CHAPTER III
A GIRL OF THE TERAI
"How beautiful! How wonderful!" murmured the girl on the verandah, her eyesturned to the long line of the Himalayas filling the horizon to the north.
Clear against the blue sky the shining, ice-clad peaks of Kinchinjunga, ahundred miles away, towered high in air. Mystic, lovely, they seemed tofloat above the earth, as unsubstantial as the clouds from which they rose.They belonged to another world, a fairy world altogether apart from therugged, tumbled masses, the awe-inspiring precipices and tremendous cliffs,of the nearer mountains. These were majestic, overpowering, but plainly ofthis earth, unlike the pure, white summits that seemed unreal, impossiblein their beauty.
"Do come and look, Fred," said the girl aloud. "I've never seen the Snowsso clearly."
She spoke to the solitary occupant of the dining-room of the bungalow. Theyoung man at the breakfast table answered laughingly:
"I don't want to look at those confounded hills, Sis. I've seen them,nothing but them, all through these long months, until I begin to hate thesight of them."
"Oh, but do come, dear!" she pleaded. "Kinchinjunga has never seemed sobeautiful as it does this morning. And it looks so near. Who could believethat it was all those miles away?"
With an air of pretended boredom and martyr-like resignation, her brotherput down his coffee-cup and came out on the verandah.
"Isn't it like Fairyland?" said the girl in an awed voice.
He put his arm affectionately round her, as he replied:
"Then it's where you belong, kiddie, for you look like a fairy thismorning."
The hackneyed compliment, unusual from the lips of a brother, was notfar-fetched. If a dainty little figure, an exquisitely pretty dimpledface, a shell-pink complexion, violet eyes with long, thick lashes, andnaturally wavy golden hair be the hallmarks of the fairies, then NoreenDaleham might claim to be one. Her face in repose had a somewhat sadexpression, due to the pathetic droop of the corners of her littlemouth and a wistful look in her eyes that made most men instinctivelydesire to caress and console her. But the sadness and the wistfulnesswere unconscious and untrue, for the girl was of a sunny and happydisposition. And the men that desired to pet her were kept at a distanceby her natural self-respect, which made them respect her, too.
She was, perhaps, somewhat unusual in her generation in that she did notindulge in flirtations and would have strongly objected to being the objectof promiscuous caresses and light lovemaking. Her innate purity andinnocence kept such things at a distance from her. It never occurred to herthat a girl might indulge in a hundred flirtations without reproach.Without being sentimental she had her own inward, unexpressed feelings ofromance and vague dreams of Love and a Lover--but not of loves and loversin the plural.
No one so far had shattered her belief in the chivalrous feeling of respectof the other sex for her own. Men as a rule, especially British men--thoughthey are no more virtuous than those of alien nations--treat a woman as sheinwardly wants them to treat her. And, although this girl was over twenty,she had never yet had reason to suspect that men could behave to her withanything but respect.
Her small and shapely figure looked to advantage in the well-cut ridingcostume of khaki drill that she wore this morning. A cloth habit wouldhave been too warm for even these early days of an Eastern Bengal hotweather. She was ready to accompany her brother in his early ridethrough the tea-garden (of which he was assistant manager) in the Duars,as this district of the Terai below the mountains is called. From theverandah on which they stood they could look over acres of trim and tidybushes planted in orderly rows, a strong contrast to the wild disorderof the big trees and masses of foliage of the forest that lay beyondthem and stretched to and along the foothills of the Himalayas only afew miles away.
Daleham's father, a retired colonel, has died just as the boy was preparingto go up for the entrance examination for the Royal Military College atSandhurst. To his great grief he was obliged to give up all hope ofbecoming a soldier, and, when he left school, entered an office in thecity. Passionately desirous of an open-air and active life he hadafterwards eagerly snatched at an offer of employment by one of the greattea companies that are dotting the Terai with their plantations andsweeping away glorious spaces of wild, primeval forest to replace the treesby orderly rows of tea-bushes and unsightly iron-roofed factories.
