The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [114]
In Mardan the Guides played a new game called polo, fought mock battles on the plain and instructed their new recruits as they had done for many seasons, and the routine of the Regiment became as familiar to Ash as the walls of his room or the view from the mess verandah. Day began with the scalding mug of tea, sweetened with gur and tasting faintly of woodsmoke, that Ala Yar brought to his bedside; and while he shaved and dressed, the old Pathan would discuss the doings of the previous day and tell him the news of Mardan and the Border and the gossip of the bazaars. After that came musketry on the ranges, breakfast in mess, stables, a session in the office, and, at intervals, durbar – the regimental parliament where complaints, requests for leave, and all matters pertaining to policy and justice came up before a panchayat (‘five elders’). This last being the system by which Indian villages have governed themselves from time immemorial. Here the panchayat consisted of the Commanding Officer, the Second-in-Command, the Adjutant and the two senior Indian officers, the men attending not as spectators, but to see that justice was done, for under the Silladar system every man in the Regiment was to all intents and purposes a shareholder in a private company, owning his own horse and his gear, as an apprentice owns the tools of his trade. The Guides were none of them landless men, but came of yeoman stock. They enlisted for honour and the love of fighting (and for loot if loot was to be had) and when they had had their fill of military service they would retire to farm their own acres – and send their sons to join the Regiment.
When work was over, Ash spent most of his free time out shooting, and divided the remainder between polo and hawking. Once every week he would write to Belinda (who was not permitted to reply) and once every month he would ride over to Peshawar to pay the formal afternoon call allowed by Major Harlowe.
There had been a time when he had fondly imagined that it would be a simple matter to beat this restriction by attending various Peshawar functions at which Belinda was bound to be present, such as Club dances, hunts or race meetings. But this had not proved a success; she had been far too strictly chaperoned to allow him to have any speech with her, and to have to watch while she rode and talked with other men, or danced with George Garforth (still, apparently, a favoured partner), had been so depressing that it was almost a relief when his Commanding Officer, hearing of these visits, had vetoed them and placed Peshawar out of bounds to him except for the one day a month permitted by Belinda's father.
Ash became savagely jealous of George, which was an unnecessary waste of emotion. Belinda's parents might permit Mr Garforth to call with great frequency, and have no objection to her dancing or riding with him; but they were shrewd enough to realize that she stood in no danger of falling in love with him, and in the normal course of events would probably not have invited him to their house at all, as Mr Garforth's position in the social hierarchy of Peshawar was a humble one. But the fact that his arrival had coincided with the autumn manoeuvres and a resulting shortage of dancing partners had been greatly to his advantage, while his good looks had made an instant impression on every young lady in the station. This, coupled with his newly acquired confidence and his talk of a titled grandmother (the daughter, it was rumoured, of a liaison between a beautiful Greek countess and no less a person than George Gordon, Lord Byron), lifted him out of the ruck, and Belinda would not have been human had she failed to take pleasure in the fact that a man whom other girls admired had eyes only