If she fell to him, the next in precedence was bestowed upon me, and there might not be a pin to choose between them for phlegm and inflation.It is a preposterous mistake to suppose that the married ladies of Simla are in the majority brilliant and fascinating creatures, who say things in French for greater convenience, and lead a man on.After fifteen years I am ready to swear that I have been led on to nothing more compromising than a subscription to the Young Women's Christian Association, though no one could have been more docile or more intelligent.During one viceroyalty of happy memory half a dozen clever and amusing men and women came together in Simla--it was a mere fortuitous occurrence, aided by a joyous ruler who hated being bored as none before or ever since have hated it--and the place has lived socially upon the reputation of that meteoric term ever since.Whereas the domestic virtues are no more deeply rooted anywhere than under the deodars; nor could any one, Ihasten to add, chronicle the fact with more profound satisfaction than myself.A dinner-party, however, is not a favourable setting for the domestic virtues; it does them so little justice that one could sometimes almost wish them left at home, and I was talking of Simla dinner-parties, where I have encountered so many.How often have I been consulted as to the best school for boys in England, or instructed as to how much I should let my man charge me for shoe-blacking, or advised as to the most effectual way of preventing the butler from stealing my cheroots, while Dora Harris, remote as a star, talked to a cavalry subaltern about wind-galls and splints!
At these moments I felt my seniority bitterly; to give Dora to a cavalry subaltern was such plain waste.
It was an infinite pleasure to know any one as well as I seemed to know Dora Harris.She, I believe, held no one else upon the same terms of intimacy, though she found women, of course, with whom she fluttered and embraced; and while there were, naturally, men with whom I exchanged the time o'day in terms more or less cordial, I am certain that I kept all my closest thoughts for her.It is necessary again to know Simla to understand how our friendship was gilded by the consideration that it was on both sides perfectly spontaneous.Social life in the poor little place is almost a pure farce with the number of its dictated, prompted intimacies, not controlled by general laws of expediency as at home, but each on its own basis of hope and expectancy, broadly and ludicrously obvious as a case by itself.There is a conspiracy of stupidity about it, for we are all in the same hat, every one of us; there is none so exalted that he does not urgently want a post that somebody else can give him.So we continue to exchange our depreciated smiles, and only privately admit that the person who most desires to be agreeable to us is the person whom we regard with the greatest suspicion.As between Dora Harris and myself there could be, naturally, no ax to grind.We amused ourselves by looking on penetratingly but tolerantly at the grinding of other people's.
That was a very principal bond between us, that uncompromising clearness with which we looked at the place we lived in, and on the testimony of which we were so certain that we didn't like it.The women were nearly all so much in heaven in Simla, the men so well satisfied to be there too, at the top of the tree, that our dissatisfaction gave us to one another the merit of originality, almost proved in one another a superior mind.It was not that either of us would have preferred to grill out our days in the plains; we always had a saving clause for the climate, the altitude, the scenery; it was Simla intrinsic, Simla as its other conditions made it, with which we found such liberal fault.Again I should have to explain Simla, at the length of an essay at least, to justify our condemnation.This difficulty confronts me everywhere.
I must ask you instead to imagine a small colony of superior--very superior--officials, of British origin and traditions, set on the top of a hill, years and miles away from literature, music, pictures, politics, existing like a harem on the gossip of the Viceroy's intentions, and depending for amusement on tennis and bumble-puppy, and then consider, you yourself, whether you are the sort of person to be unquestionably happy there.If you see no reason to the contrary, pray do not go on.There were times when Dora declared that she couldn't breathe for want of an atmosphere, and times when I looked round and groaned at the cheerful congratulatory aridity in every man's eye--men who had done things at Oxford in my own year, and come out like me to be mummified into a last state like this.Thank Heaven, there was never any cheerful congratulation in my eye; one could always put there, when the thought inspired it, a saving spark of rank ingratitude instead.
It was as if we had the most desirable things--roses, cool airs, far snowy ranges--to build what we like with, and we built Simla--altitude, 7,000, population 2,500, headquarters of the Government of India during the summer months.An ark it was, of course; an ark of refuge from the horrible heat that surged below, and I wondered as Iclimbed the steeps of Summer Hill in search of I.Armour's inaccessible address, whether he was to be the dove bearing beautiful testimony of a world coming nearer.I rejected the simile, however, as over-sanguine; we had been too long abandoned on our Ararat.
