by John Masters
She could not be sure. The distance was too great. The horse and the man came slowly, slowly on. She began to tremble. Please, Major Hayling, if you are kind, go away.
The walking man was a Gurkha, carrying two rifles--a modern Snider and an old jezail.
When Robin came to her he stopped his horse and saluted. He looked just the same as in Simla so long ago. He said, ‘Hullo, Miss Hildreth.’ He was contained, but his lips were tight as hers, and his jaw was set in the way that meant hurt or readiness to receive hurt.
‘Robin.’ She urged Beauty forward.
‘Well, I will get back to the hunt.’ That was Major Hayling’s cool voice behind her. ‘I will be seeing you again soon, no doubt. Good morning, Mr. Savage, and--for the moment--good-bye.’
‘Good-bye, sir. Who’s he, Anne?’
‘Oh--Major Hayling.’
‘What regiment?’
‘Bengal Lancers, seconded. Something to do with Intelligence. Robin, I’m glad to see you. Salaam, Jagbir.’
‘Salaam, miss-sahib.’
‘Of course, you saw Jagbir in Simla. How do you like Peshawar? I’ve only had one letter from you since you got here. That was about horses, dancing, and the man who was killed near Attock.’ The horses stepped together down the Peshawar road, the very beginning of that Grand Trunk Road which led eighteen hundred miles south-east to end in the steaming stew of Calcutta.
‘Heavens, yes! It’s awful, but I’d forgotten about him. Major Hayling promised to tell me who he was if he could, but he never has.’
‘My stepmother wrote and said everyone in Peshawar was talking about how brave you were. Congratulations.’
She spoke quickly, wanting to get away from the subject. ‘That was nothing. His life was really saved--prolonged--by Edith Collett’s bandages, I should think.’
‘She’s the wife of Captain Collett, Frontier Force?’
‘Yes. My mother doesn’t like her because she’s supposed to be fast. Mind, Robin, you be careful with her, or I’ll be jealous.’
Robin looked at her and said seriously, ‘I don’t think the situation will arise.’
She became angry with herself. She was no good at this tight-rope walking. She had become roguish and silly, like the Gillespie girl. How would Edith Collett herself have acted in this situation? Gone straight to the point probably, or somehow encouraged Robin to do so. But Robin was not an easy man to encourage.
While she hesitated he said, ‘Is my stepmother out with hounds to-day?’
‘Yes. Of course you’d like to see her. I’m not quite sure where they’ve got to by now--’
‘I don’t want to see her.’
She looked at him anxiously, for he had spoken with unexpected shortness. Surely he had not quarrelled with the only woman he could know as a mother? Surely Caroline Savage had not believed that dreadful Mclain’s stories against him, and written something in a letter to wound him? The thought made him seem more lonely, more gallant still. She stole a sideways glance at him. He had taken off his topi, and the wind ruffled his hair. He was a thin-faced, fragile Galahad, riding against the world’s meanness, the fine lines of his profile set off by the merciless severity of the background hills. After a long silence he spoke again. He always managed to surprise her. She listened to him and tried to find the cord of thought which would have led him to say this, when so many other things must be more urgent in his mind. If she could not understand that, perhaps she would never understand him. He was saying, ‘The P.V.H. is typical of all we are and all we are not. Most foreigners, and a lot of people in England, would think that it was romantic and somehow exciting to hunt jackals through this barren wild. They’d get a sense of loneliness, feel almost they were explorers. They’d think they were adapting themselves to Central Asia.’
‘Yes,’ she said slowly. She had not joined him yet. As so often before, he was looking out of some secret window, and what he saw was not what she saw or what her father would see.
He went on. ‘It’s not true. They’re adapting Central Asia to themselves. They ought to be hawking, at least.’
‘That’s cruel.’
‘So are they. Or they ought to be buying camels and trading across the passes. They ought to be missionaries, streaming west and north like locusts.’
