" He is certainly getting
very old. I don't suppose he knew himself what he meant."
I certainly did not. However my way was thus smoothed for me and
I took the upward road, leaving Olesen to the long ungrateful
toil of the man who devotes his life to India without sufficient
time or knowledge to make his way to the inner chambers of her
beauty. There is no harder mistress unless you hold the pass-key
to her mysteries, there is none of whom so little can be told in
words but who kindles so deep a passion. Necessity sometimes
takes me from that enchanted land, but when the latest dawns are
shining in my skies I shall make my feeble way back to her and
die at her worshipped feet. So I went up from Kalka.
I have never liked Simla. It is beautiful enough - eight
thousand feet up in the grip of the great hills looking toward
the snows, the famous summer home of the Indian Government. Much
diplomacy is whispered on Observatory Hill and many are the
lighter diversions of which Mr. Kipling and lesser men have
written. But Simla is also a gateway to many things - to the
mighty deodar forests that clothe the foot-hills of the
mountains, to Kulu, to the eternal snows, to the old, old bridle
way that leads up to the Shipki Pass and the mysteries of Tibet
- and to the strange things told in this story.
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