We have arrived at September and the rains are “breaking.” For two
months and a half they have trampled upon us steadily, armies on
the march; now they come in scattered battalions and make off as if
pursued. The attack, too, is as erratic; it will hammer hard upon the
kitchen while not a drop falls on the verandah, or a great slant will
sweep down the nearest valley while we look on in dry security from
the shelf. Here in the garden a wall of mist will often surround me,
with the sun shining brightly inside; it turns the shelf into a room,
and makes one think of the impalpable barrier of one’s environment,
possible to break in any direction but never broken, always there, the
bound of one’s horizon and the limit of one’s activities. I wonder if
Tiglath-Pileser will call that far-fetched.
Thin, ragged, white clouds sail over the rose-bushes, just low enough
to touch the fresh red shoots, which are now as lovely to look at,
all in new curling leaf, as ever they can be in full rose time. That
of course is written when there are no roses here to contradict me.
There is one red-brown tone that one never sees except on a new leafing
rose-bush and in the eyes of some animals, and there is a purple which
is mixed nowhere else at all. And it all shines--how it shines!--under
the soft cloud fringes, and when by accident a full-hearted deep-pink
rose comes and sits alone among these young twigs and sprays the sight
gives that strange ache of pleasure that hints how difficult perpetual
ecstasy would be to bear. The rose-bed sleeps in the rains, but it
sleeps with one eye open; I seldom look in vain for at least one
flower. Now it is full of buds; the rose of yesterday is only waiting
for to-morrow. Maréchal Niels have waited in a different way; they have
not put out new roses but they have clung obstinately to the old ones.
“At once the silken tassel of my purse tear, and its treasure on the
garden throw” is no part of the Maréchal Niels’ philosophy. It hangs a
heavy head and clings to every petal, reluctantly giving up day by day
a moiety of its sweetness and lasting so unwarrantably long that in
sheer indignation I frequently cut off its head. The garden rejoices
wildly now, all the rains-flowers are gayer than ever, and daily
confess to the sun that they never really pretended to do without him.
A new lease of vitality has sprung up everywhere; even the poor sticks
that Atma has propped up the dahlias with, have forgotten that they
have been cut off untimely and are trying to bud. There is sadness in
this and I will not consider it.
The crows are moved to speak in all sorts of strange languages,
including a good deal of English. One took his seat on the very
swaying top of a deodar this morning and distinctly ejaculated “Oh
_Bother_! Oh _Bother_! Oh _Bother_!” with a guttural throaty emphasis
that excited me at last to an unfriendly stone; whereat he went from
bad to worse and cursed me. The crow that superintends the East is a
strange bird, never happy, seldom in a good humour. He declaims, he
soliloquizes, he frequently flies off and says “I’ll enquire;” but
his principal note is that of simple derision and he plainly finds
humbug in everything. He has no period of tender innocence; some crows
are older than others but nobody has ever seen a young crow. There is
nothing like him in England; the rooks make as much noise perhaps, but
only for a little while in the evening; the crow’s comment upon life is
perpetual. Remote, across a valley, it is a kind of fantastic chorus
to the reckless course of men; overhead it is a criticism of the most
impertinent and espionage without warrant. These, of course, are only
country crows; in the cities, like other bad characters, they take
greater liberties, becoming more objectionable by sophistication.
The butterflies have come back as if by appointment; one big blue
and black fellow is carrying on a violent flirtation with a fuchsia
under my very nose. She hasn’t much honey, and he, according to
Tiglath-Pileser has hardly anything to extract it with. I fear, in the
cynicism of our contemporary Gauls, _il perd terriblement son temps_,
but it seems to amuse them both, and why comment more severely upon the
charming fooling of affinities? The butterflies alight so differently
now upon the gravel drive, which is still glistening wet; they pause
there on lightest tiptoe with waving wings; a butterfly hates cold
feet. The bees are as busy and as cheery as ever; I have wasted the
last ten minutes in watching a bumblebee, with the most persuasive hum,
sucking the last of their sweetness out of the corn-bottles. The bee
clings and the flower drops over; the old pretty garden idyll never
loses its power to please. Dear me, if it would always rain and be
unattractive I might get something done; as it is.... That was rather
a sharp shower, and I noticed that the hawk-moth courting the salvias,
braved it through. One would have thought that the big drops would have
reduced him to a tiny ball of wet fluff in two minutes, but he has
gone on darting from flower to flower quite indifferent. Last night a
hawk-moth dined with us, on the dahlias in the middle of the table. He
thought it a charming sunny day under the lamps, and enjoyed himself
enormously, only leaving with the ladies as he objected to tobacco. We
should be delighted to see him again.
