Shadow of the Moon (25 page)

The sky was ablaze with sunset by the time the
Glamorgan Castle
reached the Calcutta anchorage, and boat after boat shot out from the shore bringing relatives and friends of those on board, or coming to fetch the passengers away. Mrs Abuthnot, who had informed Lottie only the day before that any public display of affection was not only intolerable but indelicate, abandoned all reserve and cast herself into the arms of a tubby little gentleman with a cherubic face, silver-white hair and mild blue eyes, who proved to be Colonel Abuthnot, and the reunited family retired to shed happy tears in the privacy of their cabin.

Winter stood apart from the turmoil of welcome and departure, her eyes anxiously scanning every boat. But none contained a familiar face. She had seen Kishan Prasad leave, loaded with scented garlands of flowers and tinsel that had been brought by the friends who had welcomed him; and had watched a boat with two rowers bring an Indian wearing an odd, sandy-coloured uniform out to the ship, and seen Alex Randall go quickly to meet him.

The man had saluted stiffly as he reached the deck and then his brown face had creased into a grin of pure pleasure, and Winter saw Alex's hand go out and grip the man's shoulder, holding it hard, and saw that he was smiling the same smile. For a moment the two men had looked at each other without words, as brothers might look who meet again after a long separation,
with affection and relief in each other's safety. Then Alex's hand had dropped and they had both laughed and turned away together, talking rapidly.

The crowded decks emptied and Winter watched anxiously as boat after boat drew away laden with passengers for the shore. At last someone touched her on the arm and she turned quickly. But it was only Captain Randall. There was a look on his face that was dangerously near pity and it stiffened Winter's slim shoulders and brought her chin up with a jerk. She looked very young, thought Alex, and despite the haughtiness of that lifted chin, very frightened and wary. He said bluntly: ‘He has not been able to come. My orderly has brought letters from Lunjore.'

Winter took the proffered packet with a hand that was not quite steady. Her fingers closed on it so tightly that the stiff paper crackled and she could feel tears prickling behind her eyelids, but she forced them back. If she let Alex Randall see tears in her eyes she would never forgive herself. Or him. She said: ‘Thank you,' in a small cold voice, and Alex turned away abruptly and left her.

Winter caught at the rail to steady herself. She found that she was trembling, and the tears that she would not let Alex see stood in her eyes so that she saw the river and the trees and the houses on the bank through a swimming mist. The disappointment was almost too bitter to be borne. Today was to have been the end of a long journey, but the journey had not ended after all. She looked down at the letter she held clenched in her hand, and after a moment broke the seal.

Pressure of work, wrote Conway, had made it impossible after all for him to meet her in Calcutta. She must know how great a disappointment this was to him. As great, he knew, as it would be to her. But duty must come first and he was persuaded that she would not have him neglect his duty even for her. He had written to Randall asking him to make all arrangements for her journey north, and as he had heard that the Abuthnots, who had so kindly escorted her out, were proceeding to Delhi, she had better remain under their protection and travel as far as Delhi with them. It was a little out of the way, but since he himself would have occasion to go there in the near future and would be staying with the Commissioner, Mr Simon Fraser, it would suit very well. They could be married in Delhi and spend their honeymoon in that historic city, visiting the various places of interest with which the ancient Mogul capital abounded. It would mean a delay of a few more weeks, but what were a few more weeks when they had the rest of their lives before them? He hoped that she had had a pleasant voyage and remained, as ever, her affectionate, devoted husband-to-be …

The writing was straggling and uneven and the lines ran crookedly across the page. He must have been very tired when he wrote it, thought Winter with loving compassion. Tired and disappointed. It made her own disappointment seem a selfish emotion. It was noble of Conway - and so like him! - to put duty before personal happiness. Dear, dear Conway!

She crushed his letter between her hands, pressing it to her breast and fighting a desire to put her head down on the top bar of the deck-rail and cry. But she must not cry here on the open deck, and there was no privacy anywhere on the ship that day. To let her bitter disappointment be seen might be taken by others to imply a criticism of Conway, and that would be unforgivable in her. She turned away from the rail and walked steadily down to her cabin with her head high, her face calm and composed and her eyes very dry and bright.

