CHAPTER XVI.
ELYSIUM.
For they lie beside their nectar, and their bolts are hurled Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.
The conquering races, who in one age or another have owned the fairplains of Hindostan, have successively made the discovery that there areportions of the year when their magnificent possession had best becontemplated from a respectful distance. Some monarchs retired for thesummer to the exquisite Cashmir valleys: others to cool plateaux in thefar interior. The latest administrators of the country have solved theproblem by perching, through the hot season, on the summits of a craggyrange, and by performing the functions of Government at an altitude of7000 feet above the sea.
The fact that the highest officials in the country, having a largeamount of hard work to do, should prefer to do it in an invigoratingmountain atmosphere, rather than amid swamps, steam and fever in theplains below, is not, of course, surprising. The only matter of regretis that the obvious advantages, public and private, of an Europeanclimate for half the year can, from the nature of things, be enjoyed byso tiny a fraction of the official world. As it is, the annual removalof the Government to its summer quarters gives rise too often to alittle outburst of unreasonable, though not unnatural jealousy; andIndian journalists, who are necessarily closely pinned to the plains,are never tired of inveighing against the 'Capua' of the British rule.The truth is, however, that if Hannibal's soldiers had worked half ashard at Capua as English officials do at Elysium, nothing but good couldhave resulted from their sojourn in that agreeable resting-place. Of theholiday-makers it may safely be said that, in nine cases out of ten,they have earned, by long months of monotonous, laborious, and oftensolitary life, a good right to all the refreshment of body and soul thata brief interval of cool breezes, new faces, and an amusing society cangive them. The 'Jack' of the Civil Service is often a dull boy becausethe stern _regime_ of 'all work and no play' is too rigorously enforcedupon him. Let no one therefore grudge him his few weeks of rest andmerry-making, or mock at the profuse homage with which the goddessTerpsichore is adored by her modern votaries on the Himalayan heights.
Elysium, indeed, enchants one on the first approach. You clamber forweary miles up a long, blazing ascent, where even the early morning sunseems to sting and pierce. As the road turns, you enter suddenly a sweetdepth of shade formed by thick growths of ilex and rhododendron, fromthe breaks in which you look out at ease upon the blazing day beyond.Dotted all about the road, above and below, perched on every convenientrock or level ridge of soil, or sometimes built up on a framework ofpiles, are the homes of the Elysians; not, alas! the ideals which theimagination would conceive of the abodes of the blest, but seasidelodgings, of a by no means first-rate order, with precipices, clouds andrain, instead of sea. Presently the road fails at a great chasm in themountain-side, and the horses' feet clatter over a frail-lookingstructure of planks and scaffolding, which clings to the mountain'sedge. This is merely a landslip, an event too common even to beobserved. Each heavy rainfall, however, washes an appreciable fractionof the Elysian summits to the depths below and leaves the craggy sidesbarer and steeper than ever. Then, emerging from the ilex grove, thetraveller passes to a little Mall, where the fashionable world assemblesfor mutual edification, and the tide of life, business and gaiety flowsfast and strong.
There is something in the air of the place which bespeaks the closeneighbourhood of the Sovereign rule, the august climax of the officialhierarchy. Servants, brilliant in scarlet and gold, are hurrying hitherand thither. Here some Rajah, petty monarch of the surrounding ranges orthe fat plains below, attended with his mimic court and tatterdemalioncavalry, is marching in state to pay his homage to the 'great LordSahib.' Here some grand lady, whose gorgeous attire and liveried retinuebespeak her sublime position, is constrained to bate her greatness tothe point of being carried--slung like the grapes of Eschol--on a pole,and borne on sturdy peasants' shoulders to pay a round of theceremonious visits which etiquette enjoins upon her. Officers,secretaries, aides-de-camp come bustling by on mountain-ponies, eachbusy on his own behest. The energetic army of morning callers arealready in the field. A dozen palanquins, gathered at Madame Fifini's,the Elysian 'Worth,' announce the fact that as many ladies are hard atwork within, running up long-bills for their husbands and equippingthemselves for conquest at the next Government House 'At home.'Smartly-furnished shops glitter with all the latest finery of Paris andLondon, and ladies go jogging along on their bearers' shoulders, gayenough for a London garden-party in July. In the midst of all,--thesolid basis on which so huge a structure of business, pomp and pleasureis erected,--clumps the British Private, brushed, buttoned and rigid,with a loud, heavy tread, which contrasts strangely with the noiselesslymoving crowd around him and bespeaks his conscious superiority to a raceof beings whom, with a lordly indifference to minute ethnologicaldistinctions, he designates collectively as 'Moors.'
