Zemindar

by Valerie Fitzgerald

  Yet this was what I had thought I wanted. There was nothing unusually pretentious about the Baines household, nothing unfamiliar to me. On the contrary: it represented all the security and stability that, until a very short time ago, I felt I wanted more than anything in the world—even Oliver. Oh, to have the opportunity, I had thought not long since, to fill my mind and my days with just such essential trivia. But now, experiencing it, I was filled with irritation, almost with disgust.

  As I left my room to meet the arriving guests, I was delayed by Mrs Baines, who tied a wide black ribbon round my left arm, explaining that all the Allahabad ladies were doing likewise as a gesture of respect to the dead of Lucknow. She was sure I would not wish to be ‘singular’. I submitted, and wondered, as she patted the bow in place with a satisfied air, what good could derive to the memory of Corporal Dines or the sixteen natives he had forced to ‘Eat a Cawnpore Dinner’ from my sable adornment. But I was a guest, so I followed my hostess meekly and contrived not to laugh when I came upon a knot of ladies and officers arguing as to whether secular music would be appropriate on such an occasion.

  ‘What would you say?’ earnestly enquired a young woman with trailing black streamers in her hair as well as on her arm.

  ‘I would say,’ I replied, ‘by all means let us have any music you care to play. What we have most needed, after a full stomach, a hot bath and a good night’s rest, has been a jolly party.’ They looked shocked, as I had known they would, so I left them and applied myself to ices and almond macaroons in the garden. Very shortly, however, I was led back to the drawing-room like an invalid, placed upon a chair near Kate and instructed not to move a step: a whole phalanx of gallant officers lived only to serve the gustatory requirements of the ‘Survivors’!

  Seated thus in state, I felt rather as the Queen must feel at a Court Drawing-Room, but wished I enjoyed Her Majesty’s privilege of instigating the conversation. Kate and I were surrounded by a changing but ever respectful crowd of men and women, who, in their efforts to be tactful while satisfying their curiosity, posed the most fatuous questions and volunteered the most inane opinions.

  ‘Oliver!’ I suddenly cried in my heart. ‘Oh, Oliver, take me away. Rescue me from this unreality!’

  Jessie had been informed that ‘of course’ the At Home for the Survivors was intended only for officers and their ladies, but since Pearl, a prized Survivor, was required to be present, she would be welcome to sit on the verandah with the child. She had also, that day, been given her tiffin on a tray in her bedroom. The British caste system, that had alternately annoyed and amused me in Lucknow in peace, had survived the agonies of Lucknow in siege.

  After nearly an hour of polite platitudes, during which I had been presented with bon-bons, embroidered sachets filled with lavender petals, and an alarming handkerchief in the form of a Union Jack, bearing the word ‘Lucknow’ at its centre and edged with black braid, I made the excuse of attending to Pearl and escaped to the verandah. Charles had just arrived and was lost in admiration of his daughter, dressed at last in frills and flounces as small girls should be. The few steps I had taken along the verandah had been sufficient to assure me that Oliver was nowhere to be seen and, as Charles began to congratulate me on my appearance, I broke in impatiently, ‘But, Charles, where is Oliver? Surely he is coming? You’ve seen him today, of course?’

  ‘We shared quarters last night. He left very early this morning.’

  ‘He left? But where did he go?’

  Charles regarded me steadily for a moment, then drew me away to where we could talk in private.

  ‘Laura, am I to presume that you have patched things up? Are matters between you and Oliver now as they were before … before the night of the Alum Bagh beacon?’

  I had not realized that he could know nothing of the sequence of letters by which Oliver and I had made our peace. Kate and Jessie now knew all, and I had taken it for granted, somehow, that Charles would also be in possession of the facts.

  I laughed, happily I am sure, and replied, ‘Yes, Charles. And better. We have at last reached a real understanding. In a strange way, that night proved a blessing to us both.’

  ‘I see. I did not know …’ His voice was grave and his eyes guarded.

  ‘Dear Charles,’ I comforted, taking his hand, ‘don’t spoil things for me. I am so happy, and I want your happiness too. You must learn to look elsewhere.’

