The Pool in the Desert

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I was compelled to negative the idea of trotting, since we were
descending quite the steepest pitch of the road down to Annandale.
We went on at a walk, and it occurred to me, as my contemplative
gaze fell on my own pig-skins, that we were, even for Simla, an
uncommonly well-turned-out pair. I had helped to pick Dora's hack,
and I allowed myself to reflect that he did my judgment credit. She
sat him perfectly in her wrath--she was plainly angry--not a hair
out of place. Why is it that a lady out of temper with her escort
always walks away from him? Is her horse sympathetic? Ronald, at
all events, was leading by a couple of yards, when suddenly he
shied, bounding well across the road.

The mare, whose manners I can always answer for, simply stopped and
looked haughtily about for explanations. A path dropped into the
road from the hillside; something came scrambling and stumbling
down.

'Oh!' cried Dora, as it emerged and was Armour on his much enduring
white pony, 'how you frightened us!'

'Why don't you stick to the road, man?' I exclaimed. 'It isn't
usual to put ponies up and down these coolie tracks!'

He took no notice of this rather broad hint that I was annoyed, but
fixed his eager, light, luminous eyes upon Dora.

'I'm sorry,' he said, and added, 'I did not expect to see you
today!'

'Not till tomorrow,' she returned. 'You remember that we are
sketching tomorrow?'

He looked at her and smiled slightly; and then I remember noticing
that his full, arched upper lip seldom quite met its counterpart
over his teeth. This gave an unpremeditated casual effect to
everything he found to say, and made him look a dreamer at his
busiest. His smile was at the folly of her reminder.

'I've just been looking for something that you would like,' he said,
'but it isn't much good hunting about alone. I see five times as
much when we go together.'

He and his pony barred the way; he had an air of leisure and of
felicity; one would think we had met at an afternoon party.

'We are on our way,' I explained, 'to the gymkhana. Miss Harris is
in one of the events. You did enter for the needle-threading race,
didn't you, with Lord Arthur? I think we must get on.'

A slow, dull red mounted to Armour's face and seemed to put out that
curious light in his eyes.

'Is it far?' he asked, glancing down over the tree-tops. 'I've
never been there.'

'Why,' cried Dora, suddenly, 'you've been down!'

'So you have,' I confirmed her. 'Your beast is damaged too.'

'Oh, it was only a stumble,' Armour replied; 'I stuck on all right.'

'Well,' I said, 'you had better get off now, as you didn't then, and
look at your animal's near fore. The swelling's as big as a bun
already.'

Again he made me no answer, but looked intently and questioningly at
Dora.

'Get off, Mr. Armour,' she said, sharply, 'and lead your horse home.
It is not fit to be ridden. Goodbye.'

I have no doubt he did it, but neither of us were inclined to look
back to see. We pushed on under the deodars, and I was indulgent to
a trot. At the end of it Dora remarked that Mr. Armour naturally
could not be expected to know anything about riding, it was very
plucky of him to get on a horse at all, among these precipices; and
I of course agreed.

Lord Arthur was waiting when we arrived, on his chestnut polo pony,
but Dora immediately scratched for the brilliant event in which they
were paired. Ronald, she said, was simply cooked with the heat.
Ronald had come every yard of the way on his toes and was fit for
anything, but Lord Arthur did not insist. There were young ladies
in Simla, I am glad to say, who appealed more vividly to his
imagination than Dora Harris did, and one of them speedily replaced
her, a fresh-coloured young Amazon who was staying at the Chief's.
She wandered about restlessly over the dry turf for a few minutes,
and then went and sat down in a corner of the little wooden Grand
Stand and sent me for a cup of tea.

'Won't you come to the tent?' I asked a little ruefully, eyeing the
distance and the possible collisions between, but she shook her
head.

'I simply couldn't bear it,' she said, and I went feeling somehow
chastened myself by the cloud that was upon her spirit.

I found her on my return regarding the scene with a more than
usually critical eye, and a more than usually turned down lip. Yet
it was exactly the scene it always was, and always, probably, will
be. I sat down beside her and regarded it also, but more charitably
than usual. Perhaps it was rather trivial, just a lot of pretty
dresses and excited young men in white riding-breeches doing foolish
things on ponies in the shortest possible time, with one little
crowd about the Club's refreshment tent and another about the
Staff's, while the hills sat round in an indifferent circle; but it
appealed to me with a kind of family feeling that afternoon, and
inspired me with tolerance, even benevolence.

