第34章

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 Ipreferred 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.

Out in the veranda, away from the blare of the Viceroy's band, she told me very delicately and with the most charming ellipses how Armour had been filling her life in Agra, how it had all been, for these two, a dream and a vision.There is a place below the bridge there, where the cattle come down from the waste pastures across the yellow sands to drink and stand in the low water of the Jumna, to stand and switch their tails while their herdsmen on the bank coax them back with 'Ari!' 'Ari!' 'Ari!' long and high, faint and musical; and the minarets of Akbar's fort rise beyond against the throbbing sky and the sun fills it all.This place I shall never see more distinctly than I saw it that night on the veranda at Government House, Calcutta, with the conviction, like a margin for the picture, that its foreground had been very often occupied by the woman I profoundly worshiped and Ingersoll Armour.She told me that he had sent me a sketch of it, and I very much wished he hadn't.

One felt that the gift would carry a trifle of irony.

'He has told me,' she said once brusquely, 'how good you have been to him.'

'Is he coming to Simla again?' I asked.

'Oh yes! And please take it from me that this time he will conquer the place.He has undertaken to do it.'

'At your request?'

'At my persuasion--at my long entreaty.They must recognize him--they must be taught.I have set my heart on it.'

'Does he himself very much care?' I asked remembering the night of the thirty-first of October.