THE LURE OF THE HILLS
A dark pall enveloped the mountains, and over Ranga Duar raged one of
the terrifying tropical thunderstorms that signalise the rains of India.
Unlike more temperate climes this land has but three Seasons. To her the
division of the year into Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter means
nothing. She knows only the Hot Weather, the Monsoon or Rains, and the
Cold Weather. From November to the end of February is the pleasant time
of dry, bright, and cool days, with nights that register from three to
sixteen degrees of frost in the plains of Central and Northern India.
In the Himalayas the snow lies feet deep. The popular idea that
Hindustan is always a land of blazing sun and burning heat is entirely
wrong. But from March to the end of June it certainly turns itself into
a hell of torment for the luckless mortals that cannot fly from the
parched plains to the cool mountains. Then from the last days of June,
when the Monsoon winds bring up the moisture-laden clouds from the
oceans on the south-west of the peninsula, to the beginning or middle
of October, India is the Kingdom of Rain. From the grey sky it falls
drearily day and night. Outside, the thirsty soil drinks it up gladly.
Green things venture timidly out of the parched earth, then shoot up as
rapidly as the beanstalk of the fairy tale. But inside houses dampness
reigns. Green fungus adorns boots and all things of leather, tobacco
reeks with moisture, and the white man scratches himself and curses the
plague of prickly heat.
But while tens of thousands of Europeans and hundreds of millions of
natives suffer greatly in the tortures of Heat and Wet for eight weary
months of the year in the Plains of India, up in the magic realm of the
Hills, in the pleasure colonies like Simla, Mussourie, Naini Tal,
Darjeeling, and Ootacamund, existence during those same months is one long
spell of gaiety and comfort for the favoured few. These hill-stations make
life in India worth living for the lucky English women and men who can take
refuge in them. And incidentally they are responsible for more domestic
unhappiness in Anglo-Indian households than any other cause. It is said
that while in the lower levels of the land many roads lead to the Divorce
Court, in the Hills _all_ do.
For wives must needs go alone to the hill-stations, as a rule. India is not
a country for idlers. Every white man in it has work to do, otherwise he
would not be in that land at all. Husbands therefore cannot always
accompany their spouses to the mountains, and, when they do, can rarely
contrive to remain there for six months or longer of the Season.
Consequently the wives are often very lonely in the big hotels that abound
on the hill-tops, and sometimes drift into dependence on bachelors on leave
for daily companionship, for escort to the many social functions, for
regular dancing partners. And so trouble is bred.
Major Dermot was no lover of these mountain Capuas of Hindustan, and had
gladly escaped from Simla, chiefest of them all. Yet now he sat in his
little stone bungalow in Ranga Duar, while the terrific thunder crashed and
roared among the hills, and read with a pleased smile an official letter
ordering him to proceed forthwith to Darjeeling--as gay a pleasure colony
as any--to meet the General Commanding the Division, who was visiting the
place on inspection duty. For the same post had brought him a letter from
Noreen Daleham which told him that she was then, and had been for some
time, in that hill-station.
The climate of the Terai, unpleasantly but not unbearably hot in the summer
months, is pestilential and deadly during the rains, when malaria and the
more dreaded black-water fever take toll of the strongest. Noreen had
suffered in health in the hot weather, and her brother was seriously
concerned at the thought of her being obliged to remain in Malpura
throughout the Monsoon. He could not take her to the Hills; it was
impossible for him to absent himself even for a few days from the garden,
for the care and management of it was devolving more and more every day on
him, owing to the intemperate habits of Parry.
Fred Daleham's relief was great when his sister unexpectedly received a
letter from a former school-friend who two years before had married a man
in the Indian Civil Service. Noreen, who was a good deal her junior, had
corresponded regularly with her, and she now wrote to say that she was
going to Darjeeling for the Season and suggested that Noreen should join
her there. Much as the prospect of seeing a friend whom she had idolised,
appealed to the girl (to say nothing of the gaieties of a hill-station and
the pleasure of seeing shops, real shops, again), she was nevertheless
unwilling to leave her brother. But Fred insisted on her going.
