PRESENTLY they met a wonderfully pretty lady with red cheeks, such red cheeks as all the Miss Peacheys had in Canbury, being swung along in a dandy on the shoulders of four stout coolies. The red cheeks belonged to Chakrata; they were within half a mile of it then; they would see it before the sun went down. The road zig-zagged a bit and climbed more steeply, narrowing hideously here and there. The khuds became terrific. Young Browne dismounted and walked at his wife’s bridle, pushing her pony close to the mountainside. The precipices seemed to shout to them.

There was a last outstanding brown flank; the road hurtled round it, over it, and then with the greeting of a mighty torrent of wind that seemed to come from the other side of the world it ran out upon a wide level place, where a band played and five hundred soldiers, in Her Majesty’s red, wheeled and marched and countermarched, it seemed to the Brownes, for pure light-heartedness. That was the end; there, grouped all about a crag or two, was Chakrata. There across a vast heaving of mountains to the horizon—mountains that sank at their feet and swelled again and again and again purple and blue—stood the still wonder of the Snows.

“They aren’t real,” said Helen simply, “they’re painted on the sky.”

The Brownes followed a path that twisted through Chakrata, and in course of time they came to a little out-cropping wooden diamond-paned chalet, with wide brown eaves that overhung eternity and looked toward the Snows. It was a tiny toy dÂk-bungalow, and English dahlias, red and purple and yellow and white, grew in clumps and thickets tall and wild around it. Here they entered in and demanded a great fire and a cake; while a grey furred cloud, flying low with her sisters, blotted out the Snows, and darkness, coming up from the valleys, caught them upon the mountain-top.

Distinct and unusual joys awaited them in the morning. The fire had gone out for one thing, and they shivered luxurious shivers at the prospect of getting up without one. They enjoyed every shiver and prolonged it. How little one thought of being thankful for that sort of thing in England, Helen remarked, with little sniffs at the frosty air; and young Browne said “No, by Jove,” and how one hated the idea of one’s tub. Oh, delightfully cold it was, snapping cold, squeaking cold! Helen showed her hands blue after washing them, and they tumbled through their respective toilettes like a couple of school children. It was so long since they had been cold before.

At breakfast the butter was chippy, and that in itself was a ravishing thing. At what time of year, they asked each other, would butter ever stand alone without ice in Bengal. And their fingers were numb—actually numb; could anything have been more agreeable, except to sit in the sun on the little veranda, as they afterwards did, and get them warm again! There, without moving, they could watch that magical drifted white picture in the sky, so pure as to be beyond all painting, so lifted up as to be beyond all imagination. A ragged walnut-tree clung to the edge of the cliff; the wind shook the last of its blackening leaves; the vast, wheeling sky was blue and empty, except of the Snows, and the dahlias had trooped to the verge to look, so that the sun shone through their petals with the light of wine. It is their remoteness, their unapproachableness, that make these Himalayan Snows a sanctuary. From the foot of man anywhere they are prodigiously far off, so that they look to him always the country of a dream just hanging above the world he knows, or if he be of prayerful mind, the Habitation of the Holiness of the Lord. And since it is permitted to us that by mountain and by valley we may journey to look upon the Snows, even from very far off, our souls do not perish utterly in India, and our exile is not entirely without its possession.

The Brownes had only two days in Chakrata, which they employed chiefly as I have mentioned—sitting in the sun devout before the Himalayas, or ecstatically blowing upon their fingers. They made one expedition to see a pair of friends whom the merciful decree of Providence had recently brought up from the Plains for good, and found them laying in coal and flour for the winter, which made them quite silent for a moment with suppressed feeling. “I hope,” said young Browne flippantly, to conceal his emotion, “that on the event of other stores giving out you have plenty of candles. They are sustaining in an emergency.”

And as they made their thoughtful way on pony-back to the brown wooden chalet, Helen observed upon her riding habit some clustering spots of white, that multiplied and thickened, and she gathered them up between her fingers with a delighted cry. “George, dearest, look! We’re being snowed on—in India!”

All of which was doubtless very trivial, but they were not remarkable people, these Brownes; from the first I told you so.

