The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [364]
Mahdoo wrote by the hand of a bazaar letter-writer to say that he had arrived safely and was pleased to be back in Mansera once more. He was in good health and hoped that Ash was too, and that Gul Baz was looking after him properly. His entire family (there were now three more great-grandchildren, two of them boys) sent their earnest wishes for his continued health, happiness and prosperity – etc., etc….
Ash replied to this, but did not mention Gobind's visit. And curiously enough, neither did Gul Baz when he wrote as promised to give the old man the latest news of Pelham-Sahib and his household, and to assure Mahdoo that they were all keeping well. Though as far as Gul Baz was concerned his silence on that particular point was purely a matter of instinct, since neither Ash nor Gobind had suggested that it might be wiser not to talk of it. But then he too was worried.
Gul Baz, like Mahdoo, had a healthy distrust of Bhithor, and no wish to see the Sahib involved once again in anything whatever to do with that law-ess and sinister state or its unprincipled ruler. Yet this, he feared, was what the Hakim from Karidkote was striving to do – though why, and in what way, was more than he could guess (Gul Baz knew a great deal less about Ash than Mahdoo did, and that wise old man had taken care to keep certain of his suspicions to himself).
The anxiety that Gobind's unheralded arrival had aroused in him should, by rights, have subsided with that gentleman's departure. But it had not done so, for Gul Baz noticed that after that the Sahib took to making many small purchases at an Angrezi-owned pharmacy, the same shop, by a coincidence – or was it a coincidence? – that the Hakim had patronized on his last morning, and where, according to the driver of the hired tonga that had taken him there (a chatty individual whom Gul Baz had later questioned), he had spent over half an hour in consultation with the shopkeeper, and eventually bought an assortment of foreign nostrums.
By itself, there was nothing strange in that, it being no secret that the Hakim had been sent for to treat the Rana of Bhithor, whom he had once cured of a painful affliction and who therefore had great faith in his powers. Yet why should the Sahib, whose health was excellent, now take to shopping there as often as three or four times a week, when previously he had always left it to Gul Baz to keep him supplied with soap and tooth powder and such things?
Gul Baz did not like it. But there was nothing he could do about it and no one with whom he cared to discuss it. He could only keep his own counsel and hope against hope that an order would soon come from Mardan, summoning the Sahib back to the Guides and the North-West Frontier, for now he too was eager to be away, and hungry for the sight of his own Border-country and the speech of his own people.
Ash, on the other hand – who only a short while ago had been equally impatient to see the last of Gujerat – was suddenly afraid of having to leave it, because if he were to be recalled to Mardan before Gobind managed to smuggle out some news from Bhithor, he might never know what had happened there, or be able to send on a message to Kaka-ji, or do anything to help.
The very thought was so intolerable that at this juncture he would actually have been relieved to hear that he must serve another five years in Gujerat; or even ten or twenty, for to leave now could mean deserting Juli just when she might need help more than she had ever needed it before, and at a time when her very life might depend on his presence here in Ahmadabad,