And incidentally they are responsible for more domestic
unhappiness in Anglo-Indian households than any other cause. It is said
that while in the lower levels of the land many roads lead to the Divorce
Court, in the Hills _all_ do.
For wives must needs go alone to the hill-stations, as a rule. India is not
a country for idlers. Every white man in it has work to do, otherwise he
would not be in that land at all. Husbands therefore cannot always
accompany their spouses to the mountains, and, when they do, can rarely
contrive to remain there for six months or longer of the Season.
Consequently the wives are often very lonely in the big hotels that abound
on the hill-tops, and sometimes drift into dependence on bachelors on leave
for daily companionship, for escort to the many social functions, for
regular dancing partners. And so trouble is bred.
Major Dermot was no lover of these mountain Capuas of Hindustan, and had
gladly escaped from Simla, chiefest of them all. Yet now he sat in his
little stone bungalow in Ranga Duar, while the terrific thunder crashed and
roared among the hills, and read with a pleased smile an official letter
ordering him to proceed forthwith to Darjeeling--as gay a pleasure colony
as any--to meet the General Commanding the Division, who was visiting the
place on inspection duty. For the same post had brought him a letter from
Noreen Daleham which told him that she was then, and had been for some
time, in that hill-station.
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