'After all,' I said, 'it's mainly youth and high spirits--two good
things. And one knows them all.'

'And who are they to know?' complained Dora.

'Just decent young Englishmen and Englishwomen, out here on their
country's business,' I replied cheerfully; 'with the marks of Oxford
and Cambridge and Sandhurst and Woolwich on the men. Well-set-up
youngsters, who know what to do and how to do it. Oh, I like the
breed!'

'I wonder,' said she, in a tone of preposterous melancholy, 'if
eventually I have to marry one of them.'

'Not necessarily,' I said. She looked at me with interest, as if I
had contributed importantly to the matter in hand, and resumed
tapping her boot with her riding-crop. We talked of indifferent
things and had long lapses. At the close of one effort Dora threw
herself back with a deep, tumultuous sigh. 'The poverty of this
little wretched resort ties up one's tongue!' she cried. 'It is the
bottom of the cup; here one gets the very dregs of Simla's
commonplace. Let us climb out of it.'

I thought for a moment that Ronald had been too much for her nerves
coming down, and offered to change saddles, but she would not. We
took it out of the horses all along the first upward slopes, and as
we pulled in to breathe them she turned to me paler than ever.

'I feel better now,' she said.

For myself I had got rid of Armour for the afternoon. I think my
irritation with him about his pony rose and delivered me from the

too insistent thought of him. With Dora it was otherwise; she had
dismissed him; but he had never left her for a moment the whole long
afternoon.

She flung a searching look at me. With a reckless turn of her head,
she said, 'Why didn't we take him with us?'

'Did we want him?' I asked.

'I think I always want him.'

'Ah!' said I, and would have pondered this statement at some length
in silence, but that she plainly did not wish me to do so.

'We might perfectly well have sent his pony home with one of our own
servants--he would have been delighted to walk down.'

'He wasn't in proper kit,' I remonstrated.

'Oh, I wish you would speak to him about that. Make him get some
tennis-flannels and riding-things.'

'Do you propose to get him asked to places?' I inquired.

She gave me a charmingly unguarded smile. 'I propose to induce you
to do so. I have done what I could. He has dined with us several
times, and met a few people who would, I thought, be kind to him.'

'Oh, well,' I said, 'I have had him at the Club too, with old Lamb
and Colonel Hamilton. He made us all miserable with his shyness.
Don't ask me to do it again, please.'

'I've sent him to call on certain people,' Dora continued, 'and I've
shown his pictures to everybody, and praised him and talked about
him, but I can't go on doing that indefinitely, can I?'

'No,' I said; 'people might misunderstand.'

'I don't think they would MISunderstand,' replied this astonishing
girl, without flinching. She even sought my eyes to show me that
hers were clear and full of purpose.

'Good God!' I said to myself, but the words that fell from me were,
'He is outside all that life.'

'What is the use of living a life that he is outside of?'

'Oh, if you put it that way,' I said, and set my teeth, 'I will do
what I can.'

She held out her hand with an affectionate gesture, and I was
reluctantly compelled to press it.

The horses broke into a trot, and we talked no more of Armour, or of
anything, until Ted Harris joined us on the Mall.

I have rendered this conversation with Dora in detail because
subsequent events depend so closely upon it. Some may not agree
that it was basis enough for the action I thought well to take; I
can only say that it was all I was ever able to obtain. Dora was
always particularly civil and grateful about my efforts, but she
gave me only one more glimpse, and that enigmatic, of any special
reason why they should be made. Perhaps this was more than
compensated for by the abounding views I had of the situation as it
lay with Ingersoll Armour, but of that, other persons, approaching
the subject without prejudice, will doubtless judge better than I.

Chapter 2.VIII.

