The Pool in the Desert

S >> Sara Jeanette Duncan >> The Pool in the Desert

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If we met at dinner-parties, it would be sometimes Edward Harris and
sometimes myself who would take the dullest and stoutest woman down.
If she fell to him, the next in precedence was bestowed upon me, and
there might not be a pin to choose between them for phlegm and
inflation. It is a preposterous mistake to suppose that the married
ladies of Simla are in the majority brilliant and fascinating
creatures, who say things in French for greater convenience, and
lead a man on. After fifteen years I am ready to swear that I have
been led on to nothing more compromising than a subscription to the
Young Women's Christian Association, though no one could have been
more docile or more intelligent. During one viceroyalty of happy
memory half a dozen clever and amusing men and women came together
in Simla--it was a mere fortuitous occurrence, aided by a joyous
ruler who hated being bored as none before or ever since have hated
it--and the place has lived socially upon the reputation of that
meteoric term ever since. Whereas the domestic virtues are no more
deeply rooted anywhere than under the deodars; nor could any one, I
hasten to add, chronicle the fact with more profound satisfaction
than myself. A dinner-party, however, is not a favourable setting
for the domestic virtues; it does them so little justice that one
could sometimes almost wish them left at home, and I was talking of
Simla dinner-parties, where I have encountered so many. How often
have I been consulted as to the best school for boys in England, or
instructed as to how much I should let my man charge me for shoe-
blacking, or advised as to the most effectual way of preventing the
butler from stealing my cheroots, while Dora Harris, remote as a
star, talked to a cavalry subaltern about wind-galls and splints!
At these moments I felt my seniority bitterly; to give Dora to a
cavalry subaltern was such plain waste.

It was an infinite pleasure to know any one as well as I seemed to
know Dora Harris. She, I believe, held no one else upon the same
terms of intimacy, though she found women, of course, with whom she
fluttered and embraced; and while there were, naturally, men with
whom I exchanged the time o'day in terms more or less cordial, I am
certain that I kept all my closest thoughts for her. It is
necessary again to know Simla to understand how our friendship was
gilded by the consideration that it was on both sides perfectly
spontaneous. Social life in the poor little place is almost a pure
farce with the number of its dictated, prompted intimacies, not
controlled by general laws of expediency as at home, but each on its
own basis of hope and expectancy, broadly and ludicrously obvious as
a case by itself. There is a conspiracy of stupidity about it, for
we are all in the same hat, every one of us; there is none so
exalted that he does not urgently want a post that somebody else can
give him. So we continue to exchange our depreciated smiles, and
only privately admit that the person who most desires to be
agreeable to us is the person whom we regard with the greatest
suspicion. As between Dora Harris and myself there could be,
naturally, no ax to grind. We amused ourselves by looking on
penetratingly but tolerantly at the grinding of other people's.

That was a very principal bond between us, that uncompromising
clearness with which we looked at the place we lived in, and on the
testimony of which we were so certain that we didn't like it. The
women were nearly all so much in heaven in Simla, the men so well
satisfied to be there too, at the top of the tree, that our
dissatisfaction gave us to one another the merit of originality,
almost proved in one another a superior mind. It was not that
either of us would have preferred to grill out our days in the
plains; we always had a saving clause for the climate, the altitude,
the scenery; it was Simla intrinsic, Simla as its other conditions
made it, with which we found such liberal fault. Again I should
have to explain Simla, at the length of an essay at least, to
justify our condemnation. This difficulty confronts me everywhere.
I must ask you instead to imagine a small colony of superior--very
superior--officials, of British origin and traditions, set on the
top of a hill, years and miles away from literature, music,
pictures, politics, existing like a harem on the gossip of the
Viceroy's intentions, and depending for amusement on tennis and
bumble-puppy, and then consider, you yourself, whether you are the
sort of person to be unquestionably happy there. If you see no
reason to the contrary, pray do not go on. There were times when
Dora declared that she couldn't breathe for want of an atmosphere,
and times when I looked round and groaned at the cheerful
congratulatory aridity in every man's eye--men who had done things
at Oxford in my own year, and come out like me to be mummified into
a last state like this. Thank Heaven, there was never any cheerful
congratulation in my eye; one could always put there, when the
thought inspired it, a saving spark of rank ingratitude instead.

