The Pool in the Desert | Page 9

amazing lady!' said Dacres. 'A daughter--and such a tall daughter!
I somehow never--'
'You knew we had one?'
'There was theory of that kind, I remember, about ten years ago. Since
then--excuse me--I don't think you've mentioned her.'

'You talk as if she were a skeleton in the closet!'
'You DIDN'T talk--as if she were.'
'I think she was, in a way, poor child. But the resurrection day hasn't
confounded me as I deserved. She's a very good girl.'
'If you had asked me to pick out your daughter--'
'She would have been the last you would indicate! Quite so,' I said. 'She
is like her father's people. I can't help that.'
'I shouldn't think you would if you could,' 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