195. Moon Over Eden Read online

  He had noticed that Gerald’s letters had been falling off during the past nine months.

  At first he had written regularly and every fortnight a letter would arrive full of details about the plantation.

  It was only lately that Lord Hawkston had begun to wonder if Gerald wrote what he thought his uncle would like to hear rather than what was actually occurring.

  Then his letters arrived once a month and finally had tailed off into quick scribbles at intervals of two or even three months.

  ‘The boy is busy,’ Lord Hawkston told himself. ‘I expect Emily hears from him regularly.’

  He saw very little of Gerald’s future wife. He found her father an extremely dull man who he had little in common with and in any case there was too much for him to do on the estate for him to have much time for social engagements.

  In any case he found them irksome.

  He had grown so used to being alone that social chitchat and petty gossip bored him.

  He was well aware that his relations not only found him difficult but were in awe of him. He did not mind that being their attitude and on the whole he preferred it.

  “He is a difficult man,” he had heard one of his cousins say just as he was entering the drawing room. “I never have any idea what he is thinking and quite frankly I am not really interested to find out.”

  There had been the sound of laughter as the lady finished speaking but Lord Hawkston, waiting to make his entrance, had merely been amused.

  On the ship he had gone out of his way to be as uncommunicative as possible.

  He knew only too well that the gushing friendships of shipboard acquaintances seldom lasted once the passengers had reached dry land.

  He was aware that Emily, who was chaperoned by a Colonel and his wife returning to duty in Colombo, was receiving plenty of attention from the young Army Officers on board.

  She was obviously amused by the dancing and charades, the fancy dress parties and the ship’s concerts that were arranged in the evenings.

  He had not noticed, Lord Hawkston thought, that Captain Patrick O’Neill was more attentive to Emily than anyone else.

  Now, standing in the garden of Queen’s House, he blamed himself for not being more perceptive, for not having realised that the girl had lost her heart and certainly her head on the journey to Ceylon,

  Lord Hawkston came from the shadow of the bamboo and walked across the lawn.

  This was a situation he had not anticipated and he wondered what the devil he should do about it.

  Of one thing he was certain. He had no intention of allowing Emily to marry his nephew.

  Perhaps, he told himself, it was a good thing that Gerald had not been able to meet them in Colombo as he had expected.

  The letter that had been waiting for him at Queen’s House when they arrived told him that Gerald was too ill to travel, but hoped to be well enough to receive his uncle and Emily when they arrived in Kandy.

  When he had first read the letter, Lord Hawkston had been annoyed.

  He had already planned that Emily and Gerald should be married in Colombo immediately on his arrival.

  He had thought that he would send them off on honeymoon and go up to the plantation alone.

  He had looked forward to seeing what had been done, to discussing innovations with his Head man and greeting the coolies, some of whom had been with him since the very first day he had started to clear the jungle.

  But his arrangements had been upset and he supposed that the Ceremony would have to take place in Kandy.

  At this moment it was almost like a blow to realise that there would now be no Wedding and he would have to break the news to Gerald that he must look elsewhere for a wife.

  ‘Damn the girl!’ Lord Hawkston said to himself. ‘Why the hell could she not behave herself?’

  Even as he swore he realised that he himself was in part to blame for not having gone out to Ceylon sooner.

  Eighteen months was a long time in two young people’s lives. And years ago it had seemed a long time to him.

  Equally if Emily was flighty enough to be beguiled away from Gerald by the first handsome young man who sought her favours, it was better for it to happen before marriage than after.

  ‘I will send her home on the next ship,’ Lord Hawkston decided.

  The beauty of the night was spoilt for him and he turned and walked back to the front of the house, trying not to think of those two young people clasped in each other’s arms in an upstairs bedroom.

  *

  The next morning Lord Hawkston breakfasted early. As he finished and was about to rise from the table he was told that there was someone to see him.

  Surprised at so early a visitor he followed the servant, resplendent in his red and white uniform, down the wide corridors to a sitting room where to his delight he found James Taylor waiting for him.

  At fifty Taylor was a very big man with a long beard. He weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and one of his fingers was as thick as three of an ordinary man’s fingers put together.

  When he smiled, it gave his face with its deep-set eyes and long nose a strange charm.

  “I heard that you arrived yesterday, Chilton,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “James! By all that’s Holy! I was hoping to see you but not so soon. How are you? It seems a century since we last met.”

  “I have missed you, Chilton,” James Taylor said. “I began to be afraid that you had become too grand to come back to us.”

  “If only you knew how much I have longed to return before now!” Lord Hawkston replied. “But I have been working almost as hard at home as I did here, only in a different way. It has not been easy.”

  James Taylor smiled.

  “Nothing you and I have done has ever been easy, Chilton, but I expect you have managed to win through.”

  “I hope so,” Lord Hawkston answered.

  Then he thought of Emily and his expression darkened.

  “Tell me about my nephew.”

  “That is one of the reasons why I came here to see you.”

  There was something in the way he spoke that made Lord Hawkston look at him sharply.

