The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [494]
He no longer blamed Ash for marrying in haste, for he could imagine himself doing exactly the same thing if he had had the luck to be in Ash's place. There could not be many women in the world like Anjuli, and having found one it would have been madness to lose her for the sake of a career. And yet… Wally sighed, and some of the euphoria of the last few hours left him. No, he would probably not have done it – not if he had been given enough time to realize what it might mean in terms of the future, because the Guides had come to count so much to him. Besides, he had cherished dreams of military glory for as long as he could remember; it was something he had grown up with and by now it was too much a part of him to be rooted out and replaced by love for a woman – even such a one as he had seen that night and lost his heart to.
All at once he was filled with gratitude towards Ash and Anjuli: and to God, Who had been good enough to allow him to meet the one woman in the world, and yet put her beyond his reach; so that by losing his heart to her he was saved for ever (or at least, for a long time to come) from falling in love with some lesser star and getting married and domesticated and losing his taste for adventure and with it, inevitably, some part of his enthusiasm for his profession and devotion to the men of his own Regiment.
Now that Ash was about to rejoin the Guides, life would be perfect, and the only cloud in Wally's sky was the fact that there were still three weeks to run before Ash returned to duty. The thought of having to wait another twenty-one days after waiting so long was suddenly unendurable – yet it would have to be endured; and at least there was work and Wigram (who was now Adjutant and a Captain) to help him through it and make the time pass quickly. He had asked Ash if he could tell Wigram about Anjuli, and been pleased though not surprised when Ash had agreed. Everyone liked Wigram, and there was no denying that it would be a relief to be able to tell him about Ash's adventures and his romantic, secret marriage, particularly now that he himself had met the bride and so felt qualified to speak in the couple's defence and persuade Wigram to take a lenient view of the whole affair…
Wally rose from the verandah chair, and having searched for something to throw at a pi-dog that sat yelping monotonously by the compound gate, discharged a well-aimed flower-pot and went in to bed humming ‘Fight the good fight with all thy might’. Which, in the circumstances, was a healthy sign, for it showed that he was returning to normal after the stresses and strains of that emotional day.
The sun was still well below the horizon when Wally crossed the Indus and took the Peshawar road on the following morning, leaving his bearer Pir Baksh to follow in a tonga with the luggage, and an hour later he breakfasted at the Nowshera dâk-bungalow while his horse rested, before crossing the Kabul River and pressing on towards Risalpur. Mardan was an oasis of shade in a parched land. The fort and the parade-ground, the lines and the familiar back-drop of the Yusafzai hills quivered and swayed in the dancing heat, and far out on the plain towards Jamalgarhi an occasional dust-devil arose to whirl like a spinning-top and die again. But in the cantonment not a leaf stirred, and the dust of the hot weather lay like hoar frost on every stick and stone and blade of grass, reducing greens and browns to a single tint – the colour that Sir Henry Lawrence had chosen for the uniforms of his