The Karma of Love (Bantam Series No. 14) (12 page)

The Sergeant Major came to the window of the carriage to see if there was anything she required.

On Orissa’s instructions he bought her fruit—oranges and sweet melons which she shared with the other members of the compartment feeling she should make her contribution to the general feast.

She was well aware that many Indians would have felt that for her to share their meal would be sacrilege. But there appeared to be a
camaraderie
between them because she had been friendly, which overrode the taboos of caste.

The train moved off again and soon they were ready to settle down for the night.

The carriage was less crowded now as three of the women had alighted and Orissa realised she could get her feet up on
the
seat next to her and rest more comfortably.

The Parsee took off her fine, gold-embroidered sari to put on a plainer, less expensive one.

“It will be hot to-night,” she said to Orissa. “You will find it difficult to sleep in your pretty gown. Would you permit me to lend you a sari? That is if you would condescend to accept one from me.”

“Do you really mean that?” Orissa asked. “It is very kind of you.”

“I should be honoured,” the Parsee answered.

The whole carriage was amused and interested at seeing Orissa undress. They exclaimed over her petticoats, were entranced by the small tight corset which pulled in her waist, the strange shape of her lace
-
edged drawers, and her thin chemise.

They modestly looked the other way when Orissa put on the short low-necked bodice which every Indian woman wears. She caught the sari around her waist and flung it over one shoulder delighted that she had not forgotten how to arrange it.

The ladies exclaimed with delight at her appearance.

“You might be one of us!” one of the women exclaimed and it was meant to be a compliment.

Orissa remembered that Charles had said she looked like a Rajput Princess. As she studied herself in the mirror which the Parsee produced from her luggage she thought he was right!

She not only felt far more comfortable but far more attractive as well.

The sari, which was a deep, ruby red, threw into prominence the darkness of her hair with its faint blue lights. She might in fact easily have come from one of the Northern Provinces where neither the men’s nor women’s skins were as dark as those in the South.

With no constricting corset round her waist it was easy to curl up on the seat and sleep.

One of the ladies loaned her a rolled-up blanket to use as a pillow, and because she had been awake nearly the whole of the night before Orissa fell into a dreamless slumber.

She awakened to find the dawn light streaming in through the windows and showing up the amount of dust that had accumulated on the floor during the night.

Her fellow passengers were all still asleep. They had pulled their saris over their heads and they looked, lying in the seats, more like colorful bundles than women.

Orissa had only been awake for a few moments when the train came to a halt. It was not a big Station, but even so early in the morning there was a large crowd.

The sellers were there to hawk their wares, and after a few seconds the Sergeant Major came to the window of the carriage.

He looked in and Orissa saw a look of consternation on his face. He looked from one side of the compartment to the other, then took two steps back on
the platform to make sure he had the right carriage and then came to look in again.

Orissa bent forward.

“You did not recognise me, Sergeant Major?” she asked.

“Mem-Sahib!” he exclaimed in surprise.

“I am far more comfortable in these clothes,” Orissa explained.

“There is something I must say to you, Mem-Sahib,” he said in a low voice. “It is important.”

He opened the door and Orissa stepped out on to the platform.

They walked a little way from the crowds and standing beside a wall covered with instructions in two languages Orissa asked:

“What is it?”

She felt something had gone wrong.

“You not, Mem-Sahib, go any further than Peshawar,” the Sergeant Major said, “I speak with the officers on train. They say big trouble at the frontier, that why Colonel-Sahib sent to Shuba.”

“Worse trouble than usual?” Orissa asked.

“Yes, Mem-Sahib. Talk of Russians over border stirring up tribesmen.”

Orissa was silent, and then the Sergeant Major said:

“I think, Mem-Sahib, when we reach Peshawar British officials make you return to Delhi. You not allowed proceed with me.”

“I must get to my Uncle, I must!”

Then an idea came to her.

“Listen, Sergeant Major. When I am dressed like this, would you know I was English?”

“No, Mem-Sahib, if you have caste-mark you look like Hindu lady.”

“Then, Sergeant Major, when we get to Peshawar, you will not be escorting an English lady, but one of your own family, your sister perhaps?”

The Sergeant Major look at her speculatively.

“No-one ask questions, Mem-Sahib,” he said at last, positively.

“How were you intending that we should reach Shuba?” Orissa asked.

“I hire a
gharri
for you, Mem-Sahib. Now unlikely
gharri-wallah,
who are cowardly, fearful chaps, would make journey.”

“And how would you get there?”

“March, Mem-Sahib.”

“How far is it?”

“Twenty miles.”

Orissa gave a little sigh.

She was well aware as an Indian she would not wear stout, walking shoes on her feet but sandals.

