Another slanting turn or two, and the candlestick bush is left behind.
The red-flowered indigo hides the dry, red soil, and from it rise
strange shrubs with sparse foliage and abundant blossom--yellows and
whites and lilacs--with here and there a burnished pomegranate, vivid
green and crimson. A sweet scent fills the air from grey aromatic
herbs, among which the wild bees keep up a perpetual hum. It is the
land of honey and honey bees. Butterflies also. There goes a purple
emperor, and, by Jove! yonder is one of those swallowed-tailed whoppers
you have seen somewhere in a glass case. The head sinks back on the
pillow again, tiredly content, to watch the scarlet flash of a
sun-bird. Was that a fern hidden in the crevice of the yellowing rocks?
Yes! parched, dwarfed, but still a fern. So on and up, until the
coolies set the dhooli down on a bit of real green grass beside the
tiny trickle of the spring whence they slake their thirst, and some one
from a shingled hut hung with flowering, fruiting gourds, brings the
sahib a red-brown earthen pot. A land of milk this--somewhat smoky, no
doubt, yet still milk. Over the tops of the fragrant pine-trees
something blue climbs up and up into the sky. Can it be a hill?--the
hills '_from whence cometh your help!_' The memory of some early
morning service in the odd little station church comes over you, with
the punkahs swinging overhead, the Deputy-Commissioner reading the
psalms, and the involuntary stir northwards of the small knot of
worshippers as the words sink straight into their hearts, bringing
thoughts of dear faces looking down on the heat-sodden plains. Yes!
those are the hills; for, as the coolies slither through the slippery
pine needles, the faint blue mist blending into the clouds rises, and
the headman, pausing, points to a cluster of white dots. Those are the
sahib-logues' houses.
The path steepens; George pulls up the neglected shawl as shelter from
the growing cool; and as he is hurried along the curving road to find
old familiar friends in every flower and leaf his renewed vitality
expresses itself, oddly enough, in the inward conviction that here
at last is a place in which one could _die_ comfortably. Not that
George, or any other convalescent in his position, contemplates
the possibility of death; why should one when life has suddenly
become attractive?--when one can breathe instead of merely drawing
breath?--above all, when it is safe to go out into the garden without a
hat, and pick a carnation for your buttonhole before strolling over to
have tea with the most perfect woman in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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