From Darjeeling she told Dermot in a long and chatty epistle all her
sensations and experiences in this new world. It was her first real letter
to him, although she had written him a few short notes from Malpura. It was
interesting and clever, without any attempt to be so, and Dermot was
surprised at the accuracy of her judgment of men and things and the
vividness of her descriptions. He noticed, moreover, that the social
gaieties of Darjeeling did not engross her. She enjoyed dancing, but the
many balls, At Homes, and other social functions did not attract her so
much as the riding and tennis, the sight-seeing, the glimpses of the
strange and varied races that fill the Darjeeling bazaar, and, above all,
the glories of the superb scenery where the ice-crowned monarch of all
mountains, Kinchinjunga, forty miles away--though not seeming five--and
twenty-nine thousand feet high, towers up above the white line of the
Eternal Snows.
Dermot was critically pleased with the letter. Few men--and he least of
all--care for an empty-headed doll whose only thoughts are of dress and
fashionable entertainments. He liked the girl for her love of sport and
action, for her intelligence, and the interest she took in the varied
native life around her. He was almost tempted to think that her letter
betrayed some desire for his companionship in Darjeeling, for in it she
constantly wondered what he would think of this, what he would say of that.
But he put the idea from him, though he smiled as he re-read his orders and
thought of her surprise when she saw him in Darjeeling. Would she really be
pleased to meet her friend of the jungle in the gay atmosphere of a
pleasure colony? Like most men who are not woman-hunters he set a very
modest value on himself and did not rate highly his power of attraction for
the opposite sex. Therefore, he thought it not unlikely that the girl might
consider him as a desirable enough acquaintance for the forest but a bore
in a ballroom. In this he was unjust to her.
He was surprised to discover that he looked forward with pleasure to seeing
her again, for women as a rule did not interest him. Noreen was the first
whom he had met that gave him the feeling of companionship, of comradeship,
that he experienced with most men. She was not more clever, more talented,
or better educated than most English girls are, but she had the capacity of
taking interest in many things outside the ordinary range of topics. Above
all, she inspired him with the pleasant sense of "chum-ship," than which
there is no happier, more durable bond of union between a man and a woman.
The Season brought the work in which Dermot was engaged to a standstill,
and, keen lover of sport as he was, he was not tempted to risk the
fevers of the jungle. Life in the small station of Ranga Duar was dull
indeed. Day and night the rain rattled incessantly on the iron roofs
of the bungalows--six or eight inches in twenty-four hours being not
unusual. Thunderstorms roared and echoed among the hills for twenty or
thirty hours at a stretch. All outdoor work or exercise was impossible.
The outpost was nearly always shrouded in dense mist. Insect pests
abounded. Scorpions and snakes invaded the buildings. Outside, from
every blade of grass, every leaf and twig, a thin and hungry leech waved
its worm-like, yellow-striped body in the air, seeming to scent any
approaching man or beast on which it could fasten and gorge itself fat
with blood. Certainly a small station on the face of the Himalayas is
not a desirable place of residence during the rains, and to persons
of melancholy temperament would be conducive to suicide or murder.
Fortunately for themselves the two white men in Ranga Duar took life
cheerily and were excellent friends.
* * * * *
By this time Noreen considered herself quite an old resident of Darjeeling.
But she had felt the greatest reluctance to go when her brother had helped
her into the dogcart for the long drive to the railway. Fred was unable to
take her even as far as the train, for his manager had one of his periodic
attacks of what was euphemistically termed his "illness." But Chunerbutty
volunteered to escort Noreen to the hills, as he had been summoned again to
his sick father's side, the said parent being supposed to be in attendance
on his Rajah who had taken a house in Darjeeling for the season. As a
matter of fact his worthy progenitor had never left Lalpuri. However,
Daleham knew nothing of that, and, being empowered to do so when Parry was
incapacitated, gladly gave him permission to go and gratefully accepted his
offer to look after the girl on the journey.
