• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2966 0

so badly that she had difficulty in putting it on, and when she had done so she paused for a moment, holding back the voluminous folds from her face, to gaze at him with the terrible concentration of one who looks for the last time at a beloved face before the coffin-lid is closed upon it, as though she were imprinting him on her memory; learning him by heart so that she would never forget a single detail of feature or expression – the colour of his eyes and the slant of his brows, the set of a mouth that could be grave or grim or astonishingly tender, and the deep un-youthful lines that Belinda and George and life and death in the Border country beyond the North-West Frontier had scored on either side of it. The texture of his skin and the single dark lock of hair that habitually fell across his forehead and and half hid a jagged, silvery scar that had been made by an Afghan knife –

Ash spoke in a flat, controlled voice: ‘If you should ever need me, you have only to send me the luck-charm and I will come. Unless I am dead, I will come.’

‘I know,’ whispered Anjuli.

‘Goodbye –’ his voice broke suddenly – ‘Heart's-beloved – my dear – my darling. I shall think of you every hour of every day, and be glad that I have known you.’

‘And I you. Farewell… my lord and my life.’

The brown folds dropped into place and there was only a dark shrouded figure standing in the pool of light under the hanging lamp.

She went past him as noiselessly as a shadow, and he steeled himself to let her go and did not turn his head when he heard the rasp of canvas as she lifted the tent-flap, or when the lamp swayed once more to a faint draught of air and sprayed a shimmer of stars across the walls and ceiling. The flap fell with a soft thud that was, somehow, an unbelievably final sound. The lamp steadied and the stars were still: and Juli had gone.

Ash did not know how long he stood there, staring at nothing and thinking of nothing, because his mind was as empty as his arms – and his heart.

A movement in the shadows and the touch of a hand on his arm aroused him at last, and he turned slowly and saw Kaka-ji standing beside him. There was neither anger nor shock in the old man's face, only sympathy and understanding. And a great sadness.

‘I have been blind,’ said Kaka-ji quietly. ‘Blind and foolish. I should have known that this might happen, and kept you apart. I am truly sorry, my son. But Anjuli has chosen wisely – for both of you, since had she consented to go with you I am very sure that you would both have died. Her brother Nandu is not one to forgive an injury and he would have hunted you to the death, the Rana aiding him, so it is better this way. And in time you will both forget. Being young, you will forget.’

‘Did you forget her mother, then?’ asked Ash harshly.

Kaka-ji caught his breath and for a fractional moment his fingers bit into Ash's arm: ‘How did you –?’ he stopped abruptly.

His hand fell away and he released his breath in a long sigh. His gaze moved past Ash's shoulder to stare into the shadows as though he could see another face there, and his own face softened. ‘No,’ said Kaka-ji slowly. ‘I did not forget. But then I… I was no longer a young man. I was already in my middle years when… Chut! no matter! – I put it away from me. There was no other course. Maybe if I had spoken earlier it would have been different, for her father and I had been friends. But she was younger than my own daughters, and having known her since she was a babe in arms she still seemed a child to me – too young for marriage, like the bud of the moon-flower that will wither unopened if it is plucked. Therefore I did not speak but waited instead for her to become a woman – not realizing that she had already become one. Then one day my brother, hearing rumours of her great beauty, contrived to see her: and seeing her, he loved her – and she him…’

Kaka-ji was silent for a space, and then he sighed again, very deeply, and said: ‘After their marriage I left the state – my own children being wed – and went on a pilgrimage to the holy places, seeking