by M. M. Kaye
‘He is like a Knight of the Round Table,’ thought Sabrina. ‘Like the picture of Sir Tristram in that book in Grandpapa’s library.’
They stood and looked at each other and fell in love.
* Gul (rhymes with ‘pull’)-arb Ma-harl.
2
Juanita’s daughter was born, and the old, old lullabies of Spain and France and Hindustan were sung above her cradle.
‘Hai mai!’ sighed Aziza Begum to her friend Anne Marie, ‘rememberest thou the day thy daughter was born? So also do I. I am now an old woman, very fat and slothful, but it is as though it were yesterday. The years go swiftly: too swiftly. But there will be many more grandchildren for thee and me, and surely the next will be a son …’
For Sabrina it was a time of enchantment: a page cut from a fairy-story. But Emily was full of anxiety and foreboding. Emily was staunchly and stubbornly British; possessed of all the ingrained insularity of her race. Her two children had both been born, lived their brief days and died in this hostile foreign land, and had been laid to rest in this alien soil. She did not find India beautiful or exciting. She saw it only as the graveyard of her children; an uncivilized and barbaric country with a medieval standard of morality, sanitation and squalor that it was the divinely appointed but distasteful task of men like Ebenezer to govern and control and lead into the path of enlightened Western living. It was therefore not surprising that she viewed the attachment between her niece Sabrina and Marcos de Ballesteros with disapproval, and persuaded herself that it was no more than a passing infatuation that would fade as others had faded.
But this time Sabrina was in love: in love for the first time in her life. No one looking at her could doubt it for a moment. She walked as though her small feet barely touched the ground and it was as though an almost visible aura of happiness surrounded her. To Marcos, accustomed to the dark-haired women of Spain and France and his father’s adoptive country, Sabrina’s golden loveliness seemed like something out of this world - rare, fragile and exquisite. When they were together, in whatever company of people, it was as if they saw only each other; heard no other voices speak.
Emily awoke to the dangers of the situation too late (though had she but known it, even one moment after their meeting would still have been too late), and she prevailed upon Ebenezer to put forward the date of their departure from Lucknow. The Bartons had planned to visit the old Mogul capital of Delhi before proceeding to Calcutta, where they would remain until the spring, when Sabrina was to return to England. But Sabrina, who had once been delighted at the prospect, now viewed their impending departure with blank dismay and pleaded to be allowed to remain in Lucknow.
Emily had remained firm and Sabrina had wept stormily. And four hours later Marcos had asked for an interview with Sir Ebenezer Barton and had requested his permission to ask his niece for her hand in marriage.
Sir Ebenezer was for once at a loss. He both liked and respected the Conde de los Aguilares, and thought his son a very pleasant and well-mannered young man. He also knew the Conde to be immensely rich and of the best blood of Spain, and his wife Anne Marie to be descended from the old nobility of France. In many ways Marcos must be considered a most eligible match. But there were drawbacks; the greatest of which, in Sir Ebenezer’s eyes, being that Marcos was what Sir Ebenezer termed to himself ‘a foreigner’ - by which he did not mean so much the young man’s French and Spanish ancestry, but his mode of life, which was foreign to the English point of view. Many men like Sir Ebenezer Barton lived and worked and often died in this country that the ‘Merchants of London trading to the East Indies’ had conquered. But they never thought of it as ‘Home’. To Marcos however, and to his father, mother and sister, India, and in particular the Kingdom of Oudh, was home. Marcos had returned to it from nine years spent in Spain and Europe, and it had been for him a home-coming. And his sister had married an Indian - a man of an alien faith.
‘You desire my permission to ask my niece for her hand in marriage,’ said Sir Ebenezer heavily, ‘but have you not already asked her without that permission?’
‘No,’ said Marcos, very white about the mouth. ‘I had not thought of it. I mean - I could not have done so without speaking first to you, but it seemed a thing that need not be said. I have known it from the first moment I saw her. I had meant to speak to you, but …’
Marcos could not explain even to himself, much less to Sir Ebenezer, the remote and enchanted world in which he and Sabrina had seemed to move ever since that first moment of their meeting. Of course they would one day marry and live happily ever after - what a foolish question! And because Marcos was his father’s son, he would not say the formal and unnecessary words until he had duly asked the formal and necessary permission to speak them. Meanwhile it was enough for both of them to realize that they had found each other. It was from this dream-like state that Emily’s decision to remove instantly to Delhi had aroused them.
