Just over the top, about seventy miles from Bombay, is Khandalla and Lanowli and further on, Poona. Poona is a military station, sometimes too far. Lanowli is a railway station—which means that no one lives there who is fit to associate with a police commissioner's wife. But Khandalla is no station at all, being only a small mountain village with three or four abandoned bungalows far apart from each other. Heaven knows who built them in the beginning, but whoever it was, they must have done it too late, because there is a neglected grave or two near each one.
The native agents got in every good argument for the bungalows, but Police Commissioner Hichens was not persuaded. He seemed to have a constitutional antipathy to those bungalows.
No, the bungalows might be safer and dryer and warmer at night; they might be cleaner and healthier and more comfortable all the time; but he wanted a tent and he meant to put it where he wanted it. So, at great expense of time and labour on the part of natives, but very little expenditure of money on his part, he succeeded in hoisting a tent from Bombay to the top of the Western Ghat mountains, of a size and of an age and of a strength which suggested a military mess-camp.
The tent was set up in the Jungle at the edge of Khandalla. The servants would find quarters in Khandalla village; a cook, a cook's servant-boy and a butler for the entire household; a boy for the small son, an ayah for the wee girl and a very expensive ayah for the lady herself.
If an ayah is expensive enough, she is usually a very intelligent person, thoroughly informed on most general subjects pertaining to her own country and entirely competent to impart that information. It is understood she will always interpret the native standpoint relative to any matter under discussion. Her value as a servant may be great, but her value as an instructor will be greater. It was necessary that each of the ayahs should be wife to one of the men servants, but it is always possible to make a temporary arrangement of that sort to accommodate the customs of a high official.
So the present Mrs. Hichens was to be established in the tent, very comfortably matted as to the floor and furnished with all necessary appointments of a satisfying quality and wealthy appearance. Men of high rank must do all things with a certain pomp and circumstance, otherwise the ignorant might sometimes forget their rank. And rank must never be allowed to be forgotten.
Police Commissioner Hichens would spend all week-ends with her; that is to say, he would leave Bombay by the first train going up after Court closed on Saturday and would be obliged to take the Sunday evening train down. The two children so recently come into the care of a second mother, would be occupied and entertained by their servants; and the little girl, not quite three years old, would be under the additional guardianship of a Great Dane dog who had once belonged to her own mother.
It will be observed that the Great Dane dog is spoken of as a personality. He was so. He seemed to have quite fixed conclusions about the family. He ignored the servants (excepting Bhanah the cook, who was a servant as far out of the ordinary as the lady's own ayah). He tolerated the small boy. He approved of the new lady. He never ceased to mourn for his dead mistress; especially in the presence of the man.
He would extend his great length on the floor in a low couchant position, not too close to where the man sat—and search the strong human face with eyes more strong. Without the twitch of a muscle anywhere in his whole body, he would endure the man's gaze as long as the man chose, with a level look of cold, untiring rebuke. There was no anger in it, no flash of light, no flame of passion—but it had a way of eating in.
The servants bear common witness that it is the only thing they have ever known to drive the Sahib away from the delightful relaxations of his own home, which he claimed as sanctuary from the stress and grind of his official days. But the Great Dane Nels had done it more than once. Afterward the Sahib would sometimes take Nels on a hunting-furlough.