Under Oriental Skies

August 2, 1875

James has been distressed the whole day. Perhaps I have been even more so. Last night after he fell asleep with a volume of the British Physiological Review on his shoulders, I was reading Col. Arthur Fitzpatrick's Travels through the Mystical Heartlands of India when for a moment I looked up at the newly painted yellow window in front of me. I am sure that had I but the ability I could draw what I saw to the minutest detail : a shimmering white face with a pair of cold eyes whose intense stare burnt into my warm flesh like a burst of a thousand flaming arrows. My shriek of horror echoed and reechoed through the entire house.

James sprang up from his sleep and seeing me pointing towards the window darted towards it, opened it and looked down into the darkness of the garden.

A few minutes later he was sleeping soundly again.

I went to the desk and took out an old copy of the New Testament that dear uncle Jack (God bless his soul!) had given me when I was fourteen. I opened it at my favourite twenty-third Psalm :

The Lord is my shepherd

I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul

He guideth me in straight paths for His name's sake.

Yea, Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

I will fear no evil

For Thou art with me

Thy rod and thy staff

They comfort me.

James was unusually quiet at breakfast. I could feel something of the weight that was bearing down on his immaculately sculpted shoulders. The wife of an aspiring Surgeon in the Viceroy's office verging on insanity! How dreadful that must be for his reputation!

The Fairbarns came in for tea in the afternoon just as the mists were clearing up after the sudden burst of rain towards lunch. Lady Fairbarn was excited about a farm that they were buying in Rhodesia and methodically kept on complimenting me on my green dress after a precise interval of every five minutes.

'Have you been to the Mall recently? The tastes are definitely deteriorating!'

I was, however, living in a different time and place : the white face from the previous night kept on swimming in and out in front of my eyes.

A face that filled me with a cold dread.

And yet, there was an inexplicable allure in the midst of that very dread.