The Lotus and the Wind Page 2

  Anne sank slowly to her knees beside the lone man. She did not feel the sharp stones beneath her. She caught hold of the knife-handle in his back and pulled. The blade grated on bone, blood bubbled under her fingers. If she had been told to do it she could not have, but it did not seem horrible now. He needed all she could give him. Anger against his enemies nearly suffocated her.

  The blade grated free. For half a minute the blood oozed out through the lone man’s robe, then it stopped. Anne lifted her head, the tears wet on her cheeks, and saw the two Gurkhas standing beside her. They looked down, their mouths hard; one of them stirred the wounded man with the toe of his boot. ‘Wakhli, badmash,’ he said, and shook his head and wrinkled his nose.

  Anne whispered, ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to carry him down.’ She made motions of lifting the man, who lay still on his stomach, his head turned to one side. She saw that his eyes were open and expressionless. His mouth hung open, but he could not move hand or foot. He had lost his turban, and the blood was clotting under his long hair.

  Boots crunched closer along the hillside towards her. Major Hayling leaned, panting, at her side, his good left hand on his thigh, sweat pouring down behind the black patch on his right eye. Five or six Highlanders came, gathered round, and peered down at the wounded man and up at the hill. One of them said, ‘Weel, ye kilt this yin, Johnny!’ and clapped the Gurkhas on the back.

  ‘No!’ Anne cried. ‘He’s not dead. And he wasn’t shooting at us. It was him the others were after!’

  Hayling frowned and said curtly, ‘Get a blanket. Hurry.’ One of the Highlanders shambled away down the hill.

  Hayling bent over the wounded man and spoke to him softly, insistently, in a harsh tongue. At last he stood up. ‘He can’t speak. I’m afraid he’s paralysed. I wish I knew where he came from. He’s not from around here. Nor are the others, the two dead up there. If they were, it would be easier.’

  Still frowning, he stood there, his hook against the metal of his belt buckle. Anne sat down suddenly and put her head in her hands. Through her dizziness she heard Hayling ask, ‘What was this man doing, Miss Hildreth, when you first saw him?’

  His voice was alert, a little hard. He had taken off his helmet, and she saw the grey in his thick dark hair and noticed how hunched he was in the shoulders, how middle-aged now and tired. She liked him better than she had ever done.

  She told him all that had happened. Hayling shook his head slowly, looking down always at the robed man on the rock, whose bleak eyes were fixed across the road towards the north. The man lay absolutely without motion or stir. Anne saw that he was still breathing.

  Hayling said, ‘They took his jezail? In every other way it seems like a blood feud. But why should they risk so much for his jezail? You’re sure it wasn’t a modern rifle?’

  ‘It was one of those long old-fashioned guns with brass bands around it.’

  ‘H’m. And they certainly weren’t trying to rob the convoy, Those aren’t quite ordinary Pathan clothes. He’s from farther west somewhere, from over the passes. Here he ought to be a Khattak or a Jowaki or an Afridi or a Yusufzai--but he isn’t.’

  The Highlander returned, carrying a blanket, and with the help of three other soldiers began to lift the wounded man, not gently, on to it. Hayling snapped, ‘Careful there! He’s badly wounded. And he’s not an enemy.’

  When the soldiers raised the man Anne saw the blood on the rock where his body had lain, and she knew then that he could not live, and began to cry again. His blood formed patterns, lying in a pool in the centre, in streaks at the edges. The streaks looked like letters of the Arabic manuscripts she had seen pinned up in Indian bazaars, like the lettering in the stone of old mosques.

  She said hesitantly, shaking her head to free her eyes from tears, ‘Isn’t that--writing?’

  Hayling knelt quickly and peered at the face of the rock. It had been in the shade of the cleft where the man had lain; Anne remembered his hand had been there once, aimlessly moving. On the grey rock, in darkly shining outlines, she saw the signs:

  ‘Atlar,’ Hayling said slowly. ‘Horses--in Turki or some Turkic language. Horses.’ He stood a moment longer, then said, ‘Come down the hill now, Miss Hildreth.’

