Chronicles of Dustypore Part 11

CHAPTER XVIII.

GAUDIA IN EXCELSIS.

Quis non malarum quas Amor curas habet Haec inter obliviscitur?

Before many weeks had pa.s.sed Sutton and Desvoeux came up to Elysium for their holidays, and Maud's cup of pleasure began to overflow. Boldero moreover, to the great surprise of every one, discovered that the plains were telling seriously on his const.i.tution, and, despite the lamentations of his Commissioner, who was at his wits' end to find a satisfactory subst.i.tute, insisted on carrying out the doctor's recommendation to try a change of air.

'I am sorry you are ill,' the Commissioner said, 'and overworked, but what on earth am I to do without you? No one understands anything about our arterial drainage scheme but you; and who is to open the new cattle fair? And then there is that lakh of saplings we had determined to plant out in the rains--my dear fellow, don't go till October, at any rate.'

But Boldero was inexorable: the arterial drainage of the Sandy Tracts, new cattle fairs, and even the delicious prospect of planting out a hundred thousand trees in a region where a tree was almost as great a phenomenon as Dr. Johnson found it in the Hebrides--all seemed to him but as hollow dreams, which fell meaningless on the ear, when compared with the solid reality of a personal romance. To go to Elysium, to see Maud again, to hear her joyous laugh, to watch her eyes light up with pleasure, and the colour coming and going in her cheeks, as each new turn of feeling swayed her this way or that; to hold her hand in his and feel a subtle, electric influence flashing from her to him and stirring every nerve and fibre of his being into new existence; and then to win this sweet creature to himself with a tender avowal of devotion and the sweet coercion of pa.s.sionate attachment; to bring her to irradiate a dreary, solitary life with youth, beauty, freshness, everything that Boldero now discovered that his own existence wanted; this was the dream which filled his waking and sleeping thoughts, or, rather, this was the reality, and everything else was dreamland, far off, unsubstantial, unsatisfying. What, to a man in this mood, are reclamation schemes and irrigation projects and all the vexatious details involved in improving thankless people against their wills, educating those who do not want to be taught, and aiming at a chimerical Golden Age, which no one is sure can ever come, and which, at any rate, we shall never see? Boldero confessed to himself that a morning's sketching on the mountain's side with Maud was, as far as his interest about the matter went, worth more than all the Golden Ages that poets have sung or philanthropists devised. The utmost concession that the Commissioner could get out of him was that he would go only for a fortnight. And so to Elysium he came among the rest.

There may be natures to whom, according to Sir Cornewall Lewis's dictum, life would be tolerable but for its enjoyments; but the Elysians a.s.suredly are not of the number. They go about pleasure-hunting with a vehemence the stronger and keener for the long period of partial or total abstinence from amus.e.m.e.nt which most of them have undergone. The soldier who has been for months marching up and down a desert frontier, with no attainable form of excitement but the agreeable possibility of having one's throat cut in the night or a bullet cleverly lodged in one from behind a rock overhead--the engineer who has been for months out in camp with little companionship but that of theodolites and maps--the forest superintendent who has spent a twelvemonth among the deodars in some nameless Himalayan gorge--the civilian who has carried off his bride to a solitary existence in some far-off Mofussil station, where the only European is perhaps an excise officer or policeman--people like these acquire a keen relish for any change of scene and rush into a holiday with the enthusiasm of long-imprisoned schoolboys. Nothing damps their ardour--not even Himalayan rain, which effectually damps everything else. There is a ball, for instance, at the Club House; it is raining cataracts and has been doing so for twenty hours. The mountain paths are knee-deep in mud, and swept by many a turgid torrent rattling from above. Great ma.s.ses of thunder-cloud come looming up, rumbling, crashing and blazing upon a sodden, reeking world. The night is black as Tartarus, save when the frequent flashes light it up with a momentary glare. The road is steep, rough and not too safe. Carriages, of course, there are none. A false step might send you several thousand feet down the precipice into the valley below. Will all this prevent Jones the Collector and Brown the Policeman and Smith of the Irregular Cavalry putting their respective ladies into palanquins, mounting their ponies like men and finding their way, through field and flood, to the scene of dissipation? Each will ensconce himself in a panoply of indiarubber and require a great deal of peeling before becoming presentable in a ballroom; but each will get himself peeled, and dance till four o'clock. The ladies will emerge from their palanquins as fresh and bright and ambrosial as lace and tarlatan can make them. Mrs. Jones, if she would only tell the truth, has already more than half-filled up her card with engagements. Smith and his wife have never been at a dance since the night he proposed to her at the Woolwich ball, and feel quite romantic at the prospect of a valse together. Mrs. Brown will meet half-a-dozen particular friends who are dying to see her, and whom she is not averse to see. The night outside is Tartarean, certainly, but within there is nothing but light, music and mirth. The band crashes out and drowns the patter of the rain above. The Viceroy, towering like a Homeric chief among his peers, mingles with the throng, and is valsing with Felicia. Boldero has reached the seventh heaven of his hopes, is actually in possession of Maud's hand and has her heart beating close to his own. Desvoeux looks reproachfully at her over Mrs. Vereker's shoulder as they go whirling by. A hundred happy hearts are pulsating with excitement and pleasure, drowning the cares of existence in such transient oblivion as may be manufactured out of fiddlers and champagne.

