James Pethel | Page 8

deceived me when anon I was presented to a
very pale, small lady whose hair was rather white than gray. And the
"little daughter!" This prodigy's hair was as yet "down," but looked as
if it might be up at any moment: she was nearly as tall as her father,
whom she very much resembled in face and figure and heartiness of
hand-shake. Only after a rapid mental calculation could I account for
her.
"I must warn you, she's in a great rage this morning," said her father.
"Do try to soothe her." She blushed, laughed, and bade her father not be
so silly. I asked her the cause of her great rage. She said:
"He only means I was disappointed. And he was just as disappointed as
I was. WEREN'T you, now, Father?"
"I suppose they meant well, Peggy," he laughed.
"They were QUITE right," said Mrs. Pethel, evidently not for the first
time.
"They," as I presently learned, were the authorities of the
bathing-establishment. Pethel had promised his daughter he would take
her for a swim; but on their arrival at the bathing-cabins they were
ruthlessly told that bathing was defendu a cause du mauvais temps.
This embargo was our theme as we sat down to luncheon. Miss Peggy

was of opinion that the French were cowards. I pleaded for them that
even in English watering-places bathing was forbidden when the sea
was VERY rough. She did not admit that the sea was very rough to-day.
Besides, she appealed to me, where was the fun of swimming in
absolutely calm water? I dared not say that this was the only sort of
water I liked to swim in.
"They were QUITE right," said Mrs. Pethel again.
"Yes, but, darling Mother, you can't swim. Father and I are both
splendid swimmers."
To gloss over the mother's disability, I looked brightly at Pethel, as
though in ardent recognition of his prowess among waves. With a
movement of his head he indicated his daughter--indicated that there
was no one like her in the whole world. I beamed agreement. Indeed, I
did think her rather nice. If one liked the father (and I liked Pethel all
the more in that capacity), one couldn't help liking the daughter, the
two were so absurdly alike. Whenever he was looking at her (and it was
seldom that he looked away from her), the effect, if you cared to be
fantastic, was that of a very vain man before a mirror. It might have
occurred to me that, if there was any mystery in him, I could solve it
through her. But, in point of fact, I had forgotten all about that possible
mystery. The amateur detective was lost in the sympathetic observer of
a father's love. That Pethel did love his daughter I have never doubted.
One passion is not less true because another predominates. No one who
ever saw that father with that daughter could doubt that he loved her
intensely. And this intensity gages for me the strength of what else was
in him.
Mrs. Pethel's love, though less explicit, was not less evidently profound.
But the maternal instinct is less attractive to an onlooker, because he
takes it more for granted than the paternal. What endeared poor Mrs.
Pethel to me was--well, the inevitability of the epithet I give her. She
seemed, poor thing, so essentially out of it; and by "it" is meant the
glowing mutual affinity of husband and child. Not that she didn't, in her
little way, assert herself during the meal. But she did so, I thought, with
the knowledge that she didn't count, and never would count. I
wondered how it was that she had, in that Cambridge bar-room long
ago, counted for Pethel to the extent of matrimony. But from any such
room she seemed so utterly remote that she might well be in all

respects now an utterly changed woman. She did preeminently look as
if much had by some means been taken out of her, with no
compensatory process of putting in. Pethel looked so very young for his
age, whereas she would have had to be really old to look young for hers.
I pitied her as one might a governess with two charges who were
hopelessly out of hand. But a governess, I reflected, can always give
notice. Love tied poor Mrs. Pethel fast to her present situation.
As the three of them were to start next day on their tour through France,
and as the four of us were to make a tour to Rouen this afternoon, the
talk was much about motoring, a theme which Miss Peggy's enthusiasm
made almost tolerable. I said to Mrs. Pethel, with more good-will than
truth, that I supposed she was "very keen on it." She replied