I can't meet you, my precious, because I don't go out. I'm
afraid. Afraid lest I should see anyone who knew us at
Dariawarpur. India is so large and so small, and people
from everywhere are always in Bombay, and I couldn't bear
it.
Do you know, Jan, that when the very worst has happened,
you get kind of numbed. You can't suffer any more. You
can't be sorry or angry or shocked or indignant, or
anything but just broken, and that's what I am.
After all, I've one good friend here who knew us at
Dariawarpur. He's got a job at the secretariat, and he
tries to help me all he can. I don't mind him somehow. He
understands. He will meet you and bring you to the
bungalow, so look out for him when the boat gets in. He's
tall and thin and clean-shaven and yellow, with a grave,
stern face and beautiful kind eyes. Peter is an angel, so
be nice to him, Jan dear. It has been awful; it will go on
being awful; but it will be a little more bearable when you
come--for me, I mean--for you it will be horrid. All of us
on your hands, and no money, and me such a crock, and
presently a new baby. The children are well. It's so queer
to think you haven't seen "little Fay." Come soon, Jan,
come soon, to your miserable FAY.
Jan sat on her bunk under the open porthole. One after the other she
held the letters open in her hand and stared at them, but she did not
read. The sentences were burnt into her brain already.
Hugo Tancred's letter was dated. Fay's was not, and neither letter bore
any address in Bombay. Now, Jan knew that Bombay is a large town; and
that people like the Tancreds, who, if not actually in hiding, certainly
did not seek to draw attention to their movements, would be hard to
find. Fay had wholly omitted to mention the surname of the tall, thin,
yellow man with the "grave, stern face and beautiful kind eyes." Even in
the midst of her poignant anxiety Jan found herself smiling at this. It
was so like Fay--so like her to give no address. And should the tall,
thin gentleman fail to appear, what was Jan to do? She could hardly go
about the ship asking if one "Peter" had come to fetch her.
How would she find Fay?
Would they allow her to wait at the landing-place till someone came, or
were there stringent regulations compelling passengers to leave the
docks with the utmost speed, as most of them would assuredly desire to
do?
She knitted her brows and worried a good deal about this; then suddenly
put the question from her as too trivial when there were such infinitely
greater problems to solve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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