ALL night long the Jumna purred in their ears, rolling over the stones at the bottom of the shady hill, whereon the Raj had built a travellers’ rest. Looking out through the dewy branches in the morning, they saw the Doon lying under its mists at their feet, with the ragged Siwalliks on the other side—already they had begun to climb. Already, too, there was the mountain scent in the air—that smell of wet mossy rock and ferns and running streams and vigour—and this, as they set forth upon the Himalayas, with their faces turned upwards, took possession of their senses and made them altogether joyous. The Rajpore charger sniffed the wind with his Roman nose as copiously as circumstances would permit, and snapped viciously at young Browne’s trousers with his retreating under-lip. The Rajpore charger must have been at least twelve hands high, and fat out of all proportion. His syce and proprietor, Boophal—probably thirteen years old, wearing a ragged cloth jacket, a dhoty, and an expression of precocious iniquity, was very proud of him. The syce attached to Helen’s pony was visibly abased by the contrast, and Helen herself declared loudly against the injustice of being expected to keep up under the circumstances. Mrs. Browne’s mount had only one idea of going, and that was to imitate the gait of her distinguished friend in front at a considerable distance to the rear; and there is no doubt that it must have been trying invariably to come up puffing, to the reproaches of a waiting lord, complacent in his saddle. “If you could ride behind for awhile and beat it,” suggested Helen; “it doesn’t seem to mind me.” But young Browne thought that was quite impossible. There was one thing they might do, though—at Saia they might get her a spur! “George!” cried she, “do you think I would use a spur?—horrid, cruel thing, that you never can tell when it’s going in!” with ungrammatical emotion. “But we might change ponies for a bit, if you like.”
“We might,” said young Browne, reflectively, “but I don’t think that I should feel justified in putting you on this one, my dear; his rage and fury with his nose are awful.”
“But, George, I should like to ride beside you!”
“Not more than I should like to have you, dear. But I think, since I can’t have that pleasure, what a satisfaction I take in the knowledge that you are safe. Do you feel disposed to trot?”
“I do,” returned Mrs. Browne, with plaintive emphasis; “but you’ll have to start, please. What is the matter with this animal?”
The Diagram was neighing—long, shrill neighs of presagement, with her ears cocked forward. “Something’s coming,” said young Browne. “Dâk-wallahata!”[[137]] remarked Boophal. A faint jingling on the far side of the nearest curve; the dâk-wallah had rounded it, and was upon them, at a short, steady, unrelenting trot. The dâk-wallah, all in khaki, had charge of Her Majesty’s mails. There was no time for a salaam. He wore bells at his waist for premonition, and a spear over his shoulder for defence. These hills were full of janwas[[138]] without special respect for Her Majesty’s mails. On he went, jingling faint and fainter, bearing the news of the mountains down into the valleys, a pleasant primitive figure of the pleasant primitive East. Young Browne liked him particularly. “What a decent way of earning one’s living!” said he.
[137]. The postman comes.
[138]. Animals.
The hills began to round out nobly before them now. The road took great sweeps and curves, always penetrating and climbing, and a low stone wall made its appearance running along the outer edge. Over the wall they looked down upon a hurrying river and tree-tops; but the hill-sides towered straight up beside them, lost in sarl, and oak, and mosses, and shadows. They had climbed a very little way. The stillness seemed to grow with the sunshine. Only now and then a jungle-fowl stirred, or a hoo-poe cried, or they heard the trickling of a tiny stream that made its ferny way down the face of the rock to the road. Underneath the warm air lay always the cool scent; strange flowers bloomed in it, but did not change it; it was the goodly smell of the mountains, and Helen, respiring it, declared that it was the first time her nose had been the slightest pleasure to her in India. They turned to look back—the hills had grown up around them and shut them in; they were upon the solitary, engirdling road, with its low stone parapet below unknown heights, above unknown depths, insisting always upwards round the nearer masses to hills that were greater, further, bluer. It was the little parapet, Helen decided, that made it look so lonely. It must have taken quantities of people to build the little parapet along such mighty curves, and now they had all gone away down the road, and it seemed as if none of them would ever come back.
After the dâk-wallah the jogi[[139]] with his matted hair and furtive eyes. He asked nothing of the Brownes, the jogi, he extracted pice from his own people, for the good of their souls; the souls of the Brownes were past paying for; besides, it was so unlikely that a sahib would pay. And after the jogi came a score of black, long-haired, long-horned buffaloes, and a man seated upon an ass driving them. The buffaloes had evidently never seen anything approaching a Browne before, for they all with one accord stood quite still when they came within twenty yards of these two, and stared with the stolidly resentful surprise that never strikes one as an affectation in a buffalo. There were so very many buffaloes and so very few Brownes and so little room for any of them that the situation was awkward. “Keep close behind me and stick to the inside,” young Browne enjoined his lady. “They have been known to charge at things they don’t understand, but they take a good while to make up their minds.”