  She did not want to ask any questions. The two Gurkhas stood solicitously over her while she was sick. Then she was back on the road, and her father was there, scolding and puffing, and her mother was there, talking, talking. . . . The lone man was there, stretched on the rough blanket on the floor of a bullock cart, his open eyes staring at the roof. Hayling was there in the bullock cart, sitting by his head.

  Her father handed her into the carriage, and she felt the gruff admiration in his voice. ‘Silly girl... brave... lie back, lie back.’ She heard voices up and down the road, Major Hayling’s among them. ‘We must reach Nowshera to-night. Push on.’ The carriage wheels creaked. She half fainted, half slept.

  CHAPTER 2

  Her eyes closed, Anne knew that she was lying in a bed in one of the Nowshera dak-bungalow’s three rooms. The door was ajar into the centre room, which was used as a living and dining-room by the travellers who spent the night in the bungalow. Anne remembered waking once or twice on the journey, then dozing off again, then arriving here and refusing to be undressed by her mother. She had undressed by herself and got into bed. Now it was dark, and if she opened her eyes she would see that the oil lamp on the table in the centre room sent a vertical beam of light through the door and up the wall near her head.

  She knew her father was in there, sprawled back in a wicker chair; and her mother, sitting upright near the table; and Major Hayling--he would be by the window because the lone man was there on a cot, still without the power of speech. In her mother’s voice she had heard the desire to protest against such a misuse of dak-bungalows, which were reserved for European travellers. But the lone man lay there. His presence and the forms of death that sat at his head filled both rooms, so that Anne thought: If I let my hand drop over the edge of my bed it will touch his lined face. She almost called out that she was awake, then decided not to. She was tired, and frightened that the dying man might be left alone with death if they all came to her.

  She heard her father say, ‘I still don’t understand quite, I must say. By the way, where’s the wounded Highlander?’

  ‘In the cantonment hospital,’ Hayling said, and went on to answer indirectly the Hildreths’ unspoken complaint. ‘The surgeon said there was no hope for this poor fellow, so I thought it would be better to have him here where it’s easier for me to be with him if he regains the power to speak. The surgeon said there was nothing more he could do, that even the bandages were as good as he could tie. Mrs. Collett did a wonderfully neat job--where are the Colletts, by the way?’

  ‘Ah, h’m, yes, Mrs. Collett. She and her husband are spending the night with friends in the cantonment.’ Major Hildreth coughed nervously, as he always did when circumstances forced him to bring Edith Collett’s name into a conversation. The first time, back in Meerut, he’d made the mistake of saying what a good-looking woman she was. Now Anne heard her mother sniff, and herself became angry. Mrs. Collett was supposed to be fast. Perhaps she was. But she did her best to look attractive, and she laughed cheerfully with gentlemen and had a sort of tantalizing scorn for them, which they loved. Why, on account of that, should her mother sneer even at Edith Collett’s ability to tie a good bandage?

  ‘The Colletts are going to be in Peshawar, are they not?’ Major Hayling inquired suavely. Anne could imagine the queer, curved little smile on his face, a smile that his listeners could interpret any way they chose. Major Hayling too was said to be fast, but, because he was an eligible bachelor, her mother did not mind.

  Mrs. Hildreth said coldly, ‘I believe she is. Captain Collett is going up to Afghanistan to his regiment. Why she could not stay behind in Simla or Meerut until he returns, instead of coming up to Peshawar, I am at a loss to understand.’

  ‘Oh, come, Mrs. Hildreth,
perhaps she wishes to be near her husband, for when he gets leave.’

  ‘Major Hayling, you are a man of the world. You know perfectly well that she is coming up here because in Peshawar there will be many gentlemen whose wives for one reason or another have not been able to accompany them that far.’

  Major Hayling chuckled. It was peculiar to be lying here and listening to her mother’s gossip, just as though they were all still in India proper, when they weren’t in India, and a dying man lay on the floor. She imagined she could hear his breathing, slow, faint, unsteady, under the voices in that room and under the muttering of the servants in the compound and under the singing of the soldiers in their tents. Her mind ran back down the Grand Trunk Road to the whole rushed, muddled excitement. She crouched again in the ditch, the rocky hill in front of her, and wished Robin had been there. He would have been so carelessly brave. Then she heard Major Hayling speak, more softly than before.

  ‘Anne is a very brave girl, Mrs. Hildreth.’