  “Has the boy settled down and done a good job?” he asked. “I want the truth.”

  “The whole truth?” James Taylor enquired.

  “You know I would not be satisfied with anything less.”

  “Very well. We are old friends, Chilton, and because you and I have always been frank with each other I had to come to tell you that you will have to do something about that young man.”

  “What do you mean?” Lord Hawkston asked.

  James Taylor hesitated for a moment before he said,

  “I think, unlike you and me, he cannot adjust himself to the solitude. It is hard, as we both know, to live alone, to face long evenings with no one to talk to and to realise that one has to ride perhaps miles to find a friendly face.”

  James Taylor spoke quietly and there was a note of sympathy in his voice, but Lord Hawkston’s tone was hard as he enquired,

  “What is he doing – drinking?”

  James Taylor nodded.

  “What else?”

  “He is messing things up rather badly.”

  “In what way?”

  For a moment there was no answer and Lord Hawkston said,

  “Tell me the truth, James, and I don’t want it tied up with blue ribbon.”

  “Very well then,” James Taylor said. “Speaking frankly he has broken the rules where a native girl is concerned.”

  Lord Hawkston stiffened.

  “How can he have done that?”

  “We both know,” James Taylor’ replied, “that it is quite usual and in no way reprehensible for a young man to take a mistress from a nearby village or another plantation.”

  Lord Hawkston nodded.

  What was forbidden was for a planter to approach or be involved with one of his own employees.

  “Your nephew made a Ceylonese girl
his mistress a month after he arrived. Now he has kicked her out and refused to pay.”

  Lord Hawkston rose to his feet.

  “I can hardly believe that!”

  “It is true nevertheless and, as you can imagine, it has caused quite an upset.”

  Lord Hawkston was silent for a moment and then he said,

  “Tell me every detail. I want to know.”

  He was well aware as he spoke that the rules of co-habitation between white men who were owners or managers of plantations with a native girl was an age-old custom and as such accepted by both the planters and the natives themselves.

  The Portuguese and Dutch who preceded the English in Ceylon had taken women to live with them and in many cases married them.

  The English had quite a different arrangement.

  A planter living alone would take a mistress on the terms usually arranged by her father. He would invite her to his house when he needed her but she lived in a nearby village or even on the compound but not openly with him.

  The girls were highly attractive, gentle and loving and a young planter could often find real happiness with one of them.

  It was considered by the Ceylonese an honour that one of their women should be the mistress of the Durai or Master of a plantation and if a man tired of a woman there was no stigma attached to her.

  She went back to her own people with a dowry that ensured she could marry one of her own kind, because in their eyes she was rich.

  The number of rupees that should be given in compensation was more or less an unwritten law and accepted by both parties.

  If there were children from the association, they lived with their mother and many of them moved to a certain village in the hills, which was known among the natives as ‘New England’.

  These children were surprisingly beautiful with dark skins and blue eyes and sometimes even fair hair.

  They could, of course, cause trouble in that the parents of the girl realised that a child was an excuse to extort money from the father.

  The reckoning was always high, sometimes crippling. An astute peasant would have a settlement drawn up by a properly qualified Proctor, a Solicitor, in the bazaar and an unfortunate young planter could find that he was saddled with a form of alimony for the rest of his life in Ceylon.

  But in the majority of cases such unions were pleasant and, as long as justice was done, were without repercussions.

  That Gerald should have been so stupid and obtuse as to have broken the rules that governed such arrangements was almost beyond Lord Hawkston’s comprehension.

  The planters in Ceylon were noted as being among the most intelligent, gentlemanly and trustworthy of any colonists in British dependences.

  A microcosm of the population of Great Britain, elementary, grammar and public school boys. University graduates, businessmen, Lawyers, Officers of the Armed Services, Conservatives, Liberals, English, Scots, Welsh and Irish was the wide ranging spectrum to be found on the coffee, tea and rubber estates.

  They worked hard, but they also played hard and once acclimatised enjoyed life immensely.

  Few had had to pioneer their way as James Taylor and Chilton Hawk had been forced to do.

  But it was still a rough life and to rise from a novice or ‘creeper’ to a Perya Durai or Big Master, as the coolies called them, entailed working from six o’clock in the morning to six or seven in the evening.

  But a Perya Durai lived in a spacious bungalow or house set on a hilltop with large gardens. He did his round of the ‘field’ on horseback.

  When he had leave, he could shoot wild elephants, elk, buffalo, bear and leopards, fish, swim, play cricket, hunt, take part in gymkhanas or polo tournaments and join the British Clubs that were within a day’s journey of most plantations.

  James Taylor explained very carefully what had happened.

  Gerald had been drinking ever since he arrived. He had soon become bored with the plantation and everything had been left to the Head man.

  Gerald had at first gone down to Kandy where there was a certain amount of amusement to be found, then he had joined the less reputable planters who enjoyed themselves in Colombo and paid little or no attention to their plantations.

  This had kept him occupied for some time, but soon he found that his money was running out and he could not afford the visits, which always proved expensive.

