“TELL ME ALL THE NEWS.”
The French windows of Mrs. Langrishe’s drawing-room opened into a
deep stone verandah embowered in honeysuckle and passion flowers, and
commanded a matchless view, irrespective of the foreground, in which
Mrs. Sladen’s rickshaw is the chief feature, or the gravel sweep, grass
garden, and beds of pale wintry roses; but beyond the pineclad hills,
among which red roofs are peeping, beyond the valley of rhododendrons,
and a bold purple range, behold the snows! a long, long barrier of
the everlasting hills, to such as the eyes of the psalmist had never
been lifted. People may whisper that they were disappointed in the
Taj, that Delhi was a delusion, and the marble rocks a snare; but who
can declare that the snows were beneath his expectations? And if he
were to say so, who would be found to believe him? The evening breeze
is raw and chill, it has travelled sixty miles from those icy slopes,
it creeps up the khud, and warns the shivering roses that the sun has
set--it stirs the solemn deodars as they stand in dark outline against
the sky.
Mrs. Langrishe, rising from her writing-table, letter in hand, sweeps
back to her friend, who is again sitting on the fender-stool, staring
into the fire, thinking, perchance, of those bygone days when _she_ was
a girl whose friends were anxious to get her settled.
“Milly,” said her hostess, “you are passing the post-office, and you
can post this for me; you had better go now, dear, as you know you have
had a sore throat, and it is getting late.”
Mrs. Sladen rose at once; she was accustomed to being sent on errands
and to being made use of by her intimates. She pulled on her cheap
gloves, twisted her stringy boa round her neck, and held out her hand
for the letter that was to bring Miss Paske to Shirani. As her friend
stooped and kissed her, she looked up at her wistfully, and said--
“Ida, if this girl comes to you, you won’t think of her only as a
marketable article, will you? You will allow her to marry--if she does
marry--to please herself, won’t you, dear?”
“You silly, romantic little person!” exclaimed the other, patting her
cheek with two solid taper fingers. “What an absurd question. As if any
girl is ever married against her will in these enlightened days!”
Mrs. Sladen made no answer beyond an involuntary sigh. She went out
to the verandah, and got into her rickshaw without another word and
ere she was whirled away, nodded a somewhat melancholy farewell to
her handsome, prosperous-looking friend who, clad in a rich tea-gown,
had framed herself for a moment in the open doorway, and called out
imperiously--
“The post goes at six; you have just ten minutes.” Then, with a shiver,
Mrs. Langrishe closed the window and returned to her comfortable
fireside. “Poor Milly!” she muttered, as she warmed one well-shod foot.
“She was always odd and sentimental. Marry to please herself--yes, by
all means--but she must also marry to please _me_!”
* * * * *
A rickshaw (the popular conveyance in the Himalayan hill-stations) is
a kind of glorified bath-chair or grown-up perambulator, light and
smart, and drawn and pushed by four men; it flies along flat roads and
down hills as rapidly as a pony-cart, especially if your Jampannis are
racing another team.
Mrs. Sladen’s rickshaw was old; the hood, of cheap American leather,
was cracked and blistered, it had a list to one side, and her
Jampannis wore the shabby clothes of last year--but, then, their
mistress did the same! As they dashed down hill, they nearly came into
collision with a smart Dyke’s cee-spring vehicle, and a quartette of
men in brilliant (Rickett’s) blue and yellow liveries. The rickshaw
contained an elderly lady of ample proportions, with flaxen hair and
a good-humoured handsome face surmounting two chins. This was Mrs.
Brande, the wife of Pelham Brande, Esq., a distinguished member of the
Civil Service.
“Kubbardar, kubbardar!--take care, take care!” she shrieked. Then to
Mrs. Sladen, “My gracious! how you do fly! but you are a light weight.
Well, come alongside of me, my dear, and tell me all the news; this
place is as dull as ditch-water, so few people here. Next year, I
shan’t come up so early.”
“I believe every house is taken,” said Mrs. Sladen, cheerfully, as they
rolled along side by side. “Even the Cedars, and the Monastery, and
Haddon Hall.”
“You don’t say so! The chimneys smoke beyond anything. I pity whoever
is going there.”
“A bachelor, I believe, a Captain Waring, has taken it for the season,
as it’s close to the mess.”
“In the regiment that’s marching up--the Scorpions?”
“No; I believe he is out of the service, and coming up for the hot
weather, and to try and get some shooting in Thibet later on.”
“Then he must have money?” wagging her head sagaciously.
“Yes, I dare say he has. I’m told it is going to be a gay season.”
“That’s what they always say,” replied Mrs. Brande, impatiently. “I’ll
believe it when I see it. But I did hear that Mrs. Kane is expecting
a brother that is a baronet: he’s coming up to see the hills; he has
been globe-trotting all winter. And so you have been up with the
Duchess--she’s all alone, isn’t she?”
“Yes, for the present; but she will soon have a niece with her--a niece
from Calcutta.”
“A niece!” sharply, and leaning half out of the rickshaw. “What niece?”
“Her brother’s daughter, Miss Paske; she is said to be very pretty and
accomplished, and attractive in every way.”
“You need not tell me _that_!” in accents of concentrated contempt.
“Is Mrs. Langrishe the woman to saddle herself with an ugly girl?
She’ll be having grand parties now; all the rich young fellows, and the
_baronet_--no poor subalterns, you’ll see--and she will get her off
her hands in no time. Just the sort of thing she will like, and a fine
excuse for having packs of men dangling about the house.”
“Oh, Mrs. Brande, you know that is not her style,” expostulated her
companion.
“Well, well, she is your friend--a school-fellow, too--though _you_
must have been in the infant-school, so I’ll say no more--but you
know I am not double-faced, and I cannot abide her, and her airs,
and her schemes, and her always pushing herself to the front, and
sitting in the general’s pew, and being the first to ask that Austrian
prince to dinner, and getting up at parties and sailing out before
the commissioner’s wife--such impudence!--and people put up with her.
If poor little Mrs. Jones was to do such things--and she has a better
right, being an honourable’s daughter--I’d like to know what would be
said? But there’s no fear of Mrs. Jones; there’s no brass about _her_,”
and Mrs. Brande gave a bounce, that made the cee-springs quiver!
“Now, Mrs. Brande, you forget that Ida is my friend.”
“Ay, and better be her friend than her enemy! Well, here is my turn,
and here we part”; and, with a valedictory wave of her podgy hand,
in another instant Mrs. Brande was thundering down the narrow road
that led to the best house in Sharani--her own comfortable, hospitable
dwelling.
Mrs. Sladen posted her letter, and went on to the club and
reading-room, a long, low building overlooking a series of terraces
and tennis-courts, and the chief resort of the whole station. As she
entered the gate, she encountered an elderly gentleman, with beetling
brows, a coarse grey moustache, and a portly figure, riding a stout
black pony.
“Been looking for you everywhere,” he bellowed; “where the mischief
have you been? Swilling tea as usual, I suppose? Soper and Rhodes are
coming to take ‘pot luck,’ so go home at once--and, I say, I hear there
is fish at Manockjees’, just come up; call in on your way, and fetch it
in the rickshaw.”
Exit Colonel Sladen to his evening rubber; exit Mrs. Sladen to carry
home much-travelled fish, and possibly to cook the chief portion of the
dinner.