The Pool in the Desert [31]
I uttered it, 'you know I made the experiment! I found out in South Kensington--you can learn that much there--that I never would be able to paint well enough to make it worth while. So I dropped it and took a more general line towards life. But I find it very easy to imagine myself dedicated to that particular one again.'
'You never told me,' I said. Why had I been shut out of that experience?
'I tell you now,' Dora replied, absently, 'when I am able to offer you the fact with illustrations.' She laughed and dropped a still illuminated face in the palm of her hand. 'He has wonderfully revived me,' she declared. 'I could throw, honestly, the whole of Simla overboard for this.'
'Don't,' I urged, feeling, suddenly, an integral part of Simla.
'Oh, no--what end would be served? But I don't care who knows,' she went on with a rush, 'that in all life this is what I like best, and people like Mr. Armour are the people I value most. Heavens, how few of them there are! And wherever they go how the air clears up round them! It makes me quite ill to think of the life we lead here--the poverty of it, the preposterous dullness of it. . ..'
'For goodness' sake,' I said, obscurely irritated, 'don't quote the bishop. The life holds whatever we put into it.'
'For other people it does, and for us it holds what other people put into it,' she retorted. 'I don't know whether you think it's adequately filled with gold lace and truffles.'
'Why should I defend it?' I asked, not knowing indeed why. 'But it has perhaps a dignity, you know. Ah, you are too fresh from your baptism,' I continued, as she shook her head and went to the piano. The quality, whatever it was, that the last fortnight had generated in her, leaped from her fingers; she played with triumph, elation, intention. The notes seemed an outlet for the sense of beauty and for power to make it. I had never heard her play like that before.
It occurred to me to ask when she had done, how far, after a fortnight, she could throw light on Armour's aims and history, where he had come from, and the great query with which we first received him, what he could be doing in Simla. I gathered that she had learned practically nothing, and had hardly concerned herself to learn anything. What difference did it make? she asked me. Why should we inquire? Why tack a theory of origin to a phenomenon of joy? Let us say the wind brought him, and build him a temple. She was very whimsical up to the furthest stretch of what could possibly be considered tea-time. When I went away I saw her go again and sit down at the piano. In the veranda I remembered something, stopped, and went back. I had to go back. 'You did not tell me,' I said, 'when he was coming again.'
'Oh, tomorrow--tomorrow, of course,' Dora paused to reply.
I resented, as I made my way to the Club, the weight of official duties that made it so impossible for me to keep at all closely in touch with this young man.
Chapter 2.V.
The art of the photographer usually arouses in me all that is splenetic, and I had not submitted myself to him for years before Dora made such a preposterous point of it--years in which, as I sadly explained to her, I might have submitted to the ordeal with much more 'pleasing' results. She had often insisted before, but I could never see that she made out a particularly good case for the operation until one afternoon when she showed me the bold counterfeit presentment of an Assistant Adjutant-General or some such person, much flattered as to features but singularly faithful in its reproduction of the straps and buttons attached. To my post also there belongs a uniform and a cocked hat sufficiently dramatic, but persons who serve the State primarily with the intelligence are supposed to have a mind above buttons; and when I decided that my photograph should compete with the Assistant Adjutant-General's, I gave him every sartorial advantage. I gathered that the offer, cabinet size, of this gentleman had been a spontaneous one; that certainly could not be said
'You never told me,' I said. Why had I been shut out of that experience?
'I tell you now,' Dora replied, absently, 'when I am able to offer you the fact with illustrations.' She laughed and dropped a still illuminated face in the palm of her hand. 'He has wonderfully revived me,' she declared. 'I could throw, honestly, the whole of Simla overboard for this.'
'Don't,' I urged, feeling, suddenly, an integral part of Simla.
'Oh, no--what end would be served? But I don't care who knows,' she went on with a rush, 'that in all life this is what I like best, and people like Mr. Armour are the people I value most. Heavens, how few of them there are! And wherever they go how the air clears up round them! It makes me quite ill to think of the life we lead here--the poverty of it, the preposterous dullness of it. . ..'
'For goodness' sake,' I said, obscurely irritated, 'don't quote the bishop. The life holds whatever we put into it.'
'For other people it does, and for us it holds what other people put into it,' she retorted. 'I don't know whether you think it's adequately filled with gold lace and truffles.'
'Why should I defend it?' I asked, not knowing indeed why. 'But it has perhaps a dignity, you know. Ah, you are too fresh from your baptism,' I continued, as she shook her head and went to the piano. The quality, whatever it was, that the last fortnight had generated in her, leaped from her fingers; she played with triumph, elation, intention. The notes seemed an outlet for the sense of beauty and for power to make it. I had never heard her play like that before.
It occurred to me to ask when she had done, how far, after a fortnight, she could throw light on Armour's aims and history, where he had come from, and the great query with which we first received him, what he could be doing in Simla. I gathered that she had learned practically nothing, and had hardly concerned herself to learn anything. What difference did it make? she asked me. Why should we inquire? Why tack a theory of origin to a phenomenon of joy? Let us say the wind brought him, and build him a temple. She was very whimsical up to the furthest stretch of what could possibly be considered tea-time. When I went away I saw her go again and sit down at the piano. In the veranda I remembered something, stopped, and went back. I had to go back. 'You did not tell me,' I said, 'when he was coming again.'
'Oh, tomorrow--tomorrow, of course,' Dora paused to reply.
I resented, as I made my way to the Club, the weight of official duties that made it so impossible for me to keep at all closely in touch with this young man.
Chapter 2.V.
The art of the photographer usually arouses in me all that is splenetic, and I had not submitted myself to him for years before Dora made such a preposterous point of it--years in which, as I sadly explained to her, I might have submitted to the ordeal with much more 'pleasing' results. She had often insisted before, but I could never see that she made out a particularly good case for the operation until one afternoon when she showed me the bold counterfeit presentment of an Assistant Adjutant-General or some such person, much flattered as to features but singularly faithful in its reproduction of the straps and buttons attached. To my post also there belongs a uniform and a cocked hat sufficiently dramatic, but persons who serve the State primarily with the intelligence are supposed to have a mind above buttons; and when I decided that my photograph should compete with the Assistant Adjutant-General's, I gave him every sartorial advantage. I gathered that the offer, cabinet size, of this gentleman had been a spontaneous one; that certainly could not be said