Love in the Clouds Read online

  Without waiting for him to say any more, Chandra stepped out of the train, noting as she did so, that Mehan Lall, while he stood with the luggage already heaped on the backs of two porters, was watching his Master apprehensively.

  “Shall I lead the way?” Lord Frome asked and, without waiting for Chandra’s reply, stepped into the crowd.

  They seemed to move aside for him almost as if he deliberately swept them from his path and, as Chandra followed him, she thought with a smile that she was like the Eastern women who had eternally to walk two paces humbly behind their men.

  ‘He is angry with me,’ she thought, ‘and yet for the moment there is nothing he can do about it.’

  Lord Frome reached the front of the station. Chandra saw the usual collection of beggars holding out their hands optimistically, but really without much hope that anyone would pay any attention to them.

  Then ahead, only a very short distance from the station, she saw what was obviously a Dak bungalow or rest house.

  It was, in fact, larger than she had expected and she knew exactly what the rooms would be like inside, for the Dak bungalows, which had been erected all over India by the British, were invariably designed on the same pattern.

  It suddenly struck her that in such a small place as Bairagnia the bungalow might contain only one bedroom and one sitting room, in which case Lord Frome might find it difficult to accommodate her even for the night.

  Then, as they walked across the soft sandy ground, Chandra saw that her fears were groundless. The bungalow was big enough to provide rooms for three or perhaps four visitors.

  As far as she was concerned, she only wanted one room to herself.

  Lord Frome, who was still walking a pace or so ahead, stepped onto the verandah.

  There were several chairs with a small iron table between them, but he opened the door and went into the building.

  Here there was the inevitable wooden-walled room with a square table and several hard chairs.

  Most people, unless they were eating, sat outside on the verandah.

  Lord Frome drew out a chair from the table and sat down at it. Then looking at Chandra as she stood just inside the door, he said in his hard authoritative voice,

  “And now, Miss Wardell, perhaps you will tell me exactly why you are here.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Chandra sat down opposite Lord Frome, realising as she did so that he had not invited her to sit and wondering if he intended her to stand in front of him like a servant.

  In a voice she forced to sound quiet and slow, she said,

  “My father unfortunately had a heart attack two days before he was due to leave.”

  “And you did not cable me?”

  “No,” Chandra answered. “Because I thought that it would be very difficult for you to find anyone quickly to replace my father, I came in his place.”

  For a moment Lord Frome looked at her incredulously.

  Then he said,

  “By what possible reasoning could you believe you could be of any use to me?”

  Chandra smiled.

  She had thought that this would be his attitude and she replied,

  “For the last five years I have worked with my father on the Sanskrit manuscripts. I can say without conceit that my translation is nearly as good as his and therefore considerably better than that of anyone else you would be able to employ at a moment’s notice.”

  “That would be for me to decide,” Lord Frome snapped.

  “My father and I were, in fact, thinking for you,” Chandra said. “We knew how hard it would be, once you reached here, to find someone to ride with you into Nepal.”

  “And you are prepared to do that?”

  “I have travelled a great deal with my father in the past,” Chandra replied, “and I do not expect Nepal will be much different from any other country.”

  “You must be quite mad,” Lord Frome said rudely, “if you really think I can arrive in Nepal accompanied by a woman.”

  “Perhaps you could think of me, not as a woman, but as a substitute for my father and someone who would be able to identify the Lotus Manuscript as well as he could.”

  “That I can hardly believe. In fact, to tell you the truth, Miss Wardell, you are stretching my credulity too far for me to believe anything you say.”

  “Perhaps you would like to put me to a test,” Chandra suggested. “Give me a Sanskrit manuscript and I will translate it to you.”

  Lord Frome suddenly brought his fist hard down on the table in front of him as he asserted,

  “This whole situation is absurd, utterly absurd. I wished your father to come with me to Nepal to identify the Lotus Manuscript, simply because he is the greatest Sanskrit scholar in the world. You can hardly expect me to accept as a substitute a young girl with no experience, even if she is his daughter.”

  “I am older than I look,” Chandra said, remembering that on the voyage she had been prepared to pass herself off as twenty-three.

  “That’s not the point!” Lord Frome retorted, as if he resented her having an answer to everything he said.

  “The point, surely, is that I can do what you want,” Chandra argued. “Whether you believe it or not, I am very experienced in the translation of Sanskrit. I can also recognise as accurately as my father, the age of a manuscript and that is the particular reason why you wanted him to accompany you to Nepal.”

  This was irrefutable and Lord Frome, glowering at her as if he suspected she had an ulterior motive for every word she spoke, suddenly rose to his feet and walked restlessly across the small room to the window.

  He stood looking out at the bright crimson of a bougainvillea, but Chandra was certain that in actual fact he did not see it.

  He was merely contemplating the collapse of his plans and being extremely angry that things were not going as smoothly as he had hoped.

