The Pool in the Desert, Sara Jeannette Duncan [ebook reader with internet browser txt] 📗

to turn himself out well--his apparel was of smarter cut than mine, and his neckties in better taste. Little elegances appeared in the studio--he offered you Scotch in a Venetian decanter and Melachrinos from a chased silver box. The farouche element faded out of his speech; his ideas remained as fresh and as simple as ever, but he gave them a form, bless me! that might have been used at the Club. He worked as hard as ever, but more variously; he tried his hand at several new things. He said he was feeling about for something that would really make his reputation.

In spite of all this his little measure of success made him more contemptuous than before of its scene and its elements. He declared that he had a poorer idea than ever of society now that he saw the pattern from the smart side. That his convictions on this head survived one of the best Simla tailors shows that they must always have been strong. I think he believed that he was doing all that he did do to make himself socially possible with the purpose of pleasing Dora Harris. I would not now venture to say how far Dora inspired and controlled him in this direction, and how far the impulse was his own. The measure of appreciation that began to seek his pictures, poor and small though it was, gave him, on the other hand, the most unalloyed delight. He talked of the advice of Sir William Lamb as if it were anything but that of a pompous old ass, and he made a feast with champagne for Blum that must have cost him quite as much as Blum paid for the Breton sketch. He confirmed my guess that he had never in his life until he came to Simla sold anything, so that even these small transactions were great things to him, and the earnest of a future upon which he covered his eyes not to gaze too raptly. He mentioned to me that Kauffer had been asked for his address--who could it possibly be?--and looked so damped by my humourous suggestion that it was a friend of Kauffer's in some other line who wanted a bill paid, that I felt I had been guilty of brutality. And all the while the quality of his wonderful output never changed or abated. Pure and firm and prismatic it remained. I found him one day at the very end of October, with shining eyes and fingers blue with cold, putting the last of the afternoon light on the snows into one of the most dramatic hill pictures I ever knew him to do. He seemed intoxicated with his skill, and hummed the 'Marseillaise,' I remember, all the way to Amy Villa whither I accompanied him.

It was the last day of Kauffer's contract; and besides, all the world, secretaries, establishments, hill captains, grass widows, shops, and sundries, was trundling down the hill. I came to ask my young friend what he meant to do.

'Do?' he cried. 'Why, eat, drink, and be merry! Kauffer has paid up, and his yoke is at the bottom of the sea. Come back and dine with me!'

The hour we spent together in his little inner room before dinner was served stands out among my strangest, loveliest memories of Armour. He was divinely caught up, and absurd as it is to write, he seemed to carry me with him. We drank each a glass of vermouth before dinner sitting over a scented fire of deodar branches, while outside the little window in front of me the lifted lines of the great empty Himalayan landscape faded and fell into a blur. I remembered the solitary scarlet dahlia that stood between us and the vast cold hills and held its colour when all was grey but that. The hill world waited for the winter; down a far valley we could hear a barking deer. Armour talked slowly, often hesitating for a word, of the joy there was in beauty and the divinity in the man who saw it with his own eyes. I have read notable pages that brought conviction pale beside that which stole about the room from what he said. The comment may seem fantastic, but it is a comment--I caressed the dog. The servant clattered in with the plates, and at a shout outside Armour left me. He came in radiant with Signor Strobo, also radiant and carrying a violin, for hotel-keeping was not the Signor's only accomplishment. I knew Strobo well; many a special dish had he ordered for my little parties; and we met at Armour's fireside like the genial old acquaintances we were. Another voice without and presently I was nodding to Rosario and vaguely wondering why he looked uncomfortable.

'I'm sorry,' said Armour, as we sat down, 'I've got nothing but beer. If I had known you were all coming, no vintage that crawls up the hill would have been good enough for me.' He threw the bond of his wonderful smile round us as we swallowed his stuff, and our hearts were lightened. 'You fellows,' he went on nodding at the other two, 'might happen any day, but my friend John Philips comes to me across aerial spaces; he is a star I've trapped--you don't do that often. Pilsener, John Philips, or Black?' He was helping his only servant by pouring out the beer himself, and as I declared for Black he slapped me affectionately on the back and said my choice was good.

The last person who had slapped me on the back was Lord Dufferin, and I smiled softly and privately at the remembrance, and what a difference there was. I had resented Dufferin's slap.