She was really astonished now. He caught her glance and fell silent, his expression closing almost imperceptibly against her. She said brightly, ‘I almost forgot! There’s a ball at the club on the sixth. To-day’s the second, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m sure it is. We’re all going, and you must come in our party. You will, won’t you? Promise.’
‘I don’t go out much, Anne.’
‘I know, but I do want you to come to this.’ She gazed full at him and felt the tears welling up in her eyes. He would see them through the veil. That would give her away. He’d know how much she was worried about him, and why. But it might be a good thing. Anything would be good that brought him back from mooning at the window she could not find. She had thought more accurately than she relished when she saw him as Sir Galahad. She remembered now that she had never been able to understand what the Holy Grail really was. She remembered that she had loved Sir Lancelot, the hot fighter, and only admired Sir Galahad. She would be Robin’s champion, but he was a-man and must fight too, in a man’s way, for his name and reputation. Soon she would be sharing them. If he saw her tears he might spring from his horse and drag her down, to kiss her fiercely and shout in her ear, ‘Marry me! We’ll go out against them!’
Robin held her eyes for a long time, leaving his horse to plod without guidance down the verge of the road. Then he said, ‘All right, Anne. I’ll come.’
She lifted her veil and with her handkerchief wiped her eyes. Now he must know. She said in a choking voice, ‘What was Afghanistan like?’
‘It was wonderful.’ She had to grip the reins in her astonishment. His voice was passionately eager. He couldn’t have seen her tears or understood anything. He had been at his window all the time. He said, ‘The wind blew from Siberia. There were tangled mountains. When we got out of them, if the air was clear, the view stretched for ever. Not a soul to see in it--though there were people, of course, hidden. I saw the Hindu Kush one day. Beyond that there’s nothing for thousands of miles. I could feel it.’
She said, ‘Isn’t it lonely, unfriendly?’
‘Lonely? I suppose so. I didn’t find it unfriendly. “The everlasting universe of Things flows through the mind . . .” I’ve been sent back for cowardice.’
Now that he had said it she could find no answer. He spoke so calmly that the hot anger she had nourished on his behalf froze within her. He ought to be fighting mad, furious over the misunderstanding. He ought to be grim. He ought to be scornfully offering her the opportunity to desert him--so that when she didn’t take it both she and he would be lifted up by their choking love and loyalty for each other. Perhaps--oh, that must be it; he spoke of the joys of loneliness because he thought loneliness would be his fate now. Already he must have made up his mind that she would not stand by him.
She put out her hand and felt for his. ‘We must fight them, Robin.’
She was practically proposing to him. Well, she wanted to, and it was leap year. Ordinary rules did not apply to Robin.
He said, ‘I don’t think I want to fight anyone, Anne. I used to be sure of that--but then I found that, because of me, other people were hurt: Maniraj, Jagbir. When I think of them and people like them, I do want to fight. But most of the time I just don’t feel the same about anything as other people do, or think in the same way.’
She knew he was right, but this was the thing she had to fight in him. She rode over it, saying eagerly, ‘It’s not true. You are like other people, only better. What happened?’ she finished lamely.
He told her, speaking in slow, short sentences, and ended, ‘Then I shot myself.’
‘Are you all right now? Does it hurt any more? How cou
ld they think you dropped the pistol on purpose?’
He looked along the road at the approaching city. ‘Perhaps I’m not meant to kill anyone. The time before I didn’t even draw my pistol. I intended to but I didn’t. The next day, Christmas Day, the general came to see me in the field hospital. He told me he would like to court-martial me. But he wasn’t going to, because I was the son of the splendid Colonel Rodney Savage, C.B. He said I was to go to Peshawar. He said if I didn’t send in my papers quickly he’d bring me back for court martial.’
‘That’s horrible! Don’t do it, Robin. We’ll get you a transfer to another regiment; then you can go back and show them. We’ve got friends. We know people. We can do it.’
