‘But nine out of ten are forced into it,’ Mr Hickson was saying now, as if he had read her mind. Lugubriously, he sighed. ‘Poor creatures, they have a dreadful choice. Death in the flames, with honour. Or a despised and dishonourable widowhood, during which they are treated like dogs and universally reviled. India is no place to be a woman.’
‘But must her lot always be a cruel one?’ enquired Rebecca, earnestly.
‘Yes indeed ma'am, it must.’ Mr Hickson grimaced. ‘Even as infants, little girls are married off to hideous old men, who proceed to get them with child before they're barely out of childhood themselves. If they bear daughters, it's ten to one those unfortunate babes will be taken from them, and destroyed.’
‘But that's murder! That's — ’
‘It's the custom of the country, ma'am. Girls are a drain on the family resources, you see. They must be kept in purdah, which is an expensive business all round, and when they grow up, they need to be found husbands. They must have dowries, too.
‘To most families, daughters are a curse, not a blessing. Every woman in India, from the maharajah's bride to the lowest sweeper's wife or village tyrant's concubine, prays night and day to bear sons.’
* * * *
But Ellis was no village tyrant. Neither his intense dislike of Owen, nor the dismay he'd felt at his daughter's recent, most unwelcome revelations, had resulted in the issue of unreasonable edicts, in his forbidding Jane and her cousin to speak to one another in private, or even to meet alone. Indeed, now he had made himself plain, the squire counted on their obedience to his command. Jane knew her duty as a daughter, he was sure of that.
As for being in love with Owen — although he did not doubt her sincerity, Ellis was confident that if the boy went out to India for a few years, his place in his daughter's heart would be usurped. It must be!
After supper, the family group broke up. Jane and Owen disappeared, to take their favourite walk along the north shore of the lake. ‘Would you burn yourself alive for me?’ asked Owen idly, as he skimmed a pebble across the broad expanse of water, and watched it skip and jump across the mirror of glassy grey.
‘Yes. I think perhaps I would.’ But then, in spite of herself, Jane shuddered. ‘Although I'm sure I should be horribly afraid, and disgrace myself excessively, by screaming and crying like a child.’
‘That would be perfectly understandable.’ Owen frowned. ‘I shall be most interested to observe this system in operation,’ he said.
‘You may observe part of it here,’ muttered Jane. ‘At Easton Hall itself.’
‘Where young women are of no account, you mean? Where they are instead mere chattels, to be used as bargaining counters, or disposed of at a father's whim?’
‘Exactly.’
‘That's nonsense. You are your father's favourite child. Far from wishing to dispose of his elder daughter, he wants only the best for you.’
‘Does he?’ Jane shrugged. ‘He thinks I'm a fool,’ she murmured. ‘That you're a mercenary rogue, after my dowry and whatever else you can get. Why else, he reasons, should any man want me? How great would be my value, if there were not so many sacks of gold stacked up behind me, as an inducement to his lust?’
‘Oh, Jane!’ Owen shook his head at her. He took her hands in his. ‘When I return from India, I shall be so rich that you will not need a dowry! I shall also be of age. So, if your father still forbids us to marry, we'll go to church anyway.’
* * * *
Rayner would be sad to see Owen leave. He was even a little jealous, for while Owen would sail the high seas and see the splendours of the Orient for himself, Rayner was obliged to moulder in a dreary Oxford college. Or sojourn in the damp green fields of Warwickshire, learning how to manage the Easton estate — which would one day be hung like a great, heavy millstone around his own unwilling neck.
Foolishly, he had missed his opportunity to travel — and now the war with France seemed likely to drag on forever, he despaired of even visiting mainland Europe, let alone seeing the wonders of the East.
Owen left Easton Hall early one Tuesday morning. He would go to Cardiff to take leave of his uncle, then travel on to Avonmouth to catch the packet boat round the coast. ‘I shall write to you,’ he promised Jane, as they took a private and highly emotional leave of each other, in a secluded part of the rose garden. ‘I shall come home.’
