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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12520 ***
+
+DEADHAM HARD
+
+A Romance
+
+BY LUCAS MALET
+
+(MARY ST. LEGER HARRISON)
+
+Author of "Sir Richard Calmady," "The Wages of Sin," etc.
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Youth has no boundaries, age has the grave."--BULGARIAN PROVERB
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAR FRIEND ACROSS THE OCEAN C. E. O. VEVEY 1899 LONDON 1919
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK I  THE HOUSE OF THE TAMARISKS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+       I. TELLING HOW, UNDER STRESS OF CIRCUMSTANCES, A HUMANIST TURNED
+          HERMIT
+
+      II. ENTER A YOUNG SCHOLAR AND GENTLEMAN OF A HAPPY DISPOSITION AND
+          GOOD PROSPECTS
+
+     III. THE DOUBTFULLY HARMONIOUS PARTS OF A WHOLE
+
+      IV. WATCHERS THROUGH THE SMALL HOURS
+
+       V. BETWEEN RIVER AND SEA
+
+      VI. IN WHICH THE PAST LAYS AN OMINOUS HAND ON THE PRESENT
+
+     VII. A CRITIC IN CORDUROY
+
+
+BOOK II  THE HARD SCHOOL OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
+
+       I. IN MAIDEN MEDITATION
+
+      II. WHICH CANTERS ROUND A PARISH PUMP
+
+     III. A SAMPLING OF FREEDOM
+
+      IV. OUT ON THE BAR
+
+       V. WHEREIN DAMARIS MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HIDDEN WAYS OF
+          MEN
+
+      VI. RECOUNTING AN ASTONISHING DEPOSITION
+
+     VII. A SOUL AT WAR WITH FACT
+
+    VIII. TELLING HOW TWO PERSONS, OF VERY DIFFERENT MORAL CALIBRE, WERE
+          COMPELLED TO WEAR THE FLOWER OF HUMILIATION IN THEIR RESPECTIVE
+          BUTTONHOLES
+
+      IX. AN EXPERIMENT IN BRIDGE-BUILDING OF WHICH TIME ALONE CAN FIX
+          THE VALUES
+
+       X. TELLING HOW MISS FELICIA VERITY UNSUCCESSFULLY ATTEMPTED A
+          RESCUE
+
+      XI. IN WHICH DAMARIS RECEIVES INFORMATION OF THE LOST SHOES AND
+          STOCKINGS--ASSUMPTION OF THE GOD-HEAD
+
+     XII. CONCERNING A SERMON WHICH NEVER WAS PREACHED AND OTHER MATTERS
+          OF LOCAL INTEREST
+
+
+BOOK III  THE WORLD BEYOND THE FOREST
+
+       I. AN EPISODE IN THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE MAN WITH THE BLUE
+          EYES
+
+      II. TELLING HOW DAMARIS RENEWED HER ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BELOVED
+          LADY OF HER INFANCY
+
+     III. WHICH CONCERNS ITSELF, INCIDENTALLY, WITH THE GRIEF OF A VICTIM
+          OF CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE RECEPTION OF A BELATED CHRISTMAS
+          GREETING
+
+      IV. BLOWING ONE'S OWN TRUMPET PRACTISED AS A FINE ART
+
+       V. IN WHICH HENRIETTA PULLS THE STRINGS
+
+      VI. CARNIVAL--AND AFTER
+
+     VII. TELLING HOW DAMARIS DISCOVERED THE TRUE NATURE OF A CERTAIN
+          SECRET TO THE DEAR MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
+
+    VIII. FIDUS ACHATES
+
+      IX. WHICH FEATURES VARIOUS PERSONS WITH WHOM THE READER IS ALREADY
+          ACQUAINTED
+
+       X. WHICH IT IS TO BE FEARED SMELLS SOMEWHAT POWERFULLY OF BILGE
+          WATER
+
+      XI. WHEREIN DAMARIS MEETS HERSELF UNDER A NOVEL ASPECT
+
+     XII. CONCERNING ITSELF WITH A GATHERING UP OF FRAGMENTS
+
+    XIII. WHICH RECOUNTS A TAKING OF SANCTUARY
+
+
+BOOK IV  THROUGH SHADOWS TOWARDS THE DAWN
+
+       I. WHICH CARRIES OVER A TALE OF YEARS, AND CARRIES ON
+
+      II. RECALLING, IN SOME PARTICULARS, THE EASIEST RECORDED THEFT IN
+          HUMAN HISTORY
+
+     III. BROTHER AND SISTER
+
+      IV. WHEREIN MISS FELICIA VERITY CONCLUSIVELY SHOWS WHAT SPIRIT SHE
+          IS OF
+
+       V. DEALING WITH EMBLEMS, OMENS AND DEMONSTRATIONS
+
+      VI. SHOWING HOW SIR CHARLES VERITY WAS JUSTIFIED OF HIS LABOURS
+
+     VII. TELLING HOW CHARLES VERITY LOOKED ON THE MOTHER OF HIS SON
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTH WHICH IS ALSO CHAPTER THE LAST
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE HOUSE OF THE TAMARISKS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+TELLING HOW, UNDER STRESS OF CIRCUMSTANCE, A HUMANIST TURNED HERMIT
+
+
+A peculiar magic resides in running water, as every student of earth-lore
+knows. There is high magic, too, in the marriage of rivers, so that the
+spot where two mingle their streams is sacred, endowed with strange
+properties of evocation and of purification. Such spots go to the making
+of history and ruling of individual lives; but whether their influence is
+not more often malign than beneficent may be, perhaps, open to doubt.
+
+Certain it is, however, that no doubts of this description troubled the
+mind of Thomas Clarkson Verity, when, in the closing decade of the
+eighteenth century, he purchased the house at Deadham Hard, known as
+Tandy's Castle, overlooking the deep and comparatively narrow channel by
+which the Rivers Arne and Wilner, after crossing the tide-flats and
+salt-marsh of Marychurch Haven, make their swift united exit into
+Marychurch Bay. Neither was he troubled by the fact that Tandy's
+Castle--or more briefly and familiarly Tandy's--for all its commonplace
+outward decency of aspect did not enjoy an unblemished moral or social
+reputation. The house--a whitewashed, featureless erection--was planted
+at right angles to the deep sandy lane leading up from the shore, through
+the scattered village of Deadham, to the three-mile distant market town
+of Marychurch.
+
+Standing on a piece of rough land--bare, save for a few stunted Weymouth
+pines, and a fringe of tamarisk along the broken sea-wall--Tandy's, at
+the date in question, boasted a couple of bowed sash-windows on either
+side the front and back doors; and a range of five other windows set flat
+in the wall on the first floor. There was no second storey. The slate
+roofs were mean, low-pitched, without any grace of overshadowing eaves.
+At either end, a tall chimney-stack rose like the long ears of some
+startled, vacant-faced small animal. Behind the house, a thick plantation
+of beech and sycamore served to make its square blank whiteness visible
+for a quite considerable distance out to sea. Built upon the site of some
+older and larger structure, it was blessed--or otherwise--with a system
+of vaults and cellars wholly disproportionate to its existing size. One
+of these, by means of a roughly ceiled and flagged passage, gave access
+to a heavy door in the sea-wall opening directly on to the river
+foreshore.
+
+Hence the unsavoury reputation of the place. For not only did it supply a
+convenient receiving house for smuggled goods, but a convenient
+rendezvous for the more lawless characters of the neighbourhood--a
+back-of-beyond and No Man's Land where the devil could, with impunity,
+have things very much his own way. In the intervals of more serious
+business, the vaults and cellars of Tandy's frequently resounded to the
+agonies and brutal hilarities of cock-fights, dog-fights, and other
+repulsive sports and pastimes common to the English--both gentle and
+simple--of that virile but singularly gross and callous age. Nevertheless
+to Thomas Clarkson Verity, man of peace and of ideas, Tandy's
+represented--and continued to represent through over half a
+century--rescue, security, an awakening in something little short of
+paradise from a long-drawn nightmare of hell. He paid an extortionate
+price for the property at the outset, and spent a small fortune on the
+enlargement of the house and improvement of the grounds, yet never
+regretted his bargain.
+
+For, in good truth, when, in the spring of 1794, the soft, nimble,
+round-bodied, very polite, learned and loquacious little gentleman first
+set eyes upon its mean roofs, prick ears and vacant whitewashed
+countenance, he had been horribly shocked, horribly scared--for all the
+inherited valour of his good breeding--and, above all, most horribly
+disappointed. History had played very dirty pranks with him, which he
+found it impossible as yet to forgive.
+
+Five years earlier, fired, like many another generous spirit, by
+extravagant hope of the coming regeneration of mankind, he hurried off to
+Paris after the opening of the National Assembly and fall of the
+Bastille. With the overture to the millennium in full blast, must he not
+be there to hear and see? Associating himself with the Girondist party he
+assisted, busily enthusiastic, at the march of tremendous events, until
+the evil hour in which friend began to denounce friend, and heads, quite
+other than aristocratic--those of men and women but yesterday the idols
+and chosen leaders of the people--went daily to the filling of _la veuve_
+Guillotine's unspeakable market-basket. The spectacle proved too
+upsetting both to Mr. Verity's amiable mind and rather queasy stomach.
+Faith failed; while even the millennium seemed hardly worth purchasing at
+so detestable a cost. He stood altogether too close to the terrible
+drama, in its later stages, to distinguish the true import or progression
+of it. Too close to understand that, however blood-stained its cradle,
+the goodly child Democracy was veritably, here and now, in the act of
+being born among men. Rather did he question whether his own fat little
+neck was not in lively danger of being severed; and his own head--so full
+of ingenious thoughts and lively curiosity--of being sent flying to join
+those of Brissot and Verginaud, of wayward explosive Camille and sweet
+Lucile Desmoulins, in that same unspeakable basket.
+
+And to what end? For could he suppose the human race would be nearer, by
+the veriest fraction of a millimetre, to universal liberty, equality, and
+prosperity, through his insignificant death? Modesty, and a natural
+instinct of self-preservation alike answered, "never a jot." Whereupon
+with pertinacious, if furtive, activity he sought means of escape. And,
+at length, after months of hiding and anxious flitting, found them in the
+shape of a doubtfully seaworthy, and undoubtedly filthy, fishing-smack
+bound from Le Havre to whatever port it could make on the English south
+coast. The two days' voyage was rough, the accommodation and company to
+match. Mr. Verity spent a disgusting and disgusted forty-eight hours, to
+be eventually put ashore, a woefully bedraggled and depleted figure, in
+the primrose, carmine, and dove-grey of a tender April morning on the wet
+sand just below the sea-wall of Tandy's Castle.
+
+Never was Briton more thankful to salute his native land, or feel the
+solid earth of it under his weary and very shaky feet. He, an epicure,
+ate such coarse food, washed down by such coarse ale, as Tandy's could
+offer with smiling relish. Later, mounted on a forest pony--an
+ill-favoured animal with a wall-eye, pink muzzle, bristly upper and
+hanging lower lip, more accustomed to carry a keg of smuggled spirits
+strapped beneath its belly than a cosmopolitan savant and social reformer
+on its back--he rode the three miles to Marychurch, proposing there to
+take the coach to Southampton and, after a measure of rest and refitting,
+a post-chaise to Canton Magna, his elder brother's fine place lying in a
+fold of the chalk hills which face the Sussex border.
+
+The pony moved slowly and sullenly; but its rider felt no impatience. His
+humour was of the kindliest. His heart, indeed, came near singing for
+joy, simply, spontaneously, even as the larks sang, climbing up and
+upward from salt marsh and meadow, on either side the rutted road, into
+the limpid purity of the spring sky. A light wind flapped the
+travel-stained, high-collared blue cloth cloak which he wore; and brought
+him both the haunting fetid-sweet reek of the mud flats--the tide being
+low--and the invigorating tang of the forest and moorland, uprolling
+there ahead, in purple and umber to the pale northern horizon. Against
+that sombre background, fair and stately in the tender sunlight as a
+church of vision or dream, Marychurch Abbey rose above the roofs and
+chimneys of the little town.
+
+During the latter half of the eighteenth century, not only were
+religious systems very much at a discount among persons of intelligence,
+but the Deity himself was relegated to the position of an exploded idea,
+becoming an object of vituperation, witty or obscene according to the
+humour of the individual critic. As one of the illuminated, Mr. Verity
+did not escape the prevailing infection, although an inborn amenity of
+disposition saved him from atheism in its more blatantly offensive forms.
+The existence of the Supreme Being might be, (probably was) so he feared,
+but "a fond thing vainly imagined". Yet such is the constitution of the
+human mind that age confers a certain prestige and authority even upon
+phantoms and suspected frauds. Hence it followed that Mr. Verity, in the
+plenitude of his courtesy, had continued to take off his hat--secretly
+and subjectively at all events--to this venerable theological delusion,
+so dear through unnumbered centuries to the aching heart and troubled
+conscience of humanity.
+
+But in the present glad hour of restored security--his head no longer in
+danger of plopping, hideously bodiless, into _la veuve's_ basket, his
+inner-man, moreover, so recently and rackingly evacuated by that
+abominable Channel passage, now comfortably relined with Tandy's meat and
+drink--he went further in the way of acknowledgment. A glow of very vital
+gratitude swept over him, so that looking at the majestic church--secular
+witness to the soul's faith in and need of Almighty God's protective
+mercy and goodness--he took off his hat, no longer metaphorically but
+actually, and bowed himself together over the pommel of the saddle with
+an irresistible movement of thanksgiving and of praise.
+
+Recovering himself after a minute or so--"Almost thou persuades! me
+to be a Christian," he said aloud, shaking his head remonstrantly at
+the distant church, while tears started to his busy, politely
+inquisitive eyes.
+
+Then, striving by speech to bring his spirits to their accustomed
+playfulness and poise, he soliloquized thus, still aloud:
+
+"For, to be candid, what convincing argument can I advance, in the light
+of recent experience, to prove that Rousseau, my friends the
+Encyclopeadists, or even the great M. de Voltaire, were really wiser in
+their generation, truer lovers of the people and safer guides, than St.
+Benedict--of blessed memory, since patron of learning and incidentally
+saviour of classic literature--whose pious sons raised this most
+delectable edifice to God's glory seven hundred years ago?--The tower is
+considerably later than the transepts and the nave--fifteenth century I
+take it,--Upon my soul, I am half tempted to renounce my allegiance and
+to doubt whether our modern standards of civilization surpass, in the
+intelligent application of means to ends, those of these mediaeval
+cenobites, and whether we are saner philanthropists, deeper philosophers,
+more genial humanists than they!"
+
+But here his discourse suffered mortifying interruption. He became aware
+the pony stood stock-still in the middle of the road; and, turning its
+head, so that he beheld its pink muzzle, bristly upper and hanging lower
+lip in disagreeable profile, regarded him with malevolent contempt out of
+its one sound eye, as who should say:
+
+"What's the silly fellow trumpeting like this about? Doesn't the veriest
+noodle contrive to keep a quiet tongue in his head out on the highway?"
+
+Sensible of a snub, Mr. Verity jerked at the reins and clapped his heels
+into the creature's sides, as smartly as fatigue and native civility
+permitted, sending it forward at a jog-trot. Nevertheless his
+soliloquy--a silent one now--continued, and that with notable
+consequences to others besides himself.
+
+For his thought still dallied with the subject of the monastic life, as
+lived by those same pious Benedictines here in England long ago. Its
+reasoned rejection of mundane agitations, its calm, its leisure, its
+profound and ardent scholarship were vastly to his taste,--A man touching
+middle-age might do worse, surely, than spend his days between worship
+and learning, thus?--He saw, and approved, its social office in offering
+sanctuary to the fugitive, alms to the poor, teaching to the ignorant,
+consolation to the sick and safe passage heavenward to the dying. Saw,
+not without sympathy, its more jovial moments--its good fellowship,
+shrewd and witty conversation, well salted stories--whereat a man laughs
+slyly in his sleeve--its good cheer, too, with feasts on holy-days and
+high-days, rich and succulent.--And in this last connection, as he
+reflected, much was to be said for the geographical position of
+Marychurch; since if river mists and white dullness of sea fog, drifting
+in from the Channel, were to hand, so, also, in their season, were fresh
+run salmon, snipe, wood-cock, flocks of wild duck, of plover and other
+savoury fowl.
+
+For in this thankfulness of awakening from the hellish nightmare of the
+Terror, Mr. Verity's facile imagination tended to run to another extreme.
+With all the seriousness of which he was capable he canvassed the notion
+of a definite retirement from the world. Public movements, political and
+social experiments ceased to attract him. His appetite for helping to
+make the wheels of history go round had been satisfied to the point of
+nausea. All he desired was tranquillity and repose. He was free of
+domestic obligations and close family ties. He proposed to remain
+so--philosophy his mistress, science his hand-maid, literature his
+pastime, books (remembering the bitter sorrows of the tumbril and
+scaffold in Paris) in future, his closest friends.
+
+But, unfortunately, though the great church in all its calm grave,
+beauty still held the heart the fair landscape, the monastery, which
+might have sheltered his renunciation, had been put to secular uses or
+fallen into ruin long years ago. If he proposed to retire from the
+world, he must himself provide suitable environment. Marychurch Abbey,
+at the end of the eighteenth century, had very certainly nothing to
+offer him under that head.
+
+And then, with a swiftness of conception and decision possible only to
+mercurial-minded persons, his thought darted back to Tandy's, that
+unkempt, morally malodorous back-of-beyond and No Man's Land. Its vacant
+whitewashed countenance and long-eared chimney-stacks had welcomed him,
+if roughly and grudgingly, to England and to peace. Was he not in some
+sort thereby in debt to Tandy's bound by gratitude to the place? Should
+he not buy it--his private fortune being considerable--and there plant
+his hermitage? Should he not renovate and transform it, redeeming it from
+questionable uses, by transporting thither, not himself only but his fine
+library, his famous herbarium, his cabinets of crystals, of coins, and of
+shells? The idea captivated him. He was weary of destruction, having seen
+it in full operation and practised on the gigantic scale. Henceforth he
+would devote all the energy he possessed to construction--on however
+modest and private a one--to a building up, as personal protest against
+much lately witnessed wanton and chaotic pulling-down.
+
+In prosecution of which purpose, hopeful once more and elate, bobbing
+merrily cork-like upon the surface of surrounding circumstance--although
+lamentably deficient, for the moment, in raiment befitting his position
+and his purse--Mr. Verity spent two days at the Stag's Head, in
+Marychurch High Street. He made enquiries of all and sundry regarding
+the coveted property; and learned, after much busy investigation that
+the village, and indeed the whole Hundred of Deadham, formed an outlying
+and somewhat neglected portion of his acquaintance, Lord Bulparc's
+Hampshire estate.
+
+Here was solid information to go upon. Greatly encouraged, he took the
+coach to Southampton, and thence up to town; where he interviewed first
+Lord Bulparc's lawyers and then that high-coloured, free-living
+nobleman himself.
+
+"Gad, sir," the latter assured him, "you're heartily welcome to the damn
+little hole, as far as I'm concerned, if you have the bad taste to fancy
+it. I suppose I ought to speak to my son Oxley about this just as a
+matter of form. Not that I apprehend Oxley will raise any difficulties as
+to entail--you need not fear that. We shall let you off easy enough--only
+too happy to oblige you. But I warn you, Verity, you may drop money
+buying the present tenant out. If half my agent tells me is true, the
+fellow must be a most confounded blackguard, up to the eyes in all
+manner of ungodly traffic. By rights we ought to have kicked him out
+years ago. But," his lordship chuckled--"I scruple to be hard on any man.
+We're none of us perfect, live and let live, you know. Only my dear
+fellow, I'm bound to put you on your guard; for he'll stick to the place
+like a leech and blood-suck you like a leech too, as long as there's a
+chance of getting an extra guinea out of you by fair means or foul."
+
+To which process of blood-sucking Mr. Verity was, in fact, rather
+scandalously subjected before Tandy's Castle passed into his possession.
+But pass into his possession it finally did, whereupon he fell joyously
+to the work of reconstructive redemption.
+
+First of all he ordered the entrance of the underground passage, leading
+to the river foreshore, to be securely walled up; and, with a fine
+disregard of possible unhealthy consequences in the shape of choke-damp,
+the doorways of certain ill-reputed vaults and cellars to be filled with
+solid masonry. Neither harborage of contraband, cruel laughter of man, or
+yell of tortured beast, should again defile the under-world of
+Tandy's!--Next he had the roof of the main building raised, and given a
+less mean and meagre angle. He added a wing on the left containing
+pleasant bed-chambers upstairs, and good offices below; and, as crowning
+act of redemption, caused three large ground-floor rooms, backed by a
+wide corridor, to be built on the right in which to house his library and
+collections. This lateral extension of the house, constructed according
+to his own plans, was, like its designer, somewhat eccentric in
+character. The three rooms were semicircular, all window on the southern
+garden front, veritable sun-traps, with a low sloped roofing of
+grey-green slate to them, set fan-wise.
+
+Such was the house at Deadham Hard when Mr. Verity's labours were
+completed. And such did it remain until a good eighty years later, when
+it was visited by a youthful namesake and great-great nephew, under
+circumstances not altogether unworthy of record.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ENTER A YOUNG SCHOLAR AND GENTLEMAN OF A HAPPY DISPOSITION AND
+GOOD PROSPECTS
+
+
+The four-twenty down train rumbled into Marychurch station, and Tom
+Verity stepped out of a rather frousty first-class carriage on to the
+platform. There hot still September sunshine, tempered by a freshness off
+the sea, met him. The effect was pleasurable, adding delicate zest to the
+enjoyment of living which already possessed him. Coming from inland, the
+near neighbourhood of the sea, the sea with its eternal invitation,
+stirred his blood.
+
+For was not he about to accept the said invitation in its fullest and
+most practical expression? Witness the fact that, earlier in the day, he
+had deposited his heavy baggage at that house of many partings, many
+meetings, Radley's Hotel, Southampton; and journeyed on to Marychurch
+with a solitary, eminently virgin, cowhide portmanteau, upon the
+yellow-brown surface of which the words--"Thomas Clarkson Verity,
+passenger Bombay, first cabin R.M.S. _Penang_"--were inscribed in the
+whitest of lettering. His name stood high in the list of successful
+candidates at the last Indian Civil Service examination. Now he reaped
+the reward of past endeavour. For with that deposition of heavy baggage
+at Radley's the last farewell to years of tutelage seemed to him to be
+spoken. Nursery discipline, the restraints and prohibitions--in their
+respective degrees--of preparatory school, of Harchester, of Oxford; and,
+above all and through all, the control and admonitions of his father, the
+Archdeacon, fell away from him into the limbo of things done with,
+outworn and outpaced.
+
+This moved him as pathetic, yet as satisfactory also, since it set him
+free to fix his mind, without lurking suspicion of indecorum, upon the
+large promise of the future. He could give rein to his eagerness, to his
+high sense of expectation, while remaining innocent of impiety towards
+persons and places holding, until now, first claim on his obedience and
+affection. All this fell in admirably with his natural bent.
+Self-reliant, agreeably egotistical, convinced of the excellence of his
+social and mental equipment, Tom was saved from excess of conceit by a
+lively desire to please, an even more lively sense of humour, and an
+intelligence to which at this period nothing came amiss in the way of new
+impressions or experiences.
+
+And, from henceforth, he was his own master, his thoughts, actions,
+purposes, belonging to himself and to himself alone. Really the position
+was a little intoxicating! Realizing it, as he sat in the somewhat stuffy
+first-class carriage, on that brief hour's journey from Southampton to
+Marychurch, he had laughed out loud, hunching up his shoulders saucily,
+in a sudden outburst of irrepressible and boyish glee.
+
+But as the line, clearing the purlieus of the great seaport, turns
+south-westward running through the noble oak and beech woods of Arnewood
+Forest, crossing its bleak moorlands--silver pink, at the present season,
+with fading heather--and cutting through its plantations of larch and
+Scotch fir, Tom Verity's mood sobered. He watched the country reeling
+away to right and left past the carriage windows, and felt its peculiarly
+English and sylvan charm. Yet he saw it all through a dazzle, as of
+mirage, in which floated phantom landscapes strangely different in
+sentiment and in suggestion.--Some extravagantly luxuriant, as setting to
+crowded painted cities, some desert, amazingly vacant and desolate; but,
+in either case, poetic, alluring, exciting, as scenes far removed in
+climate, faith and civilization from those heretofore familiar can hardly
+fail to be. India, and all which India stands for in English history,
+challenged his imagination, challenged his ambition, since in virtue of
+his nationality, young and inexperienced though he was, he went to her as
+a natural ruler, the son of a conquering race. And this last thought
+begot in him not only exultation but an unwonted seriousness. While, as
+he thus meditated, from out the dazzle as of mirage, a single figure grew
+into force and distinctness of outline, a figure which from his childhood
+had appealed to him with an attraction at once sinister and heroic--that,
+namely, of a certain soldier and ex-Indian official, his kinsman, to pay
+a politic tribute of respect to whom was the object of his present
+excursion.
+
+In Catholic countries the World gives its children to the Church. In
+Protestant countries the process is not infrequently reversed, the Church
+giving its children to the World, and that with an alacrity which argues
+remarkable faith and courage--of a sort! Archdeacon Verity had carefully
+planned this visit for his son, although it obliged the young man to
+leave home two days earlier than he need otherwise have done. It was
+illuminating to note how the father brought all the resources of a fine
+presence, an important manner and full-toned archidiaconal voice to bear
+upon proving the expediency of the young man visiting this particular
+relation, over whose career and reputation he had so often, in the past,
+pursed up his lips and shaken his head for the moral benefit of the
+domestic circle.
+
+For the Archdeacon, in common with the majority of the Verity family, was
+animated by that ineradicable distrust of anything approaching genius
+which distinguishes the English country, or rather county, mind. And that
+Sir Charles Verity had failed to conform to the family tradition of
+solid, unemotional, highly respectable, and usually very wealthy,
+mediocrity was beyond question. He had struck out a line for himself;
+and, as the event disclosed, an illustrious one. This the Archdeacon,
+being a good Conservative, disapproved. It worried him sadly, making him
+actually, if unconsciously, exceedingly jealous. And precisely on that
+account, by an ingenious inversion of reasoning, he felt he owed it to
+abstract justice--in other words to his much disgruntled self--to make
+all possible use of this offending, this renegade personage, when
+opportunity of so doing occurred. Now, learning on credible authority
+that Sir Charles's name was still one to conjure with in India, it
+clearly became his duty to bid his son seek out and secure whatever
+modicum of advantage--in the matter of advice and introductions--might be
+derivable from so irritating a source.
+
+All of which, while jumping with his own desires, caused Tom much sly
+mirth. For might it not be counted among the satisfactory results of his
+deposition of heavy baggage at Radley's that, for the first time in his
+life, he was at liberty to regard even his father, Thomas Pontifex
+Verity, Archdeacon of Harchester and Rector of Canton Magna, in a true
+perspective? And he laughed again, though this time softly, indulgently,
+able in the plenitude of youthful superiority to extend a kindly
+tolerance towards the foibles and ingenuous hypocrisies of poor
+middle-age.
+
+But here the train, emerging from the broken hilly country on the
+outskirts of the forest, roared along the embankment which carries the
+line across the rich converging valleys of the Wilner and the Arne. Tom
+ceased to think either of possible advantage accruing to his own
+fortunes, or these defects of the family humour which had combined to
+dictate his present excursion, his attention being absorbed by the beauty
+of the immediate outlook. For on the left Marychurch came into view.
+
+The great, grey, long-backed abbey stands on a heart-shaped peninsula of
+slightly rising ground. Its western tower, land-mark for the valleys and
+seamark for vessels making the Haven, overtops the avenue of age-old elms
+which shade the graveyard. Close about the church, the red brick and
+rough-cast houses of the little market-town--set in a wide margin of
+salt-marsh and meadow intersected by blue-brown waterways--gather, as a
+brood of chickens gathers about a mothering hen. Beyond lie the pale
+glinting levels of the estuary, guarded on the west by gently upward
+sloping cornlands and on the south by the dark furze and heath-clad mass
+of Stone Horse Head. Beyond again, to the low horizon, stretches the
+Channel sea.
+
+The very simplicity of the picture gives it singular dignity and repose.
+Classic in its clearness of outline and paucity of detail, mediaeval in
+sentiment, since the great Norman church dominates the whole, its appeal
+is at once wistful and severe. And, this afternoon, just as the nearness
+of the sea tempered the atmosphere lifting all oppressive weight from the
+brooding sunshine, so did it temper the colouring, lending it an ethereal
+quality, in which blue softened to silver, grey to lavender, while green
+seemed overspread by powdered gold. The effect was exquisite, reminding
+Tom of certain water-colour drawings, by Danvers and by Appleyard,
+hanging in the drawing-room of the big house at Canton Magna, and of
+certain of Shelley's lyrics--both of which, in their different medium,
+breathed the same enchantment of natural and spiritual loveliness, of
+nameless desire, nameless regret. And, his nerves being somewhat strained
+by the emotions of the day, that enchantment worked upon him strangely.
+The inherent pathos of it, indeed, took him, as squarely as unexpectedly,
+by the throat. He suffered a sharp recoil from the solicitation of the
+future, an immense tenderness towards the past.--A tenderness for those
+same years of tutelage and all they had brought him, not only in
+over-flowing animal spirits, happy intercourse and intellectual
+attainment; but in their limitation of private action, their security of
+obligation, of obedience to authority, which at the time had seemed
+irksome enough and upon release from which he had so recently
+congratulated himself.
+
+Love of home, of England, of his own people--of the Archdeacon, in even
+his most full-voiced and moralizing mood--love of things tested,
+accustomed and friendly, touched him to the quick. Suddenly he asked
+himself to what end was he leaving all these and going forth to encounter
+untried conditions, an unknown Nature, a moral and social order equally
+unknown? Looking at the peaceful, ethereally lovely landscape, set in
+such close proximity and notable contrast to the unrest of that historic
+highway of the nations, the Channel sea, he felt small and lonely,
+childishly diffident and weak. All the established safety and comfort of
+home, all the thoughtless irresponsible delights of vanished boyhood,
+pulled at his heart-strings. He wanted, wanted wildly, desperately, not
+to go forward but to go back.
+
+Mind and body being healthy, however, the phase was a passing one, and
+his emotion, though sincere and poignant, of brief duration. For young
+blood--happily for the human story, which otherwise would read altogether
+too sad--defies forebodings, gaily embraces risks; and, true soldier of
+fortune, marches out to meet whatever fate the battlefield of manhood may
+hold for it, a song in its mouth and a rose behind its ear.
+
+Tom Verity speedily came to a steadier mind, pouring honest contempt upon
+his momentary lapse from self-confidence. He was ashamed of it. It
+amounted to being silly, simply silly. He couldn't understand, couldn't
+account for it. What possessed him to get a regular scare like this? It
+was too absurd for words. Sentiment?--Yes, by all means a reasonable
+amount of it, well in hand and thus capable of translation--if the fancy
+took you--into nicely turned elegiac verse; but a scare, a scare pure and
+simple, wasn't to be tolerated! And he got up, standing astraddle to
+brace himself against the swinging of the train, while he stretched,
+settling himself in his clothes--pulled down the fronts of his waistcoat,
+buttoned the jacket of his light check suit; and, taking off his
+wide-awake, smoothed his soft, slightly curly russet-coloured hair with
+his hand. These adjustments, and the assurance they induced that his
+personal appearance was all which it should be, completed his moral
+restoration. He stepped down on to the platform, into the serene light
+and freshness, as engaging and hopeful a youth of three and twenty as any
+one need ask to see.
+
+"For The Hard? Very good, sir. Sir Charles's trap is outside in the
+station yard. One portmanteau in the van? Quite so. Don't trouble
+yourself about it, sir. I'll send a porter to bring it along."
+
+This from the station-master, with a degree of friendly deference far
+from displeasing to the recipient of it.
+
+Whatever the defects of the rank and file of the Verity family in
+respect of liberal ideas, it can safely be asserted of all its members,
+male and female, clerical and lay, alike, that they belonged to the
+equestrian order. Hence it added considerably to Tom's recovered
+self-complacency to find a smart two-wheel dog-cart awaiting him, drawn by
+a remarkably well-shaped and well-groomed black horse. The coachman was
+to match. Middle-aged, clean-shaven, his Napoleonic face set as a mask,
+his undress livery of pepper-and-salt mixture soberly immaculate. He
+touched his hat when our young gentleman appeared and mounted beside him;
+the horse, meanwhile, shivering a little and showing the red of its
+nostrils as the train, with strident whistlings, drew out of the station
+bound westward to Stourmouth and Barryport.
+
+Later the horse broke up the abiding inertia of Marychurch High Street,
+by dancing as it passed the engine of a slowly ambulant thrashing
+machine; and only settled fairly into its stride when the three-arched,
+twelfth century stone bridge over the Arne was passed, and the
+road--leaving the last scattered houses of the little town--turned south
+and seaward skirting the shining expanse of The Haven and threading the
+semi-amphibious hamlets of Horny Cross and Lampit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DOUBTFULLY HARMONIOUS PARTS OF A WHOLE
+
+
+A long, low, rectangular and rather narrow room, supported across the
+centre--where passage walls had been cut away--by an avenue of dumpy
+wooden pillars, four on either side, leading to a glass door opening on
+to the garden. A man's room rather than a woman's, and, judging by
+appearances, a bachelor's at that.--Eighteenth-century furniture, not
+ignoble in line, but heavy, wide-seated, designed for the comfort of
+bulky paunched figures arrayed in long napped waistcoats and full-skirted
+coats. Tabaret curtains and upholsterings, originally maroon, now dulled
+by sea damp and bleached by sun-glare to a uniform tone in which colour
+and pattern were alike obliterated. Handsome copperplate engravings of
+Pisa and of Rome, and pastel portraits in oval frames; the rest of the
+whity brown panelled wall space hidden by book-cases. These surmounted by
+softly shining, pearl-grey Chinese godlings, monsters, philosophers and
+saints, the shelves below packed with neatly ranged books.
+
+A dusky room, in spite of its rounded, outstanding sash-windows, two on
+either side the glass door; the air of it holding, in permanent solution,
+an odour of leather-bound volumes. A place, in short, which, though not
+inhospitable, imposed itself, its qualities and traditions, to an extent
+impossible for any save the most thick-skinned and thick-witted wholly to
+ignore or resist.
+
+Young Tom Verity, having no convenient armour-plating of stupidity,
+suffered its influence intimately as--looking about him with quick
+enquiring glances--he followed the man-servant across it between the
+dumpy pillars. He felt self-conscious and disquieted, as by a smile of
+silent amusement upon some watchful elderly face. So impressed, indeed,
+was he that, on reaching the door, he paused, letting the man pass on
+alone to announce him. He wanted time in which to get over this queer
+sensation of shyness, before presenting himself to the company assembled,
+there, in the garden outside.
+
+Yet he was well aware that the prospect out of doors--its amplitude of
+mellow sunlight and of space, its fair windless calm in which no leaf
+stirred--was far more attractive than the room in the doorway of which he
+thus elected to linger.
+
+For the glass-door gave directly on to an extensive lawn, set out,
+immediately before the house front, with scarlet and crimson geraniums in
+alternating square and lozenge-shaped beds. Away on the right a couple of
+grey-stemmed ilex trees--the largest in height and girth Tom had ever
+seen--cast finely vandyked and platted shadow upon the smooth turf.
+Beneath them, garden chairs were stationed and a tea-table spread, at
+which four ladies sat--one, the elder, dressed in crude purple, the other
+three, though of widely differing ages and aspect, in light coloured
+summer gowns.
+
+To the left of the lawn, a high plastered wall--masked by hollies, bay,
+yew, and at the far end by masses of airy, pink-plumed tamarisk--shut off
+the eastward view. But straight before him all lay open, "clean away to
+the curve of the world" as he told himself, not without a pull of emotion
+remembering his impending voyage. For, about sixty yards distant, the
+lawn ended abruptly in a hard straight line--the land cut off sheer, as
+it seemed, at the outer edge of a gravelled terrace, upon which two small
+antiquated cannon were mounted, their rusty muzzles trained over swirling
+blue-green tide river and yellow-grey, high-cambered sand-bar out to sea.
+
+Between these innocuous engines of destruction, little black cannon balls
+had been piled into a mimic pyramid, near to which three men stood
+engaged in desultory conversation. One of them, Tom observed as markedly
+taller, more commanding and distinguished in bearing, than his
+companions. Even from here, the whole length of the lawn intervening,
+his presence, once noted, became of arresting importance, focussing
+attention as the central interest, the one thing which vitally mattered
+in this gracious scene--his figure silhouetted, vertically, against those
+long horizontal lines of river, sand-bar, and far-away delicate junction
+of opal-tinted sea with opal-tinted sky.
+
+Whereupon Tom became convicted of the agreeable certainty that no
+disappointment awaited him. His expectations were about to receive
+generous fulfilment. This visit would prove well worth while. So
+absorbed, indeed, was he in watching the man whom he supposed--and
+rightly--to be his host, that he failed to notice one of the ladies rise
+from the tea-table and advance across the lawn, until her youthful
+white-clad form was close upon him, threading its way between the glowing
+geranium beds.
+
+Then--"You are my cousin, Thomas Verity?" the girl asked, with a grave
+air of ceremony.
+
+"Yes--and you--you are my cousin Damaris," he answered as he felt
+clumsily, being taken unaware in more respects than one, and, for all his
+ready adaptability, being unable to keep a note of surprise out of his
+voice and glance.
+
+He had known of the existence of this little cousin, having heard--on
+occasion--vaguely irritated family mention of her birth at a time when
+the flame of the Mutiny still burned fiercely in the Punjab and in Oudh.
+To be born under such very accentuated circumstances could, in the eyes
+of every normal Verity, hardly fail to argue a certain obtrusiveness and
+absence of good taste. He had heard, moreover, disapproving allusions to
+the extravagant affection Sir Charles Verity was said to lavish upon this
+fruit of a somewhat obscure marriage--his only surviving child. But the
+said family talk, in Tom's case, had gone in at one ear and out at the
+other--as the talk of the elder generation mostly does, and will, when
+the younger generation is solidly and wholesomely convinced of the
+overwhelming importance of its own personal affairs. Consequently, in
+coming to Deadham Hard, Tom had thought of this little cousin--in as far
+as it occurred to him to think of her at all--as a child in the
+schoolroom who, beyond a trifle of good-natured notice at odd moments,
+would not enter into the count or matter at all. Now, awakening to the
+fact of her proximity, he awoke to the further fact that, with one
+exception, she mattered more than anything or anybody else present.
