"And we are going to Bombay!" Lady Meadowcroft exclaimed, aghast.

"You must have known there was plague there, my dear," Sir Ivor put in, soothingly, with a deprecating glance. "It's been in all the papers. But only the natives get it."

The thumb uncovered itself a little. "Oh, only the natives!" Lady Meadowcroft echoed, relieved; as if a few thousand Hindus more or less would hardly be missed among the blessings of British rule in India.

"You know, Ivor, I never read those DREADFUL things in the papers. _I_ read the Society news, and Our Social Diary, and columns that are headed 'Mainly About People.' I don't care for anything but the Morning Post and the World and Truth. I hate horrors.... But it's a blessing to think it's only the natives."

"Plenty of Europeans, too, bless your heart," the Captain thundered out unfeelingly. "Why, last time I was in port, a nurse died at the hospital."

"Oh, only a nurse--" Lady Meadowcroft began, and then coloured up deeply, with a side glance at Hilda.

"And lots besides nurses," the Captain continued, positively delighted at the terror he was inspiring. "Pucka Englishmen and Englishwomen. Bad business this plague, Dr. c.u.mberledge! Catches particularly those who are most afraid of it."

"But it's only in Bombay?" Lady Meadowcroft cried, clutching at the last straw. I could see she was registering a mental determination to go straight up-country the moment she landed.

"Not a bit of it!" the Captain answered, with provoking cheerfulness.

"Rampaging about like a roaring lion all over India!"

Lady Meadowcroft's thumb must have suffered severely. The nails dug into it as if it were someone else's.

Half an hour later, as we were on deck in the cool of the evening, the thing was settled. "My wife," Sir Ivor said, coming up to us with a serious face, "has delivered her ultimatum. Positively her ultimatum.

I've had a mort o' trouble with her, and now she's settled. EITHER, she goes back from Bombay by the return steamer; OR ELSE--you and Miss Wade must name your own terms to accompany us on our tour, in case of emergencies." He glanced wistfully at Hilda. "DO you think you can help us?"

Hilda made no hypocritical pretence of hanging back. Her nature was transparent. "If you wish it, yes," she answered, shaking hands upon the bargain. "I only want to go about and see India; I can see it quite as well with Lady Meadowcroft as without her--and even better. It is unpleasant for a woman to travel unattached. I require a chaperon, and am glad to find one. I will join your party, paying my own hotel and travelling expenses, and considering myself as engaged in case your wife should need my services. For that, you can pay me, if you like, some nominal retaining fee--five pounds or anything. The money is immaterial to me. I like to be useful, and I sympathise with nerves; but it may make your wife feel she is really keeping a hold over me if we put the arrangement on a business basis. As a matter of fact, whatever sum she chooses to pay, I shall hand it over at once to the Bombay Plague Hospital."

Sir Ivor looked relieved. "Thank you ever so much!" he said, wringing her hand warmly. "I thowt you were a brick, and now I know it. My wife says your face inspires confidence, and your voice sympathy. She MUST have you with her. And you, Dr. c.u.mberledge?"

"I follow Miss Wade's lead," I answered, in my most solemn tone, with an impressive bow. "I, too, am travelling for instruction and amus.e.m.e.nt only; and if it would give Lady Meadowcroft a greater sense of security to have a duly qualified pract.i.tioner in her suite, I shall be glad on the same terms to swell your party. I will pay my own way; and I will allow you to name any nominal sum you please for your claim on my medical attendance, if necessary. I hope and believe, however, that our presence will so far rea.s.sure our prospective patient as to make our post in both cases a sinecure."

Three minutes later Lady Meadowcroft rushed on deck and flung her arms impulsively round Hilda. "You dear, good girl!" she cried; "how sweet and kind of you! I really COULDN'T have landed if you hadn't promised to come with us. And Dr. c.u.mberledge, too! So nice and friendly of you both. But there, it IS so much pleasanter to deal with ladies and gentlemen!"

