A Proper Education for Girls (40 page)

His skin grew yellow and flaky; his eyes became glazed and ringed with dark shadows. He lay tangled in his sweat-soaked sheets, gasping and shaking.

At last, when he emerged, weak and exhausted, from his fever, Mr. Hunter found himself to be in a room of the most splendid proportions. He looked about through red-rimmed eyes. So he had not been dreaming after all. The room was light and airy, its walls patterned with mosaics and glittering with mirrors. Curtains made of some diaphanous material encircled his
charpoy
, wafting in the breeze of the gently swishing
punkah
. His window, he discovered when he managed to persuade the bearers to help him totter over to it, looked down onto a vast walled garden of exotic plants and trees, some of which he was sure he had never seen before.

He asked those silent bearers who attended him to move his bed over to the window so that he could see the garden. He asked for
Lilian, but they shook their heads and murmured vague apologies. Then, one day, gazing listlessly out at the leafy greenness, he spotted her in a far corner sitting behind her easel in the middle of what looked like (but surely could not possibly be) a vegetable patch. She was dressed in an azure
sari
and was sheltered from the hot sun by a large umbrella-like canopy held by a bearer. She looked up and saw him. She waved her paintbrush at him and smiled. Mr. Hunter raised his hand. He had not the strength to do anything more.

Over the following days he slept a lot. He ate well. He recovered his strength and his face filled out again. His whiskers regained their former glossy luster. Every day a team of silent bearers brought him food and drink in shining silverware, bathed him, clothed him, brought him books on gardening to read, and went away again. The books were in English, and had been well thumbed. Mr. Hunter dozed on his
charpoy
and flicked though his reading material in a desultory fashion.

Later, when he was able to leave his bed unaided, he noticed that the bearers always locked the door behind them. Mr. Hunter asked repeatedly to see Lilian. Why would she not come to him? He was told that she was working in the garden on her paintings. He asked to see their master. At first, the bearers simply shook their heads. Later, they mumbled that their master was busy and would meet his guest some other time. Soon, his questions were met with a stubborn silence. Rapunzel-like, Mr. Hunter gazed out of his window in despair.

One day he saw a small, tubby figure clad in gold
pyjama
trousers and white
khurta
, with a pair of what looked like Wellington boots on his feet, digging in the vegetable patch. Mr. Hunter shouted and waved. The figure shouted and waved back. Later that day Mr. Hunter was taken out of his room.

He was led down a wide, gleaming marble staircase. He crossed heavy, luxurious carpets and passed beneath glittering chandeliers. Depictions of Indian warriors enjoying the sports of war and the pleasures that follow lined the walls in a seemingly endless gallery
of military triumph and reward. At length he was brought into the presence of a small Indian gentleman with silky black whiskers and moustache. Mr. Hunter was sure that it was the same fellow he had seen laboring in the garden earlier that day. Now, however, the man was seated on a golden cushion, flicking though a copy of
Glenny's Handbook for the Fruit and Vegetable Grower
. Behind him hung a row of botanical paintings. Mr. Hunter recognized them as Lilian's handiwork—not least because she had signed her name on each of them. Four of them appeared to depict marrows of differing sizes and colors.

“My name is Ravindra Yashodhar Bhagirath Rana, the
maharaja
of Bhandarahpur,” said the man, tossing his book aside and leaping to his feet. “And you are most welcome in my palace.” He seized Mr. Hunter's hand and pumped it enthusiastically. “I see you have recovered.”

Mr. Hunter gave a slight bow. He had never heard of Bhandarahpur. “Yes,” he said warily. “For which I thank you. If there is any way in which I can repay your kindness—”

“That we will come to in a moment,” said Ravi. “But first, I see you admiring my paintings. They were, of course, executed by your lady companion, Lilian Talbot.”

“I thought so,” said Mr. Hunter. “Excuse me, but is that a marrow?”

Ravi smiled. “It is indeed
four
marrows. Ah, what a most excellent lady she is. While you were sick she has painted my most prized vegetables, as you can see. She also painted many of the plants I hold in my garden. We have ‘made hay while the sun shines’ as you English like to say.” He laughed. “Ah, such conversations we have had. Her dear sister, her beloved aunts … Lilian—she permits me to use the familiar name—has described them all to me so that I feel that they are quite my friends. Her own sad departure from England, the untimely decease of her husband—all these histories she has explained.” He smiled benignly. “You yourself were also mentioned.”

“I was?” Mr. Hunter was unable to keep the eagerness out of his voice. Had Lilian opened her heart to this unlikely confidant? “What did she say?”

“That you stole her honor and abandoned her in England.”

Mr. Hunter blushed. “That was a long time ago. I was a fool. I have admitted it to her. She has forgiven me.”

“Ah yes, and let ‘bygones be bygones.’ That is the expression is it not? And you are sure of this?”

“Why would I not be sure?”

“I merely ask.”

A note of uncertainty crept into Mr. Hunter's voice. “She said she had.”

“Did she?”

“Yes!”

“But my dear Mr. Hunter. Are you not familiar with that most instructive of English proverbs, ‘Take heed of reconciled enemies and of meat twice boiled’?”

“I must confess that I have never heard that one.”

“It is a pity. For I can assure you, Miss Talbot says that she did
not
forgive you for deserting her. Indeed, very, very bad things happened to her afterward as a consequence of your most ungentle-manly behavior and cowardly departure.”

Mr. Hunter blinked. “What?”

“‘If you would enjoy the fruit, pluck not the flower,’ Mr. Hunter. Surely, as a man of horticulture you must know the truth of this matter?”

