CHAPTER XXXI.
BOLDERO ON GUARD.
Oh! never work
Like this was done for work's ignoble sake:
It must have finer aims to spur it on!
Thus Maud and her husband were more than reconciled. Maud packed up her dresses, with a few natural sighs that so much sweetness should waste itself unseen, and set about passing the summer with heroical cheerfulness. Things took a turn for the better. A few thunder-storms had come to cool the world, and the early rains were covering the barren mountains with verdure and bringing new life to Maud's garden. Mrs. Crummins was giving her lessons in water-colours, and altogether existence was less intolerable than she had believed it possible that it should be. Perhaps the momentary breach, followed so quickly by so thorough a reconciliation, had engendered an especial sweetness in her intercourse with her husband. Be that as it may, Maud had resigned Elysium and settled down courageously to her home life, not, perhaps, without regret, but at any rate, without discontent.
Before, however, their reconciliation had time to take effect in any alteration of their plans, events occurred which gave their thoughts a wholly new direction and effectually settled for them what they were to do. Occasional cases of cholera, seeds sown by the scattered atoms of the great Fair the year before, had been occurring in various districts all through the winter, and at the first blush of spring the disease showed symptoms of breaking out in force. Week by week the 'Gazette' chronicled a marked diminution in other forms of sickness, an equally distinct increase in this. The doctors had a busy time in making preparations, and great were the cleansings, the whitewashings, the emptyings, the fillings-up in many an immund old town and ill-odoured village, where the kingdom of Dirt had prevailed in unbroken tranquillity for generations past.
Outside each city a cholera camp was formed, with a view to the isolation of the sufferers. The District officers were at work from morning to night. The natives took it all with that slightly wondering acquiescence which is the normal attitude of mind produced by the proceedings of the 'Sahib.' It was the order of God that cholera should come; it was likewise the order of the 'Sirkar'[4] that houses should be whitewashed, cesspools cleared out, and chlorodyne administered gratis to all who liked it. Both visitations were inscrutable, and to be endured with philosophic calm. The English Doctor, however, was, so ran the orthodox belief, a dangerous fellow, and the old 'Hakim,' with his traditional nostrums, no doubt the proper person to be killed or cured by. The right thing therefore, if one became ill, was carefully to conceal the fact, have surreptitious interviews with the native physician, and, if die one must, be returned as having died of some disease which would not involve a visit from the 'Inspector Sahib,' a conflagration of bedsteads and clothes, a general effusion of whitewash and consequent topsy-turveying of all the household. English doctors and native doctors, however, were of much the same avail, for King Cholera has as yet defied science to read his deadly mystery and learn the secret of his rule. All that science can achieve is to narrow the limits of his ravages.
May had scarcely begun when two cases occurred in the Hill Camp, and Sutton, for the first time in his life, knew what it was to be afraid. He had given 'hostages to Fortune,' and death and danger for the first time looked really terrible when it was Maud who had to confront them. Fifty times Sutton cursed his folly and selfishness in not having sent her off earlier to the Hills, out of harm's way.
While he was harrassing himself with vain regrets and self-reproaches and puzzling his brains as to how the mistake might be even yet repaired, Maud herself added a new item to his perplexities by becoming decidedly unwell. She awoke unrefreshed and wretched; declined the great treat of the day, her morning ride; came shivering and appetiteless to breakfast and confessed to feeling completely miserable. Her husband, the moment that he felt her dry, burning hand, exclaimed that she had got fever, gave her a welcome prescription to go back at once to bed, and sent off for the Doctor.
The reader of these pages, who knows the Sandy Tracts, would think that I did them scarcely justice if I omitted from the picture all reference to a visitation which to many of them formed, too often, a main feature of Indian existence. There is a Fiend there, be it known, that comes, no one can tell whence—from earth or air, or marshy pool or frosty sky or blazing sunny morning. However, when he comes he speedily makes his arrival known to the guests whom he favours with a visit. He shakes them and racks them, and gets into their heads and beats a kettledrum there, and sets a tribe of imps to dance a sort of infernal ballet all about each quivering limb; he freezes them, so that the poor shivering wretches bury themselves under mountains of rags and blankets and go on shivering still; he parches them till they feel like Dives in torture; he turns their brains to mud, their thoughts to chaos, their high spirits to the very blackest gall. Most people, it is believed, when the demon first possesses them, signalise his accession by a hearty cry; and well they may, for among the other cheering thoughts which suggest themselves at the moment, one is that every time you have fever the likelier you are to have it yet again; and that your way to recovery lies through a remedy which for bitterness and bewilderment is only not as bad as the disease for which it is invoked—quinine. In the Sandy Tracts they serve it to you hot, out of a black bottle, stopped with a twisted coil of paper, and heated half to boiling by being carried through the sun. It is at such a moment that existence naturally wears a sombre look, and that the Indian exile curses the ambition or the ill-luck that bore him to such a fortune beneath an alien sky.
Maud, however, was so far fortunate that she had the best and tenderest nurses that could be wished. The surgeon, delighted with so interesting a patient, was assiduous, considerate and suggestive. Mrs. Crummins was more than a mother, and Sutton suddenly discovered a perfect genius for the science of an invalid's room. When Maud, after a week or two, began to get strong again there was no doubt in the little conclave that she ought to go to the Hills. A great deal of illness was about—the cholera had become really serious—the fierce summer was coming quickly on—in another fortnight the journey would be almost impossible for all but the strongest. So it was settled for her to go; and Sutton became very impatient and uneasy till she was safely off.