Some days of autumn have more of ‘God’s in His Heaven’ than others. This was one of them. When they came out into the garden, the sun had just come up over the hills and touched the snow range across the valley with a glow of pink. The forests of deodar stood on the mountainside patiently waiting for a long day of mellow sunshine. There wasn’t a cloud in the deep blue sky: only lammergeyers drifting lazily with the noiseless ease and grace of gliders. It was too good to be true; and like all times that are too good to be true, there was mixed with the sense of elation, an apprehension that it would not last long, and perhaps, not end as well as it had begun.

They had their breakfast in the garden where the dew lay like whitewash on the lawn. The borders were thick with chrysanthemums, sunflowers, and hollyhocks. After breakfast they went for a stroll on the Mall. The crowds had considerably thinned as most of the government offices had shifted back to the plains and some of the larger stores had closed down for the month. They walked up and down the road a couple of times and then went into Davicos for coffee. After the coffee, Madan took the girls with him to watch the finals of a football tournament played on the race-course in the valley at Annandale. Sabhrai went down to the temple in the lower bazaar to spend the rest of the day.

When Sabhrai returned home late in the afternoon, the servant handed her a telegram; it had been delivered some hours earlier. She tore it open and looked at the hieroglyphics. ‘What does it say?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I can’t read English,’ replied the boy, a little surprised that she should ask him.

‘Go and ask somebody to read it and come back quickly.’

The boy went to the neighbours’ homes and came back half-an-hour later to say that the masters were out and none of the servants could read. Sabhrai took the telegram from him. She paced up and down the verandah; she walked up to the gate and came back; she went down the road a little distance, came back home, and paced up and down the verandah again. She looked at the telegram over the over again. The only letters she could piece together were those that spelled her husband’s name; the rest made no sense to her. At long last Madan and the girls came home. Sabhrai met them at the gate with the telegram. Madan read it out aloud first in English and then translated it for her in Punjabi. She was right, it was from here husband.

‘Return immediately. Buta Singh.’

Chapter X