TO THE HILLS!
However marred, and more than twice her years,
Scarred with an ancient sword-cut on the cheek,
And bruised and bronzed,--she lifted up her eyes,
And loved him with that love which was her doom.
Summer was beginning to come on apace; not summer as English people know
it, the genial supplement to a cold and watery spring, with just enough
heat about it to thaw the chills of winter out of one; but summer in its
fiercest and cruellest aspect, breathing sulphurous blasts, glowing with
intolerable radiance, begirt with whirlwinds of dust--the unsparing
despot of a sultry world. The fields, but a few weeks ago one great
'waveless plain' of ripening corn, had been stripped of their finery,
and were now lying brown and blistering in the sun's eye. The dust lay
deep on every road and path and wayside shrub, and seized every
opportunity of getting itself whirled into miniature siroccos. More than
once Maud and Felicia had been caught, not in a sweet May shower,
stealing down amid bud and blossom and leaving the world moist and fresh
and fragrant behind it, but in rough, turbulent clouds of rushing sand,
which shut out the sunshine and replaced the bright blue atmosphere with
the lurid glare of an eclipse. Felicia's flowers had begun to droop, nor
could all her care rescue the fresh green of her lawn from turning to a
dingy brown. Already prudent housekeepers were busy with preparations
against the evil day so near at hand. Verandahs were guarded with folds
of heavy matting, to shut out the intolerable light that would have
forced a way through any ordinary barrier; windows were replaced by
fragrant screens of cuscus-grass, through which the hot air passing
might lose a portion of its sting; and one morning, when Maud came out,
she found a host of labourers carrying a huge winnowing-machine to one
side of the house, the object of which was, Vernon informed her, to
manufacture air cool enough for panting Britons to exist in.
Day by day some piece of attire was discarded as too intolerably heavy
for endurance. The morning ride became a thing of the past, and even a
drive at sunset too fatiguing to be quite enjoyable. Maud felt that she
had never--not even when Miss Goodenough had locked her up for a whole
summer afternoon, to learn her 'duty to her neighbour'--known what
exhaustion really meant till now.
The children were turning sadly white, and Felicia began to be anxious
for their departure to the Hills. Maud would of course go with them, and
Vernon was to follow in a couple of months, when he could get his leave.
Much as she hated leaving her husband, Felicia was on the whole
extremely glad to go. The state of things at home disturbed her. Maud's
outspoken susceptibility, Desvoeux's impressionable and eager
temperament, Sutton's unconsciousness of what she wanted him to do--the
combination was one from which it was a relief in prospect to escape to
the refuge of a new and unfamiliar society. Felicia's buoyant and
hopeful nature saw in the promised change of scene the almost certainty
that somehow or other matters would seem less unpromising when looked at
from the summits of Elysium.
For Elysium accordingly they started. Three primitive vehicles, whose
battered sides and generally faded appearance spoke eloquently of the
dust, heat and bustle in which their turbulent existence was for the
most part engaged, were dragged one afternoon, each by a pair of highly
rebellious ponies, with a vast deal of shouting, pushing, and
execrating, into a convenient position before the hall-door, and their
tops loaded forthwith with that miscellaneous and profuse supply of
baggage which every move in India necessarily involves, and which it is
the especial glory of Indian servants to preserve in undiminished
amplitude. Suffice it to say, that it began with trunks and cradles,
went on with native nurses, and concluded with a goat. Vernon sat in the
verandah, smoking a cheroot with stoical composure and interfering only
when some pyramid of boxes seemed to be assuming proportions of perilous
altitude. He was to travel with them, establish them at Elysium, and
ride down sixty miles again by night--a performance of which no
Dustyporean thought twice. Maud, to whom one of the creaking fabrics was
assigned in company with the two little girls, found that (the feat of
clambering in and establishing herself once safely accomplished) the
journey promised to be not altogether unluxurious. The Vernons' servants
were experienced and devoted, and every detail of the journey was
carefully foreseen. The interior of the carriage, well furnished with
mattresses and pillows, made an excellent bed; a little army of servants
gathered round to proffer aid and to give the Sahibs a passing salaam;
friendly carriages kept rolling in to say 'Good-bye.' Sutton, who had
been kept away on business, galloped in at the last moment and seemed
too much occupied in saying farewell to Felicia to have much time for
other thoughts. 'Good-bye,' he said, in the most cheery tone, as he came
to Maud's carriage, and 'Good-bye, Uncle Jem!' shouted the little girls,
waving their adieux as best they might under the deep awning; and then,
after a frantic struggle for independent action on the part of the
ponies, they were fairly off and spinning along the great, straight,
high road which stretches in unswerving course through so many hundred
miles of English rule.
The little girls were in the greatest glee, and busy in signalling Uncle
Jem for as long as possible. Maud, somehow, did not share their mirth:
for the first time Sutton had seemed unkind, or near enough unkind, to
give her pain. This ending of the pleasant time seemed to her an event
which friendship ought not quite to have ignored. She looked back upon
many happy hours, the brightest of her life; and the person who had made
them bright evidently did not share her sentimental views about them in
the least. Partings, Maud's heart told her, must surely be always sad;
yet Sutton's voice had no tone of sadness in it. 'Stay--stay a little!'
she could have cried with Imogen,
Were you but riding forth to air yourself,
Such parting were too petty--
True, they were to meet in a few weeks; but yet--but yet!
'You've got a big tear on your cheek,' said one of her companions, with
the merciless frankness of childhood.
'Have I?' said Maud. 'Then it must be the dust that has gone into my
eyes. How hot it is! Come, let us have some oranges!'
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 shining 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 butter.
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, flashing 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 Titania 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 shifted 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 attitude 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 flashing 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
masses 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.