We drove together, after dinner, to the Taj. The moonlight lay in an
empty splendour over the broad sandy road, with the acacias pricking up
on each side of it and the gardens of the station bungalows stretching
back into clusters of crisp shadows. It was an exquisite February night,
very still. Nothing seemed abroad but two or three pariah dogs, upon
vague and errant business, and the Executive Engineer going swiftly home
from the club on his bicycle. Even the little shops of the bazaar were
dark and empty; only here and there a light showed barred behind
the carved balconies of the upper rooms, and there was hardly any
tom-tomming. The last long slope of the road showed us the river curving
to the left, through a silent white waste that stretched indefinitely
into the moonlight on one side, and was crowned by Akbar’s fort on the
other. His long high line of turrets and battlements still guarded a
hint of their evening rose, and dim and exquisite above them hovered
the three dome-bubbles of the Pearl Mosque. It was a night of perfect
illusion, and the illusion was mysterious, delicate, and faint. I sat
silent as we rolled along, twenty years nearer to the original joy of
things when John and I drove through the same old dream.
Dacres, too, seemed preoccupied; only Cecily was, as they say, herself.
Cecily was really more than herself, she exhibited an unusual flow of
spirits. She talked continually, she pointed out this and that, she
asked who lived here and who lived there. At regular intervals of
about four minutes she demanded if it wasn’t simply too lovely. She
sat straight up with her vigorous profile and her smart hat; and the
silhouette of her personality sharply refused to mingle with the dust
of any dynasty. She was a contrast, a protest; positively she was
an indignity. ‘Do lean back, dear child,’ I exclaimed at last. ‘You
interfere with the landscape.’
She leaned back, but she went on interfering with it in terms of
sincerest enthusiasm.
When we stopped at the great archway of entrance I begged to be left in
the carriage. What else could one do, when the golden moment had come,
but sit in the carriage and measure it? They climbed the broad stone
steps together and passed under the lofty gravures into the garden, and
I waited. I waited and remembered. I am not, as perhaps by this time is
evident, a person of overwhelming sentiment, but I think the smile upon
my lips was gentle. So plainly I could see, beyond the massive
archway and across a score of years, all that they saw at that
moment--Arjamand’s garden, and the long straight tank of marble cleaving
it full of sleeping water and the shadows of the marshaling cypresses;
her wide dark garden of roses and of pomegranates, and at the end the
Vision, marvellous, aerial, the soul of something--is it beauty? is it
sorrow?--that great white pride of love in mourning such as only here
in all the round of our little world lifts itself to the stars, the
unpaintable, indescribable Taj Mahal. A gentle breath stole out with a
scent of jessamine and such a memory! I closed my eyes and felt the warm
luxury of a tear.
Thinking of the two in the garden, my mood was very kind, very
conniving. How foolish after all were my cherry-stone theories of taste
and temperament before that uncalculating thing which sways a world and
builds a Taj Mahal! Was it probable that Arjamand and her Emperor had
loved fastidiously, and yet how they had loved! I wandered away into
consideration of the blind forces which move the world, in which comely
young persons like my daughter Cecily had such a place; I speculated
vaguely upon the value of the subtler gifts of sympathy and insight
which seemed indeed, at that enveloping moment, to be mere flowers
strewn upon the tide of deeper emotions. The garden sent me a fragrance
of roses; the moon sailed higher and picked out the little kiosks set
along the wall. It was a charming, charming thing to wait, there at the
portal of the silvered, scented garden, for an idyll to come forth.
When they reappeared, Dacres and my daughter, they came with casual
steps and cheerful voices. They might have been a couple of tourists.
The moonlight fell full upon them on the platform under the arch.
It showed Dacres measuring with his stick the length of the Sanskrit
letters which declared the stately texts, and Cecily’s expression of
polite, perfunctory interest. They looked up at the height above them;
they looked back at the vision behind. Then they sauntered towards
the carriage, he offering a formal hand to help her down the uncertain
steps, she gracefully accepting it.
‘You--you have not been long,’ said I. ‘I hope you didn’t hurry on my
account.’