Left with a small income inherited from her mother, Noreen Daleham, who wastwo years her brother's junior, had gladly given up the dulness of a homewith an aunt in a small country town to accompany her brother and keephouse for him.
To most girls life on an Indian tea-garden would not seem alluring; forthey would find themselves far from social gaieties and the society oftheir kind. Existence is lonely and lacking in the comforts, as well as theluxuries, of civilisation. Dances, theatres, concerts, even shops, are far,very far away. A woman must have mental resources to enable her to facecontentedly life in a scantily-furnished, comfortless bungalow, dumped downin a monotonous stretch of unlovely tea-bushes. With little to occupy hershe must rely for days at a time on the sole companionship of her man. To ayoung bride very much in love that may seem no hardship. But when theglamour has vanished she may change her mind.
To Noreen, however, the isolation was infinitely preferable to thenarrow-minded and unfriendly intimacy of society in a country town withits snobbery and cliques. To be mistress of her own home and to be ableto look after and mother her dearly-loved brother was a pleasant changefrom her position as a cipher in the household of a crotchetty,unsympathetic, maiden aunt. And fortunately for her the charm of thesilent forest around them, the romance of the mysterious jungle with itsdangers and its wonders, appealed strongly to her, and she preferredthem to all the pleasures that London could offer. And yet the delightsof town were not unknown to her. Her father's first cousin, who hadloved him but married a rich man, often invited the girl to stay withher in her house in Grosvenor Square. These visits gave her an insightinto life in Mayfair with its attendant pleasures of dances in smarthouses, dinners and suppers in expensive restaurants, the Opera andtheatres, and afternoons at Ranelagh and Hurlingham. She enjoyed themall; she had enough money to dress well; and she was very popular.But London could not hold her. Her relative, who was childless, wasanxious that Noreen should remain always with her, at least until shemarried--and the older woman determined that the girl should make anadvantageous marriage. But the latter knew that her income was verywelcome to her aunt and, with a spirit of self-sacrifice not usual inthe young, gave up a gay, fashionable life for the dull existence ofa paying drudge in the house of an ungrateful, embittered elderlyspinster. Yet her heart rejoiced when she conscientiously felt that herbrother needed her more and had a greater claim upon her; and gladly shewent to keep house for him in India.
And she was happier than he in their new life. For in this land that isessentially a soldier's country, won by the sword, held by the sword, inspite of all that ignorant demagogues in England may say, Fred Daleham feltall the more keenly the disappointment of his inability to follow thecareer that he would have chosen. However, he was a healthy-minded youngman, not given to brooding and vain regrets.
"Are you ready to start, dear?" he said to his sister now. "Shall I orderthe ponies?"
"I am ready. But have you finished your coffee?"
"Thanks, yes. We'll go off at once then, for I have a long morning's work,and we had better get our ride over while it's cool."
He shouted to his "boy" to order the _syces_, or grooms, to bring theponies.
"Where are we going today, dear?" asked the girl, putting on her pithhelmet.
"To the nursery first. I want to see if the young plants have suffered muchfrom that hailstorm yesterday."
"Wasn't it awful? What would people in England say if they got hailstoneslike that on their heads?"
"Chunerbutty and I measured one that I picked up outside the witheringshed," said the brother. "It was a solid lump of clear ice two inches longand
one and a half broad."
"I couldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen them," observed the girl. "Iwonder that everyone who is caught out in such a storm is not killed."
"Animals often are--and men, too, for that matter," replied Daleham.
Noreen tapped her smart little riding-boot with her whip.
"I'm glad we're going out to the nursery," she said. "It's my favouriteride."
"I know it is, but I don't like taking you there, Sis," replied herbrother. "I always funk that short cut through the bit of jungle to it. Inever feel sure that we won't meet a wild elephant in it."