+
+She was, in truth, young--he had been quite right there. Yet, like the
+room in the doorway of which he still lingered, like the man standing on
+the terrace walk--to whose tall figure the serene immensities of sea and
+sky acted as back-cloth and setting--she imposed herself. Whether she was
+pretty or plain, Tom was just now incapable of judging. He only knew
+that her eyes were wonderful. He never remembered to have seen such
+eyes--clear, dark blue-grey with fine shading of eyelash on the lower as
+well as the upper lid. Unquestionably they surpassed all ordinary
+standards of prettiness. Were glorious, yet curiously embarrassing; too
+in their seriousness, their intent impartial scrutiny--under which last,
+to his lively vexation, the young man felt himself redden.
+
+And this, considering his superiority in age, sex, and acquirements, was
+not only absurd but unfair somehow. For did not he, as a rule, get on
+charmingly well with women, gentle and simple, old and young, alike? Had
+he not an ingratiating, playfully flirtatious way with them in which he
+trusted? But flirtatiousness, even of the mildest description, would not
+do here. Instinctively he recognized that. It would not pay at all--in
+this stage of the acquaintance, at all events. He fell back on civil
+speeches; and these rather laboured ones, being himself rather
+discountenanced.
+
+"It is extremely kind of you and Sir Charles to take me on trust like
+this," he began. "Believe me I am very grateful. Under ordinary
+circumstances I should never have dreamed of proposing myself. But I am
+going out to India for the first time--sailing in the _Penang_ the day
+after to-morrow. And, as I should be so near here at Southampton, it was,
+I own, a great temptation to ask if I might come for a night. I felt--my
+father felt--what a privilege it would be for me, a really tremendous
+piece of luck, to meet Sir Charles before I started. Such a rare and
+memorable send off for me, you know!"
+
+"We were very glad you should propose yourself," Damaris answered, still
+with her grave air of ceremony.
+
+"Awfully good of you, I'm sure," the young man murmured.--No, she didn't
+stare. He could not honestly call it staring. It was too calm, too
+impersonal, too reserved for that. She looked, with a view to arriving
+at conclusions regarding him. And he didn't enjoy the process--not in
+the least.
+
+"My father is still interested in everything connected with India," she
+went on. "He will like to talk to you. We have people with us this
+afternoon whom he could not very well leave, or he would have driven into
+Marychurch himself to fetch you. Dr. McCabe, who we knew at Bhutpur long
+ago, came over unexpectedly from Stourmouth this morning; and my Aunt
+Harriet Cowden telegraphed that she and Uncle Augustus would bring Aunt
+Felicia, who is staying with them at Paulton Lacy, here to tea.--But, of
+course, you know them quite well--Uncle Augustus, I mean, and my aunts."
+
+"Do I not know them!" Tom replied with meaning; while, humour getting the
+upper hand thanks to certain memories, he smiled at her.
+
+And, even at this early period in his career, it must be conceded that
+Tom Verity's smile was an asset to be reckoned with. Mischievous to the
+verge of impudence; but confidential, too, most disarmingly friendly--a
+really vastly engaging smile, which, having once beheld, most persons
+found themselves more than ready to behold often again.
+
+Under its persuasive influence Damaris' gravity relaxed. She lowered her
+eyes, and the soft warm colour deepened in her cheeks.
+
+Her steady gaze removed, the young man breathed more freely. He
+congratulated himself. Intercourse was in act of becoming normal and
+easy. So far it had been quite absurdly hind-leggy--and for him, _him_,
+to be forced into being hind-leggy by a girl of barely eighteen! Now he
+prepared to trot gaily, comfortably, off on all fours, when she spoke,
+bringing him up to the perpendicular again with a start.
+
+"I love Aunt Felicia very dearly," she announced, as though in protest
+against some implied and subtle disloyalty.
+
+"But don't we all love Cousin Felicia?" he returned, promptly, eager to
+maintain his advantage. "Isn't she kindness incarnate, Christian
+charity personified? As for me, I simply dote on her; and with reason,
+for ever since those remote ages in which I wore scratchy pinafores and
+horrid little white socks, she has systematically and pertinaciously
+spoiled me whenever she stayed at Canton Magna.--Oh! she is an
+institution. No family should be without her. When I was small she gave
+me chocolates, tin soldiers, pop-guns warranted to endanger my
+brothers' and sisters' eyesight. And now, in a thousand ways, conscious
+and unconscious," he laughed quietly, naughtily, the words running over
+each other in the rapidity of his speech--"she gives me such a blessed
+good conceit of myself!"
+
+And Damaris Verity, caught by the wave of his light-heartedness and
+inherent desire to please, softened again, her serious eyes alight for
+the moment with answering laughter. Whereupon Tom crossed the threshold
+and stood close beside her upon the grass in the brooding sunshine, the
+beds of scarlet and crimson geraniums ranging away on glowing perspective
+to left and right. He glanced at the three ladies seated beneath the
+giant ilexes, and back at his companion. He felt absurdly keen further to
+excite her friendliness and dispel her gravity.
+
+"Only one must admit cousin Harriet is quite another story," he went on
+softly, saucily. "Any conceit our dear Felicia rubs in to you, Harriet
+most effectually rubs out. Isn't it so? I am as a worm, a positive worm
+before her--can only 'tremble and obey' like the historic lady in the
+glee. She flattens me. I haven't an ounce of kick left in me. And then
+why, oh why, tell me, Damaris, does she invariably and persistently
+clothe herself in violet ink?"
+
+"It is her colour," the girl said, her eyes still laughing, her lips
+discreetly set.
+
+"But why, in heaven's name, should she have a colour?" he demanded. "For
+identification, as I have a red and white stripe painted on my steamer
+baggage? Really that isn't necessary. Can you imagine losing cousin
+Harriet? Augustus Cowden mislaying her, for example; and only recovering
+her with joyful cries--we take those for granted in his case, of
+course--at sight of the violet ink? Not a bit of it. You know as well as
+I do identification marks can't ever be required to secure her return,
+because under no conceivable circumstances could she ever be lost. She is
+there, dear lady, lock, stock, and barrel, right there all the time. So
+her raiment of violet amounts to a purely gratuitous advertisement of a
+permanently self-evident fact.--And such a shade too, such a positively
+excruciating shade!"
+
+But here a movement upon the terrace served, indirectly, to put a term to
+his patter. For Sir Charles Verity, raising his voice slightly in passing
+emphasis, turned and moved slowly towards the little company gathered at
+the tea-table. His two companions followed, the shorter of them
+apparently making answer, the words echoing clearly in genial richness of
+affirmation across the intervening space--"And so it was, General, am I
+not recalling the incident myself? Indeed you're entirely right."
+
+"Come," Damaris said, with a certain brevity as of command.
+
+"And feel a worm?"
+
+"No--come and speak to my father."
+
+"Ah! I shall feel a worm there too," the young man returned, an engaging
+candour in his smiling countenance; "and with far better reason, unless I
+am greatly mistaken."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WATCHERS THROUGH THE SMALL HOURS
+
+
+Love, ill-health and debt being, as yet, unknown quantities to young Tom
+Verity, it followed that insomnia, with its thousand and one attendant
+miseries, was an unknown quantity likewise. Upon the eve of the stiffest
+competitive examination those, now outlived, years of tutelage had
+imposed on him, he could still tumble into bed secure of lapsing into
+unconsciousness as soon as his head fairly touched the pillow. Dreams
+might, and usually did, visit him; but as so much incidental music
+merely to the large content of slumber--tittering up and down, too
+airily light-footed and evanescent to leave any impress on mind or
+spirits when he woke.
+
+This night, at Deadham Hard, marked a new departure; sleep proving a less
+absolute break in continuity of sensation, a less absolute barrier
+between day and day.
+
+The Honourable Augustus and Mrs. Cowden, and Felicia Verity, not without
+last words, adjurations, commands and fussings, started on their
+twelve-mile drive home to Paulton Lacy about six o'clock. A little later
+Dr. McCabe conveyed himself, and his brogue, away in an ancient hired
+landau to catch the evening train from Marychurch to Stourmouth. Dinner
+followed, shortly after which Damaris vanished, along with her
+governess-companion, Miss Theresa Bilson--a plump, round-visaged,
+pink-nosed little person, permanently wearing gold eyeglasses, the
+outstanding distinction of whose artless existence consisted, as Tom
+gathered from her conversation, in a tour in Rhineland and residence of
+some months' duration at the university town of Bonn.
+
+Then, at last, came the harvest of the young man's excursion, in the
+shape of first-hand records of war and government--of intrigue and of
+sedition, followed by stern retributive chastisement--from that famous
+soldier, autocratic and practised administrator, his host.
+
+In the opinion of a good many persons Tom Verity's bump of reference
+showed very insufficient development. Dons, head-masters, the pedagogic
+and professorial tribe generally, he had long taken in his stride quite
+unabashed. Church dignitaries, too, left him saucily cool. For--so at
+least he argued--was not his elder brother, Pontifex, private chaplain to
+the Bishop of Harchester? And did not this fact--he knowing poor old
+Ponty as only brother can know brother--throw a rather lurid light upon
+the spiritual and intellectual limitations of the Bench? In respect of
+the British aristocracy, his social betters, he also kept an open mind.
+For had not Lord Bulparc's son and heir, little Oxley, acted as his fag,
+boot-black and bacon-frier, for the best part of a year at school?
+Notwithstanding which fact--Lord Oxley was of a mild, forgiving
+disposition--had not he, Tom, spent the cricket week several summers
+running at Napworth Castle; where, on one celebrated occasion, he bowled
+a distinguished Permanent Under-Secretary first ball, and, on another,
+chided a marquis and ex-Cabinet Minister for misquoting Catullus.
+
+Yet now, sitting smoking and listening to those records of eastern rule
+and eastern battle, in the quiet lamp-light of the long room--with its
+dark book-cases, faintly gleaming Chinese images, and dumpy pillars--his
+native cheekiness faded into most unwonted humility. For he was
+increasingly conscious of being, to put it vulgarly "up against something
+pretty big." Conscious of a personality altogether too secure of its own
+power to spread itself or, in the smallest degree, bluff or brag. Sir
+Charles Verity struck him, indeed, as calm to the confines of cynicism.
+He gave, but gave of his abundance, royally indifferent to the cost.
+There was plenty more where all this came from, of knowledge, of
+initiative and of thought. Only once or twice, during the course of their
+long talk, did the young man detect any sign of personal feeling. Then
+for an instant, some veil seemed to be lifted, some curtain drawn aside;
+while, with dazzling effect, he became cognizant of underlying
+bitterness, underlying romance--of secret dealings of man with man, of
+man with woman, and the dealing, arbitrary, immutable, final, of Death
+and a Greater than Death, with both.
+
+These revelations though of the briefest, over before he fairly grasped
+their import, gone like a breath, were still sufficient to discredit many
+preconceived ideas and enlarge his mental horizon to a somewhat anxious
+extent. They carried him very far from life as lived at Canton Magna
+Rectory; very far from all, indeed, in which the roots of his experience
+were set, thus producing an atmosphere of doubt, of haunting and
+insidious unrest.
+
+And of that atmosphere he was particularly sensible when, standing in
+the hall, flat candlestick in hand, he at last bade Sir Charles Verity
+good night.
+
+"It has been a wonderful evening, sir," he said, simply and modestly.
+"You have been awfully kind in sparing me so much of your time; but,
+indeed, it has not been time wasted. I begin to measure a little what
+India means, I hope. Certainly I begin to measure the depth of my own
+ignorance. I see I have nearly everything of essential importance still
+to learn. And that is a pretty large order--almost staggeringly large now
+that, thanks to you, I begin to realize the vastness of the amount."
+
+"The majority of men in your Service never realize it," Charles Verity
+returned. "They run in blinkers from first to last.--Not that I underrate
+their usefulness. They are honest, painstaking, thoroughly reliable,
+according to their lights. They do excellent journeyman work. But there
+lies the heart of the whole matter.--Are you content to do journeyman
+work only; or do you aspire to something greater?--If the former, then
+you had best forget me and all I have told you this evening as fast as
+possible. For it will prove a hindrance rather than a help, confusing the
+issues.--No--no--listen a moment, my dear boy"--
+
+This kindly, indulgently even, as Tom made a gesture of repudiation and
+began to speak.
+
+"If the latter--well, the door stands open upon achievement by no means
+contemptible, as the opportunities of modern life go; but, it is only
+fair to warn you, upon possibilities of trouble, even of disaster, by no
+means contemptible either. For, remember, the world is so constituted
+that if you elect to drive, rather than be driven, you must be prepared
+to take heavy risks, pay heavy penalties. Understand"--
+
+He laid his hand on the young man's shoulder.
+
+"I do not pose as a teacher, still less as a propagandist. I do not
+attempt to direct the jury. The choice rests exclusively with
+yourself.--And here rid your mind of any cant about moral obligations.
+Both ways have merit, both bring rewards--of sorts--are equally
+commendable, equally right. Only this--whether you choose blinkers, your
+barrel between the shafts and another man's whip tickling your loins, or
+the reins in your own hands and the open road ahead, be faithful to your
+choice. Stick to it, through evil report as well as through good."
+
+He lifted his hand off Tom's shoulder. And the latter, looking round at
+him was struck--in mingled admiration and repulsion--by his likeness to
+some shapely bird of prey, with fierce hooked beak and russet-grey eyes,
+luminous, cruel perhaps, yet very sad.
+
+"Above all be careful in the matter of your affections," Sir Charles went
+on, his voice deepening. "As you value your career, the pride of your
+intellect,--yes--and the pride of your manhood itself, let nothing
+feminine tempt you to be unfaithful to your choice. Tempt you to be of
+two minds, to turn aside, to turn back. For, so surely as you do, you
+will find the hell of disappointment, the hell of failure and regret,
+waiting wide-mouthed to swallow you, and whatever span of life may remain
+to you, bodily up."
+
+He checked himself, breaking off abruptly, the veil lowered again, the
+curtain drawn into place.
+
+"There," he said, "we have talked enough, perhaps more than enough. You
+have a long day before you to-morrow, so my dear boy, go to bed. My
+quarters are down here."
+
+He made a gesture towards the dark corridor opening off the far side
+of the hall.
+
+"You know your way? The room on the right of the landing."
+
+"Yes. I know my way, thanks, sir," Tom answered--
+
+And, thus dismissed, went on upstairs, carrying the silver flat
+candlestick, while his shadow, black on the panelled wall, mounted beside
+him grotesquely prancing step by step.
+
+The furnishing of his room was of a piece with all below, solid yet not
+uncomely. It included a four-post bed of generous proportions, hangings,
+curtains and covers of chintz, over which faded purple and crimson roses
+were flung broadcast on a honey-yellow ground. The colourings were
+discreetly cheerful, the atmosphere not unpleasantly warm, the quiet,
+save for the creaking of a board as he crossed the floor, unbroken.
+Outwardly all invited to peaceful slumber. And Tom felt more than ready
+to profit by that invitation this last night on shore, last night in
+England. His attention had been upon the stretch for a good many hours
+now, since that--after all rather upsetting--good-bye to home and family
+at Canton Magna, following an early and somewhat peripatetic breakfast.
+Notwithstanding his excellent health and youthful energy, mind and body
+alike were somewhat spent. He made short work of preparation, slipped in
+between the fine cool linen sheets, and laid his brown head upon the soft
+billowing pillows, impatient neither to think nor feel any more but
+simply to sleep.
+
+For some two hours or so he did sleep, though not without phantasmagoria
+queerly disturbing. The sweep of his visions was wide, ranging from that
+redoubtable county lady, Harriet Cowden _née_ Verity--first cousin of his
+father, the Archdeacon, and half-sister to his host--in her violet-ink
+hued gown, to fury of internecine strife amid the mountain fastnesses of
+Afghanistan,--from the austere and wistful beauty of the grey,
+long-backed Norman Abbey rising above the roofs and chimneys of the
+little English market-town, to the fierce hectic splendour of Eastern
+cities blistering in the implacable sun-glare of the Indian plains. Days
+on the Harchester playing fields, days on the river at Oxford, and still
+earlier days in the Rectory nursery at home; bringing with them sense of
+small bitter sorrows, small glorious triumphs, of laughter and uproarious
+fun, of sentimental passages at balls, picnics, garden parties, too, with
+charmingly pretty maidens who, in all probability, he would never clap
+eyes on again--all these, and impressions even more illusive and
+fugitive, playing hide-and-seek among the mazelike convolutions of his
+all too active brain.
+
+Then, on a sudden, he started up in bed, aware of external noise and
+movement which brought him instantly, almost painfully, broad awake.
+
+For a quite appreciable length of time, while he sat upright in the warm
+darkness, Tom failed either to locate the noise which had thus roused
+him, or to interpret its meaning. It appeared to him to start at the
+river foreshore, pass across the garden, into and through the
+ground-floor suite of rooms and corridor which Sir Charles had indicated
+as reserved to his particular use.--What on earth could it be? What did
+it remind him of?--Why, surely--with a start of incredulous
+recognition--the sound of hoofs, though strangely confused and muffled,
+such as a mob of scared, over-driven horses might make, floundering
+fetlock deep in loose sand.
+
+Alive with curiosity he sprang out of bed, groped his way across to the
+window and, putting up the blind, leaned out.
+
+A coppery waning moon hung low in the south-east, and sent a pale rusty
+pathway across the sea to where, behind the sand-bar, rippling waves
+broke in soft flash and sparkle. Its light was not strong enough to
+quench that of the stars crowding the western and the upper sky. Tom
+could distinguish the black mass of the great ilex trees on the right.
+Could see the whole extent of the lawn, the two sentinel cannon and
+pyramid of ammunition set on the terrace along the top of the sea-wall.
+And nothing moved there, nothing whatever. The outstretch of turf was
+vacant, empty; bare--so Tom told himself--as the back of his own hand.
+The sounds seemed to have ceased now that sight denied them visible cause
+of existence; and he began to wonder whether his hearing had not played
+him false, whether the whole thing was not pure fancy, a delusion born of
+agitated dreams.
+
+He pushed the sash up as far as it would go and leaned further out of the
+window. The luscious scent of a late flowering species of lonercera,
+trained against the house wall, saluted his nostrils, along with a
+fetid-sweet reek off the mud-flats of the Haven. Away in the village a
+dog yelped, and out on the salt-marshes water-fowl gave faint whistling
+cries. Then all settled down into stillness, save for the just audible
+chuckle and suck of the river as the stream met the inflowing tide.
+
+The stillness pleased him. For so many nights to come there would be none
+of it; but ceaselessly the drumming of the engines, quiver of the screw,
+and wash of the water against the ship's side.--All the same he did not
+quite like the colour of the moon or that frayed flattened edge of it
+westward. Why is there always something a trifle menacing about a waning
+moon? He did not like the smell of the mud-flats either. It might not be
+actually unhealthy; but it suggested a certain foulness. He yawned, drew
+back into the room, and straightening himself up, stretched his hands
+above his head. He would get into bed again. He was dog-tired--yes, most
+distinctly bed!
+
+Then he stopped short, listening, hastily knelt down by the window and
+again leaned out. For once more he heard horses coming up from the shore,
+across the garden, into and through the house, hustling and trampling one
+another as they shied away from the whip.--There were laggards too--one
+stumbled, rolled over in the sand, got on its feet after a nasty
+struggle, and tottered onward dead lame. Another fell in its tracks and
+lay there foundered, rattling in the throat.
+
+The sounds were so descriptive, so explicit and the impression produced
+on Tom Verity's mind so vivid that, carried away by indignation, he found
+himself saying out loud:
+
+"Curse them, the brutes, the cowardly brutes, mishandling their cattle
+like that! They"--
+
+And he stopped confounded, as it came home to him that throughout the
+course of this cruel drama he had seen nothing, literally nothing, though
+he had heard so convincingly much. A shiver ran down his spine and he
+broke into a sweat, for he knew beyond question or doubt not so much as a
+shadow,--let alone anything material--had breasted the sea-wall, passed
+over the smooth level turf, or entered--how should it?--the house.
+
+The garden lay outspread before him, calm, uninvaded by any alien being,
+man or animal. The great ilex trees were immobile, fixed as the eternal
+stars overhead. And he shrank in swift protest, almost in terror, being
+called on thus to face things apparently super-normal, forces unexplored
+and uncharted, defying reason, giving the lie to ordinary experience and
+ordinary belief. Reality and hallucination, jostled one another in his
+thought, a giant note of interrogation written against each. For which
+was the true and which the false? Of necessity he distrusted the evidence
+of his own senses, finding sight and hearing in direct conflict thus.
+
+The two or three minutes that followed were among the most profoundly
+disagreeable Tom ever had spent. But at last, a door opened below,
+letting forth a shaft of mellow lamp-light. It touched the flower-beds on
+the left edging the lawn, giving the geraniums form and colour, laying
+down a delicate carpet of green, transmuting black into glowing scarlet.
+Tall and spare in his grey and white sleeping-suit, Sir Charles Verity
+sauntered out, and stood, smoking, looking out to sea.
+
+Earlier that night, downstairs in the sitting-room, he seemed a storm
+centre, generating much perplexity and disquiet. But now Tom welcomed his
+advent with a sense of almost absurd satisfaction. To see what was
+solidly, incontrovertibly, human could not but be, in itself, a mighty
+relief.--Things began to swing into their natural relation, man, living
+man, the centre, the dominant factor once more. He, Tom, could now shift
+all responsibility, moreover. If the master of the house was on guard,
+he might wash his hands of these hateful ghostly goings on--if ghostly
+they were--leaving the whole matter to one far stronger and more
+competent than himself.
+
+Whereupon he went back to bed; and slept profoundly, royally, until
+Hordle the man-servant, moving about the bright chintz bedecked room,
+preparing his bath and laying out his clothes, awoke him to the sweetness
+of another summer day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BETWEEN RIVER AND SEA
+
+
+"We had a grand talk last night--Sir Charles was in splendid form. I
+enjoyed it down to the ground."
+
+Tom Verity lay, at full length on the upward sloping, sun-warmed bank of
+sand and shingle. Only to youth is given enjoyment of perfect laziness
+joined with perfect physical vigour. Just because he felt equal to
+vaulting the moon or long-jumping an entire continent, should such
+prodigious feats be required of him, could he lie thus in glorious
+idleness letting the earth cradle and the sun soak into him. Doubts and
+disturbances of last night melted in daylight to an almost ludicrous
+nothingness and self-confidence reigned; so that he declared the world a
+super-excellent place, snapping his fingers at problems and mysteries. A
+spark of curiosity pricked him still, it is true, concerning the origin
+of certain undeniably queer aural phenomena. He meant to satisfy that
+curiosity presently; but the subject must be approached with tact. He
+must wait on opportunity.
+
+A few paces from and above him, Damaris sat on the crown of the ridge,
+where the light southerly wind, coming up now and again off the sea,
+fanned her. A white knitted jersey, pulled on over her linen dress,
+moulded the curve of her back, the round of her breasts and turn of her
+waist, showing each movement of her gracious young body to the hips, as
+she leaned forward, her knees drawn up and her feet planted among the
+red, orange, and cream-grey flints and pebbles.
+
+Looking up at her, Tom saw her face foreshortened in the shade of her
+broad brimmed garden hat, a soft clear flush on it born of health, fresh
+air and sunlight, her eyes shining, the blue of the open sea in their
+luminous depths. He received a new impression of her. She belonged to the
+morning, formed part of the gladness of universal Nature, an unfettered
+nymph-like being. To-day her mood was sprightly, bidding farewell to
+ceremony. Yet, he felt, she remained perplexing, because more detached
+than is the feminine habit, poised and complete in herself.
+
+And this detachment, this suppression of the sentimental or social
+note--he being admittedly a very personable fellow--piqued Tom's male
+vanity, so that he rallied her with:
+
+"But by the way, why did you vanish so early, why didn't you stay with us
+after dinner last night?"
+
+"I did not want to vanish," she answered. "Nothing is more delightful
+than hearing my father talk. But had I stayed Miss Bilson would have
+supposed herself free to stay too, and that would have spoiled the
+evening. My father doesn't choose to talk freely before Miss Bilson,
+because she gets into a foolish excited state and interrupts and asks
+questions. She overflows with admiration and that annoys and bores him."
+
+"'She brought him butter in a lordly dish,'" Tom quoted. "The ill-advised
+Bilson. Can't one just see her!"
+
+"And it is not her place to admire out loud," Damaris continued. "Over
+and over again I have tried to explain that to her. But in some ways, she
+is not at all clever. She can't or won't understand, and only tells Aunt
+Felicia I am wanting in sympathy and that I hurt her feelings. She has
+unreasonably many feelings, I think, and they are so easily hurt. I
+always know when the hurting takes place because she sniffs and then
+plays Mendelssohn's Songs without Words on the schoolroom piano."
+
+Tom chuckled. She had a caustic tongue on occasion, this
+nymph-like creature!
+
+"Alas, poor Bilson!" he said. "For, as Sir Charles walked across the
+garden with us down to the ferry, didn't I hear those same sugary
+melodies tinkling out of some upper open window?"
+
+"I am afraid you did. You see she had made up her mind to come with me."
+
+"And you were forced to intimate you found yourself quite equal to
+conducting the expedition unshepherded?"
+
+"I did not mean to be unkind, but she would have been so dreadfully in
+the way"--
+
+Damaris gathered up a handful of little pebbles, and let them dribble
+down slowly between her outspread fingers while, turning her head, she
+gazed away out to sea.
+
+"This is a day by itself," she said. "It looks like jewels, topazes,
+turquoise, and pearls; and it seems full of things which half tell
+themselves, and then hide from or pass you by.--I wanted to watch it all
+and think; and, she doesn't do it on purpose I know, but somehow Miss
+Bilson always interferes with my thinking."
+
+Both the tone and substance of this discourse proved slightly startling
+to its hearer. They carried the conversation into regions transcendental;
+and to his blissful laziness, the rarefied air of those regions was
+unwelcome. To breathe it demanded exertion. So he said, chaffingly:
+
+"Do I interfere with your thinking? I hope not. But if I offend that way,
+speak but a word and I disappear like a shot."
+
+"Oh! no," she answered. "How could you interfere? You are part of it. You
+started it, you see, because you are going to India."
+
+Whereat, failing to catch the sequence of ideas, male vanity plumed
+itself, tickled to the point of amusement. For was not she a child after
+all, transparently simple and candid, and very much a woman-child at
+that! Tom turning on his side raised himself on one elbow, smiling at her
+with easy good-nature.
+
+"How charming of you to adopt me as a special object of thought, and care
+so much about my going."
+
+But patronage proved short-lived. The girl's colour deepened, but her
+eyes dwelt on him coldly.
+
+"I have only been thinking how fortunate you are, and seeing pictures in
+my mind of what you will see which will be new to you--and--and
+remembering."
+
+"Oh! of course, I am lucky, tremendously lucky," he hastened to declare,
+laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in
+itself, knocking the insularity out of a man--if he has any receptive
+faculty that is--and ridding him of all manner of stodgy prejudices. I
+don't the least undervalue my good fortune.--But you talk of remembering.
+That's stretching a point surely. You must have been a mere baby, my dear
+Damaris, when you left India."
+
+"No, I was six years old, and I remember quite well. All my caring for
+people, all my thinking, begins there, in the palace of the Sultan-i-bagh
+at Bhutpur and the great compound, when my father was Chief
+Commissioner."
+
+Her snub duly delivered, and she secure it had gone home, Damaris unbent,
+graciously communicative as never before.
+
+"It was all so beautiful and safe there inside the high walls, and yet a
+teeny bit frightening because you knew there were other things--as there
+are to-day--which you felt but couldn't quite see all about you.
+Sometimes they nearly pushed through--I was always expecting and I like
+to expect. It hurt me dreadfully to go away; but I had been very ill.
+They were afraid I should die and so Dr. McCabe--he was here when you
+arrived yesterday--insisted on my being sent to Europe. A lady--Mrs.
+Pereira--and my nurse Sarah Watson took me to Paris, to the convent
+school where I was to be educated. It was all very strange, but the nuns
+were kind. I liked their religion, and I got accustomed to the other
+little girls. I had rooms of my own; and French friends of my father's
+visited me and took me out on half-holidays. And Aunt Felicia came over
+to fetch me for the summer vacations and brought me here"--
+
+Damaris pointed across the tide-way to the river frontage, including with
+one sweeping gesture the whole demesne of The Hard from the deep lane on
+the one hand, opening funnel-like upon the shore, past sea-wall--topped
+at the corner by pink plumed tamarisk, the small twin cannons and pyramid
+of ball--the lawn and irregular white house overlooking it, backed and
+flanked by rich growth of trees, to a strip of sandy warren and pine
+scrub on the other, from out which a line of some half-dozen purple
+stemmed, red branched Scotch firs, along with the grey stone built Inn
+and tarred wooden cottages on the promontory beyond, showed through a
+dancing shimmer of heat haze, against the land-locked, blue and silver
+waters of Marychurch Haven.
+
+"I did not like being here at all at first," she told him. "I thought it
+a mean place only fit for quite poor people to live in. The house seemed
+so pinched and naked without any galleries or verandahs. And I was afraid
+because we had so few servants and neither door-keepers or soldiers. I
+could not believe that in England there is so little need for protection
+against disaffected persons and thieves. The sunshine was pale and thin,
+and the dusk made me sad. At Bhutpur the sun used to drop in flame behind
+the edge of the world and night leap on you. But here the day took so
+long dying. Aunt Felicia used to praise what she called 'the long sweet
+English twilight,' and try to make me stop out in the garden to enjoy it
+with her. But I could not bear it. The colours faded so slowly. It seemed
+like watching some helpless creature bleed to death silently, growing
+greyer minute by minute and feebler. I did not want to watch, but go
+indoors where the lamps were lighted and it was warm and cosy. I used to
+cry dreadfully, when I could get away by myself where Aunt Felicia and
+the maids could not see me, cry for my father--he resigned the
+Commissionership, you know, when I was sent home and took service in
+Afghanistan under the Ameer--and for my darling friend, Mrs. Pereira, and
+for the Sultan-i-bagh, where I knew strangers lived now. For the lotus
+tank and orange grove, and all my little tame animals and my pretty
+play-places I should never, never see any more"--
+
+Overcome by which intimate memories, Damaris' grave voice--which had
+taken on a chanting cadence, at once novel and singularly pleasing to the
+young man's ear--quavered and broke.
+
+"Poor little exiled princess!" he cried, all his facile kindness to the
+fore again. "Yes, it must have been cruelly hard on you. You must have
+suffered. No wonder you cried--cried buckets full."
+
+And drawn by pity for that desolate, tropic-bred little child, Tom got on
+to his feet and crunched up the loose shingle to the crest of the ridge,
+full of a lively desire to pacify and console. But here the soft breeze
+met and caressed him, and the whole plain of the tranquil sea came into
+view--turquoise shot with pearl, as Damaris recently figured it, and
+fringed with topaz where waves, a few inches high and clear as glass,
+broke on the yellow sand at the back of the Bar just below.
+
+"How wonderfully lovely!" he exclaimed, carried out of himself by the
+extreme fairness of the scene. And, his hands in his trouser pockets he
+stood staring, while once again the pull of home, of England, of
+tenderness for all that which he was about to leave, dimmed his eyes and
+raised a lump in his throat.
+
+"Upon my word, you must be difficult to please if this place doesn't
+please you or come up to your requirements, Damaris," he said, presently
+sitting down beside her. "No Arabian Nights palace in Asia, I grant you;
+yet in its own humbler and--dare I say?--less showy, manner not easy to
+beat. Breathe this enchanting air. See the heavenly tints with which our
+good dirty useful old Channel has adorned itself. Can you ask for more,
+you insatiable person, in the way of beauty?"
+
+Then, slightly ashamed of his outburst, Tom practised a delightful smile,
+at once sentimental and flirtatious.
+
+"No, on second thoughts, my dear princess, I keep my commiseration for my
+wretched self--every crumb of it. For I am the lonely exile--that is, I
+am just about to be--not you. Be advised, don't quarrel with the good
+gifts of the gods. Deadham Hard is frankly entrancing. How willingly
+would I put off taking ship for your vaunted India, and spend the
+unending cycles of eternity here--with you, well understood--in this most
+delectable spot instead."
+
+Whereupon Damaris, with mingled gravity and haste, her head bent, so
+that hat-crown and hat-brim were presented to the young man's observation
+rather than her face, proceeded to explain she had spoken not of the
+present but of the past. From the time Sir Charles returned to inhabit
+it, The Hard was transformed; his presence conferring interest and
+dignity upon it, rendering it a not unworthy dwelling-place
+indeed--should any such happen that way--for sages, conquerors, or even
+kings. He cared for the little property, a fact to her all sufficient.
+For him it held the charm of old associations. The pleasantest days of
+his boyhood were spent here with Thomas Clarkson Verity, his great
+uncle--who eventually left him the property--nor had he ever failed later
+to visit it when home on leave. In pious remembrance of that distant era
+and of his entertaining and affectionate, if somewhat eccentric, host and
+friend he forbade any alteration in the house or grounds. It continued
+to-day just as old Mr. Verity left it. There was no break, even in
+details of furnishing or arrangement, with the past. This, to Sir
+Charles, added to the natural restfulness of the place. Now after the
+great achievements and responsibilities of his Eastern career he found
+retirement congenial. The soft equable climate benefited his health.
+Rough shooting and good fishing could be had in plenty--stag-hunting,
+too, in Arnewood Forest, when he inclined to such sport. The Hard was
+sufficiently easy of access from town for friends to come and stay with
+him. Convenient for crossing to the Continent too, when he took his
+yearly cure at Aix or at Vichy, or went south for a couple of months, as
+last winter for instance, to Cette, Montpelier and across, by Pau, to the
+Atlantic seaboard at St. Sebastian, Biarritz, and Bayonne.
+
+"When my father travels I go with him," Damaris said, raising her head
+and looking at the young man with proud, deliberate eyes. "We both
+suffered too much, we must never be separated again. And when we go
+abroad, we go alone. There is no one to give advice or interfere. We take
+Hordle, to pack and look after the baggage. We are always together, and
+I am always happy. I wish we could live like that always, with no settled
+home. But after a while, my father grows tired of hotels. He begins to
+wish for the quiet of The Hard, and all the things he is accustomed to.
+And then, naturally, I begin to wish for it too."
+
+From which statement, made as he judged with intention, Tom apprehended
+an attachment of no common order existing between these two persons,
+father and child. If, as family gossip disapprovingly hinted, the
+affection given appeared to trench on exaggeration, the affection
+returned was of kindred quality, fervid, self-realized, absorbing, and
+absorbed. Comparing it with his own humorously tolerant filial attitude,
+Tom felt at once contrite and injured. The contrast was glaring. But
+then, as he hastened to add--though whether in extenuation of his own, or
+of his father's, shortcomings remained open to question--wasn't the
+contrast between the slightly pompous, slightly bow-windowed, provincial,
+Tory cleric and this spare, inscrutable soldier and ruler, glaring
+likewise? To demand that the one should either experience or inspire the
+same emotions as the other was palpably absurd! Hence (comfortable
+conclusion!) neither he, Tom, nor the Archdeacon was really to
+blame.--Only, as he further argued, once the absurdity of that same
+demand admitted, were you not free to talk of exaggeration, or of the
+"grand manner," as you chose? Were not the terms interchangeable, if you
+kept an open mind? His personal acquaintance with the "grand manner" in
+respect of the affections, with heroical love, amounted, save in
+literature, to practically nothing; yet instinctively he applied those
+high sounding phrases to the attachment existing between Damaris and her
+father. Both as discovery and, in some sort, as challenge to his own
+preconceived ideas and methods this gave him food for serious thought.
+
+He made no attempt at comment or answer; but sat silent beside the girl,
+bare-headed in the soft wind and sunlight, between the flowing river and
+tranquil sea.
+
+The "grand manner"--that was how, naturally, without posing or bombast,
+these two persons envisaged life for good or evil--for this last, too,
+might be possible!--shaped their purposes and conduct. Sir Charles, he
+knew, had played for big stakes. Damaris, he felt intuitively, young
+though she was, played and would play for them likewise. He looked at her
+with awakened speculation, awakened curiosity. What, he wondered, would
+come of it. Did it make her attractive or the reverse? Really he wasn't
+at all sure. Whereat he grew restive, the claims of inherent masculine
+superiority, let alone those of public school, university and an
+honourable profession, asserting themselves. He began to question whether
+this young lady did not take up an undue amount of room, thus cramping
+him and denying his powers of conversation suitable opportunity of
+display. Was not it about time gently to reduce her, relegate her to a
+more modest position? To achieve which laudable result--he acted, of
+course, for her good exclusively--he prepared to broach the subject of
+the unaccountable noises which disturbed his rest last night. He would
+cross-examine her as to their origin, thereby teasing and perhaps even
+discountenancing her somewhat.
+
+But before Tom could put his benevolent scheme into execution, his
+attention was unexpectedly diverted, a quite new element projecting
+itself upon the scene.
+
+For some little while an open boat, a hoary though still seaworthy tub of
+a thing, deep in draught and broad in the beam, loaded up with
+lobster-pots--the skeleton ribs of them black against the surrounding
+expanse of shining turquoise and pearl--had slowly neared the Bar from
+seaward. The bows, in which a small, withered old man bent double over
+the oars, cocked up on end. The stern, where a young man stood erect
+among the lobster-pots, was low in the water. Now, as the nose of the
+boat grounded, the young man clambered along the gunwale, and balancing
+for a minute, tall and straight, on the prow, took a flying leap across
+the wide intervening space of breaking wave and clear water, alighting on
+his feet, upon the firm sand beyond.
+
+"Good for him! Neatly done," Tom Verity murmured, appreciating the grace
+and vigour of the action.
+
+The young man, meanwhile, turning, called to the rower: "Thank you
+heartily for putting me ashore, Daddy Proud. I'll go across home by the
+ferry. But see here, can you manage her by yourself or shall I help shove
+her off for you?"
+
+"Lord love 'ee, I can manage her sure enough," the other called back
+shrilly and a trifle truculently. "I knows 'er ways and she knows her
+master--ought to by now the old strumpet, if years count for
+anythink. So don't 'ee go wetting yer dandy shoes for the likes of
+her and me, Cap'en."
+
+And keckling with thin wheezy laughter he straightened his back, and,
+planting one oar in the sand, set the boat afloat again skilfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+IN WHICH THE PAST LAYS AN OMINOUS HAND ON THE PRESENT
+
+
+Down here on the shore, in the serene morning atmosphere, voices carried
+with peculiar distinctness. Every word of the brief colloquy had reached
+Tom Verity; and one word at least possessed an Elizabethan flavour
+forbidden to ears Victorian, feminine and polite. Noting it Tom reddened
+and glanced uneasily at his companion, all inclination to tease giving
+place to a laudable desire to shield her from annoyance. But Damaris,
+judging by her demeanour, was unaware of any cause of offence; whence,
+with relief he concluded that either she had not heard, or that the rank
+expression conveyed nothing intelligible to her mind.
