第25章

I asked, but Dora smiled at a glance, the hypocrisy out of my face.

'What does anything matter?' she demanded.

I knew perfectly well the standard by which nothing mattered, and there was no use, of course, in going on pretending that I did not.

'I assured him that you didn't paint,' I said, accusingly.

'Oh, I had to--otherwise what was there to go upon? He would have been found only to be lost again.You did not contemplate that?'

Miss Harris inquired sweetly.

'I should have thought it was the surest way of losing him.'

'I can't think why you should be so rude.He observes progress already.'

'With a view to claiming and holding him, would it be of any use,' Iasked, 'for me to start in oils?'

Miss Harris eyed me calmly.

'I don't know,' she said, 'but it doesn't seem the same thing somehow.I think you had better leave it to me.'

'Indeed, I won't,' I said; 'there is too much in it,' and we smiled across the gulf of our friendly understanding.

I crossed to the mantelpiece and picked up one of the little wet panels.There was that in it which explained my friend's exultation much more plainly than words.

'That is what I am to show him tomorrow,' she exclaimed; 'I think Ihave done as he told me.I think it's pretty right.'

Whether it was pretty right or pretty wrong, she had taken in an extraordinary way an essence out of him.It wasn't of course good, but his feeling was reflected in it, at once so brilliantly and so profoundly that it was startling to see.

'Do you think he'll be pleased?' she asked, anxiously.

'I think he'll be astounded,' I said, reserving the rest, and she cried in her pleasure, 'Oh, you dear man!'

'I see you have taken possession of him,' I went on.

'Ah, body and soul,' Dora rejoined, and it must have been something like that.I could imagine how she did it; with what wiles of simplicity and candid good-fellowship she had drawn him to forgetfulness and response, and how presently his enthusiasm leaped up to answer hers and they had been caught altogether out of the plane of common relations, and he had gone away on that disgraceful bazaar pony with a ratified arrangement to return next day which had been almost taken for granted from the beginning.

I confess, though I had helped to bring it about, the situation didn't altogether please me.I did not dream of foolish dangers, but it seemed to take a little too much for granted; I found myself inwardly demanding whether, after all, a vivid capacity to make colour conscious was a sufficient basis on which to bring to Edward Harris's house a young man about whom we knew nothing whatever else.

An instant's regard showed the scruple fraudulent, it fled before the rush of pleasure with which I gazed at the tokens he had left behind him.I fell back on my wonder, which was great, that Dora should have possessed the technique necessary to take him at a point where he could give her so much that was valuable.

'Oh, well,' she said when 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.