“Not worry, Mem-Sahib,” the Sergeant Major said quickly, “I find way of getting you to Shuba. Colonel-Sahib not wish you return alone to Delhi.”

“I am quite sure my Uncle would not wish that,” Orissa agreed. “Wait a minute while I get you my purse. If I were an Indian lady I would certainly not be carrying my own money if there was a man to look after me.”

She went back to the carriage and found the purse which the Sergeant Major had given back to her after he had purchased her ticket.

She put it into his hands.

“We reach Peshawar in one hour, Mem-Sahib,” he said in a low voice and left her.

Orissa got back into the carriage and when the train started she said in English to the Parsee who was by now awake:

“I want to speak to you but I do not want the others to understand.”

“Speak slowly,” the Parsee admonished.

“I have to reach my Uncle, who is the Colonel of the Royal Chilte
rn
s,” Orissa explained, “but the Sergeant Major thinks as these are troublesome times it will be wiser for me to go dressed as I am now. May I therefore ask you a great favour?”

Her voice was rather embarrassed, but she continued:

“May I keep the sari you have so kindly loaned me? I promise to pay the full cost of it to your address in Bombay as soon as I reach my Uncle. I swear that I will not cheat you.”

“But of course you must not pay! I should not think of such a thing from a lady such as you. I give it to you. It is a gift!”

“No, no, I cannot accept!” Orissa expostulated.

They argued for fully ten minutes before Orissa realised that the Parsee really wished her to take the sari as a present and would only accept in return a pair of white kid-gloves which Orissa had in her baggage.

“It is a good exchange,” the Parsee said. “I cannot buy such gloves in India.”

Orissa then explained that she would be deeply grateful if she could also borrow a little henna for her hands and the paint for a red caste-mark on her forehead.

By now the other ladies of the carriage had been let into the secret, although Orissa was careful not to tell them her ultimate destination.

They produced not only henna but khol for her eyes, and they even insisted on giving her some glass bracelets to wear around her wrists.

“All Indian women wear jewellery,” they said. “You would appear very poor with a very stingy husband not to possess any ornaments.”

Orissa protested she could not accept such generosity but it all became a game. Her hands, her nails and her feet were hennaed, her eyes made dark and beguiling as any Oriental woman, there was a crimson caste-mark in the centre of her forehead.

She had little she could give in return. A piece of the ribbon left over from decorating her green dress, half a yard of tulle and besides the gloves for the Parsee who had given her the sari, two little lace-edged handkerchiefs she had made herself.

It was a poor exchange, but she felt she had provided the Indian women with so much to talk about and think about that it was in itself adequate recompense.

The train was slowing down and Orissa realised they were drawing into Peshawar which was the end of the line.

She felt a sudden tremor of excitement.

‘Now I really am embarking on a gre
at adventure!’ she told herself

CHAPTER
SIX

When Orissa saw the
tika-gharri
which the Sergeant Major brought to the Station for her she wanted to laugh aloud.

There was nothing funnier than a native cart which looked like a box on wheels, and which in fact it actually was!

There was a flat piece of wood fastened overhead to serve as protection from the sun and there was only just room enough for two people to sit inside and very little space indeed for any baggage.

The Sergeant Major had warned Orissa of this before he went in search of a vehicle to convey them to Shuba.

He left Orissa at the Station telling her that when he returned he would convey most of her luggage to an office where it would be safe until it could be collected.

“If all well, Mem-Sahib,” he said, “brake can be sent from Fort to carry bags. But Indian ladies travel light.”

Orissa took the hint and finding a comer in the waiting-room used by Indian women and not English
ladies, she unpacked and repacked all she thought she would need.

This required a large holdall made of canvas which she had brought with her from London to hold books and other small items which might be needed on the voyage.

She thought she must have two of her muslin day
-
gowns and one for the evening with her, as she was sure that her Uncle would not wish her to walk about the Fort dressed in a sari!

Knowing also that the weather in the North-West Provinces would be cool at night she put in a warmer wrap than she would have needed in any other part of India.

The canvas bag had eventually to be strapped to hold it together, but small though it seemed to her she thought the Sergeant Major looked at it somewhat disapprovingly when he returned to the Station.

He made no comment however, and collecting a coolie had Orissa’s round-topped leather trunks taken to an office.

Keeping well in the background, Orissa heard the Sergeant Major explain that her luggage must be kept with the greatest care and in complete safety until Colonel Henry Hobart of the Royal Chilte
rn
s could send for it.

It was obvious that her Uncle’s name commanded respect, and the Sergeant Major was given a receipt signed by a Senior Official.

Saluting smartly the Sergeant Major marched away without a glance at Orissa who followed behind him in sub-servient Eastern fashion.