+
+Her open hand pressed down upon the rough surface of the pebbles, she
+leaned a little backward, her lithe body twisted sideways from the waist,
+while she scrutinized the man upon the sands below. And that the latter
+presented a gallant and even distinguished appearance, though arrayed in
+leather-peaked cap, blue serge reefer jacket and trousers which had
+evidently seen service, Tom could not but admit, as he stood just clear
+of the ripples of incoming tide staring idly after the receding boat with
+its cargo of black ribbed skeleton lobster-pots.--A spirited-looking,
+well-made fellow, no doubt; merchant captain or more probably mate--Tom
+took him to be about eight-and-twenty--but in an altogether different
+rank of life to themselves and therefore a quite unsuitable object for
+prolonged and earnest attention. His advent should be treated as an
+accident, not elevated thus to the importance of an event. It was not
+quite good taste on Damaris' part Tom felt; and he made a show of rising,
+saying as he did so, by way of excuse:
+
+"It is wonderfully charming out here. I am loath to break up our little
+_tête-à-tête;_ but time waits for no man, worse luck, and if I am to
+catch my train I must start directly after luncheon. Sir Charles was good
+enough to promise me various letters of introduction to persons in, high
+places. He told me to remind him about them. I don't want to be greedy
+but I should like those letters. Perhaps I ought to be getting back so as
+to see your father about them."
+
+But before Damaris had time to collect her thoughts and reply, the man in
+the peaked cap had further asserted his presence. Either becoming
+conscious of her observation, or caught by something in Tom Verity's
+speech, he wheeled round and looked up at the two in swift, almost
+haughty, enquiry. To Tom he vouchsafed little more than a glance, but
+upon Damaris his eyes fastened. For a good minute he stared at her, as
+though in some sort holding her to ransom. Then with an upward jerk of
+the head and an ejaculation, half smothered oath, half sharp laughter--as
+of one who registers eminently ironic conclusions--he began deliberately
+ascending the slope.
+
+Tom Verity, though possessed of plentiful cheekiness towards the majority
+of his elders and betters, was no fire-eater. He preferred diplomacy to
+war; and would adroitly evade rather than invite anything approaching a
+scene, specially in the presence of a woman. Yet under existing
+circumstances retreat had become, as he perceived, not only undignified
+but useless. So in his best Oxford manner--a manner ornate, at that
+period, and quite crushingly superior--he raised his shoulders, smiled
+faintly, resignedly, and disposed himself in an easier attitude, saying:
+
+"Better wait, perhaps, my dear Damaris. I would sooner risk losing those
+precious letters than acquire a possible escort for you--and for
+myself--down to the river and across the ferry."
+
+And he threw a meaning glance over his shoulder, indicating the
+obtrusive stranger.
+
+So doing he received a disturbing impression. For seen thus, at close
+quarters, not only was the said stranger notably, even astonishingly
+good-looking, but he bore an arresting likeness in build, in carriage, in
+expression to--
+
+Tom paused perplexed, racking his brains.--For who, the deuce, was it?
+Where had he seen, and that as he could have sworn quite recently, this
+same forceful countenance lit by russet-grey eyes at once dauntless and
+sad, deep-set, well apart, the lids of them smooth and delicately
+moulded? The man's skin was tanned, by exposure, to a tint but a few
+shades lighter than that of his gold-brown beard--a beard scrupulously
+groomed, trimmed to a nicety and by no means deforming the lower part of
+the face since the line of jaw and chin remained clearly discernible.
+
+Tom turned away and looked absently at The Hard in its broad reposeful
+frame of lawn and trees. The cool green foliage of a bank of
+hydrangeas--running from the great ilexes to the corner of the
+house--thick-set with discs of misty pink and blue blossom took his
+fancy, as contrast to the beds of scarlet and crimson geranium naming in
+the sun. But below any superficial sense of pleasure in outward things,
+thought of that likeness--and likeness, dash it all, to whom?--still
+vexed him as a riddle he failed to guess. Obligation to guess it, to find
+the right answer, obsessed him as of vital interest and importance,
+though, for the life of him, he could not tell why. His sense of
+proportion, his social sense, his self-complacency, grew restive under
+the pressure of it. He told himself it wasn't of the smallest
+consequence, didn't matter a fig, yet continued to cudgel his memory.
+And, all the while, the sound of deliberate footsteps crunching over the
+dry rattling shingle, nearer and nearer, contributed to increase his
+inward perturbation.
+
+The footsteps halted close behind him--while for a sensible length of
+time a shadow lay across him shutting off the genial warmth--and started
+again, passing to the left, as the intruder traversed the crown of the
+ridge a few paces from where Damaris was seated, and pursued his way down
+to the river-shore on the other side.
+
+"At last--I thank you!" Tom broke out impatiently.
+
+He felt incomprehensibly nervous; and angry with himself for so feeling.
+
+"Commend me to our friend for taking his time about things, and
+incidentally wasting ours--yours and mine, I mean! What on earth did he
+want? He certainly treated us to a sufficiently comprehensive inspection.
+Well, I hope he was satisfied. By the same token, have you any conception
+who the fellow is?"
+
+Damaris shook her head. She, too, appeared perturbed. Her eyebrows were
+drawn into a little frown and her expression was perplexed to the point
+of child-like distress.
+
+"Not any," she answered simply. "Some one staying at Faircloth's Inn
+possibly. People come there from Marychurch to spend the day during the
+summer. Old Timothy Proud, the lobster-catcher, who brought him round in
+his boat, lives at one of the cottages close to the Inn. No," she
+repeated, "I have no conception who he is, and yet his face seemed
+familiar. I had a feeling that I knew him quite well--had seen him often,
+oh! very often before."
+
+"Ah! then you were puzzled by some mysterious likeness,"--Tom began
+eagerly, smiling at her. And stopped short, open-mouthed, assailed by so
+apparently preposterous a recognition that for the minute it left him
+fairly speechless.
+
+But Damaris, busy with her own sensations, her glance still following the
+blue-clad figure along the shore and out on to the tumble-down wooden
+jetty, failed to remark his embarrassment and thus gave him time to
+recover his scattered wits.
+
+"Jennifer is bringing the ferry-boat across," she said presently, "so you
+won't have to wait much longer. Not that you need be at all anxious about
+those letters. It is not my father's habit to forget a promise. Most
+likely they were written last night before he went to bed. He sleeps
+badly, I am sorry to say, and is glad to cheat the wakeful hours by
+reading and doing his correspondence until late."
+
+As she spoke the young girl rose to her feet, pulling the close-fitting
+jersey down over her hips and, stooping, dusted particles of sand off the
+hem of her dress.
+
+"There--that's better. Now I am tidy. Shall we go home, cousin Tom?"
+she asked.
+
+Her eyes shone with inward excitement and she carried her head proudly,
+but her face was white. And he, sensible that she had suddenly hardened
+towards him and strove, he could not divine why, to keep him at arm's
+length, turned perversely teasing again. He would not await a more
+convenient season. Here and now he would satisfy his curiosity--and at
+her expense--regarding one at least of the queer riddles Deadham Hard had
+sprung on him.
+
+"I did not know your father suffered from sleeplessness," he said. "It
+must be horribly trying and depressing. I am glad, in a way, you have
+told me, because it may account for my seeing him go out into the garden
+from the study last night, or rather very early this morning. It would be
+about two o'clock. I put down his appearance to another cause, and"--
+
+He smiled at her, delightfully ingratiating, assaugingly apologetic.
+
+"Shall I own it?--one which, frankly, struck me as a little upsetting and
+the reverse of pleasant."
+
+"Weren't you comfortable? I am so sorry," Damaris exclaimed, instincts of
+hospitality instantly militant. "What was wrong? You should have called
+someone--rung for Hordle. What was it?"
+
+"No--no--my dear Damaris, don't vex yourself I entreat you. I was in
+clover, luxuriously comfortable. You've allotted me a fascinating room
+and perfect dream of a bed. I feel an ungrateful wretch for so much as
+mentioning this matter to you after the way in which you have indulged
+me. Only something rather extraordinary really did happen, of which I
+honestly confess I am still expiring to find a reasonable and not too
+humiliating explanation. For, though I blush to own it"--
+
+He laughed softly, humping up his shoulders after the manner of a naughty
+small boy dodging a well-merited box on the ear.--
+
+"Yes, I blush to own it, but I was frightened, downright frightened. I
+quailed and I quaked. The sight of Sir Charles stepping out of the study
+window filled me with abject rapture. Metaphorically speaking, my craven
+soul squirmed at his heels. He was to me as a strong tower and house of
+defence.--But look here, Damaris, joking apart, tell me weren't you
+disturbed, didn't you hear any strange noises last night?"
+
+"No, none." She hesitated, then with evident reluctance--"I sleep in the
+new wing of the house."
+
+"Which you imply, might make a difference?" Tom asked.
+
+"The older servants would tell you that it does."
+
+"And you agree with them?"
+
+Damaris had a moment of defective courage.
+
+"I would rather not discuss the subject, cousin Tom," she said and moved
+away down over the shifting shingle.
+
+At first her progress was sober, even stately. But soon, either from the
+steep, insecure nature of the ground or from less obvious and material
+cause, her pace quickened until it became a run. She ran neatly, deftly,
+all of a piece as a boy runs, no trace of disarray or feminine
+floundering in her action. More than ever, indeed, did she appear a fine
+nymph-like creature; so that, watching her flight Tom Verity was touched
+alike with self-reproach and admiration. For he had succeeded in
+asserting himself beyond his intention. Had overcome, had worsted her;
+yet, as it occurred to him, won a but barren victory. That she was
+alienated and resentful he could hardly doubt, while the riddle he had
+rather meanly used to procure her discomfiture remained unanswered as
+ever, dipped indeed only deeper in mystery. He was hoist with his own
+petard, in short; and stood there nonplussed, vexed alike at himself and
+at circumstance.
+
+A soft wind, meanwhile, caressed him, as hesitating, uncertain what to do
+next, he glanced out over the smiling sea and then back at the delicate
+shore line, the white house, the huge evergreen trees and brilliant
+flower garden. A glamour covered the scene. It was lovely, intimately,
+radiantly lovely as he had lately declared it. Yet just now he grew
+distrustful, as though its fair seeming cloaked some subtle trickery and
+deceit. He began to wish he had not undertaken this expedition to
+Deadham; but gone straight from the normal, solidly engrained
+philistinism of dear old Canton Magna to join his ship. In coming here he
+had, to put it vulgarly, bitten off more than he could chew. For the
+place and its inhabitants seemed to have a disintegrating effect on him.
+Never in all his life had he been such a prey to exterior influences,
+been twisted and turned to and fro, weather-cock fashion, thus. It was
+absurd, of course, to take things too seriously, yet he could not but
+fear the Archdeacon's well-intentioned bit of worldliness and his own
+disposition to court whatever family prejudice pronounced taboo, were in
+process of leading him a very questionable little dance.
+
+Reaction, however, set in before long, as with so lively, light-hearted a
+temperament, it was bound to do, the healthy scepticism, healthy optimism
+of untried three-and-twenty rising to the surface buoyant as a cork.
+
+Tom Verity shook himself, took off his hat, smoothed his hair, settled
+his tie, hitched up the waist of his trousers, stamping to get them into
+place, laughed a little, calling himself every sort of silly ass, and
+then swung away down the side of the long ridge in pursuit of Damaris.
+He acknowledged his treatment of her had been lacking in chivalry. He
+hadn't shown himself altogether considerate or even kind. But she
+challenged him--perhaps unconsciously--and once or twice had come near
+making him feel small.--Oh! there were excuses for his behaviour! Now
+however he would sail on another tack. Would placate, discreetly cherish
+her until she couldn't but be softened and consent to make it up. After
+all maidens of her still tender age are not precisely adamant--such at
+least was his experience--where a personable youth is concerned. It only
+needed a trifle of refined cajolery to make everything smooth and to
+bring her round.
+
+He overtook the fugitive as she reached the low wooden jetty crawling,
+like some giant but rather dilapidated black many-legged insect, out over
+the stream. Its rows of solidly driven piles were intact, but the staging
+they supported had suffered damage from the rush of river floods, let
+alone from neglect and age. Handrails were broken down, planks rotted and
+wrenched away leaving gaps through which the cloudy greenish blue water
+could be seen as it purred and chuckled beneath. Here, at the river
+level, it was hot to the point of sultriness, the air heavy, even
+stagnant, since the Bar shut off the southerly breeze.
+
+"Upon my word one requires to be in training to race you, my dear
+Damaris," the young man said gaily, ostentatiously mopping his forehead.
+"And I'm disgracefully soft just now, I know. You beat me utterly and
+ignominiously; but then you did have a good three minutes' start. In
+common honesty you can't deny that"--
+
+The girl made no response, but began mounting the few sand-strewn steps
+on to the jetty. He saw her face in profile, the delicate upward curve of
+her long dark eyelashes in the shade of her hat. Saw, too, that her soft
+lips quivered as with the effort to repress an outburst of tears. And
+this affected him as the wounding of some strong free creature might,
+stirring his blood in a fashion new to him and strange. For not only did
+he find it piteous; but unseemly, unpermissible somehow, yet marvellously
+sweet, startling him out of all preconceived light diplomatic plans,
+plucking shrewdly at his complacently unawakened heart.
+
+He came close to her, and putting his hand under her elbow gently held
+it.
+
+"Pray, pray be careful," he said. "I don't trust this crazy little pier
+of yours one atom. Any one of these boards looks capable of crumbling and
+letting one through.--And, Damaris, please don't be cross with me or I
+shall be quite miserable. Forgive my having asked you stupid questions. I
+was a blundering idiot. Of course, what I heard last night was just some
+echo, some trick of wind or of the river and tide. I was half asleep and
+imagined the whole thing most likely, magnified sounds as one does,
+don't you know, sometimes at night. Your father talked wonderfully, and I
+went to bed dazzled, such imagination as I possess all aflame"--
+
+But Damaris shook her head, while her elbow rested rigid upon the palm
+of his hand.
+
+"No--what you heard was real," she answered. "I heard once myself--and
+the people here know about it. They say the dead smugglers still drive
+their ponies up from the beach, across the lawn where the old road was,
+and, as it sounds, through the round rooms downstairs, in which my father
+lives, on their way up into the forest.--You cannot help seeing--although
+you see nothing--how the ponies are ill-used, hounded and flogged. The
+last of the drove are lame and utterly worn out. They stumble along
+anyhow and one falls. Oh! it is cruel, wicked. And it is--was, really
+true, cousin Tom. It must have happened scores of times before old Mr.
+Verity, your namesake, put a stop to the iniquity by buying The Hard--I
+have only heard the ponies driven once, about this time in September last
+year--just before something very sad, quite of my own, happened"--
+
+Damaris stopped, her lips quivering again and too much for speech.
+
+"Don't tell me any more. I can't bear you to be distressed. Pray, pray
+don't"--the young man urged incoherently while his grasp on her elbow
+tightened somewhat.
+
+For he felt curiously flurried and put about; near cursing himself
+moreover for having helped to break up her high serenity thus. The whole
+thing was manifestly impossible as he told himself, outside every
+recognized law of Nature and sound science. Even during the mistrustful
+phantasy-breeding watches of the night, when reason inclines to drag
+anchor setting mind and soul rather wildly adrift, he had refused
+credence to the apparent evidence of his own senses. Now in broad
+daylight, the generous sunshine flooding him, the smooth river purring
+and glittering at his feet, belief in grim and ghostly happenings became
+more than ever inadmissible, not to say quite arrantly grotesque. Yet
+Damaris' version of those same happenings tallied with his own in every
+point. And that her conviction of their reality was genuine, profound
+indeed to the point of pain, admitted neither of question nor of doubt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A CRITIC IN CORDUROY
+
+
+William Jennifer, who successfully combined in his single person the
+varied offices of ferryman, rat-catcher, jobbing gardener, amateur
+barber, mender of sails and of nets, brought the heavy, flat-bottomed
+boat alongside the jetty. Shipping the long sweeps, he coughed behind his
+hand with somewhat sepulchral politeness to give warning of his presence.
+
+"Sweethearting--lost to sight and hearing, espoused to forgetfulness," he
+murmured, peering up at the two cousins standing in such close proximity
+to one another upon the black staging above.
+
+For William Jennifer was a born lover of words and maker of phrases,
+addicted to the bandying of pleasantries, nicely seasoned to their
+respective age, sex and rank, with all he met; and, when denied an
+audience, rather than keep silence holding conversation with himself.
+
+The hot morning induced thirst, which, being allayed by a couple of pints
+at Faircloth's Inn, induced desire for a certain easiness of costume. His
+waistcoat hung open--he had laid aside his coat--displaying a broad
+stitched leather belt that covered the junction between buff corduroy
+trousers and blue-checked cotton shirt. On his head, a high
+thimble-crowned straw hat, the frayed brim of it pulled out into a poke
+in front for the better shelter of small, pale twinkling eyes set in a
+foxy face.
+
+The said face, however--for all its sharp-pointed nose, long upper lip,
+thin gossipy mouth, tucked in at the corners and opening, redly
+cavernous, without any showing of teeth, a stiff sandy fringe edging
+cheeks and chin from ear to ear--could on occasion become utterly blank
+of expression. It became so now, as Tom Verity, realizing the fact of its
+owner's neighbourhood, moved a step or two away from Damaris and,
+jumping on board himself, proceeded with rather studied courtesy to hand
+her down into the boat.
+
+"Looks as there might have been a bit of a tiff betwixt 'em"--Thus
+Jennifer inwardly. Then aloud--"Put you straight across the ferry, sir,
+or take you to the breakwater at The Hard? The tide's on the turn, so
+we'd slip down along easy and I'm thinking that 'ud spare Miss Verity the
+traipse over the shore path. Wonnerful parching in the sun it is for the
+latter end of September."
+
+"Oh! to the breakwater by all means," Tom answered with alacrity.
+
+For reaction had set in. Not only was the young man still slightly
+flustered, but vexed by the liveliness of his own emotions. Everything
+to-day savoured of exaggeration. The most ordinary incidents distended,
+inflated themselves in a really unaccountable manner. So that, frankly,
+he fought shy of finding himself alone with Damaris again. She seemed so
+constantly to betray him into ill-regulated feeling, ill-considered
+speech and action, which tended to endanger the completeness of his
+self-esteem. Therefore, although admitting his attitude to be scantily
+heroic, he welcomed the prospect of the ferryman's chaperonage until such
+time as her father or her discarded lady-in-waiting, the innocent and
+pink-nosed Bilson, should effect his final deliverance.
+
+"Yes, it is uncommonly hot," he repeated, while, with both arms extended,
+he worked to keep the side of the boat from bumping against the range of
+piles, backing it clear of the jetty into the fairway of the river. He
+found exertion pleasant, steadying.
+
+"Neither Miss Verity nor I shall be sorry to be saved the walk along
+that basting path. That is," he added, smiling with disarming
+good-temper, "if we're not blocking business and keeping you too long
+away from the ferry."
+
+But Jennifer, mightily pleased at his company and having, moreover,
+certain scandalous little fishes of his own to fry--or attempt to
+fry--waved the objection aside.
+
+The ferry could very well mind itself for a while, he said; and if
+anyone should come along they must just hold hands with patience till he
+got back, that was all. But passengers were few and far between this time
+of year and of day. The "season"--as was the new-fangled fashion to call
+it--being now over; trippers tripped home again to wheresoever their
+natural habitat might be. The activities of boys' schools, picnic
+parties, ambulant scientific societies and field-clubs--out in pursuit of
+weeds, of stone-cracking, and the desecration of those old heathen
+burying barrows on Stone Horse Head quieted off for the time being.
+Deadham, meanwhile, in act of repossessing its soul in peace and
+hibernating according to time-honoured habit until the vernal equinox.
+
+Not that he, Jennifer, as he explained, owned to any quarrel with the
+alien invasion. Good for trade they were, that tripper lot, though
+wonnerful simple, he must say, when they came to talk, blessed with an
+almighty wide swallow for any long-eared fairy tale you liked to put on
+them. Mortal full of senseless questions, too, fit to make anybody
+laugh!--Whereat overcome by joyous memories of human folly, he opened the
+red cavern of his apparently toothless mouth, barking up audible mirth,
+brief and husky, from the depth of a beer-slaked throat.
+
+He leaned forward while speaking, resting chest and elbows on the
+oars--only now and again dipping the blades in the water to steady the
+boat in its course as it moved smoothly onward borne by brimming stream
+and tide. From out the shadow of his thimble-crowned hat he looked up
+knowingly, with the freemasonry of assured good-temper at Tom, who stood
+before him hands in pockets, friendly and debonair, class distinctions
+for the moment quite forgot. For, let alone immediate convenience of
+chaperonage, the young man found unexpected entertainment in this typical
+South Saxon, relic, as it struck him, of a bygone age and social order.
+Might not that tough and somewhat clumsy body, that crafty, jovial, yet
+non-committal countenance, have transferred themselves straight from the
+pages of Geoffrey Chaucer into nineteenth-century life? Here, was a
+master of primitive knowledge and of arts not taught in modern Board (or
+any other) Schools; a merry fellow too, who could, as Tom divined, when
+company and circumstances allowed, be broadly, unprintably humorous.
+
+So, in this last connection perhaps, it was just as well that Damaris
+still appeared somewhat implacable. Coming on board she had passed
+Jennifer--who rowed amidships--and gone right forward, putting as wide a
+distance as conditions permitted between her cousin and herself. Now, as
+she sat on a pile of red-brown seine nets in the bow of the boat, she
+kept her face averted, looking away down the cool liquid highway, and
+presenting to his observation a graceful, white-clad but eminently
+discouraging back. Her attitude repelled rather than invited advances, so
+at least Tom, watching her, certainly thought. This justified his not
+following her but staying where he was, and leaving her to herself.
+Whereupon annoyance again beset him; for it was very little to his credit
+to have mismanaged his dealings with her and alienated her sympathies
+thus. With her, it was very evident, he had not been at all a success.
+And it pricked his young vanity very shrewdly not to be a success.
+
+From these unsatisfactory reflections William Jennifer's voice, prefaced
+by a warning cough, recalled him.
+
+"Making any long stay in these parts, sir?" he enquired.
+
+And when Tom explained that a few hours from now would witness the
+termination of his visit, and that, in all probability, many years of
+absence from England lay ahead--
+
+"Indeed, indeed, to be sure. Who'd have thought it for a young gentleman
+of the quality-like yourself! But, there, some are born under the
+traveller's star, sir--created with a roving spirit. And the Lord help
+'em, I say, for they're so made as to be powerless to help themselves
+seemingly. Rove they must and will, if they are to taste any
+contentment--an itch in their feet from the cradle nought but foreign
+lands'll serve to pacify. The sight of the ocean now, seems fairly
+tormenting to 'em till they can satisfy themselves of what's on the far
+side of it."
+
+But, here, the boat being unduly drawn aside by the suck of some local
+current, Jennifer was constrained to apply his mind to navigation. He
+dipped the long sweeps, and with a steady powerful pull straightened the
+course to midstream. Then raising the glistening blades, off which the
+water dripped white and pattering, he leaned forward again, resting
+elbows and chest on the butt-end of the oars, and once more addressed
+himself to polite conversation.
+
+"Not as I've been greatly troubled that way myself. Had my chance of
+going to sea and welcome many's the time when I was a youngster. But
+always a one for the land, I was. Never had any special fancy for salt
+water, though I do make my living of it now, as you may say, in a sense."
+
+During this biographical excursion Tom Verity's attention wandered. His
+eyes dwelt on Damaris. She had altered her position turning half round as
+she scanned the strip of sandy warren with its row of sentinel Scotch
+firs bordering the river. Seen thus, three-quarter face, Tom realized
+suddenly not only how really beautiful she was--or rather could at
+moments be--but how strangely she resembled Sir Charles her father. There
+was likeness not of features alone; but, for all her youthful freshness,
+a reflection of his strength, his inscrutability. Whereupon rather
+unworthy curiosity reawoke in Tom Verity, to satisfy which he was tempted
+to descend to methods not entirely loyal.
+
+Damaris, sitting to windward, must be out of earshot assuredly, yet he
+lowered his voice as he said:
+
+"By the way, talking of going to sea, can you tell me anything about the
+young sailor whom you took across the ferry just before fetching Miss
+Verity and me? I am pretty sure I have met him before and yet I can't
+place him somehow."
+
+Jennifer shot a sharply enquiring glance at the speaker; for here, at
+first sight, appeared rare opportunity of that same coveted and
+scandalous fish-frying! Yet he debated the wisdom of immediate indulgence
+in that merry pastime, inherent suspicion of class for class, suspicion
+too, of this young gentleman's conspicuously easy, good-natured manner,
+preaching caution. A show of friendliness supplies fine cover for the
+gaining of one's own ends.--Hadn't he, Jennifer, practised the friendly
+manoeuvre freely enough himself on occasion? And he did not in the least
+relish the chance of walking into a trap, instead of jovially baiting
+one. So he dipped the oars again, and answered slowly as though the
+question taxed his memory sorely, his face vacant of expression as an
+empty plate.
+
+"Brought him across before I started to fetch you and the young lady,
+sir, did I? To be sure, there, let me see. I've had several sea-going
+chaps of sorts back and forth this morning. Come and go most days, they
+do, come and go without my taking any particular account--the Lord
+forgive me, for it ain't over civil--unless strangers should hail me, or
+someone out of the common such as Miss Verity and yourself. A passing
+show, sir, half the time those I carry; no more to me, bless you, than so
+many sand-fleas a-hopping on the beach.--Mr. Blackmore--coast-guard
+officer he is--I fetched him across early, with one of his men coming
+round from the Head. And that poor lippity-lop, Abram Sclanders'
+eldest.--Pity he wasn't put away quiet-like at birth!--Terrible drag he
+is on Abram and always will be. Anybody with an ounce of gumption might
+have seen he'd be a short-wit from the first.--I took him over; but that
+'ud the opposite way about, as he wanted to go shrimping back of the Bar
+so he said."
+
+Jennifer paused as in earnest thought.
+
+"No, not a soul to merit your attention, to-day, sir, that I can call to
+mind. Unless"--with an upward look of returning intelligence--"but that
+ain't very likely either--unless it should be Darcy Faircloth. I'd clean
+forgot him, so I had. Cap'en Faircloth, as some is so busy calling 'im,
+now, in season and out of season till it's fairly fit to make you
+laugh.--Remarkable tall, Johnny-head-in-air young feller with a curly
+yaller beard to him."
+
+"That's the man!" Tom exclaimed.
+
+He had distrusted Jennifer's show of ignorance, believing he was being
+fenced with, played with, even royally lied to; but this merely served to
+heighten his curiosity and amusement. Something of moment must lie, he
+felt, behind so much wandering talk, something of value, purposely and
+cunningly withheld until time was ripe for telling disclosure.
+
+"Darcy Faircloth--Captain Faircloth?" he could not but repeat, and with
+such honest puzzlement and evident desire for further enlightening as to
+overcome his hearer's hesitation.
+
+"No--not a likely person for you to be in any wise acquainted with, sir,"
+Jennifer returned, wary still, though yielding--"even if you didn't
+happen to be a bit new to Deadham yourself, as I may put it. For been
+away mostly from his natural home here, young Faircloth has, ever since
+he was a little shaver. Mrs. Faircloth--owns the Inn there and all the
+appurtenances thereof, sheds, cottages, boats, and suchlike, she
+does--always had wonnerful high views for him. Quite the gentleman Darcy
+must be, with a boarding school into Southampton and then the best of the
+Merchant Service--no before the mast for him, bless you. There was a snug
+little business to count on, regular takings in the public, week in and
+week out--more particularly of late years in the summer--let alone the
+rest of the property--he being the only son of his mother, too, and she a
+widow woman free to follow any whimsies as took her about the lad."
+
+Jennifer gave some slow, strong strokes, driving the lumbering boat
+forward till the water fairly hissed against its sides. And Tom Verity
+still listened, strangely, alertly interested, convinced there was more,
+well worth hearing, to follow.
+
+"Oh! there's always bin a tidy lot of money behind young Darcy, and is
+yet I reckon, Mrs. Faircloth being the first-class business woman she is.
+Spend she may with one hand, but save, and make, she does and no mistake,
+Lord love you, with the other. Singular thing though," he added
+meditatively, his face growing wholly expressionless, "how little Darcy,
+now he's growed up, features old Lemuel his father. Squinny, red-cheeked
+little old party, he was; thin as a herring, and chilly, always chilly,
+sitting over the fire in the bar-parlour winter and summer too--small
+squeaky voice he had minding any one of a penny whistle. But a warm man
+and a close one--oh! very secret. Anybody must breakfast overnight and
+hurry at that--eat with their loins girded, as you may say, to get
+upsides with old Lemuel."
+
+He ceased speaking, and glanced round over his shoulder calculating
+the distance to the breakwater, for the boat drew level with the
+sea-wall of rough-hewn pinkish-grey granite along the river frontage
+of The Hard gardens.
+
+"There's some as 'ud tell you it was the surprise of old Lemuel's life to
+find himself a parent," he added, eyeing Tom slyly as he spoke, his mouth
+remaining open as in preparation for coming laughter.
+
+For those same scandalous little fishes were well into the frying-pan,
+now--sizzling, frizzling. And this was a vastly agreeable moment to
+William Jennifer, worth waiting for, worth scheming for. Unprintable
+humour looked out of his twinkling eyes while he watched to see how far
+Tom Verity caught his meaning. Then as the young man flushed, sudden
+distaste, even a measure of shame invading him, Jennifer, true artist in
+scandal, turned the conversation aside with an air of indulgent apology.
+
+"But, lor, there, you know how people'll talk in a little country place
+where there ain't much doing!--And it ain't for me to speak of what
+happened back in those times, being barely out of my teens then and away
+cow-keeping over Alton way for Farmer Whimsett. Regular chip of the old
+block, he was. Don't breed that sort nowadays. As hearty as you like, and
+swallered his three pints of home-brewed every morning with his breakfast
+he did, till he was took off quite sudden in his four-score-and-ten
+twelve months ago come Michaelmas."
+
+Upon the terrace, by the pyramid of ball and the two little cannons, Sir
+Charles Verity stood, holding a packet of newly written letters in his
+hand and smoking, while he watched the approaching boat. Damaris rose
+from the pile of red-brown fishing-nets and waved to him. Jennifer, too,
+glanced up, steadying both oars with one hand while he raised the other
+to the brim of his thimble-crowned hat. A couple of minutes more and he
+would part company with his passenger, and so judged it safe to indulge
+himself with a final fish-frying.
+
+"Mortal fine figure of a man, Sir Charles even yet," he said to Tom
+admiringly. "But anybody should have seen him as a young gentleman. When
+he used to visit here in old Mr. Verity's time, none in the country-side
+could hold a candle to him for looks, as you may say. Turned the females'
+heads he did. Might have had his pick of the lot, maids and wives alike
+for 'arf a word. Well, good-bye to you, sir"--and, as certain coin
+changed hands--"thank ye, sir, kindly. Wish you a pleasant voyage and a
+rare good picking up of honours and glories, and gold and silver
+likewise, there across the seas and oceans where you're a-going to."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE HARD SCHOOL OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN MAIDEN MEDITATION
+
+
+It was afternoon, about five o'clock. The fine September weather, hot and
+cloudless, lasted still. The air was heavy with garden scents, the
+aromatic sweetness of sun-baked gorse and pine-scrub on the warren, and
+with the reek off the mud-flats of the Haven, the tide being low. Upon
+the sandy skirts of the Bar, across the river just opposite, three
+cormorants--glossy black against the yellow--postured in extravagant
+angular attitudes drying their wings. Above the rim of the silver-blue
+sea--patched with purple stains in the middle distance--webs of steamer
+smoke lay along the southern sky. Occasionally a sound of voices, the
+creak of a wooden windlass and grind of a boat's keel upon the pebbles as
+it was wound slowly up the foreshore, came from the direction of the
+ferry and of Faircloth's Inn. The effect was languorous, would have been
+enervating to the point of mental, as well as physical, inertia had not
+the posturing cormorants introduced a note of absurdity and the tainted
+breath of the mud-flats a wholesome reminder of original sin.
+
+Under these conditions, at once charming and insidious, Damaris Verity,
+resting in a wicker deck-chair in the shade of the great ilex trees,
+found herself alone, free to follow her own vagrant thoughts,
+perceptions, imaginations without human let or hindrance. Free to dream
+undisturbed and interrogate both Nature and her own much wondering soul.
+
+For Sir Charles was away, staying with an old friend and former
+brother-in-arms, Colonel Carteret, for a week's partridge shooting over
+the Norfolk stubble-fields. Sport promised to be good, and Damaris had
+great faith in Colonel Carteret. With him her father was always amused,
+contented, safe. Hordle was in attendance, too, so she knew his comfort
+in small material matters to be secure. She could think of him without
+any shadow of anxiety, her mind for once at rest. And this she enjoyed.
+For it is possible to miss a person badly, long for their return
+ardently, yet feel by no means averse to a holiday from more active
+expenditure of love on their account.
+
+And Theresa Bilson--pleasing thought!--was, for the moment, absent also,
+having gone to tea with the Miss Minetts. Two maiden ladies, these, of
+uncertain age, modest fortune and unimpeachable refinement, once like
+Theresa herself, members of the scholastic profession; but now, thanks to
+the timely death of a relative--with consequent annuities and life
+interest in a ten-roomed, stone-built house of rather mournful aspect in
+Deadham village--able to rest from their ineffectual labours, support the
+Church, patronize their poorer and adulate their richer neighbours to
+their guileless hearts' content.
+
+Gentility exuded from the Miss Minetts, and--if it is permissible
+slightly to labour the simile--their pores were permanently open. Owing
+both to her antecedent and existing situation, it may be added, Theresa
+Bilson was precious in their sight. For had she not in the past, like
+themselves, sounded the many mortifications of a governess' lot; and was
+she not now called up higher, promoted indeed to familiar, almost hourly,
+intercourse with the great? Miss Felicia Verity was known to treat her
+with affection. Mrs. Augustus Cowden, that true blue of county dames and
+local aristocrats, openly approved her. She sat daily at Sir Charles
+Verity's table and helped to order his household. What more genuine
+patents of gentility could be asked? So they listened with a pleasure,
+deep almost to agitation, to her performances upon the piano, her
+reminiscences of Bonn and the Rhine Provinces, and, above all, to her
+anecdotes of life at The Hard and of its distinguished owner's habits and
+speech. Thus, by operation of the fundamental irony resident in things,
+did Theresa Bilson, of all improbable and inadequate little people,
+become to the Miss Minetts as a messenger of the gods; exciting in them
+not only dim fluttering apprehensions of the glories of art and delights
+of foreign travel, but--though in their determined gentility they knew it
+not--of the primitive allurements and mysteries of sex.
+
+The moral effect of this friendship upon Theresa herself was not,
+however, of the happiest. Fired by their interest in her recitals she was
+tempted to spread herself. At first almost unconsciously, for by instinct
+she was truthful, she embroidered fact, magnifying her office not only in
+respect of her ex-pupil Damaris but of Damaris' father also. She
+represented herself as indispensable to both parent and child, until she
+more than half believed that flattering fiction. She began to reckon
+herself an essential element in the establishment at The Hard, the pivot
+indeed upon which it turned. Whereupon a rather morbid craving for the
+Miss Minetts' society developed in her. For, with those two credulous
+ladies as audience, she could fortify herself in delusion by recounting
+all manner of episodes and incidents not as they actually had, but as she
+so ardently desired they might have, taken place.--A pathetic form of
+lying this, though far from uncommon to feminine and--more
+especially--spinster practice and habit!
+
+Still Theresa was not so besotted but that lucid intervals now and again
+afflicted her. One seized her this afternoon, as she prepared to bid
+Damaris good-bye. Either conscience pricked with unusual sharpness, or
+the young girl's smiling and unruffled acquiescence in her departure
+aroused latent alarms. She began to excuse her action in leaving her
+charge thus solitary, to protest her devotion; becoming, it may be added,
+red and agitated in the process. Her thick, short little fingers worked
+nervously on the crook handle of her white cotton umbrella. Her round
+light-coloured eyes grew humid to the point of fogging the lenses of her
+gold-rimmed glasses.
+
+"But why should you worry so now, just as you are starting, Billy?"
+Damaris reasoned, with the rather cruel logic of cool eighteen in face of
+hot and flustered nine-and-thirty. "Only at luncheon you were telling me
+how much you always enjoy spending an afternoon at the Grey House. I
+thought you looked forward so much to going. What has happened to turn
+you all different, like this, at the last minute?"
+
+"Nothing has happened exactly; but I have scruples about visiting my
+own friends and letting you remain alone when Sir Charles is from home.
+It might appear a dereliction of duty--as though I took advantage of
+his absence."
+
+"Nobody would think anything so foolish," Damaris declared. "And then you
+knew he would be away this week when you made the engagement."
+
+Theresa gulped and prevaricated.
+
+"No, surely not--I must have mistaken the date."
+
+"But you were quite happy at luncheon, and you couldn't have mistaken the
+date then," Damaris persisted.
+
+Whereupon poor Theresa lost herself, the worthy and unworthy elements in
+her nature alike conspiring to her undoing. In her distraction she
+sniffed audibly. A tear ran down either side of her pink shiny nose and
+dropped on the folds of shepherd's-plaid silk veiling her plump bosom.
+For, with some obscure purpose of living up to her self-imposed
+indispensability, Miss Bilson was distinctly dressy at this period,
+wearing her best summer gown on every possible occasion and tucking a
+bunch of roses or carnations archly in her waist-belt.
+
+"Do you think it kind to insist so much on my passing forgetfulness?" she
+quavered. "The habit of criticizing and cavilling at whatever I say grows
+on you, Damaris, and it so increases the difficulties of my position. I
+know I am sensitive, but that is the result of my affection for you. I
+care so deeply, and you are not responsive. You chill me. As I have told
+dear Miss Felicia--for I must sometimes unburden myself"--
+
+This hastily, as Damaris' eyes darkened with displeasure.
+
+--"For the last year, ever since you have nominally been out of the
+schoolroom, I have seen my influence over you lessen, and especially
+since poor Mrs. Watson's death"--
+
+"We will not talk about Nannie, please," Damaris said quietly.
+
+"Yes, but--as I told your Aunt Felicia--since then I have tried more than
+ever to win your entire confidence, to make up to you for the loss of
+poor Watson and fill her place with you."
