And that is another story
A/N: With 'The Bronckhorst Divorce Case,' it is perfectly clear that the Strickland/Youghal match was happily-ever-after. But a ship being definite never stops a determined fanfic writer wanting to fluff things out a little!
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The native house-boy carrying the lamp opened the door of the verandah and stopped. The sahib was smoking at the far end, the memsahib was rocking gently in the swing, which meant-? "The lamp?" he asked uncertainly.
The memsahib looked up. "Down there. At the other end. And turn it low. That's it; thank you, Mahbub Din. You can go."
"Properly," said the sahib, in his quiet, carrying voice, and Mahbub Din bowed and shut the door and his soft footfalls hurried away into the interior of the bungalow. No native servant lingered to listen behind doors in the house of Estreeken sahib.
"Dim lamplight is the nearest you can get in India to an English twilight," said the memsahib reflectively. "It goes dark so suddenly."
"Everything is sudden in India," said her husband. "Night and day, and life and death, and hate and love. The lamplight suits you," he added with Indian suddenness. "You look like a queen in it in that white dress, Deirdre."
"Like the Queen?" Deirdre Strickland, nee Youghal, objected indignantly. "With her dumpy figure?!"
"No, no!" Strickland practically blew out his light shaking his head. "A queen, a fairy queen, or one of those fair damsels of great fame out of Tennyson's King Arthur or such. A very sensible Anglo-Irish heroine," he added. "The sort who doesn't mind a bit having her hand in marriage suddenly demanded by a knight who is really a sais wearing half the Club's spare wardrobe and riding a stolen pony."
"I had a lovely sais in Simla," said Mrs Strickland, kissing the engagement ring on her left hand affectionately. "But I have a lovelier Edward now," and she kissed the wedding ring on her right hand even more affectionately .
The smoker of the cheroot beamed at her, and then a sparkle of mischief came into the memsahib's eyes. "Edward," she coaxed. "Go native again for me. Just for a minute."
"Go native?" the sahib protested. "I've my Departmental Returns to consider!"
"There's nobody to see... and I'm not going to tell."
"But I promised I'd chuck all that, you know. And I have. I'm forgetting my talk, even."
Mrs Strickland shook her head. "Not really. Not until the day you die – I know you. And now," she stamped her foot, "if I'm the fairy queen, I command you! Be sais!"
Words cannot describe the combination of authority and coquetry contained in this last command. It can best be understood by the alacrity with which Strickland stubbed his cheroot and obeyed.
"A sais," he said, "is a humble man. Even a paragon among sais, who makes time to pick fresh flowers for the breakfast table every morning. He is nothing but a native with a blanket on his head – you will have to shut your eyes and imagine the blanket, O fairy queen. He walks like this, and he squats by his fire and smokes like this, and when he gets really homesick and pining for his lady-love he spits like this..." Strickland leaned forwards and fired precisely off the edge of the verandah.
"And did you spit?" asked the memsahib, drawing her feet back a little with an affectation of disgust.
Strickland rose. "I was pining for my lady-love, wasn't I?" he demanded cheerily. "Of course I spat."
"But you saw her every day..."
"Aye..." Strickland took a long pull on his cheroot. "Every day, trotting behind her when she rode out – and developing great wells of empathy for that Arcite chap we used to have to translate out of Chaucer at school. Stuck all day as the butler to the fairest vision he ever saw ... I suddenly quite understood why he tried to cosh Palamon. If there'd been some escaped jail bird suddenly babbling sweet endearments at the stirrup of your horse, I'd have-"
"Seized his bridle and bid him dismount to be thrown over a cliff?"
Strickland laughed. "The poor General, good old soul that he turned out to be. He couldn't have had more of a start if I had thrown him over a cliff. Hhrrm!" He straightened his shoulders. "That's the model I need to be imitating these days: a proper old boy. Just a little out in front,
and he stumps along, and stops to puff on his way to the Club, and then after dinner he shakes his head and says "'pon my word! Shocking bad dinner, eh what?""
"Where upon," said the memsahib through her giggles at the vision of corpulent later life stumping on the verandah before her, "his fair hostess has her feelings hurt."
"She does," said Strickland, snapping back into himself, "if she hears it. But she doesn't, because he says it on the verandah, and the house-boys, who would do anything for the beautiful memsahib, shut the verandah door very softly behind him while he says it, and burn with rage on the memsahib's account." A soft-footed oriental house-boy replaced the 'proper old boy,' and continued his explanation: "So when he leaves they hand him his coat just a leetle askew, and make faces at him behind the door. Then they tell the ayah, and the ayah is wrath, and she tells her dear friend the sweeper and the sweeper is wrath-" an angry sweeper took the place of the house-boy "-and before long the poor old General can not fathom why his porch steps are always dirty!"
The memsahib sighed happily. "Is that one of the true stories?"
"Oh, probably," said the restored sahib, tapping his light back into action. "Somewhere in India – and if it's not, you would be able to buy it as true, complete with witnesses, for a bit less than the fifty-four rupees that were the going rate for a murder-case-with-body."
He drew on the cheroot again and stared out through the screens, and Mrs Strickland watched him closely.
"You miss it, don't you?" she said after a minute's silence.
Strickland wobbled his head to and fro like a thoughtful punkah-wallah. "Sometimes," he said, still staring into the dark.
"You could go native again, for real," said Deirdre slowly. "I wouldn't mind..." He turned, and raised one enquiring eyebrow, just dimly visible in the lamplight. "But," she went on, as if he hadn't moved, "if you went today, just like you're dreaming of right now, you wouldn't be home for dinner tomorrow night. And I was going to make meringue, for dinner tomorrow night..."
For a moment there was only the sound of the moths against the lamp, and then Strickland sank onto the swing with a sigh of contented resignation. "Ah, you have me. There is only one thing sweeter in all India than meringue made by your fair hand."
"Going on shikari?"
"No," said Strickland, sliding one arm along the back of the swing and turning his wife to face him. "You."
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