Despite the recommendation of my shikari to cast thought aside, the incident lingered in my memory, and I mentioned it to Phooli-jân 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-jân came back to me as she had sat in the sunshine nodding and beckoning.
"Phooli-jân?" echoed the old patriarch who came out to welcome me as I crossed the plank bridge to the village, "Phooli-jân, 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.