"Oh; but I don't believe they are dangerous; and I do love the ride throughthat exquisite patch of forest. The trees look so lovely, now that theorchids on them are in flower."
"My dear girl, get that silly idea that elephants are not dangerous out ofyour head," said Daleham decidedly. "You ask any of the fellows."
"Mr. Parry says they're not."
"Old Parr's never seen any elephant but a tame one, unless it's a pink orspeckled one with a brass tail climbing up the wall of his room when he'sgot D.T's. He never went out shooting in the jungle in his life. But youask Payne or Reynolds or any of the chaps on the other gardens who knowanything of the jungle."
The girl was unwilling to believe that her beloved forest could proveperilous to her, and she feared lest her excursions into it should beforbidden.
"Well, perhaps a rogue might be dangerous," she admitted grudgingly. "But Idon't believe that even a rogue would attack you unprovoked."
"Wouldn't it? From all I've heard about them I'd be very sorry to give oneof them the chance," said her brother. "I'd almost like you to meet one,just to teach you not to be such a cocksure young woman. Lord! wouldn't Ilaugh to see you trying to climb a tree--that is, if I were safe up onemyself!"
The arrival of the ponies cut short the discussion. Daleham swung hissister up into the saddle of her smart little countrybred and mounted hisown waler.
Out along the road through the estate they trotted in the cool northerlybreeze that swept down from the mountains and tempered the sun's heat. Thepanorama of the Himalayas was glorious, although Kinchinjunga had now drawnup his covering of clouds over his face and the Snows had disappeared. Thelong orderly lines of tea-bushes were dotted here and there with splashesof colour from the bright-hued _puggris_, or turbans, of the men and the_saris_ and petticoats of the female coolies, who were busy among theplants, pruning them or tending their wounds after the storm.
The brother and sister quickened their pace and, racing along the softearthern road, soon reached the patch of forest that intervened between thegarden and the nursery.
"I say, Noreen, I think we'd better go the long way round," said Dalehamapprehensively, as he pulled up his waler.
"Oh, no, Fred. Don't funk it. Do come on," urged the girl. "If you don't,I'll go on by myself and meet you at the nursery."
The dispute was a daily occurrence and always ended in the man weaklygiving in.
"That's a dear boy," said his sister consolingly, when she had gained herpoint.
"Yes, that's all very well," grumbled the brother. "You've got your ownway, as usual. I hope you won't have cause to regret it one day."
"Don't be silly, dear. Come on!" she replied, touching her pony with thewhip. The animal seemed to dislike entering the forest as much as the mandid. "Oh, do go on, Kitty. Don't be tiresome."
The pony balked, but finally gave way under protest, and they rode on intothe jungle. A bridle path wound through the undergrowth and between thetrees, and this they followed.
It was easy to understand the girl's enthusiasm and desire to be in theforest. After the tameness of the tea-garden the wild beauty of the gianttrees, their huge limbs clothed in the green leaves and drooping trails ofblossoms of the orchids, the tangled pattern of the interlaced creepers,the flower-decked bushes and the high ferns, looked all the lovelier intheir untrammelled profusion.
The nursery was visited and the damage done to the young plants inspected.Then they turned their ponies' heads towards home and went back through thestrip of jungle. They rode over the whole estate, including the untidyramshackle village of bamboo and palm-thatched huts of the garden coolies,where the little, naked, brown babies rushed out to salaam and smile attheir friend Noreen.
As they came in sight of the ugly buildings of the engine and drying-houseswith their corrugated iron roofs and rusty stove-pipe chimneys, Dalehamsaid:
"Look here, old girl, while I go to the factory, you'd better hurry on andsee to the drinks and things we've got to send to the club. I hope youhaven't forgotten that it's our day to be 'at home' there."
"Of course I haven't, Fred. Is it likely?" exclaimed the justly-indignanthousewife. "Long before you were awake I helped the cook to pack the coldmeat and sweets and cakes, and they went off before we left the bungalow."