+
+"No one else can ever fill the place of the person one has loved,"
+Damaris returned indignantly. "It isn't possible. I should be ashamed to
+let it be possible. Nannie was Nannie--she had cared for me all my life
+and I had cared for her. She belongs to things about which you"--
+
+And there the girl checked herself, aware of something almost ludicrously
+pitiful in the smug tearful countenance and stumpy would-be fashionable
+figure. Hit a man your own size, or bigger, by all means if you are game
+to take the consequences. But to smite a creature conspicuously your
+inferior in fortune--past, present, and prospective--is unchivalrous, not
+to say downright mean-spirited. So Damaris, swiftly repentant, put her
+arm round the heaving shoulders, bent her handsome young head and kissed
+the uninvitingly dabby cheek--a caress surely counting to her for
+righteousness.
+
+"Don't find fault with me any more, Billy," she said. "Indeed I never
+hurt you on purpose. But there are such loads of things to think
+about, that I get absorbed in them and can't attend sometimes directly
+on the minute."
+
+"Absent-mindedness should be corrected rather than encouraged," Miss
+Bilson announced, sententious even amid her tears.
+
+"Oh! it amounts to more than absent-mindedness I'm afraid--a sort of
+absent-every-thingedness when it overtakes me. For the whole of me seems
+to go away and away, hand in hand and all together," Damaris said, her
+eyes alight with questions and with dreams. "But don't let us discuss
+that now," she added. "It would waste time, and it is you who must go
+away and away, Billy, if you are not to put the poor Miss Minetts into a
+frantic fuss by being late for tea. They will think some accident has
+happened to you. Don't beep them in suspense, it is simply
+barbarous.--Good-bye, and don't hurry back. I have heaps to amuse me.
+I'll not expect you till dinner-time."
+
+Thus did it come about that Damaris reposed in a deck chair, under the
+shade of the great ilex trees, gazing idly at the webs of steamer smoke
+hanging low in the southern sky, at the long yellow-grey ridge of the Bar
+between river and sea, and at the cormorants posturing in the hot
+afternoon sunshine upon the sand.
+
+Truly she was free to send forth her soul upon whatever far fantastic
+journey she pleased. But souls are perverse, not to be driven at will,
+choosing their own times and seasons for travel. And hers, just now,
+proved obstinately home-staying--had no wings wherewith to fly, but must
+needs crawl a-fourfoot, around all manner of inglorious personal matters.
+For that skirmish with her ex-governess, though she successfully bridled
+her tongue and conquered by kindness rather than by smiting, had clouded
+her inward serenity, not only by its inherent uselessness, but by
+reminding her indirectly of an occurrence which it was her earnest desire
+to forget.
+
+Indirectly, mention of her beloved nurse, Sarah Watson--who journeying
+back from a visit to her native Lancashire, just this time last year, had
+met death swift and hideous in a railway collision--recalled to Damaris
+the little scene, of a week ago, with Tom Verity when ho had asked her,
+in the noonday sunshine out on the Bar, for some explanation of his
+strange nocturnal experience. She went hot all over now, with exaggerated
+childish shame, thinking of it. For had not she, Damaris Verity, though
+nurtured in the creed that courage is the source and mother of all
+virtues, shown the white feather, incontinently turned tail and run away?
+Remembrance of that running scorched her, so that more than once,
+awakening suddenly in the night, her fair young body was dyed rose-red
+with the disgrace of it literally from head to heel. She was bitterly
+humiliated by her own poltroonery, ingenuously doubtful as to whether she
+could ever quite recover her self-respect; glad that every day put two
+hundred miles and more of sea between her and Tom Verity, since he had
+witnessed that contemptible fall from grace.
+
+Nevertheless, after her first consternation--in which, to avoid further
+speech with him she had sought refuge among the unsavoury seine nets in
+the fore-part of Jennifer's ferry-boat--Tom Verity's probable opinion of
+her undignified action troubled her far less than the cause of the said
+action itself. For exactly what, after all, had so upset her, begetting
+imperative necessity of escape? Not the apparent confirmation of that
+ugly legend concerning ghostly ponies driven up across The Hard garden
+from the shore. From childhood, owing both to temperament and local
+influences, her apprehension of things unseen and super-normal had been
+remarkably acute. From the dawn of conscious intelligence these had
+formed an integral element in the atmosphere of her life; and that
+without functional disturbance, moral or physical, of a neurotic sort.
+She felt no morbid curiosity about such matters, did not care to dwell
+upon or talk of them.--Few persons do who, being sane in mind and body,
+are yet endowed with the rather questionable blessing of the Seer's sixth
+sense.--For while, in never doubting their existence her reason
+acquiesced, her heart turned away, oppressed and disquieted, as from
+other mysterious actualities common enough to human observation, such as
+illness, disease, deformity, old age, the pains of birth and of death.
+Such matters might perplex and sadden, or arouse her indignant pity; but,
+being strong with the confidence of untouched youth and innocence, they
+were powerless, in and by themselves, to terrify her to the contemptible
+extremity of headlong flight.
+
+This she recognized, though less by reasoning than by instinct; and so
+found herself compelled to search deeper for the cause of her recent
+disgrace. Not that she willingly prosecuted that search; but that the
+subject pursued her, simply refusing to leave her alone. Continually it
+presented itself to her mind, and always with the same call for escape,
+the same foreboding of some danger against which she must provide.
+Always, too, it seemed to hinge upon Tom Verity's visit, and something in
+her relation to the young man himself which she could not define. She
+revolved the question now--Theresa being safely packed off to her
+tea-party--in shade of the ilex trees, with solemn eyes and finely
+serious face.
+
+There was not anything unusual in receiving visitors at The Hard. Men
+came often to see her father, and she took her share in entertaining all
+such comers as a matter of course. Some she "didn't much care about,"
+some she liked. But, with the exception of Colonel Carteret from
+childhood her trusted friend and confidant, their coming and going was
+just part of the accustomed routine, a survival from the life at the
+Indian summer palace of long ago, and made no difference. Yet, though she
+was still uncertain whether she did like Tom Verity or not, his coming
+and going had indisputably made a difference. It marked, indeed, a new
+departure in her attitude and thought. Her world, before his advent, was
+other than that in which she now dwelt.
+
+For one thing, Tom was much younger than the majority of her father's
+guests--a man not made but still early in the making, the glamour of
+promise rather than the stark light of finality upon him. This affected
+her; for at eighteen, a career, be it never so distinguished, which has
+reached its zenith, in other words reached the end of its tether, must
+needs have a touch of melancholy about it. With the heat of going on in
+your own veins, the sight of one who has no further go strikes chill to
+the heart. And so, while uncertain whether she quite trusted him or not,
+Damaris--until the unlucky running away episode--had taken increasing
+pleasure in this new cousin's company. It both interested and diverted
+her. She had not only felt ready to talk to him; but,--surprising
+inclination!--once the ice of her natural reserve broken, to talk to him
+about herself.
+
+Half-shyly she dwelt upon his personal appearance.--A fine head and
+clever face, the nose astute, slightly Jewish in type, so she thought.
+His eyes were disappointing, too thickly brown in colour, too opaque.
+They told you nothing, were indeed curiously meaningless; and, though
+well set under an ample brow, were wanting in depth and softness owing to
+scantiness of eyelash. But his chin satisfied her demands. It was square,
+forcible, slightly cleft; and his mouth, below the fly-away reddish
+moustache, was frankly delightful.--Damaris flushed, smiling to herself
+now as she recalled his smile. Whereupon the humiliation of that thrice
+wretched running away took a sharper edge. For she realized, poor child,
+how much--notwithstanding her proud little snubbing of him--she coveted
+his good opinion, wished him to admire and to like her; wanted, even
+while she disapproved his self-complacency and slightly doubted his
+truthfulness, to have him carry with him a happy impression of her--carry
+it with him to that enchanted far Eastern land in which all the poetry of
+her childhood had its root. For, if remembrance of her remained with him,
+and that agreeably, she herself also found "Passage to India" in a sense.
+And this idea, recondite though it was, touched and charmed her fancy--or
+would have done so but for the recollection of her deplorable
+flight.--Oh! what--what made her run away? From what had she thus run? If
+she could only find out! And find, moreover, the cause sufficient to
+palliate, to some extent at least, the woefulness of her cowardice.
+
+But at this point her meditation suffered interruption. The three
+cormorants, having finished their sun-bath, rose from the sand and
+flapped off, flying low and sullenly in single file over the sea parallel
+with the eastward-trending coast-line.
+
+With the departure of the great birds her surroundings seemed to lose
+their only element of active and conscious life. The brooding sunlit
+evening became oppressive, so that in the space of a moment Damaris
+passed from solitude, which is stimulating, to loneliness, which is only
+sad. Meanwhile the shadow cast by the ilex trees had grown sensibly
+longer, softer in outline, more transparent and finely intangible in
+tone, and the reek of the mud-flats more potent, according to its habit
+at sundown and low tide.
+
+It quenched the garden scents with a fetid sweetness, symbolic perhaps of
+the languorous sheltered character of the scene and of much which had or
+might yet happen there--the life breath of the _genius loci_, an at once
+seductive and, as Tom Verity had rightly divined, a doubtfully wholesome
+spirit! Over Damaris it exercised an unwilling fascination, as of some
+haunting refrain ending each verse of her personal experience. Even when,
+as a little girl of eight, fresh from the gentle restraints and rare
+religious and social amenities of an aristocratic convent school in
+Paris, she had first encountered it, it struck her as strangely
+familiar--a thing given back rather than newly discovered, making her
+mind and innocent body alike eager with absorbed yet half-shuddering
+recognition. A good ten years had elapsed since then, but her early
+impression still persisted, producing in her a certain spiritual and
+emotional unrest.
+
+And at that, by natural transition, her thought turned from Tom Verity to
+fix itself upon the one other possible witness of her ignominy--namely,
+the young master mariner who, coming ashore in Proud, the
+lobster-catcher's cranky boat, had walked up the shifting shingle to the
+crown of the ridge and stood watching her, in silence, for a quite
+measurable period, before passing on his way down to the ferry. For, from
+her first sight of him, had he not seemed to evoke that same sense of
+remembrance, to be, like the reek off the mud-flats, already well-known,
+something given back to her rather than newly discovered? She was still
+ignorant as to who ho was or where he came from, having been far too
+engrossed by mortification to pay any attention to the conversation
+between her cousin and Jennifer during their little voyage down the
+tide-river, and having disdained to make subsequent enquiries.--She had a
+rooted dislike to appear curious or ask questions.--But now, reviewing
+the whole episode, it broke in on her that the necessity for escape and
+foreboding of danger, which culminated in her flight, actually dated
+from the advent of this stranger rather than from Tom's request for
+enlightenment concerning unaccountable noises heard in the small hours.
+
+Damaris slipped her feet down off the leg-rest, and sat upright, tense
+with the effort to grasp and disentangle the bearings of this revelation.
+Was her search ended? Had she indeed detected the cause of her
+discomfiture; or only pushed her enquiry back a step further, thus
+widening rather than limiting the field of speculation? For what
+conceivable connection, as she reflected, could the old lobster-catcher's
+passenger have with any matter even remotely affecting herself!
+
+Then she started, suddenly sensible of a comfortable, though warmly
+protesting, human voice and presence at her elbow.
+
+"Yes, you may well look astonished, Miss Damaris. I know how late it is,
+and have been going on like anything to Lizzie over her carelessness.
+Mrs. Cooper's walked up the village with Laura about some extra meat
+that's wanted, and when I came through for your tea if that girl hadn't
+let the kitchen fire right out!--Amusing herself down in the stable-yard,
+I expect, Mrs. Cooper being gone.--And the business I've had to get a
+kettle to boil!"
+
+Verging on forty, tall, dark, deep-bosomed and comely, a rich flush on
+her cheeks under the clear brown skin thanks to a kitchen fire which
+didn't burn and righteous anger which did, Mary Fisher, the upper
+housemaid, set a tea-tray upon the garden table beside Damaris' chair.
+
+"That's what comes of taking servants out of trades-peoples' houses," she
+went on, as she marshalled silver tea-pot and cream-jug--embossed with
+flamboyant many-armed Hindu deities--hot cakes, ginger snaps and
+saffron-sprinkled buns. "You can't put any real dependence on them, doing
+their work as suits themselves just anyhow and anywhen. Mrs. Cooper and I
+knew how it would be well enough when Miss Bilson engaged Lizzie Trant
+and Mr. Hordle said the same. But it wasn't one atom of use for us to
+speak. The Miss Minetts recommended the girl--so there was the finish of
+it. And that's at the bottom of your being kept waiting the best part of
+a hour for your tea like this, Miss."
+
+Notwithstanding the exactions of a somewhat tyrannous brain and her
+conviction of high responsibilities, the child, which delights to be
+petted, told stories and made much of, was strong in Damaris still. This
+explosion of domestic wrath on her behalf proved eminently soothing. It
+directed her brooding thought into nice, amusing, everyday little
+channels; and assured her of protective solicitude, actively on the
+watch, by which exaggerated shames and alarms were withered and
+loneliness effectually dispersed. She felt smoothed, contented. Fell,
+indeed, into something of the humour which climbs on to a friendly lap
+and thrones it there blissfully careless of the thousand and one ills,
+known and unknown, which infant flesh is heir to. She engaged the comely
+comfortable woman to stay and minister further to her.
+
+"Pour out my tea for me, Mary, please," she said, "if you're not busy.
+But isn't this your afternoon off, by rights?"
+
+And Mary, while serving her, acknowledged that not only was it "by
+rights" her "afternoon off;" but that Mr. Patch, the coachman, had
+volunteered to drive her into Marychurch to see her parents when he
+exercised the carriage horses. But, while thanking him very kindly, she
+had refused. Was it likely, she said, she would leave the house with Sir
+Charles and Mr. Hordle away, and Miss Bilson taking herself off to visit
+friends, too?
+
+From which Damaris gathered that, in the opinion of the servants' hall,
+Theresa's offence was rank, it stank to heaven. She therefore, being
+covetous of continued contentment, turned the conversation to less
+controversial subjects; and, after passing notice of the fair weather,
+the brightness of the geraniums and kindred trivialities, successfully
+incited Mary to talk of Brockhurst, Sir Richard Calmady's famous place in
+the north of the county, where--prior to his retirement to his native
+town of Marychurch, upon a generous pension--her father, Lomas Fisher,
+had for many years occupied the post of second gardener. Here was
+material for story-telling to the child Damaris' heart's content! For
+Brockhurst is rich in strange records of wealth, calamity, heroism, and
+sport, the inherent romance of which Mary's artless narrative was
+calculated to enhance rather than dissipate.
+
+So young mistress listened and maid recounted, until, the former
+fortified by cakes and tea, the two sauntered, side by side--a tall
+stalwart black figure, white capped and aproned and an equally tall
+but slender pale pink one--down across the lawn to the battery where
+the small obsolete cannon so boldly defied danger of piracy or
+invasion by sea.
+
+The sun, a crimson disc, enormous in the earth-mist, sank slowly, south
+of west, behind the dark mass of Stone Horse Head. The upper branches of
+the line of Scotch firs in the warren and, beyond them, the upper windows
+of the cottages and Inn caught the fiery light. Presently a little wind,
+thin, perceptibly chill, drew up the river with the turning of the tide.
+It fluttered Mary Fisher's long white muslin apron strings and lifted her
+cap, so that she raised her hand to keep it in place upon her smooth
+black hair. The romance of Brockhurst failed upon her tongue. She grew
+sharply practical.
+
+"The dew's beginning to rise, Miss Damaris," she said, "and you've only
+got your house shoes on. You ought to go indoors at once."
+
+But--"Listen," Damaris replied, and lingered.
+
+The whistling of a tune, shrill, but true and sweet, and a rattle of
+loose shingle, while a young man climbed the seaward slope of the Bar.
+The whistling ceased as he stopped, on the crest of the ridge, and stood,
+bare-headed, contemplating the sunset. For a few seconds the fiery light
+stained his hands, his throat, his hair, his handsome bearded face; then
+swiftly faded, leaving him like a giant leaden image set up against a
+vast pallor of sea and sky.
+
+Mary Fisher choked down a hasty exclamation.
+
+"Come, do come, Miss Damaris, before the grass gets too wet," she said
+almost sharply. "It's going to be a drenching dew to-night."
+
+"Yes--directly--in a minute--but, Mary, tell me who that is?"
+
+The woman hesitated.
+
+"Out on the Bar, do you mean? No one I am acquainted with, Miss."
+
+"I did not intend to ask if he was a friend of yours," Damaris
+returned, with a touch of grandeur, "but merely whether you could tell
+me his name."
+
+"Oh! it's Mrs. Faircloth's son I suppose--the person who keeps the Inn. I
+heard he'd been home for a few days waiting for a ship"--and she turned
+resolutely towards the house. "It's quite time that silver was taken
+indoors and the library windows closed. But you must excuse me, Miss
+Damaris, I can't have you stay out here in that thin gown in the damp.
+You really must come with me, Miss."
+
+And the child in Damaris obeyed. Dutifully it went, though the soul of
+the eighteen-year-old Damaris was far away, started once more on an
+anxious quest.
+
+She heard the loose shingle shift and rattle under Faircloth's feet as he
+swung down the near slope to the jetty. The sound pursued her, and again
+she was overtaken--overwhelmed by foreboding and desire of flight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHICH CANTERS ROUND A PARISH PUMP
+
+
+Not until the second bell was about to cease ringing did Theresa
+Bilson--fussily consequential--reappear at The Hard.
+
+During the absence of the master of the house she would have much
+preferred high tea in the schoolroom, combined with a certain laxity as
+to hours and to dress; but Damaris, in whom the sense of style was
+innate, stood out for the regulation dignities of late dinner and evening
+gowns. To-night, however, thanks to her own unpunctuality, Miss Bilson
+found ample excuse for dispensing with ceremonial garments.
+
+"No--no--we will not wait," she said, addressing Mary and her attendant
+satellite, Laura, the under-housemaid, as--agreeably ignorant of the
+sentiment of a servants' hall which thirsted for her blood--she passed
+the two standing at attention by the open door of the dining-room. "I am
+not going to change. I will leave my hat and things down here--Laura can
+take them to my room later--and have dinner as I am."
+
+During the course of that meal she explained how she had really quite
+failed to observe the hour when she left the Grey House. Commander and
+Mrs. Battye were at tea there; and the vicar--Dr. Horniblow--looked in
+afterwards. There was quite a little meeting, in fact, to arrange the
+details of the day after to-morrow's choir treat. A number of upper-class
+parishioners, she found, were anxious to embrace this opportunity of
+visiting Harchester, and inspecting the Cathedral and other sights of
+that historic city, under learned escort. It promised to be a most
+interesting and instructive expedition, involving moreover but moderate
+cost.--And every one present--Theresa bridled over her salmon cutlet and
+oyster sauce--everyone seemed so anxious for her assistance and advice.
+The vicar deferred to her opinion in a quite pointed manner; and spoke,
+which was so nice of him, of her known gift of organization. "So we claim
+not only your sympathy, Miss Bilson, but your active co-operation," he
+had said. "We feel The Hard should be officially represented."
+
+Here the speaker became increasingly self-conscious and blushed.
+
+"What could I do, therefore, but remain even at the risk of being a
+trifle late for dinner?" she asked. "It would have been so extremely
+uncivil to the Miss Minetts to break up the gathering by leaving before
+full agreement as to the arrangements had been reached. I felt I must
+regard it as a public duty, under the circumstances. I really owed it to
+my position here, you know, Damaris, to stay to the last."
+
+It may be observed, in passing, that Miss Bilson was fond of food and
+made a good deal of noise in eating, particularly when, as on the present
+occasion, she combined that operation with continuous speech. This may
+account for Damaris bestowing greater attention on the manner than the
+matter of her ex-governess' communications. She was sensible that the
+latter showed to small advantage being rather foolishly excited and
+elate, and felt vexed the maids should hear and see her behaving thus. It
+could hardly fail to lower her in their estimation.
+
+As to the impending parochial invasion of Harchester--during the earlier
+stages of dinner Damaris hardly gave it a second thought, being still
+under the empire of impressions very far removed from anything in the
+nature of choir treats. She still beheld the fiery glare of an expiring
+sunset, and against the ensuing pallor of sea and sky a leaden-hued
+human, figure strangely, almost portentously evident. That it appeared
+noble in pose and in outline, even beautiful, she could not deny. But
+that somehow it frightened her, she could equally little deny. So it came
+about that once again, as Mary and her satellite Laura silently waited
+at table, and as Theresa very audibly gobbled food in and words out,
+Damaris shrank within herself seeming to hear a shrill sweet whistling
+and the shatter of loose pebbles and shifting shingle under Faircloth's
+pursuing feet.
+
+The young man's name aroused her interest, not to say her curiosity, the
+more deeply because of its association, with a locality exploration of
+which had always been denied her--a Naboth's vineyard of the imagination,
+near at hand, daily in sight, yet personal acquaintance with which she
+failed to possess even yet. The idea of an island, especially a quite
+little island, a miniature and separate world, shut off all by itself, is
+dreadfully enticing to the infant mind--at once a geographical entity and
+a cunning sort of toy. And Faircloth's Inn, with the tarred wooden houses
+adjacent, was situated upon what, to all intents and purposes, might pass
+as an island since accessible only by boat or by an ancient paved
+causeway daily submerged at high tide.
+
+Skirting the further edge of the warren, a wide rutted side lane leads
+down to the landward end of the said causeway from the village green,
+just opposite Deadham post office and Mrs. Doubleday's general shop.--A
+neglected somewhat desolate strip of road this, between broken earthbanks
+topped by ragged firs, yet very paintable and dear to the sketch-book of
+the amateur. In summer overgrown with grass and rushes, bordered by
+cow-parsley, meadowsweet, pink codlings-and-cream, and purple flowered
+peppermint, in winter a marsh of sodden brown and vivid green; but at all
+seasons a telling perspective, closed by the lonely black and grey island
+hamlet set in the gleaming tide.
+
+Small wonder the place stirred Damaris' spirit of enquiry and adventure!
+She wanted to go there, to examine, to learn how people lived cut off
+from the mainland for hours twice every day and night. But her early
+attempts at investigation met with prompt discouragement from both her
+nurse and her aunt, Felicia Verity. And Damaris was not of the
+disposition which plots, wheedles, and teases to obtain what it wants;
+still less screams for the desired object until for very weariness
+resistance yields. Either she submitted without murmuring or fearlessly
+defied authority. In the present case she relinquished hope and purpose
+obediently, while inwardly longing for exploration, of her "darling
+little island" all the more.
+
+But authority was not perhaps altogether unjustified of its decision, for
+the inhabitants of the spot so engaging to Damaris' imagination were a
+close corporation, a race of sailors and fishermen and, so said rumour,
+somewhat rough customers at that. They lived according to their own
+traditions and unwritten laws, entertained a lordly contempt for
+wage-earning labourers and landsmen, and, save when money was likely to
+pass, were grudging of hospitality even to persons of quality setting
+foot within their coasts.
+
+To their reprehensible tendencies in this last respect the Miss Minetts
+could bear painful witness, as--with hushed voices and entreaties the
+sorry tale might "go no further"--they more than once confided to Theresa
+Bilson. For one Saturday afternoon--unknown to the vicar--being zealous
+in the admonishing of recalcitrant church-goers and rounding up of
+possible Sunday-school recruits, they crossed to the island at low tide;
+and in their best district visitor manner--too often a sparkling blend of
+condescension and familiarity, warranted to irritate--severally demanded
+entrance to the first two of the black cottages.--The Inn they avoided.
+Refined gentlewomen can hardly be expected, even in the interests of
+religion, to risk pollution by visiting a common tavern, more
+particularly when a company of half-grown lads and blue jerseyed men--who
+may, of course, have been carousing within--hangs about its morally
+malodorous door.
+
+Of precisely what followed their attempted violation of the privacy of
+those two cottages, even the Miss Minetts themselves could subsequently
+give no very coherent account. They only knew that some half-hour later,
+with petticoats raised to a height gravely imperilling decency, they
+splashed landward across the causeway--now ankle-deep in water--while the
+lads congregated before the Inn laughed boisterously, the men turned away
+with a guffaw, dogs of disgracefully mixed parentage yelped, and the
+elder female members of the Proud and Sclanders families flung phrases
+lamentably subversive of gentility after their retreating figures from
+the foreshore.
+
+Modesty and mortification alike forbade the outraged ladies reporting the
+episode to Dr. Horniblow in extenso. But they succeeded in giving Miss
+Bilson a sufficiently lurid account of it to make "the darling little
+island," in as far as her charge, Damaris, was concerned, more than ever
+taboo. Their request that the story might "go no further" she interpreted
+with the elasticity usually accorded to such requests; and proceeded, at
+the first opportunity, to retail the whole shocking occurrence to her
+pupil as an example of the ingratitude and insubordination of the common
+people. For Theresa was nothing if not conservative and aristocratic.
+From such august anachronisms as the divine right of kings and the Stuart
+succession, down to humble bobbing of curtseys and pulling of forelocks
+in to-day's village street, she held a permanent brief for the classes as
+against the masses. Unluckily the Miss Minetts' hasty and watery
+withdrawal, with upgathered skirts, across the causeway had appealed to
+Damaris' sense of comedy rather than of tragedy.--She didn't want to be
+unkind, but you shouldn't interfere; and if you insisted on interfering
+you must accept whatever followed. The two ladies in question were richly
+addicted to interfering she had reason to think.--And then they must have
+looked so wonderfully funny scuttling thus!
+
+The picture remained by her as a thing of permanent mirth. So it was
+hardly surprising, in face of the dominant direction of her thoughts
+to-night, that, when the Miss Minetts' name punctuated Theresa's
+discourse recurrent as a cuckoo-cry, remembrance of their merrily
+inglorious retirement from the region of Faircloth's Inn should present
+itself. Whereupon Damaris' serious mood was lightened as by sudden
+sunshine, and she laughed.
+
+Hearing which infectiously gay but quite unexpected sound, Miss Bilson
+stopped dead in the middle both of a nectarine and a sentence.
+
+"What is the matter, Damaris?" she exclaimed. "I was explaining our
+difficulty in securing sufficient conveyances for some of our party to
+and from Marychurch station. I really do not see any cause for amusement
+in what I said."
+
+"There wasn't anything amusing, dear Billy, I'm sure there wasn't,"
+Damaris returned, the corners of her mouth still quivering and her eyes
+very bright. "I beg your pardon. I'm afraid I wasn't quite attending. I
+was thinking of something else. You were speaking about the carriage
+horses, weren't you? Yes."
+
+But Theresa turned sulky. She had been posing, planing in mid-air around
+the fair castles hope and ambition are reported to build there. Her fat
+little feet were well off the floor, and that outbreak of laughter let
+her down with a bump. She lost her head, lost her temper and her
+opportunity along with it, and fell into useless scolding.
+
+"You are extremely inconsequent and childish sometimes, Damaris," she
+said. "I find it most trying when I attempt to talk to you upon practical
+subjects, really pressing subjects, and you either cannot or will not
+concentrate. What can you expect in the future when you are thrown more
+on your own resources, and have not me--for instance--always to depend
+upon, if you moon through life like this? It must lead to great
+discomfort not only for yourself but for others. Pray be warned in time."
+
+Damaris turned in her chair at the head of the table. A station not
+unconnected, in Theresa's mind, with the internal ordering of those same
+air-built castles, and consistently if furtively coveted by her. To Sir
+Charles's chair at the bottom of the table, she dared not aspire, so
+during his absence reluctantly retained her accustomed place at the side.
+
+"You need not wait any longer, Mary," Damaris said, over her shoulder.
+
+"Why?" Theresa began fussily, as the two maids left the room.
+
+"Why?" Damaris took her up. "Because I prefer our being alone during
+the remainder of this conversation. I understand that you want to ask
+me about something to do with this excursion to Harchester. What is
+it, please?"
+
+"My dear Damaris," the other protested, startled and scenting unexpected
+danger, "really your manner"--
+
+"And yours.--Both perhaps would bear improvement. But that is by the way.
+What is it, please, you want?"
+
+"Really you assert yourself"--
+
+"And you forget yourself--before the servants, too, I do not like it at
+all. You should be more careful."
+
+"Damaris," she cried aghast, confounded to the verge of tears--"Damaris!"
+
+"Yes--I am giving you my full attention. Pray let us be practical," the
+young girl said, sitting up tall and straight in the shaded lamp-light,
+the white dinner-table spread with gleaming glass and silver, fine china,
+fruit and flowers before her, the soft gloom of the long low room behind,
+all tender hint of childhood banished from her countenance, and her eyes
+bright now not with laughter but with battle. "Pray let us finish with
+the subject of the choir treat. Then we shall be free to talk about more
+interesting things."
+
+Miss Bilson waved her hands hysterically.
+
+"No--no--I never wish to mention it again. I am too deeply hurt by your
+behaviour to me, Damaris--your sarcasm.--Of course," she added, "I see I
+must withdraw my offer. It will cause the greatest inconvenience and
+disappointment; but for that I cannot hold myself responsible, though it
+will be most painful and embarrassing to me after the kind appreciation I
+have received. Still I must withdraw it"--
+
+"Withdraw what offer?"
+
+"Why the offer I was explaining to you just now, when you ordered the
+maids out of the room. You really cannot deny that you heard what I said,
+Damaris, because you mentioned the carriage horses yourself."
+
+Theresa sipped some water. She was recovering if not her temper, yet her
+grasp on the main issue. She wanted, so desperately, to achieve her
+purpose and, incidentally, to continue to play, both for her own benefit
+and that of the parish, her self-elected role of Lady Bountiful, of
+"official representative of The Hard"--as Dr. Horniblow by a quite
+innocent if ill-timed flourish of speech had unfortunately put it.
+
+"The conveyances in the village are insufficient to take the whole party
+to the station," she continued. "An extra brake can be had at the Stag's
+Head in Mary church; but a pair of horses must be sent in to-morrow
+afternoon to bring it over here. I saw"--she hesitated a moment--"I
+really could see no objection to Patch taking our horses in to fetch the
+brake, and driving a contingent to the station in it next morning."
+
+"And meeting the train at night, I suppose?" Damaris said calmly.
+
+"Of course," Theresa answered, thus unconsciously declaring herself a
+rank outsider, and rushing blindly upon her fate.
+
+For what thoroughbred member of the equestrian order does not know that
+next--and even that not always--to the ladies of his family and,
+possibly, the key of his cellar, an Englishman's stable is sacrosanct?
+Dispose of anything he owns rather than his horses. To attempt touching
+them is, indeed, to stretch out your hand against the Ark of the Covenant
+and risk prompt withering of that impious limb. Yet poor Theresa
+blundered on.
+
+"I told the vicar that, Sir Charles being from home, I felt I might make
+the offer myself, seeing how much it would simplify the arrangements and
+how very little work Patch has when you and I are alone here. It is a
+pity there is not time to obtain Sir Charles's sanction. That would be
+more proper, of course, more satisfactory. But under the circumstances it
+need not, I think, be regarded as an insuperable objection. I told the
+Miss Minetts and the vicar"--
+
+Here Miss Bilson blushed, applying fork and spoon, in coy confusion, to
+the remains of the nectarine upon her plate.
+
+"I told them," she repeated, "knowing Sir Charles as well as I do, I felt
+I might safely assure them of that."
+
+In Damaris, meanwhile, anger gradually gave place to far more complex
+emotions. She sat well back in her chair, and clasped her hands firmly in
+her flowered Pompadour-muslin lap. Her eyes looked enormous as she kept
+them fixed gravely and steadily upon the speaker. For extraordinary ideas
+and perceptions concerning the said speaker crowded into her young head.
+She did not like them at all. She shrank from dwelling upon or following
+them put. They, indeed, made her hot and uncomfortable all over. Had
+Theresa Bilson taken leave of her senses, or was she, Damaris, herself in
+fault--a harbourer of nasty thoughts? Consciously she felt to grow older,
+to grow up. And she did not like that either; for the grown-up world, to
+which Theresa acted just now as doorkeeper, struck her as an ugly and
+vulgar-minded place. She saw her ex-governess from a new angle--a more
+illuminating than agreeable one, at which she no longer figured as
+pitiful, her little assumptions and sillinesses calling for the
+chivalrous forbearance of persons more happily placed; but as actively
+impertinent, an usurper of authority and privileges altogether outside
+her office and her scope. She was greedy--not a pretty word yet a true
+one, covering both her manner of eating and her speech. Registering which
+facts Damaris was sensible of almost physical repulsion, as from
+something obscurely gross. Hence it followed that Theresa must, somehow,
+be stopped, made to see her own present unpleasantness, saved from
+herself in short--to which end it became Damaris' duty to unfurl the flag
+of revolt.
+
+The young girl arrived at this conclusion in a spirit of rather pathetic
+seriousness. It is far from easy, at eighteen, to control tongue and
+temper to the extent of joining battle with your elders in calm and
+dignified sort. To lay about you in a rage is easy enough. But rage is
+tiresomely liable to defeat its own object and make you make a fool of
+yourself. Any unfurling of the flag would be useless, and worse than
+useless, unless it heralded victory sure and complete--Damaris realized
+this. So she kept a brave front, although her pulse quickened and she had
+a bad little empty feeling around her heart.
+
+Fortunately, however, for her side of the campaign, Theresa--emboldened
+by recapitulation of her late boastings at the Miss Minetts'
+tea-table--hastened to put a gilded dome to her own indiscretion and
+offence. For nothing would do but Damaris must accompany her on this
+choir treat! She declared herself really compelled to press the point. It
+offered such an excellent opportunity of acquiring archaeological
+knowledge--had not the Dean most kindly promised to conduct the party
+round the Cathedral himself and deliver a short lecture _en route_?--and
+of friendly social intercourse, both of which would be very advantageous
+to Damaris. As she was without any engagement for the day clearly neither
+should be missed. Of course, everyone understood how unsuitable it would
+be to ask Sir Charles to patronize parish excursions and events.--Here
+Miss Bilson became lyrical, speaking with gasping breath and glowing
+face, of "a call to exalted spheres of action, of great Proconsuls,
+Empire Builders, Pillars of the State."--Naturally you hesitated to
+intrude on the time and attention of such a distinguished person--that in
+point of fact was her main reason for disposing of the matter of the
+carriage horses herself. How could she trouble Sir Charles with such a
+homely detail?--But Damaris' case, needless to remark, was very
+different. At her age it was invidious to be too exclusive. Miss Felicia
+Verity felt--so she, Theresa, was certain--that it was a pity Damaris did
+not make more friends in the village now she was out of the schoolroom.
+May and Doris Horniblow were sweet girls and highly educated. They, of
+course, were going. And Captain Taylor, she understood would bring his
+daughter, Louisa--who was home for a few days before the opening of term
+at the Tillingworth High School where she was second mistress.
+
+"It is always well to realize the attainments of young people of your own
+age, even if they are not in quite the same social grade as yourself.
+Your going would give pleasure too. It will be taken as a compliment to
+the vicar and the Church--may really, in a sense, be called patriotic
+since an acknowledgment of the duty we owe, individually, to the local
+community of which we form part. And then," she added, naively giving
+herself away at the last, "of course, if you go over to the station in
+the brake Patch cannot make any difficulties about driving it."
+
+Here Theresa stayed the torrent of her eloquence and looked up, to find
+Damaris' eyes fixed upon her in incredulous wonder.
+
+"Have you nothing to say, dear, in answer to my proposition?" she
+enquired, with a suddenly anxious, edgy little laugh.
+
+"I am afraid I have a lot to say, some of which you won't like."
+
+"How so?" Theresa cried, still playfully. "You must see how natural and
+reasonable my suggestion is." Then becoming admonitory. "You should learn
+to think a little more of others.--It is a bad habit to offer opposition
+simply for opposition's sake."
+
+"I do not oppose you for the mere pleasure of opposing," Damaris began,
+determined her voice should not shake. "But I'm sorry to say, I can't
+agree to the horses being used to draw a loaded brake. I could not ask
+Patch. He would refuse and be quite right in refusing. It's not their
+work--nor his work either."
+
+She leaned forward, trying to speak civilly and gently.
+
+"There are some things you don't quite understand about the stables, or
+about the servants--the things which can't be done, which it's impossible
+to ask.--No,--wait, please--please let me finish"--
+
+For between astonishment, chagrin, and an inarticulate struggle to
+protest, Miss Bilson's complexion was becoming almost apoplectic and her
+poor fat little cheeks positively convulsed.
+
+"I dislike saying such disagreeable things to you, but it can't be
+avoided. It would be cowardly of me not to tell you the truth.--You shall
+have the brougham the day after to-morrow, and I'll write to Miss Minett
+in the morning, and tell her you will call for her and her sister, on
+your way to Marychurch, and that you will bring them back at night. I
+will give Patch his orders myself, so that there may be no confusion. And
+I will subscribe a pound to the expenses of the choir treat. That is all
+I can promise in the way of help."
+
+"But--but--Damaris, think of the position in which you place me! I cannot
+be thrust aside thus. I will not submit. It is so humiliating, so--so--I
+offered the horses. I told the vicar he might consider it settled about
+the extra brake"--
+
+"I know. That was a mistake. You had no right to make such an offer."
+
+For justice must take its course. Theresa must be saved from herself.
+Still her implacable young saviour, in proportion as victory appeared
+assured, began to feel sad. For it grew increasingly plain that Theresa
+was not of the stuff of which warriors, any more than saints, are made.
+Stand up to her and she collapsed like a pricked bubble.--So little was
+left, a scum of colourless soap suds, in which very certainly there is no
+fight. Again she showed a pitiful being, inviting chivalrous forbearance.
+
+"You are very hard," she lamented, "and you are always inclined to side
+with the servants against me. You seem to take pleasure in undermining
+my influence, while I am so ready and anxious to devote myself to you.
+You know there is nothing, nothing I would not do for you and--and for
+Sir Charles."
+
+Theresa choked, coughed, holding her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+"And what reward do I meet with?" she asked brokenly. "At every turn I am
+thwarted. But you must give way in this case, Damaris. Positively you
+must. I cannot allow myself to be publicly discredited through your
+self-will. I promised the horses for the extra brake. The offer was made
+and accepted--accepted, you understand, actually accepted. What will the
+vicar say if the arrangement is upset? What will every one think?"
+
+Damaris pushed her chair back from the table and rose to her
+feet.--Forbearance wore threadbare under accusation and complaint. No,
+Theresa was not only a little too abject, but a little too disingenuous,
+thereby putting herself beyond the pale of rightful sympathy. Even while
+she protested devotion, self looked out seeking personal advantage. And
+that devotion, in itself, shocked Damaris' sense of fitness where it
+involved her father. It wasn't Theresa's place to talk of devotion
+towards him!
+
+Moreover the young girl began to feel profoundly impatient of all this to
+do and bother. For wasn't the whole affair, very much of a storm in a
+teacup, petty, paltry, quite unworthy of prolonged discussion such as
+this? She certainly thought so, in her youthful fervour and inexperience;
+while--the push of awakening womanhood giving new colour and richness
+to her conception of life--nature cried out for a certain extravagance in
+heroism, in largeness of action of aspiration. She was athirst for noble
+horizons, in love with beauty, with the magnificence of things, seen and
+unseen alike. In love with superb objectives even if only to be reached
+through a measure of suffering, and--searching, arresting, though the
+thought was to her--possibly through peril of death.