A morning ride, I am glad to say, is not considered an adventure into
the world, and morning rides are again possible without the risk of a
drenching. I have left Pat and Arabi in the seclusion of their stables
all this time, but for no fault, as we should say if we were selling
them. Horses, I fear I am of those who fondly think, were created first
in a mood of pure pleasure, and a careful Providence then made men to
look after them. I should not like to tell Thisbe this; she takes the
orthodox view about the succession of beasts and it might make her
consider one unsound; but I do not mind saying it in print where it is
likely to do less harm. Besides, my friend the Bengal Lancer entirely
agrees with me, and that is what one might call a professional
opinion. Pat and Arabi came walking in on the shelf one spring morning
a year and a half ago, very meek and sorry for themselves, having
climbed up every one of fifty-eight miles and seven thousand feet on
very little, probably, but hay. They came out of a kicking, squealing
herd in the Rawalpindi fair, where Tiglath-Pileser bought them on
a day with their full respective equipment of hill-ropes, a ragged
blanket, a tin bucket and a valet for less than twenty pounds apiece.
The price seems low when you consider that Arabi’s papa was a Persian
of pedigree and Pat’s an English thoroughbred. It is due to certain
liberal provisions of an all-wise Government which nobody is compelled
to discuss except the officials of the Remount Department. It will be
enough to say that we do not boast of their connections on the maternal
side, and painfully try to subdue all characteristics which seem to
hark back that way. Their siring is by dirty scrip established, but
in this country it is a wise foal that knows his own mother. Arabi
has a pink streak on his nose which was plainly one of his mother’s
charms, but this, as I cannot see it when I am on his back, troubles me
less than his four white stockings and hoofs to match, which were also
bequeathed to him by her. But his glossy coat and the arch of his neck
and his paces he inherits from his more distinguished parent, after
whom also we have had the weakness to name him. I don’t like to think
of Arabi’s tie with the country; she probably went in an ekka[4] with
a string of blue beads across her forehead; but Pat’s mother’s family
was pure tribal Waziri, which means that with the manners and make of
your English sire you come into the world with the wiry alertness your
maternal grandfather learned in getting round lofty mountain corners
in a hurry, and a way of lifting your feet in trotting over stony
country that is pretty to see, and a pride in your dark grey coat and
iron muscles that there is no need to conceal either. Of course you
may also inherit the Waziri irritability of temperament. Pat, in a
moment of annoyance, one day early last season, cow-kicked the Head of
the Army Veterinary Department, but that was before he had been long
enough in Simla to know who people were. He would not dream of doing
such a thing now; at least he might dream of it, but that is all. He
is a noble animal and he has his ambitions. I sometimes think they
are directed against the pair of fat Australian cobs that draw the
carriage of the Commander-in-Chief. Waziris of all classes dislike the
Commander-in-Chief; and Pat may very well have a blood feud on his
hoofs to avenge.
Pat is the prouder, the more daring animal of the two; Arabi merely
champs and pretends to bite his groom to show that he too is of noble
blood. Pat will take the lead past a perambulator any day and will only
slightly consider a length of unexpected drain pipe along the road. But
even Pat has his objects of suspicion, and chief among them is a man,
any man on foot in black clothes. At such a person he will always shy
violently. This is a cause of great inconvenience and embarrassment to
us. There is one perfectly inoffensive gentleman, rather stout, who
beams upon the world through his spectacles with unvarying amiability,
whose perfectly respectable occupation no doubt compels him to wear
black, and whom it is our misfortune constantly to meet. Neither
soft words nor smiting will induce Pat to pass this person without a
wild affrighted curve away from him. The first time he smiled; the
second time he looked mildly surprised; the third time he mantled with
indignation, and now he always mantles. It has gone, I assure you,
quite beyond a joke. And we, what can _we_ do? You cannot apologize
for a thing like that. One’s usual course when a pony shies is to
take him up to the object and let him sniff it so that he will know
better the next time, but how ask an elderly, self-respecting gentleman
to allow himself to be sniffed in that way? This morning I saw the
object coming, and had an inspiration. “Let us turn round,” said I to
Tiglath-Pileser, “and let him pass _us_.” So we turned and waited,
with the air of expecting some one from the opposite direction. The man
in black came nervously on and Tiglath-Pileser laid a reassuring hand
on Pat’s neck. Would you believe it, Pat stood like an angel, and _the
man in black shied_! Shied badly. And went on looking more furious than
ever. We daily expect to have some kind of writ served on us, and do
not at all know what steps we should take.