They were referring to a custom that obtains in the colonies oftea-planters who are scattered in ones, twos, and threes onwidely-separated estates. Their one chance of meeting others of theircolour is at the weekly gathering in the so-called club of the district.This is very unlike the institutions known by that name to dwellers incivilised cities. No marble or granite palace is it, but a rough woodenshed with one or two rooms built out in the forest far from humanhabitations, but in a spot as central and equi-distant to all theplanters of the district as possible. A few tennis courts are madebeside it, or perhaps a stretch of jungle is cleared, the more obtrusiveroots grubbed up, and the result is called a polo-ground, and on it thegame is played fast and furiously.
A certain day in the week is selected as the one which the planters fromthe gardens for ten or twenty miles around will come together to it. Acrossrivers, through forest, jungle, and peril of wild beasts they journey ontheir ponies to meet their fellow men. Some of them may not have seenanother white face since the last weekly gathering.
Each of them in turn acts as host. By lumbering bullock-cart or on theheads of coolies he sends in charge of his servants to the club-house milesaway from his bungalow food and drink, crockery, cutlery, and glasses, forthe entertainment of all who will foregather there.
And for a few crowded hours this lonely spot in the jungle is filled withthe sound of human voices, with laughter, friendliness, and goodfellowship. Men who have been isolated for a week rub off the cobwebs,lunch, play tennis, polo, and cards, and swap stories at the bar until thedeclining sun warns them of the necessity for departing before night fallson the forest. After hearty farewells they swing themselves up into thesaddle again and dash off at breakneck speed to escape being trapped by thedarkness.
Many and strange are the adventures that befall them on the rough roads orin the trackless wilds. Sometimes an elephant, a bear, or a tiger confrontsthem on their way. But the intrepid planter, and his not less courageouswomen-folk, if he has any to accompany him, gallops fearlessly by it or,perhaps, rides unarmed at the astonished beast and scares it by wild cries.Then on again to another week of lonely labour.
This day it had fallen to the lot of the Dalehams to be the hosts of theircommunity. Noreen had superintended the preparation and despatch of thesupplies for their guests and could ride home now with a clear conscienceto wait for her brother to return for their second breakfast. The earlymorning repast, the _chota hazri_ of an Anglo-Indian household, is a verylight and frugal one, consisting of a cup of coffee or tea, a slice oftoast, and one or two bananas.
As she pulled up her pony in front of the bungalow a man came down thesteps of the verandah and helped her to dismount.
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Chunerbutty," she exclaimed, "and good morning."
"Good morning, Miss Daleham. Just back from your ride with Fred, Isuppose?"
The newcomer was the engineer of the estate. The staff of the tea-garden ofMalpura consisted of three persons, the manager, a hard-drinking oldWelshman called Parry; the assistant manager, Daleham; and this man. As arule the employees of these estates are Europeans. Chunerbutty was an
exception. A Bengali Brahmin by birth, the son of a minor official in theservice of a petty rajah of Eastern Bengal, he had chosen engineeringinstead of medicine or law, the two professions that appeal most to hiscompatriots. A certain amount of native money was invested in the companythat owned the Malpura garden; and the directors apparently thought it goodpolicy to employ an Indian on it.
Like many other young Hindus who have studied in England, Chunerbuttyprofessed to be completely Anglicised. In the presence of Europeans hesneered at the customs, beliefs, and religions of his fellow-countrymen andposed as an agnostic. It galled him that Englishmen in India thought nonethe more of him for foreswearing his native land, and he contrastedbitterly their manner to him with the reception that he had met with in thecircles in which he moved in England. He had been regarded as a hero inLondon boarding-houses. His well-cut features and dark complexion hadplayed havoc with the affections of shop-girls of a certain class and thatdebased type of young Englishwoman whose perverted and unnatural tasteleads her to admire coloured men.