‘Perhaps, dear.’ He smiled at her with so much warmth, and his eyes shone so affectionately on her, that she was ready to die of love. He went on, ‘But I don’t want to kill anyone. And I don’t want to send in my papers because that would hurt so many people. They ought not to be hurt, but they would be. I don’t know what to do.’
She was appalled. In her mind the words fell over themselves. It was not logical. How could he be an officer of Gurkhas and not kill the enemy? He meant killing someone himself, but he seemed not to mind giving orders which would help the Gurkhas to kill.
He was speaking again. ‘I had to wait for a convoy down. By then the wound was almost healed. On the way I nearly got you a present.’
‘Oh.’ This was something she could understand again. She felt as if she had travelled too fast on a fairground merry-go-round.
‘There was a man in Jellalabad. He came out to the staging camp, selling cloth and trinkets. When he saw that jezail Jagbir’s carrying’--Robin turned and motioned with his hand--’he asked to examine it. He said it was valuable, belonged to an important Ghilzai family, and offered me quite a lot of money for it. I’d just seen something he was selling that was very pretty. It was too much for my means. But if I’d sold the rifle and given half the money to Jagbir I could have bought it with the other half.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Her heart was pounding and her lips dry. He simply must not see her face now. She turned her head towards the hills. The hunters were miles away across the plain. He said, ‘It was a ring. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.’
Again the tears burst from her. She faced him and saw through the blur the lights in his eyes and the sadness and the loneliness. She said, ‘I love you, only you, no one but you.’
CHAPTER 7
Anne stepped into the third and last petticoat, pulled her dress down over her head, and walked in her stockinged feet along to her mother’s room to have the laces tightened at her back. When she returned she sat down in front of the mirror and began, with her mouth full of hairpins, to build up her hair into the hill of tightly rolled curls that Eugenie, lately empress of the French, had apparently set as fashion for all time to come. The lamplight was too soft and flattering. It made her thick hair seem auburn, when really it was a lighter, tawnier red than that. Robin would laugh if he could see her now--well, he’d smile at least. She had not seen him since that day he came back, except once in the road, and then he’d hardly said a word except that he had to hurry to work. Monday---Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday--and to-day was Friday.
Crossly she stuck another pin in place. Oh, for Edith Collett’s assurance, just for a week or two, even at the cost of tight little crows’ feet around her eyes; she opened them wide and saw they were green and large, and that, try as she might, she could not make them look soulful. Robin’s note of this morning lay unfolded on the dressing-table: ‘I shall not be able to come to dinner. Sorry ...’ and a word or two about late work--after all the battling she had gone through to force her mother to invite him. But he’d be joining them after dinner, in time for the ball. And though she had beaten down her mother’s will, recognizing with surprise its feebleness, she had had to compromise and allow her mother to ask Major Hayling as well--’Because the party he was going with has fallen through, Anne. It would be rude not to ask him after all his kindness to you. You do not appear to realize . .
The talk buzzed round and round Peshawar like swarming bees. About the war and General Roberts and Colonel This and Major That, and above all about the terrible affair at Tezin Kach, where the MacDonald Highlanders had suffered so bravely and the 13th Gurkhas had behaved so badly, especially Lieutenant Robin Savage. She mumbled angrily, working her lips in and out between her teeth, biting and bruising until the blood came to the surface to make them full and red. Perfume. She’d show her mother to-night, and Mrs. Collett too. She touched liberal dashes behind each ear, and more down in the valley between her breasts--they were big, too big, her mother said. She pushed back her shoulders and thrust out her breasts. The aroma of perfume rose overpoweringly, and she began to giggle. There was a secret store of rouge in the back of the top left-hand drawer. The ayah had bought it for her in the bazaar at Simla. She slapped some on. It looked terrible, and she rubbed hard, trying to get it off, but it wouldn’t all come. The pins were in place, her hair felt top-heavy, and her lip was nearly bleeding. She opened the door, lifted her head, and primped along the passage. The skirt clung so tightly around her thighs that she had to hobble. Most of the girls that she knew seemed to like the fashion, but she would have preferred being able to take a longer stride. In the drawing-room she lifted her bustle--exactly like a hen settling down over a clutch of eggs--and sat on the edge of a hard chair. She composed herself with some difficulty, crossed her hands in her lap, and waited.
