It was on the eve of his departure on a year’s furlough that Mr Barton had thrust an unwelcome commission upon him, and looking back on it Alex was surprised to find how clearly he remembered the events of that evening. He had seen that the last of his packing was completed, and in response to an unexpected summons from Mr Barton had walked over in the hot, harsh moonlight to the Residency; conscious of a twinge of anxiety as to what the sudden summons might portend. He had already paid his formal farewell visit, and as far as he knew all official matters had been handed over in good order to his successor. He could think of nothing that had not already received his attention; but supposing some sudden crisis had arisen at the last moment to delay his departure? It did not bear thinking of.
He was to leave the next day for Calcutta, and from there, via the overland route, for England. What would England look like? … feel like? … smell like? Would it really be as cool and green and fragrant as his memory had painted it for him during the last hot and crowded and eventful years? Could two such places as the England of his imaginings and the India of the stifling present really exist in one and the same world?
His footsteps made no sound on the thick dust that blanketed the ground between the avenue of shade trees, and overhead a bone-white moon blazed in a sky that seemed almost iron-grey. The air under the great gateway of the Residency was cooler than that of the hot night outside, and Alex lingered there, grateful for the small relief of that coolness.
Standing in the shadow of the thick archway he was struck by the uncanny stillness of the night, but presently he became aware of a faint sound that came from somewhere deep in the black shadows of a banyan tree that grew to the left of the gateway and just inside the Residency walls.
From an angle of the archway, where the shadow cut across the white, moonlit drive, Alex could see the dark mass of the banyan. There was a stone idol among the roots of the great tree; the symbol of virility roughly carved on an upright slab of stone, garishly bedaubed with orange paint and, on feast days, wreathed with garlands of fading marigold flowers. As his eyes became accustomed to the shadows he could make out figures crouched about the main trunk where the idol stood. One of them was speaking in a voice that was barely a whisper, for only the sibilance of the sound reached his ears. But the whispering voice was quick and urgent, and somehow conveyed an indefinable impression of authority.
Alex’s first and instant suspicion was that he had stumbled on a gang of dacoits intent on robbery; but as he watched he abandoned it, for the group among the roots of the banyan tree was becoming more distinct and one of them, surely, was Akbar Khan, the gatekeeper, while another was the oily down-country khansamah, cook to the Commissioner. He caught a momentary glimpse of a third profile as it turned against a narrow bar of moonlight that struggled between the hanging fringe of banyan roots, and recognized the havildar of one of the native infantry regiments stationed in Lunjore.
There were at least a dozen men in the shadow of the great tree, and Alex came to the conclusion that they were for the most part Residency servants. These were largely Mohammedan with a sprinkling of low-caste Hindus; but the havildar was a Brahmin. What, then, were they all doing, meeting in secret conclave at this hour at the feet of a Hindu idol? And why did they consider it necessary to speak in whispers?
As he listened the speaker ceased and a low-toned murmur of conversation broke out, and presently a lone figure detached itself from the group among the tree roots and moved out into the moonlight. Alex saw with surprise that it was a sadhu, a Hindu holy man. The tall, spare figure was naked except for an intricately tied loin-cloth, and in the clear moonlight the man’s ash-smeared body and long rope-like locks of ash-covered, uncombed hair appeared grey and ghost-like.
The sadhu reached the path before the gateway and without pausing walked directly towards Alex, his naked feet making no sound on the baked earth. The long, carved rosary he wore about his neck swung and clicked in the silence and Alex waited, expecting the man to check at the sight of him. He had a momentary glimpse of a grey, skull-like face blotted with a dark caste mark, in which a pair of glittering eyes showed astonishingly alive; and then, before he had quite realized it, the man had walked swiftly past him and through the dark arch of the gateway.
Alex swung round and ran after him, but the road beyond the gateway was empty, and the sadhu had vanished as completely as though he had indeed been a ghost.