So Hilda won her point; and what was best, won it fairly.

CHAPTER X

THE EPISODE OF THE GUIDE WHO KNEW THE COUNTRY

We toured all round India with the Meadowcrofts; and really the lady who was "so very exclusive" turned out not a bad little thing, when once one had succeeded in breaking through the ring-fence with which she surrounded herself. She had an endless, quenchless restlessness, it is true; her eyes wandered aimlessly; she never was happy for two minutes together, unless she was surrounded by friends, and was seeing something. What she saw did not interest her much; certainly her tastes were on the level with those of a very young child. An odd-looking house, a queerly dressed man, a tree cut into shape to look like a peac.o.c.k, delighted her far more than the most glorious view of the quaintest old temple. Still, she must be seeing. She could no more sit still than a fidgety child or a monkey at the Zoo. To be up and doing was her nature--doing nothing, to be sure; but still, doing it strenuously.

So we went the regulation round of Delhi and Agra, the Taj Mahal, and the Ghats at Benares, at railroad speed, fulfilling the whole duty of the modern globe-trotter. Lady Meadowcroft looked at everything--for ten minutes at a stretch; then she wanted to be off, to visit the next thing set down for her in her guide-book. As we left each town she murmured mechanically: "Well, we've seen THAT, thank Heaven!" and straightway went on, with equal eagerness, and equal boredom, to see the one after it.

The only thing that did NOT bore her, indeed, was Hilda's bright talk.

"Oh, Miss Wade," she would say, clasping her hands, and looking up into Hilda's eyes with her own empty blue ones, "you ARE so funny! So original, don't you know! You never talk or think of anything like other people. I can't imagine how such ideas come up in your mind. If _I_ were to try all day, I'm sure I should never hit upon them!" Which was so perfectly true as to be a trifle obvious.

Sir Ivor, not being interested in temples, but in steel rails, had gone on at once to his concession, or contract, or whatever else it was, on the north-east frontier, leaving his wife to follow and rejoin him in the Himalayas as soon as she had exhausted the sights of India. So, after a few dusty weeks of wear and tear on the Indian railways, we met him once more in the recesses of Nepaul, where he was busy constructing a light local line for the reigning Maharajah.

If Lady Meadowcroft had been bored at Allahabad and Ajmere, she was immensely more bored in a rough bungalow among the trackless depths of the Himalayan valleys. To anybody with eyes in his head, indeed, Toloo, where Sir Ivor had pitched his headquarters, was lovely enough to keep one interested for a twelvemonth. Snow-clad needles of rock hemmed it in on either side; great deodars rose like huge tapers on the hillsides; the plants and flowers were a joy to look at. But Lady Meadowcroft did not care for flowers which one could not wear in one's hair; and what was the good of dressing here, with no one but Ivor and Dr. c.u.mberledge to see one? She yawned till she was tired; then she began to grow peevish.

"Why Ivor should want to build a railway at all in this stupid, silly place," she said, as we sat in the veranda in the cool of evening, "I'm sure _I_ can't imagine. We MUST go somewhere. This is maddening, maddening! Miss Wade--Dr. c.u.mberledge--I count upon you to discover SOMETHING for me to do. If I vegetate like this, seeing nothing all day long but those eternal hills"--she clenched her little fist--"I shall go MAD with ennui."

Hilda had a happy thought. "I have a fancy to see some of these Buddhist monasteries," she said, smiling as one smiles at a tiresome child whom one likes in spite of everything. "You remember, I was reading that book of Mr. Simpson's on the steamer--coming out--a curious book about the Buddhist Praying Wheels; and it made me want to see one of their temples immensely. What do you say to camping out? A few weeks in the hills? It would be an adventure, at any rate."

"Camping out?" Lady Meadowcroft exclaimed, half roused from her languor by the idea of a change. "Oh, do you think that would be fun? Should we sleep on the ground? But, wouldn't it be dreadfully, horribly uncomfortable?"

