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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.
He went and stayed with Strobo, and every day he and the Signor, clad in bath-towels, lay in closed rooms under punkahs and had iced drinks in the long tumblers of the East, and smoked and talked away the burden of the hours.
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.
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 heard him, I confess, with impatience, it was all so shabby and shallow, but I heard him out, and I was rewarded; he came for an illustration in the end to Simla. 'Look, he said, 'at what they call their "Government House list"; and look at Strobo, Signor Strobo. Isn't Strobo a man of intelligence, isn't he a man of benevolence? He gave ten thousand rupees last week to the famine fund.
I gathered this by inference only, he was curiously watchful and reticent as to anything that had happened to him personally; indeed, he was careful to aver preferences for the society of 'sincere' people like Strobo and Rosario, that seemed to declare him more than indifferent to circles in which he would not meet them.
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.
It became more or less necessary to argue then, and the commonplaces with which I opposed him called forth a wealth of detail bearing most picturesquely upon his stay among us. I began to think he had never hated English rigidity and English snobbery until he came to Simla, and that he and Strobo and Rosario had mingled their experiences in one bitter cup.
We in Simla, of course, knew nothing of all this at the time; the details leaked out later when Strobo came up again.
'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!
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