Alex stared unbelievingly at the long expanse of roadway, white in the moonlight, that stretched away to the left and right past the Residency gateway. But the road was lined with shade trees that were grey with the dust of breathless days, and the sharp-edged shadows of any one of them might have swallowed up the figure of the sadhu. It was only then that Alex realized that the man had probably not been aware of his presence, for the sadhu had come from the deep shadow of the banyan out into the bright moonlight, while Alex had been standing in the shadow near the mouth of the gateway, his white drill backed by the whitewashed stone. He must have been as nearly invisible in that setting as the sadhu’s ash-smeared greyness among the moonlight and shadows of the long cantonment road.
He heard a slight sound behind him and turned quickly. Akbar Khan, the gatekeeper, a shadow among the shadows, stood salaaming under the archway.
‘Where hast thou been?’ demanded Alex harshly in the vernacular, ‘and what hast thou and the others to do with a sadhu? What evil is toward?’
‘No evil, Huzoor,’ said Akbar Khan tranquilly. ‘We do but make prayer for rain.’
‘What child’s talk! Thou art a follower of the Prophet. Imal Din also; and Ustad Ali. Since when have Mussulmans made prayer to the gods of the Hindus, or consorted with their holy men? And what has Havildar Jodah Ram to do with such as Bulaki of the sweeper-log?’
‘Huzoor,’ said Akbar Khan, ‘in evil times, when the rains fail, we suffer as one. The monsoon tarries and the crops die. Soon, if the rains delay overlong, there will come a great famine and many will die - Mussulman and Hindu, Sikh and Bengali together. Yonder fakir makes petition to his gods for rain. While we Muslims call upon Allah for rain, the Hindus of the city call also upon their gods. That is all.’
‘Hmm,’ said Alex. ‘In the circumstances it is almost conceivable that you might be speaking the truth. But I don’t believe it, and I don’t like it. And don’t leave the gate unattended again, you old reprobate.’
Akbar Khan, to whom these last remarks, spoken in English, were unintelligible, salaamed deeply and drew back against the wall as Alex walked past him and up the long, curving drive towards the big white single-storeyed house among the flame trees.
From a courtyard behind the house a woman’s voice could be heard singing a shrill, quavering Indian song to the accompaniment of a sitar. It stopped suddenly, as though checked by an order, as Captain Randall mounted the verandah steps, his boots ringing loud on the stone. A white-clad figure rose with a rustle from the matting and, salaaming low, pattered away to a lighted doorway screened by a chik - a curtain of split cane - that led into the Commissioner’s drawing-room. Alex could see the crouching figure of a punkah-coolie seated cross-legged in the shadows, his body bowing to the rhythmic tug and release of the rope, and from inside the room came the familiar flap and fall of the punkah cloth, a clink of bottles and glasses and the murmured Hindustani of the native servant.
‘What’s that? What’s that?’
The Commissioner’s voice was thick and blurred and Captain Randall’s mouth twisted in a fleeting grimace of impatience and contempt.
The servant lifted the split-cane curtain and the Commissioner’s bulky figure appeared in the doorway, black against the yellow lamplight.
‘That you, Alex? Come in. Come in. Just the man I wanted t’see. Sid-down. Have a drink. Know why I sent f’ yer?’
‘No, sir. Nothing gone wrong with my furlough, I hope?’
‘No, no. That’s all right. It’s just that I want you t’do something fer me. Favour. Long story. I
t’s m’ future wife …’
He took a deep pull at the glass in his hand while the sweat trickled down his pale, puffy features and soaked into the thin Indian-style garment he wore in lieu of more formal attire.
Alex sat down and resigned himself to listen. He knew the Commissioner for a bore and a snob, and both attributes were apt to colour his conversation to an intolerable degree. He was also aware - as who was not? - that Mr Barton was affianced to a distant cousin; a great-grand-daughter of the Earl of Ware.
