"What is your name?" I asked.
"Phooli-jan, _Huzoor_," she answered, with a brilliant, dazzling
smile.
I sat looking at her, wondering if a more appropriate name could have
been found for that figure among the anemones and celandines, the
primulas, pansies, and pinks--the thousand-and-one blossoms which,
glowing against their groundwork of forget-me-not, formed a
jewel-mosaic right to the foot of the snows above us. _Flowerful
life!_ Truly that was hers. She had a great bunch of scarlet
rhododendron stuck behind her ear, matching the cloth cap perched
jauntily on her head, and as she sat herding her buffaloes on the
upland she had threaded chaplet on chaplet of ox-eyed daisies, and
hung them about her wherever they could be hung. The result was
distinctly flowerful; her face also was distinctly pretty, distinctly
clean for a Kashmiri girl's. But coquette, flirt, minx, was written in
every line of it, and accounted for a most unusual neatness and
brightness.
She caught my eye and smiled again, broadly, innocently.
"The _Huzoor_ would like to paint my picture, wouldn't he?" she went
on, in a tone of certainty. "The Sahib who came last year gave me five
rupees. I will take six this year. Food is dear, and those base-born
contractors of the Maharajah seize everything--one walnut in ten, one
chicken in ten."
But I was not going to be beguiled into the old complaints I could
hear any and every day from the hags of the village. Up here on the
_murg_, within a stone's-throw of the first patch of snow picketing
the outskirts of the great glacier of Gwashbrari, I liked, if
possible, to forget how vile man could be in the little shingle huts
clustering below by the river. I will not describe the place. To begin
with it defies description, and next, could I even hint at its
surpassing beauty, the globetrotter would come and defile it. It is
sufficient to say that a _murg_ is an upland meadow or alp, and that
this one, with its forget-me-nots and sparkling glaciers, was like a
turquoise set in diamonds. I had seated myself on a projecting spur,
whence I could sketch a frowning defile northwards, down which the
emerald-green river was dashing madly among huge rocks crowned by
pine-trees.
"I will give five rupees also; that is plenty," I remarked suavely,
and Phooli-jan smiled again.
"It must do, for I like being painted. Only a few Sahibs come, very
few; but whenever they see me they want to paint me and the flowers,
and it makes the other girls in the village angry. Then Goloo and
Chuchchu----" Here she went off into a perfect cascade of smiles, and
began to pull the eyelashes off the daisies deliberately. There seems
a peculiar temptation in girlhood for cruelty towards flowers all over
the world, and Phooli-jan was pre-eminently girlish. She looked
eighteen, but I doubt if she was really more than sixteen. Even so, it
was odd to find her unappropriated, so I inquired if Goloo or Chuchchu
was the happy man.
"My mother is a widow," she replied without the least hesitation. "It
depends which will pay the most, for we are poor. There are others,
too, so there is no hurry. They are at my beck and call."
She crooked her forefinger and nodded her head as if beckoning to some
one. For sheer lighthearted, innocent enjoyment of her own attraction
I never saw the equal of that face. I should have made my fortune if I
could have painted it there in the blazing sunlight, framed in
flowers; but it was too much for me. Therefore, I asked her to move to
the right, further along the promontory, so that I could put her in
the foreground of the picture I had already begun.
"There, by that first clump of iris," I said, pointing to a patch of
green sword-leaves, where the white and lilac blossoms were beginning
to show.
She gave a perceptible shudder.
"What? Sit on a grave! Not I. Does not the _Huzoor_ know that those
are graves? It is true. All our people are buried here. We plant the
iris over them always. If you ask why, I know not. It is the flower of
death."
A sudden determination to paint her, the Flowerful Life against the
Flowerful Death, completely obliterated the knowledge of my own
incompetence; but I urged and bribed in vain. Phooli-jan would not
stir. She would not even let me pick a handful of the flowers for her
to hold. It was unlucky; besides, one never knew what one might find
in the thickets of leaves--bones and horrid things. Had I never heard
that dead people got tired of their graves and tried to get out? Even
if they only wanted something in their graves they would stretch forth
a hand to get it. That was one reason why people covered them up with
flowers--just to make them more contented.
The idea of stooping to cull a flower and shaking hands with a corpse
was distinctly unpleasant, even in the sunlight; so I gave up the
point and began to sketch the girl as she sat. Rather a difficult
task, for she chattered incessantly. Did I see that thin blue thread
of smoke in the dark pall of pine-trees covering the bottom of the
valley? That was Goloo's fire. He was drying orris root for the
Maharajah. There, on the opposite _murg_, where the buffaloes showed
dark among the flowers, was Chuchchu's hut. Undoubtedly, Chuchchu was
the richer, but Goloo could climb like an ibex. It was he whom the
_Huzoor_ was going to take as a guide to the peak. He could dance,
too. The _Huzoor_ should see him dance the circle dance round the
fire--no one turned so slowly as Goloo. He would not frighten a young
lamb, except when he was angry--well, jealous, if the _Huzoor_ thought
that a better word.