+
+In such moods there is small room for a Bilson régime and outlook. A
+flavour of scorn marked her tone as she answered at last:
+
+"Oh, you can lay the blame on me--or rather tell the truth, which amounts
+to the same thing. Say that, my father being away, I refused my consent
+to the horses being taken out. Say you appealed to me but I was
+hopelessly obstinate. It is very simple."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A SAMPLING OF FREEDOM
+
+
+When two persons, living under the same roof, have the misfortune to fall
+out a hundred and one small ways are ready to hand for the infliction of
+moral torment. The weak, it may be added, are not only far more addicted
+to such inflictings than the strong, but far more resourceful in their
+execution. Theresa Bilson's conduct may furnish a pertinent example.
+
+From the moment of emerging from her bed-chamber, next morning, she
+adopted an attitude which she maintained until she regained the chaste
+seclusion of that apartment at night. During no instant of the
+intervening hours did she lapse from studied speechlessness unless
+directly addressed, nor depart from an air of virtuous resignation to
+injustice and injury--quite exquisitely provoking to the onlooker. Twice
+during the morning Damaris, upon entering the schoolroom, discovered her
+in tears, which she proceeded to wipe away, furtively, with the greatest
+ostentation.--Dramatic effect, on the second occasion was, however,
+marred by the fact that she was engaged in retrimming a white chip hat,
+encircled by a garland of artificial dog-roses, blue glass grapes and
+assorted foliage--an occupation somewhat ill-adapted to tragedy. In
+addition to making her ex-pupil--against whom they were mainly
+directed--first miserable and then naughtily defiant by these manoeuvres,
+she alienated any sympathy which her red-rimmed eyelids and dolorous
+aspect might otherwise have engendered in the younger and less critical
+members of the establishment, by sending Alfred, the hall-boy, up to the
+vicarage with a note and instructions to wait for an answer, at the very
+moment when every domestic ordinance demanded his absorption in the
+cleaning of knives and of boots. Being but human, Alfred naturally
+embraced the heaven-sent chance of dawdling, passing the time of day with
+various cronies, and rapturously assisting to hound a couple of wild,
+sweating and snorting steers along the dusty lane, behind the churchyard,
+to Butcher Cleave's slaughter-house: with the consequence that his menial
+duties devolved upon Laura and Lizzie, who, supported by the heads of
+their respective departments, combined to "give him the what for," in no
+measured terms upon his eventual and very tardy return.
+
+It is not too much to say that, by luncheon time Theresa--whether
+wilfully or not--had succeeded in setting the entire household by the
+ears; while any inclinations towards peace-making, with which Damaris
+might have begun the day, were effectively dissipated, leaving her
+strengthened and confirmed in revolt. Around the stables, and the
+proposed indignity put upon Patch and the horses, this wretched quarrel
+centred so--as at once a vote of confidence and declaration of
+independence--to the stables Damaris finally went and ordered the
+dog-cart at three o'clock. For she would drive, and drive, throughout the
+course of this gilded September afternoon. Drive far away from foolishly
+officious and disingenuous Theresa, far from Deadham, so tiresome just
+now in its irruption of tea-parties and treats. She would behold peaceful
+inland horizons, taste the freedom of spirit and the content which the
+long, smooth buff-coloured roads, leading to unknown towns and unvisited
+country-side, so deliciously give.
+
+She stood at the front door, in blue linen gown, white knitted jersey and
+white sailor hat, buttoning her tan doeskin driving-gloves, a gallant,
+gravely valiant young creature, beautifully unbroken as yet by any real
+assent to the manifold foulness of life--her faith in the nobility of
+human nature and human destiny still finely intact. And that was just
+where her revolt against poor Theresa Bilson came in. For Theresa broke
+the accepted law, being ignoble; and thereby spoiled the fair pattern,
+showed as a blot.--Not that she meant to trouble any more about Theresa
+just now. She was out simply to enjoy, to see and feel, rather than
+reason, analyse or think. So she settled herself on the sloping
+high-cushioned seat, bracing her feet against the driving iron, while
+Mary, reaching up, tucked the dust-rug neatly about her skirts.
+Patch--whose looks and figure unmistakably declared his
+calling--short-legged and stocky, inclining to corpulence yet nimble on
+his feet, clean shaven, Napoleonic of countenance, passed reins and whip
+into her hands as Tolling, the groom, let go the horse's head.
+
+The girl squared her shoulders a little, and the soft colour deepened in
+her cheeks, as she swung the dog-cart down the drive and out of the
+entrance gate into the road--here a green-roofed tunnel, branches meeting
+overhead, thickly carpeted with dry sand blown inward from the beach--and
+on past the whitewashed cottages, red brick and grey stone houses of
+Deadham village, their gardens pleasant with flowers, and with apple and
+pear trees weighted down by fruit. Past the vicarage and church, standing
+apart on a little grass-grown monticule, backed by a row of elms, which
+amid their dark foliage showed here and there a single bough of
+verdigris-green or lemon-yellow--first harbingers of autumn. Into the
+open now, small rough fields dotted with thorn bushes and bramble-brakes
+on the one side; and on the other the shining waters of the Haven.
+Through the hamlet of Lampit, the rear of whose dilapidated sheds and
+dwellings abut on reed-beds and stretches of unsightly slime and ooze. A
+desolate spot, bleak and wind-swept in winter, and even under blue skies,
+as to-day basking in sunshine, degraded by poverty and dirt.
+
+Some half-mile further is Horny Cross where, as the name indicates, four
+roads meet. That from Deadham to the edge of the forest runs north; the
+other, from Beaupres-on-Sea to Marychurch, Stourmouth and Barryport, due
+west. Damaris, having a fancy to keep the coast-line out of sight, chose
+the former, following the valley of the Arne, between great flat meadows
+where herds of dairy cows, of red Devons and black Welsh runts, feed in
+the rich deep grass. In one place a curve of the river brings it, for
+three hundred yards or more, close under the hanging woods, only the
+width of the roadway between the broad stream and living wall of trees.
+Here transparent bluish shadow haunted the undergrowth, and the air grew
+delicately chill, charged with the scent of fern, of moist earth, leaf
+mould, and moss.
+
+Such traffic as held the road was leisurely, native to the scene and
+therefore pleasing to the sight.--For the age of self-moving machines on
+land had barely dawned yet; while the sky was still wholly inviolate.--A
+white tilted miller's wagon, a brewer's dray, each drawn by well-favoured
+teams with jingling bells and brass-mounted harness, rumbling farm carts,
+a gypsy van painted in crude yellow, blue, and red and its accompanying
+rabble of children, donkeys and dogs, a farmer's high-hung, curtseying
+gig, were in turn met or passed. For the black horse, Damaris driving it,
+gave place to none, covering the mounting tale of miles handsomely at an
+even, swinging trot.
+
+At Lady's Oak, a noble tree marking some ancient forest boundary and
+consequently spared when the needs of the British Navy, during the French
+wars of the early years of the century, condemned so many of its fellows
+to the axe--the flattened burnished dome of which glinted back the
+sunlight above a maze of spreading branches and massive powder-grey
+trunk--the main road forks. Damaris turned to the left, across the
+single-arch stone bridge spanning the Arne, and drove on up the long
+winding ascent from the valley to the moorland and fir plantations which
+range inland behind Stourmouth. This constituted the goal of her journey,
+for once the high-lying plateau reached, leagues of country open out far
+as the eye carries to the fine, bare outline of the Wiltshire downs.
+
+She checked the horse, letting it walk, while she took stock of her
+surroundings.
+
+It may be asserted that there are two ways of holding converse with
+Nature. The one is egotistic and sentimental, an imposing of personal
+tastes and emotions which betrays the latent categoric belief that the
+existence of external things is limited to man's apprehension of them--a
+vilely conceited if not actually blasphemous doctrine! The other is that
+of the seeker and the seer, who, approaching in all reverence, asks no
+more than leave to listen to the voice of external things--recognizing
+their independent existence, knowing them to be as real as he is, as
+wonderful, in their own order as permanent, possibly as potent even for
+good and evil as himself. And it was, happily, according to this latter
+reading of the position, instinctively, by the natural bent of her mind,
+that Damaris attempted converse with the world without.
+
+The glory of the heather had passed, the bloom now showing only as
+silver-pink froth upon an ocean of warm brown. But the colouring was
+restful, the air here on the dry gravel soil light and eager, and the
+sense of height and space exhilarating. A fringe of harebells, of orange
+hawkweed and dwarf red sorrel bordered the road. Every small oasis of
+turf, amongst the heath and by the wayside, carried its pretty crop of
+centaury and wild thyme, of bed-straw, milkwort, and birdsfoot trefoil.
+Furzechats tipped about the gorse bushes, uttering a sharp, gay, warning
+note. A big flight of rooks, blue-black against the ethereal blue of the
+distance, winged their way slowly homeward to the long avenue of dark
+trees leading to a farm in the valley. The charm of the place was clear
+and sane, its beauty simple almost to austerity. This the young girl
+welcomed. It washed her imagination free of the curious questionings,
+involuntary doubts and suspicions, which the house and garden at The
+Hard, steeped in tradition, thick with past happenings, past passions,
+were prone to breed in her. No reek off the mud-flats, any more than over
+luscious garden scents, tainted the atmosphere. It was virgin as the soil
+of the moorland--a soil as yet untamed and unfertilized by the labour of
+man. And this effect of virginity, even though a trifle _farouche_,
+harsh, and barren in the perfection of its purity, appealed to Damaris'
+present mood. Her spirit leapt to meet it in proud fellowship. For it
+routed forebodings. Discounted introspective broodings. Discounted even
+the apparently inevitable--since nobody and nothing, so the young girl
+told herself with a rush of gladly resolute conviction, is really
+inevitable unless you permit or choose to have them so.--Gallant this,
+and the mother of brave doings; though--as Damaris was to discover later,
+to the increase both of wisdom and of sorrow--a half-truth only. For man
+is never actually master of people or of things; but master, at most, of
+his own attitude towards them. In this alone can he claim or exercise
+free-will.
+
+Then--because general ideas, however inspiriting, are rather heavy diet
+for the young, immature minds growing quickly tired in the efforts to
+digest them--Damaris, having reached this happy, if partially erroneous,
+climax of emancipation, ceased to philosophize either consciously or
+unconsciously. The russet moorland and spacious landscape shut the door
+on her, had no more to tell her, no more to say. Or, to be strictly
+accurate, was it not rather perhaps that her power of response, power to
+interpret their speech and assimilate their message had reached its term?
+All her life the maturity of her brain had inclined--rather
+fatiguingly--to outrun the maturity of her body, so that she failed "to
+continue in one stay" and trivial hours trod close on the heels of hours
+of exaltation and of insight.
+
+With a sigh and a sense of loss--as though noble companions had withdrawn
+themselves from her--she gathered up the reins and sent the horse
+forward. She fell into comfortable friendly conversation with the
+Napoleonic-countenanced Patch, moreover, consulting him as to the
+shortest way, through the purlieus of Stourmouth, into the Marychurch
+high road and so home to Deadham Hard. For, to tell the truth, she became
+aware she was hungry and very badly in want of her tea.
+
+Theresa Bilson, setting out the next morning in solitary state, contrived
+to maintain the adopted attitude until the front gates were safely
+passed. Then she relaxed and looked out of the brougham windows with a
+fussy brightness more consonant to the joys of impending union with the
+Miss Minetts and the day's impending trip. She made no further effort to
+secure Damaris' participation in the social and educational advantages
+which it promised. On the contrary she left the young lady severely alone
+and at home, as one administering well-merited punishment. Thus
+effectively demonstrating, as she wished to believe, her personal
+authority; and suiting, as she would have stoutly denied, her personal
+convenience. For Damaris on a string, plus the extra brake and carriage
+horses, was one story; Damaris on her own, minus those animals and
+much-debated vehicle, quite another. Unless the presence of her ex-pupil
+could be made to redound to her own glory, Theresa much preferred
+reserving representation of The Hard and its distinguished proprietor
+wholly and solely to herself. So in the spirit of pretence and of
+make-believe did she go forth; to find, on her return, that spirit prove
+but a lying and treacherous ally--and for more reasons than one.
+
+It happened thus. Supported by the two brindled tabby house cats,
+Geraldine and Mustapha--descendants of the numerous tribe honoured,
+during the last half-century of his long life, by Thomas Clarkson
+Verity's politely affectionate patronage--Damaris spent the greater part
+of the morning in the long writing room.
+
+She had judged and condemned Theresa pretty roundly it is true,
+nevertheless she felt a little hurt and sore at the latter's treatment
+of her. Theresa need not have kept up the quarrel till the very last so
+acridly. After all, as she was going out purely for own pleasure and
+amusement, she might have found something nice and civil to say at
+parting. And then the mere fact of being left behind, of being out of
+it, however limited the charms of a party, has a certain small stab to
+it somehow--as most persons, probing youthful experiences, can testify.
+It is never quite pleasant to be the one who doesn't go!--The house,
+moreover, when her father was absent, always reminded Damaris of an
+empty shrine, a place which had lost its meaning and purpose. To-day,
+though windows and doors were wide open letting in a wealth of sunshine,
+it appeared startlingly lifeless and void. The maids seemed unusually
+quiet. She heard no movement on the staircase or in the rooms above.
+Neither gardener nor garden-boy was visible. She would have hailed the
+whirr of the mowing machine or swish of a broom on the lawn.--Oh! if
+only her poor dear Nannie were still alive, safe upstairs, there in the
+old nursery!
+
+And at that the child Damaris felt a lump rise in her throat. But the
+girl, the soon-to-be woman, Damaris choked it down bravely. For nobody,
+nothing--so she assured herself, going back to the lesson learned
+yesterday upon the open moorland--is really inevitable unless you suffer
+or will it so to be. Wherefore she stiffened herself against recognition
+of loneliness, stiffened herself against inclination to mourning, refused
+to acquiesce in or be subjugated by either and, to the better forgetting
+of them, sought consolation among her great-great uncle's books.
+
+For at this period Damaris was an omnivorous reader, eager for every form
+of literature and every description of knowledge--whether clearly
+comprehended or not--which the beloved printed page has to give. An
+eagerness, it may be noted, not infrequently productive of collisions
+with Theresa, and at this particular juncture all the more agreeable to
+gratify on that very account. For Theresa would have had her walk only in
+the narrow, sheltered, neatly bordered paths of history and fiction
+designed, for the greater preservation of female innocence, by such
+authors as Miss Sewell, Miss Strickland, and Miss Yonge. Upon Damaris,
+however, perambulation of those paths palled too soon. Her intellect and
+heart alike demanded wider fields of drama, of religion and of science,
+above all wider and less conventional converse with average human nature,
+than this triumvirate of Victorian sibyls was willing or capable to
+supply. It is undeniable that, although words and phrases, whole episodes
+indeed, were obscure even unintelligible to her, she found the memoirs of
+Benvenuto Cellini and Saint Simon more interesting than the "Lives of the
+Queens of England; Vathek," more to her taste than "Amy Herbert"; and,
+if the truth must be told, "The Decameron," and "Tristram Shandy" more
+satisfying to her imagination than "The Heir of Redcliffe" or "The Daisy
+Chain." To Damaris it seemed, just now, that a book the meaning of which
+was quite clear to her and could be grasped at sight, hardly repaid the
+trouble of reading, since it afforded no sense of adventure, no
+excitement of challenge or of pursuit, no mirage of wonder, no delightful
+provocation of matters outside her experience and not understood. About
+these latter she abstained from asking questions, having much faith in
+the illuminating power of the future. Given patience, all in good time
+she would understand everything worth understanding.--That there are
+things in life best not understood, or understood only at your peril, she
+already in some sort divined.--Hence her reading although of the order
+obnoxious to pedants, as lacking in method and accurate scholarship, went
+to produce a mental atmosphere in which honest love of letters and of
+art, along with generous instincts of humanity quicken and thrive.
+
+On this particular morning Damaris elected to explore to the Near East,
+in the vehicle of Eöthen's virile and luminous prose. She sat in one of
+the solid wide seated arm-chairs at the fire-place end of a long room,
+near a rounded window, the lower sash, of which she raised to its full
+height. Outside the row of geranium beds glowed scarlet and crimson in
+the calm light. Beyond them the turf of the lawn was overspread by
+trailing gossamers, and delicate cart-wheel spider's webs upon which the
+dew still glittered. In the shrubberies robins sang; and above the river
+great companies of swallows swept to and fro, with sharp twitterings,
+restlessly gathering for their final southern flight.
+
+No sooner had Damaris fairly settled down with her book, than Mustapha
+jumped upon her knees; and after, preliminary buttings and tramplings,
+curled himself round in gross comfort, his soft lithe body growing warmer
+and heavier, on her lap, as his sleep deepened. Where a bar of sunshine
+crossed the leather inset of the writing-table, just beside her in the
+window, Geraldine--his counterpart as to markings and colouring, but
+finer made, more slender of barrel and of limb--fitted herself into the
+narrow space between a silver inkstand and a stack of folded newspapers,
+her fore-paws tucked neatly under her chest, furry elbows outward. Her
+muzzle showed black, as did the rims of her eyelids which enhanced the
+brightness and size of her clear, yellow-green eyes. Her alert, observant
+little head was raised, as, with gently lashing tail, she watched an
+imprisoned honey-bee buzzing angrily up and down between the
+window-sashes.
+
+An elfin creature, Geraldine,--repaying liberal study. Scornfully secure
+of the potency of her own charms where mankind, or Tomcat-kind, might be
+concerned, royally devoid of morals, past-mistress in all sprightly,
+graceful, feline devilries, she was yet a fond mother, solicitous to the
+point of actual selflessness regarding the safety and well-being of her
+successive and frequently recurrent litters. She suckled, washed, played
+with and educated those of her kittens who escaped the rigours of
+stable-bucket and broom, until such time as they were three to four
+months old. After which she sent them flying, amid cuffings and spittings
+extraordinary, whenever they attempted to approach her; and, oblivious of
+their orphaned and wistful existence, yielded herself with bewitching
+vivacity, to fresh intrigues and amours new.
+
+The long quiet morning indoors, with cats and books for company, at once
+soothed Damaris and made her restless. After luncheon she put on hat,
+gloves, and walking shoes, and went down across the lawn to the sea-wall.
+Waylaying her in the hall, Mary had essayed to learn her programme, and
+anchor her as to time and place by enquiring when and where tea should be
+served. But Damaris put the kindly woman off.--She couldn't say
+exactly--yet--would ring and let Mary know when she came in. If any one
+called, she was not at home.
+
+In truth her active young body asked for movement and exercise, while
+scenes and phrases from the pages of Eöthen still filled her mind. She
+longed for travel. Not via Marychurch to Harchester, well understood,
+shepherded by Theresa Bilson, the members of the Deadham Church choir and
+their supporters; but for travel upon the grand scale, with all its
+romance and enlargement of experience, its possible dangers and certain
+hardships, as the author of Eöthen had known it and her father, for that
+matter, had known it in earlier days too. She suffered the spell of the
+East--always haunting the chambers of her memory and ready to be stirred
+in active ascendency, as by her morning's reading to-day--suffered the
+spell not of its mysterious cities and civilizations alone, but of its
+vast solitudes and silences, desert winds and desert sands.
+
+And hence it came about that, as her mood of yesterday sent her inland to
+pacify her imagination by gazing at the peaceful English country-side, so
+her present mood sent her down to the shore to satisfy, or rather further
+stimulate, her nostalgia for the East by gazing out to sea.
+
+The cause in both cases was the same, namely, the inward tumult of her
+awakening womanhood, and still more, perhaps, the tumult of awakening
+talent which had not as yet found its appointed means of expression. She
+was driven hither and thither by the push of her individuality to
+disengage itself from adventitious surroundings and circumstances, and
+realize its independent existence.--A somewhat perilous crisis of
+development, fruitful of escapades and unruly impulses which may leave
+their mark, and that a disfiguring one, upon the whole of a woman's
+subsequent career.
+
+Immediately, however, Damaris' disposition to defy established convention
+and routine took the mildest and apparently most innocuous form--merely
+the making, by herself, of a little expedition which, accompanied by
+others, she had made a hundred times before. From the terrace she went
+down the flight of steps, built into the width of the sea-wall, whence a
+tall wrought-iron gate opens direct upon the foreshore. Closing it behind
+her, she followed the coastguard-path, at the base of the
+river-bank--here a miniature sand cliff capped with gravel, from eight
+to ten feet high--which leads to the warren and the ferry. For she would
+take ship, with foxy-faced William Jennifer as captain and as crew, cross
+to the broken-down wooden jetty and, landing there, climb the crown of
+the Bar and look south-east, over the Channel highway, towards far
+distant countries of the desert and the dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OUT ON THE BAR
+
+
+All which was duly accomplished though with a difference. For on reaching
+the head of the shallow sandy gully opening on the tide, where the
+flat-bottomed ferry-boat lay, Damaris found not Jennifer but the withered
+and doubtfully clean old lobster-catcher, Timothy Proud, in possession.
+This disconcerted her somewhat. His appearance, indeed--as he stood
+amongst a miscellaneous assortment of sun-bleached and weather-stained
+foreshore lumber, leaning the ragged elbows of his blue jersey upon the
+top of an empty petroleum barrel and smoking a dirty clay pipe--was so
+far from inviting, that the young girl felt tempted to relinquish her
+enterprise and go back by the way she had come.
+
+But, as she hesitated, the old man catching sight of her and scenting
+custom, first spat and then called aloud.
+
+"Might 'e be wanting the Ferry, Miss?" Thus directly challenged, Damaris
+could not but answer in the affirmative.
+
+"Put 'e across to the Bar?" he took her up smartly. "Nat'rally I
+will--bean't I here for the very purpose?--Put 'e across I will and on
+the tick too."
+
+And, after further expectoration, relinquishing the support of the oil
+barrel, he joined her and shambled down the sandy track at her side,
+talking. Damaris hastened her step; but bent back and creaking breath
+notwithstanding, Proud kept pace with her, his speech and movements alike
+animated by a certain malicious glee.
+
+"William 'e give hisself an 'oliday," he explained, "to take the little
+dorgs and ferrets up to Butcher Cleave's ratting. Powerful sight of
+varmin there allers be round they sheds and places. Comes after the
+innards and trimmings they do, as bold as you please."
+
+"Oh, yes--no doubt. I understand," Damaris said, at once anxious to
+arrest the flow of his unsavoury eloquence yet to appear civil, since she
+was about to make use of his services.
+
+"'Normous great rats they be," he however continued, with evident relish.
+"'Normous and fierce as tigers, the rascals, what with feasting on flesh
+and fatness like so many lords. So 'mind the ferry for me, will you,
+Daddy,' William says, coming round where was I taking my morning pint
+over at the Inn. 'You're a wonderful valorous man of your years'--and so
+thank the powers, Miss, I be--'can handle the old scraw as clever as I
+can myself,' William says. 'There ain't much about water, salt or fresh,
+nor whatsoever moves on the face of it, nor down below in the belly of
+it, any man can teach you.' Which may seem putting it a bit high yet
+ain't no more than truth and justice, Miss, so you needn't fear to trust
+yourself across the ferry along of me."
+
+"I have no fear," Damaris answered curtly and loftily, holding herself
+very erect, her face slightly flushed, her eyes war-like.
+
+For he was a repulsive old man, and said repulsive things such as she had
+never heard put thus plainly into words before. She felt soiled by even
+this brief association with him. She wanted to hear no more of his ugly
+high-coloured talk, although of his skill as a waterman she entertained
+no doubt. Stepping lightly and quickly up on to the square stern of the
+ferry-boat, she went forward and kept her back resolutely turned upon the
+old fellow as he scrambled on board after her, shoved off and settled to
+the oars. The river was low, and sluggish from the long drought with
+consequently easy passage to the opposite bank. It took but a short five
+minutes to reach the jetty, crawling like some gigantic, damaged,
+many-legged insect out over the smooth gleaming water.
+
+Instead of the legal twopence, Damaris dropped a couple of shillings into
+Daddy Proud's eager hand--with a queenly little air; and, without
+waiting for his thanks, swung herself up on to the black planking and
+turned to go down the sand-strewn wooden steps.
+
+"Pleased to fetch 'e back, Miss, any hour you like to name," Proud called
+after her, standing up and fingering the shillings with one hand while
+with the other he steered the boat's side away from the slippery
+weed-grown piles.
+
+"Thank you, I don't quite know when I shall be back," she answered over
+her shoulder.
+
+For her main desire was to get quit of his unpleasant neighbourhood. She
+would go for a long walk by the coast-guard path across the sand-hills,
+right out to Stone Horse Head. Would stay out till sundown, in the hope
+that by then Jennifer might have seen fit to exchange the manly joys of
+ratting for his more prosaic duties at the ferry, and so save her from
+further association with his displeasing deputy.
+
+But, the ridge of the Bar reached, other thoughts and impulses took
+possession of her. For the sea this afternoon showed an infinitely
+beguiling countenance. Not as highway of the nations, still less as
+violent and incalculable, holding cruelties of storm and tempest in its
+heart, did it present itself to her view; but rather as some gentle,
+softly inviting and caressing creature decked forth in the changeful
+colours of a dove's neck and breast. Opaline haze veiled the horizon,
+shutting off all unrestful sense of distance. The tide was low and little
+waves, as of liquid crystal, chased one another over the gleaming sands.
+Out to where the haze met and covered it the smooth expanse of sea was
+unbroken by passing boat or ship; nor was any person within sight upon
+the long line of the beach. Damaris found herself alone--but deliciously
+alone, with this enchanted dream sea for companion in the sunshine, under
+the vault of tender blue sky.
+
+And, for the present at least, she asked nothing better, humanity being
+at a decided discount with her, thanks first to the extreme tiresomeness
+of Theresa Bilson and later the extreme unsavouriness of Timothy Proud.
+The element thus eliminated, nothing interfered, nothing jarred; so that
+she could yield herself to an ecstasy of contemplation, active rather
+than passive, in that imagination, breaking the bounds of personality,
+made her strangely one with all she looked on. Consciousness of self was
+merged in pure delight. Never could she remember to have felt so
+light-hearted, so happy with the spontaneous, unconditioned happiness
+which is sufficient to itself, unclouded by thought of what has been or
+what may be.
+
+Pushed by her own radiant emotion and an instinct, deriving from it, to
+draw even closer to that Everlasting Beauty of Things which is uncreated
+by and independent of the will and work of man, she ran down the slope,
+and sitting on the shingle slipped off her shoes and stockings. Took off
+her hat, too, and leaving the lot lying there, just above high-tide mark,
+gathered her skirts in one hand, and, bare-headed thus and bare-footed,
+danced out over the wet gleaming sands a graceful flying figure, until
+the little waves played and purred about her ankles. Her action was
+symbolic, born of the gay worship welling up within her, a giving of
+herself to the shining infinite of Nature as just now manifest--things
+divine and eternal glimmering through at her--in this fair hour of
+solitude and brooding peace.
+
+Till her mood softened, Damaris danced thus alone, unwitnessed on the
+shore. Then, as she sobered, happy still though the crisis of ecstasy had
+passed, smaller seeings began to charm her fancy and her eyes.--Pinkish
+yellow starfish, long ribbons of madder-red or emerald seaweed, their
+colours the more living and vivid for the clear water covering them.
+Presently a company of five birds--their mottled brown and olive bodies
+raised on stilt-like legs thin as a straw--claimed her notice. So
+bewitched was she by their quaint and pretty ways, that she could not but
+follow them as they chased one another in and out of the rippling waves,
+ran quickly and bowed catching something eatable floating upon the tide,
+scattered and then joined up into a joyous chorus of association with
+gentle twittering cries. Watching them, dreaming, standing now and again
+looking out over the sweet wonder of the placid sea, sometimes wading
+ankle deep, sometimes walking on the firm floor of uncovered sand,
+Damaris passed onward losing count of time.
+
+The birds led her eastward, up channel, to the half-mile distant nose of
+the Bar, round which the rivers, released at last from their narrow
+channel, sweep out into Marychurch Bay. Here, on a sudden, they took
+wing, and Damaris looking after them, bade them an unwilling farewell,
+for their innocent society had been sweet. And with that she became aware
+she was really quite tired and would be glad to rest awhile, the
+afternoon being young yet, before turning homeward. The longer she stayed
+the more hope there was of finding Jennifer at the ferry; and more than
+ever, the glamour of her wild hour of Nature worship still upon her, did
+she recoil from any sort of association with foul old Timothy Proud.
+
+Therefore she went up across the moist gleaming levels to the
+tide-line, and picking her way carefully among the black jumble of
+seaweed and sea-litter which marked it, sat down in a fan-shaped
+depression in the dry, clean, blown sand some few paces above. The
+sunshine covered it making it warm to her bare feet. The feel and blond
+colour of it brought to mind her reading of this morning--a passage in
+Eöthen telling of the striking of camp at dawn, the desert waiting to
+claim its own again and obliterate, with a single gesture, all sign or
+token of the passing sojourn of man. Clasping her hands behind her
+head, Damaris lay back, the warm sand all around her, giving beneath
+her weight, fitted itself into the curves of her body and limbs--only
+it visible and the soft blue of the sky above. For a little while she
+rested open-eyed in the bright silent stillness, and then, unknowing of
+the exact moment of surrender, she stretched with a fluttering sigh,
+turned on her side and dreamlessly slept.
+
+And, while she thus slept, two events took place eminently germane to the
+further unfolding of this history.--The weather changed, and the local
+degenerate, Abram Sclanders' half-idiot son--the poor "lippity-lop" who,
+according to Jennifer, had far better been "put away quiet-like at
+birth"--committed theft.
+
+Of the first event, Damaris gradually became sensible, before her actual
+awakening. She grew restless, her bed of sand seeming robbed of comfort,
+bleak and uneasy, so that she started up, presently, into a sitting
+position, rubbing her eyes with her fists baby-fashion, unable for the
+minute to imagine how or why she came to be lying like this out on the
+Bar, hatless, shoe and stockingless. Looking about her, still in
+questioning bewilderment, she observed that in the south-west a great
+bank of cloud had risen. It blotted out the sun, deadening all colour.
+The opaline haze, turned to a dull falling mist, closed down and in,
+covering the sand-hills and the dark mass of Stone Horse Head and even
+blurring the long straight lines of the sandbank and nearer shingle. The
+sea had risen, but noiselessly, creeping up and up towards her, no line
+of white marking the edge of its slothful oncoming.
+
+Damaris stood up, pulling her white jersey--the surface of it already
+furred with moisture--low over her hips. For she felt shivery, and the
+air was thick and chill to breathe causing a tightness in her throat.
+
+"The glory has departed, very much departed, so I had best make haste to
+depart also," she told herself; but told herself gallantly, smiling at
+her own strange plight in a spirit of adventure, discovering in it the
+excitement of novel experience.
+
+She picked her way over the shingle and black sea litter of high-water
+mark, and started to run along the narrow strip between it and the
+advancing tide. To run would circulate her blood, warm her through and
+keep her gallant humour up; still she had to own she found this heavy
+going, for her feet were numb and the sand seemed to pluck at and weigh
+them down. Her run slackened to a walk. Then she ventured a yard or two
+out into the shallow water, hoping there to meet with firmer foothold;
+but here it proved altogether too cold. She had the misfortune, moreover,
+to tread on the top end of a razor shell, buried upright, which cut the
+skin making her limp from pain and sharpness of smarting. So perforce,
+she took to the deep blown sand again above high-water mark, and ploughed
+along slowly enough in growing weariness and discomfort.
+
+Never, surely, was any half-mile so long as this between the place of her
+farewell to the mottled stilt-legged birds and subsequent sleeping, and
+the place where she left her hat and shoes and stockings! In the dimness
+and chill of the falling mist, it seemed to lengthen and lengthen to an
+altogether incomprehensible extent. Time and again she stopped and
+scanned the ground immediately before her, certain she should see there
+those so lightly discarded and now so earnestly desired items of
+clothing. Once in possession of them she would simply scurry home. For
+visions of warm, dry pretty garments, of Mary's, comely ministering
+presence, of tea, of lamp-light and--yes, she would allow herself that
+culminating luxury--of a fine log fire in the long sitting-room,
+presented themselves to her imagination in most alluring sequence--the
+spirit of adventure, meanwhile, as must be owned, beginning to sing small
+and hang a diminished head.
+
+But on a sudden, raising her eyes from their persistent search, Damaris
+realized she must have missed and already passed the spot. For she was
+close upon the tract of sand-hills--a picture of desolation in the sullen
+murk, the winding hollows between their pale formless elevations bearing
+a harsh growth of neutral tinted sword-like grasses.
+
+She had come too far by a quarter of a mile at least, so she judged, and
+must turn her face eastward again and laboriously plough her way back.
+But the return journey was crowned with no better success than the
+outward one. Carefully, methodically she quartered the beach; but simply
+her things weren't there, had vanished, leaving neither token or trace.
+
+She was confronted moreover by the unpleasant fact that it grew late.
+Soon the dusk would fall, its coming hastened by the mist, now settling
+into a steady drizzle of rain precursor of a dark and early night. To
+hunt any longer would be useless. She must give it up. Yet her maidenly
+pride, her sense of what is seemly and becoming, revolted from exposing
+herself to Timothy Proud's coarse leering glances or even--should he by
+luck be her waterman--to Jennifer's more respectful curiosity,
+dishevelled and but half-dressed as she was. And then the actual distance
+to be traversed appeared to her dishearteningly great. For she was
+weary--quite abominably weary now she came to think of it. Her feet were
+bruised and blistered. They ached. Her throat ached too, and she
+shivered. Cold, though it was, she must wait a minute or two and rest
+before attempting the ascent of the slope.
+
+Damaris sat down, pulling her skirts as low as they would come over her
+bare legs, and clasping her hands round her knees, bowed, huddled
+together to gain, if it might be, some sensation of warmth. For a little
+she thought of that only--warmth--her mind otherwise a blank. But soon
+the consuming sadness of the place in the waning light penetrated her
+imagination, penetrated, indeed, her whole being. Only a few hours ago
+she had danced here, in ecstasy born of the sunshine, the colour, the
+apparently inexhaustible beauty of things uncreated by, and independent
+of, the will and work of man. Contrast that scene, and the radiant
+emotion evoked by it, with this? Which was real, the enduring revelation?
+Was this truth; the other no more than mirage--an exquisite dissembling
+and lovely lie?
+
+Such thoughts are hardly wholesome at eighteen--hardly wholesome perhaps
+at any age, if life is to be lived sweetly, with honest profit to one's
+own soul and to the souls of others. Yet remembering back, down the dim
+avenues of childhood, Damaris knew she did not formulate the question,
+entertain the suspicion, for the first time. Only, until now, it had
+stayed in the vague, a shapeless nightmare horror, past which she could
+force herself to run with shut eyes. It didn't jump out of the vague,
+thank goodness, and bar her passage. But now no running or shutting of
+eyes availed. It had jumped out. She stared at it, and, in all its
+undermining power of discouragement, it stared back.--What if the deepest
+thing, the thing which alone lasted, the thing which, therefore, you
+were bound in the end to accept, to submit to, was just darkness, sorrow,
+loneliness of worn body and shrinking spirit, by the shore of a cold,
+dumb, and tenantless, limitless sea--what then?
+
+From which undesirable abyss of speculation she was aroused by the sound
+of her own name--"Damaris Verity, hey--Damaris Verity"--shouted, not
+roughly though in tones of urgent command, from above and behind her on
+the crest of the Bar. Along with it came the rattle of shifting shingle
+under a strong active tread.
+
+Hearing which the young girl's senses and faculties alike sprang to
+attention. She rose from her dejected attitude, stood up and faced round,
+forgetful of aches and weariness and of woeful ultimate questionings,
+while in glad surprise her heart went out to meet and welcome the--to
+her--best beloved being in this, no longer, sorry world.
+
+For even thus, at some fifty yards distant through the blur of falling
+rain, the figure presented to her gaze, in height, build, and fashion of
+moving, was delightfully familiar, as were the tones of the voice which
+had hailed her--if in not quite equal degree the manner of that hail.
+Some change in his plans must have taken place, or some letter miscarried
+advising her of her father's earlier return. Finding her out he had come
+to look for her.--This was perfectly as it should be. Had Colonel
+Carteret come home with him, she wondered. And then there flashed through
+her, with a singular vividness, recollection of another, long, long ago
+escapade--when as a still almost baby child she had stepped off alone, in
+daring experiment, and fallen asleep, in the open as to-day. But in
+surroundings how amazingly different!--A place of fountains, cypresses
+and palms, she curled up in a black marble chair, set throne fashion,
+upon a platform of blood red sandstone, an age-old Oriental garden
+outstretched below. Colonel Carteret--"the man with the blue eyes" as she
+always had called him--awakened her, bringing an adorable and, as it
+proved in the sequel, a tragic birthday gift.--Tragic because to it
+might, actually if indirectly, be traced the breaking up of her
+childhood's home in the stately Indian pleasure palace of the
+Sultan-i-bagh at Bhutpur, her separation from her father and exile--as
+she had counted it--to Europe.
+
+It is among the doubtful privileges of highly sensitized natures, such as
+Damaris', that, in hours of crisis, vision and pre-vision go hand in
+hand. As there flashed through her remembrance of that earlier sleep in
+the open, there flashed through her also conviction that history would
+still further repeat itself. Now, as then, the incident of sleep preluded
+the receipt of a gift, adorable perhaps, yet freighted with far-reaching
+consequences to herself and her future. Of just what that gift might
+consist she had no idea; but of its approach she felt as certain as of
+the approach of the man swinging down through the rain over the rattling
+pebbles. And her gladness of welcome declined somewhat. She could have
+cried off, begged for postponement. For she was very tired, after all.
+She didn't want anything now, anything which--however delightful in
+itself--demanded effort, demanded even the exertion of being very
+pleased. She shied away, in short. And then commendably rallied her
+forces, resolute not to be found unworthy or ungrateful.
+
+"Yes--come. I am here," she called in response to that lately heard
+calling of her name, desiring to make an act of faith whereby to assure
+herself she was indeed ready, and assure her hearer of her readiness to
+accept the impending gift.
+
+"I am here," she began again to affirm, but stopped abruptly, the words
+choking in her throat.
