The Pool in the Desert | Page 9

Dacres remarked absently; but the sea air, perhaps, enabled me to digest his thoughtlessness with a smile.
'No,' I said, 'I am just as well pleased. I think a resemblance to me would confuse me, often.'
There was a trace of scrutiny in Dacres's glance. 'Don't you find yourself in sympathy with her?' he asked.
'My dear boy, I have seen her just twice in twenty-one years! You see, I've always stuck to John.'
'But between mother and daughter--I may be old-fashioned, but I had an idea that there was an instinct that might be depended on.'
'I am depending on it,' I said, and let my eyes follow the little blue waves that chased past the hand-rail. 'We are making very good speed, aren't we? Thirty-five knots since last night at ten. Are you in the sweep?'
'I never bet on the way out--can't afford it. Am I old-fashioned?' he insisted.
'Probably. Men are very slow in changing their philosophy about women. I fancy their idea of the maternal relation is firmest fixed of all.'
'We see it a beatitude!' he cried.
'I know,' I said wearily, 'and you never modify the view.'
Dacres contemplated the portion of the deck that lay between us. His eyes were discreetly lowered, but I saw embarrassment and speculation and a hint of criticism in them.
'Tell me more about it,' said he.
'Oh, for heaven's sake don't be sympathetic!' I exclaimed. 'Lend me a little philosophy instead. There is nothing to tell. There she is and there I am, in the most intimate relation in the world, constituted when she is twenty-one and I am forty.' Dacres started slightly at the ominous word; so little do men realize that the women they like can ever pass out of the constated years of attraction. 'I find the young lady very tolerable, very creditable, very nice. I find the relation atrocious. There you have it. I would like to break the relation into pieces,' I went on recklessly, 'and throw it into the sea. Such things should be tempered to one. I should feel it much less if she occupied another cabin, and would consent to call me Elizabeth or Jane. It is not as if I had been her mother always. One grows fastidious at forty--new intimacies are only possible then on a basis of temperament--'
I paused; it seemed to me that I was making excuses, and I had not the least desire in the world to do that.
'How awfully rough on the girl!' said Dacres Tottenham.
'That consideration has also occurred to me,' I said candidly, 'though I have perhaps been even more struck by its converse.'
'You had no earthly business to be her mother,' said my friend, with irritation.
I shrugged my shoulders--what would you have done?--and opened 'La Duchesse Bleue'.
Chapter 1.
III
Mrs. Morgan, wife of a judge of the High Court of Bombay, and I sat amidships on the cool side in the Suez Canal. She was outlining 'Soiled Linen' in chain-stitch on a green canvas bag; I was admiring the Egyptian sands. 'How charming,' said I, 'is this solitary desert in the endless oasis we are compelled to cross!'
'Oasis in the desert, you mean,' said Mrs. Morgan; 'I haven't noticed any, but I happened to look up this morning as I was putting on my stockings, and I saw through my port-hole the most lovely mirage.'
I had been at school with Mrs. Morgan more than twenty years agone, but she had come to the special enjoyment of the dignities of life while I still liked doing things. Mrs. Morgan was the kind of person to make one realize how distressing a medium is middle age. Contemplating her precipitous lap, to which conventional attitudes were certainly more becoming, I crossed my own knees with energy, and once more resolved to be young until I was old.
'How perfectly delightful for you to be taking Cecily out!' said Mrs. Morgan placidly.
'Isn't it?' I responded, watching the gliding sands.
'But she was born in sixty-nine--that makes her twenty-one. Quite time, I should say.'
'Oh, we couldn't put it off any longer. I mean--her father has such a horror of early debuts. He simply would not hear of her coming before.'
'Doesn't want her to marry in India, I dare say--the only one,' purred Mrs. Morgan.
'Oh, I don't know. It isn't such a bad place. I was brought out there to marry, and I married. I've found it very satisfactory.'
'You always did say exactly what you thought, Helena,' said Mrs. Morgan excusingly.
'I haven't much patience with people who bring their daughters out to give them the chance they never would have in England, and then go about devoutly hoping they won't marry in India,' I said. 'I shall be very pleased if Cecily does as well as your girls have done.'
'Mary in the Indian Civil and Jessie in the Imperial Service Troops,'