The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeannette Duncan (100 best novels of all time txt) 📕

it?' I assented. My tone acknowledged with all humility that she was likely to know, and I did not deserve her doubtful glance.

'He could not certainly,' she went on, with firmer decision, 'have been in the least ashamed of his connection with Kauffer.'

'He comes from a country where social distinctions are less sharp than they are in this idiotic place,' I observed.

'Oh, if you think it is from any lack of recognition! His sensitiveness is beyond reason. He has met two or three men in the Military Department here--he was aware of the nicest shade of their patronage. But he does not care. To him life is more than a clerkship. He sees all round people like that. They are only figures in the landscape.'

'Then,' I said, 'he is not at all concerned that nobody in this Capua of ours knows him, or cares anything about him, or has bought a scrap of his work, except our two selves.'

'That's a different matter. I have tried to rouse in him the feeling that it would be as well to be appreciated, even in Simla, and I think I've succeeded. He said, after those two men had gone away on Sunday, that he thought a certain reputation in the place where he lived would help anybody in his work.'

'On Sunday? Do you mean between twelve and two?'

'Yes, he came and made a formal call. There was no reason why he shouldn't.'

'Now that I think of it,' I rejoined, 'he shot a card on me too, at the Club. I was a little surprised. We didn't seem somehow to be on those terms. One doesn't readily associate him with any conventionality.'

'There's no reason why he shouldn't,' said Dora again, and with this vague comment we spoke of something else, both of us, I think, a little disquieted and dissatisfied that he had.

'I think,' Dora said as I went away, 'that you had better go up to the studio and tell him what you have told me. Perhaps it doesn't matter much, but I can't bear the thought of his not knowing.'

'Come to Kauffer's in the morning and see the pictures,' I urged; but she turned away, 'Oh, not with you.'

I found my way almost at once to Amy Villa, not only because I had been told to go there. I wanted, myself, certain satisfactions. Armour was alone and smoking, but I had come prepared against the contingency of one of his cigars. They were the cigars of the man who doesn't know what he eats. With sociable promptness I lighted one of my own. The little enclosed veranda testified to a wave of fresh activity. The north light streamed in upon two or three fresh canvases, the place seemed full of enthusiasm, and you could see its source, at present quiescent under the influence of tobacco, in Armour's face.

'You have taken a new line,' I said, pointing to a file of camels, still half obscured by the dust of the day, coming along a mountain road under a dim moon. They might have been walking through time and through history. It was a queer, simple thing, with a world of early Aryanism in it.

'Does that say anything? I'm glad. It was to me articulate, but I didn't know. Oh, things have been going well with me lately. Those two studies over there simply did themselves. That camp scene on the left is almost a picture. I think I'll put a little more work on it and give it a chance in Paris. I got in once, you know. Champ de Mars. With some horses.'

'Did you, indeed?' I said. 'Capital.' I asked him if he didn't atrociously miss the life of the Quarter, and he surprised me by saying that he never had lived it. He had been en pension instead with a dear old professor of chemistry and his family at Puteaux, and used to go in and out. A smile came into his eyes at the remembrance, and he told me one after the other idyllic little stories of the old professor and madame. Madame and the omelet--madame and the melon--M. Vibois and the maire; I sat charmed. So long as we remained in France his humour was like this, delicate and expansive, but an accidental allusion led us across the Channel when he changed. He had no little stories of the time he spent in England. Instead he let himself go in generalizations, aimed, for they had a distinct animus, at English institutions and character, particularly as these appear in English society. I could not believe, from the little I had seen of him, that his experience of English society of any degree had been intimate; what he said had the flavour of Radical Sunday papers. The only original element was the feeling behind, which was plainly part of him; speculation instantly clamoured as to how far this was purely temperamental and how far the result of painful contact. He himself, he said, though later of the Western States, had been born under the British flag of British parents--though his mother was an Irishwoman she came from loyal Ulster--and he repeated the statement as if it in some way justified his attitude towards his fellow countrymen and excused his truculence in the ear of a servant of the empire which he had the humour to abuse. I heard him, I confess, with impatience, it was all so shabby and shallow, but I heard him out, and I was rewarded; he came for an illustration in the end to Simla. 'Look,' he said, 'at what they call their "Government House list"; and look at Strobo, Signor Strobo. Isn't Strobo a man of intelligence, isn't he a man of benevolence? He gave ten thousand rupees last week to the famine fund. Is Strobo on Government House list? Is he ever invited to dine with the Viceroy? No, because Strobo keeps a hotel! Look at Rosario--where does Rosario come in? Nowhere, because Rosario is a clerk, and a subordinate. Yet Rosario is a man of wide reading and a very accomplished fellow!'

It became more or less necessary to argue then, and the commonplaces with which I opposed him called forth a wealth of detail bearing most picturesquely upon his stay among us. I began to think he had never hated English rigidity and English snobbery until he came to Simla, and that he and Strobo and Rosario had mingled their experiences in one bitter cup. I gathered this by inference only, he was curiously watchful and reticent as to anything that had happened to him personally; indeed, he was careful to aver preferences for the society of 'sincere' people like Strobo and Rosario, that seemed to declare him more than indifferent to circles in which he would not meet them. In the end our argument left me ridiculously irritated--it was simply distressing to see the platform from which he obtained so wide and exquisite a view of the world upheld by such flimsy pillars--and my nerves were not soothed by his proposal to walk with me to the Club. I could hardly refuse it, however, and he came along in excellent spirits, having effected the demolition of British social ideals, root and branch. His mongrel dog accompanied, keeping offensively near our heels. It was not even an honest pi, but a dog of tawdry pretensions with a banner-like tail dishonestly got from a spaniel. On one occasion I very nearly kicked the dog.


Chapter 2.VII.

'The fact is,' I said to Dora as we rode down to the gymkhana, 'his personality takes possession of one. I constantly go to that little hut of his with intentions, benevolent or otherwise, which I never carry out.'

'You mean,' she answered, 'that you completely forgot to reveal to him your hateful knowledge about Kauffer.'

'On the contrary, I didn't forget it for a moment. But the conversation took a turn that made it quite impossible to mention.'

'I can understand,' Miss Harris replied softly, 'how that might be. And it doesn't in the least matter,' she went on triumphantly, 'because I've told him myself.'

My nerves must have been a trifle strung up at the time, for this struck me as a matter for offense. 'You thought I would trample upon him,' I exclaimed.

'No, no really. I disliked his not knowing it was known--rien de plus,' she said lightly.

'What did he say?'

'Oh, not much. What should he say?'

'He might have expressed a decent regret on poor Kauffer's account,' I growled. Dora did not reply, and a glance showed her frowning.

'I believe he apologized!' I cried, pushing, as it were, my advantage.

'He explained.'

'Oh!'

'Of course he hasn't relished the position, and of course he didn't realize it before he came. Shall we trot?'

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,