+
+For, as with decreasing distance the figure grew distinct, she saw, to
+her blank amazement, not Sir Charles Verity, her father, as she expected,
+but the blue reefer jacket, peaked cap, and handsome bearded face of
+Darcy Faircloth, the young merchant sea-captain, emerge from the blur of
+the wet. And the revulsion of feeling was so sharp, the shock at once so
+staggering and intimate--as summing up all the last ten days confused
+experience--that Damaris could not control herself. She turned away with
+a wail of distress, threw out her hands, and then, covering her eyes with
+them, bowed her head.
+
+The young man came forward and stood near her; but an appreciable time
+elapsed before he spoke. When he presently did so, his voice reached
+her as again singularly familiar in tone, though strange in diction and
+in accent.
+
+"I'm sorry if I startled you," he began, "but I hailed you just now, and
+you told me to come.--I concluded you meant what you said. Not, I'm
+afraid, that your giving your permission or withholding it would have
+made much difference in the upshot. Timothy Proud let on, in my hearing,
+that he set you across the river soon after two o'clock, and that there'd
+been no call for the ferry since. So I took one of my own boats and just
+came over to look for you--in case you might have met with some mishap or
+strayed among the sand-hills and couldn't find your"--
+
+Thus far he spoke with studied calm and restraint. But here, as though
+struck by a fresh and very objectionable idea, he broke out:
+
+"Nothing has happened has it? No cowardly brute has interfered with
+you or upset you? Dear God alive, don't tell me I'm too late, don't
+tell me that."
+
+Upon Damaris this sudden, though to her unaccountable, violence and heat
+acted as a cordial. She raised her head, pushing back the damp hair from
+her forehead, and displaying a proud if strained and weary face.
+
+"No," she said, "of course not. Who would venture to be rude to me? I
+have not seen anyone all the afternoon--until now, when you came. And,"
+she added by way of further explanation--she didn't want to be ungracious
+or unkind, but she did want, in justice to herself, to have this
+understood--"in the distance I didn't recognize you. I mistook you for
+someone else"--
+
+"Who else?" he took her up, and with a queer flicker--if of a smile, then
+one with a keenish edge to it--in his eyes and about his mouth.
+
+"For my father," Damaris answered. "It was a stupid mistake, because he
+is away staying in Norfolk for partridge shooting, and I have not any
+real reason to expect him home for several days yet."
+
+"But in this deceptive light," Faircloth took her up again, while--as she
+could not help observing--that flicker became more pronounced. It seemed
+silently to laugh and to mock.--"Oh! to be sure that accounts for your
+mistake as to my identity. One sees how it might very well come about."
+
+He took off his cap, and threw back his head looking up into the
+low wet sky.
+
+"At night all cats are grey, aren't they," he went on, "little ones as
+well as big? And it's close on night now, thanks to this dirty weather.
+So close on it, that--though personally I'm in no hurry--I ought to get
+you back to The Hard, or there'll be a regular hue and cry after
+you--rightly and probably too, if your servants and people have any
+notion of their duty."
+
+"I am quite ready," Damaris said.
+
+She strove to show a brave front, to keep up appearances; but she felt
+helpless and weak, curiously confused by and unequal to dealing with
+this masterful stranger--who yet, somehow did not seem like a stranger.
+Precisely in this was the root of her confusion, of her inability to
+deal with him.
+
+"But hardly as you are," he commented, on her announcement she was ready.
+"Let me help to put on your shoes and stockings for you first." And this
+he said so gently and courteously, that Damaris' lips began to quiver,
+very feminine and youthful shame at the indignity of her present plight
+laying hold on her.
+
+"I can't find them," she pitifully declared. "I have looked and looked,
+but I can't find them anywhere. I left my things just here. Can anyone
+have stolen them while I was out at the end of the Bar? It is so
+mysterious and so dreadfully tiresome. I should have gone home long ago,
+before the rain began, if I could have found them."
+
+And with that, the whole little story--childish or idyllic as you
+please--of sunshine and colour, of beguiling birds beguiling sea, of
+sleep, and uneasy awakening when the cloud-bank rising westward devoured
+the fair face of heaven, of mist and fruitless seeking, even some word of
+the fear which forever sits behind and peeps over the shoulder of all
+wonder and all beauty, got itself--not without eloquent passages--quickly
+yet gravely told. For the young man appeared to derive considerable
+pleasure from listening, from watching her and from questioning her
+too--still, gently and courteously though closely, as if each detail were
+of interest and of value.
+
+"And now you know all about it, Captain Faircloth," Damaris said in
+conclusion, essaying to laugh at her own discomfiture. "And I am very
+tired, so if you will be kind enough to row me across the ferry, I shall
+be grateful to you, and glad, please, to go home at once."
+
+"By all means," he answered. "Only, you know, I can't very well let you
+cut your feet to pieces on these cruel stones, so I am just going to
+carry you up over the Bar"--
+
+"No--no--I can perfectly well walk. I mean to walk--see," she cried.
+
+And started courageously up the rough ascent, only to slip, after a few
+paces, and to stagger. For as soon as she attempted to move, she felt
+herself not only weak, but oddly faint and giddy. She lurched forward,
+and to avoid falling instinctively clutched at her companion's
+outstretched hand. Exactly what passed between the young man and young
+girl in that hand-clasp--the first contact they had had of one
+another--it might seem far-reached and fantastic to affirm; yet that it
+steadied not only Damaris' trembling limbs, but her trembling and
+over-wrought spirit, is beyond question. For it was kind and more than
+kind--tender, and that with the tenderness of right and usage rather than
+of sentimental response to a passing sentimental appeal.
+
+"There, there," he said, "what's the use of working to keep up this
+little farce any longer? Just give in--you can't put off doing so in the
+end. Why not at once, then, accept defeat and spare both yourself and me
+pain? You are no more fit to walk, than you are fit to fly--to fly away
+from me!--That's what you want, isn't it? Ah! that flight will come, no
+doubt, all in good time.--But meanwhile, be sensible. Put your left arm
+round my neck--like this, yes. Then--just a little hoist, and, if you'll
+not worry but keep still, nothing's easier."
+
+As he spoke, Faircloth stooped, lightly and with no apparent exertion
+lifting her high, so that--she clasping his neck as instructed--the main
+weight of her body rested upon his shoulder. With his right arm he held
+her just above the waist, his left arm below her knees cradling her.
+
+"Now rest quiet," he said. "Know you are safe and think only of
+comfortable things--among them this one, if you care to, that for once in
+my life I am content."
+
+Yet over such yielding and treacherous ground, upward to the crown of the
+ridge and downward to the river, progress could not be otherwise than
+slow. Twilight, and that of the dreariest and least penetrable, overtook
+them before Faircloth, still carrying the white-clothed figure, reached
+the jetty. Here, at the bottom of the wooden steps he set Damaris down,
+led her up them and handed her into the boat--tied up to, and the tide
+being at the flood, now little below the level of the staging.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WHEREIN DAMARIS MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HIDDEN WAYS OF MEN
+
+
+Throughout their singular journey--save for briefest question and answer
+about her well-being at the commencement of it--the two had kept silence,
+as though conscious Faircloth's assertion of contentment struck a chord
+any resolution of which might imperil the simplicity of their relation.
+Thus far that relation showed a noble freedom from embarrassment. It
+might have continued to do so but for a hazardous assumption on his part.
+
+When first placing Damaris in the stern of the boat, the young man
+stripped off his jacket and, regardless of her vaguely expressed protest,
+wrapped it round her feet. It held the living warmth of his body; and,
+chilled, dazed, and spent, as Damaris was, that warmth curiously soothed
+her, until the ink-black boat floating upon the brimming, hardly less
+inky, water faded from her knowledge and sight. She drooped together,
+passing into a state more comparable to coma than to natural slumber, her
+will in abeyance, thought and imagination borne under by the immensity of
+her fatigue.
+
+As Faircloth, meanwhile, pulled clear of the outstanding piles of the
+jetty, he heard voices and saw lights moving down by the ferry on the
+opposite shore. But these, and any invitation they might imply, he
+ignored. If the hue and cry after Damaris, which he had prophesied, were
+already afoot, he intended to keep clear of it, studiously to give it the
+slip. To this end, once in the fairway of the river he headed the boat
+downstream, rowing strongly though cautiously for some minutes, careful
+to avoid all plunge of the oars, all swish of them or drip. Then, the
+lights now hidden by the higher level and scrub of the warren, he sat
+motionless letting the boat drift on the seaward setting current.
+
+The fine rain fell without sound. It shut out either bank creating a
+singular impression of solitude and isolation, and of endlessness too.
+There seemed no reason why it should ever cease. And this delusion of
+permanence, the enclosing soft-clinging darkness served to heighten. The
+passage of time itself seemed arrested--to-morrow becoming an
+abstraction, remote and improbable, which could, with impunity, be left
+out of the count. With this fantastic state of things, Faircloth had no
+quarrel. Though impatient of inaction, as a rule definite and autocratic
+enough, he really wasn't aware of having any particular use for
+to-morrow. Content still held sway. He was satisfied, profoundly, yet
+dreamingly, satisfied by an achievement long proposed, long waited for,
+the door upon which had opened to-day by the merest accident--if anything
+can justly be called accident, which he inclined to believe it could not.
+
+He had appointed, it should be added, a limit in respect of that
+achievement, which he forbade himself to pass; and it was his habit very
+rigidly to obey his own orders, however little disposed he might be to
+obey those of other people. He had received, as he owned, more than he
+could reasonably have expected, good measure pressed down and running
+over. The limit was now reached. He should practise restraint--leave the
+whole, affair where it stood. But the effect of this darkness, and of
+drifting, drifting, over the black water in the fine soundless rain, with
+its illusion of permanence, and of the extinction of to-morrow--and the
+retributions and adjustments in which to-morrow is so frequently and
+inconveniently fertile--enervated him, rendering him a comparatively easy
+prey to impulse, should impulse chance to be stirred by some adventitious
+circumstance. The Devil, it may be presumed, is very much on the watch
+for such weakenings of moral fibre, ready to pounce, at the very shortest
+notice, and make unholy play with them!
+
+To Faircloth's ruminative eyes, the paleness in the stern of the boat,
+indicating Damaris Verity's drooping figure, altered slightly in outline.
+Whereupon he shipped the oars skillfully and quietly, and going aft knelt
+down in front of her. Her feet were stretched out as, bowed together, she
+sat on the low seat. His jacket had slipped away exposing them to the
+weather, and the young man laying his hands on them felt them cold as in
+death. He held them, chafed them, trying to restore some degree of
+circulation. Finally, moved by a great upwelling of tenderness and of
+pity, and reckoning her, since she gave no sign, to be asleep, he bent
+down and put his lips to them.
+
+But immediately the girl's hands were upon his shoulders.
+
+"What are you doing, oh! what are you doing?" she cried.
+
+"Kissing your feet."
+
+Then the Devil, no doubt, flicking him, he let go restraint, disobeyed
+his own orders, raised his head, and looking at her as in the enfolding
+obscurity she leaned over him, said:
+
+"And, if it comes to that, who in all the round world has a better right
+than I, your brother, to kiss your feet?"
+
+For some, to him, intolerable and interminable seconds, Faircloth waited
+after he had shot his bolt. The water whispered and chuckled against the
+boat's sides in lazy undertones, as it floated down the sluggish stream.
+Beyond this there was neither sound nor movement. More than ever might
+time be figured to stand still. His companion's hands continued to rest
+upon his shoulders. Her ghostly, dimly discerned face was so near his own
+that he could feel, now and again, her breath upon his forehead; but she
+was silent. As yet he did not repent of his cruelty. The impulse which
+dictated it had not spent itself. Nevertheless this suspense tried him.
+He grew impatient.
+
+"Damaris," he said, at last, "speak to me."
+
+"How can I speak to you when I don't understand," she answered gravely.
+"Either you lie--which I should be sorry to accuse you of doing--or you
+tell me a very terrible thing, if, that is, I at all comprehend what you
+say.--Are you not the son of Mrs. Faircloth, who lives at the inn out by
+the black cottages?"
+
+"Yes, Lesbia Faircloth is my mother. And I ask for no better. She has
+squandered love upon me--squandered money, upon me too; but wisely and
+cleverly, with results. Still--" he paused--"well, it takes two,
+doesn't it, to make a man? One isn't one's mother's son only."
+
+"But Mrs. Faircloth is a widow," Damaris reasoned, in wondering
+directness. "I have heard people speak of her husband. She was married."
+
+"But not to my father. Do you ask for proofs--just think a minute. Whom
+did you mistake me for when I called you and came down over the Bar in
+the dusk?"
+
+"No--no--" she protested trembling exceedingly. "That is not possible.
+How could such a thing happen?"
+
+"As such things mostly do happen. It is not the first case, nor will it
+by a long way, I reckon, be the last. They were young, and--mayn't we
+allow--they were beautiful. That's often a good deal to do with these
+accidents. They met and, God help them, they loved."
+
+"No--no--" Damaris cried again.
+
+Yet she kept her hands on Faircloth's shoulders, clinging to him in the
+excessive travail of her innocent spirit--though he racked her--for
+sympathy and for help.
+
+"For whom, after all, did you take me?" he repeated. "If there wasn't
+considerable cause it would be incredible you should make such a mistake.
+Can you deny that I am hall-marked, that the fact of my parentage is
+written large in my flesh?"
+
+He felt her eyes fixed on him, painfully straining to see him through the
+rain and darkness; and, when she spoke again, he knew she knew that he
+did not lie.
+
+"But wasn't it wrong" she said.
+
+"I suppose so. Only as it gave me life and as I love life I'm hardly the
+person to deliver an unbiased opinion on that point."
+
+"Then you are not sad, you are not angry?" Damaris presently and rather
+unexpectedly asked.
+
+"Yes--at times both, but not often or for long together. As I tell you I
+love life--love it too well to torment myself much about the manner of my
+coming by it. It might show more refinement of feeling perhaps to hang my
+head and let a certain ugly word blast my prospects. But I don't happen
+to see the business that way. On the contrary I hope to get every ounce
+of advantage out of it I can--use it as a spur rather than a hobble. And
+I love my profession too. It gives you room and opportunity. I am waiting
+now for my first ship, my first command. That's a fine thing and a strong
+one. For your first ship is as a bride to you, and your first command
+makes you as a king among men. Oh! on a small scale I grant; but, as far
+as it reaches, your authority is absolute. On board your own ship you are
+master with a vengeance--if you like. And I do like."
+
+Faircloth said the last few words softly, but with a weight of meaning
+not to be misunderstood. He bent down, once more, chafed Damaris' feet
+and wrapped his jacket carefully round them.
+
+"And, while you and I are alone together, there is something--as we've
+spoken so freely--which I want to tell you, so that there may be no
+misconception about me or about what I want.--As men in my rank of life
+go, I am well off. Rich--again on a small scale; but with means
+sufficient to meet all my needs. I'm not a spend-thrift by nature,
+luckily. And I have amply enough not only to hold my own in my profession
+and win through, but to procure myself the pleasures and amusements I
+happen to fancy. I want you to remember that, please. Tell me is it quite
+clear to you?"
+
+"Yes," Damaris said, "you have made it quite clear."
+
+Yet for the first time he jarred on her, as with a more than superficial
+difference of breeding and of class. This mention of money offended her
+taste, seeming to lower the level upon which their extraordinary and--to
+her--terrible conversation had thus far moved. It hurt her with another
+kind of hurting--not magnificent, not absorbing, but just common. That in
+speaking of money he was protecting himself, proudly self-guarding his
+own honour and that of his mother, Lesbia Faircloth, never, in her
+innocence of what is mean and mercenary, occurred to Damaris.
+
+So she took her hands off his shoulders and clasped them in her lap.
+Clasped them with all her poor strength, striving even in this extreme,
+to maintain some measure of calm and of dignity. She must hold out, she
+told herself, just simply by force of will hold out, till she was away
+from him. After that, chaos--for thoughts, discoveries, apprehensions of
+possibilities in human intercourse hitherto undreamed of, were marshalled
+round her in close formation shoulder to shoulder. They only waited. An
+instant's yielding on her part, and they would be on to her, crushing
+down and in, making her brain reel, her mind stagger under their stifling
+crowded assault.
+
+"Go back and row," she said, at once imploring and imperious. "Row
+quickly. I am very tired. I am cold. I want to be at home--to be in my
+own place."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RECOUNTING AN ASTONISHING DEPOSITION
+
+
+Theresa Bilson bustled upstairs. Barring the absence of the extra brake,
+which had caused--and for this she could not be sorry since didn't it
+justify her "attitude" towards her recalcitrant ex-pupil?--some
+inconvenient overcrowding in transit to and from the station, and barring
+the rain, which set in between five and six o'clock, the expedition to
+Harchester passed off with considerable _éclat_. Such, in any case, was
+Theresa's opinion, she herself having figured conspicuously in the
+foreground. During the inspection of the Cathedral the Dean paid her
+quite marked attention; thanks, in part, to her historical and
+archaeological knowledge--of which she made the most, and to her
+connection with the Verity family--of which she made the most also. In
+precisely what that connection might consist, the learned and timid old
+gentleman, being very deaf and rather near-sighted, failed to gather. He
+determined, however, to be on the safe side.
+
+"Our genial Archdeacon," he said, "and his distinguished kinsman, Sir
+Charles? Ah! yes--yes--indeed--to be sure--with the greatest pleasure."
+
+And he motioned the blushing Theresa to fall into step with him, and with
+Dr. Horniblow, at the head of the Deadham procession.
+
+The afterglow of that triumphal progress irradiated her consciousness
+still, when--after depositing the Miss Minetts upon their own doorstep,
+with playful last words recalling the day's mild jokes and rallyings--she
+drove on to The Hard to find the household there in a state of sombre and
+most admired confusion.
+
+Thus to arrive home in possession of a fine bag of news, only to
+discover an opposition and far finer bag ready awaiting you may well
+prove trying to the most high-souled and amiable of temper. By this time,
+between success and fatigue, Theresa could not be justly described as
+either high-souled or sweet tempered. She was at once inflated and on
+edge, and consequently hotly indignant, as though the unfairest march
+possible had been stolen upon her.
+
+She bustled upstairs, and crossing the landing turned into the schoolroom
+passage--a long, lamp-lit vista, hung with old Chinese wall-paper, the
+running pattern of buds and flowers, large out of all proportion to the
+bridges, palms, pagodas and groups of little purple and blue-clad men and
+women disposed, in dwindling perspective, upon its once white surface.
+Half-way along the passage, their backs towards her, Mary and Mrs.
+Cooper, the cook--a fair, mild middle-aged, and cow-like person, of ample
+proportions--stood conversing in smothered tones.
+
+"And it's my belief he's been and told her, or anyhow that she guesses,
+pore dear young lady," the latter, with upraised hands, lamented.
+
+Theresa just caught these strange words. Caught too, Mary's hurried
+rejoinder--"For mercy's sake, Mrs. Cooper, not a hint of that to any
+living soul"--before the two women, sensible of the swish and patter of
+her self-important entry, turned and moved forward to meet, or--could it
+be?--to intercept her. Their faces bore a singular expression, in Mrs.
+Cooper's case of sloppy, in Mary's of stern yet vivid alarm. Deeply
+engaged though she was with her private grievance, Miss Bilson could not
+but observe this. It made her nervous.
+
+"What is the meaning," she began, her voice shrill with agitation, "of
+the extraordinary story about Miss Damaris which Laura reports to me?
+Someone is evidently very much in fault."
+
+"Please don't speak quite so loud, Miss," Mary firmly admonished her.
+"I've just got Miss Damaris quieted off to sleep, and if she's roused up
+again, I won't answer for what mayn't happen."
+
+"But what has happened? I insist upon knowing," Theresa declared, in
+growing offence and agitation.
+
+"Ah! that's just what we should be thankful enough to have you tell us,
+Miss," Mrs. Cooper chimed in with heavy and reproachful emphasis upon
+the pronouns.
+
+To even the mild and cow-like revenge is sweet. Though honestly
+distressed and scared, the speaker entertained a most consoling
+conviction she was at this moment getting even with Theresa Bilson and
+cleverly paying off old scores.
+
+"The pore dear young lady's caught her death as likely as not, out
+there across the river in the wet, let alone some sneaking rascal
+making off with her stockings and shoes. When I saw her little naked
+feet, all blue with the cold, it made my heart bleed, regularly bleed,
+it did. I could only give thanks her Nanna, pore Mrs. Watson, who
+worshipped the very ground Miss Damaris trod on, was spared living to
+see that afflicting sight."
+
+Then with a change of tone exasperating--as it was designed to be--to
+one, at least, of her hearers, she added:
+
+"I'll have that soup ready against Miss Damaris wakes, Mary, in case she
+should fancy it. Just touch the bell, will you, and I'll bring it up
+myself. It's not suitable to give either of the girls a chance for
+prying. They're a deal too curious as it is. And I'm only too pleased to
+watch with you, turn and turn about, as I told you, whenever you feel to
+require a rest. Lizzie will have to see to the cooking anyhow--except
+what's wanted for Miss Damaris. I couldn't put my mind into kitchen work
+to-night, not if you paid me ever so."
+
+And on large flat feet she moved away towards the back-staircase, leading
+down to the offices from the far end of the passage, leaving an odour of
+pastry behind her and of cloves.
+
+"To think of what to-morrow may bring, ah! dear me," she murmured
+as she went.
+
+During the ten minutes or so which immediately followed Theresa Bilson
+boxed the compass in respect of sensations, the needle, as may be noted,
+invariably quivering back to the same point--namely, righteous anger
+against Damaris. For was not that high-spirited maiden's imperviousness
+to influence and defiance of authority--her, Theresa's, influence and
+authority--the mainspring of all this disastrous complication? Theresa
+found it convenient to believe so, and whip herself up to almost frantic
+determination in that belief. It was so perfectly clear. All the more
+clear because her informant, Mary, evidently did not share her belief.
+Mary's account of to-day's most vexatious transactions betrayed
+partizanship and prejudice, such as might be expected from an uneducated
+person, offering--as Theresa assured herself--a pertinent example of the
+workings of "the servant mind." Nevertheless uneasy suspicion dogged her,
+a haunting though unformulated dread that other persons--one person above
+all others--might endorse Mary's prejudices rather than her own, so
+reasonably based, conviction.
+
+"If only Mr. Patch had been in there'd have been somebody to depend on,"
+the woman told her, recounting the anxious search after vanished Damaris.
+"But he'd driven into Marychurch of course, starting ever so early
+because of the parcels he had your orders to call for at the several
+shops, before meeting the train. And the gardeners had left work on
+account of the wet; so we'd nobody to send to make enquiries anywhere
+except Tolling, and that feather-head Alfred, who you can't trust half a
+minute out of your sight." Here she paused in her narrative and made a
+move, adroitly driving Theresa Bilson before her out on to the landing,
+thus putting a greater distance between that tormented spinster and the
+neighbourhood of Damaris' bed-chamber. Her handsome brown eyes held the
+light of battle and her colour was high. She straightened a chair,
+standing against the wall at the stair-head, with a neatly professional
+hand in passing.
+
+"Mrs. Cooper and I were fairly wild waiting down on the sea-wall with the
+lantern, thinking of drowning and--worse,--when"--she glanced sharply at
+her companion and, lowering her eyes altered the position of the chair by
+a couple of inches--"when Captain Faircloth's boat came up beside the
+breakwater and he carried Miss Damaris ashore and across the garden."
+
+"Stop"--Theresa broke in--"I do not follow you. Faircloth, Captain
+Faircloth? You are not, I earnestly hope, speaking of the owner of that
+low public-house on the island?"
+
+"Yes--him," Mary returned grimly, her eyes still lowered.
+
+"And do you mean me to understand that this young man carried Miss
+Damaris--actually carried her"--Miss Bilson choked and cleared her throat
+with a foolish little crowing sound--"carried her all the way into the
+house--in his arms?"
+
+"Yes, in his arms, Miss. How else would you have had him carry her?--And,
+as gentle and careful as any woman could, too--into the house and right
+upstairs here"--pointing along the passage as if veritably beholding the
+scene once more--"and into her own bedroom."
+
+"How shocking. How extremely improper!"
+
+Theresa beat her fat little hands hysterically together. She credited
+herself with emotions of the most praiseworthy and purest; ignorant that
+the picture conjured up before her provoked obscure physical jealousies,
+obscure stirrings of latent unsatisfied passion. More than ever, surely,
+did the needle quiver back to that fixed point of most righteous anger.
+
+"Such--such a proceeding cannot have been necessary. It ought not to have
+been permitted. Why did not Miss Damaris walk?"
+
+"Because she was in a dead faint, and we'd all the trouble in life to
+bring her round."
+
+"Indeed," she said, and that rather nastily. "I am sorry, but I cannot
+but believe Miss Damaris might have made an effort to walk--with your
+assistance and that of Cooper, had you offered it. As I remarked at
+first, someone is evidently very much to blame. The whole matter must be
+thoroughly sifted out, of course. I am disappointed, for I had great
+confidence in you and Cooper--two old servants who might really have been
+expected to possess some idea of the--the respect due to their master's
+daughter. What will Sir Charles say when he hears of this objectionable
+incident?"
+
+"That's just what Mrs. Cooper and I are wondering, Miss," Mary took her
+up with so much meaning that Miss Bilson inwardly quailed, sensible of
+having committed a rather egregious blunder. This she made efforts to
+repair by sheering off hurriedly on another tack.
+
+"Not that I shall trouble Sir Charles with the matter, unless
+circumstances arise which compel me to do so--as a duty. My great object,
+of course, is at all times to spare him any domestic annoyance."
+
+She began pulling off her gloves, a new pair and tight. Her hands were
+moist and the glove-fingers stuck, rendering their removal lengthy and
+difficult.
+
+"To-morrow I shall have a thorough explanation with Miss Damaris and
+decide what action it is my duty to take after hearing her version of the
+events of this afternoon. I should prefer speaking to her to-night--"
+
+"Miss Damaris isn't fit to talk about anything to-night."
+
+Theresa pulled at the right-hand glove--the kid gave with a little
+shriek, the thumb splitting out. She was in a state of acute indecision.
+Could she retire from this contest without endangering her authority,
+without loss of prestige, or must she insist? She had no real wish to
+hasten to her ex-pupil's bedside. She would be glad to put off doing so,
+glad to wait. She was conscious of resentment rather than affection. And
+she felt afraid, unformulated suspicion, unformulated dread, again
+dogging her. That Damaris was really ill, she did not believe for an
+instant. Damaris had excellent health. The maids exaggerated. They
+delighted in making mysteries. Uneducated persons are always absurdly
+greedy of disaster, lugubriously credulous.--Yes, on the whole she
+concluded to maintain her original attitude, the attitude of yesterday
+and this morning; concluded it would be more telling to keep up the
+fiction of disgrace--because--Theresa did not care to scrutinize her own
+motives or analyse her own thought too closely. She was afraid, and she
+was jealous--jealous of Damaris' beauty, of the great love borne her by
+her father, jealous of the fact that a young man--hadn't she, Theresa,
+seen the young sea-captain once or twice in the village recently and been
+fluttered by his notable good looks?--had rescued the girl, and carried
+her home, carried her up here across the landing and along the familiar
+schoolroom passage, with its patterned Chinese wall-paper, gently and
+carefully, in his arms.
+
+And these qualifying terms--gentle and careful--rankled to the point even
+of physical disturbance, so that Miss Bilson again became guilty of
+inelegantly choking, and clearing her throat for the second time with a
+foolish crowing sound.
+
+"I will postpone my interview with Miss Damaris until after breakfast
+to-morrow," she said, thus leaving Mary Fisher virtually, if not
+admittedly, master of the field.
+
+But long before breakfast time, in the grey and mournful autumn
+morning, Patch rattled the dog-cart the seven miles into Stourmouth, as
+fast as the black horse could travel, to fetch Damaris' old friend, the
+retired Indian Civil surgeon, Dr. McCabe. For, coming to herself, in
+the intervals of distracted fever dreams, she had asked for him, going
+back by instinct to the comfort of his care of her in childish
+illnesses long ago. Since she was ill enough, so Mary said, to need a
+doctor, let it be him.
+
+"Not Mr. Cripps out of the village, or Dr. Risdon from Marychurch. I
+won't see them. I will not see anyone from near here. Keep them away from
+me," she commanded. "I know Miss Bilson will try to send for one or the
+other. But I won't see either. Promise you'll keep them away."
+
+When, after his visit, Theresa Bilson, considerably flustered and
+offended, found McCabe breakfasting in the dining-room and offered
+profuse apologies for the inconvenience to which he must have been put by
+so early and unnecessary a call, the tender-hearted and garrulous, but
+choleric Irishman cut her uncommonly short.
+
+"And would you be supposing then, that if the dear blessed child should
+be desirous of consulting me I wouldn't have rejoiced to come to her a
+thousand times as early and from ten thousand times as far?" he enquired,
+between large mouthfuls of kidney and fried bacon. "The scheming little
+pudding-faced governess creature, with a cherry nose and an envious eye
+to her"--he commented to himself.
+
+"But you do not apprehend anything serious?" Theresa said
+stiffly--"Merely a slight chill?"
+
+"With a temperature dancing up and down like a mad thing between a
+hundred and one and a hundred and three? I'm dashed if I like the looks
+of her at all, at all, Miss Bilson; and I am well acquainted with her
+constitution and her temperament. She's as delicate a piece of feminine
+mechanism as it's ever been my fortune to handle, and has been so from a
+child. Mind and body so finely interwoven that you can't touch the one
+without affecting the other--that is where danger comes in.--And I am
+glad to find she has so competent a nurse as Mary Fisher--a wholesome
+woman and one to put faith in. I have given my full instructions to her."
+
+"But I"--Theresa began fussily, her face crimson.
+
+"Oh! I don't doubt you're devotion itself; only my first consideration is
+my patient, and so I make free to use my own judgment in the selection of
+my assistants. No disrespect to you, my dear lady. You are at home in
+more intellectual spheres than that of the sick-room. And now," he wiped
+his mouth with his napkin, twinkling at her over the top of it with small
+blue-grey eyes, at once merry, faithful, and cunning--"I'll be bidding
+you good-bye till the evening. I have told Mary Fisher I'll be glad to
+sleep here to-night. And I'll despatch a telegram to Sir Charles on my
+way through the village."
+
+"Sir Charles?" Theresa cried.
+
+"Yes," he answered her. "I find the darling girl's illness as
+serious as that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A SOUL AT WAR WITH FACT
+
+
+The deepest and most abiding demand of all sentient creatures, strong and
+weak alike, is for safety, or, that being unattainable, for a sense of
+safety, an illusion even of safety.
+
+This, so universal demand, dictated, in Damaris' case, her prayer for Dr.
+McCabe's attendance. He belonged to the safeties of her childhood, to the
+securely guarded, and semi-regal state--as, looking back, she recalled
+it--of the years when her father held the appointment of Chief
+Commissioner at Bhutpur. Dr. McCabe was conversant with all that; the
+sole person available, at this juncture, who had lot or part in it. And,
+as she had foreseen--when drifting down the tide-river in the rain and
+darkness--once the supporting tension of Faircloth's presence removed,
+chaos would close in on her. It only waited due opportunity. That
+granted, as a tempest-driven sea it would submerge her. In the welter of
+the present, she clutched at the high dignities and distinctions of the
+past as at a lifebelt. Not vulgarly, in a spirit of self-aggrandizement;
+but in the simple interests of self-preservation, as a means of keeping
+endangered sanity afloat. For the distinctions and dignities of that
+period were real too, just as uncontrovertible a contribution to her
+knowledge of men and of things, just as vital an element in her
+experience, as chaos let loose on her now. The one in no degree
+invalidated the truth or actuality of the other.
+
+But to keep this in mind, to remember it all the time, while imagination
+galloped with fever brought on by chill and exposure, and reason
+wandered, losing touch with plain commonsense through the moral shock she
+had sustained, was difficult to the point of impossibility. She needed a
+witness, visible and material, to the fact of those former happier
+conditions; and found it, quaintly enough, in the untidy person and
+humorous, quarrelsome, brick-dust coloured face--as much of the said
+face, that is, as was discoverable under the thick stiff growth of sandy
+hair surrounding and invading it--of the Irish doctor, as he sat by her
+bed, ministered to and soothed her with reverent and whimsical delicacy.
+
+As long as he was there, her room retained its normal, pleasant and
+dainty aspect. All Damaris' little personal effects and treasures
+adorning dressing and writing-tables, the photographs and ornaments upon
+the mantelshelf, her books, the prints and pictures upon the walls--even
+the white dimity curtains and covers, trellised with small faded pink and
+blue roses--seemed to smile upon her, kindly and confiding. They wanted
+to be nice, to console and encourage her--McCabe holding them in place
+and in active good-will towards her, somehow, with his large freckled,
+hairy-backed hands. But let him go from the room, let him leave her, and
+they turned wicked, behaving as they had behaved throughout the past
+rather dreadful night and adding to the general chaos by tormenting
+tricks and distortions of their own.
+
+The beloved photographs of her father, in particular, were cruel. They
+grew inordinately large, stepped out of their frames, and stalked to and
+fro in troops and companies. The charcoal drawing of him--done last year
+by that fine artist, James Colthurst, as a study for the portrait he was
+to paint--hanging between the two western windows, at right angles to her
+bed where she could always see it, proved the worst offender. It did not
+take the floor, it is true, but remained in its frame upon the wall. Yet
+it too came alive, and looked full at her, compelling her attention,
+dominating, commanding her; while, slowly, deliberately it changed, the
+features slightly losing their accentuation, growing youthful, softer in
+outline, the long drooping moustache giving place to a close-cut beard.
+The eyes alone stayed the same, steady, luminous, a living silence in
+them at once formidable and strangely sad. Finally--and this the poor
+child found indescribably agitating and even horrible--their silence was
+broken by a question. For they asked what she, Damaris, meant to say,
+meant to do, when he--her father, the all-powerful Commissioner Sahib of
+her babyhood's faith and devotion--came home here, came back?
+
+Yet whose eyes, after all, were they which thus asked? Was it not, rather
+the younger man, the bearded one, who claimed, and of right, an answer to
+that question? And upon Damaris it now dawned that these two, distinct
+yet interchangeable personalities--imprisoned, as by some evil magic in
+one picture--were in opposition, in violent and impious conflict, which
+conflict she was called upon, yet was powerless, to avert or to assuage.
+
+Not once but many times--since the transformation was persistently
+recurrent--the girl turned her face to the wall to gain relief from the
+sight of it and the demand it so fearfully embodied, pressing her dry
+lips together lest any word should escape them. For the whole matter, as
+she understood it was secret, sacred too as it was agonizing. No one must
+guess what lay at the root of her present suffering--not even comfortable
+devoted Mary, nor that invaluable lifebelt, Dr. McCabe. She held the
+honour of both those conflicting interchangeable personalities in her
+hands; and, whether she were strong enough to adjust their differences or
+not, she must in no wise betray either of them. The latent motherhood in
+her cried out to protect and to shield them both, to spare them both. For
+in this stage of the affair, while the hallucinations of deadly fever--in
+a sense mercifully--confused her, its grosser aspects did not present
+themselves to her mind. She wandered through mazes, painful enough to
+tread; but far removed from the ugliness of vulgar scandal. That her
+sacred secret, for instance, might be no more than a _secret de
+Polichinelle_ suspected by many, did not, so far, occur to her.
+
+Believing it to be her exclusive property, therefore, she, inspired by
+tender cunning, strove manfully to keep it so. To that end she made play
+with the purely physical miseries of her indisposition.--With shivering
+fits and scorching flushes, cold aching limbs and burning, aching head.
+With the manifold distractions of errant blood which, leaving her heart
+empty as a turned-down glass, drummed in her ears and throbbed behind her
+eyeballs. These discomforts were severely real enough, in all conscience,
+to excuse her for being self-occupied and a trifle selfish; to justify a
+blank refusal to receive Theresa Bilson, or attempt to retail and discuss
+the events of yesterday. All she craved was quiet, to be left alone, to
+lie silent in the quiet light of the covered grey day.
+
+In the earlier hours of it, silver rain showers travelled across the sea
+to spend themselves, tearfully, against the panes of her bedroom
+windows. But towards evening the cloud lifted, revealing a watery
+sunset, spread in timid reds and yellows behind Stone Horse Head and the
+curving coast-line beyond, away to Stourmouth and Barryport. The faint
+tentative colours struck in long glinting shafts between the trunks and
+branches of the stone pines and Scotch firs in the so-called
+Wilderness--a strip of uncultivated land within the confines of the
+grounds dividing the gardens from the open Warren to the West--and
+gleamed in at the windows, faintly dyeing the dimity hangings and
+embroidered linen counterpane of Damaris' bed.
+
+Throughout the afternoon she had been less restless. So that Mary Fisher,
+judging her to be fairly asleep, some five minutes earlier had folded her
+needlework together, and, leaving the chair where she sat sewing, went
+softly from the room.
+
+But that brightening of sunset disturbed Damaris, bringing her slowly
+awake. For a time she lay watching, though but half consciously the
+tinted radiance as--the trees now stirred by a little wind drawing out of
+the sunset--it shifted and flitted over the white surfaces. At first it
+pleased her idle fancy. But presently distressed her, as too thin, too
+chill, too restlessly unsubstantial, the veriest chippering ghost of
+colour and of light. It affected her with a desolating sadness as of
+failure; of great designs richly attempted but petering out into a
+pitiful nothingness; of love which aped and mimicked, being drained of
+all purpose and splendour of hot blood; of partings whose sorrow had lost
+its savour, yet which masqueraded in showy crape for a heart-break long
+grown stale and obsolete.
+
+Her temperature rushed up; and she threw off the bedclothes, raising
+herself on her elbow, while the shafts of thin brightness wavered
+fitfully. Through them she saw the photographs of her father step out of
+their frames again, and growing very tall and spare, stalk to and fro.
+Other figures joined them--those of women. Her poor dear Nannie, in the
+plain quaker-grey cotton gown and black silk apron she used to wear, even
+through the breathless hot-weather days, at the Sultan-i-bagh long ago.
+And Henrietta Pereira, too, composed and delicately sprightly, arrayed in
+full flounced muslins and fine laces with an exquisiteness of high
+feminine grace and refinement which had enthralled her baby soul and
+senses, and, which held her captive by their charm even yet. A handsome,
+high-coloured full-breasted, Eurasian girl, whom she but dimly
+recollected, was there as well. And with these another--carrying very
+certainly no hint of things oriental about her--an English woman and of
+the people, in dull homely clothing, grave of aspect and of bearing; yet
+behind whose statuesque and sternly patient beauty a great flame seemed
+to quiver, offering sharp enough contrast to the frail glintings of the
+rain-washed sunset amid which she, just now, moved.