The ponies went excitedly this morning, as they always do after a
storm like the one we had last night. “Ridiculous animal,” said I
to Arabi as he paused to look askance at a small boulder that had
slipped down the khud. “This is the same old road you travelled many
yesterdays and will travel many to-morrows. Foolish beast, of what are
you afraid?” Tiglath-Pileser reproved me. “To us,” said he, “it is the
same old road, but to a really observant person like Arabi it presents
fifty significant changes. He in his stable listened to the rain last
night with emotions quite different from yours in your bed. To him
it meant that the young grass was everywhere springing and the turf
everywhere softening under foot, and no doubt he reflected once more
upon the insoluble problem presented by heel-ropes and your meals in
a trough. This morning his experienced eye discovers all he expected
and more,--puddles, channels, and other suspicious circumstances. That
stone was not there yesterday, no doubt a wild beast had unearthed
it and was sitting behind it as we passed, waiting for just such a
breakfast as Arabi knows he comprises. That the wild beast didn’t
happen to be there on this occasion was great luck for Arabi and you
can see he is relieved.”
“Well,” said I, unsympathetic, “I think a good deal of it is nonsense
all the same,” and as we approached the next lurking lion I gave Arabi
a sound cuff that drew off his attention and he cantered past it
without a word.
The familiar road wound round our own hill, the Roy-Regent’s hill
crowned with his castle, and Summer Hill. It would be entertaining to
be as observant as Arabi and find wonders round every curve; we come
far short of that and sometimes confess the great book of nature before
us a little dull for lack of the writing of man. It is possible that
mountains may suggest mere altitude, especially mountains like the
Himalayas, wall behind wall, waves transfixed in long unbroken lines
against the sky; one cannot always feel a passion of admiration for
mere matter at an inconvenient level. But their new mood of the rains
makes them beautiful, almost interesting. The mist rises among them and
turns them cleverly into the peaks and masses they ought to be, and a
slope flashes in the brilliant sun and a ravine sinks in the purple
shade, and the barest shoulder is cloaked in green velvet. “They would
give a good deal to see _that_ from the Row,” I say boastfully, and
Tiglath-Pileser responds “Yes indeed,” and we both look at it as if
we were the proprietors, momentarily almost inclined to admit it as a
compensation.
The jungle triumphs in the rains; it overwhelms the place. Even on the
shelf it is hard enough to cope with, creeping up, licking and lipping
the garden through the paling; but out upon the public khud-sides it
is unchecked and insatiable. We hate the jungle; it is so patient and
designing and unremitting, so much stronger than we are. Such constant
war we have to make upon it merely to prevent it from swallowing us
alive. It will plant a toadstool in your bedroom and a tree in your
roof; it shrinks from nothing. That is why we hear newcomers from tidy
England in rapture upon the glorious freedom of the wilderness with
grim displeasure; and point to the crooked squares of our pathetic
little estates, painfully redeemed and set smugly about with posies,
saying “Admire _that_!” And it is so demoralizing, the jungle. The oak,
for instance, at home, is a venerable person we all respect and some
of us used to worship. Here he is a disreputable old Bacchus with an
untrimmed beard and ferns sticking to his branches. Certain English
flowers even, alas that I should say it! have left the paths of
propriety and taken permanently to unregulated living. The dahlia has
never repented, and the tiger-lilies brazen it out, but the little blue
face of a convolvulus I met this morning, strayed away in the company
of a snake-plant and a young rhododendron, said with wistful plainness,
“I was a virtuous flower once!”
Everything is still very damp, and in the shade very chill, and we
were glad enough to escape the cloud that suddenly sobered the highway
just as we turned in upon the shelf. A figure moved along the road
in the greyness, came closer, making automatic movements of head and
hands, passed us--a coolie eating a cucumber. It was a long and thick
cucumber, and he was eating the rind and the seeds, everything. It
seemed a cold, unsuitable, injudicious thing for even a coolie to eat
in the rain. We hoped it was vicious indulgence, but we feared it was
his breakfast.