‘Miss Farnham found the marble a little cold under foot,’ replied
Dacres, putting Miss Farnham in.
‘You see,’ explained Cecily, ‘I stupidly forgot to change into thicker
soles. I have only my slippers. But, mamma, how lovely it is! Do let us
come again in the daytime. I am dying to make a sketch of it.’
Mr. Tottenham was to leave us on the following day. In the morning,
after ‘little breakfast,’ as we say in India, he sought me in the room I
had set aside to be particularly my own.
Again I was writing to John, but this time I waited for precisely his
interruption. I had got no further than ‘My dearest husband,’ and my
pen-handle was a fringe.
‘Another fine day,’ I said, as if the old, old Indian joke could give
him ease, poor man!
‘Yes,’ said he, ‘we are having lovely weather.’
He had forgotten that it was a joke. Then he lapsed into silence while I
renewed my attentions to my pen.
‘I say,’ he said at last, with so strained a look about his mouth that
it was almost a contortion, ‘I haven’t done it, you know.’
‘No,’ I responded, cheerfully, ‘and you’re not going to. Is that it?
Well!’
‘Frankly--’ said he.
‘Dear me, yes! Anything else between you and me would be grotesque,’ I
interrupted, ‘after all these years.’
‘I don’t think it would be a success,’ he said, looking at me resolutely
with his clear blue eyes, in which still lay, alas! the possibility of
many delusions.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I never did, you know. But the prospect had begun to
impose upon me.’
‘To say how right you were would seem, under the circumstances, the most
hateful form of flattery.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think I can dispense with your verbal endorsement.’
I felt a little bitter. It was, of course, better that the connoisseur
should have discovered the flaw before concluding the transaction; but
although I had pointed it out myself I was not entirely pleased to have
the article returned.
‘I am infinitely ashamed that it should have taken me all these
days--day after day and each contributory--to discover what you saw so
easily and so completely.’
‘You forget that I am her mother,’ I could not resist the temptation of
saying.
‘Oh, for God’s sake don’t jeer! Please be absolutely direct, and tell
me if you have reason to believe that to the extent of a thought, of a
breath--to any extent at all--she cares.’
He was, I could see, very deeply moved; he had not arrived at this point
without trouble and disorder not lightly to be put on or off. Yet I did
not hurry to his relief, I was still possessed by a vague feeling of
offense. I reflected that any mother would be, and I quite plumed myself
upon my annoyance. It was so satisfactory, when one had a daughter, to
know the sensations of even any mother. Nor was it soothing to remember
that the young man’s whole attitude towards Cecily had been based upon
criticism of me, even though he sat before me whipped with his own
lash. His temerity had been stupid and obstinate; I could not regret his
punishment.
I kept him waiting long enough to think all this, and then I replied, ‘I
have not the least means of knowing.’
I can not say what he expected, but he squared his shoulders as if he
had received a blow and might receive another. Then he looked at me
with a flash of the old indignation. ‘You are not near enough to her for
that!’ he exclaimed.
‘I am not near enough to her for that.’
Silence fell between us. A crow perched upon an opened venetian and
cawed lustily. For years afterward I never heard a crow caw without a
sense of vain, distressing experiment. Dacres got up and began to walk
about the room. I very soon put a stop to that. ‘I can’t talk to a
pendulum,’ I said, but I could not persuade him to sit down again.
‘Candidly,’ he said at length, ‘do you think she would have me?’
‘I regret to say that I think she would. But you would not dream of
asking her.’
‘Why not? She is a dear girl,’ he responded inconsequently.
‘You could not possibly stand it.’
Then Mr. Tottenham delivered himself of this remarkable phrase: ‘I could
stand it,’ he said, ‘as well as you can.’
There was far from being any joy in the irony with which I regarded him
and under which I saw him gather up his resolution to go; nevertheless
I did nothing to make it easy for him. I refrained from imparting
my private conviction that Cecily would accept the first presentable
substitute that appeared, although it was strong. I made no reference to
my daughter’s large fund of philosophy and small balance of sentiment. I
did not even--though this was reprehensible--confess the test, the test
of quality in these ten days with the marble archives of the Moguls,
which I had almost wantonly suggested, which he had so unconsciously
accepted, so disastrously applied. I gave him quite fifteen minutes of
his bad quarter of an hour, and when it was over I wrote truthfully but
furiously to John....