It was as if we had the most desirable things--roses, cool airs, far
snowy ranges--to build what we like with, and we built Simla--
altitude, 7,000, population 2,500, headquarters of the Government of
India during the summer months. An ark it was, of course; an ark of
refuge from the horrible heat that surged below, and I wondered as I
climbed the steeps of Summer Hill in search of I. Armour's
inaccessible address, whether he was to be the dove bearing
beautiful testimony of a world coming nearer. I rejected the
simile, however, as over-sanguine; we had been too long abandoned on
our Ararat.

Chapter 2.III.

A dog of no sort of caste stood in the veranda and barked at me
offensively. I picked up a stone, and he vanished like the dog of a
dream into the house. It was such a small house that it wasn't on
the municipal map at all: it looked as if someone had built it for
amusement with anything that was lying about. Nevertheless, it had
a name, it was called Amy Villa, freshly painted in white letters on
a shiny black board, and nailed against the nearest tree in the
orthodox Simla fashion. It looked as if the owner of the place had
named it as a duty towards his tenant, the board was so new, and in
that case the reflection presented itself that the tenant might have
cooperated to call it something else. It was disconcerting somehow
to find that our dove had perched, even temporarily, in Amy Villa.
Nor was it soothing to discover that the small white object stuck in
the corner of the board was Mr. Ingersoll Armour's card.

In Simla we do not stick our cards about in that way at the mercy of
the wind and the weather; we paint our names neatly under the names
of our houses with 'I.C.S.' for Indian Civil Service, or 'P.W.D.'
for Public Works Department, or whatever designation we are entitled
to immediately after, so that there can be no mistake. This strikes
newcomers sometimes as a little professional, especially when a hand
accompanies, pointing; but it is the only possible way where there
are no streets and no numbers, but where houses are dropped about a
hilltop as if they had fallen from a pepper-pot. In sticking his
card out like that Mr. Armour seemed to imagine himself au quatrieme
or au cinquieme somewhere on the south side of the Seine; it
betrayed rather a ridiculous lack of conformity. He was high enough
up, however, to give any illusion; I had to stop to find the wind to
announce myself. There was nobody else to do it if I except the
dog.

I walked into the veranda and shouted. Then I saw that one end of
it was partly glazed off, and inside sat a young man in his shirt-
sleeves with his back to the door.

In reply he called out, 'That you, Rosario?' and I stood silent,
taken somewhat aback.

There was only one Rosario in Simla, and he was a subordinate in my
own office. Again the hateful need to explain. Between subordinate
clerks and officials in Simla there is a greater gulf fixed than was
ever imagined in parable. Besides, Rosario had a plain strain of
what we call 'the country' in him, a plain strain, that is, of the
colour of the country. It was certainly the first time in my
official career that I had been mistaken for Rosario.

Armour turned round and saw me--that I was a stranger.

He got up at once. 'Oh,' he said, 'I thought it was Rosario.

'It isn't,' I replied, 'my name is Philips. May I ask whether you
were expecting Mr. Rosario? I can come again, you know.'

'Oh, it doesn't matter. Sit down. He may drop in or he may not--I
rather thought he would today. It's a pull up, isn't it, from the
Mall? Have a whisky and soda.'

I stood on the threshold spellbound. It was just the smell that
bound me, the good old smell of oil paints and turpentine and
mediums and varnish and new canvas that you never by any chance put
your nose into in any part of Asia. It carried me back twenty years
to old haunts, old friends, old joys, ideals, theories. Ah, to be
young and have a temperament! For I had one then--that instant in
Armour's veranda proved it to me forever.

'No thanks,' I said. 'If you don't mind I'll just have the smell.'

The young fellow knew at once that I liked the smell. 'Well, have a
chair, anyhow,' he said, and took one himself and sat down opposite
me, letting his lean brown hands fall between his knees.

'Do you mind,' I said, 'if for a minute I sit still and look round?'

He understood again.

'I haven't brought much,' he said, 'I left pretty near everything in
Paris.'

'You have brought a world.' Then after a moment, 'Did you do that?'
I asked, nodding towards a canvas tacked against the wall. It was
the head of a half-veiled Arab woman turned away.

The picture was in the turning away, and the shadow the head-
covering made over the cheek and lips.

'Lord, no! That's Dagnan Bouveret. I used to take my things to
him, and one day he gave me that. You have an eye,' he added, but
without patronage. 'It's the best thing I've got.'

