The letter was sweetened with many pretty
little pet names, and it amused the Tertium Quid considerably. He and She
laughed over it, so that you, fifty yards away, could see their shoulders
shaking while the horses slouched along side by side.
Their conversation was not worth reporting. The upshot of it was that, next
day, no one saw the Man's Wife and the Tertium Quid together. They had both
gone down to the Cemetery, which, as a rule, is only visited officially by the
inhabitants of Simla.
A Simla funeral with the clergyman riding, the mourners riding, and the coffin
creaking as it swings between the bearers, is one of the most depressing
things on this earth, particularly when the procession passes under the wet,
dank dip beneath the Rockcliffe Hotel, where the sun is shut out and all the
hill streams are wailing and weeping together as they go down the valleys
Occasionally folk tend the graves, but we in India shift and are transferred
so often that, at the end of the second year, the Dead have no friends--only
acquaintances who are far too busy amusing themselves up the hill to attend to
old partners. The idea of using a Cemetery as a rendezvous is distinctly a
feminine one. A man would have said simply "Let people talk.
Pages:
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395