Noreen would much have preferred going alone, but her brother refused to
entertain the idea. Although she knew nothing of the suspicions of her
Bengali friend entertained by Dermot, she sensed a certain disapproval on
his part of Fred's and her intimacy with Chunerbutty, and it affected her
far more than did the open objection of the other planters to the Hindu.
Besides, she was gradually realising the existence of the "colour bar,"
illiberal as she considered it to be. But it will always exist, dormant
perhaps but none the less alive in the bosoms of the white peoples. It is
Nature herself who has planted it there, in order to preserve the
separation of the races that she has ordained. So Noreen, though she hated
herself for it, felt that she would rather go all the way alone than travel
with the Hindu.
The thirty miles' drive to the station of the narrow-gauge branch railway
which would convey them to the main line did not seem long. For several
planters who resided near her road had laid a _dâk_ for her, that is, had
arranged relays of ponies at various points of the way to enable the
journey to be performed quickly. Noreen's heavy luggage had gone on ahead
by bullock cart two days before, so the pair travelled light.
After her long absence from civilisation the diminutive engine and
carriages of the narrow-gauge railway looked quite imposing, and it
seemed to the girl strange to be out of the jungle when the toy train
slid from the forest into open country, through the rice-fields and by
the trim palm-thatched villages nestling among giant clumps of bamboo.
In the evening the train reached the junction where Noreen and Chunerbutty
had to transfer to the Calcutta express, which brought them early next
morning to Siliguri, the terminus of the main line at the foot of the
hills, whence the little mountain-railway starts out on its seven thousand
feet climb up the Himalayas.
Out of the big carriages of the express the passengers tumbled reluctantly
and hurried half asleep to secure their seats in the quaint open
compartments of the tiny train. White-clad servants strapped up their
employers' bedding--for in India the railway traveller must bring his own
with him--and collected the luggage, while the masters and mistresses
crowded into the refreshment room for _chota hazri_, or early breakfast.
Noreen was unpleasantly aware of the curious and semi-hostile looks cast at
her and her companion by the other Europeans, particularly the ladies, for
the sight of an English girl travelling with a native is not regarded with
friendly eyes by English folk in India.
But she forgot this when the toy train started. As they climbed higher the
vegetation grew smaller and sparser, until it ceased altogether and the
line wound up bare slopes. And as they rose they left the damp heat behind
them, and the air grew fresher and cooler.
The train twisted among the mountains and crawled up their steep sides on a
line that wound about in bewildering fashion, in one place looping the loop
completely in such a way that the engine was crossing a bridge from under
which the last carriage was just emerging. Noreen delighted in the journey.
She chatted gaily with her companion, asking him questions about anything
that was new to her, and striving to ignore the looks of curiosity, pity,
or disgust cast at her by the other European passengers, among whom
speculation was rife as to the relationship between the pair.
The leisurely train took plenty of time to recover its breath when it
stopped at the little wayside stations, and many of its occupants got out
to stretch their legs. Two of them, Englishmen, strolled to the end of the
platform at a halt. One, a tall, fair man, named Charlesworth, a captain in
a Rifle battalion quartered in Lebong, the military suburb of Darjeeling,
remarked to his companion:
"I wonder who is the pretty, golden-haired girl travelling with that
native. How the deuce does she come to be with him? She can't be his wife."
"You never know," replied the other, an artillery subaltern named Turner.
"Many of these Bengali students in London marry their landladies' daughters
or girls they've picked up in the street, persuading the wretched women by
their lies that they are Indian princes. Then they bring them out here to
herd with a black family in a little house in the native quarter."
"Yes; but that girl is a lady," answered Charlesworth impatiently. "I heard
her speak on the platform at Siliguri."
"She certainly looks all right," admitted his friend. "Smart and
well-turned out, too. But one can never tell nowadays."
"Let's stroll by her carriage and get a nearer view of her," said
Charlesworth.
As they passed the compartment in which Noreen was seated, the girl's
attention was attracted by two gaily-dressed Sikkimese men with striped
petticoats and peacocks' feathers stuck in their flowerpot-shaped hats, who
came on to the platform.
"Oh, Mr. Chunerbutty, look at those men!" she said eagerly. "What are
they?"