‘I shall be waiting.’ Jane blinked back her tears. She did not want his last memory to be of his sweetheart crying. ‘Dear Owen, take care. Remember, you are not your own man now. You belong to me.’
* * * *
After Owen had gone, Jane did not burn herself alive, but she certainly made a sort of suttee of herself. She accepted no invitations to dances, balls or routs, nor would she give any afternoon parties or musical evenings for her many friends. She became, in effect, a recluse.
Charles Harding turned his attention to Maria. After some weeks of dogged persistence and unfailing good humour on his part, he managed to convince her that she was by no means second best. Only his parents’ outdated notions of what was due to seniority had persuaded him to pay diffident court to Jane.
He liked Jane very much, he said. He respected her, too. But it was pretty, elfin Maria whose charms had ensnared him. She, and she alone, whose beauty and goodness had pierced his heart.
‘My dearest Maria,’ he concluded, as he gazed earnestly into her clear, blue eyes, and wondered how much her father would give her for pin money, ‘will you make me the happiest of men? In short, will you marry me?’
Mr Frederick Harding was a hard–headed farmer. He had no time at all for modern, romantic nonsense such as this. But, seeing the elder daughter had run mad and was not to go to market after all, Charles's father told his son to pull on his top–boots, climb into the sty, and try to get the other sow by the ear. While he himself approached Ellis Darrow on the subject of his second child.
Mr Harding and the Squire of Easton were both good businessmen who liked to feel they'd got a bargain. They also delighted in all the haggling, feinting and palaver which preceded any deal. After the requisite amount of prevarication and discussion, therefore, a bargain was struck. The Hardings got Maria and all her personal property – gowns, jewellery and other feminine bits and pieces — plus fifteen thousand pounds, most of it in Government stock. In addition to this, the squire undertook to provide his daughter with pocket money for the next ten years, or as long as he lived, whichever was the shorter period.
On the day the wedding was celebrated, Owen's first letter to Jane finally arrived. From then on, great fat parcels came regularly. They smelled of spices and indigo, of dust and heat, and warm, baked earth. Their contents were more precious than anything else, either on land or sea.
‘Well?’ demanded Rebecca, as Jane folded her latest letter and lay back on the sofa, smiling a beatific, almost unearthly smile. ‘How does he get on? What does he say?’
‘He is well. He sends us his love.’ Surreptitiously, Jane wiped away a tear. ‘He says he misses me.’
Jane read her letters again and again, learning them by heart. She lived for their coming, and when a parcel arrived for her, she would be cheerful and talkative for several days. But then, she would relapse into a world of her own, not going out, not seeing anybody or doing anything but peruse her private papers over and over, and write whole volumes in reply.
The Darrows’ neighbours shook their heads and sighed. Who would have thought that pretty, charming Jane Darrow would turn into a species of anchorite? Become a mad, melancholy, mooning thing?
Six long years went by.
Chapter 7
George Hickson was nearing the end of his active life. Old and tired, his constitution grievously weakened by the recurrent fevers, agues and debilitating night sweats which plagued most Europeans in this dreadful climate, his mind was weary, too.
These days, he took no pleasure in his official duties. None at all. Promoted to senior district magistrate of a large provi
nce, he was constantly called on not only to give judgement, but also to hear appeals. Something he had once enjoyed, as he cut through the cats’ cradles and tangles of Oriental non–logic with his sword of Anglo–Saxon common sense.
Just recently, however, listening to a native or whole family of natives loudly rehearsing their grievances — sitting, in fact, through the interminable rigmarole of an Indian court case — merely gave him a headache.
So, he meant to retire. To leave all this to his deputy. As he thought about it, he smiled. For, taking Owen Morgan under his wing had been the best thing he ever did. Childless — for after being widowed twice, he decided he could not bear the idea of bringing yet another Englishwoman to this hostile land, to pine and die in the heat and dust, and had solaced himself instead with women from the bazaar — in Owen, he had at last found a son.
