Chronicles of Dustypore Part 9

By this time evening was fast closing in, and Maud's cheeks were soon safe from further observation. Before long her and her companions' eyes were fast closed by that kindly hand which secures to the most troubled of mankind the boon that one-third, at any rate, of existence shall be spent in peace. When they awoke the stars were s.h.i.+ning bright, but the sky was already ruddy with the coming dawn, and Maud could see the giant mountain forms looming, cold and majestical, in the grey air above them.

They alighted at a little wayside inn, and found delicious cups of tea (the Indians' invariable morning luxury) awaiting them. Maud had sufficiently recovered her spirits to make a bold inroad on the bread and b.u.t.ter.

A mist hung about the country round, and it was a delightful, home-like sensation to shrink once again, as the cold mountain blasts came swirling down, throwing the wreaths of vapour here and there, and recalling the delicious reminiscence of a November fog. In a few moments the horses were ready, the children and nurses packed into palanquins, and the upward march began.

These morning expeditions in the mountains are indescribably exhilarating. At every step you breathe a fresher atmosphere and feel a new access of life, vigour and enjoyment. Sweet little gushes of pure cold air meet you at the turnings of the road and bid you welcome. The vegetation around is rich, profuse and--long-forgotten charm--sparkling everywhere with dew. There has been a thunderstorm in the night, and the mountain-sides are streaming still: little cataracts come tumbling clamorously beside your path; below you a muddy stream is foaming and brawling and collecting the tribute of a hundred torrents to swell the great flood that spreads away miles wide in the plain, and glitters in the far horizon. As the path rises you get a wider view, and presently the great champaign lies below, flas.h.i.+ng and blinking in the morning's rays. Miles away overhead a tiny white thread shows the road along which in an hour or two you will be travelling, and a little speck at the summit, the cottage where your mid-day rest will be. Behind you lie heat, monotony, fatigue, hot hours in sweltering courts, weary strugglings through the prose of officialdom, the tiresome warfare against sun and dust; around you and above, it is all enchanted ground; the air is full of pleasant sounds and sweet invisible influences; the genius of the woods breathes poetry about the scene, the mountain nymphs are dancing on yonder crest, and Puck and Oberon and t.i.tania haunting in each delicious nook. Well may the first Englishman, who toiled panting hitherwards from the reeking realms below, have fancied himself half-way to Paradise and have christened the crowning heights Elysium. Maud, at any rate, leaving the rest of the party behind, rode forward in an ecstasy of enjoyment.

They spent the hot hours of the day in a sweet resting-place. Years afterwards the calmness of that pleasant day used to live in Maud's recollection; and though many scenes of bustle and trouble and fevered excitement had come between herself and it, yet the very thought of it used to soothe her. 'I have you, dear,' she would say to Felicia, 'in my mind's picture-gallery, set in a dozen different frames--scenes in which you played a part--and this is my favourite. I love you best of all in this; it cools and gladdens me to look at it.'

The scene, in fact, was a lovely one. On one side rose a vast amphitheatre of granite, rugged, solemn, precipitous; downwards, along the face of this, a careful eye might trace from point to point the little path up which the party were to make to-morrow's march. This mountain ridge separated them from the Elysian hills, and seemed to frown at them like some giant bulwark reared to guard the snowy solitudes beyond from human intrusion. On the other hand, fold upon fold, one sweet outline melting into another--here kissed by soft wreaths of cloud, here glittering clear and hard in the flood of light--stretched all the minor ranges, along which for fifty miles the traveller to the Elysians prepares himself for the final sublimity that lies beyond. In front, where the mountains parted, lay sweltering in the horizon, and immeasurably below them, the great Indian plain, spread out as far as eye could follow it--a dim, glistening, monotonous panorama--varied only when occasionally a great river, swollen with the melting snows above, spread out for miles across the plain and twinkled like an inland lake as the sun's rays fell upon it--and the whole suggested intolerable heat.

