by M. M. Kaye
The crowds on the quayside began to thin and the mountains of luggage to dwindle, and still Belinda and her mother waited impatiently for Ash to return. Their companions of the last two months piled into carriages and were driven away in the direction of the city, and above their heads the sun beat down on the corrugated iron roof of the customs shed, and the temperature soared. But Ash had lost all count of time. There had been so much to talk of and to tell; and when at last Zarin dispatched Gul Baz to seek out his luggage and engage coolies to carry it from the dock, Ala Yar had announced unexpectedly that both he and Mahdoo would be accompanying Ash to Mardan.
‘You will not require that new bearer,’ said Ala Yar, ‘for before he died I made a promise to Anderson-Sahib that I would see to your welfare. Mahdoo too wishes to take service with you. We have discussed the matter between us, and though we are both old men we do not desire to retire and sit idle. Nor do we wish to seek employment with some new Sahib whose ways will be strange to us. Therefore I will be your bearer and Mahdoo your cook; and there is no need to trouble yourself over the matter of payment, as Anderson-Sahib made ample provision for us both and our needs are small. A few rupees will suffice.’
No argument could move either old gentlemen from this decision, and when Zarin pointed out that a junior subaltern living in the mess would have no need of a cook, Mahdoo said placidly that in that case he would be a khidmatgar (butler); what did it matter? But he and Ala Yar had served together for many years and were used to each other's ways – and to Ash-Sahib's too – and they preferred to remain together.
Nothing could have suited Ash better, for the prospect of parting with them had been the only thing that marred his return to India, and he was delighted to agree to this arrangement, and to the suggestion that Gul Baz should be retained as ‘assistant bearer’. ‘I will send him to the station to buy the tickets and to reserve a compartment for us as near to yours as may be,’ said Zarin: ‘No, we cannot travel with you… Or you with us. It would not be fitting. You are now a Sahib, and if you do not behave as one it will cause trouble for us all, for there are many who would not understand it.’
‘He is right,’ agreed Ala Yar. ‘And there are also the memsahibs to be thought of.’
‘Oh, to hell with –’ began Ash and stopped on a gasp. ‘Belinda! Oh God, I forgot her. Look – I'll meet you at the station, Zarin. Tell Gul Baz to bring along my luggage. Ala Yar, you've got the keys haven't you? You know my gear. I must go –’
He ran back to where he had left Belinda, but she had gone. So too had all the other passengers, together with their baggage and those who had come to meet them. The S.S. Canterbury Castle lay silent and apparently deserted in the mid-day heat, and an official in the custom shed informed Ash that two ladies who had been waiting there for the best part of an hour had only just left. No, he did not know where they had gone: probably to a hotel on Malabar Hill, or to the Yacht Club, or the Byculla. One of the ghari-wallahs* outside might be able to tell him. Both ladies, added the official unkindly, had appeared upset.
Ash hired a tonga and set off in pursuit, but as the pony proved to be a jaded animal and incapable of any speed, he failed to overtake them. Having spent an anxious and exhausting afternoon driving about Bombay making fruitless inquiries at a number of hotels and clubs, he was left with no alternative but to make for the railway station and await them there.
The mail train was not due to leave until the late evening, so he spent the intervening hours loitering unhappily in the entrance hall and anathematizing himself for a selfish, unthinking clod who was in every way unworthy of such a superlatively lovely creature as Belinda. Only last night he had told her that if she would entrust her future to him, he would love and cherish her for ever and do everything in his power to make her happy. Yet at the first test he had failed her. What must she be thinking of him and where had she gone?
Belinda and her mother had, in fact, gone to the house of an acquaintance who lived within easy reach of the harbour, where they had spent the day; it being too hot, in Mrs Harlowe's opinion, for sight-seeing, and of course there was no question of Belinda being allowed to go out alone. They left for the station after an early supper and arrived to find Ash on the platform, though unfortunately for him, not alone. His luck was plainly out that day, because had they arrived five minutes earlier he would still have been standing forlornly by the ticket office. But Ala Yar had friends in the city and he had taken Zarin and Mahdoo to visit them, leaving Gul Baz to make all the necessary arrangements at the station. The three men had driven up in a tonga not five minutes before the arrival of Mrs Harlowe and her daughter, which could not have been more unfortunate, as seeing them in animated conversation with her betrothed, Belinda not unnaturally concluded that he had spent the day with them, preferring their company to her own and making no attempt to find her.
