The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [82]
‘I don't know,’ replied Ash, incurably honest. ‘I suppose that will depend on us.’
‘On us?’ repeated Mrs Chiverton in a tone that told Ash he had made a suggestion that she not only found totally unacceptable, but coming from such a very junior officer, positively insulting.
Ash hesitated, unwilling to offend her further, but Miss Harlowe had rushed gaily in where an ensign feared to tread: ‘He means that provided we deal justly with them, they will have no reason to rise against us;’ here she turned to him again and added: ‘That was what you meant, wasn't it?’
It was not exactly what Ash had meant, but it was Belinda's use of the word ‘justly’ that made him cease from that moment to see her only as a pretty girl; and after that, despite the fact that strict chaperoning, a plethora of admirers and the crowded conditions that prevailed on shipboard made it well-nigh impossible to have any speech with her alone, he seized every opportunity that offered to talk to her or listen to her talk to him, of the land to which both were returning with such high hopes and happy anticipation.
Belinda's mother, Mrs Archibald Harlowe, was a stout, well-meaning and fluffy-minded woman who had once been as pretty as her daughter; but the climate and conditions that prevailed in India, together with her distrust of ‘the natives’ and fear of a second Mutiny, had not suited her health or her temperament. The heat and constant pregnancies had thickened a once admirable figure, her husband, now in his late sixties, was still only a Major in an Indian infantry regiment, three of the seven children she had borne him had died in infancy, and a year ago she had been forced to take her five-year-old twins, Harry and Teddy, home to England to leave them in the care of her sister Lizzie – for India was still regarded as a death trap for the young; cantonment cemeteries up and down the country being crowded with the graves of children who had died of cholera, heat-stroke, typhoid or snakebite.
Nothing would have pleased Mrs Harlowe more than to be able to stay in England with her darling boys, but after exhaustive discussions with her sister the two ladies had agreed that it was her plain duty to return to India: not her duty to her husband, but to her daughter Belinda, who at the age of seven had also been consigned to Lizzie's care. That had been ten years ago, and as Lizzie pointed out, the girl's chances of making an advantageous match in a small provincial town such as Nelbury were slight. In British India, however, eligible bachelors were two-a-penny, so it was only sensible to give Belinda the chance to meet and marry some suitable gentleman, after which her Mama would be able to return to her precious boys, and make her home with dear Lizzie until such time as Archie gained command of his regiment or was retired.
No one (with the possible exception of Major Harlowe) could have found fault with this programme, and Mrs Harlowe's confidence in her decision had been speedily vindicated when no less than eleven gentlemen out of the twenty-nine who had taken passages on the S.S. Canterbury Castle began to pay marked attention to her pretty daughter. True, these were for the most part mere boys; either penniless ensigns, junior Civil Servants or youthful recruits to Trade, and the five other unmarried ladies on board were not remarkable for good looks. But the gentlemen did include an infantry Captain his mid-thirties, a rich middle-aged widower who was the senior partner in a firm of jute exporters, and young Ensign Pelham-Martyn,