The hillside around was covered thick with forest growth of tropical luxuriance. On the heights above, a clump of rhododendrons glowed with a rosy glory; here, on a rugged precipice, a storm-stricken deodar spread its vast flat branches as if to brave the storm and the lightning strokes such as had before now seamed its bark. The path below was overhung with a dense growth of bamboo, each stem a miracle of grace, and growing at last to an inextricable jungle in the deep bosom of the mountain gorge. Mountain creepers in fantastic exuberance tossed wildly about the crag's side or hung festooning the roadside with a gorgeous natural tapestry. A hundred miles away the everlasting snow-clad summits, which had stood out so clear in the grey morning, when they first emerged from their couch of clouds, were fading into faintness as the bright daylight poured about them. Just below the spot on which their camp was pitched there was a little spring and a drinking-place, and constant relays of cattle came tinkling up the road and rested in the tall rocks' shadow for a drink, while the weary drivers sat chatting on the edge. Every now and then weird beings from the Interior, whose wild attire and unkempt aspect bespoke them as belonging to some aboriginal tribe, were to be seen staggering along under huge logs of timber felled in the great forests above and now brought down to the confines of civilisation for human use. It was a new page in Nature's grand picture-book, and full of charm. Maud, who was always very much alive to the outer world, was greatly impressed. Her nerves were over-wrought. She took Felicia's hand and seemed to be in urgent need of imparting her excited mood to some one.

'How beautiful this is!' she cried; 'how solemn, how solitary! Already all the world seems to be something unsubstantial, and the mountains the only reality.'

Felicia threw herself back upon the turf and gave a great sigh of relief.

'I love these delicious gusts of air,' she said, 'fresh and pure from the snow-tops.'

'Yes,' cried Maud; 'how serene and grand they look! No wonder the Alpine tourists go crazy about them and break their necks in clambering about them, bewildered with pleasure:

'"How faintly flushed, how phantom fair, Was Monte Rosa hanging there!

A thousand shadowy pencilled valleys And snowy dells in a golden air!"

'And here is a whole horizon of Monte Rosas! I should like to stop a month here and devote myself to sketching.'

While they were chatting in the shade, a native lad, who had been standing on a neighbouring knoll, came running down to a picketed pony and began hurriedly to prepare him for departure.

'What Sahib's horse?' Vernon asked with that imperative inquisitiveness that the superior race allows itself in India.

'Boldero Sahib,' replied the breathless groom; and before many minutes more 'Boldero Sahib' himself began to be apparent on the opposite hillside.

'The impetuous Boldero,' cried Vernon, 'riding abroad, redressing human wrongs, and doing his best, as usual, to break his neck, as if there could by any possibility be anything worth hurrying about in the plains below. Now, Maud, you will see a real philanthropist in flesh and blood.'

Presently the tiny distant object had shaped itself into a man and horse, and in a quarter of an hour more Boldero came clattering into the yard, had slung himself out of the saddle in a moment, and was already preparing to mount his new horse, when he discovered the Vernons and was introduced to Maud.

He seemed to have broken like a whirlwind into the repose of the party.

His servants were evidently well experienced in their master's movements; the saddle had been speedily s.h.i.+fted and the fresh horse was already ready for a start. Boldero drank off a great beaker of cold water. Maud's first impression was that he looked extremely handsome and extremely hot, and in better spirits and a greater hurry than she had ever seen any one in in her life. Vernon, after first greetings, had speedily resumed his att.i.tude of profound repose and evidently had no intention of being infected with bustle.

'Come, Boldero,' he said, 'do, for goodness' sake, send away your horse and wait here and have some lunch, instead of flying off in such a madman's hurry. India, which has already waited several thousand years for your arrival to reform her, can, no doubt, dispense with you for twenty minutes more; and fortune does not send good meetings every day.'

'Yes, Mr. Boldero,' said Felicia, 'and I have just been making a salad, which I am delighted you have arrived to admire; and I daresay you have half-a-dozen new ferns to show me.'