Is this the race which proclaims itself inadept at amus.e.m.e.nts, and which, historians gravely a.s.sure us, loves to take its very pleasures sadly? Are these the melancholy beings whose gloom is supposed to have acquired a still sadder tinge from the sad routine of Eastern life? Say, rather, a race with healthy instincts and conscious energy and the ready joyousness of youth--fittest rulers of a world where much hard work is to be done, where many things tend to melancholy and all things to fatigue.

Boldero, as he rode homewards (only three miles out of his direct course) by the side of Maud's palanquin, through the pelting rain, admitted to himself an almost unlimited capacity for happiness, of which he had till now been unaware.

There were some b.a.l.l.s, moreover, when it did _not_ rain; when the music, streaming out into the still atmosphere, could be heard miles away across the gorge, and the moon, sailing in a cloudless sky, flooded the mountain-sides with soft pure light. Such a night was that on which the 'Happy Bachelors' entertained their friends. Happy indeed! for the fairest hands in Elysium had been busy twining wreaths and arranging flowers; and ottomans and sofas and mirrors had been brought from many a despoiled drawing-room, in order that the Happy Bachelors' abode should look as picturesque and comfortable as hands could make it. Whole conservatories of lovely plants had been all the morning marching up the craggy path on peasants' heads. All Elysium was alert, for the Bachelors were men of taste, 'well loved of many a n.o.ble dame;' and, if not otherwise fitted for the Episcopate, at any rate fulfilling the Apostolic requirement of being given to hospitality.

To one person, however, that ball was a period of the darkest disappointment. While the merriment of the evening was raging to its height poor Boldero's heart was growing colder and colder, and all his pleasant schemes were rapidly melting into air. The course of true love always runs delightfully smooth when one person only is concerned and that person's imagination directs it at his will; but how often rude contact with reality brings all our airy castle-building to the ground!

Boldero, in his dreams about Maud, had no doubt judged her charms aright; but he had omitted one important consideration, namely, that he was not the only man in the world, and that other people would be likely to think about her much as he did himself. This melancholy fact was now borne in upon him with a cruel vehemence. Maud seemed to be in the greatest request and to smile with distracting impartiality on all who came about her. 'Why did you not ask me sooner?' she said reproachfully when he came to claim a dance, 'my card has been full for ages.

Stop--you shall have one of Mr. Desvoeux's; he does not matter and he has put down his name for several too many. Shall it be the fifteenth?'