Sir Ebenezer hedged, playing for time. He was in no position, he said, to grant or withhold permission for his niece’s marriage: that responsibility rested with her grandfather, Lord Ware. Marcos must wait until such time as the Earl’s views could be made known, which would be of necessity a matter of a few months.
‘But Sabrina is twenty-one,’ said Marcos. ‘She is of age. I have requested this interview with you only because it is correct that I should do so. If it is true that you cannot grant or withhold consent, neither can Lord Ware. Only Sabrina can do that.’
‘He can disinherit her,’ said Sir Ebenezer drily. ‘The bulk of his property that is not entailed is to come to Sabrina.’
‘She will not need it,’ said Marcos. ‘You know that my father is rich and that I am his heir. Sir Ebenezer, I beg you to permit me to address her.’
‘And if I refuse?’
Marcos’s gay laugh rang out suddenly. ‘Then I ask her without it. I am sorry, but I cannot help myself. When you wished to espouse the Lady Emily, if permission to address her had been refused, what would you have done?’
Sir Ebenezer cast a reminiscent eye over that long-ago summer in Hampshire when he had fallen in love with his Emily, and was betrayed into a smile.
‘Never did ask for it, my boy. Asked her straight out. But then that was quite a different thing, you know. Emily wasn’t a chit from the schoolroom. She was of age.’
‘So is Sabrina.’
‘There is a vast difference between twenty-one and thirty-three!’ retorted Sir Ebenezer with an unconscious lack of gallantry.
‘Not in the eyes of the law,’ said Marcos.
‘Lady Emily will not hear of it,’ said Sir Ebenezer, cravenly shifting his ground. ‘She has set her heart on removing to Delhi immediately. She had hoped by doing so to avoid a declaration.’
‘Am I then so undesirable a parti?’ demanded Marcos bitterly.
‘No, no,’ said Sir Ebenezer unhappily, ‘it is not that. It is that she would have wished … Sabrina’s grandfather would have wished the child to marry someone who resided in England. Your home is here, and if she marries you it is here that she will live her life. That will seem a sad loss to those of her family who love her most dearly. You do not realize how great an affection my father-in-law has for Sabrina. It would be a cruel blow to him if she should remain in this country.’
‘There is no reason why we should not visit England on occasions,’ said Marcos with the buoyancy of youth.
‘That is not at all the same thing. To see someone you love once in six or eight years, and then only for a few brief months, is not enough.’
‘But I too love her!’ said Marcos passionately. ‘Am I to sacrifice my happiness and hers so that her grandfather may be made happy?’
‘Oh, well,’ said Sir Ebenezer, giving the matter up. ‘I cannot think what my father-in-law will say to all this. What a plague and a problem women are!’
He wondered what he was to say to Emily: Emily was going to be difficult.
Emily was more than difficult. She was distra
ught. ‘You should have made him see how impossible it is - how unthinkable! Oh, what will Papa say? How could you consent to such a thing?’
‘But my dear, I have not given my consent. I could not do so even if I wished. I am not Sabrina’s guardian, I am only her uncle by marriage. Besides, the girl is of age, so we can only hope that your father’s wishes may count with her. She must at least wait until his views are made known.’
‘We will remove to Delhi immediately,’ said Lady Emily. ‘And if Marcos attempts to follow us I shall send Sabrina home to Papa, even if I have to take her myself.’
‘But I cannot go with you,’ said Sabrina, starry-eyed with happiness. ‘I am going to marry Marcos.’
‘You are going to do no such thing! I refuse to allow it.’
‘You cannot stop me. Darling, darling Aunt Emily - do not be unkind. I am so happy. I never knew that anyone could be so happy. Do you not wish me to be happy?’
Emily wrung her hands and wept.
