The Pool in the Desert | Page 7

her out. She received me with just a hint of kindness,
perhaps, but on the whole very well.
Chapter 1.
II
John was recalled, of course, before the end of our furlough, which
knocked various things on the head; but that is the sort of thing one
learned to take with philosophy in any lengthened term of Her
Majesty's service. Besides, there is usually sugar for the pill; and in this
case it was a Staff command bigger than anything we expected for at
least five years to come. The excitement of it when it was explained to
her gave Cecily a charming colour. She took a good deal of interest in
the General, her papa; I think she had an idea that his distinction would

alleviate the situation in India, however it might present itself. She
accepted that prospective situation calmly; it had been placed before
her all her life. There would always be a time when she should go and
live with papa and mamma in India, and so long as she was of an age to
receive the idea with rebel tears she was assured that papa and mamma
would give her a pony. The pony was no longer added to the prospect;
it was absorbed no doubt in the general list of attractions calculated to
reconcile a young lady to a parental roof with which she had no
practical acquaintance. At all events, when I feared the embarrassment
and dismay of a pathetic parting with darling grandmamma and the
aunties, and the sweet cat and the dear vicar and all the other objects of
affection, I found an agreeable unexpected philosophy.
I may add that while I anticipated such broken-hearted farewells I was
quite prepared to take them easily. Time, I imagined, had brought
philosophy to me also, equally agreeable and equally unexpected.
It was a Bombay ship, full of returning Anglo-Indians. I looked up and
down the long saloon tables with a sense of relief and of solace; I was
again among my own people. They belonged to Bengal and to Burma,
to Madras and to the Punjab, but they were all my people. I could pick
out a score that I knew in fact, and there were none that in imagination
I didn't know. The look of wider seas and skies, the casual experienced
glance, the touch of irony and of tolerance, how well I knew it and how
well I liked it! Dear old England, sitting in our wake, seemed to hold by
comparison a great many soft, unsophisticated people, immensely
occupied about very particular trifles. How difficult it had been, all the
summer, to be interested! These of my long acquaintance belonged to
my country's Executive, acute, alert, with the marks of travail on them.
Gladly I went in and out of the women's cabins and listened to the argot
of the men; my own ruling, administering, soldiering little lot.
Cecily looked at them askance. To her the atmosphere was alien, and I
perceived that gently and privately she registered objections. She cast a
disapproving eye upon the wife of a Conservator of Forests, who
scanned with interest a distant funnel and laid a small wager that it
belonged to the Messageries Maritimes. She looked with a straightened

lip at the crisply stepping women who walked the deck in short and
rather shabby skirts with their hands in their jacket-pockets talking
transfers and promotions; and having got up at six to make a
water-colour sketch of the sunrise, she came to me in profound
indignation to say that she had met a man in his pyjamas; no doubt;
poor wretch, on his way to be shaved. I was unable to convince her he
was not expected to visit the barber in all his clothes.
At the end of the third day she told me that she wished these people
wouldn't talk to her; she didn't like them. I had turned in the hour we
left the Channel and had not left my berth since, so possibly I was not
in the most amiable mood to receive a douche of cold water. 'I must try
to remember, dear,' I said, ' that you have been brought up altogether in
the society of pussies and vicars and elderly ladies, and of course you
miss them. But you must have a little patience. I shall be up tomorrow,
if this beastly sea continues to go down; and then we will try to find
somebody suitable to introduce to you.'
'Thank you, mamma,' said my daughter, without a ray of suspicion.
Then she added consideringly, 'Aunt Emma and Aunt Alice do seem
quite elderly ladies beside you, and yet you are older than either of
them aren't you? I wonder how that is.'
It was so innocent, so