The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [94]
Only a handful of passengers who had travelled on the mail-train from Bombay were going further north into the Punjab, and the remainder of the journey had been undertaken in dâk-gharis, rickety horse-drawn vehicles that resembled closed boxes on wheels. This time Ash had only one companion to share his carriage with him, but as it turned out to be George Garforth he would have been happier on his own or with a full complement of passengers.
George had no intention of relinquishing the hopes that Belinda had encouraged by her treatment of him during the first three days out from Bombay. The fact that she considered herself engaged to Ashton Pelham-Martyn made no difference to his feelings for her (beyond adding jealousy and despair to the other emotions he was suffering on her behalf) and as he saw no reason why he should not discuss the subject of his wounded heart with her betrothed, Ash found himself listening to a good deal of talk from his love-sick rival, and was often hard put to it to keep his temper.
It was sad that Belinda, by encouraging George to talk about himself, should have released such an uninhibited torrent of speech, for once having got the bit between his teeth, George showed every sign of bolting. But as Ash could see no way of stopping him that did not involve unpleasantness, he merely took the easier way of spending a large part of each day in the company of Zarin, Ala Yar and Mahdoo; not only because he found their society infinitely preferable to Mr Garforth's, but because it was no longer possible for him to get Belinda to himself – her Mama having invited an old acquaintance, a Mrs Viccary, to share their dâk-ghari.
The presence of a third, and middle-aged lady, effectively put an end to any hope of his being invited to pass an occasional hour or so in the Harlowes' carriage, or of spending much time alone with them at the various stopping places where rooms and meals were available and the horses were changed. Yet in spite of this disappointment he did not, as might have been expected, take a strong dislike to the interloper, for Mrs Viccary turned out to be a delightful person, wise, tolerant and understanding, with a talent for making friends and a genuine interest in other people that made her very easy to talk to. As she was also an excellent and sympathetic listener, it was not long before Ash found himself telling her more of his history than he was ever to tell Belinda; which surprised him though it did not surprise her.
Edith Viccary was used to receiving confidences (and had never been known to betray one, which probably accounted for the fact that she received so many). Moreover in the present instance, having listened to a voluble account of young Mr Pelham-Martyn's prospects, relatives and background from his prospective mother-in-law, she had exerted herself to draw him out, as she not only fully understood but shared his passion for his adopted country, which was, in a sense, her own, because she too had been born in it. She had also by now spent the greater part of her life there, for having been sent home to England at the age of eight, she had come back as a young lady of sixteen to rejoin her parents who were at that time stationed at Delhi; and it was there in the capital city of the Moguls that a year later she met and married a young engineer, Charles Viccary.
That had been in the winter of 1849, and since then her husband's work had taken her to most parts of the vast sub-continent in which men of both their families, Carrolls and Viccarys, had served for three successive generations – initially in the East India Company and later under the Crown. And the more she saw of it, the more she came to love the land, and to appreciate its peoples, among whom she was proud to number many close friends, for unlike Mrs Harlowe, she had set herself to master at least four of India's main languages and learned to speak them with enviable fluency. When cholera deprived her of her only child, and the great Sepoy Rising of '57 took the lives of her parents, and of her