Love in the Clouds

by Barbara Cartland

  “I am very much looking forward to seeing it,” Chandra answered. “It seems strange that there is not an easier route into the country.”

  “The Nepalese find it easy enough. They are used to carrying heavy loads on their backs. They bring in woollen goods, furs and sheep and I am told that, when the Prime Minister wanted a grand piano, that they packed it in an enormous wooden crate and it came on this same route on the shoulders of some hundred carriers!”

  “That sounds to me sheer cruelty!” Chandra exclaimed.

  “They like their country to belong to them and to no one else,” Lord Frome replied, “and who shall blame them? I think everybody would like a little Eden where they can be alone.”

  “It would, of course, depend upon whom you shared it with.”

  “That goes without saying,” Lord Frome said coldly.

  The servants left the room and he went on,

  “I suppose I should have asked you if you have everything you need. If not, don’t hesitate to tell Mehan Lall or me.”

  “I have everything, thank you,” Chandra said, “and now, my Lord, if you will excuse me, I will go to bed and prepare myself for tomorrow.”

  She rose from the table as she spoke and for a moment Lord Frome did not move.

  Then he said,

  “I have been rather remiss in not asking you what is your Christian name. It is certainly something that, as your supposed husband, I ought to know.”

  “It is Chandra.”

  “An Indian name,” Lord Frome remarked, “which I know, means ‘the moon’.”

  “Both my father and mother loved India,” Chandra replied.

  She had reached the door before Lord Frome rose to his feet.

  “Goodnight – Chandra,” he said.

  There was a pause before her name and she knew that he forced himself to say it.

  “Goodnight, my Lord,” she replied formally, but, as she found her way to her bedroom, she was smiling.

  She had forced him into the position where he had to ask her what he wanted to know and that, she felt, was a triumph, although a very small one.

  She wondered how much longer he would keep up his aloof attitude and his resentment of the fact that she was there at all.

  It would be difficult, she thought, for him not to talk to her and not to be more friendly when they were actually looking at manuscripts and discussing their merits.

  ‘One thing is quite certain,’ she told herself. ‘He may think that he is a determined and dedicated bachelor entirely through his own choice, but he would find it very difficult to find any woman who would put up with him, even though he is a Lord and doubtless very rich.’

  As she undressed, Chandra thought sleepily how she had always imagined that one day she would find a man she loved and who would love her and they would be as happy together as she and her father and mother had been.

  Money was not really important, although one did not actually want to starve.

  What would be exciting in a marriage would be to have the same interests, the same ambitions.

  It was extraordinary, when she thought of it, how very few young men she had actually met.

  The visitors they had had in the last five years had all been her father’s contemporaries because, with the exception of Lord Frome, he did not know any younger men who had devoted their lives to the search for and the translation of the Sanskrit writers.

  It seemed strange that they should all be so old. Sir Brian Hodgson had been only nineteen when he had first gone to Nepal and become interested in the undiscovered treasures with which the Monasteries abounded.

  He had also begun then his interest in the flowers and plants of the country and the animals and birds which had never been catalogued before.

  Chandra had read one of his letters that had been published after his death, in her father’s book in which he said,

  “Zoology and the branches of birds and quadrupeds amuse me very much. I have three native artists always employed in drawing from nature. I possess a live tiger, a wild sheep, a wild goat, four bears, three civets and three score of our beautiful pheasants – a rare menagerie!”

  ‘I want to sketch,’ Chandra thought.

  Riding through the woods, she had not seen a bear or a civet, but she had had a quick glimpse of several pheasants and longed to discuss their beauty with somebody.

  The Himalayan pheasant is, she had always known, one of the most beautiful birds in the world.

  She climbed into bed and, as she fell asleep, she was thinking how she would like to be on this journey with somebody she loved.

  Someone who would understand how the beauty of everything she saw, whether it was the flowers, the pheasants or the trees, was etched in her mind so that she felt she could never forget it.

  *

  She hardly felt that she had closed her eyes before she was awoken by a sharp knocking on the door and she knew that it was Mehan Lall calling her.

  Yawning, she began to get out of bed only to find with dismay that she was extremely stiff.

  It was quite cold and she longed at that moment for a warm bath which would ease away the aches and pains of her body.

  But there was no time even to think of such luxuries.

  Quickly she put on her riding habit, remembering that as they were going higher she might need warmer clothing than she had worn on the previous day.

  There had been among her mother’s clothes, a coat lined with lamb’s wool which she had always said was her most treasured possession when they were travelling.

  Chandra pulled it from her trunk and, when she was dressed, told Mehan Lall to strap it to her saddle so that she could put it on when she needed it.

  He understood, then Chandra ran in a hurry to the room where she knew breakfast would be waiting.

  She saw, as she entered with a feeling of consternation, that Lord Frome had just finished and was in the act of rising from the table.

  “You are late!” he said abruptly.

