Athelstane Ford

by Allen Upward

“I wish never to see him, nor so much as to hear of him again,” Marian answered warmly.

With such assurances she satisfied me. Perhaps my hopes played me false, and made me take gratitude for something dearer; or it may be that Marian, who knew well enough what were my feelings towards her, did return me some fondness at this time, and was resigned to accept my suit. Even if I deceived myself, I will not repent it. For I know that this life of ours is but a series of illusions, where we stand like children at a peepshow in a fair, beholding pictures which we mistake for real things. So that I say that he who falsely thinks himself beloved is just as well off for that time as he who really is beloved. Yet so far as I was concerned, if any man had said to me then that Marian did not love me, I should have scorned him.

Of my love for her I must not speak at all, or I shall never have done. Long before we reached the Hooghley she had recovered from the ill effects of her imprisonment, and moved about the ship with that command which her beauty gave to her. Her charm was such as I have never seen in any other woman: compared with them she seemed like a bright child among old, sleeping men, almost like a living body among the withered tenants of the tombs. And before we had been upon our voyage above a fortnight the commander and both lieutenants of the Thetis were at her beck and call, while as for the little midshipmen, down to one youngster of twelve, they swore by her as if she were a goddess, and fought duels about her in the cockpit with their dirks.

Before we arrived in Bengal she talked to me much about her parents, who had been settled at Fort William for nearly twenty years. It was a long time since she had had news of them, she told me, but when she last heard her father was prospering in his business, which was that of a drug factor, not in the civil service of the East Indian Company, but trading under their licence, and shipping his merchandise in their bottoms. So much she knew, but nothing besides, and it was with as much curiosity as myself that she saw the Sunderbunds drawing near, and our sloop anchoring off Falta to wait for a pilot up the river.

The Hooghley, famous as it is, is only one of the mouths of that great river the Ganges, sacred and renowned throughout Indostan. Yet it is upwards of forty miles long, for so great was the distance which separated us from our destination. By means of a fair wind we accomplished this difficult navigation, dangerous on account of the numerous shoals, in a very few hours, passing on our way the fort of Budge-Budge, where the Company kept a small garrison.

The scene along the banks of the river was most strange to me at this time, and made an impression not easy to be effaced. The trees which overhung the most part of the banks, of a character quite unlike those we have in Norfolk, were gloomy and forbidding in the extreme; but when we came to one of the people of the country’s villages, and saw the men dressed in gay turbans, the women walking about with curious earthen vessels on their heads, and the stark naked black children playing in the water, I was altogether bewildered, and could scarcely credit that I, who saw these things and had come to dwell amongst them, was the same boy who had been bred up so peacefully in that English village among the flat meadows bordered by the shallow broad.

However, we came at last to that place since so celebrated, though then considered only as the third among the Company’s settlements in the East; I mean Fort William. The fort itself was at this date of no great size or consequence; but in the neighbourhood along the river bank were many fine warehouses erected by the English. In the rear of these was built the native town, which the Moors call Calcutta. Here the houses are generally mean and dirty; but some of the rich Indians lived in very noble style, having fine gardens round their houses, ornamented with fountains and groves of tulip trees and mangoes.

Marian and I were put ashore in the ship’s gig, having first bid adieu to the officers, and set about inquiring the way to Mr. Rising’s house. In this at first we were unsuccessful, but at last I found an obliging person on the quay who directed his native servant to guide us to it.

This man, to whom I gave a handful of pice, conducted us through some narrow streets of the town, very ill-paved, and full of a most evil smell, to a lonely neighbourhood on the side of the river further up, where there was a house built in the Moorish fashion, and enclosed in a wild garden much overrun with weeds. All round this garden was a high wall, conformable to the jealous disposition of these people. The entrance was by a narrow gate, and there was a miserable dwelling crouched against the wall inside, the door of which stood open. Some black children were playing in front of this hovel, who cried out when they saw us, and ran indoors. An Indian came out, very gaunt and fierce, who demanded in English what we did there.