It was better not to inquire, so I never knew to what extent Kauffer
worked upon the vanity of ancient houses the sinful dodge I suggested to
him; but I heard before long that the line of Armour’s rejected efforts
had been considerably diminished. Armour told me himself that Kauffer’s
attitude had become almost conciliatory, that Kauffer had even hinted
at the acceptance of, and adhesion to, certain principles which he would
lay down as the basis of another year’s contract. In talking to me about
it, Armour dwelt on these absurd stipulations only as the reason why any
idea of renewal was impossible. It was his proud theory with me that to
work for a photographer was just as dignified as to produce under any
other conditions, provided you did not stoop to ideals which for lack
of a better word might be called photographic. How he represented it to
Dora, or permitted Dora to represent it to him, I am not so certain--I
imagine there may have been admissions and qualifications. Be that as
it may, however, the fact was imperative that only three months of the
hated bond remained, and that some working substitute for the hated bond
would have to be discovered at their expiration. Simla, in short, must
be made to buy Armour’s pictures, to appreciate them, if the days of
miracle were not entirely past, but to buy them any way. On one or two
occasions I had already made Simla buy things. I had cleared out young
Ludlow’s stables for him in a week--he had a string of ten--when he
played polo in a straw hat and had to go home with sunstroke; and I once
auctioned off all the property costumes of the Amateur Dramatic Society
at astonishing prices. Pictures presented difficulties which I have
hinted at in an earlier chapter, but I did not despair. I began by
hauling old Lamb, puffing and blowing like a grampus, up to Amy Villa,
filling him up all the way with denunciations of Simla’s philistinism
and suggestions that he alone redeemed it.
It is a thing I am ashamed to think of, and it deserved its reward.
Lamb criticized and patronized every blessed thing he saw, advised
Armour to beware of mannerisms and to be a little less liberal with his
colour, and heard absolutely unmoved of the horses Armour had got into
the Salon. ‘I understand,’ he said, with a benevolent wink, ‘that about
four thousand pictures are hung every year at the Salon, and I don’t
know how many thousand are rejected. Let Mr. Armour get a picture
accepted by the Academy. Then he will have something to talk about.’
Neither did Sir William Lamb buy anything at all.
The experiment with Lady Pilkey was even more distressing. She gushed
with fair appropriateness and great liberality, and finally fixed upon
one scene to make her own. She winningly asked the price of it. She
had never known anybody who did not understand prices. Poor Armour, the
colour of a live coal, named one hundred rupees.
‘One hundred rupees! Oh, my dear boy, I can never afford that! You must,
you must really give it to me for seventy-five. It will break my heart
if I can’t have it for seventy-five.’
‘Give me the pleasure,’ said Armour, ‘of making you a present of it. You
have been so kind about everything, and it’s so seldom one meets
anybody who really cares. So let me send it to you.’ It was honest
embarrassment; he did not mean to be impertinent.
And she did.
Blum, of the Geological Department--Herr Blum in his own country--came
up and honestly rejoiced, and at end of an interminable pipe did
purchase a little Breton bit that I hated to see go--it was one of
the things that gave the place its air; but Blum had a large family
undergoing education at Heidelberg, and exclaimed, to Armour’s keenest
anguish, that on this account he could not more do.
Altogether, during the months of August and September, persons resident
in Simla drawing their income from Her Majesty, bought from the
eccentric young artist from nowhere, living on Summer Hill, canvases and
little wooden panels to the extent of two hundred and fifty rupees. Lady
Pilkey had asked him to lunch--she might well! and he had appeared at
three garden-parties and a picnic. It was not enough.
It was not enough, and yet it was, in a manner, too much. Pitiful as
it was in substance, it had an extraordinary personal effect. Armour
suddenly began to turn himself out well--his apparel was of smarter cut
than mine, and his neckties in better taste. Little elegances appeared
in the studio--he offered you Scotch in a Venetian decanter and
Melachrinos from a chased silver box. The farouche element faded out of
his speech; his ideas remained as fresh and as simple as ever, but he
gave them a form, bless me! that might have been used at the Club. He
worked as hard as ever, but more variously; he tried his hand at several
new things. He said he was feeling about for something that would really
make his reputation.
In spite of all this his little measure of success made him more
contemptuous than before of its scene and its elements. He declared that
he had a poorer idea than ever of society now that he saw the pattern
from the smart side. That his convictions on this head survived one of
the best Simla tailors shows that they must always have been strong. I
think he believed that he was doing all that he did do to make himself
socially possible with the purpose of pleasing Dora Harris. I would
not now venture to say how far Dora inspired and controlled him in
this direction, and how far the impulse was his own. The measure of
appreciation that began to seek his pictures, poor and small though it
was, gave him, on the other hand, the most unalloyed delight. He talked
of the advice of Sir William Lamb as if it were anything but that of a
pompous old ass, and he made a feast with champagne for Blum that must
have cost him quite as much as Blum paid for the Breton sketch. He
confirmed my guess that he had never in his life until he came to Simla
sold anything, so that even these small transactions were great things
to him, and the earnest of a future upon which he covered his eyes not
to gaze too raptly. He mentioned to me that Kauffer had been asked
for his address--who could it possibly be?--and looked so damped by my
humourous suggestion that it was a friend of Kauffer’s in some other
line who wanted a bill paid, that I felt I had been guilty of brutality.
