By Eastern windows

by Gretta Curran Browne

  By half past seven the ball was in full swing with guests still arriving. Lachlan moved around the outskirts of the ballroom conferring with other duty-aides, occasionally pausing to speak and joke with some of his fellow officers.

  As the night progressed the room became unbearably noisy with hysterically happy laughter, ladies shrieking greetings across the room and men bowing graciously in response. On every female neck and hand, Indian jewels blazed garishly. Some of the civilian gentlemen of the East India Company were almost as bejewelled as the ladies, ruby and diamond rings dazzling on both hands. Lachlan considered it all to be excessively vulgar. The room quickly became like a hothouse, the exuding odour of perfume and powder sickened him.

  All in a moment, as if he was alone, the silent peace of the Scottish hills descended upon him. He had a sudden yearning to walk alone amongst trees and sit by the still waters of a silent loch again … and just as quickly his senses cleared and the brouhaha all about him came back ... more guests were arriving, more colours and silks and feathers and jewels.

  An elegant couple were being announced, ‘Mr and Mrs Morley,’ but it was the girl who accompanied them who caught Lachlan’s attention. A tall, graceful girl, with beautiful long dark chestnut hair which was undressed and without jewels or peacock feathers. She was no more than twenty and wore a gown of watery green silk, exquisite but simple. No frills or flounces, no emerald halter round her neck or diamond tiara on her head. She looked as refreshing as a walk through the trees.

  Her arms were bare and her skin golden. That surprised him, for most of the wives and daughters of the East India Company prided themselves on their milky-white skin and took every precaution to protect it.

  He watched as the threesome moved down the side aisle to one of the tables, his eyes fixed on the slender figure of the girl as she sat down beside her two companions. She sat with her back straight, and she was beautiful with a dark serene beauty that was rare in the English.

  ‘Lachlan...?’

  He turned to see John Forbes, a personal friend from the civilian population of Bombay.

  ‘Man, John, it’s you! He shook his friend’s hand vigorously, confused by his own sudden excitement. ‘I am very glad you decided to come tonight.’

  ‘Oh? Why so?’

  ‘Because you might be able to do me a personal favour.’

  John Forbes, an elegant man in his early forties, and a well-established banker, prided himself on knowing everything about everyone in Bombay. So Lachlan asked him: ‘Do you see that girl, John? Long chestnut hair, a green dress … sitting with an older couple.’

  ‘Where? … Oh, yes.’ John had now picked her out in the line of tables. ‘Miss Jane Jarvis. She arrived in India just a few days ago, from the West Indies. Comes from a very wealthy family on one of the islands there, but I can't remember which one.’

  ‘The West Indies?’ That explained the sunburned tan of her skin. `Go on,’ Lachlan urged.

  ‘Well, whichever island it was, her father was Chief Justice there. He died recently and left her a very acceptable fortune.’

  ‘So she's rich?’ Lachlan was not surprised – most of the white civilians in Bombay were rich.

  ‘Oh, yes, very rich indeed,’ John replied, ‘but as she is not yet twenty-one years old, only nineteen, her sister's husband, James Morley, has now assumed the role of her guardian.’ He gave Lachlan a glance of warning. ‘But in view of her wealth, I doubt if he would ever consider relinquishing her to any man worth less than a thousand a year sterling.’

  ‘How much?’ Lachlan looked startled.

  John Forbes could not help smiling at Lachlan's shock. It was obvious he still did not fully realise the enormous wealth of British Bombay.

  Lachlan’s gaze focused silently on the girl sitting at the table, her eyes watching the dancers as if she was gazing at some enchanting scene. Something about her was familiar. He wondered if the island she came from was Jamaica, or perhaps Barbados. Just looking at her reminded him of the sweet air and magical nights of the Caribbean.

  Resolutely, he said, ‘I still want to be introduced to her.’

  John Forbes shook his head.‘No point, old chum, no point. James Morley is a nabob who cares only for the company of senior staff. He would have no time for a junior captain.’