  He sighed and laid his other hand over mine for a second; then squared his shoulders and straightened up.

  ‘I only hope you are doing right.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I am, as you will be when you think about it. But tell me, where did Oliver go, Charles? And when will he be back?’

  ‘The answer to both questions is “I don’t know”. He left at dawn, taking Ishmial and Toddy with him—which was deuced inconvenient, since I was depending on one or other of them being around to get me some stuff from the bazaar and so on. All he told me was that he was going to see some family he knows in the district to make arrangements—living arrangements. Said he was going to fix up married quarters, so then, well, then I guessed that you …’

  ‘Married quarters!’ I gasped.

  ‘Yes. Is the wedding to be so soon?’

  ‘Good heavens, I don’t know!’ But then, thinking rapidly as I spoke, I went on, ‘There is no reason, I suppose, why it should be delayed,’ and told Charles that Kate had agreed to accompany Jessie and Pearl to Mount Bellew, should I decide to remain in India.

  ‘I see,’ he commented stiffly, so that I at once felt guilty at relinquishing my duties to Pearl. ‘And you feel now that you could live in Hassanganj again?’

  ‘I cannot live without Oliver. So I must learn to live again in Hassanganj. And,’ I added, gesturing around me, ‘I don’t think it will be as hard as I expected before renewing acquaintance with all this.’

  ‘Well,’ he said with a heavy sigh, ‘all I can do is wish you happiness then, dear Laura.’ Both voice and gaze were laden with emotion that I hoped he was not going to express. To my relief, he then took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. ‘Oliver asked me to give you this.’ He took my hand and pressed it and after a moment’s hesitation, stooped and kissed my brow. Then he walked back to Pearl, leaving me alone with my letter. I tore open the seal and hastily unfolded the single sheet of paper. It bore one word: ‘TOMORROW’.

  Vexation. And delight. Maddening frustration and subdued ecstasy. The familiar irritation and the more recently acknowledged admiration. All the conflicting emotions that Oliver had always aroused flooded over me again with the knowledge that, though he had not come when I wanted him, yet his coming was imminent.

  I have little recollection of how I passed the rest of that evening, except that it was in every variety of impatience. There was music, I remember and, scruples overcome, a young officer with bushy whiskers laid his hand on his heart and sang a sentimental ballad that he first dedicated to my ‘noble and heroic’ self.

  I suppose we ate dinner, and I must have slept for some part of the night, as I awoke refreshed and eager for the ‘Tomorrow’ that was now today.

  At breakfast I found another envelope addressed in the familiarly unfamiliar scrawl of Oliver’s left hand. Its presence went unmarked by the others, so I concealed it until I could open it alone. As soon as manners permitted, I excused myself from the table and hurried to my room. This time even the single word was lacking. Instead, wrapped in a screw of tissue paper, was a little ring of rubies and pearls, such as can be bought at any jeweller’s booth in the bazaar. Intrinsically worthless, it remains my greatest treasure.

  I slipped it on the appropriate finger and ran into the dressing-room to admire it in the mirror. As I moved my hand in the morning light to bring out the fire of the rubies and the glow of the pearls, I remembered my mother telling me that she was particularly fond of the little pearl and ruby pin she had given me and which I had treasured through all our vicissitudes, since the ruby is the toke
n of love and the pearl of fidelity. Not that Oliver Erskine was likely to know that. Maddening man; if it was intended as an engagement present, why hadn’t he brought it himself? I could have waited. But then it occurred to me that the trinket was more probably in lieu of an apology for his tardiness—a placatory offering before bearding the lioness in her den!

  The ring calmed my impatience as it filled me with tenderness. I would allow him the last word. This time.

  Then, suddenly, I was beset with anxiety regarding my appearance, and scanned the glass to make sure my borrowed dress became me. It was a pretty dress, its dusky rose adding some needed colour to my cheeks. As I carefully scrutinized my face, feature by feature, I recalled a pastel likeness of myself made a year or so before Emily’s marriage, and that must still hang in the Mount Bellew drawing-room. A young round face, and neat chestnut hair parted demurely over what Oliver had termed my ‘candid’ brow. The eyes were a little too large, the brows rather too defined, and the chin too settled into determination for beauty, I remembered, as I remembered also the delicious sense of identity I had enjoyed on first seeing a representation of myself other than in a too-subjective mirror.

