第17章

To understand how we prized him, Dora Harris and I, it is necessary to know Simla.I suppose people think of that place, if they ever do think of it, as an agreeable retreat in the wilds of the Himalayas where deodars and scandals grow, and where the Viceroy if he likes may take off his decorations and go about in flannels.Iknow how useless it would be to try to give a more faithful impression, and I will hold back from the attempt as far as I can.

Besides, my little story is itself an explanation of Simla.

Ingersoll Armour might have appeared almost anywhere else without making social history.He came and bloomed among us in the wilderness, and such and such things happened.It sounds too rude a generalization to say that Simla is a wilderness; I hasten to add that it is a waste as highly cultivated as you like, producing many things more admirable than Ingersoll Armour.Still he bloomed there conspicuously alone.Perhaps there would have been nothing to tell if we had not tried to gather him.That was wrong; Nature in Simla expects you to be content with cocked hats.

There are artists almost everywhere and people who paint even in the Himalayas, though Miss Harris and I in our superior way went yearly to the Simla Fine Arts Exhibition chiefly to amuse ourselves by scoffing.It was easy to say clever things about the poor little exhibits; and one was grateful to the show on this account, for nothing is more depressing east of Suez than the absence of provocation to say clever things.There one afternoon in May as we marched about enjoying ourselves, we came upon Ingersoll Armour, not in the flesh, but in half a dozen studies hanging in the least conspicuous corner and quite the worst light in the room.

'Eh, what?' said I, and Dora exclaimed:

'I SAY!'

'Sent out from home,' I said, ever the oracle.

'Not at all,' replied Dora.'Look, they are Indian subjects.SIMLAsubjects,' she went on, with excitement.

I turned up the catalogue.'Ninety-seven, "Kasumti Bazaar"; ninety-eight, "Clouds on the Chor"; ninety-nine, "The House of a Friend"--Lord, what apricot blossoms! Yes, they're all Simla.'

'For goodness' sake,' said Dora, 'who painted them? You've got the catalogue!'

'"I.Armour,"' I read.

'"I.Armour,"' she repeated, and we looked at each other, saying in plain silence that to the small world of Simla I.Armour was unknown.

'Not on Government House list, I venture to believe,' said Dora.

That in itself may show to what depths we sink.Yet it was a trenchant and a reasonable speculation.

'It may be a newcomer,' I suggested, but she shook her head.'All newcomers call upon us,' she said.'There in the middle of the Mall we escape none of them.He isn't a calling person.'

'Why do you say "he"? You are very confident with your pronouns.

There's a delicacy of feeling--'

'Which exactly does not suggest a women.We are undermined by delicacy of feeling; we're not strong enough to express it with brushes.A man can make it a quality, a decorative characteristic, and so we see it.With a woman it's everything--all over the place--and of no effect.Oh, I assure you, I.Armour is a man.'

'Who shall stand against you! Let him be a man.He has taste.'

'Taste!' exclaimed Miss Harris, violently, and from the corners of her mouth I gathered that I had said one of those things which she would store up and produce to prove that I was not, for all my pretensions, a person of the truest feeling.'He sees things.'

'There's an intensity,' I ventured.

'That's better.Yes, an intensity.A perfect passion of colour.

Look at that.' She indicated a patch of hillsides perhaps six inches by four, in which the light seemed to come and go as it does in a sapphire.

We stood and gazed.It was a tremendous thing; only half a dozen studies with feeling and knowledge in them, but there in that remote fastness thrice barred against the arts a tremendous thing, a banquet for our famished eyes.What they would have said to us in London is a different matter, and how good they really were I do not find the courage to pronounce, but they had merit enough to prick our sense of beauty delightfully where we found them--oh, they were good!

'Heaven send it isn't a Tommy,' said Dora, with a falling countenance.'There is something absolutely inaccessible about a Tommy.'

'How could it be?' I asked.

'Oh, there are some inspired ones.But it isn't--that's French technique.It's an Englishman or an American who has worked in Paris.What in the name of fortune is he doing here?'

'Oh,' I said, 'we have had them, you know.Val Prinsep came out at the time of the Prince of Wales's visit.'

'Do you remember that?'

'It's a matter of history,' I said, evasively, 'and Edwin Weeks travelled through India not so many years ago.I saw his studio in Paris afterward.Between his own canvases and Ahmedabad balconies and Delhi embroideries and Burmese Buddhas and other things he seemed to have carried off the whole place.'

'But they don't come up here ever.They come in the cold weather, and as they can get plenty of snow and ice at home, they stay down in the plains with the palm-trees.'

'Precisely; they do,' I said.

'And besides,' Dora went on, with increasing excitement, 'this isn't a master.You see, he doesn't send a single picture--only these tiny things.And there's a certain tentativeness'--Miss Harris, her parasol handle pressed against her lips, looked at me with an eagerness that was a pleasure to look at in itself.

'A certain weakness, almost a lack of confidence, in the drawing,' Isaid.

'What does that signify?'

'Why, immaturity, of course--not enough discipline.'

'He's a student.Not that it amounts to a defect, you know'--she was as jealous already as if she possessed the things--'only a sign to read by.I should be grateful for more signs.Why should a student come to Simla?'

'To teach, perhaps,' I suggested.Naturally one sought only among reasons of utility.