Anger and unshed tears formed a hot hard lump in her throat, and despite her training and the fact that the platform was crowded with travellers, baggage coolies, and vendors of food and drink, if she had possessed an engagement ring she would at that moment have torn it off and flung it in Ash's face. Deprived of such an outlet for her wounded feelings, she was preparing to sweep past him with her head in the air, when unkind fate sent her a weapon that few women, in these circumstances, could have resisted making use of.
It was to prove, in long run, one of those trivial incidents that can change the character and course of events in the lives of many more people than those immediately involved, though no one, least of all Belinda, could be expected to know that. She merely saw a chance of repaying Ash in his own coin, and took it; and young George Garforth – he of the Grecian profile and Byronic curls – hurrying down the platform in search of his carriage, found himself being greeted with every appearance of delight by the girl to whom he had already lost his heart. Overcome by this reception, he now lost his head as well.
A combination of love, shyness and an acute sense of inferiority had hitherto prevented him from expressing his devotion, and though Belinda admired his looks, she considered him deplorably dull and had agreed wholeheartedly with Amy Chiverton's malicious observation that ‘poor Mr Garforth would have made an excellent tailor's dummy’. Such looks ought, by rights, to have bestowed confidence, if not conceit, on their owner. But George Garforth quite obviously lacked any trace of either quality, and was not only painfully unsure of himself, but apt, at times, to be unbelievably gauche, pushing himself forward in an unseemly manner at quite the wrong moments, and then retreating in scarlet-faced confusion that created even further embarrassment. Ash, who rather liked him, had once said, ‘The trouble with George is that he was born with one skin too few, so everything seems to touch him on the raw.’
Belinda had certainly done so. On the only occasion that George had nerved himself to make a bid for her attention, he had set about it in a manner calculated to irritate the mildest of girls, and she had been compelled to give him a sharp set-down that had sent him back into his shell, sore, blushing and humiliated. Yet here she was, advancing on him with an outstretched hand and a smile of such dazzling sweetness that poor George stopped in his tracks and cast an involuntary look over his shoulder to see who could be standing behind him.
‘Why, Mr Garforth. What a pleasant surprise. Are you travelling on this train? I do hope so. It will make the journey so much pleasanter if we have friends on board.’
George stared at her as though he could not believe his ears, and then dropping the packet of letters he held, he clutched her proffered hand with the fervour of a drowning man catching at a rope. The blood drained out of his face and his tongue seemed to tie itself into knots, but his inability to answer her did not appear to offend his divinity, for having freed her hand from his grasp she tucked it confidingly under his arm and begged his escort to her carriage.
‘If I had known that you would be on this train, I should not have worried,’ declared Belinda gaily. ‘But I confess I was a trifle hurt that you
had not even said goodbye to me this morning. I looked for you everywhere, but the dock was so hot and crowded.’
‘D-did you?’ stammered George, finding his voice. ‘Did – did you really?’
They were approaching Ash and his disreputable friends, and Belinda laughed up into her escort's pallid face, and giving his arm a little squeeze, said: ‘Yes, really.’
The colour rushed back into George's face, and he took a deep breath that seemed to fill not only his lungs but his whole body with a heady exhilaration that no wine had ever given him before. All at once he felt taller and broader, and for the first time in his life, full of confidence.
‘I say!’ said George. He began to laugh, and Ash looked round and saw them arm in arm, laughing together as though neither had a care in the world. He started forward and Belinda said carelessly: ‘Oh, hallo, Ashton,’ and passed by with a casual little inclination of the head that was infinitely more wounding than any cut direct.