Sabrina would not leave Lucknow and Emily could not remove her by force, since as Marcos had already pointed out, she was of age and could therefore marry whom and when she wished. She had agreed, however, to make no plans until her grandfather’s wishes were made known.
Emily, Sir Ebenezer, Marcos, Conde Ramon and Sabrina all wrote to the Earl of Ware, and Marcos wrote to Rome for a dispensation for his marriage. Emily cancelled her visits to Delhi and Calcutta and remained in Oudh. Her husband went, but he went alone.
The Christmas mails from England brought with them the news that Huntly - Herbert and Charlotte’s only son - was to marry Julia Pike, the daughter of one of Charlotte’s oldest friends. The wedding would take place in the spring and the Earl wrote to urge the immediate return of both daughter and grand-daughter so that they should be at Ware for the wedding of his only grandson. Sabrina, said the Earl, had stayed quite long enough in the East and it was high time she returned home. He added a postscript to the effect that Captain Dennis Allington had recently married the daughter of a wealthy cotton-manufacturer from Manchester.
Although Emily had known that these letters could not possibly contain the answers to those that had been dispatched homeward less than two months ago, guilt had made her eye the packet that bore her father’s handwriting with considerable apprehension. But now she stood for a long time holding the pages in her hand and looking out of the window through a screen of blazing bougainvillea to where the distant domes and minarets and jostling roof-tops of the Indian city met the intense blue of the Indian sky, her thoughts four thousand miles away …
Huntly! That fat, solemn silent baby, Herbert’s son who had been born the year before Waterloo … the year before Johnny died … And now Huntly was to marry Julia Pike. ‘Well, if she is anything like her mother, I am sorry for Huntly,’ said Emily. ‘Sabrina, dear child, could you not consent to go home in the spring? Just for the wedding? It will look so particular if you are not there. And then you could discuss your own affairs with Papa at the same time. So much more suitable in every way. You and Marcos are both young. You can afford to wait for a few months, and it would mean so much to your grandfather … and to Huntly, of course.’
‘Huntly? Pooh! Huntly does not care a fig for me or I for him. Uncle Ashby once said that Huntly was a cold fish, and he was right. No, Aunt Emily. If I go to Ware it will be as Marcos’s wife. I love Grandpapa. He is a darling. But he is an old tyrant too, and I don’t trust him.’
‘Sabrina! What a dreadful thing to say.’ Emily was genuinely shocked.
‘But I mean it. Look how he behaved over Dennis Allington. Oh, he was right about Dennis, I know. But do you not see, Aunt Emily, even though he was so fond of me, he could send me away to India just to get his own way?’
‘That is not fair, Sabrina,’ said Emily. ‘He did it only to prevent you from making a very great mistake. He wished to save you from unhappiness.’
‘Oh, I know, Aunt. But it was not only my happiness he was thinking of. Supposing I had been really in love with Dennis? I was not, but suppose that I had been? He would not have cared. I was only to marry when he decided and whom he decided, and he was prepared to do anything to get his own way. If I went back to England now he’d try to stop me from marrying Marcos. He is a darling old tyrant from the Middle Ages, and I am afraid of him.’
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Emily, ‘it is all going to be very difficult. I hope you may not find that you have made a sad mistake. You think now that this country is beautiful and romantic. But how are you going to like living all your days here? Heat, disease, wars, famines …’
‘I shall have Marcos,’ said Sabrina.
Emily gave it up and waited with as much resignation as she could muster for the arrival of the mails from England that would bring her father’s answer to the request for his blessing upon the marriage of his grand-daughter to Marcos de Ballesteros.
The new year dawned over Oudh in a blaze of saffron-yellow light. A new year that was to see the coronation of the young Queen Victoria, the Austrian evacuation of the Papal States, France declare war on Mexico, the abolition of slavery in India and the start of the disastrous Afghan War.
Beyond the borders of Oudh, in the Land of the Five Rivers, Ranjit Singh, the fabulous ‘Lion of the Punjab’, held dissolute court in Lahore; plundering the hapless peasantry, meting out savage punishment to those who angered him and heaping wealth upon those who pleased, intriguing with the British and driving himself towards an early grave by a deliberate indulgence in drink and debauchery.