It was better not to inquire, so I never knew to what extent Kauffer
worked upon the vanity of ancient houses the sinful dodge I
suggested to him; but I heard before long that the line of Armour's
rejected efforts had been considerably diminished. Armour told me
himself that Kauffer's attitude had become almost conciliatory, that
Kauffer had even hinted at the acceptance of, and adhesion to,
certain principles which he would lay down as the basis of another
year's contract. In talking to me about it, Armour dwelt on these
absurd stipulations only as the reason why any idea of renewal was
impossible. It was his proud theory with me that to work for a
photographer was just as dignified as to produce under any other
conditions, provided you did not stoop to ideals which for lack of a
better word might be called photographic. How he represented it to
Dora, or permitted Dora to represent it to him, I am not so certain-
-I imagine there may have been admissions and qualifications. Be
that as it may, however, the fact was imperative that only three
months of the hated bond remained, and that some working substitute
for the hated bond would have to be discovered at their expiration.
Simla, in short, must be made to buy Armour's pictures, to
appreciate them, if the days of miracle were not entirely past, but
to buy them any way. On one or two occasions I had already made
Simla buy things. I had cleared out young Ludlow's stables for him
in a week--he had a string of ten--when he played polo in a straw
hat and had to go home with sunstroke; and I once auctioned off all
the property costumes of the Amateur Dramatic Society at astonishing
prices. Pictures presented difficulties which I have hinted at in
an earlier chapter, but I did not despair. I began by hauling old
Lamb, puffing and blowing like a grampus, up to Amy Villa, filling
him up all the way with denunciations of Simla's philistinism and
suggestions that he alone redeemed it.

It is a thing I am ashamed to think of, and it deserved its reward.

Lamb criticized and patronized every blessed thing he saw, advised
Armour to beware of mannerisms and to be a little less liberal with
his colour, and heard absolutely unmoved of the horses Armour had
got into the Salon. 'I understand,' he said, with a benevolent
wink, 'that about four thousand pictures are hung every year at the
Salon, and I don't know how many thousand are rejected. Let Mr.
Armour get a picture accepted by the Academy. Then he will have
something to talk about.'

Neither did Sir William Lamb buy anything at all.

The experiment with Lady Pilkey was even more distressing. She
gushed with fair appropriateness and great liberality, and finally
fixed upon one scene to make her own. She winningly asked the price
of it. She had never known anybody who did not understand prices.
Poor Armour, the colour of a live coal, named one hundred rupees.

'One hundred rupees! Oh, my dear boy, I can never afford that! You
must, you must really give it to me for seventy-five. It will break
my heart if I can't have it for seventy-five.'

'Give me the pleasure,' said Armour, 'of making you a present of it.
You have been so kind about everything, and it's so seldom one meets
anybody who really cares. So let me send it to you.' It was honest
embarrassment; he did not mean to be impertinent.

And she did.

Blum, of the Geological Department--Herr Blum in his own country--
came up and honestly rejoiced, and at end of an interminable pipe
did purchase a little Breton bit that I hated to see go--it was one
of the things that gave the place its air; but Blum had a large
family undergoing education at Heidelberg, and exclaimed, to
Armour's keenest anguish, that on this account he could not more do.

Altogether, during the months of August and September, persons
resident in Simla drawing their income from Her Majesty, bought from
the eccentric young artist from nowhere, living on Summer Hill,
canvases and little wooden panels to the extent of two hundred and
fifty rupees. Lady Pilkey had asked him to lunch--she might well!
and he had appeared at three garden-parties and a picnic. It was
not enough.

It was not enough, and yet it was, in a manner, too much. Pitiful
as it was in substance, it had an extraordinary personal effect.
Armour suddenly began 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; and naturally one never looks in vain. Mrs.
Symons would be delighted. I conjured up Dora's rage on receipt of
the telegram. She loathed the Symonses.

She came, but not at the jerk of a wire; she arrived a week later,
with a face of great propriety and a smile of great unconcern.
Harris, having got her effectually out of harm's way, shirked
further insistence, and I have reason to believe that Armour was
never even mentioned between them.

Dora applied herself to the gaieties of the season with the zest of
a debutante; she seemed really refreshed, revitalized. She had
never looked better, happier. I met her again for the first time at
one of the Thursday dances at Government House. In the glance she
gave me I was glad to detect no suspicion of collusion. She plainly
could not dream that Edward Harris in his nefarious exercise of
parental authority had acted upon any hint from me. It was rather
sweet.

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