  She remembered all too well how confident he had sounded when talking to her father when he had said he planned everything ahead and, if things went wrong, he wished to know the reason why.

  The reason in this case was quite simple. Her father was too ill to join him and she had come in his place.

  She felt she almost wanted to say it out loud to him as if reading an easy primer to a child, but she thought that would make him only angrier.

  So she just sat still, her hands in her lap, hoping that she looked studious and not in the least a frivolous type of woman who might disturb him.

  There was a long silence while Lord Frome stood with his back to her.

  Then he said, as if he had not come to any positive decision,

  “Even if I agree to your accompanying me in your father’s place, it would be impossible, as I have already said, for me to arrive in Kathmandu accompanied by a young woman who was un-chaperoned.”

  Chandra thought, with a little smile of amusement, that it might have been Ellen speaking.

  “I should not have thought that a chaperone was necessary in such an obscure part of the world,” she remarked.

  She knew even as she spoke, that nothing was too far away or obscure for gossip and as Lord Frome was a man of distinction, what happened in Kathmandu would doubtless sooner or later be gossiped about over the teacups in Simla.

  “I still think it is extremely reprehensible of you not to have sent me a cable,” Lord Frome said suddenly, as if his mind was off on another tack.

  “One very good reason why I did not do so,” Chandra replied, “was because you did not give my father an address. I daresay it would have found you here, but, if you had then suggested that I should come in his place, there would have been a long delay before I could reach you.”

  “I should have suggested nothing of the sort!” Lord Frome raged. “There are other Sanskrit scholars who would doubtless have been only too pleased to take this trip with me.”

  Chandra made no reply and merely sat quietly.

  After a time Lord Frome turned and now she could see by the expression on his face h
ow angry he was.

  “I shall have to think this over, Miss Wardell,” he said. “It is not a decision I can make in a few seconds.”

  He paused and looked at her aggressively as if he expected her to argue.

  Then he continued,

  “You will obviously have to stay the night here and, as there will be no train back until midday tomorrow, I can give you my decision as to whether you can stay or go at breakfast time, which I have ordered at six o’clock.”

  “Thank you,” Chandra said meekly.

  She rose to her feet as she spoke and felt as she did so, that Lord Frome was watching her almost as if he thought he might discover by his scrutiny something he did not know already.

  He made her feel self-conscious. At the same time she hoped that she did not show it.

  She merely walked to the door and as she did so Lord Frome said,

  “I presume you will want to eat? My manservant is preparing a meal at this moment.”

  “Thank you,” Chandra said again and she walked from the room out onto the verandah.

  There was another door which she thought must lead to the bedrooms and found she was not mistaken.

  There were three very small rooms side by side and she found that Mehan Lall had already put her luggage in the first of them.

  The Dak bungalows were always primitive but clean and in each bedroom was a harpoy or native bed which consisted of a frame with cross webbing on four legs on which travellers placed their own bedding.

  A plain chest of drawers, a chair and a table on which there was a candle for when it grew dark constituted the rest of the furnishings.

  At the back of the building there was a washing sluice, which the keeper kept supplied with a number of cans of cold water.

  When she had undressed, a little shyly because she was afraid that she might meet Lord Frome, Chandra went to the sluice and washed.

  She felt cleaner and cooler after she had done so. Then she went back to her room and put on a plain gown that she hoped made her look severe and business-like.

  With a little white collar at the neck, it was almost puritanical in appearance. She dragged her hair into a small tight bun at the back of her head and even tried to smooth away the two waves that fell on either side of her forehead.

  ‘If I had been sensible,’ she told her reflection in the mirror, ‘I would have brought with me a pair of spectacles, even though I don’t need them.’

  She knew a great deal depended on what Lord Frome thought of her as they ate together.

  At the moment she was very uncertain as to whether he would submit to what she hoped he would find inevitable and take her with him to Nepal.

  She knew his instinct was to send her back immediately on the train tomorrow. At the same time she was hoping that he would find it so inconvenient to have no expert in Sanskrit with him that he would accept her because there was no ready alternative.

  She was certain, however, that he was the type of man whose reactions one could never anticipate and, as she had thought when she first heard his voice, there was something hard and ruthless about him.

  She was sure that he was completely selfish when it came to his own interests.

  She had hurried over washing and changing simply because she felt to keep him waiting might make her appear to be typically feminine.

  It was with a sense of relief, when she went back into the sitting room, to find he was not there.

  A servant was laying the table and there was a clean white cloth over it which inevitably was rough dried. In the centre of the table a wicker basket was filled with chapattis and other types of Indian bread.

  The servant bowed to her when she appeared.

  Then before Chandra could speak as she intended to do, Lord Frome came into the room.

  She saw at once that he had changed as she had and in a way, because he was conventionally clad for the evening, it made him seem more awe-inspiring and even more authoritative than he had been in his riding clothes.