To the north, among the barren hills of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammed the Amir, disappointed in his hopes of a treaty with the British, began to turn his thoughts towards Russia, while the British Emissary, Alexander Burns, defeated by the stubborn stupidity of Lord Auckland from making an ally of Afghanistan, prepared to return empty-handed to India.
In the capital city of Oudh, Sabrina Grantham celebrated her twenty-second birthday with a picnic in a grove of trees upon the river bank, and a ball at the Casa de los Pavos Reales.
The gardens were hung with lanterns on the night of Sabrina’s Birthday Ball and the great house was gay with music and laughter, a flutter of fans, the glitter of jewels and the clink of dress-swords. Sabrina wore a dress of white crêpe trimmed with gold embroidery, and a magnificent triple row of pearls that were a birthday gift from Anne Marie to her future daughter-in-law.
‘They were my mother’s,’ said Anne Marie, clasping the lustrous strands about Sabrina’s white throat. ‘She had them from her mother on her wedding day, who had worn them at the marriage of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. I have always meant them for Marcos’s betrothed as a wedding gift, but I felt that I should like you to have them now - for your birth-night ball. You shall wear them at your wedding also, is it not so?’
But the year that had dawned for Sabrina with so much sunshine and happiness darkened swiftly. Anne Marie died in the first week of February. Perhaps it had been some premonition of the future that had decided her to give the pearls to Sabrina on her birthday instead of waiting until her wedding day.
As it must be in the East, the funeral took place within a few hours of Anne Marie’s death; but to the Conde, although he was familiar with this abrupt disposal of the dead, the short space of time between his wife’s death and her interment was particularly shocking. In Spain her body would have lain in state in the family chapel with candles flaring at the head and foot of the coffin while weeping mourners passed by, incense burned and priests sang masses for her soul, and only after several days would she have been carried in procession to her last resting-place in the family vault.
It did not seem right to Don Ramon that Anne Marie should be hurried thus to her grave, and when the rest of the household had retired to bed he took candles and flint and went by night to the little marble mausoleum he had built so many years ago to house the bodies of himself and his family. Five of his children already lay within it, and now Anne Marie had gone to join them.
&nb
sp; No one heard him go save the night-watchman on guard outside the house, and him the Count beckoned to follow him, for he knew that he could not of his own frail strength open the heavy doors of the vault. The watchman, who saw nothing strange in this reverence to the dead, did not think to report it, and the ageing Count lit his candles and kept vigil all night beside the cumbersome lead coffin that contained the body of his wife. The night air had been warm and gentle, but the marble vault still held the chill of winter, and by morning he was shivering with cold and fatigue and unable to walk the short distance that lay between the mausoleum and the house. He was carried to his bed and did not leave it again. The chill reached his lungs and he died on the third day, and by the same evening his body lay beside that of Anne Marie’s in the marble mausoleum of the Casa de los Pavos Reales.
‘Now they are together again,’ said Sabrina. She had wept for Anne Marie as though it had been her own and greatly beloved mother who had died. But her grief had been in part for the Count, lonely and bereft. Now that he too was dead she could not weep for him. She could only feel comforted. Somewhere, they were together again; not in the cold vault where the heaped flowers were already turning brown, but in some far and happy country of the spirit.
The brilliant days and cool nights of the late winter gave place to the warmer days of the Indian spring, and the days were hot and the nights pleasantly mild. It was more comfortable now to remain indoors, with the shutters closed against the glare, during the greater part of the day, and to go abroad only in the early mornings and the late afternoon.
The new fashions with their tight-fitting longer bodices, modest collars and full wide skirts suited Emily’s taste, but with the approach of the hot weather she regretted the cooler and less formal draperies of the Directoire mode. Victorian England, in reaction from the laxity and licence of the preceding reigns, was already moving rapidly towards primness, and the gay high-waisted gowns and diaphanous materials of the earlier years of the century were giving place to more solid fabrics and a greater degree of sober respectability. Sir Ebenezer was still absent in Calcutta and the mails from England, though infrequent, never failed to bring a peremptory missive from the Earl of Ware commanding his grand-daughter’s immediate return.