“Meaning what, exactly?” said Mr. Hunter in exasperation. “Look here, my dear fellow. Where is she? I demand to speak to her.”

“‘My dear fellow,’” murmured Ravi. “Ah, Oxford.” He looked at Mr. Hunter brightly and shook his head. “I do not think that you are in a position to demand anything. I am to tell you, as you have not asked her yourself, that Miss Talbot—Lilian—was to have had your child.”

“How do you—”

“That a doctor, a friend of her father's, took it upon himself to remove the babe. To … destroy it, so that she would not be shamed. So that her father would not be shamed—” Ravi shuddered and lowered his eyes. “And afterward, she was married to a foolish man, denied her dowry, and sent away from her beloved sister. The rest you know.”

“Why didn't she tell me this herself if it's true?” cried Mr. Hunter. But even as he spoke it dawned on him that the man before him might well be speaking the truth. Had not Lilian said something similar when they were camping in the forest? He had been feverish and had been hardly able to concentrate on what she was saying. He had assumed, in his delirium, that she was talking about the mutiny. He had assumed she was referring to the unspeakable acts of bloodshed and violence she had witnessed in the streets of Kushpur. And yet those unspeakable acts had not been perpetrated on someone else but had happened to Lilian herself, and to her child—his child—within her own body. “Why didn't she tell me?” Mr. Hunter's voice was no more than a whisper.

“You did not ask her,” said Ravi. “And so, ‘though the wound was healed, a scar remained.’ This English saying is most fitting. Mr. Hunter, you would be sensible to remember it.”

“I need to speak to her,” said Mr. Hunter. “Where is she?”

“Oh, she has gone,” said Ravi. He picked up his copy of
Glenny's Handbook for the Fruit and Vegetable Grower
and began flicking through its pages once more.

“Gone?” said Mr. Hunter, unable to believe his ears.

“Yes. But you are to stay here. I have much work for you to do. ‘The devil makes work for idle hands,’ does he not? And that would never do.” Ravi frowned, as though suddenly remembering something. “Oh yes. And please do not try to follow her. Her life will be improved very much without you. I have many guards, and you can be certain that they are under the most explicit instructions. Besides, we are many, many miles from anyone you might wish to call friends, and these lands are fearfully, fearfully dangerous—Thugs, crocodiles, tigers … and mutiny, of course.” He shrugged. “But
please, enough of this unpleasant talk. We have work to do. As you English say, ‘Procrastination is the thief of time.’ This saying also is most correct.” He smiled and clapped his hands. From behind a jewel-encrusted wall hanging a bearer appeared holding a silver platter. Upon it was a small pouch of golden fabric. Ravi seized the pouch and jiggled it in his right hand excitedly.

“The seed of the Brussels sprout,” he said. “You will grow them for me. I have also cabbage, leek, turnip … ‘As you sow, so shall you reap.’ Is it not so?” He frowned and regarded Mr. Hunter with a mixture of perplexity and concentration. “Now then. We are perhaps a little too late to sow these particular seeds. What would your advice be? Should we plant this instant? Should we await cooler weather?” He shrugged. “Then again, perhaps we should simply leave them until next year? After all, we have plenty of time.”

T
HE SOUND OF
S
LUCE FALLING TO THE GROUND WAS
masked by the applause that broke out at the conclusion of Dr. Cattermole's lecture. Alice stepped over the sprawling body of her father's manservant and peeped over the threshing machine. The guests were facing the podium, behind which Dr. Cattermole was nodding and shaking hands and generally looking rather pleased with himself. His magic lantern had not been switched off, and from the wall behind him the face of a woman stared out in startled disbelief at the crowd of enthusiastically applauding men. Her head was encircled by a garland of flowers—put there for dramatic effect by Cattermole himself, thought Alice, angrily. After all, how persuasive would his lecture have been without such shameless recourse to the customary motifs of madness? And yet, could the so-called scientific men who made up his audience not see beyond such visual tricks? Were they not insulted by his lack of scientific rigor? Had they not daughters, wives, sisters of their own who every day demonstrated the contrary? Alice was tempted to seize another glass eye and hurl it at Dr. Cattermole's head.

Sluce let out a groan. Stretched on the floor, his nostrils caked with congealing blood, he was breathing heavily. The glass eye lay beside him, staring up at Alice as though in fear and astonishment at the assault in which it had been forced to take part. The door to the servants' passageway stood ajar, a lantern within glowing dimly against the darkness. Alice bent down and seized Sluce about the
ankles. His muddy shoes emanated a powerful stench of the abyss—a blend of wet leather, freshly turned soil, and sulfur. Alice dragged him over the threshold and into the flickering darkness beyond.

The door clicked closed behind her. Alice hauled Sluce down the passageway, deep into the manservant's lair behind the wall of the ballroom. For someone so small and thin he seemed a remarkably cumbersome load. It was like dragging a sack of wet soil. Eventually, she reached the lantern that Sluce had left burning on the Louis Quinze table beside the pile of silken cushions and the electroplated statue of Diana. Alice held up the lantern and studied him. His breathing was heavy. His eyes had rolled back into his head so that only a narrow slit of white could be seen from beneath his drooping eyelids. As Mr. Talbot's indispensable familiar, Sluce, she knew, had been entrusted with the keys to the house. He would have the keys to the back and front doors, to her father's study, perhaps even to his strongbox … There was no time to lose.

Alice reached down and began to rummage in the pockets of Sluce's mnemonic coat. From her position crouched on the floor beside the wall she could hear the rumble of conversation from the ballroom beyond. A question-and-answer session had started. It was with a thrill of horror that she realized what Dr. Cattermole was talking about.