Helen desired a garden, a tennis-court, and, if possible, a cocoanut palm-tree in the garden. She would prefer a yellow house to a pink one, in view of the fact that the houses were all yellow or pink, and she would like a few pillars in front of it—pillars seemed so common an architectural incident in Calcutta that she thought they must be cheap. Mr. Browne particularly wanted air in the house, “a good south veranda,” and a domicile well raised above its native Bengal. Mr. Browne was strong upon locality and drains, and the non-proximity of jungle and bushes. Helen bowed to his superior knowledge, but secretly longed that a garden with a cocoanut palm in it might be found in a neighbourhood not insanitary. And so they fared forth daily in a ticca-gharry to inspect desirable addresses.
They inspected many. There was no unnecessary formality about permission to look, no “Enquire of Messrs. So and So,” no big key to procure from anywhere. The ticca-gharry[[12]] stopped, and they alighted. If the high wooden gates were closed, Mr. Browne beat upon them lustily with his stick, shouting, “Qui hai!”[[13]] in tones of severe authority. Then, usually from a small and dingy domicile near the gate, issued a figure hastily, a lean, brown figure, in a dirty dhoty, that salaamed perfunctorily, and stood before them waiting.
[12]. Hired carriage.
[13]. Whoever is!
“Iska ghur kali hai?”[[14]] Mr. Browne would inquire and the figure would answer, “Ha!”
[14]. Is this house empty?
Whereat, without further parley, the Brownes would enter the place and begin to express their minds about it. Generally it invited criticism. If the previous sahib had been but three weeks departed the place had an overgrown look, the bushes were unkempt, the grass ragged; there were cracks in the mortar and stains on the walls; within it smelt of desolation. Helen investigated daintily; it looked, she said, so very “snaky.” The general features of one house were very like the general features of another; that is to say, their disadvantages were fairly equal. They all had jungly compounds, they were all more or less tumble-down, all in fashionable Eurasian neighbourhoods, and all at least fifty rupees a month more than the Brownes could afford to pay. Helen found some æsthetic charm, and young Browne some objectionable odour in every one of them. She, one might say, used nothing but her eyes, he nothing but his nose. With regard to the attractions of one address in particular they came almost to a difference of opinion. It was a bungalow, and it sat down flatly in a luxuriant tangle of beaumontia, and bougainvilliers, and trailing columbine. It had a veranda all roundabout, and the veranda was a bower of creeping things. Not only cocoanut palms, but date palms, and areca palms, and toddy palms grew in the corners of the compound with hibiscus bushes all in crimson flower along the wall, a banyan-tree in the middle, and two luxuriant peepuls, one on each side, almost meeting over the roof of the house. The walls and pillars of the bungalow were in delicate tones of grey and green; close behind it were all the picturesque features of a native bustee, and immediately in front a lovely reflection of the sky lay in a mossy tank in places where the water was deep enough. The rent was moderate: it had been empty a long time.
“George!” Helen exclaimed, “it has been waiting for us.”
George demurred. “It’s far and away the worst place we’ve seen,” he remarked.
“I think it’s perfectly sweet,” his wife maintained.