And though they found this journey of theirs brimful of the extraordinary, the unparalleled, there was really only one remarkable thing about it, which was the dignified and self-reliant conduct of the ekka. The ekka had always gone before, overflowing with their goods and crowned with Kasi in cross-legged pomp. They had traced its wavering progress by ends of ravelled rope, and splinters of wood, and scraps of worn-out leather which lay behind in the road to testify of it; and grave as had been their apprehensions, they had never overtaken it in a state of collapse. Invariably when they arrived they found the ekka disburthened, tipped up under a tree, the ekka pony browsing with a good conscience, Kasi awaiting with an air which asked for congratulation. How it held together was a miracle which repeated itself hourly; but it did hold together, and inspired such confidence in young Browne that he proposed, when she tired of the Diagram, to deposit Mrs. Browne in the ekka also. This, however, was declined. Mrs. Browne said that she had neither the heart nor the nerves for it; in which case, of course, an emergency would find her quite anatomically unprepared.

Leaving the Snows with grief, therefore, they left the ekka with trusting faith. There had been a hitch in the process of packing, examination, consultation. The sahib, inquiring, had been told that one of the wheels was “a little sick.” It was an excellent ekka—an ekka with all the qualities; the other wheel was quite new, and you did not often find an ekka with an entirely new wheel! But the other was certainly a little old, and after these many miles a little sick. Young Browne diagnosed the suffering wheel, and made a serious report; there were internal complications, and the tire had already been off seven times. Besides, it wouldn’t stand up; obviously it was not shamming, the purana chucker^[141] was taken bad, very bad indeed. Its cure could be accomplished, however, with wet chips and a hammer—and time. If the sahib would permit, the ekka would follow in half an hour.

So the Brownes departed gaily, and an hour and three-quarters later the ekka tottered forth also, with Kasi and the ekka-wallah walking lamentably alongside exchanging compliments upon the subject of the wheel. They travelled three miles and an hour thus, and then the wheel had a sudden relapse, with signs of dissolution; while young Browne’s dressing-case, which happened to be on top, shot precipitately first into space and then into the topmost branches of a wild cherry-tree growing three thousand feet down the khud. The ekka pony planted his feet in the road-bed and looked round for directions; the ekka-wallah groaned and sat down. “And the sahib, O, my brother-in-law!” exclaimed Kasi, dancing round the ekka.

“The sahib is in the hand of God!” returned the ekka-wallah piously. “To-day I have been much troubled. I will smoke.” And while the Brownes, at Saia, remotely lower down, grew chilly with vain watching in the shadows that lengthened through the khuds, the weary ekka leaned peacefully against the mountain wall, the ekka-wallah drew long comfort from his hubble-bubble, and Kasi reposed also by the wayside, chewing the pungent betel, and thinking, with a meditative eye on the wild cherry-tree below, hard things of fate.

Nevertheless, without the direct interposition of Providence, the ekka eventually arrived, and there was peace in one end of the dÂk-bungalow, and the crackling of sarl branches, and the simmering of tinned hotch-potch. In the other end was wrath, and a pair of Royal Engineers—a big Royal Engineer and a little Royal Engineer. To understand why wrath should abide with these two Royal Engineers in their end of the bungalow, it is necessary to understand that it was not an ordinary travellers’ bungalow, but a “Military Works’” bungalow, their very own bungalow, for “Military Works” and “Royal Engineers” mean the same thing; and that ordinary travellers were only allowed to take shelter there by special permission or under stress of weather. By their proper rights, therefore, these Royal Engineers should have had both ends of the bungalow, and the middle, and the compound, and the village, and a few miles of the road north and south—and a little privacy. If these ideas seem a trifle large, it becomes necessary to try to understand, at least approximately, what a Royal Engineer is, where he comes from, to what dignities and emoluments he may aspire. And then, when we have looked upon the buttons which reflect his shining past, and considered the breadth of his shoulders and the straightness of his legs, and the probable expense he has been as a whole to his parents and his country, we will easily bring ourselves to admit that he is entirely right in considering himself quite the most swagger article in ordinary Government service in India. We may even share his pardonable incredulity as to whether before his advent India was at all. And certainly we will sympathise with the haughtily impatient expletives with which he would naturally greet pretensions to circumscribe his vested rights in the Himalayan mountains on the part of two absurdly unimportant and superfluous Brownes.