In one of these boarding-houses he had met Daleham, when the latter was aclerk in the city. It was at Chunerbutty's suggestion and with anintroduction from him that Fred had sought for and obtained employment inthe tea company, and as a result the young Englishman had ever since feltin the Bengali's debt. He inspired his sister with the same belief, and inconsequence Noreen always endeavoured to show her gratitude to Chunerbuttyby frank friendliness. They had all three sailed to India in the same ship,and on the voyage she had resented what seemed to her the illiberalprejudice of other English ladies on board to the Hindu. And all the moresince she had an uncomfortable suspicion that deep down in her heart sheshared their feeling. So she tried to seem the friendlier to Chunerbutty.
It said much for her own and her brother's popularity with the plantersthat their intimacy with him did not cause them to be disliked. These menas a class are not unjust to natives, but intimate acquaintance with theBengali does not tend to make them love him. For the Dalehams' sake most ofthe men in the district received Chunerbutty with courtesy. But hismanager, a rough Welshman of the bad old school, who openly declared thathe "loathed all niggers," treated him with invariable rudeness.
As the Hindu engineer and Noreen ascended the steps of the verandahtogether, the girl said:
"You are coming to the club this afternoon, are you not?"
"Yes, Miss Daleham, that is why I have been waiting at your bungalow to seeyou. I wanted to ask if we'd ride over together."
"Of course. We must start early, though. I want to see that the servantshave everything ready."
"I don't think I'd be anxious to go if it were not _your_ 'At Home' day,"said the Bengali, as they seated themselves in the drawing-room that Noreenhad made as pretty as she could with her limited resources. "I don't likethe club as a rule. The fellows are so stand-offish."
"You mustn't think so, Mr. Chunerbutty. They aren't really. You knowEnglishmen as a rule are not expansive. They often seem unfriendly whenthey don't mean to be."
"Oh, they mean it right enough here," replied the Hindu bitterly. "They allthink they're better than I am, just because I am an Indian. It is thathateful prejudice of the English man and woman in this country. It isdifferent in England. You know I was made a lot of in London. You saw howall the men in that boarding-house we stayed at before we sailed were myfriends."
"Yes; that was so, Mr. Chunerbutty," replied Noreen, who was secretly tiredof the subject, with which he regaled her every day.
"And as for the women--Of course I don't want to boast, but all the girlswere keen to have me take them out and were proud to be seen with me. Iknow that if I liked I could have picked up lots of ladies, real ladies, Imean, not shop-girls. You should have seen the way they ogled me in thestreet. I can assure you that little red-haired girl from Manchester in theboarding-house, Lily----"
Noreen broke in quickly.
"Please don't tell me anything about her, Mr. Chunerbutty. You know that Idon't like to hear you speak disrespectfully of ladies." Then, to changethe disagreeable subject, she continued: "Fred will be back to breakfastsoon. Will you stay for it? Then we can all ride together to the club."
"Thank you. I should like to," replied Chunerbutty. To show his freedomfrom caste prejudices he not only ate with Europeans, but even showed noobjection to beef, much to the horror of all orthodox Hindus. That aBrahmin, of all men, should partake of the sacred flesh of the almostdivine cow was an appalling sacrilege in their eyes.
Leaving him with a book she attended to the cares of her household,disorganised by the absence of cook and butler, who had gone on ahead tothe club with the supplies.
When, after an eight miles' ride, the Dalehams and Chunerbutty reached thewooden shanty that was the rendezvous of the day, they found that they werenot the first arrivals. Four or five young men swooped joyously down onNoreen and quarrelled over the right to help her from the saddle. Whilethey were disputing vehemently and pushing each other away the laughinggirl slipped unaided to the ground and ran up the wooden steps of theverandah. She was instantly pursued by the men, who followed her to theback verandah where she had gone to interview her servants. They clamouredto be allowed to help in any capacity, and she had to assume an indignationand a severity she was far from feeling to drive them away.
"Oh, do go away, please," she said. "You are only in the way. How can Ilook after _tiffin_ if you interfere with me like this? Now do be good boysand go off. There's Mrs. Rice arriving. Help her out of her trap."