  Undeterred, Lachlan straightened his scarlet jacket. ‘An introduction, John, if you please.’

  *

  The table where James and Maria Morley were seated was directly under a swaying punkah, a length of matting pulled by a rope to make a breeze. Behind their chairs a turbaned servant stood in weary monotony pulling the punkah rope.

  John Forbes approached the table and bowed low. ‘Mr and Mrs Morley, Miss Jarvis, I already have your acquaintance, but may I now have the honour of introducing to you, Captain Lachlan Macquarie.’

  Lachlan stepped forward and James Morley allowed three of his fingers to be shaken. He was a senior civil servant of the East India Trading Company and therefore, in his opinion, one of the Heaven-born – pure and white and blessed by God to be rich and wealthy in a land of brown-skinned heathens.

  And if Captain Macquarie had been a senior officer, Morley might have given him his entire hand to shake, but for a mere junior captain, the touch of three fingers was enough. His wife also extended three gloved fingers with a gracious inclination of her head.

  John Forbes watched with eyes keen as Lachlan at last took the ungloved hand of Jane Jarvis and smiled. ‘Miss Jarvis,’ he said softly, ‘welcome to India.’

  She looked up at him with her beautiful soft brown eyes, and there it was – in her eyes too – that sudden and unexplainable light of recognition that sometimes happens between strangers.

  ‘Thank you,’ was all she said, but as John Forbes watched, into his mind came a line from an Eastern poem he had been reading earlier that evening, translated from the Persian – `Looks, the language of the eyes.’

  And then she smiled, and once again John Forbes saw the Persian poet's language of the eyes ... ‘Tears may speak, and so may smiles.’

  A subaltern rushed up and addressed Captain Macquarie. ‘Colonel Balfour's compliments, sir, and would you please report to him in the library.’

  Lachlan sighed irritably, glanced sideways at John Forbes and murmured, ‘Balfour – that man just delights in persecuting me.’

  *

  Colonel Balfour beamed with pride when everyone filed out to the lawn after supper to watch the magnificent fireworks display. Even James Morley and his wife exuded their pleasure at the entertainment, and continually said so to Colonel Balfour who stood beside them rocking happily back and forth on his heels in satisfaction, his humour at tip-top height.

  So much so, that when the display was over, Balfour even wandered back into the ballroom with the Morleys, although he usually preferred the company of officers to civilians. But Mrs Maria Morley was a very attractive woman, much younger than her husband, and Balfour derived great pleasure in flattering her in a most chivalrous way, purely for the exercise of it. Still a bachelor he may be, but he did intend to find himself a neat little woman when he had the time, or when he returned to England, so he could not allow his charm to rust over.

  Balfour was happily sipping a glass of wine, his eyes benevolently roving the dancers swirling around the ballroom, when he caught sight of Captain Macquarie dancing with a willowy young piece in green.

  ‘Good Heavens!’ he said aloud, his eyebrows pitching in that named direction.

  Colonel Balfour could scarcely believe his eyes: Captain Macquarie – dancing! This was the first time he had ever known Macquarie to blatantly disregard his duty. Well, by God, he would suffer for it with a stern reprimand at the very least!

  ‘But James...’ Maria Morley was saying to her husband in a perplexed voice. ‘Was it not Mr Forbes, the banker, who escorted Jane out to the fireworks display? So how is it that she is now dancing with a soldier?’

  Furious, James Morley stared hard at t
he officer in scarlet finery guiding his young sister-in-law around the floor in a waltz. And the waltz, everyone agreed, was the most sociable dance ever invented, for it allowed a dancing couple to talk privately to each other.

  Too damned private, James Morley thought as he watched the couple and wondered what the redcoat was murmuring down into Jane's upturned face.

  *

  Close up, Lachlan decided that Miss Jane Jarvis was not only deliciously beautiful, but also even more magical than he had imagined. In the space of the last five dances he had held her slim figure and felt her move with such a youthful and natural vitality that he now wished he could just dance away with her into the Indian moonlight.