  The face that looked back at me now was heart-shaped and high-cheekboned, and bore shadows that defined new planes and new lines that accentuated shadows. The magnanimous brow? That remained. The eyes were deeper set, though, and looked darker. The nose was finer, the once amply curved mouth was thinner, but the chin still indicated obstinacy. No great beauty there, I thought, but the expression was an improvement on the untried assurance of the girl in the pastel. The face in the mirror was acquainted with self-doubt, the eyes, though more guarded, were also more benign, and the curving mouth, while retaining its hint of humour, also indicated a steadier gentleness. The short hair was brushed into springy curls and shone in the morning sun.

  I turned away, resigned, if not wholly satisfied.

  Kate and Jessie had taken Pearl out to be admired by acquaintances, and Mrs Baines was busy with the ordering of her household. I picked up Mr Roberts’s copy of Marcus Aurelius and went into the garden to wait.

  A white bench stood beneath a spreading tree. A pleasant vista of sloping lawns and bright flowerbeds, backed by the ancient crenellations of the Mogul walls, spread before me. Idly flipping through the gilt-edged leaves of my book, I came upon the inscription: ‘The perfection of moral character consists in this: in passing every day as the last.’

  I had recalled those words with bitterness as I stood at my friend’s grave. They had seemed inappropriate to what I had learned of Mr Roberts’s character and knew of his despairing end. Yet he had thought so well of that short sentence that he had given it to me, in a special sense, in his own handwriting. I would never know the frame of mind in which he had copied it for me but, recalling the words at his graveside, I had realized that most of my objections to life in India, with Oliver, sprang, not from what I had already experienced, but from fear of an imaginary future. That swift second of illumination had been sufficient to change my mind, conform my stubborn will to my real desires, and …

  A shadow fell across the book. I looked up from my musings to find a servant before me, holding out a salver on which lay a sheet of notepaper halved and correctly cornered. I took it, nodded dismissal to the man, and opened it.

  Mr Oliver Erskine presents his compliments

  and begs leave to call in person upon

  Miss Laura Hewitt.

  I sprang up, poor Marcus falling on his well-bound face in the grass.

  ‘Wait!’ I cried to the retreating servant. ‘Wait, the sahib who brought this … where is he?’

  The servant turned in puzzlement, and I repeated my question.

  ‘There, Miss-sahib!’ he said, pointing to the corner of garden led on to by the verandah steps. ‘He but waits your coming.’

  I saw him then, standing at the top of the broad white steps, laughing at me. I suppose he wore new clothes and boots as I did, but I did not take them in. A memory invaded me of another day, and another flight of broad steps on which he had stood waiting for us to leave the carriage that had conveyed us to Hassanganj. He had changed as much as I had, I could see—yet remained so much the same.

  I walked towards him—quietly—and only when he threw aside his riding crop and leapt down the steps, did I pick up my skirts and run.

  Neither memory nor imagination, and both had been much exercised in the time since I last saw him, had prepared me for the vehemence of his embrace, nor the eagerness of my response. It was as though I had never before felt the touch of his lips or the pressure of his single arm around me. We could not let each other go. When we did draw apart it was solely that eyes might query eyes before our lips sought once again the answer that only lips can give.

  He released me at last and, cupping my face in his hand, with the old glint in his eye and the familiar sardonic smile, said, ‘This time, woman dear, you are sure. No more doubts. And oh, my love, you have no more fears!’

  It was, as so often with him, a statement not a question, but I answered nevertheless: ‘Yes, I am sure. Very sure. Oh, Oliver! How could either of us ever have doubted?’

  ‘There will be time to discuss the matter—in the future,’ he replied, ‘but now …’ And grasping my hand he led me to the bench beneath the tree.

  There followed then the usual concomitants of such happy occasions. There were promises made and reasons given and explanations proffered, and, as a result, a measure of deep and necessary joy. There were kisses and continued wonder that we should ever have known misunderstanding, and the breathless reiteration of each other’s name.