We had spiced hump and jungle-fowl and a Normandy cheese, everybody will understand that; but how shall I make plain with what exultation and simplicity we ate and drank, how the four candid selves of us sat around the table in a cloud of tobacco and cheered each other on, Armour always far in front turning handsprings as he went. Scraps come back to me, but the whole queer night has receded and taken its place among those dreams that insist at times upon having been realities. Rosario told us stories Kipling might have coveted of the under life of Port Said. Strobo talked with glorious gusto of his uncle the brigand. They were liberated men; we were all liberated men. 'Let the direction go,' cried Armour, 'and give the senses flight, taking the image as it comes, beating the air with happy pinions.' He must have been talking of his work, but I can not now remember. And what made Strobo say, of life and art, 'I have waited for ten years and five thousand pounds--now my old violin says, "Go, handle the ladle! Go, add up the account!"' And did we really discuss the chances of ultimate salvation for souls in the Secretariat? I know I lifted my glass once and cried, 'I, a slave, drink to freedom!' and Rosario clinked with me. And Strobo played wailing Hungarian airs with sudden little shakes of hopeless laughter in them. I can not even now hear Naches without being filled with the recollection of how certain bare branches in me that night blossomed.

I walked alone down the hill and along the three miles to the Club, and at every step the tide sank in me till it cast me on my threshold at three in the morning, just the middle-aged shell of a Secretary to the Government of India that I was when I set forth. Next day when my head clerk brought me the files we avoided one another's glances; and it was quite three weeks before I could bring myself to address him with the dignity and distance prescribed for his station as 'Mr.' Rosario.


Chapter 2.IX.

I went of course to Calcutta for the four winter months. Harris and I were together at the Club. It was the year, I remember, of the great shindy as to whether foreign consuls should continue to be made honourary members, in view of the sentiments some of them were freely reflecting from Europe upon the subject of a war in South Africa which was none of theirs. Certainly, feeling as they did, it would have been better if they had swaggered less about a club that stood for British Government; but I did not vote to withdraw the invitation. We can not, after all, take notice of every idle word that drops from Latin or Teutonic tongues; it isn't our way; but it was a liverish cold weather on various accounts, and the public temper was short. I heard from Dora oftener, Harris declared, than he did. She was spending the winter with friends in Agra, and Armour, of course, was there too, living at Laurie's Hotel, and painting, Dora assured me, with immense energy. It was just the place for Armour, a sumptuous dynasty wrecked in white marble and buried in desert sands for three hundred years; and I was glad to hear that he was making the most of it. It was quite by the way, but I had lent him the money to go there--somebody had to lend it to him--and when he asked me to decide whether he should take his passage for Marseilles or use it for this other purpose I could hardly hesitate, believing in him, as I did, to urge him to paint a little more of India before he went. I frankly despaired of his ever being able to pay his way in Simla without Kauffer, but that was no reason why he should not make a few more notes for further use at home, where I sometimes saw for him, when his desultory and experimental days were over and some definiteness and order had come into his work, a Bond Street exhibition.

I have not said all this time what I thought of Ingersoll Armour and Dora Harris together, because their connection seemed too vague and fantastic and impossible to hold for an instant before a steady gaze. I have no wish to justify myself when I write that I preferred to keep my eyes averted, enjoying perhaps just such a measure of vision as would enter at a corner of them. This may or may not have been immoral under the circumstances--the event did not prove it so--but for urgent private reasons I could not be the person to destroy the idyll, if indeed its destruction were possible, that flourished there in the corner of my eye. Besides, had not I myself planted and watered it? But it was foolish to expect other people, people who are forever on the lookout for trousseaux and wedding-bells, and who considered these two as mere man and maid, and had no sight of them as engaging young spirits in happy conjunction--it was foolish to expect such people to show equal consideration. Christmas was barely over before the lady with whom Miss Harris was staying found it her duty to communicate to Edward Harris the fact that dear Dora's charming friendship--she was sure it was nothing more--with the young artist--Mrs. Poulton believed Mr. Harris would understand who was meant--was exciting a good deal of comment in the station, and WOULD dear Mr. Harris please write to Dora himself, as Mrs. Poulton was beginning to feel so responsible?

I saw the letter; Harris showed it to me when he sat down to breakfast with the long face of a man in a domestic difficulty, and we settled together whom we should ask to put his daughter up in Calcutta. It should be the wife of a man in his own department of course; it is to one's Deputy Secretary that one looks for succour at times like this;