Some servants were waiting at the entrance of the place to conduct theVernons to their home, and before many minutes the travellers werestanding in the balcony, looking out on the steep slopes of greenfoliage below them and the noble snow-ranges which bounded the entirehorizon. Maud soon rushed off to explore the house; and Felicia made herway to the garden, to see how many of last summer's plants the winterhad spared to her. Presently she came in, with dew-bedrenched sleevesand gloves and an armful of sparkling roses, geraniums and heliotropes,and deposited them joyously in a heap on the table.
'There,' she cried, 'is my first fruit-offering. Bury your face in them,George, and do homage, as I have been doing, to the Genius of the Hills!Come here, babies, and be crowned.'
Felicia knelt down and stuck the children's hair full of flowers, tilleach looked as gaudy as a little Queen of May. Her husband came andstood over them and watched the scene.
'Now,' he said, 'Felicia, you ought to be quite happy--you have yourchildren and your flowers to adore at once.'
'And my husband,' said Felicia, looking up at him, with her sweet,radiant smile. 'And, oh dear, how I wish you had not to go down againto-night! Do you know, George, I mind each separation worse than thelast? Next summer we will send the children straight to "The Gully," andwe will stay comfortably together.'
Maud came back in the highest spirits. 'Look here,' she said, showing ahandful of snow, and fingers red and blue with unaccustomed cold--'hownice it is to feel it once again! And what nectar the air is! And,George, actually, strawberries!'
'Yes,' said Vernon, 'and cream, and plenty of both. Is it notenchanting?'
'You shall have some flowers too, dear,' cried Maud, who seldom missedan opportunity of petting Felicia and letting her love run out in somepretty act or speech. 'See, this rose was made for me to deck you with.Does she not look charming, George?'
'Hush!' said George; 'we shall make her and the little girls too as vainas possible. Now, as I suppose nobody means to crown me, I vote that yougo and get ready for breakfast, and I will prepare Maud a plate ofstrawberries-and-cream, by way of beginning the feast.'
That morning lived ever afterwards in Maud's thoughts as one of thetimes when the world looked brightest to her. Everything was full ofexcitement, interest and keen pleasure. If from time to time a thoughtof Sutton set her heart beating, it was more that she had learnt toworship him as an ideal of all that was most charming in man than thathis absence cost her any serious regret. It had given her a pang to partand to feel how little of a pang it had given him. He had been almostunconscious of her departure; he had been certainly quite, quiteindifferent to it. Such insensibility was a little speck on theotherwise spotless perfection; but Maud's heart was too light for thisto weigh it down for long. A long, charming vista of enjoyment wasopening before her. Half-a-dozen people, she knew, were awaiting herarrival with impatience and thought Elysium not quite Elysium till shewas there. Before the morning was over there would come, so herprophetic soul announced, kind familiar f
aces, all the brighter for herpresence, with all sorts of delightful projects, often talked ofbeforehand, now to come into actual fruition; rides, picnics, dances,theatricals, and (thrilling thought!) a fancy ball, at which Maud hadalready found herself twenty times whirling in anticipated valses, eachmore enchanting than the last. Who could contemplate such a prospectwith equanimity? or whose heart have room for gloomy thoughts with somany bright dreams to crush them out?
Then presently there came a note from Mrs. Vereker, bidding her acordial welcome and threatening her high displeasure if Maud's firstvisit was not to her. To Mrs. Vereker's accordingly they went, and foundher in a little cottage, romantically stuck into a cleft in the rocks,with a cataract of honeysuckle tumbling all about a wooden porch, and aview of the mountains which even her adorers, burning to behold herself,were yet constrained to stop and look at. There was a little court, witha wooden railing to guard the edge and geraniums blazing all about it,where a succession of enthusiasts' ponies waited while their owners didhomage within. Through that convenient cranny in the foliage the deity,unseen, could spy the approaching visitor and decide betimes whether shewould be 'at home' or not. Now she was unquestionably at home and metthem at the door with merry greetings. She led them in and showed themher drawing-room, the very home of innocence and refined propriety. 'Myhusband does not wish me to mope when he is away,' she said, with acharming simple smile; and, to do her justice, in this respect, at anyrate, she obeyed his wishes. If the loveliest, freshest bonnets, thedaintiest gloves, the most picturesque mountain costumes, a successionof bewildering head-dresses, could rescue a widowed soul frommelancholy, Mrs. Vereker had no right to gloom. Nor was hers the onlynature that was cheered, for all mankind conspired to assure her thatshe was the most bewitching of her sex. Turn where she would she found ahost of willing courtiers, who thought their assiduous services wellrewarded with a single smile. She looked at the world through herbeautiful purple eyes, and saw it prostrate at her feet.
Even Felicia was captivated, despite her own convictions; and Vernonalone of the party declared her a little ogling hypocrite, andpronounced himself unable to understand how any one could think her evenpretty.