"Not half so uncomfortable as you'll find yourself here at Toloo in a few days, Emmie," her husband put in, grimly. "The rains will soon be on, la.s.s; and when the rains are on, by all accounts, they're precious heavy hereabouts--rare fine rains, so that a man's half-flooded out of his bed o' nights--which won't suit YOU, my lady."

The poor little woman clasped her twitching hands in feeble agony. "Oh, Ivor, how dreadful! Is it what they call the mongoose, or monsoon, or something? But if they're so bad here, surely they'll be worse in the hills--and camping out, too--won't they?"

"Not if you go the right way to work. Ah'm told it never rains t'other side o' the hills. The mountains stop the clouds, and once you're over, you're safe enough. Only, you must take care to keep well in the Maharajah's territory. Cross the frontier t'other side into Tibet, an' they'll skin thee alive as soon as look at thee. They don't like strangers in Tibet; prejudiced against them, somehow; they pretty well skinned that young chap Landor who tried to go there a year ago."

"But, Ivor, I don't want to be skinned alive! I'm not an eel, please!"

"That's all right, la.s.s. Leave that to me. I can get thee a guide, a man that's very well acquainted with the mountains. I was talking to a scientific explorer here t'other day, and he knows of a good guide who can take you anywhere. He'll get you the chance of seeing the inside of a Buddhist monastery, if you like, Miss Wade. He's hand in glove with all the religion they've got in this part o' the country. They've got noan much, but at what there is, he's a rare devout one."

We discussed the matter fully for two or three days before we made up our minds. Lady Meadowcroft was undecided between her hatred of dulness and her haunting fear that scorpions and snakes would intrude upon our tents and beds while we were camping. In the end, however, the desire for change carried the day. She decided to dodge the rainy season by getting behind the Himalayan-pa.s.ses, in the dry region to the north of the great range, where rain seldom falls, the country being watered only by the melting of the snows on the high summits.

This decision delighted Hilda, who, since she came to India, had fallen a prey to the fashionable vice of amateur photography. She took to it enthusiastically. She had bought herself a first-rate camera of the latest scientific pattern at Bombay, and ever since had spent all her time and spoiled her pretty hands in "developing." She was also seized with a craze for Buddhism. The objects that everywhere particularly attracted her were the old Buddhist temples and tombs and sculptures with which India is studded. Of these she had taken some hundreds of views, all printed by herself with the greatest care and precision.

But in India, after all, Buddhism is a dead creed. Its monuments alone remain; she was anxious to see the Buddhist religion in its living state; and that she could only do in these remote outlying Himalayan valleys.

Our outfit, therefore, included a dark tent for Hilda's photographic apparatus; a couple of roomy tents to live and sleep in; a small cooking-stove; a cook to look after it; half-a-dozen bearers; and the highly recommended guide who knew his way about the country. In three days we were ready, to Sir Ivor's great delight. He was fond of his pretty wife, and proud of her, I believe; but when once she was away from the whirl and bustle of the London that she loved, it was a relief to him, I fancy, to pursue his work alone, unhampered by her restless and querulous childishness.

On the morning when we were to make our start, the guide who was "well acquainted with the mountains" turned up--as villainous-looking a person as I have ever set eyes on. He was sullen and furtive. I judged him at sight to be half Hindu, half Tibetan. He had a dark complexion, between brown and tawny; narrow slant eyes, very small and beady-black, with a cunning leer in their oblique corners; a flat nose much broadened at the wings; a cruel, thick, sensuous mouth, and high cheek-bones; the whole surmounted by a comprehensive scowl and an abundant crop of lank black hair, tied up in a knot at the nape of the neck with a yellow ribbon.

His face was shifty; his short, stout form looked well adapted to mountain climbing, and also to wriggling. A deep scar on his left cheek did not help to inspire confidence. But he was polite and civil-spoken.

Altogether a clever, unscrupulous, wide-awake soul, who would serve you well if he thought he could make by it, and would betray you at a pinch to the highest bidder.

