To Lhassa at Last

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

'Ain't this ripping?' said I to my wife.

'Yes, delightful,' she said.

It really was rather nice. It had been quite hot in the plains, and was pleasantly cool up here. My wife and family had preceded me and had been settled for some weeks in the house which we had taken in the hills for the hot weather, and now I had just arrived on two months' leave. We were sitting over the fire in the drawing-room after dinner, a cosy little room made homelike by a careful selection of draperies and ornaments from the larger drawing-room in the plains.

'Just ripping,' I repeated with sad lack of originality. The ride up the hill from the plains had been fatiguing. The fire was soporific. There was whiskey and soda at my elbow and a cheroot in my mouth (I'm a privileged husband and smoke in the drawing-room).

'Ripping,' I said for the third time, half dozing.

'Come, get up, lazy-bones, and go to bed. You are hopeless as you are.'

So I was led to bed. We put out the lamps, and on the hall table found our bedroom candles, which we lit preparatory to climbing the stairs. The staircase set me musing. Some hill houses have them, but they are rare in the plains. The smallness of the rooms, the existence of that narrow staircase, the domestic process of lighting the bedroom candles, the necessity of not waking the baby, the sense of security and of being cut adrift even temporarily from the ties of officialdom—all suggested the peaceful conditions of life enjoyed by the small but solid householder at home.

'We've got it at last,' I exclaimed.

'Got what?' asked my wife.

'Why, the life of the bank clerk at home,' I replied; 'that bank clerk whom we have always envied, who lives at Tooting in a little house just like this, with a creaking staircase just like this, who never gets harried from pillar to post, who is peaceful and domestic, and gets fat as soon as he can afford to. And here I am, for two months at any rate, and I'm living in a Tooting villa just like the bank clerk, and in the bosom of my family, and I'm going to get fat too.'

So up we went to bed, full of peace. There was a big black centipede crawling on the bedroom wall, a sinister-looking object, looking on the white surface like mysterious handwriting, bringing with it to the fanciful mind suggestions of 'Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.' My wife has a horror of centipedes. I was at once detailed to destroy it: a feat soon accomplished.

'That dispels the bank clerk idea altogether, does it not?' one of us remarked to the other. 'Bank clerks at Tooting don't have centipedes on their bedroom walls, do they?'

When I had gone to my dressing-room, I heard the sound below of a key turning in a lock. It was a servant opening the back door.

A moment later I heard the tread of the servant's bare feet on the stairs. This was unusual. My bearer does not voluntarily visit me at this hour.

Yes, it was the bearer. He came to the dressing-room door and presented me with a telegram. It was 'urgent,' as denoted by the yellow colour of the envelope. 'Urgent' telegrams when addressed to officers on leave are apt to involve some interference with their plans.

I read the telegram and signed the receipt. The servant asked if he was wanted any more. 'Yes, very much wanted,' I answered; 'but go downstairs now and I'll call you later.'

Then came the process of breaking the news to my wife. It is difficult not to be clumsy on these occasions. I went into the bedroom with the telegram concealed somewhere on my person....