That was ten years ago. We have since attained the shades of retirement,
and our daughter is still with us when she is not with Aunt Emma and
Aunt Alice--grandmamma has passed away. Mr. Tottenham’s dumb departure
that day in February--it was the year John got his C.B.--was followed,
I am thankful to say, by none of the symptoms of unrequited affection on
Cecily’s part. Not for ten minutes, so far as I was aware, was she the
maid forlorn. I think her self-respect was of too robust a character,
thanks to the Misses Farnham. Still less, of course, had she any
reproaches to serve upon her mother, although for a long time I thought
I detected--or was it my guilty conscience?--a spark of shrewdness in
the glance she bent upon me when the talk was of Mr. Tottenham and
the probabilities of his return to Agra. So well did she sustain her
experience, or so little did she feel it, that I believe the impression
went abroad that Dacres had been sent disconsolate away. One astonishing
conversation I had with her some six months later, which turned upon
the point of a particularly desirable offer. She told me something then,
without any sort of embarrassment, but quite lucidly and directly, that
edified me much to hear. She said that while she was quite sure that Mr.
Tottenham thought of her only as a friend--she had never had the least
reason for any other impression--he had done her a service for which she
could not thank him enough--in showing her what a husband might be. He
had given her a standard; it might be high, but it was unalterable.
She didn’t know whether she could describe it, but Mr. Tottenham was
different from the kind of man you seemed to meet in India. He had his
own ways of looking at things, and he talked so well. He had given her
an ideal, and she intended to profit by it. To know that men like Mr.
Tottenham existed, and to marry any other kind would be an act of folly
which she did not intend to commit. No, Major the Hon. Hugh Taverel did
not come near it--very far short, indeed! He had talked to her during
the whole of dinner the night before about jackal-hunting with a bobbery
pack--not at all an elevated mind. Yes, he might be a very good
fellow, but as a companion for life she was sure he would not be at all
suitable. She would wait.
And she has waited. I never thought she would, but she has. From time
to time men have wished to take her from us, but the standard has been
inexorable, and none of them have reached it. When Dacres married the
charming American whom he caught like a butterfly upon her Eastern tour,
Cecily sent them as a wedding present an alabaster model of the Taj, and
I let her do it--the gift was so exquisitely appropriate. I suppose
he never looks at it without being reminded that he didn’t marry Miss
Farnham, and I hope that he remembers that he owes it to Miss Farnham’s
mother. So much I think I might claim; it is really very little
considering what it stands for. Cecily is permanently with us--I believe
she considers herself an intimate. I am very reasonable about lending
her to her aunts, but she takes no sort of advantage of my liberality;
she says she knows her duty is at home. She is growing into a firm and
solid English maiden lady, with a good colour and great decision of
character. That she always had.
I point out to John, when she takes our crumpets away from us, that she
gets it from him. I could never take away anybody’s crumpets, merely
because they were indigestible, least of all my own parents’. She
has acquired a distinct affection for us, by some means best known
to herself; but I should have no objection to that if she would not
rearrange my bonnet-strings. That is a fond liberty to which I take
exception; but it is one thing to take exception and another to express
it.
Our daughter is with us, permanently with us. She declares that she
intends to be the prop of our declining years; she makes the statement
often, and always as if it were humorous. Nevertheless I sometimes
notice a spirit of inquiry, a note of investigation in her encounters
with the opposite sex that suggests an expectation not yet extinct
that another and perhaps a more appreciative Dacres Tottenham may flash
across her field of vision--alas, how improbable! Myself I can not
imagine why she should wish it; I have grown in my old age into a
perfect horror of cultivated young men; but if such a person should by
a miracle at any time appear, I think it is extremely improbable that I
will interfere on his behalf.
2. An Impossible Ideal.