Maharajah’s private lines to Chitipur, where he, directly descended from an important and most authentic goddess, dispenses life and justice to his subjects without even the assistance of the Press.  There is little criticism in the city and less work.  A patriarchal calm sleeps in all its streets.  In Chitipur it is always Sunday afternoon.  Even down by the lake, where the huge white many-storeyed palace contemplates its dark-latticed windows and high balconies mirrored in still water unimaginably blue nothing which could be described as energy is visible.  You may see an elephant kneeling placidly in the lake while an attendant polishes up his trunk and his forehead with a brickbat.  But the elephant will be too well-mannered to trumpet his enjoyment.  Or you may notice a fisherman drowsing in a boat heavy enough to cope with the surf of the Atlantic.  But the fisherman will not notice you—­not even though you call to him with dulcet promises of rupees.  You will, if you wait long enough, see a woman coming down the steps with a pitcher balanced on her head; and indeed perhaps two women.  But when your eyes have dwelt upon these wonders you will have seen what there is of movement and life about the shores of those sleeping waters.  It was in accordance with the fitness of things that the city and its lake should be three miles from the railway station and quite invisible to the traveller.  The hotel however and the Residency were near to the station, and it was the Residency which had brought Thresk out of the crowds and tumult of Bombay.  He put up at the hotel and enclosing Repton’s introduction in a covering letter sent it by his bearer down the road.  Then he waited; and no answer came.

Finally he asked if his bearer had returned.  Quite half an hour he was told, and the man was sent for.

“Well?  You delivered my letter?” said Thresk.

“Yes, Sahib.”

“And there was no answer?”

“No.  No answer, Sahib,” replied the man cheerfully.

“Very well.”

He waited yet another hour, and since still no acknowledgment had come he strolled along the road himself.  He came to a large white house.  A flagpost tapered from its roof but no flag blew out its folds.  There was a garden about the house, the trim well-ordered garden of the English folk with a lawn and banks of flowers, and a gardener with a hose was busy watering it.  Thresk stopped before the hedge.  The windows were all shuttered, the big door closed:  there was nowhere any sign of the inhabitants.

Thresk turned and walked back to the hotel.  He found the bearer laying out a change of clothes for him upon his bed.

“His Excellency is away,” he said.

“Yes, Sahib,” replied the bearer promptly.  “His Excellency gone on inspection tour.”

“Then why in heaven’s name didn’t you tell me?” cried Thresk.

The bearer’s face lost all its cheerfulness in a second and became a mask.  He was a Madrassee and black as coal.  To Thresk it seemed that the man had suddenly withdrawn himself altogether and left merely an image with living eyes.  He shrugged his shoulders.  He knew that change in his servant.  It came at the first note of reproach in his voice and with such completeness that it gave him the shock of a conjurer’s trick.  One moment the bearer was before him, the next he had disappeared.