第10章

Dacres, at this, took me up promptly.Life, he said, the heart of life, had particularly little to say to temperament.By the heart of life I suppose he meant married love.He explained that its roots asked other sustenance, and that it throve best of all on simple elemental goodness.So long as a man sought in women mere casual companionship, perhaps the most exquisite thing to be experienced was the stimulus of some spiritual feminine counterpart;but when he desired of one woman that she should be always and intimately with him, the background of his life, the mother of his children, he was better advised to avoid nerves and sensibilities, and try for the repose of the common--the uncommon--domestic virtues.Ah, he said, they were sweet, like lavender.(Already, Itold him, he smelled the housekeeper's linen-chest.) But I did not interrupt him much; I couldn't, he was too absorbed.To temperamental pairing, he declared, the century owed its breed of decadents.I asked him if he had ever really recognized one; and he retorted that if he hadn't he didn't wish to make a beginning in his own family.In a quarter of an hour he repudiated the theories of a lifetime, a gratifying triumph for simple elemental goodness.

Having denied the value of the subtler pretensions to charm in woman as you marry her, he went artlessly on to endow Cecily with as many of them as could possibly be desirable.He actually persuaded himself to say that it was lovely to see the reflections of life in her tranquil spirit; and when I looked at him incredulously he grew angry, and hinted that Cecily's sensitiveness to reflections and other things might be a trifle beyond her mother's ken.'She responds instantly, intimately, to the beautiful everywhere,' he declared.

'Aren't the opportunities of life on board ship rather limited to demonstrate that?' I inquired.'I know--you mean sunsets.Cecily is very fond of sunsets.She is always asking me to come and look at them.'

'I was thinking of last night's sunset,' he confessed.'We looked at it together.'

'What did she say?' I asked idly.

'Nothing very much.That's just the point.Another girl would have raved and gushed.'

'Oh, well, Cecily never does that,' I responded.'Nevertheless she is a very ordinary human instrument.I hope I shall have no temptation ten years hence to remind you that I warned you of her quality.'

'I wish, not in the least for my own profit, for I am well convinced already, but simply to win your cordiality and your approval--never did an unexceptional wooer receive such niggard encouragement!--Iwish there were some sort of test for her quality.I would be proud to stand by it, and you would be convinced.I can't find words to describe my objection to your state of mind.'

The thing seemed to me to be a foregone conclusion.I saw it accomplished, with all its possibilities of disastrous commonplace.

I saw all that I have here taken the trouble to foreshadow.So far as I was concerned, Dacres's burden would add itself to my philosophies, voila tout.I should always be a little uncomfortable about it, because it had been taken from my back; but it would not be a matter for the wringing of hands.And yet--the hatefulness of the mistake! Dacres's bold talk of a test made no suggestion.

Should my invention be more fertile? I thought of something.

'You have said nothing to her yet?' I asked.

'Nothing.I don't think she suspects for a moment.She treats me as if no such fell design were possible.I'm none too confident, you know,' he added, with longer face.

'We go straight to Agra.Could you come to Agra?'

'Ideal!' he cried.'The memory of Mumtaz! The garden of the Taj!

I've always wanted to love under the same moon as Shah Jehan.How thoughtful of you!'

'You must spend a few days with us in Agra,' I continued.'And as you say, it is the very place to shrine your happiness, if it comes to pass there.'

'Well, I am glad to have extracted a word of kindness from you at last,' said Dacres, as the stewards came to lay the table.'But Iwish,' he added regretfully, 'you could have thought of a test.'