Conway Barton was proud of his connection with Lord Ware and lost no opportunity of mentioning the relationship, though in actual fact the connection was of the slightest; the Earl’s only daughter having married an elderly nabob whose youngest brother was Conway Barton’s father. The lady’s niece had apparently married a Spanish nobleman, and it was to this niece’s daughter that Mr Barton was affianced. The match had been arranged some five or six years previously, during the Commissioner’s last furlough in England, and it had been intended, explained Mr Barton, that there should be a long engagement - no unusual thing in the circumstances - and that the marriage should take place during his next home leave. But now the Earl of Ware, who was her great-grandfather and guardian, had written to urge the return of Mr Barton and his immediate marriage to his betrothed. This course, however, was impracticable, and therefore he had decided upon an alternative arrangement …
Captain Randall smothered a yawn and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He could feel the sweat trickling down between his shoulder-blades, and his body itched with prickly heat. The punkah flapping gently to and fro above their heads had drifted to a stop as the weary punkah-coolie dozed at his post, and Alex wondered tiredly why the Commissioner had found himself unable to go home. For one of his seniority it should have been easy enough to arrange. The districts were always intolerably short of officers, but Conway Barton’s reputation did not stand so high as to class him among the irreplaceables. And why should the Commissioner have sent for him, Alex, at this hour, merely in order to discuss his projected marriage?
‘The mountain must come t’ Mahomet,’ said Mr Barton, and laughed heartily at his own wit. ‘An’ thish, m’dear Alex, is where you come in—’
‘I, sir?’ Alex sat up with a jerk, roused from his bored lethargy into apprehensive attention.
‘Yesh, you, m’dear fellow. Wouldn’t trust anyone else. But you’re a genel’man. Can’t shay the same of some others. An’ though you’re a sight too good-looking for a man, or would be if y’d only grow some hair on y’lip … wasser marrer with you anyway? it ain’t decent at your age, shavin’ your face like a demned nigger! … you don’t go much with women. Never known you tie up with a petticoat yet. Can’t shay the same of some others. ‘Tisn’t normal, but there it ish. Sho when I had to decide, I said “Randall! Just the f’llow. He’ll do!”’
The Commissioner stopped as though he had fully explained himself, and lay back in his long cane chair and drank deeply.
‘Do what, sir?’
‘What? Wha’s that? Oh; fetch her of course, m’boy. Bring her out here. Mountain t’Mahomet. Hope she ain’t a mountain. Half Spanish y’know. They can run to fat. Mountain t’Mahomet.’
For a few minutes Alex had thought that the Commissioner could not possibly be serious, but he was speedily disabused: the Commissioner was perfectly serious. He had given prolonged thought to the problem and had spent the greater part of the day in writing letters. They lay on an inlaid ivory and sandalwood table beside him as he spoke. His plans were all made. Captain Randall was to carry letters to the Earl of Ware, to Mr Barton’s betrothed, to Mr Barton’s solicitors, Mr Barton’s uncle and Mr Barton’s bankers. He was, in addition, to explain the whole matter in person to the Earl, and add his entreaties to those of the Commissioner that the Condesa de los Aguilares should set sail for India in the following year, under the charge of Captain Alex Randall and of any suitable chaperon that could be provided, when Captain Randall returned from furlough.
‘I leave it to you,’ said the Commissioner expansively. ‘Very capable f’llow. Always said so. “Randall’s the man for this,” I said. “Once they shee him they’ll realize it’s safe enough to shend - send ‘er out.” Genel’man to protect her. Makesh a difference.’
Alex had argued and protested, but to no purpose. The Commissioner was not a man to be deflected from any course of action which he had once decided to follow, and short of a flat refusal - and the incurring of the Commissioner’s enmity thereby - there was nothing he could do about it. To make an enemy of his chief over such a matter seemed absurdly quixotic, for after all, he had to return and work with the man. That work must come first, and it could be made difficult, if not impossible, if Mr Barton’s antagonism was aroused against him.
Alex fought a perpetual battle with the daily problem of how to do what appeared to him as obviously right, sensible and just, while at the same time steering clear of a direct collision with some senior official who resented his early promotion and his impatience with bumbling ineptitude. He had learned long ago the necessity of riding his temper and his impatience on a curb, but he still found it the hardest part of his work. He could not afford to quarrel with Mr Barton, and so it had ended with his accepting the distasteful commission that had been thrust upon him by his superior. But with certain inward reservations.