+
+At sight of the last comer, Damaris started up, tense with wonder and
+excitement, since she knew--somehow--this final visitant belonged not to
+the past so much as to the present, that her power was unexhausted and
+would go forward to the shaping of the coming years. Which knowledge drew
+confirmation from what immediately followed. For, as by almost
+imperceptible degrees the brightness faded in the west, the figures, so
+mysteriously peopling the room, faded out also, until only the woman in
+homely garments was left. By her side stood the charcoal drawing of Sir
+Charles Verity from off the wall--or seemed to do so, for almost at
+once, Damaris saw that dreaded interchange of personality again take
+place. Saw the strongly marked features soften in outline, the face grow
+bearded yet younger by full thirty years.
+
+Both the woman and the young man looked searchingly at her; and in the
+eyes of both she read the same question--what did she mean to do, what to
+say, when her father, the object of her adoration, came home to her, came
+back to Deadham Hard?
+
+"I will do right," she cried out loud to them in answer, "Only trust me.
+I am so tired and it is all so difficult to believe and to understand.
+But I am trying to understand. I shall understand, if you will give me
+time and not hurry me. And, when I understand, indeed, indeed, you may
+trust me, whatever it costs, to do right."
+
+Just then Mary opened the door, entering quickly, and behind her came Dr.
+McCabe, to find Damaris talking, talking wildly, sitting up, parched and
+vivid with fever, in the disordered bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+TELLING HOW TWO PERSONS, OF VERY DIFFERENT MORAL CALIBRE, WERE COMPELLED
+TO WEAR THE FLOWER OF HUMILIATION IN THEIR RESPECTIVE BUTTONHOLES
+
+
+Cross-country connections by rail were not easy to make, with the
+consequence that Sir Charles Verity,--Hordle, gun-cases, bags and
+portmanteaux, in attendance--did not reach The Hard until close
+upon midnight.
+
+Hearing the brougham at last drive up, Theresa Bilson felt rapturously
+fluttered. Her course had been notably empty of situations and of
+adventure; drama, as in the case of so many ladies of her profession--the
+pages of fiction notwithstanding--conspicuously cold-shouldering and
+giving her the go-by. Now, drama, and that of richest quality might
+perhaps--for she admitted the existence of awkward conjunctions--be said
+to batter at her door. She thought of the Miss Minetts, her ever-willing
+audience. She thought also--as so frequently during the last, in some
+respects, extremely unsatisfactory twenty-four hours--of Mr. Rochester
+and of Jane Eyre. Not that she ranged herself with Jane socially or as to
+scholastic attainments. In both these, as in natural refinement,
+propriety and niceness of ideas, she reckoned herself easily to surpass
+that much canvassed heroine. The flavour of the evangelical
+charity-school adhered--incontestably it adhered, and that to Jane's
+disadvantage. No extravagance of Protestantism or of applied
+philanthropy, thank heaven, clouded Theresa's early record. The genius of
+Tractarianism had rocked her cradle, and subsequently ruled her studies
+with a narrowly complacent pedantry all its own. Nevertheless in moments
+of expansion, such as the present, she felt the parallel between her own
+case and that of Jane did, in certain directions, romantically hold.
+Fortified by thought of the Miss Minetts' agitated interest in all which
+might befall her, she indulged in imaginary conversations with that great
+proconsul, her employer--the theme of which, purged of lyrical
+redundancies, reduced itself to the somewhat crude announcement that
+"your daughter, yes, may, alas, not impossibly be taken from you; but I,
+Theresa, still remain."
+
+When, however, a summons to the presence of the said employer actually
+reached her, the bounce born of imaginary conversations, showed a
+tendency, as is its habit, basely to desert her and soak clean away. She
+had promised herself a little scene, full of respectful solicitude, of
+sympathy discreetly offered and graciously accepted, a drawing together
+through the workings of mutual anxiety leading on to closer intercourse,
+her own breast, to put it pictorially, that on which the stricken parent
+should eventually and gratefully lean. But in all this she was
+disappointed, for Sir Charles did not linger over preliminaries. He came
+straight and unceremoniously to the point; and that with so cold and
+lofty a manner that, although flutterings remained, they parted company
+with all and any emotions even remotely allied to rapture.
+
+Charles Verity stood motionless before the fire-place in the long
+sitting-room. He still wore a heavy frieze travelling coat, the fronts of
+it hanging open. His shoulders were a trifle humped up and his head bent,
+as he looked down at the black and buff of the tiger skin at his feet.
+When Theresa approached with her jerky consequential little walk--pinkly
+self-conscious behind her gold-rimmed glasses--he glanced at her,
+revealing a fiercely careworn countenance, but made no movement to shake
+hands with or otherwise greet her. This omission she hardly noticed,
+already growing abject before his magnificence--for thus did his
+appearance impress her--which, while claiming her enthusiastic
+admiration, enjoined humility rather than the sentimental expansions in
+which her imaginary conversations had so conspicuously abounded.
+
+"I have seen Dr. McCabe," he began. "His report of Damaris' condition is
+very far from reassuring. He tells me her illness presents peculiar
+symptoms, and is grave out of all proportion to its apparent cause. This
+makes me extremely uneasy. It is impossible to question her at present.
+She must be spared all exertion and agitation. I have not attempted to
+see her yet."
+
+He paused, while anger towards her ex-pupil waxed warm in Theresa once
+again. For the pause was eloquent, as his voice had been when speaking
+about his daughter, of a depth of underlying tenderness which filled his
+hearer with envy.
+
+"I must therefore ask you, Miss Bilson," he presently went on, "to give
+me a detailed account of all that took place yesterday. It is important I
+should know exactly what occurred."
+
+Whereat Theresa, perceiving pitfalls alike in statement and in
+suppression of fact, hesitated and gobbled to the near neighbourhood of
+positive incoherence, while admitting, and trying to avoid admitting, how
+inconveniently ignorant of precise details she herself was.
+
+"Perhaps I erred in not more firmly insisting upon an immediate enquiry,"
+she said. "But, at the time, alarm appeared so totally uncalled for. I
+assumed, from what was told me, and from my knowledge of the strength of
+Damaris' constitution, that a night's rest would fully restore her to her
+usual robust state of health, and so deferred my enquiry. The servants
+were excited and upset, so I felt their account might be misleading--all
+they said was so confused, so far from explicit. My position was most
+difficult, Sir Charles," she assured him and incidentally, also, assured
+herself. "I encountered most trying opposition, which made me feel it
+would be wiser to wait until this morning. By then, I hoped, the maids
+would have had time to recollect themselves and recollect what is
+becoming towards their superiors in the way of obedience and respect."
+
+Charles Verity threw back his head with a movement of impatience, and
+looked down at her from under his eyelids--in effect weary and a
+little insolent.
+
+"We seem to be at cross purposes, Miss Bilson," he said. "You do not, I
+think quite follow my question. I did not ask for the servants' account
+of the events of yesterday--whatever those events may have been--but for
+your own."
+
+"Ah! it is so unfortunate, so exceedingly unfortunate," Theresa broke
+out, literally wringing her hands, "but a contingency, an accident, which
+I could not possibly have foreseen--I cannot but blame Damaris, Sir
+Charles"--
+
+"Indeed?" he said.
+
+"No, truly I cannot but blame her for wilfulness. If she had
+consented--as I so affectionately urged--to join the choir treat to
+Harchester, this painful incident would have been spared us."
+
+"Am I to understand that you went to Harchester, leaving my daughter
+here alone?"
+
+"Her going would have given so much pleasure in the parish," Theresa
+pursued, dodging the question with the ingenuity of one who scents mortal
+danger. "Her refusal would, I knew, cause sincere disappointment. I could
+not bring myself to accentuate that disappointment. Not that I, of
+course, am of any importance save as coming from this house, as--as--in
+some degree your delegate, Sir Charles."
+
+"Indeed?" he said.
+
+"Yes, indeed," Theresa almost hysterically repeated.
+
+For here--if anywhere--was her chance, as she recognized. Never again
+might she be thus near to him, alone with him--the normal routine made it
+wholly improbable.--And at midnight too. For the unaccustomed lateness of
+the hour undoubtedly added to her ferment, provoking in her obscure and
+novel hopes and hungers. Hence she blindly and--her action viewed from a
+certain angle--quite heroically precipitated herself. Heroically, because
+the odds were hopelessly adverse, her equipment, whether of natural or
+artificial, being so conspicuously slender. Her attempt had no backing in
+play of feature, felicity of gesture, grace of diction. The commonest
+little actress that ever daubed her skin with grease-paint, would have
+the advantage of Theresa in the thousand and one arts by which, from
+everlasting, woman has limed twigs for the catching of man. Her very
+virtues--respectability, learning, all the proprieties of her narrowly
+virtuous little life--counted for so much against her in the present
+supreme moment of her self-invented romance.
+
+"You hardly, I dare say," she pursued--"how should you after the
+commanding positions you have occupied?--appreciate the feelings of the
+inhabitants of this quiet country parish towards you. But they have a
+lively sense, believe me, of the honour you confer upon them, all and
+severally--I am speaking of the educated classes in particular, of
+course--by residing among them. They admire and reverence you so much, so
+genuinely; and they have extended great kindness to me as a member of
+your household. How can I be indifferent to it? I am thankful, Sir
+Charles, I am grateful--the more so that I have the happiness of knowing
+I owe the consideration with which I am treated, in Deadham, entirely to
+you.--Yes, yes," she cried in rising exaltation, "I do not deny that I
+went to Harchester yesterday--went--Dr. Horniblow thus expressed it when
+inviting me--'as representing The Hard.' I was away when Damaris made
+this ill-judged excursion across the river to the Bar. Had she confided
+her intention to me, I should have used my authority and forbade her. But
+recently we have not been, I grieve to say, on altogether satisfactory
+terms, and our parting yesterday was constrained, I am afraid."
+
+Theresa blushed and swallowed. Fortunately her sense of humour was
+limited; but, even so, she could not but be aware of a dangerous decline.
+Not only of bathos, but of vulgar bathos, from which gentility revolted,
+must she be the exponent, thanks to Damaris' indiscretion!
+
+"You require me to give you the details, Sir Charles," she resumed, "and
+although it is both embarrassing and repugnant to me to do so, I obey. I
+fear Damaris so far forgot herself--forgot I mean what is due to her age
+and position--as to remove her shoes and stockings and paddle in the
+sea--a most unsuitable and childish occupation. While she was thus
+engaged her things--her shoes and stockings--appear to have been stolen.
+In any case she was unable to find them when tired of the amusement she
+came up on to the beach. Moreover she was caught in the rain. And I
+deeply regret to tell you--but I merely repeat what I learned from Mary
+Fisher and Mrs. Cooper when I returned--it was not till after dark, when
+the maids had become so alarmed that they despatched Tolling and Alfred
+to search for her, that Damaris landed from a boat at the breakwater,
+having been brought down the river--by--by"--
+
+Throughout the earlier portion of her recital Charles Verity stood in the
+same place and same attitude staring down at the tiger skin. Twice or
+thrice only he raised his eyes, looking at the speaker with a flash of
+arrogant interrogation.
+
+Upon one, even but moderately, versed in the secular arts of twig-liming,
+such flashes would have acted as an effective warning and deterrent. Not
+so upon Theresa. She barely noticed them, as blindly heroic, she pounded
+along leading her piteous forlorn hope. Her chance--her unique chance, in
+nowise to be missed--and, still more, those obscure hungers, fed by the
+excitement of this midnight _tête-à-tête,_ rushed her forward upon the
+abyss; while at every sputtering sentence, whether of adulation,
+misplaced prudery, or thinly veiled animosity towards Damaris, she became
+more tedious, more frankly intolerable and ridiculous to him whose favour
+she so desperately sought. Under less anxious circumstances Charles
+Verity might have been contemptuously amused at this exhibition of futile
+ardour. Now it exasperated him. Yet he waited, in rather cruel patience.
+Presently he would demolish her, if to do so appeared worth the trouble.
+Meanwhile she should have her say, since incidentally he might learn
+something from it bearing upon the cause of Damaris' illness.
+
+But now, when, at the climax of her narrative, Theresa--seized by a spasm
+of retrospective resentment and jealousy, the picture of the young man
+carrying the girl tenderly in his arms across the dusky lawns arising
+before her--choked and her voice cracked up into a bat-like squeaking,
+Charles Verity's self-imposed forbearance ran dry.
+
+"I must remind you that neither my time nor capacity of listening are
+inexhaustible, Miss Bilson," he said to her. "May I ask you to be so good
+as to come to the point. By whom was Damaris rescued and brought home
+last night?"
+
+"Ah! that is what I so deeply regret," Theresa quavered, still
+obstinately dense and struggling with the after convulsion of her choke.
+"I felt so shocked and annoyed on your account, Sir Charles, when the
+maids told me, knowing how you would disapprove such a--such an incident
+in connection with Damaris.--She was brought home, carried"--she
+paused--"carried indoors by the owner of that objectionable public-house
+on the island. He holds some position in the Mercantile Marine, I
+believe. I have seen him recently once or twice myself in the
+village--his name is Faircloth."
+
+Theresa pursed up her lips as she finished speaking. The glasses of her
+gold pince-nez seemed to gleam aggressively in the lamp-light. The backs
+of the leather-bound volumes in the many book-cases gleamed also, but
+unaggressively, with the mellow sheen--as might fancifully be figured--of
+the ripe and tolerant wisdom their pages enshrined. The pearl-grey
+porcelain company of Chinese monsters, saints and godlings, ranged above
+them placid, mysteriously smiling, gleamed as well.
+
+For a time, silence, along with these various gleamings, sensibly, even a
+little uncannily, held possession of the room. Then Charles Verity moved,
+stiffly, and for once awkwardly, all of a piece. Backed against the
+mantelshelf, throwing his right arm out along it sharply and
+heavily--careless of the safety of clock and of ornaments--as though
+overtaken by sudden weakness and seeking support.
+
+"Faircloth? Of course, his name is Faircloth." he repeated absently.
+"Yes, of course."
+
+But whatever the nature of the weakness assailing him, it soon,
+apparently, passed. He stood upright, his face, perhaps, a shade more
+colourless and lean, but in expression fully as arrogant and formidably
+calm as before.
+
+"Very well, Miss Bilson," he began. "You have now given me all the
+information I require, so I need detain you no longer--save to say
+this.--You will, if you please, consider your engagement as my daughter's
+companion terminated, concluded from to-night. You are free to make such
+arrangements as may suit you; and you will, I trust, pardon my adding
+that I shall be obliged by your making them without undue delay."
+
+"You do not mean," Theresa broke out, after an interval of speechless
+amazement--"Sir Charles, you cannot mean that you dismiss me--that I am
+to leave The Hard--to--to go away?"
+
+"I mean that I have no further occasion for your services."
+
+Theresa waved her arms as though playing some eccentric game of ball.
+
+"You forget the servants, the conduct of the house, Damaris' need of a
+chaperon, her still unfinished education--All are dependent upon me."
+
+"Hardly dependent," he answered. "These things, I have reason to think,
+can safely be trusted to other hands, or be equally safely be left to
+take care of themselves."
+
+"But why do you repudiate me?" she cried again, rushing upon her fate in
+the bitterness of her distraction. "What have I done to deserve such
+harshness and humiliation?"
+
+"I gave the most precious of my possessions--Damaris--into your keeping,
+and--and--well--we see the result. Is it not written large enough, in all
+conscience, for the most illiterate to read?--So you must depart, my dear
+Miss Bilson, and for everyone's sake, the sooner the better. There can be
+no further discussion of the matter. Pray accept the fact that our
+interview is closed."
+
+But Theresa, now sensible that her chance was in act of being finally
+ravished away from her, fell--or rose--perhaps more truly the
+latter--into an extraordinary sincerity and primitiveness of emotion.
+She cast aside nothing less than her whole personal legend, cast aside
+every tradition and influence hitherto so strictly governing her conduct
+and her thought. Unluckily the physical envelope could not so readily be
+got rid of. Matter retained its original mould, and that one neither
+seductive nor poetic.
+
+She went down upon her fat little knees, held her fat little hands aloft
+as in an impassioned spontaneity of worship.
+
+"Sir Charles," she prayed, while tears running down her full cheeks
+splashed upon her protuberant bosom--"Sir Charles"--
+
+He looked at the funny, tubby, jaunty, would-be smart, kneeling figure.
+
+"Oh! you inconceivably foolish woman," he said and turned away.
+
+Did more than that--walked out into the hall and to his own rooms,
+opening off the corridor. In the offices a bell tinkled. Theresa
+scrambled on to her feet, just as Hordle, in response to its summons,
+arrived at the sitting-room door.
+
+"Did you ring, Miss?" he asked grudgingly. Less than ever was she in
+favour with the servants' hall to-night.
+
+Past intelligible utterance, Theresa merely shook her head in reply. Made
+a return upon herself--began to instruct him to put out the lamps in the
+room. Remembered that now and henceforth the right to give orders in this
+house was no longer hers; and broke into sobbing, the sound of which her
+handkerchief pressed against her mouth quite failed to stifle.
+
+About an hour later, having bathed and changed, Sir Charles Verity made
+his way upstairs. Upon the landing Dr. McCabe met him.
+
+"Better," he said, "thank the heavenly powers, decidedly better.
+Temperature appreciably lower, and the pulse more even. Oh! we're on the
+road very handsomely to get top dog of the devil this bout, believe me,
+Sir Charles."
+
+"Then go to bed, my dear fellow," the other answered. "I will take
+over the rest of the watch for you. You need not be afraid. I can be an
+admirable sick-nurse on occasion. And by the way, McCabe, something has
+come to my knowledge which in my opinion throws considerable light upon
+the symptoms that have puzzled you. Probably I shall be more sure of my
+facts before morning. I will explain to you later, if it should seem
+likely to be helpful to you in your treatment of the case. Just now, as
+I see it, the matter lies exclusively between me"--he smiled looking at
+his companion full and steadily--"between me"--he repeated, "and my
+only child."
+
+All which upon the face of it might, surely, be voted encouraging
+enough. Yet:
+
+"Should there be any that doubt the veritable existence of hell fire,"
+the doctor told himself, as he subsequently and thankfully pulled on his
+night-shirt, "to recover them, and in double quick time, of their heresy
+let 'em but look in my friend Verity's eyes."--And he rounded off the
+sentence with an oath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AN EXPERIMENT IN BRIDGE-BUILDING OF WHICH TIME ALONE CAN FIX THE VALUES
+
+
+Damaris lay on her side, her face turned to the wall. When Charles
+Verity, quietly crossing the room, sat down in an easy chair, so placed
+at the head of the half-tester bed as to be screened from it by the
+dimity curtains, she sighed and slightly shifted her position.
+
+Leaning back, he crossed his legs and let his chin drop on his breast.
+He had barely glanced at her in passing, receiving a vague impression
+of the outline of her cheek, of her neck, and shoulders, of her head,
+dark against the dim whiteness on which it rested, and the long dark
+stream of her hair spread loose across the pillows. He had no wish for
+recognition--not yet awhile. On the contrary, it was a relief to have
+time in which silently to get accustomed to her presence, to steep
+himself in the thought of her, before speech should define the new
+element intruded, as he believed, into his and her relation. Though
+little enough--too little, so said some of his critics--hampered by
+fear in any department, he consciously dreaded the smallest
+modification of that relation. Among the many dissatisfactions and
+bitternesses of life, it shone forth with a steady light of purity and
+sweetness, as a thing unspoiled, unbreathed on, even, by what is
+ignoble or base. And not the surface of it alone was thus free from all
+breath of defilement. It showed clear right through, as some gem of the
+purest water. To keep it thus inviolate, he had made sacrifices in the
+past neither easy nor inconsiderable to a man of his temperament and
+ambitions. Hence that its perfection should be now endangered was to
+him the more exquisitely hateful.
+
+Upon the altar of that hatred, promptly without scruple he sacrificed
+the wretched Theresa. Most of us are so constituted that, at a certain
+pass, pleasure--of a sort--is to be derived from witnessing the anguish
+of a fellow creature. In all save the grossly degenerate that pleasure,
+however, is short-lived. Reflection follows, in which we cut to ourselves
+but a sorry figure. With Charles Verity, reflection began to follow
+before he had spent many minutes in Damaris' sick-room. For here the
+atmosphere was, at once, grave and tender, beautifully honest in its
+innocence of the things of the flesh.--The woman had been inconceivably
+foolish, from every point of view. If she had known, good heavens, if she
+had only known! But he inclined now to the more merciful view that,
+veritably, she didn't know; that her practical, even her theoretic,
+knowledge was insufficient for her to have had any clear design. It was
+just a blind push of starved animal instinct. Of course she must go. Her
+remaining in the house was in every way unpermissible; still he need not,
+perhaps, have been so cold-bloodedly precipitate with her.
+
+Anyhow the thing was done--it was done--He raised his shoulders and
+making with his hands a graphic gesture of dismissal, let his chin drop
+on to his breast again.
+
+For the East had left its mark on his attitude towards women with one
+exception--that of his daughter--Charles Verity, like most men, not
+requiring of himself to be too rigidly consistent. Hence Theresa, and
+all which pertained to her, even her follies, appeared to him of
+contemptibly small moment compared with the developments for which those
+follies might be held accidentally responsible. His mind returned to
+that main theme painfully. He envisaged it in all its bearings, not
+sparing himself. Suffered, and looked on at his own suffering with a
+stoicism somewhat sardonic.
+
+Meanwhile Damaris slept. His nearness had not disturbed her, indeed he
+might rather suppose its effect beneficent. For her breathing grew even,
+just sweetly and restfully audible in the intervals of other sounds
+reaching him from out of doors.
+
+The wind, drawing out of the sunset, freshened during the night. Now it
+blew wet and gustily from south-west, sighing through the pines and
+Scotch firs in the Wilderness. A strand of the yellow Banksia rose,
+trained against the house wall, breaking loose, scratched and tapped at
+the window-panes with anxious appealing little noises.
+
+Many years had elapsed since Charles Verity spent a night upstairs in
+this part of the house, and by degrees those outdoor sounds attracted his
+attention as intimately familiar. They carried him back to his boyhood,
+to the spacious dreams and projects of adolescence. He could remember
+just such gusty wet winds swishing through the trees, such petulant
+fingering of errant creepers upon the windows, when he stayed here during
+the holidays from school at Harchester, on furlough from his regiment,
+and, later, on long leave from India, during his wonderful little
+great-uncle's lifetime.
+
+And his thought took a lighter and friendlier vein, recalling that
+polished, polite, encyclopedic minded and witty gentleman, who had lived
+to within a few months of his full century with a maximum of interest and
+entertainment to himself, and a minimum of injury or offence to others.
+To the last he retained his freshness of intellectual outlook, his
+insatiable yet discreet curiosity. Taking it as a whole, should his life
+be judged a singularly futile or singularly enviable one? Nothing
+feminine, save on strictly platonic lines, was recorded to have entered
+it at any period. Did that argue remarkable wisdom or defective courage,
+or some abnormal element in a composition otherwise deliciously mundane
+and human?
+
+Charles had debated this often. Even as a boy it had puzzled him. As a
+young man he had held his own views on the subject, not without lasting
+effect. For one winter he had passed at The Hard, in the fine bodily
+health and vigour of his early thirties, this very lack of women's
+society contributed, by not unnatural reaction, to force the idea of
+woman hauntingly upon him--thereby making possible a strange and hidden
+love passage off the Dead Sea fruit of which he was in process of
+supping here to-night.
+
+He moved, bent forward, setting his elbows on the two chair arms,
+closing his eyes as he listened, and leaning his forehead upon his
+raised hands. For in the plaintive voice of the moist, fitful
+southwesterly wind how, to his bearing, the buried, half-forgotten drama
+re-lived and reenacted itself!
+
+It dated far back, to a period when his career was still undetermined,
+hedged about by doubts and uncertainties--before the magnificent and
+terrible years of the Mutiny brought him, not only fame and distinction,
+but a power of self-expression and of plain seeing.--Before, too, his not
+conspicuously happy marriage. Before the Bhutpur appointment tested and
+confirmed his reputation as a most able if most autocratic ruler. Before,
+finally, his term of service under the Ameer in Afghanistan--that
+extraordinary experience of alternate good and evil fortune in barbaric
+internecine warfare, the methods and sentiments of which represented a
+swing back of three or four centuries, Christianity, and the attitude of
+mind and conduct Christianity inculcates, no longer an even nominal
+factor, Mahomet, sword in hand, ruthlessly outriding Christ.
+
+He had done largely more than the average Englishman, of his age and
+station, towards the making of contemporary history. Yet it occurred to
+him now, sitting at Damaris' bedside, those intervening years of
+strenuous public activity, of soldiering and of administration, along
+with the honours reaped in them, had procured cynically less substantial
+result, cynically less ostensible remainder, than the brief and hidden
+intrigue which preceded them. They sank away as water spilt on sand--thus
+in his present pain he pictured it--leaving barely a trace. While that
+fugitive and unlawful indulgence of the flesh not only begot flesh, but
+spirit,--a living soul, henceforth and eternally to be numbered among the
+imperishable generations of the tragic and marvellous children of men.
+
+Then, aware something stirred close to him, Charles Verity looked up
+sharply, turning his head; to find Damaris--raised on one elbow planted
+among the pillows--holding aside the dimity curtain and gazing
+wonderingly yet contentedly in his face.
+
+"Commissioner Sahib," she said, softly, "I didn't know you'd come back.
+I've had horrid bad dreams and seemed to see you--many of you--walking
+about. The room was full of you, you over and over again; but not like
+yourself, frightening, not loving me, busy about something or somebody
+else. I didn't at all enjoy that.--But I am awake now, aren't I? I
+needn't be frightened any more; because you do love me, don't you--and
+this really is you, your very ownself?"
+
+She put up her face to be kissed. But he, in obedience to an humility
+heretofore unfelt by and unknown to him, leaning sideways kissed the hand
+holding aside the curtain rather than the proffered lips.
+
+"Yes, my darling, very surely it is me," he said. "Any multiplication of
+specimens is quite superfluous--a single example of the breed is enough,
+conceivably more than enough."
+
+But to his distress, while he spoke, he saw the content die out of
+Damaris' expression and her eyes grow distended and startled. She glanced
+oddly at the hand he had just kissed and then at him again.
+
+"It seems to me something must have happened which I can't exactly
+remember," she anxiously told him, sitting upright and leaving go the
+curtain which slipped back into place shutting off the arm-chair and its
+occupant. "Something real, I mean, not just bad dreams. I know I had to
+ask you about it, and yet I didn't want to ask you."
+
+Charles Verity rose from his place, slowly walked the length of the room;
+and, presently returning, stood at the foot of the bed. Damaris still sat
+upright, her hands clasped, her hair hanging in a cloud about her to
+below the waist. The light was low and the shadow cast by the bed-curtain
+covered her. But, through it, he could still distinguish the startled
+anxiety of her great eyes as she pondered, trying to seize and hold some
+memory which escaped her. And he felt sick at heart, assured it could be
+but a matter of time before she remembered; convinced now, moreover, what
+she would, to his shame and sorrow, remember in the end.
+
+The purity in which he delighted, and to which he so frequently and
+almost superstitiously had turned for refreshment and the safeguarding of
+all the finest instincts of his own very complex nature, would, although
+she remembered, remain essentially intact. But, even so, the surface of
+it must be, as he apprehended, henceforth in some sort dimmed, and that
+by the breath of his own long ago misdoing. The revelation of passion and
+of sex, being practically and thus intimately forced home on her, the
+transparent innocence of childhood must inevitably pass away from her;
+and, through that same passing she would consciously go forward,
+embracing the privileges and the manifold burdens, the physical and
+emotional needs and aspirations of a grown woman. The woman might,
+would--such was his firm belief--prove a glorious creature. But it was
+not she whom he wanted. Her development, in proportion as it was rich and
+complete, led her away from and made her independent of him.--No, it
+wasn't she, but the child whom he wanted. And, standing at the foot of
+Damaris' bed, he knew, with a cruel certainty, he was there just simply
+to watch the child die.
+
+Yes, it was a mere matter of time. Sooner or later she would put a
+leading question--her methods being bravely candid and direct. Of course,
+it was open to him to meet that question with blank denial, open to him
+to lie--as is the practice of the world when such damnably awkward
+situations come along.--A solution having, in the present case, the
+specious argument behind it that in so doing he would spare her, save her
+pain, in addition to the obvious one that he would save his own skin.
+Moreover, if he lied he could trust Damaris' loyalty. Whether she
+believed it or not, she would accept his answer as final. No further
+question upon the subject would ever pass her lips. The temptation was
+definite and great. For might not the lie, if he could stomach his
+disgust at telling it, even serve to prolong the life of the child?
+Should he not sell his honour to save his honour--if it came to that?
+
+Thus he debated, his nature battling with itself, while at that battle he
+stoically, for a time, looked on. But when, at last, the climax was
+reached, and Damaris commenced to speak, stoicism dragged anchor. For he
+could conquer neither his disgust nor his sorrow, could find courage
+neither for his denial nor for watching the child die. Leaving the foot
+of the bed, he went and sat down in the arm-chair, where the dimity
+curtain screened Damaris from his, and him from Damaris' sight.
+
+"Commissioner Sahib," she began, her voice grave and low, "it has come
+back to me--the thing I had to ask you, but it is very hard to say. If it
+makes you angry, please try to forgive me--because it does hurt me to ask
+you. It hurts me through and through. Only I can't speak of it. I
+oughtn't just to leave it. To leave it would be wrong--wrong by you."
+
+"Very well, my darling, ask me then," he said, a little hoarsely.
+
+"You have heard about my being out on the Bar and--and all that?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have heard."
+
+"Captain Faircloth, who found me and brought me home, told me something."
+
+Damaris' voice broke into tones of imploring tenderness.
+
+"I love you, Commissioner Sahib, you know how I love you--but--but is
+what Captain Faircloth told me true?"
+
+Whereupon temptation surged up anew, inviting, inciting Charles Verity
+to lie--dressing up that lie in the cloak of most excellent charity, of
+veritable duty towards Damaris' fine courage and her precious innocence.
+And he hedged, keeping open, if only for a few minutes longer, the way
+of escape.
+
+"How can I answer until I know what he did tell you?" he took her up, at
+last, almost coldly.
+
+"That he is your son--is my brother," Damaris said.
+
+Even at this pass, Charles Verity waited before finally committing
+himself, thereby unwittingly giving sentiment--in the shape of the
+Powers of the Air--the chance to take a rather unfairly extensive hand
+in the game.
+
+For while he thus waited, he could not but be aware, through the tense
+silence otherwise reigning in the room, of the tap and scratch of the
+rose-spray upon the window-panes; of the swish of the moist gusty wind
+sweeping from across the salt-marsh and mud-flats of the Haven--from the
+black cottages, too, beyond the warren, gathered, as somewhat sinister
+boon companions, about the bleak, grey stone-built Inn. And this served
+to transfix his consciousness with visions of what once had been--he
+knowing so exactly how it would all sound, all look out there, the
+wistful desolation, the penetrating appeal bred of the inherent sadness
+of the place on a wild autumn night such as this.
+
+"Yes," he said at last, and putting a great constraint upon himself he
+spoke calmly, without sign of emotion. "What the young man told is true,
+Damaris, perfectly true."
+
+"I--I thought so," she answered back, gravely. "Though I didn't
+understand"--And, after a moment's pause, with a certain hopelessness of
+resignation--"Though I don't understand even now."
+
+In her utterance Charles Verity so distinctly heard the last words of
+the--to him--dying child, that, smitten with raging bitterness of grief
+and of regret, he said:
+
+"Nevertheless it is, in my opinion, disgraceful, abominable, that he
+should have made the occasion, or, to put the matter at its best, have
+taken advantage of the occasion, when you were alone and, in a sense, at
+his mercy, to tell you this most unhappy thing."
+
+"No, no," Damaris cried, in her generous eagerness catching back the
+curtain and looking at him nobly unselfconscious, nobly zealous to defend
+and to set right. "You mustn't think that. He didn't start with any
+intention of telling me. He fancied I might have lost my way among the
+sand-hills, that I might be frightened or get some harm, and so came
+straight to look for me, and take care of me. He was very beautifully
+kind; and I felt beautifully safe with him--safe in the same way I feel
+safe with you, almost."
+
+Her mouth was soft, her eyes alight--dangerously alight now, for
+her pulse had quickened. As she pleaded and protested her
+temperature raced up.
+
+"It happened later," she went on, "when we were in the boat, and it was
+partly my fault. He wrapped my feet up in his coat. They were very cold.
+And he believed I was asleep because I didn't speak or thank him. I was
+so tired, and everything seemed so strange. I couldn't rouse myself
+somehow to speak. And as he wrapped them in his coat, he kissed my feet,
+thinking I shouldn't know. But I wasn't asleep, and it displeased me. I
+felt angry, just as you felt when you condemned him just now."
+
+"Ah! as I felt just now!" he commented, closing his eyes and, just
+perceptibly, bowing his head.
+
+"Yes, Commissioner Sahib, as you felt just now--but as, please you
+mustn't go on feeling.--What he had done seemed to me treacherous; and it
+pained as well as displeased me. But in all that I was unjust and
+mistaken.--And it was then, because he saw he'd pained me, displeased and
+made me angry, that he told me in self-defence--told me to show he wasn't
+treacherous, but had the right--a right no one else in all the world has
+over me except yourself."
+
+"And you believed this young man, you forgave his audacity, and admitted
+his right?" Sir Charles said.
+
+He leaned back in the angle of the chair, away from her, smiling as he
+spoke--a smile which both bade farewell and mocked at the sharpness and
+futility of the grief which that farewell brought with it. For this was a
+grown woman who pleaded with him surely, acting as advocate? A child,
+compelled to treat such controversial, such debatable matters at all,
+would have done so to a different rhythm, in a different spirit.
+
+"Forgave him? But after just the first, when, I had time to at all think
+of it," Damaris answered with rather desperate bravery, "I couldn't see
+there was anything for me to forgive. It was the other way about. For
+haven't I so much which he might very well feel belonged, or should have
+belonged, to him?"
+
+"You cut deep, my dear," Sir Charles said quietly.
+
+Still holding back the curtain with one hand, Damaris flung herself
+over upon her face. She would not give way, she would not cry, but her
+soul was in travail. These words, as coming from her father, were
+anguish to her. She could look at him no longer, and lying outstretched
+thus, the lines of her gracious body, moulded by the embroidered linen
+quilt, quivered from head to heel. Still that travail of soul should
+bring forth fruit. She would not give in, cost what anguish it might,
+till all was said.
+
+"I only want to do what is right," she cried, her voice half stifled by
+the pillows. "You know, surely you know, how I love you, Commissioner
+Sahib, from morning till night and round till morning again, always and
+above all, ever since I can first remember. But this is different to
+anything that has ever happened to me before, and it wouldn't be right
+not to speak about it. It would be there all the time, and it would
+creep in between us--between you and me--and interfere in all my
+thinking about you."
+
+"It may very well do that in any case, my dear," he said.
+
+"No--no," Damaris answered hotly, "not if I do right now--right by both.
+For you must not entertain wrong ideas about him--about Captain Faircloth
+I mean. You must not suppose he said a word about my having what might,
+or ought to be his. He couldn't do so. He isn't the least that sort of
+person. He took pains to make me understand--I couldn't think why at
+first, it seemed a little like boasting--that he is quite well off and
+that he's very proud of his profession. He doesn't want anything
+from--from us. Oh! no," she cried, "no."
+
+And, in her excitement, Damaris raised herself, from the small of her
+back, resting on her elbows, sphinx-like in posture, her hands and
+arms--from the elbows--stretched out in front of her across the pillows.
+Her face was flushed, her eyes blazed. There was storm and vehemence in
+her young beauty.
+
+"No--he's too much like you, you yourself, Commissioner Sahib, to want
+anything, to accept anything from other people. He means to act for
+himself, and make people and things obey him, just as you yourself do.
+And," she went on, with a daring surely not a little magnificent under
+the circumstances--"he told me he loved life too well to care very much
+how he came by it to begin with."
+
+Damaris folded her arms, let her head sink on them as she finished
+speaking, and lay flat thus, her face hidden, while she breathed short
+and raspingly, struggling to control the after violence of her emotion.
+
+The curtain hung straight. The wind took up its desolate chant again. And
+Sir Charles Verity sat back in the angle of the arm-chair, motionless,
+and, for the present, speechless.
+
+In truth he was greatly moved, stirred to the deep places of perception,
+and of conscience also. For this death of childhood and birth of
+womanhood undoubtedly presented a rare and telling spectacle, which, even
+while it rent him, in some aspects enraged and mortified him, he still
+appreciated. He found, indeed, a strangely vital, if somewhat cruel,
+satisfaction in looking on at it--a satisfaction fed, on its more humane
+and human side, by the testimony to the worth of the unknown son by the
+so well-beloved daughter. Respecting himself he might have cause for
+shame; but respecting these two beings for whose existence--whether born
+in wedlock or out of it--he was responsible, he had no cause for shame.
+In his first knowledge of them as seen together, they showed strong,
+generous, sure of purpose, a glamour of high romance in their
+adventitious meeting and companionship.
+
+This was the first, the unworldly and perhaps deepest view of the matter.
+In it Charles Verity allowed himself to rest, inactive for a space. That
+there were, not one, but many other views of the said matter, very
+differently attuned and coloured he was perfectly well aware. Soon these
+would leap on him, and that with an ugly clamour which he consciously
+turned from in repulsion and weary disgust. For he was very tired, as he
+now realized. The anxiety endured during his tedious cross-country
+journey, the distasteful tragic-comedy of the _scéne de séduction_ so
+artlessly made him by unlucky Theresa Bilsen, followed by this prolonged
+vigil; lastly the very real tragedy--for such it in great measure
+remained and must remain--of his interview with Damaris and the re-living
+of long buried drama that interview entailed, left him mentally and
+physically spent. He fell away into meditation, mournful as it was
+indefinite, while the classic lament of another age and race formed
+itself silently upon his lips.
+
+"_Comprehenderunt me iniquitates meae, et non potui ut viderem.
+Multiplicatae sunt super capillos capitis mei; et cor meum dereliquit
+me_," he quoted, in the plenitude of his existing discouragement.
+
+At his time of life, he told himself, earth held no future; and in
+heaven--as the Churches figure it--namely, an adjustment of the balance
+on the other side death, his belief was of the smallest. A sea of
+uncertainty, vast, limitless, laps the shores of the meagre island of the
+present--which is all we actually have to our count. Faith is a
+gift.--You possess it, or you possess it not; yet without it--
+
+But here his attention was caught, and brought home to that very present,
+by a movement upon the bed and Damaris' voice, asking tremulously:
+
+"Commissioner Sahib are you angry, too angry to speak to me?"
+
+Whereupon Charles Verity got up, gathered back the curtain stuffing it in
+between the head board and the wall, and stood, tall, spare, yet
+graceful, looking down at her. Whether from fatigue or from emotion, his
+expression was softer, his face less keen than usual, and the likeness
+between him and Darcy Faircloth proportionately and notably great.