I felt the warmth of an old thrill.

'Once upon a time,' I said, 'I was allowed to have an eye.' The
wine, untasted all those years, went to my head. 'That's a vigorous
bit above,' I continued.

'Oh, well! It isn't really up to much, you know. It's Rosario's.
He photographs mostly, but he has a notion of colour.'

'Really?' said I, thinking with regard to my eye that the sun of
that atrocious country had put it out. 'I expect I've lost it,' I
said aloud.

'Your eye? Oh, you'll easily get a fresh one. Do you go home for
the exhibitions?'

'I did once,' I confessed. 'My first leave. A kind of paralysis
overtakes one here. Last time I went for the grouse.'

He glanced at me with his light clear eyes as if for the first time
he encountered a difficulty.

'It's a magnificent country for painting,' he said.

'But not for pictures,' I rejoined. He paid no attention, staring
at the ground and twisting one end of his moustache.

'The sun on those old marble tombs--broad sun and sand--'

'You mean somewhere about Delhi.'

'I couldn't get anywhere near it.' He was not at that moment
anywhere near me. 'But I have thought out a trick or two--I mean to
have another go when it cools off again down there.' He returned
with a smile, and I saw how delicate his face was. The smile turned
down with a little gentle mockery in its lines. I had seen that
particular smile only on the faces of one or two beautiful women.
It had a borrowed air upon a man, like a tiara or an earring.

'There's plenty to paint,' he said, looking at me with an air of
friendly speculation.

'Indeed, yes. And it has never been done. We are sure it has never
been done.'

'"We"--you mean people generally?'

'Not at all. I mean Miss Harris, Miss Harris and myself.'

'Your daughter?'

'My name is Philips,' I reminded him pleasantly, remembering that
the intelligence of clever people is often limited to a single art.
'Miss Harris is the daughter of Mr. Edward Harris, Secretary of the
Government of India in the Legislative Department. She is fond of
pictures. We have a good many tastes in common. We have always
suspected that India had never been painted, and when we saw your
things at the Town Hall we knew it.'

His queer eyes dilated, and he blushed.

'Oh,' he said, 'it's only one interpretation. It all depends on
what a fellow sees. No fellow can see everything.'

'Till you came,' I insisted, 'nobody had seen anything.'

He shook his head, but I could read in his face that this was not
news to him.

'That is mainly what I came up to tell you,' I continued, 'to beg
that you will go on and on. To hope that you will stay a long time
and do a great deal. It is such an extraordinary chance that any
one should turn up who can say what the country really means.'

He stuck his hands in his pockets with a restive movement. 'Oh,
don't make me feel responsible,' he said, 'I hate that;' and then
suddenly he remembered his manners. 'But it's certainly nice of you
to think so,' he added.

There was something a little unusual in his inflection which led me
to ask at this point whether he was an American, and to discover
that he came from somewhere in Wisconsin, not directly, but by way
of a few years in London and Paris. This accounted in a way for the
effect of freedom in any fortune about him for which I already liked
him, and perhaps partly for the look of unembarrassed inquiry and
experiment which sat so lightly in his unlined face. He came, one
realized, out of the fermentation of new conditions; he never could
have been the product of our limits and systems and classes in
England. His surroundings, his 'things,' as he called them, were as
old as the sense of beauty, but he seemed simply to have put them
where he could see them, there was no pose in their arrangement.
They were all good, and his delight in them was plain; but he was
evidently in no sense a connoisseur beyond that of natural instinct.
Some of those he had picked up in India I could tell him about, but
I had no impression that he would remember what I said. There was
one Bokhara tapestry I examined with a good deal of interest.

'Yes,' he said, 'they told me I shouldn't get anything as good as
that out here, so I brought it,' but I had to explain to him why it
was anomalous that this should be so.

'It came a good many miles over desert from somewhere,' he remarked,
as I made a note of inquiry as to the present direction of trade in
woven goods from Persia, 'I had to pound it for a week to get the
dust out.'