  But I knew, beneath the lovers’ murmurings and the fervour of eyes and hands and lips so long deprived, that this was no happy ending, no culmination of desire, nor yet the blissful assuagement of hope deferred. It was something much better, much more filled with both promise and content.

  I knew, in that sun-filled and water-whispering garden, with the neem shadows flickering on the grass and the butterflies hovering over the flowers, that this was but the first lesson in the long learning of love.

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  Author’s Note

  About Valerie Fitzgerald

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  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Any reader familiar with the period and events covered by the foregoing tale will at once discover that certain small liberties have been taken with the known facts—all too well documented for any novelist’s comfort—of history.

  First, I have given the cossid Ungud (otherwise spelt Angad, Ungad and Anghad) a particular background and certain specific emotional responses to the happenings in which he became involved. This might fairly be construed as impertinence, but not, I hope, as inordinate imaginative liberty. All that is known of Ungud, apart from his three brief and dramatic entries into history during the Siege of Lucknow, is the fact that he was a pensioner of the Bengal Army, who, like many others, rallied to Sir Henry Lawrence’s call for assistance at the beginning of May 1857, and that he was a tenant of a ‘zemindar of Oudh’. It is unlikely, though not impossible, that this zemindar was a European such as I describe. However, the loyalties and emotions I have ascribed to Ungud in relation to that zemindar are merely extensions of the loyalties and emotions that were obviously part of his make-up, as the accounts of his prowess and his relations with the officers of Lucknow make plain.

  Secondly, there were only four known survivors of the massacre at the river in Cawnpore: Captain Mowbray Thomson, Lieutenant Delafosse and Privates Murphy and Sullivan. Several accounts, however, mention a ‘British officer’, ‘gentleman’ or ‘white man’, encountered by Havelock’s troops after they had taken Cawnpore and were marching to Lucknow. This unfortunate, described as ‘naked, heavily bearded’ and ‘almost certainly crazy’, had been sheltered or perhaps imprisoned in some native village, and was thoug
ht to be a further survivor of the massacre at the river. Unfortunately, before he could be interrogated, he was shot—some accounts have it by the hostile villagers, another by the alarmed British soldiers. It is therefore at least debatable whether only four men survived the terror of the river.

  In this connection also, my hero’s musings on the cause of the massacre at the river, though unpopular in his own day and discredited in the accounts that appeared soon after the Mutiny, are not without foundation. In a brief note such as this it is not possible to go into detail regarding the many contradictions, anomalies and paradoxes observed by the survivors and stated in the depositions of witnesses when the matter came to be examined by the British authorities. That there was a struggle for precedence in the Court of Bithur was common knowledge at the time, and that the Nana Sahib always fervently protested his, at least, partial innocence, as ‘he had never intended things to go so far’ is a matter of historical fact. What was actually in the Nana’s mind we can never now know, but I think it is at least possible that whatever scheme he set afoot was expanded, or even directly perverted, by one or other of the three men about him who were jockeying for position, power and a share in the dead Peshwa of Poonah’s estate. The convoluted corruptions of a native court would have been well within the experience of a man with Oliver Erskine’s background. For the rest, he comments on nothing that was not observed, and puzzled over, by the writers of one or other of the many written accounts.

  A third point, though trivial in nature, has given me some concern. Most of the diaries and journals mention the ‘heroic work’ in the Hospital of Mesdames Polehampton, Barber and Galt in the early days of the Siege, but then indicate that, when these ladies were ordered by the authorities to terminate their endeavours, no further help was forthcoming from among the female population of the garrison. However, by way of contradiction and merely to confuse the poor researcher, it is asserted in more than one account that Miss Birch and her sister-in-law, Mrs Birch, continued to lend assistance to the doctors throughout the Siege, and Mr Gubbins, as always expansive but not particularly accurate, extols the ‘Angels of Mercy’ who had worked so faithfully in such horrible conditions throughout. Since the Birch ladies were at one time in residence in his house, it is possible that they were the angels in question. On this slim evidence, and for the sake of my story, I have allowed two of my fictional characters to swell the ranks of the ‘Angels’.