Outside the station the
tika-gharri
was waiting in the charge of a small, ragged boy.

It was obviously old and weather-beaten, the original blue with which it had been painted had faded and there were several cracks in the wooden sides.

At the same time the wheels looked strong and the thin dun-coloured horse which pulled it had, Orissa hoped, more stamina than its appearance suggested.

She was however well aware that the slim-legged but sure-footed Northern horses were strong and reliable when it came to long distances and mountain roads.

She was certain that the Sergeant Major would not have been deceived in any animal he had hired.

Her canvas bag was disposed of under the hard wooden seat and she climbed into the
tika
-
gharri.
The ragged boy was rewarded with a small coin and they set off to drive through the town.

There were numerous soldiers to be seen in uniform, but not a sign of any British women, which made Orissa feel sure that the Sergeant Major had been right when he said that if any of the officials had known who she was she would have been compelled to return to Delhi.

She looked around her with curiosity and excitement, remembering to keep her sari pulled well over her forehead and to hold it sideways across her face so that only her
k
hol-ringed eyes could be seen by those who looked in her direction.

Peshawar had been founded in the Sixteenth Century by the Mongul Emperor Akbar, lying only eighteen miles from the Khyber Pass.

Two years earlier a further extension of the Punjab Northern State Railway had been completed, joining the old city to the British Civil Station and Cantonment two miles to the West.

Shuba however lay to the East and therefore could not be reached by road. The
tika-gharri
moved through the crowds towards the Northern Gate.

Orissa had a look at the new factories as she passed. Peshawar was famous for its manufacture of woollen cloths, silks and above all carpets.

These were woven by men with shaved heads wearing “durees,” who had been sentenced to prison.

“Many of the prisoners are Afreedies, bad men,” the Sergeant Major told her.

Orissa remembered that the wild habits of the
Afreedies had caused the Punjab Government a lot of trouble.

She looked with affection at the Pathans who strode the street.

Her father had often quoted:

“Trust a Brahmin before a snake, and a snake before a harlot, and a harlot before a Pathan.”

But she had known them all her childhood and she loved the most ferocious, independent, and warlike race the world had ever known.

Divided into dozens of tribes, the Pathans looked on King Saul as their ancestor, but had been converted to Islam.

Some Pathans were light of skin, eyes and hair, many had aquiline noses, a rosy white complexion, nut brown eyes and hair, others had broad, high
-
cheek-boned faces.

Orissa knew that whatever their strain, all Pathans were reserved and proud, and were bound by their traditions to exact vengeance for any wrong—actual or fancied. This alone made the Frontier one of the most sensitive and explosive areas on earth.

She spoke of this to the Sergeant Major and he replied curtly:

“Most grievances come from Zar, Zan and Zamin.”

Orissa knew that this meant—“gold, women and land.”

She also saw in the crowded streets an Akali, a wild-haired, wild-eyed Sikh, in the blue-checked clothes of his faith, with polished steel quoits glistening on the cone of his tall blue turban.

There were women with babies on their hips who all wore the dull, glass bracelets made in the North West.

There was a gang of Changars—the women who work on the embankments of all the Northern railways—big-bosomed, flat-footed and strong-limbed. They, as Orissa knew, were the earth-carriers and had a strength that was proverbial in a land of delicate, fragile women.

The town of Peshawar seemed prosperous, as towns always were when there were troops with money to spend.

The cloth shops were inviting with rolls of cloth laid on shelves open to the street and gay cottons, prints and crisp new sari-lengths were set out enticingly on the pavement.

There were jewellers, gold
-
and silver-smiths working in filigree in the front of their shops. High pyramids of grain were heaped in black wicker-baskets, while piles of spices brought splashes of colour to the sand on which the vendors squatted to sell their wares.

Orissa laughed when she saw a sacred bull almost too fat to walk helping himself from a food-shop as he lumbered past, infuriating the owner who was too superstitious to drive
him
away.

There were rickshaws and buffalo-carts moving slowly. A barber was shaving the head of a man in the gutter, and next to him a scribe, his desk on the ground was taking a letter couching it in the elaborate, flowery words that were part of his trade.

There were numberless goats, pigeons, crows, cats, dogs, horses and people, people, people everywhere!

But soon they left Peshawar behind and the Sergeant Major driving skilfully took them out onto the dusty, open road which was bordered by a few trees and fertile, well-watered fields of grain.

Here there were no more crowds, but only a few small villages through which they must pass as they went on further and further Eastwards.

Everywhere there was a profusion of birds, and Orissa remembered there were more different species of birds in this part of India than in all the rest of the country.

She saw in the distance a Sarus crane, which was the height of a man, a bearded vulture with a wing span of over eight feet and hundreds of grey-winged blackbirds, whistling thrushes and magpie-robins.