Maud asked this in the most artless way and seemingly without a suspicion that Boldero could be otherwise than pleased. Alas! how far otherwise than pleased he felt! The fifteenth! and then only a sort of crumb of consolation from Desvoeux's over-ample banquet! How cruel for a man whose heart was beating high with hope, and who had risen to that state of nervous excitement when to propose would have been easier than not! The charmer had come and gone. The next moment Boldero saw her hurrying off with a new partner and laughing just the same joyous, childlike laugh that had been ringing in his ears for weeks. 'What could that idiotic young ensign have said to make her laugh?' How could any one laugh while Boldero found existence rapidly growing into a Sahara around him? What business had Maud to smile so affectionately on each new comer? Then what was this intimacy with Desvoeux which enabled her to treat him so unceremoniously? How came he to be putting down his name for what dances he pleased? Boldero moodily denounced the object of his devotion as a flirt of the purest water and not over-particular in her selection of admirers. As for Desvoeux, could any really nice girl like such a fop as that? Poor Boldero, in the amiable, sensible condition of mind which jealousy provokes, plunged at once into despair, felt too acutely miserable to dance, and resigned himself, a melancholy wall flower, to the contemplation of enjoyment in which fate forbade him to partic.i.p.ate.

Presently Maud came back and put every depreciatory thought about herself to instant flight. There had been some mistake about a quadrille, she said, and her partner was not forthcoming, and so she had taken flight at once. It was so dull dancing with people one did not know; and would it not be nice if it was the fashion to dance only with one's friends? 'And now,' she said, 'do take me outside to look at the moon.' Maud was evidently bent on being kind and gracious; and Boldero, blushing to think what an idiot he had been making of himself, took her out into the balcony, where the Bachelors' industry had worked wonders with ferns and flowers and sofas poetically suggestive of a _tete-a-tete_ and all that an artistic Bachelor's soul dreams of as appropriate to b.a.l.l.s. There lay the still valley at their feet--all its depths filled with motionless white clouds, that glistened in the moonlight like a silver lake. The twinkling fires of the hamlets opposite were one by one dying out of sight. The solemn pine-shade all around, wherever the moonlight could not pierce, made the rest of the picture seem ablaze with glory. Is there a sweeter, softer radiance in the world than the moonlight of the Himalayas? 'This is enchanting,'

Maud said, in great spirits; 'how I should like to sketch it! Why should we not have a moonlight party? And you will do my sketch for me, will you not, Mr. Boldero? Let me get Mr. Desvoeux to arrange it; he is great at such things; and we can make him sing to us and play on his guitar, which he does delightfully, while we are drawing--would it not be delicious?'

Boldero, in his heart, doubted the deliciousness of any programme in which Desvoeux figured as a performer. He had no time to reply, however, for all too soon--before, as it seemed, he and his companion had well established themselves--the quadrille had ended, and Maud's claimant for the next dance came bustling up; and Maud, who thought moonlight all very well but would not have missed a valse for the world, went gleefully away, smiling her adorer a kind farewell that sent him sevenfold deeper into love than ever.

No proposal, it was clear enough, was destined to be made that night; but would the scheme look hopefuller to-morrow? Boldero lay tossing through the few hours which intervened before to-morrow, already reddening the eastern horizon, came, and could give himself no satisfactory reply. She liked him, certainly; but with how many was this precious privilege shared? He was one of the 'friends' with whom Maud liked to dance; but the list was so long, that all through a long evening he could with difficulty get near her for a minute. She would come with him for a moonlight picnic; but then Desvoeux was to arrange it, Sutton, no doubt, to preside, and half-a-dozen more attendant courtiers to swell the little monarch's train. Boldero's manly bosom heaved with sighs. His servant, inexperienced in such symptoms, brought him, unbidden, a large beaker of iced soda-water, as if the flames of love could be extinguished by that innocent beverage.

Maud had, in fact, been very much impressed with Boldero, and, with the frankness of inexperience, had taken good care to let him know it. At this period of her career novelty possessed a wondrous charm and the last admirer had a strong recommendation in being the last. Boldero forgot that at Elysium this fortunate advantage was no longer his. Still Maud smiled upon him, as she did on almost every one who aspired to her smiles. It was not so much fickleness as the keen pleasure of success, the most natural and pleasantest, probably, of all human successes,--the proved capacity to charm mankind. What faint adumbration of love had darkened the sunshine of her heart was all for Sutton; and even this was a sort of transient pang, which the excitement of daily life made it easy to forget. Knowing but faintly what love meant, she mistook, as women often do, the thrill of flattered vanity for solid feeling.