Ash followed them to the Harlowes' carriage where he found himself compelled to make his apologies and explanations to Mrs Harlowe, as Belinda seemed far too occupied with George to pay much attention to what he was saying – beyond telling him graciously that there was no need for him to apologize, it did not matter at all. Which not only took the wind out of his sails, but left him feeling uncommonly foolish.
He was to feel a good deal worse in the days that followed, for Belinda continued to treat him with maddening politeness when he presented himself at her carriage during the leisurely and frequent stops at wayside stations, and never once invited him to sit with them in their carriage, or take her strolling on the platform during the evening halts. This behaviour afflicted Ash and alarmed poor Mrs Harlowe, but its effect upon George was little short of electrifying. No one who had travelled out with him on the S.S. Canterbury Castle would have believed that the gauche, tongue-tied and over-sensitive youth of the voyage could have blossomed so swiftly into this talkative and assured young man, who squared his shoulders and threw out his chest as he walked in the twilight with Belinda on his arm, or mono-olized the conversation in the carriage.
Ash himself was far too crushed and remorseful to take offence at his love's behaviour, or even notice George's growing jealousy and truculence, for he had already convicted himself of almost every crime in a lover's calendar, and felt that no punishment could be too severe – except the unthinkable one of losing her. As for Zarin, finding that he could do nothing to lighten Ashok's mood, he abandoned the attempt, and consoled himself with the more congenial company of his fellow-countrymen until such time as his friend should come to his senses. The journey that both had looked forward to had become slow and tedious, and Ash had no attention to spare for the vast landscape that streamed past his window, though it was seven long years since he had last seen it, and for the greater part of those years had dreamed of little else than seeing it again.
The tree-clad gorges and lush greenness of the south gave place to the parched emptiness of rock and sand: to jungle and cropland, little lost villages and the ruins of dead and gone cities, and wide, winding rivers where crocodiles and mud-turtles basked on the sand bars and white egrets fished in the shallows. At night-fall the thickets and the elephant grass shimmered with fire-flies, and at dawn peacocks cried from every cane-brake and the yellow sky mirrored itself in ponds and ditches that were starred with water-lilies. But Ash lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, rehearsing speeches to soften Belinda's heart, or replying to the conversational efforts of his travelling companions – an enthusiastic young man in the Political Department and a middle-aged Forest-Officer – very much at random.
Mrs Harlowe was also not enjoying the journey, which was only to be expected. Experience had taught her that travelling in India by whatever means was bound to be hot, dusty and excessively uncomfortable; but on the present occasion it was neither the tediousness or the discomfort that was upsetting her, but Ashton and Belinda, whose behaviour had plainly demonstrated that both were still little more than children. A great many girls married at seventeen – she herself had done so; but they married grown men who could be relied upon to take care of them, not thoughtless and irresponsible boys in their teens, which Ashton had shown himself to be when he ran off and left Belinda alone and unprotected on a crowded quayside while he gossiped for over an hour with a parcel of natives.
His excuse for this behaviour had merely made matters worse. To explain that one of them (and a mere daffadar at that – not even an Indian officer) was an old friend who had travelled from the Khyber to Bombay to meet him, and that he had been so pleased to see him that he had ‘lost all count of time’, might reflect credit onhis honesty, but it certainly proved him to be lacking in wisdom and tact, and Mrs Harlowe fully sympathized with her daughter's rejection of such a clumsily phrased apology. Ashton really should have known better. And know better, too, than to be on such exceedingly friendly terms with sepoys and servants. Such behaviour was not at all the thing, and only went to prove that he did not yet know how to conduct himself – and also that she herself knew far too little about him. She had, in fact, allowed his eligibility in the matter of birth and fortune, and her anxiety to see her daughter swiftly and safely bestowed, to override good sense and caution. And now Belinda was flirting shamelessly with another, and quite ineligible young man, and really she felt distracted with worry. It was all most upsetting, and she did not know what Archie was going to say when he heard…
Poor, foolish, conscience-stricken Mrs Harlowe took refuge in tears and an attack of vapours, and three days of this atmosphere proved more than enough for Belinda, who began to discover that a sense of outrage was not equal to sustaining her through the boredom of endless hours penned up in a hot and dusty railway carriage, with nothing to do but listen to Mama's tearful observations on the subject of Ashton, early engagements and what Papa was likely to say about it all. Of course Ashton had behaved abominably, but he had been punished enough. Besides, she was beginning to tire of George Garforth's increasing bumptiousness and the protective and proprietary airs he had begun to adopt towards her, and thought that it was really time she put him in his place.