  “I am sorry,” Chandra said, “I rose as soon as I heard the knock on the door. But tomorrow I will ask if I can be called earlier.”

  She felt that he was not placated by her explanation, but merely said as he walked towards the door,

  “We shall be leaving in four minutes!”

  She thought his rudeness was insufferable and she longed to tell him that in that case he could leave without her, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that, if she did so, he might, in fact, leave her alone to follow as best she could.

  The coffee was too hot to swallow quickly, so she was forced to leave her cup half-full and she only managed to eat a very little before she went outside to find the whole baggage train waiting for her and Lord Frome already mounted on his pony.

  Feeling rather as if she was a schoolgirl who had arrived after the class had started, Chandra allowed herself to be helped into the saddle, Lord Frome rode off and she followed immediately behind him as she had done the day before.

  Now there was a steep descent into a small valley, then they started to climb again.

  Here the road was as bad as anything Chandra had ever known and she could easily understand that the Nepalese Government considered the mountains, with their formidably steep ascents and descents, as part of their natural fortifications on which they relied to keep out unwelcome visitors.

  They stopped for a midday meal and Chandra found that it was not only difficult for her to move but also very painful.

  However, she was determined to say nothing and was only glad for the moment that she could stretch herself and sit in a different position from that in which she had to ride.

  They had been climbing for some time and the view below them was very beautiful as were the mountains they could now see in the distance.

  In the sunshine the peaks were not only white but seemed to turn from pink to red, to gold. Chandra had heard it called ‘the flowering of the snows’.

  It was so lovely that once again she longed
to have a companion with whom she could enthuse over such beauty and who would understand.

  Lord Frome was still looking aloof and what she described as ‘surly’ and so she sat in silence looking away from him at the view trying to forget that he even existed.

  Even so, she felt as if he encroached on her. He was very like a dark cloud amongst the sunshine or, she thought, a menacing rock.

  “If you have finished, I think we should be pushing on,” he suddenly said abruptly, making her start.

  “Yes, of course,” Chandra agreed.

  She put on her hat that she had taken off while they were sitting in the shade and took a last drink of the fruit juice which had been provided for their meal.

  Then she walked rather slowly and carefully towards her pony, which was waiting for her.

  The syce helped her into the saddle and she thought as she picked up the reins, that she was going to have difficulty in walking at all when they arrived at where they were to stay the night.

  Now it was uphill all the way and the syce told her that one of the reasons they were moving away as quickly as they could from the valley was that it was easy to catch malaria there.

  Chandra knew that this was true and she had no wish to contract the dreaded disease which had affected her father’s health and was, she was quite sure, the reason why he now had a weak heart.

  Even so, she found the pace at which Lord Frome was moving difficult to follow and there began to be a longer and longer distance between his pony and hers.

  Finally he looked back, drew his animal to a standstill and waited until she reached him.

  “You must try to keep up,” he said sharply. “We still have a considerable way to go before we can stop for the night.”

  “I will do my best,” Chandra answered, “but you must realise that the ponies are tired.”

  “They are used to it!” he retorted.

  She knew this was a suggestion that she was not and therefore it was her fault and not that of the animal she was riding.

  She was quite certain that Lord Frome was making the ride more difficult than it need be and trying deliberately to make her feel uncomfortable.

  He had certainly succeeded in that, she told herself a little later, for it was now agony to go on riding and, after another hour had passed, she began to feel so exhausted that she thought she might fall from the saddle.

  If she did so, she would doubtless roll down the mountain, over and over on the stones until she was battered into insensibility.

  She clutched the front of her saddle and forced herself to make the pony she was riding keep up with Lord Frome. At the same time trying not to scream because her body ached in every muscle.

  ‘I am sure Papa would have felt the same after being so inactive for so long,’ she thought.

  But that was no consolation and every step her pony took over the rough stones seemed to jolt her body unbearably.

  She was so exhausted that when at last her syce said with a note of elation in his voice,

  “Look, Lady Sahib!” it was difficult to understand what he was trying to say.

  Then she saw ahead of her what appeared to be a small village or fortification on top of yet another steep incline.

  Up, up they went and now at last, after what seemed to be a long drawn-out agony of time, there was the same sort of building where they had stayed the night before looking even more primitive and dilapidated.

  It was surrounded by several dirty huts, their roofs patched with heavy stones, in which lived a number of ragged children.

  Slowly and with great difficulty Chandra dismounted and went into the rest house.

  It seemed so small that for a moment she wondered if she would have a room to herself or, as was usual in Chinese inns, the travellers would all sleep together on a kind of platform.

  But she found a room, dusty and in need of cleaning, but she was too tired to care.

  She sat down on a chair which creaked beneath her weight and did not move until Mehan Lall came in with her baggage.

  He put her trunk down on the floor and unstrapped it, laid the quilt on the bed and unpacked her pillow.

  Then he went from the room closing the door behind him.

