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 inertiæ_,
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. Cockshaw 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
Municipal Committee wild with projects of reform--water-supply,
vaccination, canals, 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 assault 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
friendship, and Boldero had thus become a not unfrequent visitor at the
Vernons' house, where, though her husband pronounced 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.