Chandra drew in her breath.
Then she said,
“I have something to suggest to you.”
*
It was after the doctor had left that Chandra went upstairs to her father’s bedroom looking a little apprehensive.
He was lying against his pillows and she knew as she entered the room what he was going to say.
“If you have been listening to that old windbag,” he said threateningly, “and intend to stop me from going to Nepal, you can save your breath!”
Chandra sat down on a chair by the bed.
“You are not going to Nepal, Papa,” she said. “You are going to Cannes.”
“To Cannes?” her father exclaimed. “What on earth are you talking about, Chandra?”
“I have talked it over with Dr. Baldwin and he knows of a charming little pension where you and Ellen will be happy and comfortable. He is also friendly with one of the local doctors who will look after you.
“I think you have gone off your head!” her father retorted. “I am going to Nepal and no one, you, Baldwin or anyone else, is going to stop me!”
As Chandra did not speak, he paused and went on,
“It is not only because I have been looking forward to the trip and because I wish to find the Lotus Manuscript, it is because, as you know, we need the money.”
“We have the money.”
“We can hardly keep it if I do not fulfil my obligations,” her father replied.
“Now listen, Papa,” Chandra said, bending forward to take his hand in hers. “I love you and I don’t intend to let you die on some Nepalese mountain when I am not with you. You know as well as I do that you could not undertake an arduous ride at this moment with your heart in the condition it is.”
“I have to, Chandra. I have to!”
“No,” Chandra replied. “I have arranged everything and I will not let you risk your life for the Lotus Manuscript. It’s not worth it!”
She forced a smile to her lips as she said,
“It has existed for over two thousand years already and whether you find it or not, it will doubtless go on existing for another two thousand!”
“What are you trying to say to me?” her father enquired.
Now his voice sounded suddenly weary as if the spurt of energy he had put into defying her had left him exhausted.
“What I have decided,” Chandra said quietly, “is that you shall go to the South of France with Ellen and I will go to Nepal in your place.”
“Y-you?”
The word seemed to come jerkily from his lips.
“Why not?” Chandra asked. “You know as well as I do that I can recognise the age of a manuscript as competently as you can.”
“Do you really imagine that Frome will take you with him?”
“He may refuse at the last moment,” Chandra replied, “but by that time I shall have reached the borders of Nepal and unless he is to go on alone, which I doubt, it will take him some time to find anybody as experienced as you – or me for that matter – to accompany him.”
Her father looked at her in astonishment, then to Chandra’s surprise, he began to chuckle.
“I cannot believe that Frome will ever have found himself in such a difficult predicament,” he said. “At the same time, it is something we cannot do.”
“Why not?” Chandra asked.
“Because he has paid for my services.”
“Whatever he has paid, he cannot have you because you are not fit enough to go with him and quite frankly, Papa, it’s impossible for us to give him back his money nor do I intend to do so.”
The Professor closed his eyes for a moment and Chandra felt the hand she was holding go limp.
“It is – wrong!” he murmured.
“But it is something we have to do and I will not have you upsetting yourself about it. Just leave everything to me, Papa.”
As she spoke, she felt her father was deliberately slipping away in his thoughts from the problem that confronted him.
It was something he had often done in the past when he had felt it was either too uncomfortable or too difficult for him to extricate himself from some awkward position or make a decision that was an unpleasant one.
Then it had been a mental evasion of facing the truth, but now she knew it was also a physical one.
His heart attack had left him limp and very tired and he therefore did not wish to argue or even discuss difficulties that he could find no solution to.
“Leave everything to me, Papa,” Chandra said again.
Then, feeling he would sleep, she kissed him lightly on the forehead and drew down the blinds to shut out the afternoon sun.
Downstairs, as she expected, she encountered far fiercer opposition from Ellen than anything she had heard from her father.
“If you’re thinkin’ you can go off alone on some wild goose chase to one of those heathen, outlandish places that made your father ill in the first place, you can think again!” Ellen stipulated firmly.
“You and Papa will have a lovely time in the South of France,” Chandra replied. “Doctor Baldwin says he will be a different person by the time the winter is over.”
“And what’ll you be doin’ I’d like to know?” Ellen asked angrily.
“I shall be earning the six hundred pounds that Lord Frome gave to Papa and which we are not in a position to return.”
“No decent young lady would go off alone un-chaperoned and without even a maid with her.”
“You can hardly expect me to take a lady’s maid riding over the mountains,” Chandra answered, “and even if I agreed to take one, whoever would we find intrepid enough to accompany me?”
Ellen muttered something rude beneath her breath and Chandra, who always knew how to handle the elderly woman, put her arm around her shoulders to say,
“Don’t worry, Ellen. I can look after myself and you know that Lord Frome is sending a servant to meet Papa at Bombay, so there will be somebody to see to the luggage.”