When Major Hayling came her parents had still not finished dressing. She greeted the major carefully, and he went to stand in front of the fire. His mess-kit was grey and black with silver facings. He looked distinguished and deceitfully young this evening, in spite of his grey hairs. After a few moments her father and mother came to help her out.
As soon as they sat down to dinner her mind ran off, although she heard what the others were saying and tried to keep a place in their conversation. When she’d said to Robin--that last beautiful Monday morning on the plain--‘I love you,’ the words had come from inside her of their own volition. She had not meant to speak then. But she had said those words and immediately afterwards found she had no more doubts. And Robin had answered, ‘I must love you.’ Meaning, I must love you, I’ve got to? Or, I must love you, because I think of you so much? Why ‘must’? She frowned and grappled with her thoughts.
‘I beg your pardon, Mother? Oh, dear, yes, of course.’ She dabbed her lips and got up. Major Hayling leaped attentively to pull back her chair. She followed her mother out of the dining-room, leaving Major Hayling and her father to their port. Even before the bearer closed the door behind them her mother began a rambling, nagging tirade about her company manners. A minute later, the doors of her mind firmly closed against the familiar, scratchy voice, Anne was away again. Sunlit clouds of content cushioned her. Then someone came to insult Robin, and she was haughty, bitingly cold, annihilating the faceless someone with a look. The someone grovelled to apologize. Another someone came. She wanted to scratch him with her nails. Robin stood by, too hurt to fight. She did all the fighting.
After dinner they all waited in the drawing-room for Robin. Half-past nine struck, and he had not come. Her mother fidgeted on the edge of a chair. Her father pulled out his watch, checked it twice against the grandfather clock in the comer, and muttered, ‘Dash it, young Savage might attempt to be here at the time he’s invited for. I don’t know what these young men are coming to, do you, Hayling?’
‘No, indeed. But I expect Savage will have some very good reason for his tardiness. We old fogies must be careful nowadays before we sit in judgment on those who already think we have both feet in the grave.’
‘Ah, h’m. Fogies? Us? Well, I suppose we’re not getting any younger.’
‘Of course Robin will have a good reason,’ Anne broke out sharply at Major Hayling; but she couldn’t really touch him, because he was pretending to be on her side.
At
ten o’clock Mrs. Hildreth jerked to her feet. ‘We can’t wait a minute longer, Edwin, or we’ll lose our table. If Mr. Savage is able to come to the ball he must meet us there.’ At the door she turned to Major Hayling, and her voice became a coo. ‘You are taking Anne in your trap, are you not, Major Hayling?’
‘I did hope that I would be allowed that great privilege--oh!’
‘I am sorry, Major Hayling.’ Anne lifted her heel off his instep and looked him in the eye. She was not afraid of him any more, nor was she shy with him. In fact, he was fun when you learned to behave according to his scandalously incorrect rules. Now he was smiling and apologizing for getting his foot in her way. When her mother looked away he cast his eye up and down her in that manner he had, as though he could see through her clothes. There was a statue--’The Slave Market,’ or some such title; he reminded her of that. She pulled her wrap tightly around her. It was bitter cold too.
‘Wind from the north-east,’ said Major Hayling, raising his head to sniff. ‘Straight out of a thousand miles of mountain and two thousand miles of steppe beyond that.’
‘May we go now, please? I am becoming chilled.’
Once the pony had started the light trap moving he shifted the reins to the crook of his right arm and with his left hand got out a cigar and lit it. She watched, fascinated but knowing she shouldn’t help. The queer and warming thing was that she did not want to. He saw her watching and said, ‘You learn. That’s the easiest thing to get over.’