  ‘I must undress and change,’ Chandra thought, pulling off her hat.

  Then somehow, she did not know how it happened, everything vanished into a grey mist.

  *

  Lord Frome, having washed and changed for dinner, waited impatiently.

  He was not particularly hungry, but he liked being served when he was ready without having to consider anyone else, least of all a woman who had thrust herself on him, as he considered it, quite unnecessarily.

  He drank a whisky slowly, thinking as he did so that tomorrow he would be in Kathmandu and start the research in which he was so interested.

  He supposed that Chandra Wardell would be some use, but he told himself resentfully that, if he had had more time, he might have been able to get hold of Professor Edmunds, who he believed, although he was not certain, was in Darjeeling.

  He was not nearly as good as Barnard Wardell. At the same time he would quite obviously be a great deal better than any woman could be.

  Lord Frome’s lips tightened ominously as he thought how infuriating it was to be forced not only to drag a woman with him over the mountains of Nepal, but to introduce her as his wife.

  All his life he had gone out of his way to prevent his name from being connected in any way with the numerous women who tried to marry him for his title and for his wealth.

  He was well aware how easy it was for a man to be forced into marriage just because, having been linked in gossip with one particular woman, he could only do the honourable thing in offering her his name.

  He had made up his mind never to marry.

  He disliked women with a violence that affected his whole outlook on life and he found the easiest way to avoid being implicated with them was to have nothing to do with the whole sex.

  This was made all the easier because of his deep interest in Sanskrit manuscripts which took him to parts of the world where women were unable to go.

  He enjoyed Tibet not only because of the treasures he discovered, but because he did not see a woman, apart from peasants, from the time he left India to the time he returned.

  Unfortunately the Viceroy had wished to hear of his exploits and, when he visited him at Simla, he had found himself lionised by just the type of man-seeking women that he most disliked.

  They fawned on him, flattering him and had done everything in their power, he thought violently, to trap him. He made his escape as soon as it was possible.

  It seemed incredible that, after all the trouble he had taken to get into Nepal, which had not been easy, that in his moment of triumph the whole pleasure of it should have been spoilt by Chandra’s appearance in place of her father.

  Lord Frome genuinely liked the Professor and appreciated his erudition which he quite rightly considered was unequalled.

  It was farcical to imagine for one moment that his daughter, so young she looked like a schoolgirl, could have anything like the expertise of her father.

  It was typical of a woman’s vanity for her to assert that she had.

  But whatever he felt about Chandra, Lord Frome knew that he was forced, because of the difficulty of obtaining another permit for a later date, to take her with him once she had reached Bairagnia.

  He had been so angry at first when she had appeared unexpectedly and he found that the only thing he could do was to pass her off as his wife that he very nearly abandoned the whole expedition and told her, as he wanted to do, that she could go to hell.

  But Lord Frome was very obstinate in getting his own way.

  If he wanted to go to Nepal he intended to go to Nepal and to have everything upset by one tiresome woman was more than he could contemplate.

  ‘I have to take her,’ he had told himself through gritted teeth. ‘I just hope to God she is of some use, alth
ough I very much doubt it.’

  He had not explained to Chandra the real reason why he was so insistent that she should travel as his wife.

  This was because the new British Resident, Colonel Wylie, who had not been in Kathmandu for long, had advised him against approaching the Monasteries with a view to inspecting their manuscripts.

  “I think,” Colonel Wylie had written, “it would be a mistake to take any further treasures of such sort from the Nepalese. Sir Brian Hodgson, as you well know, gave a great number of the Sanskrit manuscripts both to the Royal Asiatic Society and to the India Office. I cannot help thinking that future generations will think these valuable and unique works should remain in Nepal where they belong.”

  It was because Lord Frome had persuaded the Viceroy to overrule Colonel Wylie on this point that he was determined he would not give the British Resident any possible excuse to complain about him personally.

  To arrive in Kathmandu with a young girl whom he could merely explain away as an authority on Sanskrit would, if repeated, which it would be in Viceregal circles, make him the subject of raised eyebrows.

  It might also invite a polite, thinly veiled rebuke for letting down the prestige of the British aristocracy in a backward country like Nepal.

  Furious at having to stoop to such a deception, but knowing that it was necessary if he was to continue his journey, Lord Frome had surrendered himself to the inevitable.

  He loathed what he had to do and hated Chandra quite unreasonably because she was instrumental in what he thought was an undoubted humiliation.

  As he finished the glass of whisky in his hand, Lord Frome realised that the servants were still waiting and there was no sign of Chandra.

  “Tell the Lady Sahib that dinner is ready!” he ordered.

  “I have knocked on her door, Lord Sahib,” his personal servant replied, “but there was no answer.”

  Lord Frome frowned.

  Was the damned woman being deliberately difficult, he asked himself, keeping him waiting while she titivated herself up. Or was she too tired to come to dinner? In which case she might have the decency to say so and he could get on with his meal.