Mrs Abuthnot was motherly and sympathetic. Dear Alex had already informed her of the state of affairs and had handed her a most
charming
letter from Mr Barton. So disappointing! But then life in India was sadly full of such disappointments. One had to learn to bear them. Officers in the service of the Company were not their own masters, and India, said Mrs Abuthnot profoundly, was not England. Naturally, dear Winter would remain in her care; it would be delightful to have her! - although she feared that it would mean some delay, as Colonel Abuthnot had official business to transact in Calcutta and Barrackpore which might keep them here for a little time. He had arranged for them to stay with a friend - Mr Shadwell, a Calcutta merchant. The Shadwells, she knew, would be only too pleased to welcome Winter as an additional guest, for Horace Shadwell had known her Uncle Ebenezer well. And what could be more delightful than to travel to Delhi in company? Dear Lottie was overjoyed at the prospect!

The Shadwells' house proved to be a palatial two-storeyed mansion on Garden Reach surrounded by lawns and gardens that fronted the river, and to Winter's relief she was given a room to herself.

She shut the door behind her and leant tiredly against it, released at last from the necessity of keeping her features composed and her lips smiling. She could cry now that there was no one to see, and let tears relieve some of the strain and the pain of disappointment that the day had brought her.

But she did not cry. She looked about the huge, high-ceilinged room with its whitewashed walls and long french windows opening onto a deep verandah. A room that was as utterly unlike an English bedroom as the vast, slow-moving Hooghly was unlike an English stream. And as she looked, the tight band that had seemed to be tied about her heart relaxed, and the fever of excitement and the leaden weight of disappointed hope both faded.

She walked slowly across the room and out onto the verandah, her wide skirts rustling softly on the matting. Below her a long lawn sloped down between thick groves of trees to where the river ran gold in the brief twilight. The sky was a wash of clear pale green in which the first stars were already ghostly points of light, and the evening air was full of sounds: half-forgotten yet wholly familiar sounds. Conches blaring in a temple; a distant throb of tom-toms; peacocks calling and a jackal-pack wailing; the barking of pariah dogs, and all the many noises of an Indian city. The air smelt of sun-baked
dust and cow-dung fires, of wood-smoke, marigolds and jasmine and the rank scent of the river, while in the gathering dusk a myriad faintly glinting pin-points of light spangled the bamboo-brakes, and overhead a line of dark shapes winged their way across the garden - the fireflies and the fruit bats that old Sir Ebenezer had wished that he might see once more …

Winter leaned on the broad verandah rail and drew a long, long breath of happiness. It did not matter any longer that Conway had been unable to come to Calcutta to meet her, or that tomorrow would not, after all, be her wedding-day. She could wait. She had come home.

The travellers awoke next morning to a babble of birdsong: crows, minas, jays, parrots, ‘
saht-bai
' and doves, whistling, screeching and cooing.

The sky was yellow with dawn and air still cool, and the fruit bats were coming home to roost as the birds awoke; hanging themselves up in the deepest shadows of the mango trees and quarrelling and flapping as they jostled for sleeping-space. The river too was already awake and noisy. A paddle-steamer churned past on its way to Allahabad, and skiffs, country boats and slender
dinghies
punted by boatmen wielding long bamboo poles drifted by. A small striped squirrel chattered indignantly from the scented masses of flowering creeper that clothed one of the verandah pillars, doves cooed upon the cornices and a flight of parrots flew screaming overhead.

Their scream was echoed by Lottie, whose room gave onto the same verandah, and a moment later Lottie herself, clad in a pink cotton peignoir over a cambric nightgown and with her soft fair curls in tangled disarray, appeared in Winter's bedroom. An Indian had walked into her room, she announced in trembling tones. ‘A
man
, Winter! He did not even knock … he just walked in. I thought I should have swooned with fright.'

‘What did he want?' inquired Winter.

‘Oh, he did not want anything. He brought me tea and fruit. He just put them on a table beside my bed and went out again. Don't laugh, Winter! It is most unkind in you. I was never so frightened in my life.'