We set out, in merry mood, prepared to solve all the abstruse problems of the Buddhist religion. Our spoilt child stood the camping out better than I expected. She was fretful, of course, and worried about trifles; she missed her maid and her accustomed comforts; but she minded the roughing it less, on the whole, than she had minded the boredom of inaction in the bungalow; and, being cast on Hilda and myself for resources, she suddenly evolved an unexpected taste for producing, developing, and printing photographs. We took dozens, as we went along, of little villages on our route, wood-built villages with quaint houses and turrets; and as Hilda had brought her collection of prints with her, for comparison of the Indian and Nepaulese monuments, we spent the evenings after our short day's march each day in arranging and collating them. We had planned to be away six weeks, at least. In that time the monsoon would have burst and pa.s.sed. Our guide thought we might see all that was worth seeing of the Buddhist monasteries, and Sir Ivor thought we should have fairly escaped the dreaded wet season.

"What do you make of our guide?" I asked of Hilda on our fourth day out.

I began somehow to distrust him.

"Oh, he seems all right," Hilda answered, carelessly--and her voice rea.s.sured me. "He's a rogue, of course; all guides and interpreters, and dragomans and the like, in out-of-the-way places, always ARE rogues. If they were honest men, they would share the ordinary prejudices of their countrymen, and would have nothing to do with the hated stranger. But in this case our friend, Ram Das, has no end to gain by getting us into mischief. If he had, he wouldn't scruple for a second to cut our throats; but then, there are too many of us. He will probably try to cheat us by making preposterous charges when he gets us back to Toloo; but that's Lady Meadowcroft's business. I don't doubt Sir Ivor will be more than a match for him there. I'll back one shrewd Yorkshireman against any three Tibetan half-castes, any day."

"You're right that he would cut our throats if it served his purpose," I answered. "He's servile, and servility goes hand in hand with treachery.

The more I watch him, the more I see 'scoundrel' written in large type on every bend of the fellow's oily shoulders."

"Oh, yes, he's a bad lot, I know. The cook, who can speak a little English and a little Tibetan, as well as Hindustani, tells me Ram Das has the worst reputation of any man in the mountains. But he says he's a very good guide to the pa.s.ses, for all that, and if he's well paid will do what he's paid for."

Next day but one we approached at last, after several short marches, the neighbourhood of what our guide a.s.sured us was a Buddhist monastery.

I was glad when he told us of it, giving the place the name of a well-known Nepaulese village; for, to say the truth, I was beginning to get frightened. Judging by the sun, for I had brought no compa.s.s, it struck me that we seemed to have been marching almost due north ever since we left Toloo; and I fancied such a line of march must have brought us by this time suspiciously near the Tibetan frontier. Now, I had no desire to be "skinned alive," as Sir Ivor put it. I did not wish to emulate St. Bartholomew and others of the early Christian martyrs; so I was pleased to learn that we were really drawing near to Kulak, the first of the Nepaulese Buddhist monasteries to which our well-informed guide, himself a Buddhist, had promised to introduce us.

We were tramping up a beautiful high mountain valley, closed round on every side by snowy peaks. A brawling river ran over a rocky bed in cataracts down its midst. Crags rose abruptly a little in front of us.

Half-way up the slope to the left, on a ledge of rock, rose a long, low building with curious, pyramid-like roofs, crowned at either end by a sort of minaret, which resembled more than anything else a huge earthenware oil-jar. This was the monastery or lamasery we had come so far to see. Honestly, at first sight, I did not feel sure it was worth the trouble.

Our guide called a halt, and turned to us with a sudden peremptory air.

His servility had vanished. "You stoppee here," he said, slowly, in broken English, "while me-a go on to see whether Lama-sahibs ready to take you. Must ask leave from Lama-sahibs to visit village; if no ask leave"--he drew his hand across his throat with a significant gesture--"Lama-sahibs cuttee head off Eulopean."