When the train next stopped at a station and Ash as usual knocked humbly at the door, he was admitted, and the unhappy George found himself suddenly relegated to the position of odd-man-out and left to hang about the platform, or make laborious conversation with his divinity's mother. But for Ash and Belinda the rest of the journey passed pleasantly enough apart from a tiff in Delhi, where the railway stopped and anyone wishing to travel further northward must proceed in the manner of an older day by dâk-ghari* palanquin, bullock cart or on foot. The travellers had put up at Delhi dâk-bungalow, and Ash, after two afternoons devoted to sightseeing, had absented himself for an entire day.
He had, in fact, been absent for a full twenty-four hours, but fortunately neither Mrs nor Miss Harlowe was aware of this, for Ash was learning wisdom, and this time he had accounted for his absence by producing a very pretty pearl and diamond ring, explaining that he had had to visit at least twenty or thirty shops in the old city and along the Chandi Chowk, Delhi's famous ‘Silver Street’, before finding something good enough to give Belinda. Both ladies had been charmed with the ring; though it could not of course be worn until Ash had spoken to Belinda's Papa. And as George Garforth had taken advantage of Ash's absence to take them for a picnic to the Kutab Minar, they had passed the day very pleasantly. Ash was forgiven, and neither Belinda nor her mother had thought to ask him any further questions, which was just as well, for he had, in point of fact, spent less than half an hour over the purchase of the ring and the rest of the time in quite another fashion.
Mahdoo had relations in Delhi, and on the previous night Ash had donned the dress of a Pathan (borrowed for the occasion from Gul Baz) and roistered in the city until dawn, eating and drinking and merry-making with Mahdoo's relatives, and later sampling the night-life of the crowded bazaars with Zarin. He was filled wit
h an exhilarating sense of freedom, as though he had broken out of gaol. The Western veneer so painfully acquired during the cold years at school and Pelham Abbas fell away from him as easily as though it had been no more than a winter overcoat, discarded on the first warm day of spring, and he slipped back effortlessly into the ways and speech of his childhood. The rich, spicy food tasted ambrosial after a diet of boiled beef and carrots, watery cabbage and suet puddings, while the heat and smell and noise of the city was an intoxication and a deep delight. England, Sahib-hood, the Guides, Belinda – all were forgotten, and he was once more Sita's son Ashok, who had come home and inherited a kingdom.
Having no idea which temple Sita had taken him to (even if he had, he would not have been able to enter it in his present guise) he gave alms to several ash-smeared sadhus and a dozen Hindu beggars in her name, and the following morning, in company with Zarin, Ala Yar, Mahdoo and Gul Baz, he joined a vast congregation in the great courtyard of the Juma Masjid and said a prayer for her and for Uncle Akbar – the one an orthodox Hindu and the other a devout Mussulman – in the belief that the One God, to whom all creeds are one, would hear and not be offended.
There had been a group of tourists in the gallery above the great gate, European men and women who had looked down at the worshipping throng below, laughing and talking the while as though they were watching the antics of animals in a zoo. Their plangent voices cut through the murmured prayers, and Ash was wondering angrily what they would think if a group of Indians behaved in a similar manner during a service in Westminster Abbey, when he was disconcerted to see that one of them was Mrs Harlowe and another his betrothed. ‘It's only ignorance… they don't mean any harm; they don't understand,’ he excused them to himself.
The red-walled city of the Moguls was as intriguing by day as it was exciting by night, but towards evening his conscience belatedly reminded him of the enormity of his behaviour and its probable consequences, and he reluctantly changed back into his own clothing and spent half an hour in a jeweller's shop in the Chandi Chowk before presenting himself at the dâk-bungalow.