  A chair scraped. ‘She’s a very silly and wilful one sometimes, Major Hayling’--then hurriedly, ‘not but what she couldn’t learn--in the right hands, I mean.’

  ‘She’s a very beautiful girl too. Of course, she inherits it, so--’

  ‘Now, Major Hayling!’--more chair creakings and scrapings, and a high laugh. Anne lay furious and stiff. He knew she was awake. How dare he pretend he didn’t!

  Hayling continued, ‘I mean it--but have you noticed how exactly like Hogarth’s shrimp girl she is?’

  ‘Well, really, I don’t think I have, I mean--’

  ‘Surely, ma’am! The wide mouth, the laughing eyes, her air of health and normality. And, if I may say so, a sort of provocativeness which only the utterly innocent possess.’

  ‘Well, now, Major Hayling, I don’t know, it never struck me--‘

  Anne could tell that her mother did not know the ‘Shrimp Girl’ and had not at first been sure that the comparison was complimentary. She would be thinking that shrimp girls were not usually of aristocratic descent. Anne closed her eyes and felt a flush rising in her cheeks. Her mother would have been furious if it had been Robin who’d said that just now. But Robin never would. Did he think her provocative, or--awful thought--innocent, namby-pamby? She loved him and would be everything, do anything, for him.

  Imprinted on the darkness behind her eyelids she saw herself standing naked before a long mirror. Her skin was smooth and creamy white, and she was beautiful---provocative, not innocent. But, oh dear, she was innocent. She had never seen herself like that since she was fifteen, when she’d looked once out of curiosity and her mother had caught her and scolded her furiously and been breathlessly outraged. She must look better now. Behind her eyelids she certainly did; and Robin was there, looking over her shoulder, and she liked it. Then Robin dissolved, and Major Hayling was there, looking with his one eye, but her mother came and prevented her from covering her nakedness with her hands.

  She opened her eyes. She knew for certain that as far as her mother was concerned Major Hayling could do no wrong. He was a gentleman by birth, a major, and well paid. He had lost an eye and a hand at Lucknow in the Mutiny. Her mother didn’t know, or care, that he loved Anne--but Anne knew, because she was twenty-three, and it made her care. She did not want him to be hurt. She had only got to know him since Robin went away to the war. He was not so different from Robin in spite of the gap of years between them. Only, Robin’s shyness made people want to walk around him at a distance, while Major Hayling’s presented itself and invited you to break through it.

  Her father said importantly, ‘This war, Hayling, what do you make of it? Think it will last long?’

  ‘That largely depends on the Czar of All the Russias, Hildreth. He and his advisers persuaded the Amir of Afghanistan to refuse to accept our mission last year, which caused that campaign. We have no evidence the Russians were behind the massacre of Cavagnari’s party this September, but of course it’s possible.’

  ‘And if they were, you mean they’ve got something up their sleeves, eh? You mean the Russians must have foreseen that if our envoy to Afghanistan was murdered we’d have to go to war again, eh? And that would give them their chance to interfere?’

  Hayling did not answer at once. Anne wondered whether these questions were closer to his work than he cared for. Her father had no tact at all. At length Hayling said, ‘That’s something we have to think about.’

  ‘And find out about, eh?’

  ‘If we can.’

  ‘I hope you do, by George! Those dashed Russians have been gobbling up Asia like--like hyenas! Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara--what’s the name of that place Burnaby rode to?--Khiva. If we don’t put our foot down they’ll be on the damned Khyber!’

  ‘Edwin!’

  ‘Sorry, sorry. I meant--’

  A light knock on the outer door interrupted him, and Anne leaned up on her elbow, trying to see around the door of her bedroom. A new voice said, ‘Major Hayling? I’ve got the maliks here.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Preston. They’d better come in first and have a look at him. Then we’ll talk on the verandah.’

  She heard the sounds of several pairs of bare feet crossing the centre room, and the swish of robes; a long silence; the feet returning to the outer door, the door opening and closing. Four or five men started talking on the verandah outside her bedroom in the harsh, deep tones of the Pushtu language. Major Hayling spoke, the others answered. Then, after a quarter of an hour, in English--’That’s interesting.’

