Love in the Clouds Read online

  “I think perhaps that you don’t consider him as a person at all, but merely as someone who is very useful to you.”

  If she had meant to shock him, Lord Frome could not have looked more surprised.

  “I consider that a most unfair assertion,” he protested.

  She did not argue, but merely bowed her head a little as if to acknowledge his retort, but did not reply to it.

  “To return to what we were discussing,” Lord Frome said sharply, “which is whether or not you shall accompany me to Nepal. I wish I could be convinced, Miss Wardell, that you are as competent in your work as you tell me you are.”

  “Shall I say that my father is extremely satisfied with all that I do for him?” Chandra replied. “In fact the last manuscript you sent him, the Bhadravadana, I translated entirely myself and my father merely revised it.”

  She thought from the way Lord Frome looked at her that he very much doubted that this was true, but he said aloud,

  “There is nothing I can do but take your word for your capabilities, in which case the problem is how I can justify your travelling with me, seeing that you are not only a woman but young in years.”

  “Time, of course, will eradicate one of those difficulties.” Chandra said. “The second is unfortunately unchangeable.”

  She spoke without thinking and knew that Lord Frome was surprised. She was afraid that he might think she was being flippant.

  She was beginning to find his pomposity and the manner in which he openly revealed his dislike of her so irritating that she longed to say that she had no intention of going with him to Nepal or anywhere else in the world.

  But all the time at the back of her mind she was remembering how much they needed the money.

  It would be difficult to return even part of the six hundred pounds which by now had paid for her father’s and Ellen’s tickets to Cannes and provided them for some weeks with their board and lodgings in the pension that Dr. Baldwin had chosen for them.

  With an effort, because she disliked having to toady to Lord Frome, she managed to say in a humble tone,

  “If your Lordship will be kind enough to take me with you to Kathmandu, I promise you I will do everything in my power to see that I am as unobtrusive as possible.”

  “You will still be there with me,” Lord Frome said grimly, “and we have to think of how it will appear to the outside world.”

  Chandra longed to argue that the ‘outside world’ was so far away that it really was rather foolish to worry about it.

  Then she remembered that, as Lord Frome was so important, he obviously had to be concerned with his reputation while hers was of no consequence.

  It seemed to her, however, that he was making a great fuss about nothing.

  Famous men from the beginning of time had travelled with their mistresses and in India the Maharajahs all had a number of concubines who accompanied them wherever they went.

  But obviously Lord Frome, who was a woman-hater, was immunising himself not only from contact with women but from being talked about in relation to them.

  After a moment, Chandra said a little hesitatingly,

  “I-I suppose it would not be – possible for me to disguise myself as – a boy or a young – man?”

  “Good God, no!” Lord Frome exclaimed. “That sort of play-acting would not deceive anybody! No, Miss Wardell, I am afraid what we have to do is more drastic, for I can find no other possible means by which I can justify taking you with me to Kathmandu.”

  Chandra looked at him in surprise and he added,

  “I assure you it is not anything I would even consider at any other time or place, but this is an exceptional problem, simply because I cannot afford to wait and find somebody else to take your father’s place.”

  “What – are you suggesting?” Chandra enquired.

  “It is quite simple,” Lord Frome replied, in a voice that made it quite clear it was nothing of the sort. “It is that you should come with me to Kathmandu as my wife!”

  It was Chandra’s turn to look astonished and her eyes widened as she stared at him.

  “Of course it will be a pretence only for the time we are there,” Lord Frome said quickly, as if he was afraid she thought he might be proposing to her, “but that would obviate any questions that the British Resident, Colonel Wylie, might ask and it would be an excuse for your presence that no one would question.”

  “Your – wife?” Chandra said in a low voice.

  This was something she had never anticipated in her wildest dreams.

  “I can assure you, Miss Wardell,” Lord Frome said in a bitter voice, “it is the type of deception that I would greatly deplore in any other circumstances, but this is undoubtedly an emergency that has never occurred before in my life and which I hope fervently will never happen again.”

  “B-but – surely – ?” Chandra began.

  Then, as she thought of it, she realised it was, from Lord Frome’s point of view, a very sensible idea.

  She could imagine with his hatred of women, how he would loathe the innuendos, the snide remarks and the assumption even from his servants that, because there was a woman with him, she was his mistress.

  To put a respectable front on it, to appear as man and wife, was to take any immoral aspect or indeed any romance out of the situation and make it just an ordinary journey where a wife automatically accompanied her husband wherever his duty or his interests took him.

  That was not the spirit in which her father and mother had travelled, but she knew that they were exceptional.

  For the majority of wives in India or anywhere else in the East, they followed where their husbands’ occupations carried them, grumbling and complaining, but nevertheless having little or no say in where they must set up another temporary home.

  “I do not need to assure you,” Lord Frome was saying, “that if the idea is abhorrent to you, it is even more so to me and perhaps I should add that I am an avowed bachelor.”

  Chandra thought he was making it very clear that she should not ‘cast her cap’ at him and she longed to reassure him that he was quite safe in that respect.

