It was in this month of August, I remember, that we lost a partner of the firm, in a sad though not unusual way. He died, as a matter of fact, from a little Calcutta mud which rubbed itself into his elbow one afternoon when he was thrown out of his brougham. Tetanus the doctors called it, and they said he would have had a better chance if he had been thrown out of his brougham at another time of year. He was buried, poor man, in seven inches of water; and Mr. Perth Macintyre had two months’ fever after attending the dripping funeral.
It would be an affectation to write about Mrs. Browne’s experiences and to omit a chapter on at least one phase of the weather; but I could have told you in the beginning that it would not be amusing.
CHAPTER XXIII.
IF you have not entirely forgotten your geography you will know that against the eternal gold and blue of the Indian sky, across and across the middle of the land, there runs unevenly a high white line. You will remember it better, perhaps, as “the trend of the Himalayas,” and it may have a latter-day association in your mind with imprudent subalterns and middle-aged ladies who consume a great many chocolates and call each other “my dear girl.” Out here we never forget it for a single instant; it survives the boundaries of our native counties, and replaces in our imaginations every height in Europe. We call it “The Snows,” and the name is as little presumptuous as any other. It is very far off, and the more like heaven for that reason; moreover, that way Simla lies, which is heaven’s outer portal, full of knights and angels. They are distant and imperturbable, the Snows, we can only gaze and wonder and descend again to earth; we have only the globe-trotter’s word for it that they do not belong to another world. It is the brown outer ranges that we climb, the heaving brown outer ranges that stand between the Holy of Holies and the eye of the profane, the unbeliever, the alien. Because these brown outer ranges are such very big mountains it is our pleasure to call them “The Hills”—if you talked of spending three months in the mountains it would not be clear that you didn’t mean Switzerland. Here we perch our hill-stations, here once in every year or two we grow fat and well-liking, here on the brink of a literal precipice the callow subalterns and the blasé married ladies flirt.
It was by the merest accident, which I helped to precipitate, that the Brownes went to the Hills in September. A planter in the Doon[[124]] had committed suicide—acute dyspepsia—whose business was in our hands, and somebody had to go to see about it. The junior partner wanted to go, but the junior partner had just come out from England weighing fourteen stone, and I got Mr. Perth Macintyre to persuade him that it was absolutely necessary to spend two months of the rains in Calcutta if he wished to recover his figure. Thus to the Brownes also came the hope of the clean breath of the Hills. I went myself down to Howrah station after dinner to add my blessing to their luggage, but the train was gone. A fat baboo of Bengal told me so, with a wreath of marigolds round his neck. I thought, looking at him, how glad they must be to have turned their faces toward a country where men eat millet and chapattis,[[125]] and are lean.
[124]. Valley.
[125]. Native cakes of flour and water.
Kasi was there too. Kasi travelled “intermediate,” that is to say sitting on the floor, quite comfortably, in a wooden box, iron-barred down the sides to let in light and air. Before the train started Kasi had unrolled all the rugs and pillows, had made ready soap and towels and brushes, and had left the sahib who had been very troublesome all day, and the memsahib who had already unjustly accused him of having forgotten seven things, with nothing to do but to go to bed and to rise again. Then he returned to his own place, where his own kind buzzed about him with flat baskets of sticky brown balls and fried sweetmeats to sell. Kasi regarded them indifferently and bought nothing; the kinship was only skin-deep, the lime-marks upon their foreheads were different, he could not eat from their hands. Secretly, when the shadow of none fell upon it he took from a little brass box his betel solace, then as the train whistled he unwound the ten yards of his turban, wrapped his red chuddar[[126]] about him, and disposed himself on the floor to dream of the profit there might be when the sahib took a journey.