things through the medium of paper and ink.Then there were the Phoenician remains in the foot-hills where the copper was mined-old workings, and things which might have been forts or temples.He knew all that was to be known about them, but he had never seen them and never wanted to.

Once only he went to the hills, to open some new reservoirs and make the ordinary Governor's speech; but he went in a special train and stayed two hours, most of which was spent in lunching and being played to by brass bands.

"But, oddly enough, there was one thing which stirred him with an interest that was not academic.I discovered it by accident one day when I went into his study and found him struggling with a map of Central Asia.Instead of the mild, benevolent smile with which he usually greeted my interruptions, he looked positively furtive, and, I could have sworn, tried to shuffle the map under some papers.Now it happens that Central Asia is the part of the globe that I know better than most men, and I could not help picking up the map and looking at it.It was a wretched thing, and had got the Oxus two hundred miles out of its course.

I pointed this out to Tommy, and to my amazement he became quite excited.'Nonsense,' he said.'You don't mean to say it goes south of that desert.Why, I meant to--,' and then he stammered and stopped.I wondered what on earth he had meant to do, but Imerely observed that I had been there, and knew.That brought Tommy out of his chair in real excitement.'What!' he cried, 'you! You never told me,' and he started to fire off a round of questions, which showed that if he knew very little about the place, he had it a good deal in his mind.

I drew some sketch-plans for him, and left him brooding over them.

"That was the first hint I got.The second was a few nights later, when we were smoking in the billiard-room.I had been reading Marco Polo, and the talk got on to Persia and drifted all over the north side of the Himalaya.Tommy, with an abstracted eye, talked of Alexander and Timour and Genghis Khan, and particularly of Prester John, who was a character and took his fancy.I had told him that the natives in the Pamirs were true Persian stock, and this interested him greatly.'Why was there never a great state built up in those valleys?' he asked.'You get nothing but a few wild conquerors rushing east and west, and then some squalid khanates.And yet all the materials were there--the stuff for a strong race, a rich land, the traditions of an old civilisation, and natural barriers against all invasion.'

"'I suppose they never found the man,' I said.

"He agreed.'Their princes were sots, or they were barbarians of genius who could devastate to the gates of Peking or Constantinople, but could never build.They did not recognise their limits, and so they went out in a whirlwind.But if there had been a man of solid genius he might have built up the strongest nation on the globe.In time he could have annexed Persia and nibbled at China.He would have been rich, for he could tap all the inland trade-routes of Asia.He would have had to be a conqueror, for his people would be a race of warriors, but first and foremost he must have been a statesman.Think of such a civilisation, THE Asian civilisation, growing up mysteriously behind the deserts and the ranges! That's my idea of Prester John.Russia would have been confined to the line of the Urals.China would have been absorbed.There would have been no Japan.The whole history of the world for the last few hundred years would have been different.It is the greatest of all the lost chances in history.' Tommy waxed pathetic over the loss.

"I was a little surprised at his eloquence, especially when he seemed to remember himself and stopped all of a sudden.But for the next week I got no peace with his questions.I told him all I knew of Bokhara, and Samarkand, and Tashkend, and Yarkand.Ishowed him the passes in the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush.I traced out the rivers, and I calculated distances; we talked over imaginary campaigns, and set up fanciful constitutions.It a was childish game, but I found it interesting enough.He spoke of it all with a curious personal tone which puzzled me, till one day when we were amusing ourselves with a fight on the Zarafshan, and I put in a modest claim to be allowed to win once in a while.