The Brownes in their end heard the two Royal Engineers kicking the fire logs in theirs, and conversing with that brevity and suppression which always marks a Royal Engineer under circumstances where ordinary people would be abusively fluent. Apparently they had command of themselves, they were Royal Engineers, they weren’t saying much, but it was vigorous the way they kicked the fire. The Brownes were still as mice, and absorbed their soup with hearts that grew ever heavier with a grievous sense of wrong inflicted not only upon their neighbour but upon a Royal Engineer!

“As a matter of fact, you know,” said young Browne, “we’ve no business here. I think I ought to go and speak to them.”

“We’ve got permission,” remarked Mrs. Browne feebly, “and we were here first.”

“I’m afraid,” said young Browne, “that we have the best end, and we’ve certainly got the lamp. Maybe they would like the lamp. I think I ought first to go and see them. After all, it’s their bungalow.”

Young Browne came back presently twisting the end of his moustache. It was an unconscious imitation of the Royal Engineers acquired during their short and embarrassed interview.

“Well?” said Helen.

“Oh, it’s all right. They don’t particularly mind. They accepted my apology—confound them! And they would like the lamp—their’s smokes. They’re marching, like us, down to Saharanpore, inspecting the road or something, and fishing. No end of a good time those chaps have.”

“What are their names?”

“Haven’t the least idea—they’re Royal Engineers.”

“Well,” returned Mrs. Browne disconsolately, “what are we to do when you give them the buttie?”

“Go to bed,” returned her lord laconically.

Mrs. Browne prepared, therefore, for repose, and while Mr. Browne yielded up the lamp there reached her from the other end of the bungalow the ineffable condescension of a Royal Engineer, who said “Thanks awfully.”

They were gone in the morning; the Brownes heard from the khansamah that the burra-sahibs had departed at daylight, and the very burra of the burra-sahibs rode a white horse. The Brownes were glad these particularly burra-sahibs had gone; they found they preferred to be entertained by the Military Works Department in the abstract. “They probably mean to ride a long way to-day, starting so early,” said Helen hopefully. “We won’t find them at Futtehpore.” It was unreasonable in the Brownes; they had no grievance against these Royal Engineers, and yet they desired exceedingly that somewhere, anywhere, their ways should diverge; and there is no doubt whatever that the Royal Engineers would have heartily recommended a change of route to the Brownes. Unfortunately there was only one, and it lay before them unravelling down among the hills to Futtehpore. It was such glorious cantering, though, that these inconsiderable civil little Brownes on their bazar tats, all agog with their holiday, almost forgot the possible recurrence of the Royal Engineer. He became a small cloud on the horizon of their joyous day; he would probably vanish before evening. So that the sun shone and the doves cooed and the crested hoo-poe ran across the path, of what import was a Royal Engineer—or even two? So the Brownes rode valiantly down among the hills, she upon her Diagram and he upon the charger of Rajpore, and when they really went with wings and glory, the syce-boys running behind attached themselves to the tails of the Diagram and the charger of Rajpore respectively, relieving their own legs and adding greatly to the imposing character of the cavalcade. And so they went down, down, where purple-veined begonias grew beside the course of the springs, and tall trees fluttered their ghostly white leaves over the verge, and orchids bloomed on dead branches up overhead. As they went they met an invalid being taken to Chakrata for change of air and scene. He rode in a dandy evidently made for his special accommodation, carried by two coolies; and a chuprassie attended him, a beautiful chuprassie with a red sash and a medal. The invalid looked at the Brownes in a way that asked their solicitude, but he made them no salutation because he was only a big brown and white mastiff, and besides, he didn’t feel up to promiscuous conversation with strangers who might or might not be desirable. But when young Browne stopped the chuprassie and the coolies, and called him “old fellow” and asked him where he was going and how he had stood the journey, he gave young Browne a paw and a depreciating turn of his head over the dandy which distinctly said, “Liver complications. We all come to it. Your turn next hot weather. This country isn’t fit for a Christian to live in!” and one more homesick alien passed on to look for his lost well-being in the Hills. Mrs. Browne hoped he would find it, he was such a dear dog.