  Finally, because he was hard-up, Gerald was forced to sit in his house and drink, his only amusement being Seetha, the native girl who had taken his fancy soon after he arrived.

  “What happened then?” Lord Hawkston asked.

  “I gather that there was a scene a month ago, when Gerald had been drinking very heavily,” James Taylor answered. “He accused the girl of stealing a signet ring that he always wore. Afterwards, I believe, it was discovered under a piece of furniture in the room.”

  He paused and his voice was scathing as he went on,

  “At the time he was quite adamant that Seetha had stolen it and she was extremely angry and distressed knowing that she had done nothing of the sort.”

  Lord Hawkston could imagine how indignant the girl would be. The Ceylonese employed on the plantation were usually scrupulously honest and anyway were far too frightened to take anything that did not belong to them from their Master’s house.

  He himself had never missed anything all the years that he had lived in the hills.

  “Gerald told the girl to clear out,” James Taylor continued, “and, because he alleged that she was a thief, he refused to give her the money as is usual upon dismissal.”

  Lord Hawkston rose to walk across the room.

  “The fool!” he exclaimed. “The damned fool.”

  “I agree with you,” James Taylor said. “When I heard what had happened, I rode over to see the boy, but he was at that moment quite incapable of understanding anything I had to say. However I saw your cable to him lying on his desk. I read it, learnt that you were arriving and came here to tell you what was happening.”

  “That was kind of you, James.”

  “In the cable,” James Taylor went on, “you put ‘Emily and I arriving on Friday’. Does it mean that you have brought Gerald a wife? I heard rumours that you were to do so. As you know, everything is known in such a small community.”

  “I brought with me a young woman who was engaged to Gerald before he left England,” Lord Hawkston replied in a hard voice. “Unfortunately, I have discovered that her interests lie elsewhere and I shall not permit the marriage.”

  James Taylor gave a low whistle.

  “More problems. Well, I must say, Chilton, I think it’s a pity. I am sure if there is one thing that could save young Gerald it would be for him to have a sensible wife who would stop him drinking and disperse the loneliness and isolation that he obviously cannot endure alone.”

  “I will try to find him a wife,” Lord Hawkston said, but he added beneath his breath, “it will not be Emily Ludgrove.”

  James Taylor looked at his watch.

  “I must get back. I intend to catch the morning train to Kandy, but I wanted to prepare you for what lay ahead. I hope you will be able to sort everything out, Chilton, and then come and see me. I have some interesting new experiments to show you.”

  “You know perfectly well that there is nothing I would enjoy more,” Lord Hawkston replied. “Thank you, James, for proving yourself a true friend once again.”

  “I wish I had better news to bring you,” James Taylor remarked. “But I will tell you one thing that will please you, the export of tea will reach over five million hundredweight this year.”

  Lord Hawkston smiled.

  “That is the sort of information I certainly hoped to hear.”

  “My plantation is booming,” James Taylor said, “and yours should do so if once again it has your magic touch. We need you back, Chilton. We all need you and so does Ceylon.”

  “Don’t tempt me!” Lord Hawkston smiled. “You know I would rather be here than anywhe
re else in the world.”

  There was a ring of truth in his voice that was unmistakable and James Taylor put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “I will be seeing you later, Chilton,” he said. “We will talk about it then.”

  Lord Hawkston saw him to the door and then turned back with a frown between his eyes.

  He knew now that he had to see Emily Ludgrove.

  Then he had to decide what he would say to his nephew.

  It was not a pleasant prospect and yet those who knew him well, had they seen the sudden tightening of his jaw, would have been aware that Chilton Hawk was about to go into battle and, as always, emerge victorious.

  Twenty minutes later Emily Ludgrove came into the sitting room where Lord Hawkston waited for her. She was looking, he had to admit, extremely pretty.

  The gown she had bought in London was in the very latest fashion and revealed the perfection of her slim figure, while the colour accentuated the blue of her eyes and the almost dazzling gold of her hair.

  For almost the first time Lord Hawkston realised that she was indeed lovely and he thought perhaps it had been an absurd idea that she should incarcerate herself on a tea plantation miles away from the many admirers her beauty would attract.

  “Good morning, my Lord,” Emily said in a coquettish way with the look in her eyes that she accorded any man, young or old, when she was alone with him.

  “Good morning, Emily,” Lord Hawkston replied. “Will you please sit down? I wish to talk to you.”

  “That sounds ominous!” Emily exclaimed. “Is anything wrong?”

  “I wish to inform you,” Lord Hawkston said, “that I am arranging for your passage back to England on the first available ship.”

  He saw Emily’s eyes widen in an incredulous look of surprise and went on before she could speak,

  “I happened to be in the garden last night when Captain O’Neill visited you in a somewhat irregular manner.”

  For a moment Emily was still and then she said,

  “Captain O’Neill has asked me to marry him.”

  “I should imagine that is the least he could do,” Lord Hawkston remarked dryly.

  “And I was just debating,” Emily Ludgrove went on, “as to whether I should accept his offer.”