  ‘A more disagreeable, unpleasant man I have yet to meet!’ she thought. ‘I can only hope my husband, when I have one, is not in the least like him in any particular.’

  Aloud she said in a reluctant tone,

  “I suppose your Lordship is right in thinking it is the only – possible way I can accompany you. At the same time I must admit it is not a situation that I look forward to with any pleasure.”

  “Pleasure!” Lord Frome ejaculated. “You cannot think it gives me any pleasure?”

  He stared at her for a moment and then said in a quieter tone,

  “It is just a measure of expediency and I hope you will treat it as such.”

  “You need have no fears on that account,” Chandra said coldly, “and as it happens, I thought, as I had no chaperone, I would be wise on the ship to say that I was a widow. I therefore travelled as Mrs. Wardell.”

  As if he was forced against his will to find it amusing, just for a moment there was a slight twinkle in Lord Frome’s eyes as he enquired,

  “So you have already found the marriage status a convenient disguise?”

  “Before I left England I thought it might be,” Chandra answered, “but actually I need not have troubled. There was nobody on the ship who paid me any attention I could possibly resent.”

  “I can assure you the situation will be the same in Nepal,” Lord Frome asserted.

  “Thank you.”

  As Chandra spoke, she rose to her feet.

  “If your Lordship will excuse me, I would like to retire early. I presume, as you have made the decision as to what we shall do, we shall leave immediately after breakfast.”

  “We have a long ride in front of us, Miss Wardell,” Lord Frome replied, as he too rose from the chair he had been sitting on.

  “I will be ready,” Chandra replied.

  She passed him on t
he verandah and then turned back to say,

  “Perhaps I should thank you for taking me with you and express the hope that you will not regret it.”

  “I wish I could be sure of that,” Lord Frome replied.

  She thought for a moment that there was a faintly mocking smile on his lips.

  She bowed her head.

  “Goodnight, my Lord.”

  “Goodnight, Miss – Wardell!”

  There was just a pause before her name and she knew he was thinking that he would have to address her differently on the morrow.

  As she walked through the door that led to her bedroom, Chandra knew with amusement that Lord Frome was wondering what was her Christian name.

  ‘I will not tell him,’ she decided, ‘I will make him ask me!’

  *

  Chandra’s bedroom seemed hot despite the fact that outside it was very much cooler.

  She opened the windows to stand looking out, thinking again as she was doing so, before Lord Frome interrupted her on the verandah, how friendly and familiar it all was.

  She saw a woman walking up the road with a basket on her head. She was not young, but she walked with the carriage and grace of a Queen.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Chandra thought, ‘I shall enter a new land! It will all be an adventure and exciting because it is strange and unusual and a place I have never been before.’

  She knew in that moment how afraid she had been that Lord Frome would send her home and she would never see Nepal or the Lotus Manuscript.

  It was not only a question of money which she wanted for her father’s sake, it was also for her own.

  Because the tension was now over, she felt that she must go down on her knees and say a prayer of thankfulness because she had won the battle that she might so easily have lost.

  ‘Thank you – thank you,’ she said in her heart, instinctively raising her face to the sky as she did so.

  Then she heard a whisper.

  “Memsahib! Memsahib!”

  She looked down feeling as she did so, as if she came back to earth with a thump and saw outside the window that there was a small Indian boy.

  He had the huge dark liquid eyes and the appealing expression of an Indian child she had seen thousands of times and yet which had never failed to pull at her heartstrings.

  They were so beautiful and yet with their small bones and soft brown bodies, so vulnerable and so fragile.

  “Memsahib! Come! Holy Man speak you!”

  The boy spoke almost incomprehensible English and Chandra replied in Urdu,

  “What are you saying? Who is it that wants me?”

  The small boy was obviously delighted that she could speak his own language.

  “Holy man, very great Holy man want to speak with Memsahib. Come now!”

  “But how? And where is he?” Chandra asked bewildered.

  The small boy pointed, but she could not see from the window where his finger was directed.

  “Come, Memsahib! Very important!” the boy said again.

  Because Chandra was intrigued, she replied,

  “Wait for me. I will join you if I can.”

  She closed the window and, going to the door of her bedroom, listened before she opened it.

  There was no sound outside and the door of the two other bedrooms were shut.

  She slipped past them and the sluice and out through the back door of the bungalow.

  She was certain that, if Lord Frome had not gone to bed, he would still be on the verandah where she had left him.

  At the back of the bungalow was the well, a few untidy shrubs and beyond some insignificant buildings which she knew housed the caretaker and his family.

  She turned the corner and found the small boy waiting for her.

  He smiled at her, obviously delighted that she had come and then set off through the shrubs and bushes to where on the edge of the garden surrounding the bungalow there were several trees.

  As she followed him, Chandra found herself wondering what this could all be about, at the same time she thought that perhaps she was being rather rash in leaving without telling anybody where she was going.

