Free To the Dark Tower by Francis King Page B

in small groups, while the youngsters discussed the feasibility of playing rounders, squabbled over the rules, teased Mrs. Meakins’s dropsical terrier, and finally decided on a walk. In twos and threes they wandered off into the jungle, led by a young man who thought he knew a short-cut to the river.
    Hugh was about to saunter after them, alone, when a hand touched his wrist. It was Lucy, smiling, without a trace of embarrassment. "May I come with you?” The words were the first she had spoken to him for four months, apart from conventional greetings.
    "If you like."
    Again she smiled, magnificent in green silk; then bending her head slightly forward, as if in compliance to his wishes, the plumes on her hat nodding, her eyelashes making delicate shadows on rouged cheeks, she swung ahead. They did not speak. Hers was a high-stepping progression, bird-like, her skirt held high in a white-gloved hand.
    "But aren’t we going the wrong way?” Hugh said at last. "I’m sure the others—"
    "Oh, no. I saw them. It’s quite all right." Again that smile, again the forward inclination of the head.
    He shrugged his shoulders and they moved on through punkahs of fern. The path had been beaten hard by the feet of coolies, the air was shrill with birds. Then suddenly she turned.
    "Oh, dear! I do believe we’ve lost the way. I could have sworn ... but this is a dead-end." They had reached a clearing, a few tree-trunks, some creeper, two lemonade bottles, and a copy of the Pioneer —relics of some other picnic at some other time. "Now what are we to do?"
    "We’d better go back."
    She wrinkled up her nose. "I feel rather tired. Let’s sit down for a bit." Raising her skirt she climbed on to a tree-trunk. "Come here. Sit down."
    Obeying her he placed himself on the same perch. He wondered what would happen.
    Then she was pressing herself against him, hands exploratory, mouth glued to his, body trembling.
    "Dearest," she murmured. And her hat fell to the ground.
    "Where have you been?” Mrs. Meakins simpered when they returned too late for tea and a game of Consequences.
    "We got lost," Hugh explained. "We thought we were following the others, but we came to a dead-end—a rather pleasant clearing."
    "Good heavens! Fancy Lucy losing her way! That must be the clearing where we had our picnic last year." This from Sir Basil, who was only tactful with his superiors. "What’s this, Lucy? Lost your way? You have got a memory." Then he began to chuckle indulgently.
    But Lucy blushed.
    "I couldn’t be more delighted," said Lady Korrance when their engagement was announced; and later: "Do call me Mother. After all—well—we’ve never had a son. And now we look upon you ..." So she became Mumsie.
    "Of course, I saw it months ago," Mrs. Meakins confided to a group of friends. "Months and months ago—even before they did." Then she sighed, thinking of the Rev. Pat Meakins—‘padre’—who had been so slow that summer at Eastbourne, and was now buried in Gorakhpur under a marble inscription, ‘Remember that the best of friends must part.’
    "Congratulations, old boy," were Sir Basil’s words, after a brief interview, during which the baronetcy, Hugh’s grandmother’s probable fortune, and the likelihood of promotion were all discussed. "I haven’t a thing against the match." Nor had he. Of course, there had been talk of a Eurasian girl; the boy moved in a ‘fast’ set; old Phillips had seen a party of them in the bazaar, and one guessed their errand.
    But now all this could be dismissed as ‘wild oats’. ‘Wild oats’ meant anything that Sir Basil did not wish to find disagreeable.
    So it was all settled. His colleagues gave a party and they all got drunk; the Collector gave a party and they all stayed sober. Mumsie said she didn’t believe in long engagements. Lucy chose an emerald ring.
    But Andrée had still to be told.
    The Da Costas’ house had been built in a swamp on a bend of the river. For this reason the walls