We spent an hour looking over work he had done down in the plains,
and then I took my leave. It did not occur to me at the moment to
ask Armour to come to the club or to offer to do anything for him;
all the hospitality, all that was worth offering seemed so much more
at his disposition than at mine. I only asked if I might come
again, mentioning somewhat shyly that I must have the opportunity of
adding, at my leisure, to those of his pictures that were already
mine by transaction with the secretary of the Art Exhibition. I
left him so astonished that this had happened, so plainly pleased,
that I was certain he had never sold anything before in his life.
This impression gave me the uplifted joy of a discoverer to add to
the satisfactions I had already drawn from the afternoon; and I
almost bounded down the hill to the Mall. I left the pi dog barking
in the veranda, and I met Mr. Rosario coming up, but in my unusual
elation I hardly paused to consider either of them further.

The mare and her groom were waiting on the Mall, and it was only
when I got on her back that the consciousness visited me of
something forgotten. It was my mission--to propose to take Armour,
if he were 'possible,' to call upon the Harrises. Oh, well, he was
possible enough; I supposed he possessed a coat, though he hadn't
been wearing it; and I could arrange it by letter. Meanwhile, as
was only fair, I turned the mare in the direction of the drawing-
room where I had reason to believe that Miss Dora Harris was
quenching her impatience in tea.

Chapter 2.IV.

The very next morning I met Armour on my way to the office. He was
ambling along on the leanest and most ill-groomed of bazaar ponies,
and he wore a bowler. In Simla sun hats are admissible, straw hats
are presentable, and soft felt hats are superior, but you must not
wear a bowler. I might almost say that if one's glance falls upon a
bowler, one hardly looks further; the expectation of finding an
acquaintance under it is so vain. In this instance, I did look
further, fortunately, though in doing so I was compelled to notice
that the bowler was not lifted in answer to my salutation. Of no
importance in itself, of course, but betraying in Armour a certain
lack of observation. I felt the Departmental Head crumble in me,
however, as I recognized him, and I pulled the mare up in a manner
which she plainly resented. It was my opportunity to do cautiously
and delicately what I had omitted the afternoon before; but my
recollection is that I was very clumsy.

I said something about the dust, and he said something about the
glare, and then I could think of nothing better than to ask him if
he wouldn't like to meet a few Simla people.

'Oh, I know lots of people, thanks,' he said. 'It's kind of you to
think of it, all the same, but I've got any amount of friends here.'

I thought of Mr. Rosario, and stood, or sat confounded.

The mare fidgeted; I knocked a beast of a fly off her, and so gained
time.

'This is my second season up here, you know.'

'Your second season!' I exclaimed. 'Where on earth have you been
hiding?'

'Well, I didn't exhibit last year, you see. I'd heard it was a kind
of a toy show, so I thought I wouldn't. I think now that was
foolish. But I got to know quite a number of families.'

'But I am sure there are numbers that you haven't met,' I urged,' or
I should have heard of it.'

He glanced at me with a slight flush. 'If you mean society people,'
he said, 'I don't care about that kind of thing, Mr. Philips. I'm
not adapted to it, and I don't want to be. If any one offered to
introduce me to the Viceroy, I would ask to be excused.'

'Oh, the Viceroy,' I responded, disrespectfully, 'is neither here
nor there. But there are some people, friends of my own, who would
like very much to meet you.'

'By the name of Harris?' he asked. I was too amazed to do anything
but nod. By the name of Harris! The Secretary of the Government of
India in the Legislative Department! The expression, not used as an
invocation, was inexcusable.

'I remember you mentioned them yesterday.'

'Yes,' I said, 'there's a father and daughter. Miss Harris is very
artistic.'

His face clouded, as well it might, at the word. 'Does she paint?'
he asked, so apprehensively that I could not forbear a smile at
Dora's expense. I could assure him that she did not paint, that she
had not painted, at all events, for years, and presently I found
myself in the ridiculous position of using argument to bring a young
man to the Harrises. In the end I prevailed, I know, out of sheer
good nature on Armour's part; he was as innocent as a baby of any
sense of opportunity.

We arranged it for the following Friday, but as luck would have it,
His Excellency sent for me at the very hour; we met the messenger.
I felt myself unlucky, but there was nothing for it but that Armour
should go alone, which he did, with neither diffidence nor alacrity,
but as if it were all in the day's work, and he had no reason to be
disobliging.

The files were very heavy during the succeeding fortnight, and the
Viceroy quite importunate in his demand for my valuable suggestions.
I was worked off my legs, and two or three times was obliged to deny
myself in replying to notes from Dora suggesting Sunday breakfast or
afternoon tea. Finally, I shook myself free; it was the day she
wrote:

'You must come--I can't keep it to myself any longer.'