Boldero had not disguised his admiration, nor Maud the pleasure which it gave her. Mutual satisfaction had been the natural result. Poor Boldero, who was always rushing at conclusions and unskilled in the tactics of the feminine heart, thought himself at once the happiest of men and gilded his horizon with a bright aurora of matrimonial bliss. Maud meanwhile, by a hundred half-unconscious arts, encouraged the delusion and established the relation of friendly intimacy. When he looked across the room her bright eyes met his and spoke him the heartiest recognition. She would look up wearily from some uncongenial companion and find Boldero watching her, and a glance would sign the pledge of mutual understanding. 'Here is the song you liked,' she had said only the evening before, 'and I like it too;' and then she had sung it, and each note had caught a new charm in being intended especially for his ear. So it was that Boldero had fallen into the too common mistake of impetuous lovers: he thought, poor mortal, that Maud had fallen violently in love with him; the truth being that she was merely rather pleased at the symptoms of his being violently in love with her, and accepted his homage with a light heart, as hardly more than her due.

CHAPTER XIX.

A BRUSH ON THE FRONTIER.

Tell me not, love, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly.

The reign of peace and pleasure was not destined to last through the summer undisturbed. Conflicts, more serious than those which were agitating poor Boldero's breast, broke in upon the tranquil season and caused a hurried dispersion of many of the holiday-makers.

For weeks past the news from the frontier had not been rea.s.suring. Blunt had gone off on his mission to the Rumble Chunder District, dragging the miserable Whisp, who could not ride and hated leaving head-quarters, in his train. He had mastered the whole matter, as he considered, from first to last and was resolved to bring his knowledge to bear with good effect upon the entanglements which his predecessors' ignorance and indistinctness had produced. He saw his way quite clearly and was resolved to have it. Other people had faltered and hesitated; but Blunt was resolved to strike, and to strike hard, and to finish the matter and have done with it once for all. He arrived, accordingly, in no mood to be trifled with, as Mahomed Khan, the first of the Zamindars who had an interview with him, discovered in about two minutes. Now, Mahomed Khan, a wily old gentleman, with a great turn for diplomacy, was deeply interested in the Rumble Chunder question, and had, at different times, interviewed a long succession of 'Sahibs' with reference to it. He had invariably found them long-suffering, conciliatory, anxious to learn and not difficult to puzzle. He had talked to them at ease in his own language and was accustomed to the elaborate courtesy due to the leader of a powerful and not over-loyal clan. His antecedents ent.i.tled him to respect. When Sutton was getting his troop together in the Mutiny a word from Mahomed Khan would have put the whole district in a blaze and rendered it impossible to recruit a man. The liking, however, which one good soldier feels for another had carried the day. The old fellow had ridden with fifty followers into Sutton's camp, unstrapped his sword, and, placing it in Sutton's hands, had sworn that he and his would follow him wherever he pleased to lead them. Well had the oath been kept; when some months later the fighting closed, Mahomed Khan's name was recorded as amongst the most deserving of Her Majesty's lieges, and his well-timed loyalty had resulted in a fine grant of fat acres, a conspicuous seat in the Durbar, and, not least in the estimation of men keenly sensitive to honour, a vast deal of complimentary writing and talking on the part of every British official with whom he had to deal.

All this flattery had, perhaps, turned the old soldier's head, or, at any rate, had given him no small idea of his importance to the British 'Raj' and of his claims to the grat.i.tude of British administrators. His rights in the Salt matter had been left in convenient obscurity, and might, not without reason, be considered as tacitly conceded by the Power with whom he was on such affectionate terms.

This, however, was not at all the light in which Blunt saw the matter; he was annoyed at the man's bl.u.s.ter, pomposity and pretence. He was not in the least impressed by a well-worn packet of letters which his visitor produced, in which successive Generals and Commissioners had testified to his deserts; what he wanted was business, and this was essentially unbusinesslike. If Sutton had written, 'You have proved yourself a brave and loyal soldier, and I will ever be your friend,'

this was no reason why Mahomed Khan should not pay his salt-dues like other folk, or should object to have his t.i.tle-deeds rigidly overhauled.

