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 fair
plains of Hindostan, have successively made the discovery that there are
portions of the year when their magnificent possession had best be
contemplated from a respectful distance. Some monarchs retired for the
summer to the exquisite Cashmir valleys: others to cool plateaux in the
far interior. The latest administrators of the country have solved the
problem by perching, through the hot season, on the summits of a craggy
range, and by performing the functions of Government at an altitude of
7000 feet above the sea.
The fact that the highest officials in the country, having a large
amount of hard work to do, should prefer to do it in an invigorating
mountain atmosphere, rather than amid swamps, steam and fever in the
plains below, is not, of course, surprising. The only matter of regret
is that the obvious advantages, public and private, of an European
climate for half the year can, from the nature of things, be enjoyed by
so tiny a fraction of the official world. As it is, the annual removal
of the Government to its summer quarters gives rise too often to a
little outburst of unreasonable, though not unnatural jealousy; and
Indian 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 as
hard at Capua as English officials do at Elysium, nothing but good could
have resulted from their sojourn in that agreeable resting-place. Of the
holiday-makers it may safely be said that, in nine cases out of ten,
they have earned, by long months of monotonous, laborious, and often
solitary life, a good right to all the refreshment of body and soul that
a brief interval of cool breezes, new faces, and an amusing society can
give them. The 'Jack' of the Civil Service is often a dull boy because
the stern _régime_ of 'all work and no play' is too rigorously enforced
upon him. Let no one therefore grudge him his few weeks of rest and
merry-making, or mock at the profuse homage with which the goddess
Terpsichore is adored by her modern votaries on the Himalayan heights.
Elysium, indeed, enchants one on the first approach. You clamber for
weary miles up a long, blazing ascent, where even the early morning sun
seems to sting and pierce. As the road turns, you enter suddenly a sweet
depth of shade formed by thick growths of ilex and rhododendron, from
the breaks in which you look out at ease upon the blazing day beyond.
Dotted all about the road, above and below, perched on every convenient
rock or level ridge of soil, or sometimes built up on a framework of
piles, are the homes of the Elysians; not, alas! the ideals which the
imagination would conceive of the abodes of the blest, but seaside
lodgings, of a by no means first-rate order, with precipices, clouds and
rain, instead of sea. Presently the road fails at a great chasm in the
mountain-side, and the horses' feet clatter over a frail-looking
structure of planks and scaffolding, which clings to the mountain's
edge. This is merely a landslip, an event too common even to be
observed. Each heavy rainfall, however, washes an appreciable fraction
of the Elysian summits to the depths below and leaves the craggy sides
barer and steeper than ever. Then, emerging from the ilex grove, the
traveller passes to a little Mall, where the fashionable world assembles
for mutual edification, and the tide of life, business and gaiety flows
fast and strong.
There is something in the air of the place which bespeaks the close
neighbourhood of the Sovereign rule, the august climax of the official
hierarchy. Servants, brilliant in scarlet and gold, are hurrying hither
and thither. Here some Rajah, petty monarch of the surrounding ranges or
the fat plains below, attended with his mimic court and tatterdemalion
cavalry, is marching in state to pay his homage to the 'great Lord
Sahib.' Here some grand lady, whose gorgeous attire and liveried retinue
bespeak her sublime position, is constrained to bate her greatness to
the point of being carried--slung like the grapes of Eschol--on a pole,
and borne on sturdy peasants' shoulders to pay a round of the
ceremonious visits which etiquette enjoins upon her. Officers,
secretaries, aides-de-camp come bustling by on mountain-ponies, each
busy on his own behest. The energetic army of morning callers are
already in the field. A dozen palanquins, gathered at Madame Fifini's,
the Elysian 'Worth,' announce the fact that as many ladies are hard at
work within, running up long-bills for their husbands and equipping
themselves for conquest at the next Government House 'At home.'
Smartly-furnished shops glitter with all the latest finery of Paris and
London, and ladies go jogging along on their bearers' shoulders, gay
enough for a London garden-party in July. In the midst of all,--the
solid basis on which so huge a structure of business, pomp and pleasure
is erected,--clumps the British Private, brushed, buttoned and rigid,
with a loud, heavy tread, which contrasts strangely with the noiselessly
moving crowd around him and bespeaks his conscious superiority to a race
of beings whom, with a lordly indifference to minute ethnological
distinctions, he designates collectively as 'Moors.'
