第11章

Four days later we were in Agra.A time there was when the name would have been the key of dreams to me; now it stood for John's headquarters.I was rejoiced to think I would look again upon the Taj; and the prospect of living with it was a real enchantment; but I pondered most the kind of house that would be provided for the General Commanding the District, how many the dining-room would seat, and whether it would have a roof of thatch or of corrugated iron--I prayed against corrugated iron.I confess these my preoccupations.I was forty, and at forty the practical considerations of life hold their own even against domes of marble, world-renowned, and set about with gardens where the bulbul sings to the rose.I smiled across the years at the raptures of my first vision of the place at twenty-one, just Cecily's age.Would I now sit under Arjamand's cypresses till two o'clock in the morning to see the wonder of her tomb at a particular angle of the moon? Would I climb one of her tall white ministering minarets to see anything whatever? I very greatly feared that I would not.Alas for the aging of sentiment, of interest! Keep your touch with life and your seat in the saddle as long as you will, the world is no new toy at forty.But Cecily was twenty-one, Cecily who sat stolidly finishing her lunch while Dacres Tottenham talked about Akbar and his philosophy.'The sort of man,' he said, 'that Carlyle might have smoked a pipe with.'

'But surely,' said Cecily reflectively, 'tobacco was not discovered in England then.Akbar came to the throne in 1526.'

'Nor Carlyle either for that matter,' I hastened to observe.

'Nevertheless, I think Mr.Tottenham's proposition must stand.'

'Thanks, Mrs.Farnham,' said Dacres.'But imagine Miss Farnham's remembering Akbar's date! I'm sure you didn't!'

'Let us hope she doesn't know too much about him,' I cried gaily, 'or there will be nothing to tell!'

'Oh, really and truly very little!' said Cecily, 'but as soon as we heard papa would be stationed here Aunt Emma made me read up about those old Moguls and people.I think I remember the dynasty.

Baber, wasn't he the first? And then Humayon, and after him Akbar, and then Jehangir, and then Shah Jehan.But I've forgotten every date but Akbar's.'

She smiled her smile of brilliant health and even spirits as she made the damaging admission, and she was so good to look at, sitting there simple and wholesome and fresh, peeling her banana with her well-shaped fingers, that we swallowed the dynasty as it were whole, and smiled back upon her.John, I may say, was extremely pleased with Cecily; he said she was a very satisfactory human accomplishment.One would have thought, positively, the way he plumed himself over his handsome daughter, that he alone was responsible for her.But John, having received his family, straightway set off with his Staff on a tour of inspection, and thereby takes himself out of this history.I sometimes think that if he had stayed--but there has never been the lightest recrimination between us about it, and I am not going to hint one now.

'Did you read,' asked Dacres, 'what he and the Court poet wrote over the entrance gate to the big mosque at Fattehpur-Sikri? It's rather nice."The world is a looking-glass, wherein the image has come and is gone--take as thine own nothing more than what thou lookest upon."'

My daughter's thoughtful gaze was, of course, fixed upon the speaker, and in his own glance I saw a sudden ray of consciousness;but Cecily transferred her eyes to the opposite wall, deeply considering, and while Dacres and I smiled across the table, I saw that she had perceived no reason for blushing.It was a singularly narrow escape.

'No,' she said, 'I didn't; what a curious proverb for an emperor to make! He couldn't possibly have been able to see all his possessions at once.'

'If you have finished,' Dacres addressed her, 'do let me show you what your plain and immediate duty is to the garden.The garden waits for you--all the roses expectant--'