'If it was just, why had Sir John Larrens Sahib never done it?' the old man objected; but Blunt did not care what Sir John Lawrence had done or had not done; what he wanted was his bond, and nothing else would satisfy him.

This was Blunt's first nettle, and he was grasping it firmly, with no doubts as to the propriety of the course. Then, at last, he got tired of the interview, and--fatal blunder for an Eastern diplomat--became abrupt and rude, and began to show his hand. Thereupon Mahomed Khan began to show his teeth and went away in a surly mood with the news, which spread like wildfire among the clansmen, that the Sirkar was going to rule them with a heavy hand; that all old rights were to be cancelled; a grievous land-tax to be imposed, and that a terrible 'Sahib,' of fierce aspect, had arrived to see this objectionable policy carried out.

Then Blunt found the investigation by no means the simple matter he had hoped. Statements, which looked so neat and clean when submitted to the Board and neatly minuted on by Whisp, a.s.sumed an aspect of hopeless inexplicability when Blunt had them face to face; and the more he questioned the less he understood. He was armed with powers to examine witnesses, but not a word of truth could be got out of any one. Fine old countrymen, whose n.o.ble bearing, well-chiselled features and long flowing beards would have made a fortune in a Roman studio, came before him and told him the most unblushing lies with a volubility and earnestness that fairly staggered Blunt's bewildered comprehension.

To say one thing to-day, the precise opposite to-morrow, and to explain with easy grace that it was a mistake, or that the evidence had been wrongly taken down, seemed to every man whom Blunt interrogated the correct and natural procedure for a person who was being pressed for information which it was inconvenient to produce. Some men remembered everything; others professed the most absolute obliviousness; each contradicted all the rest, except when Government interests were concerned, and then all swore together like a band of conspirators. To make confusion worse confounded, the accounts were kept on a system which none of the Salt Board people understood and which no one else could be induced to explain.

Then, by some fatality, the white ants had always eaten the precise doc.u.ments of which Blunt stood in need, and the trembling officials produced a tattered ma.s.s of dirt and rags and a.s.sured him that this was the record which he called for, or rather all that could be found of its remains. Blunt became, day by day, more profoundly convinced that all men--all the Rumble Chunder men, at any rate--were liars, and let his conviction appear in short speeches and abrupt procedure. The old Zamindars, outraged by discourtesy in the presence of their retainers, came away from his presence quivering with rage and ripe for the first chance of mischief which offered. Blunt found the nettle stinging him sorely, and, like a rough, resolute man, grasped it with all the more unflinching hand. When at last he succeeded in making out a case he dealt out the sternest justice, not, perhaps, without a gratified vindictiveness against the people who had so long baffled and annoyed him. One Uzuf Ali, a large grantee, had been called upon to verify his claims; and this he proceeded to do with the utmost alacrity. He and his forefathers, he protested, had been in possession for centuries--look at the Revenue records, the files of the Courts, the orders of Government.

Here, too, was a Sunnud from the Emperor Akbar confirming them in their rights. Twenty witnesses, all disinterested, honourable, unimpeachable, the entire village indeed, would attest the fact of continuous, open, rightful enjoyment from a period as far as memory could go. So the twenty witnesses did; but then appeared a gentleman, one Hosain Khan, on the other side, and blew the pretty story into the air. Uzuf Ali was an audacious impostor, everybody in the country knew that his father had come from Delhi not thirty years ago; he had no more right to an ounce of salt than the 'Commissioner Sahib' himself; the ground over which he claimed his rights was notoriously in the possession of another man: as for the Sunnud of Akbar, it was an obvious forgery, as the Commissioner Sahib might see for himself by merely looking.

Hosain Khan having had his innings, Uzuf Ali returned to the wickets and began to make great play. 'Ask Hosain Khan,' he said, 'if his uncle did not carry off my sister and if some of our people did not kill him for it?'

'Yes,' says Hosain Khan, 'you stabbed him yourself, like a coward as you are, when he lay asleep by his bullocks.'

'And if I did,' cries his opponent, 'did not your father knock out my cousin's brains with a lathee[2] and get sent over the Kala Panee[3] for his pains?'