Alex had considered those reservations often since that hot night at the Lunjore Residency, but had been unable to come to any definite decision. There were two alternatives before him, and both were distasteful. On the one hand he was to make himself responsible for conveying a gently nurtured woman to an unknown land seething with sedition and unrest - to say nothing of the dangers and discomforts of such things as disease, intolerable heat and an almost total lack of sanitation - and eventually hand this fellow-creature into the care of a man whom he knew to be both a drunkard and a libertine. On the other hand, should he warn Lord Ware of these aspects of the affair, he would be betraying the trust of his superior officer, and stand guilty of disloyalty.
It was always possible, of course, that the Commissioner’s betrothed was well aware of the disadvantages of the match, for according to Conway Barton the marriage had been arranged some five years previously, and since the earliest that a young lady of rank would be likely to be affianced was seventeen, that would make her at least of age. But possibly she was a good deal older than that, and plain into the bargain; which would account for the aged Earl’s anxiety to get her suitably bestowed. If so, it was likely that the lady herself was fully prepared to accept the prospect of life in the East and a drunken husband of loose morals, as an escape from spinsterhood. Women were unpredictable in such matters. The solution of the problem would have to rest on the outcome of his visit to Ware, and the character and understanding of the aged and possibly senile Earl. Nothing of course could be said to Mr Barton’s betrothed, but if her guardian was a sensible man, Captain Randall had little doubt that the Commissioner of Lunjore would wait in vain for the arrival of his bride.
Medusa stumbled and recovered herself, and Captain Randall’s tired brain jerked itself back from the past and into the immediate and uncomfortable present.
The snow had turned back to sleet, and now it was raining again. No heavy, tropical, lukewarm downpour this time, but the icy, stinging sleet of the northern latitudes, that lashed at him as the wind blew in uneven gusts. For the last mile or so Medusa had been moving at a walk, picking her way uncertainly in the darkness and confused by the whirling snowflakes. But now all at once she lengthened her stride and began to trot.
Alex roused himself from his stupor of cold and fatigue and peered ahead. There were trees near by. And surely that was a glimmer of light? They were leaving the moors behind them and entering a more hospitable country of fields and hedges and woodland, and Medusa shook her head and snorted as though she knew that a warm stable and a feed of oats lay not far ahead.
The road dipped downwards, sheltered no
w by trees, and the whine of the gale over the moorland changed to the surf-like croon of wind among branches. A high wall loomed up out of the darkness; sensed rather than seen, for the wind was cut off abruptly and the sound of Medusa’s hooves rang hollowly on the roadway. The wall followed the line of the road for a mile or so and then turned away almost at right angles in front of a vast stone gateway topped by the heraldic wolves of Ware.
Lights glowed behind the windows of the lodge-keeper’s cottage and it seemed that Captain Randall was expected, for the heavy wrought-iron gates stood open. Beyond these lay a long avenue of oak trees rising out of a sea of dead bracken, and on either side stretched the open spaces of a park across which the wind, unhampered now by the high stone wall that had sheltered the road, blew in savage gusts between the tree-trunks.
Medusa broke into a gallop, and ten minutes later the park and the avenue ended in a wide sweep of gravel before the towering bulk of a great house, half-castle, half-mansion. A faint gleam of light showed from a high window, but except for that the place was in darkness.
Captain Randall dismounted stiffly, and knotting the sodden reins, looped them about the neck of a dimly seen griffin carved in weather-worn stone, and mounted the wide steps that led up to the front door. He tugged at the iron bell-chain and waited, stamping his feet on the wet stone to restore the circulation to them. After what seemed an unconscionably long wait he heard a sound of slow footsteps, and the great door creaked open. An aged man, bent and wrinkled, his white hair dressed in the manner of an earlier day, peered out at him, and then setting the door a little wider drew back to let him pass.
Captain Randall found himself standing in a vast hall that appeared even vaster in the dim light of the single branch of candles that formed the only illumination in all that wide place of shadows. He looked about him in some surprise. In such a hall one might have expected to see family portraits, weapons or trophies adorning the enormous expanse of wall. Yet here there was nothing. Nothing but a blackness that seemed to move and sway and shiver as the draught blew in through the half-open door and eddied about the hall.