That Elephant Is Back

FAR, FAR THE MOUNTAIN PEAK (471 pp.)--John Masters--Viking ($5).

The sun may set on the British Empire, but never, apparently, on novels about it. Currently the most prolific of old-colonial-writing hands is John Masters (Bhowani Junction, Coromandel!), an ex-infantry officer (4th Gurkha Rifles) who now offers the sixth installment of his projected 35-volume epic of the British in India. The book is a reliable old elephant, advancing indomitably over the narrative terrain while throwing the dust of unlikely adventures in the reader's eye. The gist of Far, Far the Mountain Peak is that, given enough rope in India, a cad may climb it--socially.

Gerald Cowley Holcombe, Viscount Manningford, and Peter Savage are turn-of-the-century pals at Cambridge. Gerry is the gracious son of an earl and Peter is a steely-eyed child of fortune. Peter does his first serious social climbing on a Swiss Alp when he seduces Gerry's well-heeled, well-built girl friend Emily on "the steep slope above the Zmuttbach.'' Married and shortly in receipt of Gerry's gentlemanly blessing ("the best man won"), the couple head for the Punjab and Peter's civil-service duties.

A born leader as well as a born pusher, Peter fights famines and bad drainage, jousts with floods, earthquakes and contumacious natives. He also decides to cross wills with "Meru," an Everest-class glacial peak, and coaxes the long-suffering Gerry to join him. They fail to scale the summit and Gerry comes back to the Savage home a nervous wreck, to be nursed back to health by Emily. She makes convalescent Gerry's bed and eventually lies in it. World War I shatters their illicit bliss and sweeps the two meninto their last mountain adventure this time in the Italian Alps. Gerry is killed, and back in England Peter is confronted with Emily's maternity gown and the hush-lipped word: "Gerry's."

Far, Far the Mountain Peak has to be read to be disbelieved. It is cornball escape fiction of a kind that has been difficult to escape ever since the sahibs laid down the white man's burden and picked up the portable typewriter.

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