'I am pledged to be at Dustypore to-morrow, and ought to be ten miles further on my way by this time,' said Boldero. 'However, there is a glorious moon all through the night, and this delightful Doongla Gully seems set as a snare to beguile one into loitering by the way. What a sweet little oasis it is among all the gloom of the mountains!'

'Now, Maud,' said Vernon, 'I'll give you an idea of what the virtuous civilian does. He rides all night, he works all day.'

'Or rather,' said Boldero, who had as much dislike as the rest of the army of good fellows to being the topic of conversation, 'by night he dances, by day he plays at Badminton. My visit to the Viceroy was nothing except for the solemnity of the affair.'

'Well,' answered Vernon, 'and now you come just in time to give my cousin a lesson in water-colours. You must know, Maud, that Mr. Boldero carried off the prize at Elysium for a mountain-sketch last year. Now, Boldero, be good-natured and tell her the mystery of your sunset skies, which, though I deny their fidelity, are, I must admit, as beautiful as the real ones.'

'Will you?' said Maud, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng out and her colour coming at the mere thought of what she especially desired.

'Will I not?' Boldero said, with alacrity. 'What pleasanter afternoon's work could fortune send one?' And thereupon Maud's sketch-book was produced.

'Did you ever see such a daub?' she cried. 'It looks worse now it is dry than when I did it. It is so provoking! I feel the scenes--I have them all beautifully in my mind, and then come those horrid, hard, blotchy heaps. Just look at this odious mountain! Alas! alas!' Maud went on ruthlessly blotting out her morning's work, which, to tell the truth, did not deserve immortality.

'You made it a little too blue,' said her tutor. 'See, now; I will tone it down for you in a minute.'

'No, no,' cried Maud, 'let us have something fresh, that I have not desecrated by a caricature. Here, this in front of us will be lovely.'

'See,' said Boldero; 'we will have that nice bit of dark shade with that ragged deodar, and that jolly little cloud overhead.'

Maud's face glowed with pleasure, and her companion's last thought of getting in time to Dustypore disappeared.

Before the sketch was done the evening shadows were already fast climbing up the mountain's side; the valley's short day was over; cold ma.s.ses of vapour were gathering about the crags; and the moon, that was to light the traveller through his night-long journey, was sailing, pale and ghostlike, overhead. Boldero waved them a last farewell as he disappeared round the opposite hillside, and seemed to Maud's excited imagination like some knight-errant riding down into the gloom.

CHAPTER XV.

A DISTRICT OFFICER.

Their aches, hopes, Their pangs of love, with other incident throes, That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain In life's uncertain voyage----

Boldero was one of the Queen's good bargains. His mind teemed with schemes for the regeneration of mankind. Disappointment could not damp his hopefulness, nor difficulty cool his zeal; he was an enthusiast for improvement and the firmest believer in its possibility. Against stupidity, obstinacy, the blunders of routine, official _vis inertiae_, he waged a warfare which, if not always discreet, was sufficiently vigorous to plague his opponents: 'See,' cries Mr. Browning's philanthropist,

I have drawn a pattern on my nail And I will carve the world fresh after it--

Boldero's nails were absolutely covered with new patterns, and the little bit of the world on which he was able to operate was continually being carved into some improved condition. Nature having gifted him with courage, high spirit, resource, inventiveness, enterprise, and--precious gift!--administrative effectiveness, and Fortune and the Staff Corps having guided his steps from a frontier regiment to a civilian appointment in the Sandy Tracts, his importance was speedily appreciated. Wherever he looked at the machinery about him he saw things out of gear and working badly, and his mind was forthwith haunted with devices to improve them. He saw material, money, time wasted; wheel catching against wheel and producing all sorts of bad results by the friction; office coming to dead-lock with office; one blundering head knocking against another; wants to which no one attended; wrongs which no one avenged; sufferings to which no hand brought relief. Some men see such things and acquiesce in them as inevitable or relieve themselves by cynical remarks on the best of all possible worlds. Boldero felt it all as a personal misfortune and was incapable of acquiescence.