I half thought Armour would be there, but he wasn't; that is, he was
absent corporeally, but the spirit and expression of him littered
every convenient part. Some few things lay about that I had seen in
the studio, to call it so, but most of the little wooden panels
looked fresh, almost wet, and the air held strongly the fragrance of
Armour's north veranda. In one corner there used to be a Madonna on
a carved easel; the Madonna stood on the floor, and the easel with
working pegs in it held an unfinished canvas. Dora sat in the midst
with a distinct flush--she was inclined to be sallow--and made me
welcome in terms touched with extravagance. She did not rush,
however, upon the matter that was dyeing her cheeks, and I showed
myself as little impetuous. She poured out the tea, and we sat
there inhaling, as it were, the aroma of the thing, while keeping it
consciously in the background.

I imagine there was no moment in the time I describe when we enjoyed
Ingersoll Armour so much as at this one, when he lay in his nimbus
half known and wholly suppressed, between us. There were later
instances, perhaps, of deeper satisfaction, but they were more or
less perplexed, and not unobscured by anxiety. That afternoon it
was all to know and to be experienced, with just a delicious
foretaste.

I said something presently about Lady Pilkey's picnic on the morrow,
to which we had both been bidden.

'Shall I call for you?' I asked. 'You will ride, of course.'

'Thanks, but I've cried off--I'm going sketching.' Her eyes plainly
added, 'with Ingersoll Armour,' but she as obviously shrank from the
roughness of pitching him in that unconsidered way before us. For
some reason I refrained from taking the cue. I would not lug him in
either.

'That is a new accomplishment,' was as much as I felt I could say
with dignity, and she responded:

'Yes, isn't it?'

I felt some slight indignation on Lady Pilkey's account. 'Do you
really think you ought to do things like that at the eleventh hour?'
I asked, but Dora smiled at a glance, the hypocrisy out of my face.

'What does anything matter?' she demanded.

I knew perfectly well the standard by which nothing mattered, and
there was no use, of course, in going on pretending that I did not.

'I assured him that you didn't paint,' I said, accusingly.

'Oh, I had to--otherwise what was there to go upon? He would have
been found only to be lost again. You did not contemplate that?'
Miss Harris inquired sweetly.

'I should have thought it was the surest way of losing him.'

'I can't think why you should be so rude. He observes progress
already.'

'With a view to claiming and holding him, would it be of any use,' I
asked, 'for me to start in oils?'

Miss Harris eyed me calmly.

'I don't know,' she said, 'but it doesn't seem the same thing
somehow. I think you had better leave it to me.'

'Indeed, I won't,' I said; 'there is too much in it,' and we smiled
across the gulf of our friendly understanding.

I crossed to the mantelpiece and picked up one of the little wet
panels. There was that in it which explained my friend's exultation
much more plainly than words.

'That is what I am to show him tomorrow,' she exclaimed; 'I think I
have done as he told me. I think it's pretty right.'

Whether it was pretty right or pretty wrong, she had taken in an
extraordinary way an essence out of him. It wasn't of course good,
but his feeling was reflected in it, at once so brilliantly and so
profoundly that it was startling to see.

'Do you think he'll be pleased?' she asked, anxiously.

'I think he'll be astounded,' I said, reserving the rest, and she
cried in her pleasure, 'Oh, you dear man!'

'I see you have taken possession of him,' I went on.

'Ah, body and soul,' Dora rejoined, and it must have been something
like that. I could imagine how she did it; with what wiles of
simplicity and candid good-fellowship she had drawn him to
forgetfulness and response, and how presently his enthusiasm leaped
up to answer hers and they had been caught altogether out of the
plane of common relations, and he had gone away on that disgraceful
bazaar pony with a ratified arrangement to return next day which had
been almost taken for granted from the beginning.

I confess, though I had helped to bring it about, the situation
didn't altogether please me. I did not dream of foolish dangers,
but it seemed to take a little too much for granted; I found myself
inwardly demanding whether, after all, a vivid capacity to make
colour conscious was a sufficient basis on which to bring to Edward
Harris's house a young man about whom we knew nothing whatever else.
An instant's regard showed the scruple fraudulent, it fled before
the rush of pleasure with which I gazed at the tokens he had left
behind him. I fell back on my wonder, which was great, that Dora
should have possessed the technique necessary to take him at a point
where he could give her so much that was valuable.

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