The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [105]
‘You must not think me hard-hearted, my boy,’ said Belinda's father. ‘I know just how you feel. But really, you know, it will not do. I am aware that financially you are well able to support a wife, but that don't alter the fact that you are both far too young to be thinking of marriage. Or if Bella is not, you are. Cut your milk teeth first my boy, and learn your trade; and if you have any sense you'll give yourself at least another eight or ten years before you tie yourself to petticoats and perambulators. That's my advice.’
It was also the Commandant's. When Ash had attempted to argue his cause, he had been tersely instructed not to be a young fool, and that if he felt himself unable to support life without Miss Harlowe, then he was obviously unsuited to such a Corps as the Guides, and had better arrange a transfer to some more sedentary branch of the service as soon as possible. In the meantime, as it seemed that there had been some talk of an engagement, he had permission to take leave the following weekend in order to ride over to Peshawar and put matters straight with Miss Harlowe.
Ash had been prepared for a certain amount of opposition to his matrimonial plans and would undoubtedly have settled for a long engagement, but it had never crossed his mind that Belinda's father and his own Commanding Officer would refuse to recognize any engagement at all. After all, it was not as though he were a fortune-hunter or a penniless nobody; compared with the average Indian Army officer he could be considered extremely well-off, and it was therefore palpably unjust that his proposal to Belinda should be dismissed in this cavalier fashion.
Suddenly convinced that he could not possibly live without her, he decided on the instant that there was nothing for it but to elope. If he and Belinda were to run away together, her father would consent to the marriage in order to avoid a scandal, and if the Guides refused to keep him, well, there were plenty of other regiments.
Looking back on it, Ash could never remember very much about that first week in Mardan: there had been so much to learn and so much to do. But though the days had been full of interest, the nights had turned into a long battle for sleep, for it was only then that he had leisure to think of Belinda.
He would lie awake in the darkness evolving wild plans, and when at last he slept it was always to dream of riding headlong across a stony plain between low barren hills, with a girl on the crupper behind him who clung to him and urged him to ride faster – faster. A girl whose face he could not see, but who was of course Belinda; though the long hair that streamed out behind her like a flag in the wind, impeding his view of their pursuers, was not yellow but black. He would hear the thunder of following hoof-beats coming louder and nearer, and would wake sweating with terror – to find that the sound of galloping horses was his own heart-beats thumping as though he had been running a race.
It was disturbing, too, to realize that although he was back once more in the land of his birth and able to see and speak with Zarin and Koda Dad again, he had not after all lost that nagging sense of emptiness that had haunted his years in exile. It was still there, but he felt sure that if Belinda would only agree to defy her father and marry him, with or without permission, he would be free of it for ever together with all restlessness and anxiety and doubt. It was the nights that made the