Thus he was for ever discovering grievances, which, when once discovered, no one could deny. His reports to Government sent a little shudder through the Chief Secretary's soul. The Salt Board regarded him with especial disfavour. c.o.c.kshaw cursed him for the long correspondence he involved. Fotheringham thought him dangerous, rash, Quixotic. Even Blunt accorded him but a scanty approval, Blunt's view being always the rough, commonplace and unsentimental, and Boldero's projects involving a constant temptation to expenditure. But the Agent was a finer judge of character than any of them, and his keen eye speedily detected Boldero's rare merits and his fitness for responsible employment. Boldero had more than justified the Agent's hopes, and accordingly moved rapidly up from one post to another.

He was now acting as chief magistrate of the district next to Dustypore.

Here his energetic temperament had the fullest play. He built, he planted, he drained. Sunrise found him ever in the saddle. He drove his Munic.i.p.al Committee wild with projects of reform--water-supply, vaccination, ca.n.a.ls, tanks, and public gardens. He fulminated the most furious orders, plunged into all sorts of controversies, was always waging war in some quarter or other, and manufactured for himself even a hotter world than Nature had provided ready-made. He offended the doctors by invading the hospitals and pointing out how the patients were killed by defective arrangements; the Chaplain, by objecting to the ventilation of the church and the length of the sermons; the Educational Department by a savage tirade on the schools, and the General in command by a bold a.s.sault on the drainage of the barracks. Altogether a bustling, joyous, irrepressible sort of man, and, as the Agent knew, a perfect treasure in a land where energy and enthusiasm are hard to keep at boiling heat, and where to get a thing done, despite the piles of official correspondence it gets buried under, is a result as precious as it is difficult of achievement.

When he first came to India he had been for a couple of years in Sutton's regiment, and at the time of Sutton's illness the two had almost lived together. The intimacy so formed had ripened into a cordial friends.h.i.+p, and Boldero had thus become a not unfrequent visitor at the Vernons' house, where, though her husband p.r.o.nounced him an enthusiastic bore, Felicia ever accorded him a kindly welcome.

He had now, however, carried away with him that which speedily cured him of enthusiasm, or, rather, forbade him to feel enthusiastic about anything but one. With his accustomed earnest precipitancy he had fallen deeply in love with Maud the first moment he had seen her, and all his afternoon had been spent in that paradise which springs into sudden existence beneath a happy lover's feet. Maud had been delighted with him for being so handsome, so good-natured, and the latest comer. And, then, was not he Sutton's friend, whose care and kindness had brought him from Death's door? Maud thought of this with a gush of interest and rained the sweetest and most gracious smiles upon him in consequence.

Those bright looks pursued him down the mountain's side, through the livelong night, and next day into court and office and all the hundred businesses of a busy official's day. So bright were they, even in recollection, that all the brightness seemed to have faded out of everything else. The details of his District, lately so full of interest, had become the dreariest routine. Improvements which, when last he thought of them, seemed of vital importance, faded away into uselessness or impossibility. A great pile of papers stood, ranged upon the study table, inviting disposal. A week ago Boldero would have fallen upon them, like a glutton on some favourite repast, and driven through them with alacrity and enjoyment. Now he had not the heart to touch them. A week ago the plains, with all their drawbacks, were pleasanter far, for a healthy man, than the indolent comforts and dull frivolities of a Hill station. Now, alas! Elysium was the only place where life--any life, that is, which deserved the name--was to be had.

Meanwhile, the object of his devotion was conscious only of having had a very pleasant afternoon and added one more to an already ample list of agreeable acquaintances. By the time she arrived at Elysium next day, Boldero had faded into indistinctness, and his chance meeting with them figured in Maud's thoughts only as one, and not the most striking, incident of a journey which had been to her full of things new, interesting and picturesque.