They went reluctantly to the aid of the only other lady of their littlecommunity, who was apparently unable to climb down from her bamboo cartwithout help. Her husband and Daleham were already proferring theirservices, but they were seemingly insufficient.
Mrs. Rice belonged to the type of woman altogether unsuited to the life ofa planter's wife. She was a shallow, empty-headed person devoid of mentalresources and incapable of taking interest in her household or herhusband's affairs. In her girlhood she had been pretty in a common style,and she refused to recognise that the days of her youth and good looks hadgone by. On the garden she spent her time lounging in her bungalow in anuntidy dressing-gown, skimming through light novels and the fashion papersand writing interminable letters to her family in Balham. Her elderlyhusband, a weak, easy-going man, tired of her constant reproaches forhaving dragged her away from the gay life of her London suburb to theisolation of a tea-garden, spent as much of his day as possible in thefactory. In the bungalow he drank methodically and steadily until he was ina state of mellow contentment and indifferent to his wife's tongue.
On club days Mrs. Rice was a different woman. She arrayed herself in thelatest fashions, or the nearest approach to them that could be reached by anative tailor working on her back verandah with the guidance of the fashionplates in ladies' journals. Her face thickly coated with most of thecreams, powders, and complexion beautifiers on the market, she swathed herhead in a thick veil thrown over her sun-hat. Then, prepared for conquest,she climbed into the strong, country-built bamboo cart in which her husbandwas graciously permitted to drive her to the club. Fortunately for her apassable road to it ran from her bungalow, for she could not ride.
Arrived at the weekly gathering-place she delighted to surround herselfwith all the men that she could cajole from the bar running down theside of the one room of the building. With the extraordinary power ofself-deception of vain women she believed that most of them weresecretly in love with her.
Noreen's arrival in the district the previous year and her instantpopularity were galling to the older woman. But after a while, finding thather sneers and thinly-veiled bitter speeches against the girl had no effecton the men, she changed her tactics and pretended to make a bosom friend ofher.
When all the company had assembled at the club, luncheon was served at along, rough wooden table. Beside Noreen sat the man she liked best in thelittle colony, a grey-haired planter named Payne. Many of the younger menhad striven hard to win her fa
vour, and several had wished to marry her;but, liking them all, none had touched her heart. She felt most at easewith Payne, who was a quiet, elderly man and a confirmed bachelor. And hecordially reciprocated her liking.
During _tiffin_ Fred Daleham called out from the far end of the table:
"I say, Payne, I wish you'd convince that young sister of mine that wildelephants can be dangerous beasts."
"They can indeed," replied Payne, turning to Noreen. "Take my advice andkeep out of their way."
"Oh, but isn't it only rogues that one need be afraid of?" the girl asked."And aren't they rare?"
"These jungles are full of them, Miss Daleham," said another planter."We've had two men on our garden killed already this year."
"The Forest Officer told me that several guards and wood-cutters have beenattacked lately," joined in another. "One brute has held up the junglesaround Mendabari for months."
"Oh, don't tell us any more, Mr. Lane," cried Mrs. Rice with affectedtimidity. "I shall be afraid to leave the bungalow."
"I heard that the fellow commanding the Military Police detachment at RangaDuar was nearly killed by a rogue lately," remarked an engineer namedGoddard. "Our _mahout_ had the story from one of the _mahouts_ of the Fort.He had a cock-and-bull yarn about the sahib being saved by his tameelephant, a single-tusker, which drove off the rogue. But, as the latterwas a double tusker, it's not a very likely tale."
"They've got a still more wonderful story about that fellow in Ranga Duar,"remarked a planter named Lulworth. "They say he can do anything with wildelephants, goes about the jungle with a herd and they obey him like a packof hounds."
The men near him laughed.
"Good old Lulworth!" said one. "That beats Goddard's yarn. Did you make itup on the spot or did it take you long to think it out?"
