第19章

'Mr.Cathcart, of course; the Private Secretary to the Viceroy would be on the Committee almost ex officio, wouldn't he? Impossible to conceive a Private Secretary to the Viceroy whose opinion would not be valuable upon any head.The member for Public Works--I suppose he can build bridges, or could once, therefore he can draw, or could once; besides, look at his precedence and his pay! General Haycock--isn't he head of the Ordnance Department? I can't think of any other reason for putting him on.Oh yes--he's a K.C.B., and he is inventing a way of taking coloured photographs.Mr.Tilley, the old gentleman that teaches elementary drawing to the little girls in the diocesan school, that's all right.And Mr.Jay, of course, because Mr.Jay's water-colours are the mainstay of the exhibition, and he must be given a chance of expressing his opinion of them.' She handed me back the catalogue.'I have never been really angry with them before,' she said.

'Are you really angry now?' I asked.

'Furious,' Dora replied, and indeed her face expressed indignation.

Its lines were quite tense, and a spark shone oddly in the middle of the eyes.One could not credit her with beauty, but as her lady friends were fond of saying, there was something 'more' in her face.

I saw a good deal more at this moment, and it gave me pleasure, as all her feelings did when they came out like that.I hasten to add that she was not unpleasing; her features had a symmetry and a mobility, and her eyes could take any transient charm they chose to endow themselves with; though there were moments when she compared very badly with the other young ladies of Simla with their high spirits and their pretty complexions, very badly indeed.Those were occasions when the gay monotony of the place pressed, I imagine, a little heavily upon her, and the dullness she felt translated itself in her expression.But she was by no means unpleasing.

'I must go and see Lady Pilkey's picture,' I said.

'What is the use?' said Dora.'It's a landscape in oils--a view of the Himalayas, near Narkanda.There are the snows in the background, very thin and visionary through a gap in the trees, and two hills, one hill on each side.Dark green trees, pine-trees, with a dead one in the left foreground covered with a brilliant red creeper.Right foreground occupied by a mountain path and a solitary native figure with its back turned.Society's silver medal'

'When did you see it?' I asked.

'I haven't seen it--this year.But I saw the one she sent last, and the one the year before that.You can trust my memory, really.'

'No,' I said, 'I can't.I'm dining there tonight.I must have an original impression.'

'Congratulate her on the warm blaze of colour in the foreground.

It's perfectly safe,' urged Miss Harris, but I felt compelled to go myself to see lady Pilkey's landscape.When I returned I found her still sitting in grave absorption before the studies that had taken us so by surprise.Her face was full of a soft new light; I had never before seen the spring touched in her that could flood it like that.

'You were very nearly right,' I announced; 'but the blaze of colour was in the middle distance, and there was a torrent in the foreground that quite put it out.And the picture does take the Society's silver medal.'

'I can not decide,' she replied without looking at me, 'between the Kattiawar fair thing and those hills in the rain.I can only have one--father won't hear of more than one.'

'You can have two,' I said bluntly, so deeply interested I was in the effect the things had on her.'And I will have a third for myself.I can't withstand those apricot-trees.'

I thought there was moisture in the eyes she turned upon me, an unusual thing--a most unusual thing--in Dora Harris; but she winked it back, if it was there, too quickly for any certainty.

'You are a dear,' she said.Once or twice before she had called me a dear.It reminded me, as nothing else ever did, that I was a contemporary of her father's.It is a feeble confession, but I have known myself refrain from doing occasional agreeable things apprehending that she might call me a dear.