The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [92]
The tree-clad gorges and lush greenness of the south gave place to the parched emptiness of rock and sand: to jungle and cropland, little lost villages and the ruins of dead and gone cities, and wide, winding rivers where crocodiles and mud-turtles basked on the sand bars and white egrets fished in the shallows. At night-fall the thickets and the elephant grass shimmered with fire-flies, and at dawn peacocks cried from every cane-brake and the yellow sky mirrored itself in ponds and ditches that were starred with water-lilies. But Ash lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, rehearsing speeches to soften Belinda's heart, or replying to the conversational efforts of his travelling companions – an enthusiastic young man in the Political Department and a middle-aged Forest-Officer – very much at random.
Mrs Harlowe was also not enjoying the journey, which was only to be expected. Experience had taught her that travelling in India by whatever means was bound to be hot, dusty and excessively uncomfortable; but on the present occasion it was neither the tediousness or the discomfort that was upsetting her, but Ashton and Belinda, whose behaviour had plainly demonstrated that both were still little more than children. A great many girls married at seventeen – she herself had done so; but they married grown men who could be relied upon to take care of them, not thoughtless and irresponsible boys in their teens, which Ashton had shown himself to be when he ran off and left Belinda alone and unprotected on a crowded quayside while he gossiped for over an hour with a parcel of natives.
His excuse for this behaviour had merely made matters worse. To explain that one of them (and a mere daffadar at that – not even an Indian officer) was an old friend who had travelled from the Khyber to Bombay to meet him, and that he had been so pleased to see him that he had ‘lost all count of time’, might reflect credit onhis honesty, but it certainly proved him to be lacking in wisdom and tact, and Mrs Harlowe fully sympathized with her daughter's rejection of such a clumsily phrased apology. Ashton really should have known better. And know better, too, than to be on such exceedingly friendly terms with sepoys and servants. Such behaviour was not at all the thing, and only went to prove that he did not yet know how to conduct himself – and also that she herself knew far too little about him. She had, in fact, allowed his eligibility in the matter of birth and fortune, and her anxiety to see her daughter swiftly and safely bestowed, to override good sense and caution. And now Belinda was flirting shamelessly with another, and quite ineligible young man, and really she felt distracted with worry. It was all most upsetting, and she did not know what Archie was going to say when he heard…
Poor, foolish, conscience-stricken Mrs Harlowe took refuge in tears and an attack of vapours, and three days of this atmosphere proved more than enough for Belinda, who began to discover that a sense of outrage was not equal to sustaining her through the boredom of endless hours penned up in a hot and dusty railway carriage, with nothing to do but listen to Mama's tearful observations on the subject of Ashton, early engagements and what Papa was likely to say about it all. Of course Ashton had behaved abominably, but he had been punished enough. Besides, she was beginning to tire of George Garforth's increasing bumptiousness and the protective and proprietary airs he had begun to adopt towards her, and thought that it was really time she put him in his place.
When the train next stopped at a station and Ash as usual knocked humbly at the door, he was admitted, and the unhappy George found himself suddenly relegated to the