  However, she had no desire to confide in Lord Frome and she told herself that there could be no possible danger in this quiet place inhabited only by people who served the railway station.

  She moved on a very short way before she saw the small boy, who had scampered ahead and was standing in front of a man seated under a large tree.

  As Chandra drew nearer, she saw that it was a Holy man who was waiting for her and she recognised, at once, that he was from the hills.

  When they had been in India, men whom her father had known in Tibet had come to see him even as far South as Bombay.

  Chandra had learned to know many of the hundreds of different Indians, but there was none more outstanding than the Holy men from the North.

  The man sitting at the foot of the tree was tall and dressed in a robe shaped more like a coat which was made of thick wool like a blanket.

  His turned-back hat, not unlike a Mandarin’s, was edged with fur, at his belt hung a wooden rosary and there was an expression on his face that was unmistakable.

  It was difficult to describe and yet to Chandra it made him immediately a man of dedication, one of those who spent their whole lives intoning the sacred words in the great Lamaseries that her father had visited in Tibet.

  The Holy man made no effort to rise or even speak as she approached him and, because she knew it was expected of her, she put her hands together.

  Palm to palm, finger to finger, she raised them to her forehead in the traditional greeting of Namasker which the Indians gave to a Guru or those they considered Holy.

  “Greetings, daughter!” the Holy man said in a deep voice, far deeper than any Southern Indian could attain. “It is with distress that I learn that your honourable father is ill.”

  “How do you know that?” Chandra asked in surprise and, even as she spoke, knew it was a ridiculous question.

  Of course, it would be known already in Bairagnia that her father had been expected and she had come in his stead.

  “I have the acquaintance of your honourable father.”

  Chandra’s eyes lit up.

  “You know my father?” she exclaimed. “How interesting! What is your name?”

  “I am the Lama Teshoo from the Sakya-Cho Monastery,” the Holy man replied.

  “I am sure I remember my father speaking of your Monastery. It is in Tibet?”

  The Lama nodded.

  “Yes, Tibet, and your honourable father visited us ten years ago.”

  “Then you must be disappointed he is not here now, but he has had a heart attack and could not come at the last moment.”

  “He is in capable hands,” the Lama said slowly, “and will live for many years before he is released.”

  He spoke so positively that Chandra believed him and smiled.

  “But as your father is not here,” the Lama said, “I must ask you, his daughter, for your help.”

  “My help?” Chandra enquired.

  The Lama nodded.

  Chandra wondered how old he was. She had a feeling that, like so many Holy men whose faces and bodies do not age as ordinary people do, he was very old in years.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “you will be leaving with the Lord Sahib for Nepal.”

  Chandra thought it was extraordinary that he should be so certain of this, when she herself had not known of it until a few minutes ago.

  But she made no comment and the Lama went on,

  “When you are in Kathmandu, there is something you can do for our Monastery which will bring great merit to you in this life and in those which follow.”

  “What is it you want me to do?” Chandra asked.

  The old Lama gestured to her to come nearer and she moved so that she was sitting at his feet, knowing that what he had to say was secret.

  The small Indian boy, without being told, had moved out of earshot and
was lying on some tufts of grass playing with a piece of wood.

  The Lama seemed to think for some minutes before he said,

  “You know who I mean when I speak of Nana Sahib?”

  Chandra thought for a moment and then she replied,

  “Do you mean the Rajah of Bithur who behaved with such incredible cruelty during the Indian Mutiny?”

  The Lama nodded and, although she could not imagine how Nana Sahib could concern her in Nepal, Chandra remembered that he had, in fact, been the perpetrator of one of the most cruel and treacherous acts of the whole Indian Mutiny.

  The beleaguered British Garrison at Cawnpore had been offered by Nana Sahib a safe passage to Allahabad if they were prepared to lay down their arms.

  The English Officers in charge of the Fort would, on their own, have wished to hold on until a relief force arrived.

  They had, however had no choice. Rations and ammunition were almost exhausted and the women and children were in a desperate state.

  Finally, though they had mental reservations, they trusted Nana Sahib, who had in the past always appeared to be very English in his sympathies.

  Forty large boats were provided at a landing place and at dawn the survivors of the siege with their clothes in rags and stained with blood and dust were taken to the boats in a procession of sixteen elephants followed by seventy to eighty palanquins and bullock-carts for the wounded.

  It was in the minds of all the Officers that it might be a trick, but they proceeded to the boats where the Ganges ran between high brown banks.

  When they reached the river, it was found that nothing had been provided to help the women and children to embark and there were no means of carrying the sick and wounded aboard.

  The men and women waded into the deep and muddy water while the native boatmen and bearers watched in ominous silence.

  By 8 o’clock the boats were crowded with human beings panting in the white heat of the morning and taunted constantly by the mutineers from the shore.

  They were almost ready to leave when promptly at nine o’clock, as if at a signal, the boatmen deserted their boats and leapt overboard.

  Instantly firing started from both sides of the river, a withering fusillade of musket and cannon setting on fire the thatched roofs of the boats.