The Hindu had got out and was standing at the door of the compartment.
"Did you notice that?" said Charlesworth, when he and Turner had got beyond
earshot. "She called him Mr. Something-or-other."
"Yes; deuced glad to hear it, too," replied the gunner. "I'd hate to see a
white woman, especially an English lady, married to a native. I wonder how
that girl comes to be travelling with the beggar at all."
"I'd like to meet her," said Charlesworth, who was returning from ten days'
leave in Calcutta. "If I ever do, I'll advise her not to go travelling
about with a black man. I suppose she's just out from England and knows no
better."
"She'd probably tell you to mind your own business," observed his friend.
"Hullo! it looks as if the engine-driver is actually going to get a move on
this old hearse. Let's go aboard."
More spiteful comments were made on Noreen by the Englishwomen on the
train, and the girl could not help remarking their contemptuous glances at
her and her escort.
When the train ran into the station at Darjeeling she saw her friend, Ida
Smith, waiting on the platform for her. As the two embraced and kissed each
other effusively Charlesworth muttered to Turner:
"It's all right, old chap. I'll be introduced to that girl before this time
tomorrow, you bet. I know her friend. She's from the Bombay side--wife of
one of the Heaven Born."
By this lofty title are designated the members of the Indian Civil Service
by lesser mortals, such as army officers--who in return are contemptuously
termed "brainless military popinjays" by the exalted caste.
Their greeting over, Noreen introduced Chunerbutty to Ida, who nodded
frigidly and then turned her back on him.
"Now, dear, point out your luggage to my servant and he'll look after it
and get it up to the hotel. Oh, how do you do, Captain Charlesworth?"
The Rifleman, determined to lose no time in making Noreen's acquaintance,
had come up to them.
"I had quite a shock, Mrs. Smith, when I saw you on the platform, for I was
afraid that you were leaving us and had come to take the down train."
"Oh, no; I am only here to meet a friend," she replied. "Have you just
arrived by this train? Have you been away?"
Charlesworth laughed and replied:
"What an unkind question, Mrs. Smith! It shows that I haven't been missed.
Yes, I've been on ten days' leave to Calcutta."
"How brave of you at this time of year! It must have been something
very important that took you there. Have you been to see your tailor?"
Then, without giving him time to reply, she turned to Noreen. "Let me
introduce Captain Charlesworth, my dear. Captain Charlesworth, this is
Miss Daleham, an old school-friend, who has come up to keep me company.
We poor hill-widows are so lonely."
The Rifleman held out his hand eagerly to the girl.
"How d'you do, Miss Daleham? I hope you've come up for the Season."
"Yes, I think so," she replied. "It's a very delightful change from down
below. This is my first visit to a hill-station."
"Then you'll be sure to enjoy it. Are you going to the
Lieutenant-Governor's ball on Thursday?"
"I don't suppose so. I don't know anything about it," she replied.
"You see, I've only just arrived."
"You are, dear," said Ida. "I told Captain Craigie, one of the A.D.C.'s,
that you were coming up, and he sent me your invitation with mine."
"Oh, how jolly!" exclaimed the girl. "I do hope I'll get some partners."
"Please accept me as one," said Charlesworth. Then he tactfully added to
Ida, "I hope you'll spare me a couple of dances, Mrs. Smith."
"With pleasure, Captain Charlesworth," she replied. "But do come and see us
before then."
"I shall be delighted to. By the way, are you going to the gymkhana on the
polo-ground tomorrow?"
"Yes, we are."
Charlesworth turned to Noreen.
"In that case, Miss Daleham, perhaps you'll be good enough to nominate me
for some of the events. As you have only just got here you won't have been
snapped up yet by other fellows. I know it's hopeless to expect Mrs. Smith
not to be."
Ida smiled, well pleased at the flattery, although, as a matter of fact, no
one had yet asked her to nominate him.
"I'm afraid I wouldn't know what to do," answered Noreen. "I've never been
to a gymkhana in India. I haven't seen or ridden in any, except at
Hurlingham and Ranelagh."