‘That was only the bearer,' said Winter, continuing to laugh. ‘He brought me some too. You will have to get used to it, Lottie darling. I do not think servants in India ever knock.'

‘I shall
never
get used to it!' declared Lottie, shuddering.

‘Oh yes, you will. I prophesy that within a year you will find yourself quite unable to support life or run the simplest
ménage
without the assistance of at least a dozen servants, with another ten for Edward. Mrs Shadwell informed me last night that they run a very modest establishment here - a mere thirty-five servants!'

But the mention of Edward had instantly diverted Lottie, who blushed pinkly and said with a small gasp: ‘Oh Winter, Edward is to call on Papa today. Mama has told him all, and Papa has been so kind. And only think - he knows Edward's uncle! They were at school together. He would not
commit himself, but - but he did not look at all displeased, and he said that it was hard for a father to find his daughter again after so many years only to lose her before he had time to know her. That does not sound as though he meant to refuse his consent, does it?'

‘No, of course it does not. What possible objection could he have? Edward is most eligible. And so handsome,' added Winter with a twinkle.

‘He is handsome, is he not?' sighed Lottie, accepting the tribute as a simple statement of fact. And indeed to her adoring eyes Edward's blunt-nosed, blue-eyed, freckled face and flaming red hair embodied all that was admirable in masculine good looks - although barely two months ago her mental vision of the ideal male would have been found to resemble the late Lord Byron; a gentleman who had borne no recognizable likeness to Lieutenant Edward English.

‘You are so lucky, Winter,' sighed Lottie. ‘I do not think that it is fair. You are a whole year younger than I am, and yet you are going to be married in a few weeks' time whereas I shall have to wait for at least half a year, and probably a great deal longer. Mama says that an engagement of only six months would be considered scandalously short, but Edward hopes to be able to persuade Papa to allow it so that we may be married in the spring. Do you think he will agree? It is delightful, of course, to be with Papa again, but— Oh, I know that it sounds most undutiful in me, but he is not
Edward
!'

But as it happened, Lottie had not to wait for as long as that.

She was to be married within a few weeks of their arrival in Delhi, for Edward had received information - unofficial but believed to be reliable - that his Regiment, who were Queen's and not Company's troops, might be sent to augment Admiral Seymour's forces in China early in the New Year. In the light of this information he desired to get married as soon as possible, in case such a calamity occurred. He had, he said, already known Lottie for two months, during which time he had seen her daily, and this surely constituted a long acquaintance, for had they been in England he might well have seen her at the most once or twice a week even if they had been betrothed. There was little point, he argued, in being separated from her for the next few months, only to be married on the eve of his departure and when faced with the prospect of indefinite separation. Let them at least enjoy a short spell of happiness, and then if the worst occurred and he was indeed ordered to China in the following year, they could face it with more fortitude as husband and wife. While should he be killed, added Edward bluntly, his wife would be amply provided for, since all he possessed would revert to her.

From this last and strictly worldly point of view Edward's arguments carried considerable weight, and when reinforced by the appeals of sentiment and emotion they had carried the day, for Lottie, upon hearing of the possibility of her Edward being sent to China, had instantly swooned away, and
only the promise of an early wedding had prevented her - upon being revived with the aid of burnt feathers and hartshorn - from repeating this affecting gesture.

Mrs Abuthnot, alarmed by her daughter's pallor and despair, had withdrawn all opposition, and the entire party had repaired to the drawing-room where Mr Shadwell, despite the unsuitability of hour, called for champagne so that all might drink to the health and happiness of the betrothed pair.

It was at this point that a servant announced Captain Randall, who was greeted affectionately by Mrs Abuthnot, introduced to the Shadwells and once again thanked for his assistance on the journey by Colonel Abuthnot. Informed of the betrothal and wedding plans of Lottie and Edward he congratulated them in a somewhat preoccupied voice, and announced that he had only called in order to make his adieux. He regretted that he could not accompany them to Delhi, but he could not delay his return to Lunjore any longer.