Lulworth smiled good humouredly.
"Oh, it's not an original lie," he replied. "I had it from a half-bredGurkha living in the forest village near my garden."
"Who is commanding Ranga Duar?" asked Lane.
"A fellow called Dermot; a Major," replied Goddard.
"Dermot? I wonder if by any chance it's a man who used to be in these partsbefore--commanded Buxa Duar when there was a detachment of an Indianregiment there," said Payne.
"I believe it's the same," replied Goddard. "He knows these jungles welland did a lot of shooting in them. He bagged that _budmash_ (rogue)elephant that killed so many people. You heard of it. He chased the brutefor a fortnight."
"That's the man," said Payne. "I'm glad he's back. We used to be ratherpals and stay with each other."
"Oh, do ask him again, Mr. Payne, and bring him to the club," chimed inMrs. Rice. "It would be such a pleasant change to have some of the officershere. They are so nice, such men of the world."
A smile went round the table. All were so used to the lady's tactlessremarks that they only amused. They had long lost the power to irritate.
"I'm afraid Dermot wouldn't suit you, Mrs. Rice," said Payne laughing."He's not a lady's man."
"Indeed? Is he married?" she asked.
"No, he hasn't that reason to dislike your sex. At least, he wasn't marriedwhen I knew him. I wonder how he's escaped, for he's very well off for aman in the Indian Army and heir to an uncle who is a baronet. Good-lookingchap, too. Clever beggar, well read and a good soldier, I believe. He has awonderful way with animals. I had a pony that was a regular mad beast. Itkilled one _syce_ and savaged another. It nearly did for me. I sent it toDermot, and in a week he had it eating out of his hand."
"He seems an Admiral what-d'you-call-him--you know, that play they had intown about a wonderful butler," said Mrs. Rice.
"Admirable Crichton, wasn't it?"
"Yes, that was the name. Well, your Major seems a wonderful chap," shesaid. "Do ask him. Perhaps he'll bring some of his officers here."
"I hope he won't, Mrs. Rice," remarked Goddard. "If he does, it's evidentthat none of us will have a look in with you."
She smirked, well pleased, as she caught Noreen's eye and rose from thetable.
Sets of tennis were arranged and the game was soon in full swing. Some ofthe men walked round to the back of the building to select a spot to becleared to make a polo ground. Others gathered at the bar to chat.
Noreen had a small court round her, Chunerbutty clinging closely to her allthe afternoon, to her secret annoyance. For whenever he accompanied her tothe club he seemed to make a point of emphasising the friendly terms onwhich they were for the benefit of all beholders. As a matter of fact hedid so purposely, because he knew that it annoyed all the other men of thecommunity to see him apparently on intimate terms with the girl.
On the afternoon, when at her request he had gone out to the back verandahto tell her servants to prepare tea, he called to her across the club andaddressed her by her Christian name. Noreen took it to be an accidentalslip, but she fancied that it made Mrs. Rice smile unpleasantly and severalof the men regard her curiously.
The day passed all too quickly for these exiled Britons, whose one brightspot of amusement and companionship it was in the week. The setting sungave the signal for departure. After exchanging good-byes with theirguests, the Malpura party mounted their ponies and cantered home.
One morning, a week later, Noreen over-slept herself, and, when she cameout of her room for her _chota hazri_, she found that her brother hadalready started off to ride over the garden. Ordering her pony she followedhim. She guessed that he had gone first to the nursery, and when shereached the short cut through the forest she rejoiced at being able toenter it without the usual battle. She urged the reluctant Kitty on, androde into it carelessly.
Suddenly her pony balked and shied, flinging her to the ground. Then itturned and galloped madly home.
As Noreen, half stunned by the fall, picked herself up stiffly and stooddazed and shaken, she shrieked in terror. She was in the middle of a herdof wild elephants which surrounded her on every side; and, as she gazedpanic-stricken at them, they advanced slowly upon her.