  She was also much younger in every way than she had first appeared at a distance, more innocent, her conversation devoid of any false coyness or sophisticated game playing.

  She answered all his questions openly and honestly, stimulating his senses like a fresh wind after being confined in stagnant air. She told him all about the oddity of her upbringing on the island of Antigua and it was clear she was still pining for her home in the Caribbean and her Negro Mammy, Dinah, who had cared for her since birth, and whom she had been forced to leave behind.

  ‘I wanted to buy Mammy's bond, out of my own money, and at least give her her freedom before I left,’ she told him, ‘but I was unable to draw even a penny from the fund my father left me. So Mammy is still bonded to the sugar estate and now that my brother owns it, he will never give Mammy her freedom.’

  The words tumbled out breathless and anxious, as if it was something that plagued her but no one had ever listened to her before. She glanced quickly over her shoulder towards the table where her guardian was sitting, and saw him preoccupied in conversation with a senior officer.

  *

  ‘I have no wish to criticise a member of your staff, Colonel,’ James Morley said to Balfour in a voice that was coldly superior, ‘but I am compelled to say that when I was an officer, we would never dream of participating in any frolicking whilst on duty. Neither, I may add, would any of our officers have been capable of such effrontery as to dance with a young lady without the permission of her guardians.’

  And it was that criticism alone that saved Captain Macquarie from the sternest dressing-down Balfour might have given him. And Morley's mistake had been in using the word ‘officer’ in such a superior way.

  ‘Officer?’ The colonel turned his face slowly to the civil servant. ‘I did not realise you had served as a soldier, sir. How very interesting! You must tell me something of your campaigns. Serve long, did you? And which regiment, pray?’

  James Morley flushed, realising that in his anger he had said the wrong thing to the wrong man. It was all right to boast about the days of being an officer to other civilians, but not to a professional soldier such as the colonel.

  ‘Militia regiment in England,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Militia!’ Colonel Balfour smiled his professional smile, which often covered a multitude of emotions. If there was one thing he could not stomach it was civilian males who had spent a year or two in some poxy militia regiment in some safe bolt-hole in England, then spent the rest of their lives talking as if they knew more about how to win battles than the generals of the Regular Army.

  And there were many of them here in India, men who had never ploughed for months through the field in the most deplorable conditions, had never slept in wet ditches and gone hungry through loss of supplies. Men who had never risked their lives in battle or seen their comrades cut down by an enemy's cutlass or cannon-shot. Men whose `service’ in the militia amounted to no more than a regular strut around the town square in a parade of regimental pomp and self-importance.

  And men like that dared to criticise officers of the Regular Army! It made Colonel Balfour's blood boil with seething contempt, but not a glimpse of this showed through his professional smile.

  ‘The militia,’ he said amiably, ‘England's home army, God bless `em. But I do think, sir, that had you elected to serve in the Regular Army, you might have found there is a very great difference between us and the militia.’

  Balfour ignored Morley's blushes and spread a hand expansively towards the dance floor. ‘Now consider Captain Macquarie there, a fine young man and a fine officer. No more than a boy of fifteen when he left Scotland with his regiment and crossed the Atlantic to serve in Canada and America. Ah yes, …’ Balfour smiled even more expansively as he watched the dancers, ‘the militia may march with starch, but our lads have the polish.’

  Uncomfortably, James Morley glanced at Balfour and wondered if he should concede defeat now, or allow the colonel the pleasure of demolishing his pride completely.

  Which was what Balfour had every intention of doing. The army was a family, and all the lads in the regiment were his military sons. He spared no mercy to any civilian who dared to criticise them.

  James Morley had got the message. He shrugged pettishly. ‘My concern at the moment, Colonel, is that Captain Macquarie has chosen to dance with my sister-in-law without the benefit of either my own or her sister's permission.’

