The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeannette Duncan (100 best novels of all time txt) 📕

'Bless me!' said I, 'is it Sunday?' It seemed she had got on very well indeed with the bishop, who knew the married sister, at Tunbridge, of her very greatest friend. Cecily herself did not know the married sister, but that didn't matter--it was a link. The bishop was charming. 'Well, my love,' said I--I was teaching myself to use these forms of address for fear she would feel an unkind lack of them, but it was difficult--'I am glad that somebody from my part of the world has impressed you favourably at last. I wish we had more bishops.'

'Oh, but my bishop doesn't belong to your part of the world,' responded my daughter sleepily. 'He is travelling for his health.'

It was the most unexpected and delightful thing to be packed into one's chair next morning by Dacres Tottenham. As I emerged from the music saloon after breakfast--Cecily had stayed below to look over her hymns and consider with her bishop the possibility of an anthem--Dacres's face was the first I saw; it simply illuminated, for me, that portion of the deck. I noticed with pleasure the quick toss of the cigar overboard as he recognized and bore down upon me. We were immense friends; John liked him too. He was one of those people who make a tremendous difference; in all our three hundred passengers there could be no one like him, certainly no one whom I could be more glad to see. We plunged at once into immediate personal affairs, we would get at the heart of them later. He gave his vivid word to everything he had seen and done; we laughed and exclaimed and were silent in a concert of admirable understanding. We were still unravelling, still demanding and explaining when the ship's bell began to ring for church, and almost simultaneously Cecily advanced towards us. She had a proper Sunday hat on, with flowers under the brim, and a church-going frock; she wore gloves and clasped a prayer-book. Most of the women who filed past to the summons of the bell were going down as they were, in cotton blouses and serge skirts, in tweed caps or anything, as to a kind of family prayers. I knew exactly how they would lean against the pillars of the saloon during the psalms. This young lady would be little less than a rebuke to them. I surveyed her approach; she positively walked as if it were Sunday.

'My dear,' I said, 'how endimanchee you look! The bishop will be very pleased with you. This gentleman is Mr. Tottenham, who administers Her Majesty's pleasure in parts of India about Allahabad. My daughter, Dacres.' She was certainly looking very fresh, and her calm grey eyes had the repose in them that has never known itself to be disturbed about anything. I wondered whether she bowed so distantly also because it was Sunday, and then I remembered that Dacres was a young man, and that the Farnham ladies had probably taught her that it was right to be very distant with young men.

'It is almost eleven, mamma.'

'Yes, dear. I see you are going to church.'

'Are you not coming, mamma?'

I was well wrapped up in an extremely comfortable corner. I had 'La Duchesse Bleue' uncut in my lap, and an agreeable person to talk to. I fear that in any case I should not been inclined to attend the service, but there was something in my daughter's intonation that made me distinctly hostile to the idea. I am putting things down as they were, extenuating nothing.

'I think not, dear.'

'I've turned up two such nice seats.'

'Stay, Miss Farnham, and keep us in countenance,' said Dacres, with his charming smile. The smile displaced a look of discreet and amused observation. Dacres had an eye always for a situation, and this one was even newer to him than to me.

'No, no. She must run away and not bully her mamma,' I said. 'When she comes back we will see how much she remembers of the sermon;' and as the flat tinkle from the companion began to show signs of diminishing, Cecily, with one grieved glance, hastened down.

'You 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 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,' sighed Mrs. Morgan complacently. 'And both, my dear, within a year. It WAS a blow.'

'Oh, it must have been!' I said civilly.

There was no use in bandying words with Emily Morgan.

'There is nothing in the world like the satisfaction and pleasure one takes in one's daughters,' Mrs. Morgan went on limpidly. 'And one can be in such CLOSE sympathy with one's girls. I have never regretted having no sons.'

'Dear me, yes. To watch oneself growing up again--call back the lovely April of one's prime, etcetera--to read every thought and anticipate every wish--there is no more golden privilege in life, dear Emily. Such a direct and natural avenue for affection, such a wide field for interest!'

I paused, lost in the volume of my admirable sentiments.

'How beautifully you talk, Helena! I wish I had the gift.'

'It doesn't mean very much,' I said truthfully.

'Oh, I think it's everything! And how companionable a girl is! I quite envy you, this season, having Cecily constantly with you and taking her about everywhere. Something quite new for you, isn't it?'

'Absolutely,' said I; 'I am looking forward to it immensely. But it is likely she will make her own friends, don't you think?' I added anxiously.

'Hardly the first season. My girls didn't. I was practically their only intimate for months. Don't be afraid; you won't be obliged to go shares in Cecily with anybody for a good long while,' added Mrs. Morgan kindly. 'I know just how you feel about THAT.'

The muddy water of the Ditch chafed up from under us against its banks with a smell that enabled me to hide the emotions Mrs. Morgan evoked behind my handkerchief.