The controversy waxed ardent; the combatants' voices rose shrill and high; they tossed their black locks and waved their arms, and poured out long streams of pa.s.sionate family history, long-cherished feuds--deep, never-to-be-forgotten wrongs--interminable complications as to lands and wells, women and bullocks; and Blunt, who understood nothing but that they had travelled a long way from the Rumble Chunder Grant, sat by in mute and wrathful despair, and began to perceive that the administration of justice to folks so excitable and unveracious as these was no such easy matter as he had once imagined.

Amid all the chaff, however, Blunt had, he thought, got hold of one piece of solid fact: either the Sunnud was a forgery or it was not; and if a forgery, then he resolved to make an example, prosecute Uzuf Ali for his fraud, and turn him summarily out of his pretended rights. A forgery no doubt it was, for the paper bore the British watermark, and you could see the places where the gunpowder had been smeared in hopes of giving it an antiquated look. And so the question was decided, and the order made out, and poor Uzuf Ali, in vain protesting that it was a device of the enemy, left the Commissioner's presence a ruined man.

Ruined men, however, are dangerous things at all times, and especially with an excitable and easily frightened people, who see in their neighbours' fall only an antic.i.p.ation of their own. The Bazaar was presently in a tumult: angry cl.u.s.ters of talkers gathered in circles round the grain-shops or at the village well, or under the great banyan-tree which spread a wide shade over one end of the street, and discussed past grievances and future disaster. Meanwhile Blunt, not with so light a heart or seeing his way as clearly as usual, had moved his head-quarters a dozen miles away, and begun a new series of investigations with a new set of Hosain Khans and Uzuf Alis, and with precisely similar success.

Before the month was over Fotheringam's words had come true. The Eusuf Khayls, a turbulent tribe of frontier freebooters, were up. A police outpost had been attacked in force one night, and its occupants had made a bad retreat, leaving two of their number on the field. The marauders had ridden through twenty miles of British territory, burning villages, destroying crops, driving away bullocks to their fastnesses in the hills. Blunt, as he came, escorted by a strong detachment, into Dustypore, met the Horse Artillery rattling out towards the disturbed region; and a telegram despatched to Elysium informed Sutton that he was to head a flying column into the enemies' country and that he must be with his regiment without an instant's delay.

CHAPTER XX.

A LAST RIDE.

He turned his charger as he spoke Upon the river-sh.o.r.e; He gave the bridle-reins a shake, Said 'Adieu for evermore, My love!

And adieu for evermore!'

Sutton, who was practising '_La ci darem la mano_' with Maud when the telegram arrived, glanced at its contents without stopping the duet and slipped it into his pocket before Maud had even seen it. '_Andiam, Andiam, Andiam,_' she sang joyfully; '_Andiam, Andiam, Andiam_' pealed Sutton's pleasant tenor tones; '_d'un innocente Amor_' sang the two together; so the performance came smoothly to its close. 'And now,'

Sutton said, 'I am afraid we must stop our practice for this morning, as I have to go to the Viceroy. I will come and see you on my way back. I may have to go down to Dustypore this afternoon.'

'Down to Dustypore!' Maud cried, in a tone that bespoke the pang of disappointment that shot into her heart, 'I thought that you were to stay all the summer?'

'And so did I,' said her companion; 'but unluckily some of my naughty boys on the Hills out there have been getting into too good spirits, and I must go and look after them. And now for his Excellency.'

Before Sutton had been gone many minutes Desvoeux came galloping up the pathway, and found Maud still standing in the verandah, where she had wished Sutton farewell, and where in truth she had been standing in a brown study ever since he went. Desvoeux was in the gloomiest spirits, far too much concerned about himself to pay much attention to Maud's troubled looks. 'Have you heard the dreadful, dreadful news?' he said.

'All our holidays are over for the year. There has been an outbreak on the frontier. The troops are already on the march. The Agent is closeted with the Viceroy and goes down this afternoon, and of course poor I have to go along with him. Sutton is to command the expedition, and, I daresay, is off already. Every soldier in the place will be ordered down; and meanwhile what is to become of the fancy-ball?'