Виктория Холт - The India Fan

She stopped speaking and the tears began to run down her cheeks.

"I loved the fan," she went on after a while. "It was the first thing he gave me after our engagement. When I awoke in the morning it was the first thing I saw. Always, I told myself, I will remember that moment in the bazaar when he bought it for me. He laughed at my obsession with it. I did not know it then, but I do now. It had already cast its spell on me. 'It is only a fan,' said Gerald. 'Why do you care so much for it?' I told him why and he went on, 'Then I will make it more worthy of your regard. I shall have something precious put in it, and every time you see it you will be reminded of how much I care for you.'

"He said he would take it to a jeweller he knew in Delhi. The man was a craftsman. When I received the fan back it would indeed be something to be proud of. I was delighted and so happy. I ought to have known happiness like that does not last. He took the fan and went into the centre of the town. I have never forgotten that day. Every second of it it is engraved on my memory forever. He went into the jeweller's shop. He was there quite a long time. And when he came out ... they were waiting for him. There was often trouble. The Company kept it under control, but there were always the mad ones. They didn't see what good we were bringing to their country. They wanted us out. Gerald's family was important in the country ... as my family was. He was well known among them. When he came out of the jeweller's they shot him. He died there in the street."

"What a sad story. I am so sorry, Miss Lucille," I said.

"My dear child, I see you are. You are a good child. I am sorry you took the fan."

"You believe all that was due to the fan?"

"It was because of the fan that he was in that spot. I shall never forget the look in my servant's eyes. Somehow those people have a wisdom we lack. How I wish I had never seen that fan ... never gone into the bazaar that morning. How blithe and gay I had been ... and my foolish impulse had taken his life and ruined mine."

"It could have happened somewhere else."

"No, it was the fan. You see, he had taken it into the jeweller's shop. They must have followed him and waited for him outside."

"I think it could have happened without the fan."

She shook her head. "In time it came back to me. I will show you what was done." She sat there for a few moments with the tears coursing down her cheeks. Ayesha came in.

"There, there," she said. "You shouldn't have brought it all back to yourself. Dearie me, dearie me, it is not good, little mistress ... not good."

"Ayesha," she said. "Bring the fan to me."

Ayesha said, "No ... forget it ... Do not distress yourself."

"Bring it, please, Ayesha."

So she brought it.

"See, child, this is what he did for me. One has to know how to move this panel. You see. There is a little catch here. The jeweller was a great craftsman." She pulled back the panel on the mount of the fan to disclose a brilliant emerald surrounded by smaller diamonds. I caught my breath. It was so beautiful.

"It is worth a small fortune, they tell me, as if to console me. As if anything could. But it was his gift to me. That is why the fan is precious."

"But if it is going to bring you bad luck ..."

"It has done that. It can bring me no more. Ayesha, put it back. There. I have told you because, briefly, the fan was yours. You must walk more carefully than most. You are a good child. There. Go and rejoin Lavinia now. I have done my duty. Be on your guard ... with Fabian. You see, he will take some of the blame. Perhaps because you were in possession of it for such a short time it will pass over you. And he, too, would not be considered free of blame ..."

Ayesha said, "It is time to leave now."

She took me to the door and walked with me along the corridors.

"You must not take too much notice of what she says," she told me. "She is very sad and her mind wanders. It was the terrible shock, you understand. Do not worry about what you have heard. Perhaps I should not have brought you to her, but she wanted it. She could not rest until she had talked to you. It is off her mind now. You understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

And I said to myself: What happened made her mad.

And the thought of the ghostly nun in the east wing and the mad woman in the west made the house seem more and more fascinating to me.

As time passed I ceased to think about the peacock-feather fan and to wonder what terrible things might befall me because it had once been in my possession. I still visited the House; the governesses remained friendly; and my relationship with Lavinia had changed a little. I might still be plain and invited because I was the only girl in the neighbourhood of Lavinia's age and my station in life was not too lowly for me to be dismissed entirely, but I was gaining a little superiority over Lavinia because, while she was exceptionally pretty, I was more clever. Miss York boasted a little to Miss Etherton and on one occasion when Miss Etherton was ill, Miss York went over to the House to take her place until she recovered; and then the gap between myself and Lavinia was exposed. That did a lot for me and was not without its effect on Lavinia.

I was growing up. I was no longer to be put upon. I even threatened not to go to the House if Lavinia did not mend her ways; and it was obvious that that was something she did not want. We had become closer—even allies, when the occasion warranted it. I might be plain, but I was clever. She might be beautiful, but she could not think and invent as I could; and she relied on me—though she would not admit it—to take the lead.

Occasionally I saw Fabian. He came home for holidays and sometimes brought friends with him. They always ignored us, but I began to notice that Fabian was not so oblivious of my presence as he would have us believe. Sometimes I caught his furtive glance on me. I supposed it was due to that adventure long ago when I was a baby and he had kidnapped me.

It was whispered now that Miss Lucille was mad. Mrs. Janson was very friendly with the cook at the House, so, as she said, she had it "straight from the horse's mouth." Polly was like a jackdaw. She seized on every bit of dazzling gossip and stored it up so that she could, as she said, "piece things together a treat."

We used to talk about the House often, for Polly seemed as fascinated about it as I was.

"The old lady's mad," she said. "Not a doubt of it. Never been right in her head since she lost her lover out in India. People must expect trouble if they go to these outlandish places. It turned Miss Lucille's head, all right. Mrs. Bright says she's taken to wandering about the House now ... ordering them around like they was black servants. It all comes of going to India. Why people can't stay at home, I don't know. She thinks she's still in India. It's all that Ayesha can do to look after her. And she's got another black servant there."

"That's Imam. He comes from India too. I think she brought him with her when she came home ... with Ayesha, of course."

"Gives me the creeps. Them outlandish clothes and black eyes and talking a sort of gibberish."

"It's not gibberish, Polly. It's their own language."

"Why didn't she have a nice British couple to look after her? Then there's that haunted room and something about a nun. Love trouble there, too. I don't know. I think love's something to keep away from, if you ask me."

"You didn't feel like that when you had Tom."

"You can't find men like my Tom two a penny, I can tell you."

"But everyone hopes you can. That's why they fall in love."

"You're getting too clever, my girl. Look at our Eff."

"Is he still as bad?"

Polly just clicked her tongue.

Oddly enough, after that conversation, there was news of Him. Apparently he had been suffering, as Polly said, from "Chest" for some time. I remember the day when news came that he was dead.