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.
CHAPTER XVI.
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.