  Colonel Balfour held up his palms and went on smiling. `You have absolutely no need to worry! The man is an officer and a gentleman so she is in good hands. And times really are changing, dear fellow. Even in England a girl is now allowed to give her dances to whomever she pleases, just so long as she carries them out under the watchful eyes of her protectors. And there she is – before your eyes – safe and sound and looking as happy as a sparrow in spring.'

  The Morleys looked.

  Throughout the conversation the music had changed from a waltz to a quadrille and now back to a waltz and Jane was still dancing with the captain as her partner. Such behaviour for a young lady so recently entered into Bombay society was quite unacceptable.

  Although Maria Morley had to admit, ‘They do dance rather well together.’

  ‘Indeed, ma'am, they do indeed!’ Balfour agreed. ‘But now, Mistress Morley, my dear lady, how about some more wine? Capital stuff for making an evening jolly!’

  Balfour beckoned to one of the turbaned servants and commanded more wine, a twinkle of mischief in his blue eyes.

  *

  ‘Is it true what they say about Scotland? It rains there every day?’

  ‘Aye, it does have a reputation for its morning and evening mists,’ Lachlan admitted. ‘Especially where I come from, Mull, one of the western islands. But between the mists the sun does occasionally shine.’

  ‘So different to Antigua. Most of the year the island is painfully dry.’ She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I think you would find the long dry days of the West Indies very strange.’

  ‘No, no,’ he assured her, ‘not at all.'

  She was astonished to learn that he knew the West Indies very well, having served there for two years after leaving America. She asked eager questions.

  ‘Jamaica, mainly,’ he told her, but he had also spent time on some of the Windward Islands, including Barbados.

  ‘But not leeward to Antigua?’

  He smiled regretfully. ‘No, alas.’

  *

  James Morley saw the soldier's smile. There was no mistaking what it meant. Inwardly Morley's fury continued to rage, but he was careful not to betray it in the presence of Colonel Balfour who seemed to possess an unreasonable affection for his junior officers.

  Morley gave a quick sideways glance at Balfour – a damned country squire in the gaudy lace and braid of a colonel who survived solely on the pride of being a fighting soldier. What did a man like him know about the real world outside the ridiculous camaraderie of the military? How could a man like him understand that the care of Jane and her fortune required constant vigilance. No suitor could be taken on trust, but subjected to the most thorough scrutiny.

  Morley continued staring at the dance-floor where his young sister-in-law was happily dancing with her soldier . . . Macquarie? A Scot from the wilds of nowhere . . . the Scots had a reputa
tion for being a stubborn race . . . but there was not a man in the world more stubborn than he was. And if Macquarie continued to push his luck, he would soon find that out.

  THREE

  The Ball had ended, all the dining and dancing over. The guests passed out of Government House into the warm night air.

  ‘I’m holding a picnic in the gardens of my own house on Saturday,’ said John Forbes. ‘For just a few chums. You will come, won’t you?’

  Lachlan nodded inattentively. They were standing on the steps of Government House and his eyes were searching the departing crowd cheerily surging towards their carriages and tongas; but he could find no sight of Jane and her guardians.

  ‘Cricket will be played of course. So extend the invitation to Edward Grant too, will you. Good batsman is Edward, always knows the spot. Come at noon or thereabouts, but no later than one o’clock. Are you listening to me?’

  Lachlan stopped searching and looked at John. `Aye, of course I’m listening. A picnic, on Saturday, yes, definitely.’

  ‘And Edward Grant.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I want you to extend my invitation to him also. I’d invite him myself but I can’t find him, so will you do it for me?’

  ‘I will,’ Lachlan consented, giving up his search of the crowd. John Forbes took his leave, smiling all the way to his carriage as a sudden idea occurred to him, another favour for his young friend.

  *

  On Saturday, Lachlan expected to find about twenty-five men standing or sitting around on John Forbes's green lawn, but when he and Edward Grant arrived the place was packed, inside and out. The ‘picnic’ was in fact a sumptuous daylong feast served continuously by a troop of servants.