第36章

Within a fortnight I was surprised and a little irritated to receive from Armour the amount of my loan in full.It was not in accordance with my preconceived idea of him that he should return it at all.Ihad arranged in my own mind that he should be governed by the most honest impulses and the most approved intentions up to the point of departure, but that he should never find it quite convenient to pay, and that in order to effect his final shipment to other shores Ishould be compelled to lend him some more money.In the far future, when he should be famous and I an obscure pauper on pension, my generous imagination permitted me to see the loan repaid; but not till then.These are perhaps stereotyped and conventional lines to conceive him on, but I hardly think that anybody who has followed my little account to this point will think them unjustifiable.Ilooked at his cheque with disgust.That a man turns out better than you expected is no reason why you such not be annoyed that your conception of him is shattered.You may be gratified on general grounds, but distinctly put out on personal ones, especially when your conception pointed to his inevitable removal.That was the way I felt.

The cheque stood for so much more than its money value.It stood for a possible, nay, a probable capacity in Armour to take his place in the stable body of society, to recognize and make demands, to become a taxpayer, a churchgoer, a householder, a husband.As Igazed, the signature changed from that of a gnome with luminous eyes who inhabited an inaccessible crag among the rhododendrons to that of a prosperous artist-bourgeois with a silk hat for Sundays.Ihave in some small degree the psychological knack, I saw the possibilities of the situation with immense clearness; and I cursed the cheque.

Coincidence is odious, tells on the nerves.I never felt it more so than a week later, when I read in the 'Pioneer' the announcement of the death of my old friend Fry, Superintendent of the School of Art in Calcutta.The paragraph in which the journal dismissed poor Fry to his reward was not unkind, but it distinctly implied that the removal of Fry should include the removal of his ideas and methods, and the substitution of something rather more up to date.It remarked that the Bengali student had been pinned down long enough to drawing plaster casts, and declared that something should be done to awake within him the creative idea.I remember the phrase, it seemed so directly to suggest that the person to awake it should be Ingersoll Armour.

I turned the matter over in my mind; indeed, for the best part of an hour my brain revolved with little else.The billet was an excellent one, with very decent pay and charming quarters.It carried a pension, it was the completest sort of provision.There was a long vacation, with opportunities for original effort, and Ihad heard Fry call the work interesting.Fry was the kind of man to be interested in anything that gave him a living, but there was no reason why a more captious spirit, in view of the great advantages, should not accommodate itself to the routine that might present itself.The post was in the gift of the Government of Bengal, but that was no reason why the Government of Bengal should not be grateful in the difficulty of making a choice for a hint from us.

The difficulty was really great.They would have to write home and advertise in the 'Athenaeum'--for some reason Indian Governments always advertise educational appointments in the 'Athenaeum'; it is a habit which dates from the days of John Company--and that would mean delay.And then the result might be a disappointment.Might Armour not also be a disappointment? That I really could not say.

A new man is always a speculation, and departments, like individuals, have got to take their luck.

The Viceroy was so delighted--everybody was so delighted--with the medal picture that the merest breath blown among them would secure Armour's nomination.Should I blow that breath? These happy thoughts must always occur to somebody.This one had occurred to me.Ten to one it would occur to nobody else, and last of all to Armour himself.The advertisement might already be on its way home to the 'Athenaeum'.

It would make everything possible.It would throw a very different complexion over the idyll.It would turn that interlacing wreath of laurels and of poppies into the strongest bond in the world.

I would simply have nothing to do with it.

But there was no harm I asking Armour to dine with me; I sent the note off by messenger after breakfast and told the steward to put a magnum of Pommery to cool at seven precisely.I had some idea, Isuppose, of drinking with Armour to his eternal discomfiture.Then I went to the office with a mind cleared of responsibility and comfortably pervaded with the glow of good intentions.