Charlesworth made a mental note of this. If the girl had taken part in
gymkhanas at the London Clubs she must be socially all right, he thought.
"They're just the same," he said. "In England they've only copied India in
these things. Have you brought your habit with you?"
"Yes; Mrs. Smith told me in her letters that I could get riding up here."
"Good. I've got a ripping pony for a lady. I'll raise a saddle for you
somewhere, and we'll enter for some of the affinity events."
The girl's eyes sparkled.
"Oh, how delightful. Could I do it, Ida?"
"Yes, certainly, dear."
"I should love to. It's very kind of you, Captain Charlesworth. Thank you
ever so much. It will be splendid. I hope I shan't disgrace you."
"I'm sure you won't. I'll call for you and bring you both down to Lebong if
I may, Mrs. Smith."
"Will you lunch with us then?" asked Ida. "You know where I am staying--the
Woodbrook Hotel. Noreen is coming there too."
"Thank you, I'll be delighted," replied the Rifleman.
"Very well. One o'clock sharp. Now we'll say good-bye for the present."
Charlesworth shook hands with both ladies and strode off in triumph to
where Turner was awaiting him impatiently.
"Now, dear, we'll go," said Ida. "I have a couple of _dandies_ waiting for
us."
"_Dandies_?" echoed the girl in surprise. "What do you mean?"
The older woman laughed.
"Oh, not dandies like Captain Charlesworth. These are chairs in which
coolies carry you. In Darjeeling you can't drive. You must go in
_dandies_, or rickshas, unless you ride. Here, Miguel! Have you got the
missie _baba's_ luggage?" This to her Goanese servant.
"Yes, _mem sahib_. All got," replied the "boy," a native Christian with the
high sounding name of Miguel Gonsalves Da Costa from the Portugese Colony
of Goa on the West Coast of India below Bombay. In his tweed cap and suit
of white ducks he did not look as imposing as the Hindu or Mohammedan
butlers of other Europeans on the platform with their long-skirted white
coats, coloured _kamarbands_, and big _puggris_, or turbans, with their
employers' crests on silver brooches pinned in the front. But Goanese
servants are excellent and much in demand in Bombay.
"All right. You bring to hotel _jeldi_ (quickly). Come along, Noreen," said
Mrs. Smith, walking off and utterly ignoring the Hindu engineer who had
stood by unnoticed all this time with rage in his heart.
Noreen, however, turned to him and said:
"What are you going to do, Mr. Chunerbutty? Where are you staying?"
"I am going to my father at His Highness's house," he replied. "I should
not be very welcome at your hotel or to your friends, Miss Daleham."
"Oh, of course you would," replied the girl, feeling sorry for him but
uncertain what to say. "Will you come and see me tomorrow?"
"You forget. You are going to the gymkhana with that insolent English
officer."
"Now don't be unjust. I'm sure Captain Charlesworth wasn't at all insolent.
But I forgot the gymkhana. You could come in the morning. Yet, perhaps, I
may have to go out calling with Mrs. Smith," she said doubtfully. "And how
selfish of me! You have your own affairs to see to. I do hope that you'll
find your father much better."
"Thank you. I hope so."
"Do let me know how he is. Send me a _chit_ (letter) if you have time. I am
anxious to hear. Now I must thank you ever so much for your kindness in
looking after me on the journey. I don't know what I'd have done without
you."
"It was nothing. But you had better go. Your haughty friend is looking back
for you, angry that you should stop here talking to a native," he said
bitterly.
Ida was beckoning to her; even at that distance they could see that she was
impatient. So Noreen could only reiterate her thanks to the Hindu and hurry
after her friend, who said petulantly when she came up:
"I do wish you hadn't travelled up with that Indian, Noreen. It isn't nice
for an English girl to be seen with one, and it will make people talk. The
women here are such cats."
Noreen judged it best to make no reply, but followed her irate friend in
silence. Their _dandies_ were waiting outside the station, and as the girl
got into hers and was lifted up and carried off by the sturdy coolies on
whose shoulders the poles rested, she thought with a thrill of the last
occasion on which she had been borne in a chair.