By the time she had done chattering there was not a petal left on the
ox-eyed daisies, and I was divided between pity and envy towards Goloo
and Chuchchu.
That evening, as usual, I set my painting to dry on the easel at the
door of the tent. As I lounged by the camp fire, smoking my pipe, a
big young man, coming in with a jar of buffalo milk on his shoulder
and a big bunch of red rhododendron behind his ear, stopped and
grinned at my caricature of Phooli-jan. Five minutes after, down by
the servants' encampment, I heard a free fight going on, and strolled
over to see what was the matter. After the manner of Kashmiri
quarrels, it had ended almost as it began; for the race love peace.
That it had so ended was not, however, I saw at a glance, the fault of
the smaller of the antagonists, who was being forcibly held back by my
_shikari_.
"Chuchchu, that man there, wanted to charge Goloo, this man here, the
same price for milk as he does your honour," explained the _shikari_
elaborately. "That was extortionate, even though Goloo, being the
_Huzoor's_ guide for to-morrow, may be said to be your honour's
servant for the time. I have settled the matter justly. The _Huzoor_
need not give thought to it."
I looked at the two recipients of Phooli-jan's favour with
interest--for that the bunches of red rhododendron they both wore were
her gift I did not doubt. They were both fine young men, but Goloo was
distinctly the better-looking of the two, if a trifle sinister.
Despite the recommendation of my _shikari_ to cast thought aside, the
incident lingered in my memory, and I mentioned it to Phooli-jan when,
on returning to finish my sketch, I found her waiting for me among the
flowers. Her smile was more brilliant than ever.
"They will not hurt each other," she said. "Chuchchu knows that Goloo
is more active, and Goloo knows that Chuchchu is stronger. It is like
the dogs in our village."
"I was not thinking of them," I replied; "I was thinking of you.
Supposing they were to quarrel with you?"
She laughed. "They will not quarrel. In summer time there are plenty
of flowers for everybody."
I thought of those red rhododendrons, and could not repress a smile at
her barefaced wisdom of the serpent.
"And in the winter time?"
"Then I will marry one of them, or some one. I have only to choose.
That is all. They are at my beck and call."
Three years passed before recurring leave enabled me to pay another
visit to the _murg_. The rhododendrons were once more on the uplands,
and as I turned the last corner of the pine-set path which threaded
its way through the defile I saw the meadow before me, with its mosaic
of flowers bright as ever. The memory of Phooli-jan came back to me as
she had sat in the sunshine nodding and beckoning.
"Phooli-jan?" echoed the old patriarch who came out to welcome me as I
crossed the plank bridge to the village, "Phooli-jan, the herd-girl?
_Huzoor_, she is dead; she died from picking flowers. A vain thing. It
was at the turn beyond the _murg_, _Huzoor_, half-way between
Chuchchu's hut and Goloo's drying stage. There is a big rhododendron
tree hanging over the cliff, and she must have fallen down. It is
three years gone."
Three years; then it must have happened almost immediately after I
left the valley. The idea upset me; I knew not why. The _murg_ without
that Flowerful Life nodding and beckoning felt empty, and I found
myself wondering if indeed the girl had fallen down, or if she had
played with flowers too recklessly and one of her lovers, perhaps
both---- It was an idea which dimmed the sunshine and I was glad that
I had arranged not to remain for the night, but to push on to another
meadow, some six miles farther up the river. To do so, however, I
required a fresh relay of coolies, and while my _shikari_ was
arranging for this in the village I made my way by a cross-cut to the
promontory, with its patches of iris.
Deaths are rare in these small communities, and there were but two or
three new graves--all but one too recent to be poor Phooli-jan's.
That, then, must be hers, with its still clearly denned oblong of
iris, already a mass of pale purple and white.
I sat down on a rock and began, unromantically, to eat my lunch,
finishing up with a pull at my flask, and thus providentially
fortified, I stooped, ere leaving, to pick one or two of the blossoms
from the grave, intending to paint them round the sketch of the girl's
head which I had with me.
Great heavens! what was that?
I turned positively sick with horror and doubt. Was it a hand? It was
some time before I could force myself to set aside the sheathing
leaves and settle the point. Something it was, something which, even
as I parted the stems, fell to pieces, as the skeleton of a beckoning
hand might have done. I did not stay to see more; I let the flowers
close over it--whatever it was--and made my way back to the village.
My baggage, having changed shoulders, was streaming out over the plank
bridge again, and in the two first bearers, carrying my cook-room pots
and pans, I recognised Goloo and Chuchchu. They had both grown
stouter, and wore huge bunches of red rhododendron behind their ears.
I found out, on inquiry, that they were both married and had become
bosom friends.
I have not seen the turquoise set in diamonds since, but I often think
of it, and wonder what it was I saw among the iris. And then I seem to
see Phooli-jan sitting among the flowers, nodding her head and saying,
"They are at my beck and call."
If I were Goloo or Chuchchu, I would be buried somewhere else.