  “What will you drink, Miss Wardell?” he asked abruptly. “I am afraid, as I was expecting your father, your choice is limited to whisky or Indian beer.”

  “I like Indian beer,” Chandra replied, “and it will be delightful to drink it again.”

  “You have been in India before?”

  “I was with my father in various parts of the country six years ago.”

  She thought Lord Frome looked at her speculatively as if he thought that she was lying because she would have been too young at the time. But he did not say anything and only ordered the servant to bring her a glass of beer while he himself accepted a whisky.

  They sipped their drinks in silence until the food was ready and then sat down at the table.

  What they ate was, Chandra thought, the inevitable travellers’ menu – hot soup, a very skinny chicken, which having been killed only a few hours earlier was very tough and yet cooked with spices, was quite appetising, and a caramel pudding.

  This was one of the dishes that every Memsahib had taught their Indian servants and appeared monotonously at every meal for Europeans.

  Because she thought it was polite, Chandra said, after they had sat in silence for some time,

  “Your servant is a good cook.”

  “He does his best,” Lord Frome replied, “and when I am travelling I am not really interested in what I am eating.”

  Chandra thought that this was true.

  There was a preoccupied expression on his face, which told her that he was thinking of other subjects while he consumed what was put in front of him.

  She wondered if she should suggest that she was a very good cook and in an emergency she could, if he liked, provide something very different from what they had just eaten.

  Then she thought that was the last thing she should say, it would sound far too feminine and far too obviously like a woman trying to encroach upon his bachelor mode of existence.

  Instead she sat silent and only as they finished, did Lord Frome say,

  “I want to talk to you, Miss Wardell. I suggest we go out onto the verandah.”

  “That will be very nice,” Chandra replied and walked outside.

  The sun had sunk, but there was a golden translucent glow in the sky that came before darkness.

  As she sat down on one of the wicker chairs, she could hear the crickets chirping in the surrounding shrubs.

  She listened to them as she looked out over the dusty road that led down to the station to where in the distance there was a little cultivated land and beyond that sand and barren rocks.

  It was all so familiar and so dear that Chandra felt as if she had come home.

  Behind the bungalow there was the distant chatter of voices, a baby crying and the creak of a well-wheel.

  There was the smell of warm dust and stones that had been sun-soaked all day and the scent of woodsmoke.

  Then, as Chandra felt her whole being moving like a wave of love towards it all, Lord Frome came and sat down beside her.

  “I have been thinking over your extraordinary, if I may say so, behaviour in coming here without informing me what you intended to do,” he said slowly. “As I am quite certain you are aware, Miss Wardell, you have put me in an extremely difficult position.”

  There was no doubt of the hostility in his voice and it seemed to Chandra to grate harshly on what she had just been feeling.

  With an effort, she turned her eyes towards him, thinking it was polite to appear as if she was listening while she longed to return to her contemplation of the view and listen to the sounds that were so peculiarly Indian.

  “My first impulse,” Lord Frome went on, “is to send you home immediately with a letter to your father saying that he should never have allowed you to come in the first place. Unfortunately I have other factors to consider.”

  He paused and Chandra could see what she thought was almost an expression of hatred in his eyes before he added,

  “I have permission to enter Nepal fo
r a short time and my permit, if that is the right word for it, begins in three days when I intend to reach Kathmandu.”

  His lips tightened and there was no need for him to explain that it had taken months of negotiation to obtain permission to enter the country. If he had to start all over again, he might be delayed for a further two or three months – perhaps longer.

  Chandra felt a little thrill of hope raise its head excitedly inside her.

  She had forgotten while pressing on Lord Frome the advantage of taking her in her father’s place, that the question of a permit to enter what was a closed country was a very important one.

  “I could, of course, cancel my whole journey indefinitely,” Lord Frome was saying, “but I very much dislike having to change my plans and I have in fact been determined for a long time that I would spend these next few months in Nepal.”

  “I can assure you,” Chandra said in a voice that was as cold as his, “that my father was deeply disappointed at not being able to accompany you and even the fact that the journey might have killed him would not have deterred him, if it had been physically possible for him to come to you.”

  “I had no idea the Professor was in ill health,” Lord Frome said almost resentfully.

  “My father is not as young as he was when he made his expeditions to Tibet and Sikkim and I think that you may find later, my Lord, that on expeditions of this sort, one ages quickly.”

  If she had meant to startle Lord Frome, she succeeded.

  “Do you think that’s true?” he enquired.

  “I know it,” Chandra replied. “My father has had malaria a number of times and, of course, various types of Asiatic fever, which take their toll of even the strongest man and certainly, sooner or later, affect the heart.”

  She knew this was something else that Lord Frome had not considered, but she thought as she spoke, that he looked very young and people with robust health seldom thought of the frailty of others.

  “Your father has been so helpful to me in the past,” Lord Frome said a little grudgingly, “and I am afraid I never considered his age.”