“Did you hear any news when we were in the town?” Orissa asked, letting her sari fall back from her face now there was no-one to see her.

“Only rumours, Mem-Sahib,” the Sergeant Major answered, “but rumours start from truth.”

“In other words, there is no smoke without fire,” Orissa remarked with a smile.

“I hope Colonel-Sahib not angry if I bring Mem
-
Sahib into danger,” the Sergeant Major said.

The way he spoke told Orissa that the idea was worrying him and she said reassuringly:

“I promise you, Sergeant Major, if my Uncle is angry, I will direct his wrath onto me. It was I who commanded you to escort me, and when the Colonel knows why, he will understand.”

Orissa’s promise seemed to re-assure the Sergeant Major, but after they had stopped in a small village to water the horse and to buy some fresh fruit she thought he looked more anxious when they went on again.

“More bad news?” she enquired. “I cannot believe that it is worse than usual.”

She remembered the reports of ambushes and attacks published in the English newspapers in previous years, when the Russians had been “sabre-rattling” in all countries adjoining the North-West Frontier.

Then in 1880, Abdurrahman Khan had been recognised as the Amir of Kabul in return for his acknowledgement of the British Raj to control his foreign relations.

It had been hoped that this would bring some measure of peace, but unfortunately such optimism had been short-lived.

They drove on until Orissa was glad to open her bag and take out the woolen cloak she had worn when she left Tilbury.

Ahead lay a dim, flat plain but beyond that, there were sunny peaks where the sun still lingered.

On the road they were now passing frontiersmen who strode by with long, lifting steps.

There was one young tribesman they passed who walked as if he was dancing. He was singing to himself and had oil-bobbed hair with a red flower in it.

More than once camels came sailing through the dust, riding towards Peshawar like ships to port
from distant seas. The camel-bells tinkled merrily and then grew fainter and fainter until again they were lost in file dust.

The camels must have come from Afghanistan, Orissa thought, right through the war-zone, perhaps from Russia across the Oxus and over the snowy Hindu-Kush.

Even to think of the far-away mountains made her shiver, and the Sergeant Major thinking she must be cold said:

“Not long now, Mem-Sahib.”

“Where are we stopping?” she asked, well aware they could not reach Shuba in one day.

“
In a Dak-bungalow, Mem-Sahib.”

Swiftly the sun slipped down behind the distant peaks, painting for a few seconds, their faces, the tika-gharri, and the landscape red as blood.

Then night fell like a gossamer veil of blue over the land and a sharp wind blew from the Khyber Pass to chill Orissa’s neck.

They reached the bungalow a few minutes later. It was small and
sparsely
furnished because such bungalows only contain the essentials. Most travellers bring all their comforts they require with them.

At the sight of the Sergeant Major and Orissa the keeper, or
Khansamah,
was thrown into confusion because Dak
-
bungalows were supposed to be reserved for European travellers.

The Sergeant Major however quickly brow-beat him into subservience and Orissa was taken into one of the rooms and, like magic, pillows and a quilt for the bare Charpoy were provided.

An oil lamp was set on the table in the centre room which served as a Living and Dining-Room for all travellers who spent the night in the bungalow.

Fortunately there were no other visitors and soon there was the fragrance of wood-smoke on the night air, the smell of ghee and curds, of sesame oil and mustard which had the most pungent scent of all.

Orissa washed herself, shook the dust from her sari and brushed it from her hair.

It was amusing, she thought, to let her long dark hair hang down her back as an Indian woman would have done and not to have to bother to confine it with pins or ribbons, combs or nets.

Her bracelets, given her by the land Indian ladies in the train, tinkled as she moved and she liked the sound of them.

Later after she had eaten, waited on by the Sergeant Major, she heard the soft music of a sitar playing outside and learnt that a party of Indians had arrived and camped for the night in the shelter of the Dak
-
bungalow.

Orissa peeped at them as they sat round the fire they had kindled of dung-cake. She had brief glimpses of their faces in the lights from the flames.

There were grey-bearded Oorayas, felt-hatted, duffle-clad hillmen from the North, and strong
eagle faced
men who pulled deep at gurgling hookahs, which sounded like bull-frogs.

Orissa was tired, because there is nothing more exhausting than driving through the dust and heat of India, but she almost resented having to sleep in case she should miss something exciting.

This was a wild adventure such as she had never expected to encounter.

She knew only too well how conventional a British woman’s life could be in India with its round of Social entertainment, where after a short while one always met the same people, heard the same conversations and listened to the same complaints and the same jokes.

This experience however was something she had not even dreamt she might ever enjoy and she knew she would remember every moment of it all her life.