  The man called Preston answered, ‘Yes. But not very helpful.’

  ‘Not to you. To me it may be very useful.’

  ‘Of course. Can the maliks go now?’

  ‘Yes. And thank you. Good night.’

  When Hayling re-entered the centre room Anne’s father said, ‘Find out anything?’

  ‘Only that the maliks disclaim any knowledge of the shooting. They’d heard about it long since, but they swear no local men were responsible. They don’t know the two men who were shot, and they don’t know him.’

  ‘Damn liars! Trust a snake before a woman, and a woman before a Pathan, eh?’

  ‘I don’t think they’re lying this time. I can often tell, and of course Preston knows them all personally.’

  ‘Very strange.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Anne heard in Major Hayling’s voice that he did not want to discuss the affair any more. It was time she got up. She was hungry. She called out, ‘Mother, I’m awake. Can I have something to eat?’

  When her mother came Anne said she would like her food brought in to the bedroom, but her mother answered, ‘Nonsense, we’ll wrap you up and you can come and lie on the couch. Major Hayling won’t mind, I’m sure.’

  The servants came in to set the table. The lone man lay on the floor, his eyes wide open. Anne said, ‘How is he now?’

  ‘The same. I’m afraid it’s only a question of time.’

  Mrs. Hildreth said, ‘He’ll put me off my food, I’m sure. I couldn’t eat a thing with him lying there and staring. He can’t understand what we say, can he?’

  ‘I doubt if the poor fellow can even hear, Mrs. Hildreth, let alone understand.’

  ‘Well, it’s horrible, really--ah, chicken giblet soup!’

  Anne pulled up her knees and, when she had finished her soup, said, ‘I had such a lovely dream. I dreamed that Robin was in Peshawar to meet us.’ That would teach her mother to try and sell her to Major Hayling in her sleep. It would warn Major Hayling too. But the major only smiled and put up his hand to adjust the black patch on his right eye.

  Her father grunted through his soup. Mrs. Hildreth said, ‘Robin? Do you mean Mr. Savage? I hardly think you know him well enough to call him Robin.’

  ‘I do, Mother. You know I do.’

  She began to blush and became furious with herself. She only wanted to warn Major Hayling that she loved someone else. If she could do it lightly he’d believe her, yet he would not be hurt. But she
had to blush and simper!

  Her father grumbled, ‘That boy’s too thin, in my opinion. Thin in the face, too. Sometimes I thought I could see right through him. His father, now, there’s a fine figure of a man.’

  ‘Colonel Savage is indeed very striking,’ Mrs. Hildreth said. ‘He somewhat overshadows Mrs. Savage in that respect. She is in Peshawar already, I have heard.’ She sniffed, but the sniff did not have the same import as the one for Edith Collett. This Mrs. Savage was Robin’s stepmother and a peer’s niece, and some thought her stiff-mannered. Robin never talked about her or about his father.

  Mrs. Hildreth continued. ‘The son, this Mr. Robin Savage, is--I don’t know--he makes me feel uncomfortable. So reserved. It’s not natural in a young man.’

  ‘Not usually, ma’am. But I know the family a little. I suppose you are aware that the young man suffered some ghastly experiences as a young child? His mother was killed before his eyes, I believe. Then his father had to push him down a deep shaft to escape from the Rani of Kishanpur.’

  ‘In the Mutiny?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why should that make any difference? That was twenty-two years ago.’

  ‘Twenty-two years is not a long time for memories. I was twenty-five years old in the Mutiny, when I got these’--he touched the black eye-patch with the hook--’and that was in fair fight too, in daylight. Yet the experience has altered my life. It made me something different from what I would have been--what I wanted to be.’ He spoke seriously. Suddenly flippant, he finished, ‘Instead I became a wicked and cynical old man.’ He smiled at Anne, and she flushed but could not help smiling back.

  Mrs. Hildreth raised her voice, harking back to the subject of Robin Savage for reasons well understood by her daughter.

  ‘Nevertheless Mr. Savage is not quite normal. There was a time, you know, when her father and I seriously feared that Anne here was becoming--well, too fond of him. Anne doesn’t mind me speaking about it, I know--do you dear?--because I’m sure it blew over. When are we going to get the next course served? Koi hai!’