And all the while the quality of his wonderful output never changed or
abated. Pure and firm and prismatic it remained. I found him one day at
the very end of October, with shining eyes and fingers blue with cold,
putting the last of the afternoon light on the snows into one of the
most dramatic hill pictures I ever knew him to do. He seemed intoxicated
with his skill, and hummed the ‘Marseillaise,’ I remember, all the way
to Amy Villa whither I accompanied him.
It was the last day of Kauffer’s contract; and besides, all the world,
secretaries, establishments, hill captains, grass widows, shops, and
sundries, was trundling down the hill. I came to ask my young friend
what he meant to do.
‘Do?’ he cried. ‘Why, eat, drink, and be merry! Kauffer has paid up, and
his yoke is at the bottom of the sea. Come back and dine with me!’
The hour we spent together in his little inner room before dinner was
served stands out among my strangest, loveliest memories of Armour. He
was divinely caught up, and absurd as it is to write, he seemed to carry
me with him. We drank each a glass of vermouth before dinner sitting
over a scented fire of deodar branches, while outside the little window
in front of me the lifted lines of the great empty Himalayan landscape
faded and fell into a blur. I remembered the solitary scarlet dahlia
that stood between us and the vast cold hills and held its colour when
all was grey but that. The hill world waited for the winter; down a
far valley we could hear a barking deer. Armour talked slowly, often
hesitating for a word, of the joy there was in beauty and the divinity
in the man who saw it with his own eyes. I have read notable pages that
brought conviction pale beside that which stole about the room from what
he said. The comment may seem fantastic, but it is a comment--I caressed
the dog. The servant clattered in with the plates, and at a shout
outside Armour left me. He came in radiant with Signor Strobo, also
radiant and carrying a violin, for hotel-keeping was not the Signor’s
only accomplishment. I knew Strobo well; many a special dish had he
ordered for my little parties; and we met at Armour’s fireside like the
genial old acquaintances we were. Another voice without and presently
I was nodding to Rosario and vaguely wondering why he looked
uncomfortable.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Armour, as we sat down, ‘I’ve got nothing but beer.
If I had known you were all coming, no vintage that crawls up the hill
would have been good enough for me.’ He threw the bond of his wonderful
smile round us as we swallowed his stuff, and our hearts were lightened.
‘You fellows,’ he went on nodding at the other two, ‘might happen any
day, but my friend John Philips comes to me across aerial spaces; he is
a star I’ve trapped--you don’t do that often. Pilsener, John Philips, or
Black?’ He was helping his only servant by pouring out the beer himself,
and as I declared for Black he slapped me affectionately on the back and
said my choice was good.
The last person who had slapped me on the back was Lord Dufferin, and
I smiled softly and privately at the remembrance, and what a difference
there was. I had resented Dufferin’s slap.
We had spiced hump and jungle-fowl and a Normandy cheese, everybody will
understand that; but how shall I make plain with what exultation and
simplicity we ate and drank, how the four candid selves of us sat around
the table in a cloud of tobacco and cheered each other on, Armour always
far in front turning handsprings as he went. Scraps come back to me, but
the whole queer night has receded and taken its place among those dreams
that insist at times upon having been realities. Rosario told us stories
Kipling might have coveted of the under life of Port Said. Strobo talked
with glorious gusto of his uncle the brigand. They were liberated men;
we were all liberated men. ‘Let the direction go,’ cried Armour, ‘and
give the senses flight, taking the image as it comes, beating the air
with happy pinions.’ He must have been talking of his work, but I can
not now remember. And what made Strobo say, of life and art, ‘I have
waited for ten years and five thousand pounds--now my old violin says,
“Go, handle the ladle! Go, add up the account!”’ And did we really
discuss the chances of ultimate salvation for souls in the Secretariat?
I know I lifted my glass once and cried, ‘I, a slave, drink to freedom!’
and Rosario clinked with me. And Strobo played wailing Hungarian airs
with sudden little shakes of hopeless laughter in them. I can not
even now hear Naches without being filled with the recollection of how
certain bare branches in me that night blossomed.
I walked alone down the hill and along the three miles to the Club, and
at every step the tide sank in me till it cast me on my threshold at
three in the morning, just the middle-aged shell of a Secretary to the
Government of India that I was when I set forth. Next day when my head
clerk brought me the files we avoided one another’s glances; and it was
quite three weeks before I could bring myself to address him with the
dignity and distance prescribed for his station as ‘Mr.’ Rosario.