“That’s as maybe!” Ellen admitted, who had seen the efficiency of a superior Indian servant, “but you’re too young and it’s certainly not proper for you to be alone with a gentleman like Lord Frome.”
“You need not worry about his Lordship,” Chandra smiled. “Papa says he is a woman hater and I expect he will have a fit when he sees me anyway!”
“He looked a decent enough gentleman when I let him in the other afternoon,” Ellen said grudgingly, “but one never knows.”
“If he attacks me, which is extremely unlikely,” Chandra said lightly, “I can always shoot him with Papa’s pistol. I see you have included that in the baggage.”
“Now, Miss Chandra, I’ll not have you talkin’ like that! It’s not right nor proper and you know it’s not. Send a cable to his Lordship telling him your father’s ill. After all, it’s the only right thing to do.”
“And if I do that,” Chandra answered, “shall I put a postscript at the end saying, ‘Sorry we cannot return your money. Spent a great deal of it.’?”
Ellen did not answer this question and Chandra went on pressing her advantage,
“And what about Papa and the South of France? Doctor Baldwin said it’s just what he needs and you know as well as I do, Ellen, that the cough he had last winter would be the worst possible thing for his heart.”
Ellen slapped the cloth she had been holding in her hand down on the table.
“I don’t know what the world’s comin’ to, that I don’t!” she said tartly, but Chandra knew that she had won the argument.
It was however, one thing to convince her father and Ellen that she had to go to Nepal, but something quite different to set off alone.
There was a feeling of exhilaration in it and yet at the same time she was nervous.
It was not the travelling that alarmed her. She had travelled during her childhood and up to five years ago when her mother died, in all sorts of strange parts of the world.
She had been to India and e
ven though her father had been ill for some months and both she and her mother had found the heat of the plains almost unbearable, it was still a country that was always vividly in her thoughts.
It was exciting now to be going back to find if it was still as beautiful and as stimulating as it had been when she was very young.
What made her nervous was that she might fail to persuade Lord Frome when she arrived to let her take her father’s place.
A further talk with Dr. Baldwin the following day had made her aware that, for her father to regain his health, he required not only a change of atmosphere, but far better food than he had been eating these past months.
Ellen was a good cook, but she could not cook what they could not afford to buy.
Although she had done wonders with eggs and vegetables, Dr. Baldwin insisted that the Professor’s health needed building up with foods which in general had been too expensive to be bought regularly.
Chandra found herself thinking of the second six hundred pounds that Lord Frome had promised to pay her father to work on the manuscript, if they found it.
There were so many things, so many comforts that could be provided with such a sum in the bank and she was sensible enough to realise that the first six hundred pounds would be spent by the end of the winter.
‘Lord Frome has to take me with him!’ she told herself.
She felt a little sinking feeling inside as she remembered the hard authoritative note in his voice.
She was certain that he was the kind of man who would think of no one but himself and have no qualms, if it suited him, about sending her home ignominiously.
The necessity was that it should not suit him.
He had to find her indispensable, just as he considered her father would be.
‘I shall have to convince him,’ she told herself, but she felt despairingly as if she would be unable to do so.
*
Leaving home had been easier than she had anticipated, because her father had given up the unequal struggle of arguing with her.
She knew it was because he felt worse in health than he was prepared to admit and also had the honesty to admit that such an arduous journey, at the moment, was completely impossible for him.
He would have remonstrated once more with Chandra, but she said to him quietly,
“There are only three courses we can take, Papa. We can wire Lord Frome that you are ill and unable to join him, in which case we are under an obligation to return his money. Or I can go in your place and, if he refuses to take me with him into Nepal, then it will be his fault and I will have no compunction about keeping every penny of the money he has given us already.”
“And what is the third alternative?” her father asked.
Chandra laughed.
“There is not one, unless you can have a brilliant idea!”
A faint smile came to the Professor’s lips.
“For once you have set me a conundrum for which I have no answer,” he said. “Perhaps your second idea is best.”
“That is just what I have been saying and if his Lordship is disagreeable I can just say meekly that we tried to help him and it’s not our fault that we failed.”
However, she knew from her father’s expression that he did not think Lord Frome would accept his argument.
As the ship set off from Southampton dock, she found herself feeling that every mile they travelled brought her nearer to a sinister and rather frightening man who was encroaching all the time upon her imagination.
Before she actually left The Manor, there was too much to do to have time to think of anyone except her father and herself.
She and Ellen had been so busy preparing for his departure that it was an almost impossible task to change everything over for her.
Fortunately, at the same time as keeping all her father’s equipment for travelling in the strange places they had visited for so many years, Ellen had also put away her mother’s and Chandra, having grown in the last five years, could now fit into them perfectly.
The riding clothes and boots all might have been made for her and were in fact made of far better material and had originally cost more than they could have afforded at the moment.
“The rest of your clothes are a disgrace, Miss Chandra,” Ellen said disparagingly.
