"General Beamish, saar, very old, living in General's quarters."
"Been here long?"
"Twenty-four years, never going away, never seeing friends, twice every day, drive same road, same time."
Mallender's heart sank. If Rochfort was too young, here was possibly the other extreme! but remembering Rochfort's opinion, he clung to hope. A native's idea of age was so vague; he would wait, and judge for himself.
The next morning, as he sat at chotah-hazri, attended by the assiduous butler, he questioned him further.
"This bungalow of yours is newly whitewashed and well kept, you have spoons, and good crockery. How is this—when I see that the last entry in your book of guests was five years ago?"
"It is the General's orders," was the prompt reply. "He likes any gentlemans stopping here, to be all right; therefore I getting spoons and sheets from his house, and sending over for your honour's dinner. Behold, he passes now!"
A large landau drawn by a pair of fine walers, came slowly into view; it was driven by a magnificent coachman, and preceded by running syces, waving silver-mounted yâk tails, or chowries. Propped high in the carriage, sat an aged bent man, with a long white beard. Beside him, was a stout elderly woman, her round, good-natured face half hidden by a hideous mushroom topee.
"It is his Honour the General, and Mrs. General Beamish," explained the butler. The announcement was the knell of Mallender's hopes. That venerable and decrepit figure was at least eighty years of age. Here was another failure! He had no luck, of what use to go on? He felt hopeless and despondent; in spite of all his effort and outlay, it seemed as if some tremendous, but fantastic force, was striving against him; luring him to out-of-the-way places, there to abandon him in perplexity and disappointment; and for the first time since he had begun his search, he was pricked by a suspicion of being purposely led astray! But before taking steps for immediate departure, he decided to have a look round the strangest environment in which he had yet found himself, and seizing his topee and stick,—in case of snakes,—he set out to explore.
As he gazed about dispiritedly, he distinguished the parade ground, the old horse lines, and a vast walled enclosure, which proved to be the cemetery. Is anything in the world more forsaken and forgotten, than an up-country burial-place in India, where rest unremembered and unknown, the unconscious builders of Empire? Here, the explorer aimlessly wandered, among flat gravestones, huge tombs of various forms, and sizes, pyramidal, bomb-shaped, or square, all of either stucco or red sandstone, and all gradually crumbling in the fierce tropical sun. Mallender was impressed by two facts; the dimensions of this well-peopled enclosure, in comparison to the size of the cantonment, and the perfect order in which it was maintained. The walks were weedless, the inscriptions legible and undefaced. Who, in this dead station, undertook "Le culte des morts?"