He would have liked a grandson, too. ‘What do you say to asking the Waterstones over tomorrow evening?’ he suggested craftily, as he and Owen sat on their verandah one sultry dusk, drinking their first sundowners, and watching the sky dissolve into a glorious pageant of purple, gold and scarlet fire. ‘Nazim Shah has mended the oven, so he could concoct one of his special dinners. Afterwards, I'm sure the ladies would be happy to sit out on our verandah here. Delighting in the sunset, and watching the officers play polo on the maidan.’
‘Well, Miss Julia Waterstone would certainly like that.’ Owen grinned. ‘She's had her eye on Major O'Sullivan this past twelvemonth or more.’
‘She's also had her eye on you.’ George Hickson shook his head. ‘Why don't you like her? She's a fine figure of a woman. Only twenty eight or nine. Not that much older than you.’
‘No, but — ’
‘Don't tell me. I know what you're about to say. You're already spoken for. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Damned shame.’ George Hickson sighed. While staying in Warwickshire, he hadn't even realised that Owen and Jane were especially fond of one other. Let alone as good as engaged. But later, observing that great, fat packages of letters were regularly exchanged between the two continents, and that whenever he received a packet, Owen was particularly cheerful for several days, he had asked if there were a lady in the case.
Owen had simply replied that the letters were from his cousin Jane, whom he hoped one day to marry. If her father would allow it. It wasn't until several years had gone by, however, that he told George Hickson the full story.
‘The old fellow may come round.’ This evening, George was in a sentimental, mellow mood. ‘After all, you've done very well for yourself out here. You may not be as rich as a rajah — but you must be worth at least ten, fifteen thousand pounds nowadays.’
Owen agreed that indeed he was. For, on his arrival in India, he had applied himself not only to the study of law, but also to the arcane sciences of bribery and corruption. He had realised, without having to be told in so many words, that in the East nothing could be done without recourse to baksheesh.
But although he readily accepted presents and tips, for the past six years Owen Morgan had — unlike some of his fellow Europeans — trodden the difficult path of the foreign overlord with honour and integrity. In doing this, he had astonished many of his peers.
Even more astonishingly, he had kept away from native women, too.
* * * *
‘That daughter of the padre fellow, eh? She and her Mama arrived here last Wednesday, from up country. She's a pretty little thing, wouldn't you say?’ A week later, George was trying again. ‘Why don't you ask her if she and her parents would like to go with us and the Forresters in a party, to see the Blue Fort at Andrapur?’
‘You ask her, if you wish.’ His quill pen poised, Owen was searching through the great volume of paperwork which permanently littered his desk. ‘I'm afraid I haven't any time to spare.’
‘Why? What are you doing?’
‘Preparing the prosecution's case for that assault and battery business. If the clerks are to have the papers on Tuesday, I need to get my submission done by the weekend.’
‘But what's the tearing hurry?’
‘When I arrived here, I inherited a mess. I wish to leave everything in order for my successor.’ Owen leaned back in his chair. ‘George, I've decided to go home.’
‘I see.’ Lugubriously, George Hickson shook his grizzled head. ‘That makes two of us.’
‘You're not thinking of retiring?’
‘Yes. But not to England. It's too damned chilly for old bones like mine.’ George grinned. ‘I've bought a little place up in the hills, and I shall go there. I'll take a couple of creatures from the bazaar — nice clean girls, you understand, but orphans or outcasts or some such — and live out my days in peace and solitude.’
‘In your own personal Shangri–la?’
‘Precisely.’ The district magistrate's one remaining eye grew misty. ‘I'll do a little fishing,’ he continued. ‘A little writing, maybe. A little walking here and there. All that sort of thing.’
‘It sounds delightful.’
‘I think so.’ Again, George Hickson grinned. ‘So what about you? Shall you go back to Belait? To renew your siege to Miss Darrow and her cruel Papa?’
