GAUDIA IN EXCELSIS.
Quis non malarum quas Amor curas habet
Hæc inter obliviscitur?
Before many weeks had passed 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 constitution, and, despite the
lamentations of his Commissioner, who was at his wits' end to find a
satisfactory substitute, 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 passionate 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
assuredly 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 amusement 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 masses 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 amusements, and
which, historians gravely assure 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 balls, 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 noble 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
participate.
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
_tête-à-tête_ and all that an artistic Bachelor's soul dreams of as
appropriate to balls. 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.