(There’d been that stormy interview at Clevely; Sir Charles had said, ‘This is the last time, Richard. You marry and settle down or I’m finished with you!’ And the perverse devil which ruled all Richard’s actions had, two months later, derived the greatest satisfaction from composing a letter which said: ‘According to instructions, sir, I have chosen my bride. She is the daughter of a poor parson; she has a dowry of five hundred pounds, the gift of her cousin who is the widow of a man who sold tallow candles with great profit; she is plain of face, rustic
of manner but has the ability to make me laugh, and I can make her cry.’ It was the last six words which proved to Sir Charles that there was no hope.)
The hat which matched the lavender dress was a genuine Leghorn straw, wide of brim and becoming; but it had changed colour. Much exposure to strong sunshine had darkened the straw and faded the amethyst ribbon almost to grey. Still, it hid a great deal of the straight bleached hair and in its shadow the hollows were less noticeable. As she pulled on her lace mittens—very carefully, for they too had grown brittle—Linda was satisfied that she looked, not attractive, but at her best.
The curtained, wheeled, scarlet-lacquered, silver-decked, cushioned litter which was provided for the use of those of the Rajah’s harem who found it necessary from time to time to visit one of the various holy places in the district called for her exactly fifteen minutes and one hour before sunset. Indian time-keeping had always been, and remained, a mystery to her. (Richard had once said, ‘It is your inquisitive, puppy-nosing-into-everything attitude that I find so engaging.’) She had been interested to know that Surunda Ghotal, Rajah of Kilapore, a man whose wealth just could not be counted, owned no watch, no clock. Once, when she was thinking about the future, she had thought, if I could borrow a little money to start with and could find someone who could make watches and clocks cheaply and quickly, because it wouldn’t matter if they didn’t last, I could make a small fortune in India. She had had a vision of herself hurrying from city to city, from province to province, with a pack like a pedlar’s, selling off the cheap time-pieces. Indians, particularly those who were coming more and more every day into touch with the East India Company, couldn’t go on, surely, reckoning time by whatever means they used.
Still, the litter was punctual; it took exactly fifteen minutes, timed by Richard’s watch, to cross the city from their horrid little hired house to the palace. She looked into the room where Richard lay, sprawled almost naked upon the bed, with an empty brandy bottle on the floor
beside him, before she went out and climbed into the litter. The driver cracked his whip, the necklace of small golden bells which hung from the horses’ necks set up their jingling, and she was off on her last ride through the city.
Today, meek as any member of the harem, she did not lift the curtains, which were just light enough not to be oppressive, just opaque enough to defeat curious eyes. During her first, and her second, and her third ride in this very litter she had lifted the curtain and peered out, making her observations and her comparisons and her comments. Now she knew it all—knew how the people, so many people in the overcrowded streets, made way for the litter and averted their eyes as they dragged their goats, and their children, and their overburdened donkeys, and their old people out of the way; knew how the driver used his whip on those who were slow. Once she had looked out and thought, suppose one, just one of those golden bells came loose and fell in the dust and somebody picked it up, how many bowls of rice could he buy? And had realised that if golden bells were freely broadcast they would lose all value, would buy no rice at all. Today she kept the curtains in place and rode unseeing past the crowds and the dreadful-looking beggars and through the dust and the filth. She had finished with Kilapore.
She knew, by the way the air freshened, when the litter passed into the palace precincts, a little above the city, refreshed by fountains, set with trees. Presently, with the fierce jerk which all Indian drivers considered stylish, the litter stopped, a waiting servant drew back the curtains, and Linda, after settling her hat which the jolt had tilted to a more-than-fashionably rakish angle, stepped out.
She remembered how impressive the palace had seemed the first time she saw it, which was at night, lit by the flare of many torches; and how amusing it had seemed on her second visit, in daylight. It was a vast rambling building which looked as though many successive
owners had added to it and taken pains to see that each addition was individual and different. There was a central part, approached by a flight of marble steps and facaded with pillars, which was of pink plaster and which resembled an iced cake; there was a round tower made of purplish-red brick and a square one of grey stone topped with a silver dome; there was an outjutting wing entirely of wood, and everywhere there were balconies and cornices and buttresses and archways and shutters of varying materials and colours. Symbolic of India, perhaps, she thought, as she mounted the steps, passed on, as it were, from one to another of the white-clad servants who stood at intervals on either side and who raised their hands to their heads as she drew level with them and then slightly turned; symbolic of India—huge, sprawling, overdecorated, conforming to no pattern, full of contrasts and yet mounting up to something magnificent by virtue of very size. Magnificent and on the verge of rot. There was symbolism, too, in the shutters which sagged from their hinges, the balconies which would collapse if ventured upon. Piece by piece India was collapsing, falling into the hands of the East India Company. Surunda Ghotal’s palace would hold together a little longer, and so would Kilapore, but they were doomed. She rather hoped that Kilapore would keep its independence just long enough, that the collapse would come after Surunda Ghotal’s death, not before. Yet why she should feel sentimental about him she did not know… a few careless kindnesses which cost him nothing but the moment’s attention needed for the giving of an order—should she be grateful to the point of sentiment for those? And could she blind herself to the fact that one of those half-crazed, hysterical, greed-frenzied potentates who started off by administering violent rebuffs and then listened to arguments and gave in would have been, in the end, of more value to her and to Richard than this grave, courteous old man who had received them so kindly, listened so attentively to all the arguments, asked for time to consider and then refused to give any concessions at all?
The servant on the uppermost step passed her on no further; instead he turned and led her through the now-familiar but still uncharted labyrinth of the interior of the palace, through high halls where her heels rang on the tiled floor, through narrow dim passages, through curtained archways, up stairs, down stairs. Finally a doorway gave upon a place which she had never seen before, a small enclosed space which denied absolutely the haphazard nature of the rest of the palace and its precincts, a little place of pure and formal beauty. It was walled all round with white marble, solid blocks to about shoulder height, and above that a two-foot-deep fringe of carving so delicate and intricate that it looked like petrified lace. From the point where she stood, and where the servant had halted and turned his hand palm upwards, pointing straight ahead, ran a path paved with the same white marble. On either side, between path and wall, was a space of bright-green grass, such as she had not seen since she came to India; and in each piece of green lawn, perfectly matched, were three fountains in play, the spray catching the light in broken rainbows. Set along each side of the path, in perfect symmetry, were small flowering trees, and at its end was a little marble summerhouse, traced over, but not embowered, with climbing roses. The whole space was artificially, mathematically precise, but it was beautiful, with the measured disciplined beauty of a sonnet. She stood for a moment taking in the cool delight; the green, the white, the fountains’ graces, the little trees, so strictly shaped and each standing in its ring of fallen petals … then she looked towards the place where Surunda Ghotal sat, half reclining upon his couch in the summerhouse, his infirm leg propped out straight before him. In his youth, leading a punitive expedition against a rebellious Polygar, he had been wounded in the thigh and the wound had never healed; there were times when, close to him, you could smell the festering, rotten-sweet stench of it. Possibly because of his enforced inaction he had grown very stout, and the drugs which he relied upon to relieve the constant nag of the pain had made his hair