The Lotus and the Wind Read Online Free PDF Page A

them waited in silence, and the servants by the door froze where they stood. The lone man stared at the ceiling. The front of his robe lay open. Bandages made of shirts criss-crossed his chest, and there was a bandage around his head. His breath rasped more slowly, more loudly. Cautiously Mrs. Hildreth began to eat again. The desperation of the man’s effort struck out at Anne so that she gripped the couch and prayed that God would reach down with His fingers and touch the man to lend him back a part of the power he had once had, just a tiny part of the strength that had sent him racing down the hill. He only had to speak to be at rest.
    But the breath rattled in his chest and died there, and was swallowed in the small, secret clatter of Mrs. Hildreth’s fork on her plate. From cantonments a bugle blew a peremptory call--the new discipline marching forward to order the wastes of Central Asia.
    Major Hayling went out, and came back with a mirror and held it to the lone man’s lips. ‘He’s dead.’
    Major Hildreth said, ‘Poor chap. Can’t you cover his face, Hayling, or something? As a matter of fact, really, I think you might have him taken outside now.’
    ‘I will. Here, bearer, madad dena .’
    Anne had not been able to see the lone man’s face before, even when she looked at it. Now that he had gone and lay wrapped like a mummy on his cot in the cold outside, she saw it clearly. It was strong, deeply-lined, black-bearded; it could be kind even when it was stern. She turned away, stared at the curtained windows, and began to cry.
    The next day they had twenty-seven miles to cover to Peshawar. It was cold in the dawn, hot at noon. The dust lay thick in the road, and the carts raised it, and young Pathan gentlemen rode through it like wild princes on wild horses, hawks on their wrists; the marching soldiers swore at them. The bullock cart bearing the body of the lone man travelled in front of the Hildreths’ carriage. Major Hayling rode nearby, for most of the day wrapped in silence, sometimes tempting Anne out of her sadness with his anecdotes of the places they passed through and the men who lived in them.
    It was an uneventful journey, except for a confused little incident in Pabbi, eleven miles east of Peshawar. Major Hayling had just said to her, ‘This is Pabbi we’re coming into. It has the worst reputation for robbery and violence of any place in the district.’ Then, as if the local inhabitants wanted to prove how right he was, five or six Pathans burst out of a shop on the left of the road and pushed through the travellers, shouting and shaking their fists. A couple of donkey boys joined in, and some more men, and a man on a horse. For a minute Anne was frightened. The quarrelling Pathans milled around the carriage and the bullock cart; a woman screamed from a housetop; Major Hayling shouted angrily in Pushtu. As suddenly as it had arisen, the storm subsided. ‘And there’s Pabbi for you,’ Major Hayling said, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
    Then, as the sun was setting, they came to Peshawar. The buildings closed in, and the road narrowed to a street. Guides came from the cantonments west of the town to lead the soldiers to their quarters. A man came for the Colletts, and their carriage left the column. The bullock carts ground to a halt in the western outskirts of the bazaar and waited. Major Hildreth muttered, ‘Damn that fellow! He should have had someone here for us by now.’ But no one came.
    When a tall, stately Pathan and a young British officer came walking down the road, Anne thought they must be the expected guides from the commissariat depot, which her father had been posted here to command, but they were not. Major Hayling went forward and said, ‘Hullo, Gluck, glad to see you. Ashraf Khan, starrai mashe!’
    ‘Khwar mashe, janab ali. Joriye?’
    The Pushtu greetings volleyed back and forth like tennis balls. Finally Hayling said, ‘This is the man. You’d better take a look