Some servants were waiting at the entrance of the place to conduct the
Vernons to their home, and before many minutes the travellers were
standing in the balcony, looking out on the steep slopes of green
foliage below them and the noble snow-ranges which bounded the entire
horizon. Maud soon rushed off to explore the house; and Felicia made her
way to the garden, to see how many of last summer's plants the winter
had spared to her. Presently she came in, with dew-bedrenched sleeves
and 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, till
each looked as gaudy as a little Queen of May. Her husband came and
stood over them and watched the scene.
'Now,' he said, 'Felicia, you ought to be quite happy--you have your
children 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 again
to-night! Do you know, George, I mind each separation worse than the
last? Next summer we will send the children straight to "The Gully," and
we will stay comfortably together.'
Maud came back in the highest spirits. 'Look here,' she said, showing a
handful of snow, and fingers red and blue with unaccustomed cold--'how
nice 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 not
enchanting?'
'You shall have some flowers too, dear,' cried Maud, who seldom missed
an opportunity of petting Felicia and letting her love run out in some
pretty 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 vain
as possible. Now, as I suppose nobody means to crown me, I vote that you
go and get ready for breakfast, and I will prepare Maud a plate of
strawberries-and-cream, by way of beginning the feast.'
That morning lived ever afterwards in Maud's thoughts as one of the
times when the world looked brightest to her. Everything was full of
excitement, interest and keen pleasure. If from time to time a thought
of Sutton set her heart beating, it was more that she had learnt to
worship him as an ideal of all that was most charming in man than that
his absence cost her any serious regret. It had given her a pang to part
and to feel how little of a pang it had given him. He had been almost
unconscious of her departure; he had been certainly quite, quite
indifferent to it. Such insensibility was a little speck on the
otherwise spotless perfection; but Maud's heart was too light for this
to weigh it down for long. A long, charming vista of enjoyment was
opening before her. Half-a-dozen people, she knew, were awaiting her
arrival with impatience and thought Elysium not quite Elysium till she
was there. Before the morning was over there would come, so her
prophetic soul announced, kind familiar faces, all the brighter for her
presence, with all sorts of delightful projects, often talked of
beforehand, now to come into actual fruition; rides, picnics, dances,
theatricals, and (thrilling thought!) a fancy ball, at which Maud had
already found herself twenty times whirling in anticipated valses, each
more enchanting than the last. Who could contemplate such a prospect
with equanimity? or whose heart have room for gloomy thoughts with so
many bright dreams to crush them out?
Then presently there came a note from Mrs. Vereker, bidding her a
cordial welcome and threatening her high displeasure if Maud's first
visit was not to her. To Mrs. Vereker's accordingly they went, and found
her in a little cottage, romantically stuck into a cleft in the rocks,
with a cataract of honeysuckle tumbling all about a wooden porch, and a
view of the mountains which even her adorers, burning to behold herself,
were yet constrained to stop and look at. There was a little court, with
a wooden railing to guard the edge and geraniums blazing all about it,
where a succession of enthusiasts' ponies waited while their owners did
homage within. Through that convenient cranny in the foliage the deity,
unseen, could spy the approaching visitor and decide betimes whether she
would be 'at home' or not. Now she was unquestionably at home and met
them at the door with merry greetings. She led them in and showed them
her drawing-room, the very home of innocence and refined propriety. 'My
husband does not wish me to mope when he is away,' she said, with a
charming simple smile; and, to do her justice, in this respect, at any
rate, she obeyed his wishes. If the loveliest, freshest bonnets, the
daintiest gloves, the most picturesque mountain costumes, a succession
of bewildering head-dresses, could rescue a widowed soul from
melancholy, Mrs. Vereker had no right to gloom. Nor was hers the only
nature that was cheered, for all mankind conspired to assure her that
she was the most bewitching of her sex. Turn where she would she found a
host of willing courtiers, who thought their assiduous services well
rewarded with a single smile. She looked at the world through her
beautiful purple eyes, and saw it prostrate at her feet.
Even Felicia was captivated, despite her own convictions; and Vernon
alone of the party declared her a little ogling hypocrite, and
pronounced himself unable to understand how any one could think her even
pretty.