‘I intend to write to my uncle,’ agreed Owen. ‘To ask if I may visit the family in Warwickshire.’ Thoughtfully, he tapped a pencil against his teeth. ‘George, would you perhaps write to him, too? He has a high opinion of your good sense. So, if you could persuade him that I have worked hard and waited patiently, he might be disposed to reconsider — ’
‘He damned well ought to be!’ George grimaced. ‘Apart from the odd lapse now and then, you've lived like a monk out here. A man would think you had taken holy orders. If ever constancy deserved recognition, then you should have it, and be rewarded with Miss Darrow's pretty hand.’
* * * *
The voyage home, on a heavily–armed British warship carrying sixteen guns in addition to a full compliment of civilian passengers, seemed interminable. It was hazardous and terrifying, too. A fleet of French privateers stalked the solitary British vessel all the way to the Maldives. Then, storms in the Indian Ocean rent the rigging and tore the sails to tattered shreds. A series of squalls off the Cape Verde Islands made Owen vow that if, by the grace of God, he made it to Belait, he would never venture from dry land again.
A violent gale in the Bay of Biscay almost succeeded in sending the gallant little frigate to the bottom of the sea. But finally, as the Captain had promised it would, the ship rounded the coast of Brittany and entered the English Channel.
‘Come, sir. Will you have a sight of Albion?’ A jaunty young midshipman, who had just come off the watch, offered Owen the use of his telescope.
Owen accepted the offer readily. Now, descrying green hills and rolling pastureland, he found he wanted to weep. For at last, at long last, he was home.
England was so beautiful! So clean and wholesome. So impossibly, gloriously green. As the coach sped on its way through the southern counties, as acres of pasture and meadow, woodland and common and heath were spread out before him, dozing in the soft summer sunshine, Owen knew he had done the right thing. He had been exiled long enough, and had earned the right to come home.
Very early one Thursday morning, he crossed the county boundary into Warwickshire. An hour or two later, as he stepped from his hired chaise, and gazed up at the front elevation of Easton Hall, the tears came into his eyes once again. He must have been mad! How else could he have even considered leaving this lovely place, with its dear inhabitants, its beloved woods and fields and groves, and so many happy memories? But then he recalled that one inhabitant was not so dear.
He sighed. But then he squared his shoulders resolutely. He had worked hard, striven faithfully, and if his uncle was still disposed to dislike him, there was nothing more he could do.
‘Owen? Great God in heaven! It is you!’ The small, fair–haired woman who came running down the grey stone steps of the manor house was beside herself with
delight. Her dressing gown flapping undone, she threw herself into her cousin's arms. Beaming up at him, she hugged him, then kissed him, and then she hugged him again.
‘Maria?’ Blinking and completely bemused, Owen gazed down at her. ‘It is Maria, isn't it?’
‘Yes, of course! But isn't this shocking?’ Still smiling, Maria shook her head. ‘Here am I, a respectable married woman, embracing a man who is not her husband, and in full view of the servants, too. I'm not even dressed!
‘But today, you see, I woke at dawn. When I heard the chaise, I thought my imagination must be playing tricks on me. All the same, I glanced out of the window — and there you were, looming out of the morning mist!’
‘It is rather early,’ Owen agreed. Coming to himself, he took his cousin's hands in his, then stepped back to look at her. ‘Well, now. Are you and Mr Harding here on a visit?’
‘Not exactly. I'm staying here with the girls, while Charles is away on business.’
‘But is the rest of the family at home?’
‘Oh, certainly. They're all still abed, of course. But if I go and tell them you've arrived, they'll be up betimes. Have no fear of that!’
Disengaging her hands, Maria linked her arm through her cousin's. ‘Dear Owen!’ she cried, dashing away a tear. ‘It's wonderful to see you here again! Come. Let's go inside.’
So now Maria, these days Mrs Charles Harding and the mother of two fair–haired, hazel–eyed daughters, led the weary traveller into the entrance hall of the manor house.
There, yawning footmen were shrugging on their jackets, house dogs stretched and gave themselves rousing shakes, and blear–eyed maidservants were just beginning to go about their daily tasks. As Mrs Harding led a good– looking, smartly–dressed young gentleman through the vestibule, then up the stairs, dogs and servants stared, in horrified disbelief. What could the young lady be thinking of? More to the point, what would the squire say?
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