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Lady Bassett, whose presence he realised with a grimace to be indispensable, would complete the wedding-party. He had arranged to leave Simla directly the service was over, and to go into Nepal. It would not be his first visit to that most wonderful country, and it held many things that he desired to show her.
Many people live in tents, particularly the military families, and make themselves exceedingly comfortable. Simla is quite cold in winter, being 7,084 feet above the sea and situated on the thirty-second parallel of north latitude, about the same as Charleston, S. C., but in summer the climate is very fine.
The town itself is flat and monotonous, but it is large and wealthy and contains more than a million inhabitants. The climate is very damp and hot, the temperature even in winter being about 95° in the shade. Accordingly in the summer the Viceroy and his government move up to Simla in the cool of the hills.
A charming picture it was, prepared as if on purpose for our especial delectation. The bungalow was a large one for Simla, and the verandah was deep and shady; many chairs of all sorts and conditions stood about in natural positions, as if they had just been sat in, instead of being ranged in stiff rows against the wall, and across one angle hung a capacious hammock.
He had consented gladly; for to him the great attraction of his new post was that he would find himself once more in the great Terai Jungle. To him it was Paradise. Before going to Simla he had been stationed with a Double Company of the Indian Infantry Regiment to which he belonged in a similar outpost in the mountains not many miles away. This outpost had now been abolished.
It was not that either of us would have preferred to grill out our days in the plains; we always had a saving clause for the climate, the altitude, the scenery; it was Simla intrinsic, Simla as its other conditions made it, with which we found such liberal fault. Again I should have to explain Simla, at the length of an essay at least, to justify our condemnation.
When she ceased being pretty, he left her to her own devices, and went back to the lairs of his bachelordom. She used to trot up and down Simla Mall in a forlorn sort of way, with a gray Terai hat well on the back of her head, and a shocking bad saddle under her. Schreiderling's generosity stopped at the horse. He said that any saddle would do for a woman as nervous as Mrs. Schreiderling.
"I think we'll go up the service together," Findlayson said to himself. "You're too good a youngster to waste on another man. Cub thou wast; assistant thou art. Personal assistant, and at Simla, thou shalt be, if any credit comes to me out of the business!"
So sorry to bother you, old man, but I don't know Ormond's address, except that he was with you and has gone up Simla way. And of course he will be keen to hear the thing is settled." Amazing. I remembered the message I had heard and this man's words rang true and kindly, but what could it mean? I really did not question farther than this for now I could not doubt that I was guided.
Sir Reginald Bassett had been appointed British Resident, to act as adviser to the young rajah thereof, and there had been no question of a flitting to Simla that year. Lady Bassett had deplored this, but Muriel rejoiced. She never wanted to see Simla again. Life was a horrible emptiness to her in those days.
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