“I think it is unlikely that I shall need to wear anything attractive,” Chandra answered, “and of course Mama’s ordinary clothes are sadly out of date.”
She smiled and added,
“Not that I suppose that would matter in Nepal.”
She had, however, a feeling in the back of her mind that one thing Lord Frome would not want would be for her to look feminine or womanly.
She thought that perhaps the sensible walking boots and ankle-length skirts that were suitable for mountaineering would be far more to his taste than the frilled gowns that she remembered the Memsahibs wore in India in the evening and the muslin dresses which graced them during the day.
Pressing things that had been folded away for such a long time until her back ached, Ellen grumbled and at the same time warned Chandra a thousand times a day of all the horrifying things that might happen to her.
It was not only the dangers of high mountains, wild animals and bad food which concerned Ellen, but that there might be men who would be attracted to her and she would be defenceless and at their mercy without a chaperone to protect her.
“I have told you, Ellen, that I will keep them off with Papa’s pistol,” Chandra said.
“Now be sensible, Miss Chandra,” Ellen replied. “Here’s you, knowin’ nothin’ more about the world than a new-born baby, going off by yourself and meetin’ Heaven knows what sort of gentlemen in them outlandish places.”
“I have told you, Ellen, there are no Europeans in Nepal since they are not allowed in. There will only be the British Resident, who is doubtless an old man with a white beard and Lord Frome, who is a woman hater.”
She laughed and added,
“Instead of worrying what they will do to me, you ought to be hoping I will meet Prince Charming riding over the mountains who will sweep me off my feet and turn out to be a millionaire.”
“I’ve always hoped that one day, Miss Chandra, you’d meet a nice young gentleman,” Ellen said, “with a little bit of money and settle down to a happy married life, which is somethin’ you are not likely to find in a country such as Nepal, wherever that might be.”
Chandra laughed.
“You must ask Papa to show you a map of it, Ellen, then you will be able to think of me surrounded by small dark men who will obviously think I look very queer to them, as they look to us.”
“I don’t know what your mother would say, that I don’t!” Ellen exclaimed, as she had done a thousand times already, but Chandra knew that it was the end of that particular conversation.
When finally the moment came for her to drive away to the station, she felt curiously like crying.
It would have been so thrilling if she and her father could have gone together, but quite another thing to leave him behind and know that she would be alone during the long days at sea and the dusty tiring journey from Bombay to the Nepalese border.
The one issue that did not trouble her father in the slightest was the idea of her travelling alone.
To him it seemed as natural for her to ride up the side of the Himalayas as to walk to the village shops and, although Ellen fussed and fumed about her being un-chaperoned, the idea that she might fall a prey to lustful men never crossed her father’s mind.
Chandra knew that it was because in his estimation she was still the child she had always been and an assistant in whose intelligence he was interested, but not her looks.
The night before she was to leave she had sat in front of the mirror on the dressing table and looked at herself critically.
She decided that if she behaved quietly and ‘kept herself to herself’, as Ellen would have said, there would be no likelihood of her being worried by men appro
aching her because she was travelling alone.
She was aware that, because she was doing so, the women would look at her questioningly and would doubtless not wish to make her acquaintance.
It was then that a sudden idea had come to her and she had gone downstairs to say to Ellen,
“I wonder if it would make you happier about my journey to India if I went as a widow?”
“A widow, Miss Chandra? What do you mean by that?” Ellen asked.
“Well, you keep fussing because I have no chaperone, but if I was a widow I wouldn’t need one.”
“But you’re not a widow, so the question doesn’t arise.”
“What is to stop me from calling myself one and wearing Mama’s wedding ring? I saw it in her jewellery box when we were unpacking her clothes.”
“I’ve never heard such a ridiculous idea – ” Ellen began, then she stopped. “There might be somethin’ in what you say, Miss Chandra.”
“I think it’s a sensible idea,” Chandra said. “If anybody is so rude as to ask my age, I shall say I am twenty-three. At that age I can easily have been married and lost my husband in an accident. Or better still on the North-West Frontier. There is always fighting going on there.”
She sat down at the kitchen table with her chin in her hands.
“I know!” she exclaimed. “I shall call myself Mrs. Wardell and pretend, while I am on board ship at any rate, that I was married to Papa’s son.”
“Your father never had a son!” Ellen corrected.
“We know that,” Chandra agreed, “but the people on board ship will not have heard of Papa, so why should they know whether he had one or fifty children?”
It was an indisputable argument and finally Ellen agreed that a wedding ring might be some form of protection, but she would not go so far, she added darkly, as to say what.
*
Accordingly, Chandra went aboard the steamship wearing her mother’s wedding ring and explained to the Purser that she had been forced to take her father-in-law’s place because of his unexpected illness.
She was pleased to find that one of the best cabins had been engaged for her father on the First Class deck and the Stewards were very attentive in handling her luggage and arranging the cabin as she wished.
Love in the Clouds Page 4