+
+"No, my dear," he said, "why should I be angry? What conceivable right
+have I to be angry? As a man sows so does he reap. I only reap to-day
+what I sowed eight or nine-and-twenty years ago--a crop largely composed
+of tares, though among those tares I do find some modicum of wheat. Upon
+that modest provision of wheat I must make shift to subsist with the best
+grace I may. No, don't cry, my darling. It is useless. Tears never yet
+altered facts. You will only do yourself harm, and put a crown to my
+self-reproach."
+
+He sat down on the side of the bed, taking her hand, holding and
+coaxing it.
+
+"Only let there be no doubt or suspicion on your part, my dear," he went
+on. "As you have travelled so far along this dolorous way, take courage
+and travel a little farther. To stop, to turn back, is only to leave your
+mind open to all manner of imaginations worse very likely than the truth.
+I will be quite plain with you. This episode--which I do not attempt to
+explain or excuse--took place, and ended, several years before I first
+met your mother. And it ended absolutely. Never, by either written or
+spoken word, have I held any communication with Lesbia Faircloth since.
+Never have I attempted to see her--this in the interests of her
+reputation every bit as much as in those of my own. For her station in
+life she was a woman of remarkable qualities and character. She had made
+an ugly, a repulsive marriage, and she was childless.--More than this it
+is not seemly I should tell you."
+
+Charles Verity waited a minute or so. He still coaxed Damaris' hand,
+calmly, soothingly. And she lay very still watching him; but with
+half-closed eyes, striving to prevent the tears which asked so
+persistently to be shed. For her heart went out to him in a new and
+over-flowing tenderness, in an exalted pity almost maternal. Never had she
+felt him more attractive, more, in a sense, royally lovable than in this
+hour of weariness, of moral nakedness, and humiliation.
+
+"Not until I had rejoined my regiment in India," he presently continued,
+in the same low even tones, "did I hear of the birth of her son. I have
+never seen him--or made enquiries regarding him. I meant to let the
+dead bury its dead in this matter. For everyone concerned it seemed best
+and wisest so. Therefore all you have told me to-night comes as news to
+me--and in some respects as good news. For I gather I have no reason to
+be ashamed of this young man--which on your account, even more than on my
+own, is so much clear gain.--But I oughtn't to have brought you here to
+live at Deadham. I ought to have taken the possibility of some accidental
+revelation, such as the present one, into serious account and saved you
+from that. To expose you, however remotely, to the risk was both callous
+and stupid on my part. I own I have a strong sentiment for this house. It
+seemed natural and restful to return to it--the only house to call a
+home, I have ever had. And so much has happened during the last eight or
+nine-and-twenty years, to occupy my mind, that I had grown indifferent
+and had practically forgotten the risks. This was selfish,
+self-indulgent, lacking in consideration and reverence towards you,
+towards your peace of mind, your innocence.--And for it, my darling, I
+beg your forgiveness."
+
+Damaris sat up in the bed, raised her face to be kissed.
+
+"No--no," she implored him, "don't say that. I can't bear to have you say
+it--to have you speak as if you had been, could ever be anything but
+beautiful and perfect towards me. I can't have you, not even for a little
+minute, step down, from the high place, which is your own, and talk of
+forgiveness. It hurts me.--I begin to understand that your world, a man's
+world, is different to my world--the world, I mean, in which I have been
+brought up. I know what is right for myself--but it would be silly to
+believe mine is the only rightness"--
+
+"Ah!" Charles Verity murmured, under his breath, "alas! for the child
+that is dead."
+
+And leaning forward he kissed her lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+TELLING HOW MISS FELICIA VERITY UNSUCCESSFULLY ATTEMPTED A RESCUE
+
+
+With the assistance of the Miss Minetts, reinforced by a bribe of five
+shillings, Theresa Bilson procured a boy on a bicycle, early the
+following morning, to convey a note the twelve miles to Paulton Lacy--Mr.
+Augustus Cowden's fine Georgian mansion, situate just within the Southern
+boundaries of Arnewood Forest. Miss Felicia Verity, to whom the note was
+addressed, still enjoyed the hospitality of her sister and
+brother-in-law; but this, as Mrs. Cowden gave her roundly to understand,
+must not be taken to include erratic demands upon the stables. If she
+required unexpectedly to visit her brother or her niece at Deadham Hard,
+she must contrive to do so by train, and by such hired conveyances as the
+wayside station of Paulton Halt at this end of her journey, and of
+Marychurch at the other, might be equal to supplying.
+
+"In my opinion, Felicia, it is quite ridiculous you should attempt to go
+there at all to-day," Mrs. Cowden, giving over for the moment her study
+of the _Morning Post,_ commandingly told her. "If Damaris has got a cold
+in her head through some imprudence, and if Charles has called Miss
+Bilson over the coals for not being more strict with her, that really is
+no reason why Augustus' and my plans for the afternoon should be set
+aside or why you should be out in the rain for hours with your
+rheumatism. I shall not even mention the subject to Augustus. We arranged
+to drive over to Napworth for tea, and I never let anything interfere
+with my engagements to the Bulparcs as you know. I encourage Augustus to
+see as much as possible of his own people.--I have no doubt in my own
+mind that the account of Damaris' illness is absurdly exaggerated. You
+know how Charles spoils her! She has very much too much freedom; and
+little Miss Bilson, though well-meaning, is incapable of coping with a
+headstrong girl like Damaris. She ought--Damaris ought I mean--to have
+been sent to a finishing school for another year at least. She might then
+have found her level. If Charles had consulted me, or shown the least
+willingness to accept my advice, I should have insisted upon the
+finishing school. It would have been immensely to Damaris' advantage. I
+have known all along that the haphazard methods of her education were
+bound to have deplorable results.--But look here, Felicia, if you really
+intend to go on this wild-goose-chase notwithstanding the rain, let the
+boy who brought the note order Davis' fly for you on his way back. He
+passes Paulton Halt. I shall not expect you before dinner to-night. Now
+that is settled."
+
+With which she returned to her interrupted study of the _Morning Post_.
+
+The above pronouncement while rendering Felicia Verity somewhat uneasy,
+in nowise turned her from her purpose. Her powers of sympathy were as
+unlimited as they were confused and, too often, ineffective. Forever she
+ran after the tribulations of her fellow creatures, pouring forth on them
+treasures of eager sympathy, but without discrimination as to whether the
+said tribulations were in fact trivial or profound, deserving or
+deserved. That anyone under any circumstances, should suffer, be
+uncomfortable or unhappy, filled her with solicitude. The loss of an
+eyelash, the loss of a fortune, the loss of the hope of a lifetime
+equally ranked. Illness and disease appealed to her in hardly less degree
+than unfortunate affairs of the heart. She practised the detection of
+extenuating circumstances as one might practise a fine art. She wallowed
+in sentiment, in short; but that with such native good-breeding and
+singleness of mind, as went far to redeem the said wallowings from
+morbidity or other offence. Her friends and acquaintances loved her,
+quite unconscionably made use of her, secretly laughed at her, grew weary
+of her, declared that "of such are the Kingdom of Heaven;" and, having
+successfully exploited her, turned with relief to the society of persons
+frankly belonging to the kingdoms of earth. Men petted but did not
+propose to her; affected to confide in her, but carefully withheld the
+heart of their confessions. Tall, thin, gently hurried and bird-like, she
+yet bore a quaint, almost mirthful, resemblance to her brother, Sir
+Charles Verity. Such was the lady who responded, in a spirit of liveliest
+charity, to Theresa's wildly waved flag of distress.
+
+By the time Miss Verity reached Marychurch the rain amounted to a
+veritable downpour. Driven by the southwesterly wind, it swept in sheets
+over the low-lying country, the pallid waters, drab mud-flats, dingy
+grey-green salt-marsh, and rusty brown reed-beds of the estuary. The
+dusty road, running alongside this last through the hamlets of Horny
+Cross and Lampit, grew hourly deeper in gritty mud. Beyond question
+summer and all its dear delights were departed and the chill mournfulness
+of autumn reigned in their stead.
+
+With the surrounding mournfulness, Miss Verity's simple, yet devious,
+mind played not ungratefully. For it seemed to her to harmonize with the
+true inwardness of her mission, offering a sympathetic background to the
+news of her niece's indisposition and the signals of distress flown by
+her little _protégée_, Theresa Bilson. The note addressed to her by the
+latter was couched in mysterious and ambiguous phrases, the purport of
+which she failed to grasp. Theresa's handwriting, usually so neat and
+precise, was wobbly, bearing unmistakable traces of severe agitation and
+haste. She hinted at nothing short of catastrophe, though whether in
+relation to herself, to her ex-pupil, or to Sir Charles, Miss Verity
+couldn't for the life of her discover. It was clear in any case, however,
+that affairs at The Hard had, for cause unknown, gone quite startlingly
+astray, and that Theresa found herself entirely unequal to righting
+them--hence her outcry.
+
+Under these circumstances, it struck Miss Verity as only tasteful and
+tactful that her approach to the distracted dwelling should take place
+unheralded by rumble of wheels or beat of horse-hoofs, should be pitched
+in a, so to speak, strictly modest and minor key. On arriving at the
+front gate she therefore alighted and, bidding her grumpy and streaming
+flyman take himself and his frousty landau to the Bell and Horns in
+Deadham village there to await her further orders, proceeded to walk up
+the carriage-drive under the swaying, dripping trees.
+
+About fifty yards from the gate the drive turns sharply to the left; and,
+just at the turn, Miss Verity suddenly beheld a tall figure clad in a
+seaman's oilskins and sou'wester, coming towards her from the direction
+of the house. Youth and good looks--more especially perhaps masculine
+ones--whatever rank of life might exhibit them, acted as a sure passport
+to Miss Verity's gentle heart. And the youth and good looks of the man
+approaching her became momentarily more incontestable. His bearing, too,
+notwithstanding the clumsiness of his shiny black over-garment, had a
+slightly ruffling, gallantly insolent air to it, eminently calculated to
+impress her swift and indulgent fancy.
+
+The young man, on his part, calmly took stock of her appearance, as she
+beat up against the wind, her flapping waterproof cloak giving very
+inefficient protection to the rather girlish dove-grey cashmere dress,
+picked out with pink embroidery, beneath it. At first his eyes challenged
+hers in slightly defiant and amused enquiry. But as she smiled back at
+him, sweetly eager, ingenuously benignant, his glance softened and his
+hand went up to his sou'wester with a courteous gesture.
+
+"What weather!" she exclaimed. "How fearfully wet!"--while her expression
+testified to a flattering interest and admiration.
+
+"Yes, it's a wild day," he said, in answer. "I expect We've seen the last
+of the sun, anyhow for this week."
+
+The incident, though of the most casual and briefest, gave a new
+direction to Miss Verity's thought. It pleased and intrigued her,
+bringing a pretty blush to her thin cheeks. "Who and what can he be?" she
+said to herself. "Where can I have seen him before?" And the blush
+deepened. "I must really describe him to Charles and find out who he is."
+
+This monologue brought her as far as the front door, at which, it may be
+added, she--though by no means impatient--did in point of fact ring twice
+before the man-servant answered it. Although Mr. Hordle had the reputation
+of "being fond of his joke" in private life, in his official capacity his
+manner offered a model of middle-aged sedateness and restraint. To-day
+neither humour nor reserve were in evidence, but a harassed and hunted
+look altogether surprising to Miss Verity. He stared at her, stared past
+her along the drive, before attempting to usher her into the hall and
+relieve her of her umbrella and her cloak.
+
+"Sir Charles doesn't expect me, Hordle," she said. "But hearing Miss
+Damaris was unwell I came over from Paulton Lacy at once."
+
+"Quite so, ma'am. Sir Charles has not left his room yet. He did not reach
+home till late, and he sat up with Miss Damaris the rest of the night."
+
+"Oh! dear--did he? Then, of course, I wouldn't disturb him on any
+account, Hordle. I had better see Miss Bilson first. Will you tell her
+I am here?"
+
+"I can send Laura to enquire, ma'am. But, I doubt if Miss Bilson, will
+care to come downstairs at present."
+
+"She is with Miss Damaris?"
+
+"No, ma'am, Miss Bilson is not with Miss Damaris."
+
+Hordle paused impressively, sucking in his under lip.
+
+"If I might presume to advise, ma'am, I think it would be wise you should
+see Miss Bilson in the schoolroom--and go up by the back staircase,
+ma'am, if you don't object so as to avoid passing Miss Damaris' bedroom
+door. I should not presume to suggest it, ma'am, but that our orders as
+to quiet are very strict."
+
+In this somewhat ignominious method of reaching her objective Miss
+Verity, although more and more mystified, amiably acquiesced--to be
+greeted, when Hordle throwing open the schoolroom door formally announced
+her, by a sound closely resembling a shriek.
+
+Entrenched behind a couple of yawning trunks, a litter of feminine
+apparel and of personal effects--the accumulation of a long term of
+years, for she was an inveterate hoarder--encumbering every available
+surface, the carpet included, Theresa Bilson stood as at bay.
+
+"My dear friend," Miss Verity exclaimed advancing with kindly
+outstretched hands--"what is the meaning of this?"--She looked at the
+miscellaneous turn-out of cupboards and chests of drawers, at the display
+of garments not usually submitted to the public gaze. "Are you preparing
+a rummage sale or are you--but no, surely not!--are you packing? I cannot
+describe how anxious I am to hear what has occurred. My sister, Mrs.
+Cowden, was extremely adverse to my facing the bad weather; but, I felt
+your note could only be answered in person. Let me hear everything."
+
+She drew Theresa from behind the luggage entrenchments, and, putting
+aside an assortment of derelict hats and artificial flowers strewn in
+most admired confusion on the sofa, made her sit down upon the said piece
+of furniture beside her.
+
+Whereupon, in the pensive, rain-washed, mid-day light, which served to
+heighten rather than mitigate the prevailing, very unattractive and
+rather stuffy disorder obtaining in the room, Theresa Bilson, not without
+chokings and lamentations, gave forth the story of her--to herself quite
+spectacular--deposition from the command of The Hard and its household.
+She had sufficiently recovered her normal attitude, by this time, to pose
+to herself, now as a heroine of one of Charlotte Bronte's novels, now as
+a milder and more refined sample of injured innocence culled from the
+pages of Charlotte Yonge. A narrow, purely personal view inevitably
+embodies an order of logic calculated to carry conviction; and Theresa,
+even in defeat, retained a degree of self-opinionated astuteness. She
+presented her case effectively. To be discharged, and that in disgrace,
+to be rendered homeless, cast upon the world at a moment's notice, for
+that which--with but trifling, almost unconscious, manipulation of
+fact--could be made to appear as nothing worse than a venial error of
+judgment, did really sound and seem most unduly drastic punishment.
+
+Miss Verity's first instinct was to fling herself into the breech; and,
+directly her brother emerged from his room, demand for her _protégée_
+redress and reinstatement. Her second instinct was--she didn't, in truth,
+quite know what--for she grew sadly perplexed as she listened.
+
+Her sympathy, in fact, split into three inconveniently distinct and
+separate streams. Of these Theresa's woes still claimed the widest and
+deepest, since with Theresa she was in immediate and intimate contact.
+Yet the other two began to show a quite respectable volume and current,
+as she pictured Damaris marooned on the Bar and Sir Charles ravished away
+from the seasonable obligation of partridge shooting to take his place at
+his daughter's bedside.
+
+"But this young Captain Faircloth, of whom you speak," she presently
+said, her mind taking one of its many inconsequent skippits--"who so
+providentially came to the dearest child's assistance--could he, I
+wonder, be the same really very interesting-looking young man I met in
+the drive, just now, when I came here?"
+
+And Miss Verity described him, while a pretty stain of colour illuminated
+her cheek once more.
+
+"You think quite possibly yes?--How I wish I had known that at the time.
+I would certainly have stopped and expressed my gratitude to him. Such a
+mercy he was at hand!--Poor dearest Damaris! I hope his good offices
+have already been acknowledged. Do you know if my brother has seen and
+thanked him?"
+
+The expression of Theresa's round little face, still puffy and blotched
+from her last night's weeping, held a world of reproachful remindings.
+
+"Ah! no," the other cried conscience-stricken--"no, of course not. How
+thoughtless of me to ask you. And"--another mental skippit--"and that you
+should be forbidden the sick-room too, not permitted to nurse Damaris! My
+poor friend, indeed I do feel for you. I so well understand that must
+have caused you more pain than anything."
+
+A remark her hearer found it not altogether easy to counter with
+advantage to her own cause, so wisely let it pass in silence.
+
+"I know--I know, you can hardly trust yourself to speak of it. I am so
+grieved--so very grieved. But one must be practical. I think you are wise
+to yield without further protest. I will sound my brother--just find out
+if he shows any signs of relenting. Of course, you can understand, I
+ought to hear his view of the matter too--not, that I question your
+account, dear friend, for one instant. Meanwhile make all your
+arrangements."
+
+"The village!"--Theresa put in, with a note of despair this time
+perfectly genuine.
+
+"Ah, yes--the village. But if I take you away, in my fly I mean, that
+will give you a position, a standing. It will go far to prevent
+unpleasant gossip!"
+
+Miss Verity's soul looked out of her candid eyes with a positive
+effulgence of charity.
+
+"Oh! I can enter so fully into your shrinking from all that. We will
+treat your going as temporary, merely temporary--in speaking of it both
+here and at Paulton Lacy. Of course, you might stay with your friends,
+the good Miss Minetts; but I can't honestly counsel your doing so. I am
+afraid Sir Charles might not quite like your remaining in Deadham
+directly after leaving his house. It might be awkward, and give rise to
+tiresome enquiries and comment. One has to consider those things.--No--I
+think it would be a far better plan that you should spend a week at
+Stourmouth. That would give us time to see our way more clearly. I know
+of some quite nice rooms kept by a former maid of Lady Bulparc's. You
+would be quite comfortable there--and, as dinner at Paulton Lacy isn't
+till eight, I could quite well go into Stourmouth with you myself this
+afternoon. And, my dear friend, you will, won't you, forgive my speaking
+of this"--
+
+Miss Verity--whose income, be it added, was anything but princely--gave
+an engagingly apologetic little laugh.
+
+"Pray don't worry yourself on the score of expense. The week in
+Stourmouth must cost you nothing. As I recommend the rooms I naturally am
+responsible--you go to them as my guest, of course.--Still I'll sound my
+brother at luncheon, and just see how the land lies. But don't build too
+much on any change of front. I don't expect it--not yet. Later, who knows
+Meanwhile courage--do try not to fret."
+
+And Miss Verity descended the backstairs again.
+
+"Poor creature--now her mind will be more at rest, I do trust. I am
+afraid Charles has been rather severe. I never think he does quite
+understand women. But how should he after only being married for
+three--or four years, was it?--Such a very limited experience!--It is a
+pity he didn't marry again, while Damaris was still quite small--some
+really nice woman who one knows about. But I suppose Charles has never
+cared about that side of things. His public work has absorbed him. I
+doubt if he has ever really been in love"--Miss Verity sighed.--"Yes,
+Hordle, thanks I'll wait in the long sitting-room. Please let Sir Charles
+know I am there, that I came over to enquire for Miss Damaris. He is
+getting up?--Yes--I shall be here to luncheon, thanks."
+
+But, during the course of luncheon, that afore-mentioned split in Miss
+Verity's sympathies was fated to declare itself with ever growing
+distinctness. The stream consecrated to Theresa's woes--Theresa herself
+being no longer materially present--declined in volume and in force,
+while that commanded by Felicia's affection for her brother soon rushed
+down in spate. Perhaps, as she told herself, it was partly owing to the
+light--which, if pensive upstairs in the white-walled schoolroom, might,
+without exaggeration, be called quite dismally gloomy in the
+low-ceilinged dining-room looking out on the black mass of the ilex
+trees over a havoc of storm-beaten flower-beds--but Sir Charles struck
+her as so worn, so aged, so singularly and pathetically sad. He was
+still so evidently oppressed by anxiety concerning Damaris that, to hint
+at harsh action on his part, or plead Theresa's cause with convincing
+earnestness and warmth, became out of the question. Miss Verity hadn't
+the heart for it.
+
+"Be true to your profession of good Samaritan, my dear Felicia," he
+begged her with a certain rueful humour, "and take the poor foolish
+woman off my hands. Plant her where you like, so long as it is well out
+of my neighbourhood. She has made an egregious fiasco of her position
+here. As you love me, just remove her from my sight--let this land have
+rest and enjoy its Sabbaths in respect of her at least. I'll give you a
+cheque for her salary, something in excess of the actual amount if you
+like; for, heaven forbid, you should be out of pocket yourself as a
+consequence of your good offices.--Now let us, please, talk of some less
+unprofitable subject."
+
+Brightly, sweetly eager, Miss Verity hastened to obey, as she believed,
+his concluding request.
+
+"Ah! yes," she said, "that reminds me of something about which I do so
+want you to enlighten me.--This young Captain Faircloth, who so
+opportunely appeared on the scene and rescued darling Damaris, I believe
+I met him this morning, as I walked up from the front gate. I wondered
+who he was. His appearance interested me, so did his voice. It struck me
+as being so quaintly like some voice I know quite well--and I stupidly
+cannot remember whose."
+
+The coffee-cups chattered upon the silver tray as Hordle handed it to
+Miss Verity.
+
+"You spoke to him then?" Sir Charles presently said.
+
+"Oh! just in passing, you know, about the weather--which was phenomenally
+bad, raining and blowing too wildly at the moment. I supposed you had
+seen him. He seemed to be coming away from the house."
+
+Charles Verity turned sideways to the table, bending down a little over
+the tray as he helped him. The coffee splashed over into the saucer; yet
+it was not the hand holding the coffee-pot, but those holding the tray
+that shook. Whereupon Charles Verity glanced up into the manservant's
+face, calmly arrogant.
+
+"Pray be careful, Hordle," he said. And then--"Is Miss Verity right in
+supposing Captain Faircloth called here this morning?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir Charles. Yes, Sir Charles, he did."
+
+"What did he want?"
+
+"He came to enquire after Miss Damaris, Sir Charles. I understood him to
+say he was going away to sea shortly."
+
+"Did he ask for me?"
+
+"No, Sir Charles," rather hurriedly; and later, with visible effort to
+recapture the perfection of well-trained nullity.--"He only asked after
+Miss Damaris."
+
+"When he calls again, let me know. Miss Damaris wishes to see him if she
+is sufficiently well to do so."
+
+"Very good, Sir Charles."
+
+And during this conversation, Felicia felt keenly distressed and
+perplexed. It made her miserable to think evil of anyone--particularly an
+old and trusted servant. But from the moment of her arrival Hordle's
+manner had seemed so very strange. Of course it was horrid even to
+suspect such a thing; but was it possible that he over-indulged
+sometimes, that he, in plain English, drank? Poor dear Charles--if he
+knew it, what an additional worry! It really was too deplorable.--Anyway
+she could alleviate his worries to a certain extent by carrying Theresa
+off. She would do so at once.--Was there an evening train from
+Stourmouth, which stopped at Paulton Halt? Well--if there wasn't she must
+get out at Marychurch, and drive from there. She only trusted she would
+be in time to dress for dinner. Harriet was such a stickler for
+etiquette.
+
+From all which it may be deduced that the confessions, made to Miss
+Verity to-day, had this in common with those habitually heard by
+her--that the point of the story had been rather carefully left out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+IN WHICH DAMARIS RECEIVES INFORMATION OF THE LOST SHOES AND
+STOCKINGS--ASSUMPTION OF THE GOD-HEAD
+
+
+As Darcy Faircloth prophesied, the wild weather lasted throughout that
+week. Then, the rain having rained itself out, the wind backed and the
+skies cleared. But all to a different mode and rhythm. A cold white sun
+shone out of a cold blue sky, diapered, to the north above the indigo and
+umber moorland and forest, with perspectives of tenuous silken-white
+cloud. Land and sky were alike washed clean, to a starkness and nakedness
+calling for warm clothing out of doors, and well-stoked fires within.
+
+At the beginning of the next week, invited by that thin glinting
+sunshine--beneath which the sea still ran high, in long, hollow-backed
+waves, brokenly foam-capped and swirling--Damaris came forth from her
+retreat, sufficiently convalescent to take up the ordinary routine of
+life again. But this, also, to a changed mode and rhythm, having its
+source in causes more recondite and subtle than any matter of fair or
+foul weather.
+
+To begin with she had, in the past week, crossed a certain bridge there
+is no going back over for whoso, of her sex, is handicapped or
+favoured--in mid-nineteenth century the handicap rather than the favour
+counted even more heavily than it does to-day, though even to-day, as
+some of us know to our cost, it still counts not a little!--by possession
+of rarer intelligence, more lively moral and spiritual perceptions, than
+those possessed by the great average of her countrymen or countrywomen.
+Damaris' crossing of that bridge--to carry on the figure--affected her
+thought of, and relation to everyone and everything with which she now
+came in contact. She had crossed other bridges on her eighteen years'
+journey from infancy upwards; but, compared with this last, they had been
+but airy fantastic structures, fashioned of hardly more substantial stuff
+than dreams are made of.--Thus, anyhow, it appeared to her as she lay
+resting in her pink-and-white curtained bed, watching the loose
+rose-sprays tremble against the rain-spattered window-panes.--For this
+last bridge was built of the living stones of fact, of deeds actually
+done; and, just because it was so built, for one of her perceptions and
+temperament, no recrossing of it could be possible.
+
+So much to begin with.--To go on with, even before Dr. McCabe granted her
+permission to emerge from retirement, all manner of practical matters
+claimed her attention; and that not unwholesomely, as it proved in the
+sequel. For with the incontinent vanishing of Theresa Bilson into space,
+or,--more accurately--into the very comfortable lodgings provided for her
+by Miss Verity in Stourmouth, the mantle of the ex-governess-companion's
+domestic responsibilities automatically descended upon her ex-pupil. The
+said vanishing was reported to Damaris by Mary, on the day subsequent to
+its occurrence, not without signs of hardly repressed jubilation. For
+"Egypt," in this case represented by the Deadham Hard servants' hall, was
+unfeignedly "glad at her departing."
+
+"A good riddance, I call it--and we all know the rest of that saying,"
+Mrs. Cooper remarked to an audience of Hordle and Mary Fisher, reinforced
+by the Napoleonic Patch and his wife--who happened to have looked in from
+the stables after supper--some freedom of speech being permissible,
+thanks to the under-servants' relegation to the kitchen.
+
+"I never could see she was any class myself. But the airs and graces
+she'd give herself! You'll never persuade me she wasn't sweet on the
+master. That was at the back of all her dressings up, and flouncings and
+fidgetings. The impidence of it!--You may well say so, Mrs. Patch. But
+the conceit of some people passes understanding. To be Lady Verity, if
+you please, that was what she was after. To my dying day I shall believe
+it. Don't tell me!"
+
+Mary's announcement of the event was couched in sober terms, shorn of
+such fine flowers of suggestion and comment. Yet it breathed an
+unmistakable satisfaction, which, to Damaris' contrition, found instant
+echo in her own heart. She ought, she knew, to feel distressed at poor
+Theresa's vanishing--only she didn't and couldn't. As an inherent
+consequence of the afore-chronicled bridge-crossing, Theresa was more
+than ever out of the picture. To listen to her chatterings, to evade her
+questionings would, under existing circumstances, amount to a daily trial
+from which the young girl felt thankful to escape. For Damaris
+entertained a conviction the circumstances in question would call for
+fortitude and resource of an order unknown, alike in their sternness and
+their liberality of idea, to Theresa's narrowly High Anglican and
+academic standards of thought and conduct. She therefore ascertained from
+her informant that Miss Verity had been as actively instrumental in the
+vanishing--had, to be explicit, taken "Miss Bilson, and all her luggage
+(such a collection!) except two disgraceful old tin boxes which were to
+be forwarded by the carrier, away with her in her own Marychurch
+fly."--And at this Damaris left the business willingly enough, secure
+that if tender-hearted Aunt Felicia was party to the removal, it would
+very surely be effected with due regard to appearances and as slight
+damage to "feelings" as could well be.
+
+Later Sir Charles referred briefly to the subject, adding:
+
+"When you require another lady-in-waiting we will choose her ourselves, I
+think, rather than accept a nominee of my sister Felicia's. She is
+certain to have some more or less unsuitable and incapable person on
+hand, upon whom she ardently desires to confer benefits."
+
+"But must I have another lady-in-waiting?" Damaris meaningly and
+pleadingly asked.
+
+Charles Verity drew his hand down slowly over his flowing moustache, and
+smiled at her in tender amusement, as she sat up in a much lace and
+ribbon befrilled jacket, her hair hanging down in a heavy plait on
+either side the white column of her warmly white throat. Her face was
+refined to a transparency of colouring, even as it seemed of texture,
+from confinement to the house and from lassitude following upon fever,
+which, while he recognized its loveliness, caused him a pretty sharp
+pang. Still she looked content, as he told himself. Her glance was frank
+and calm, without suggestion of lurking anxiety.
+
+Nor was she unoccupied and brooding--witness the counterpane strewn with
+books, with balls of wool, a sock in leisurely process of knitting, and,
+in a hollow of it, Mustapha, the brindled cat, luxuriously sleeping
+curled round against her feet.
+
+"Heaven knows I've no special craving your lady-in-waiting should find a
+speedy successor," he said. "But to do without one altogether might
+appear a rather daring experiment. Your aunts would be loud in protest."
+
+"What matters isn't the aunts, is it, but ourselves?" Damaris quite gaily
+took him up.
+
+"But wouldn't you be lonely, my dear, and would you not find it
+burdensome to run the house yourself?"
+
+"No--no," she cried. "Not one bit. Anyway let me try, Commissioner
+Sahib. Let us be by ourselves together--beautifully by ourselves, for a
+time at least."
+
+"So be it then," Charles Verity said.
+
+And perhaps, although hardly acknowledged, in the mind of each the same
+consideration operated. For there remained a thing still to be done
+before the new order could be reckoned as fully initiated, still more
+fully established,--a thing which, as each knew, could be best done
+without witnesses; a thing which both intended should very surely be
+done, yet concerning which neither proposed to speak until the hour of
+accomplishment actually struck.
+
+That hour, in point of fact, struck sooner than Damaris anticipated, the
+sound and sight of it reaching her without prelude or opportunity of
+preparation. For early in the afternoon of the second day she spent
+downstairs, as, sitting at the writing table in the long drawing-room,
+she raised her eyes from contemplation of the house-keeping books spread
+out before her, she saw her father walking slowly up from the sea-wall
+across the lawn. And seeing him, for the moment, her mind carried back to
+that miracle of interchangeable personalities so distressingly haunting
+her at the beginning of her illness, when James Colthurst's charcoal
+sketch of her father played cruel juggler's tricks upon her. For beside
+him now walked a man so strangely resembling him in height, in bearing
+and in build that, but for the difference of clothing and the bearded
+face, it might be himself had the clock of his life been set back by
+thirty years.
+
+Damaris' first instinct was of flight. Just as when, out on the Bar with
+her cousin, Tom Verity, now nearly a month ago, overcome by a foreboding
+of far-reaching danger she had--to the subsequent bitter wounding of her
+self-respect and pride--shown the white feather, ignominiously turned
+tail and run away, was she tempted to run away now.
+
+For it seemed too much. It came too close, laying rough hands not only
+upon the deepest of her love and reverence for her father, but upon that
+still mysterious depth of her own nature, namely her apprehension of
+passion and of sex. A sacred shame, an awe as at the commission of some
+covert act of impiety, overcame her as she looked at the two men walking,
+side by side, across the moist vividly green carpet of turf in the chill
+white sunshine, the plain of an uneasy grey sea behind them. She wanted
+to hide herself, to close eyes and ears against further knowledge.
+Yes--it came too close; and at the same time made her feel, as never
+before, isolated and desolate--as though a great gulf yawned between her
+and what she had always counted pre-eminently her own, most securely her
+property because most beloved.
+
+She had spoken valiantly on Faircloth's behalf, had generously acted as
+his advocate; yet now, beholding him thus in open converse with her
+father, the wings of love were scorched by the flame of jealousy--not so
+much of the young man himself, as of a past which he stood for and in
+which she had no part. Therefore to run--yes, run and hide from further
+knowledge, further experience and revelation, to claim the privileges,
+since she was called on to endure the smart, of isolation.--Yet to run,
+as she almost directly began to reason, was not only cowardly but
+useless. Fact remains fact, and if she refused to accept it, range
+herself in line with it to-day, she in nowise negatived but merely
+postponed the event. If not to-day, then to-morrow she was bound to empty
+the cup. And she laughed at the specious half-truth which had appeared so
+splendid and exhilarating a discovery--the half-truth that nothing is
+really inevitable unless you yourself will it to be so. For this was
+inevitable, sooner or later unescapable, fight against it, fly from it as
+she might.
+
+Therefore she must stay, whether she liked it or not--stay, because to do
+otherwise was purposeless, because she couldn't help herself, because
+there was nowhere to run to, in short--
+
+She heard footsteps upon the flags outside the garden door, speech, calm
+and restrained, of which she could not distinguish the import.
+Mechanically Damaris gathered the scattered house-keeping books lying
+before her upon the table--baker's, butcher's, grocer's, corn-chandler's,
+coal-merchant's--into a tight little heap; and, folding her hands on the
+top of them, prayed simply, almost wordlessly, for courage to hold the
+balance even, to seek not her own good but the good of those two others,
+to do right. Then she waited.
+
+The door opened, closed, and, after a minute's pause, one of the two
+men--Damaris did not know which, she could not bring herself to
+look--coming from between the stumpy pillars walked towards her down the
+half-length of the room; and bent over her, resting one hand on the back
+of her chair, the other on the leather inlay of the writing-table just
+beside the little pile of house-books.
+
+The hand was young, sunburnt, well-shaped, the finger nails well kept.
+Across the back of it a small-bodied, wide-winged sea-bird, in apparent
+act of flight, and the letters D.V.F. were tattooed in blue and crimson.
+A gold bangle, the surface of it dented in places and engraved with
+Japanese characters, encircled the fine lean wrist. These Damaris saw,
+and they worked upon her strangely, awakening an emotion of almost
+painful tenderness, as at sight of decorations pathetically fond,
+playfully child-like and ingenuous. While, as he bent over her, she also
+became aware of a freshness, a salt sweetness as of the ocean and the
+great vacant spaces where all the winds of the world blow keen and free.
+
+"Sir Charles wrote to me," Faircloth said a little huskily. "He told me I
+might come and see you again and talk to you, and bid you good-bye before
+I go to sea. And I should have been here sooner, but that I was away at
+Southampton Docks, and the letter only reached me this morning. I
+telegraphed and started on at once. And he--Sir Charles--walked out over
+the warren to meet me, and brought me up here right to the door. And on
+the way we talked a little,--if he chose he could make the very stones
+speak, I think--and he said one or two things for which--I--well--I thank
+first Almighty God, and next to God, you--Damaris"--
+
+This last imperatively.
+
+"You did ask for me? You did wish to have me come to you?"
+
+"Yes, I did wish it," she answered. "But I never knew how much until now,
+when he has brought you. For that is the right, the beautiful, safe way
+of having you come to me and to this house."
+
+Yet, as she spoke, she lightly laid her hand over the tattooed image of
+the flying sea-bird, concealing it, for it moved her to the point of
+active suffering in its quaint prettiness fixed thus indelibly up in the
+warm live flesh.
+
+At the touch of her hand Faircloth drew in his breath sharply, seeming to
+wince. Then, at last, Damaris looked up at him, her eyes full of
+questioning and startled concern.
+
+"I didn't hurt you?" she asked, a vague idea of suffering, attached to
+that fanciful stigmata, troubling her.
+
+"Hurt me--good Lord, how could you, of all people, hurt me?" he gently
+laughed at her. "Unless you turned me down, gave me to understand that,
+on second thoughts, you didn't find me up to your requirements or some
+mean class devilry of that kind--of which, by the way, had I judged you
+capable, you may be sure I should have been uncommonly careful never to
+come near you again.--No, it isn't that you hurt me; but that you delight
+me a little overmuch, so that it isn't easy to keep quite level-headed.
+There's so much to hear and to tell, and such scanty time to hear or tell
+it in, worse luck."
+
+"You are obliged to go so soon?"
+
+The flames of jealousy had effectually, it may be noted, died down
+in Damaris.
+
+"Yes--we're taking on cargo for all we're worth. We are booked to sail
+by noon the day after to-morrow. I stretched a point in leaving at all,
+which won't put me in the best odour with my officers and crew,
+or--supposing they come to hear of it--with my owners either. I am
+giving my plain duty the slip; but, in this singular ease, it seemed to
+me, a greater duty stood back of and outweighed the plain obvious
+one--since it mounted to a reconstruction, a peace-making, ridding the
+souls of four persons of an ugly burden. I wanted the affair all
+settled up and straightened out before this, my maiden voyage, in
+command of a ship of my own. For me it is a great event, a great step
+forward. And, perhaps I'm over-superstitious--most men of my trade are
+supposed to be touched that way--but I admit I rather cling to the
+notion of this private peace-making, this straightening out of an
+ancient crookedness, as a thing of good augury, a favourable omen. As
+such--let alone other reasons"--and he looked down at Damaris with a
+fine and delicate admiration--"I desired it and, out of my heart, I
+prize it.--Do you see?"
+
+"Yes--indeed a thing of good augury"--she affirmed.
+
+Yet in speaking her lips shook. For, in truth, poor child, she was
+hard-pressed. This intimate intercourse, alike in its simple directness
+and its novelty, began to wear on her to the point of physical distress.
+She felt tremulous and faint. Not that Faircloth jarred upon or was
+distasteful to her. Far from that. His youth and health, the unspoiled
+vigour and force of him, captivated her imagination. Even the dash of
+roughness, the lapses from conventional forms of speech and manner she
+now and again observed in him, caught her fancy, heightening his
+attraction for her. Nor was she any longer tormented by a sense of
+isolation. For, as she recognized, he stole nothing away which heretofore
+belonged to her. Rather did he add his own by no means inconsiderable
+self to the sum of her possessions.--And in that last fact she probably
+touched the real crux, the real strain, of the present, to her
+disintegrating, situation. For in him, and in his relation to her, a
+wonderful and very precious gift was bestowed upon her, namely another
+human life to love and live for.--Bestowed on her, moreover, without
+asking or choice of her own, arbitrarily, through the claim of his and
+her common ancestry and the profound moral and spiritual obligations, the
+mysterious affinities, which a common ancestry creates.
+
+Had she possessed this gift from childhood, had it taken its natural
+place in her experience through the linked and orderly progress of the
+years, it would have been wholly welcome, wholly profitable and sweet.
+But it was sprung upon her from the outside, quite astoundingly
+ready-made. It bore down on her, and at a double, foot, horse, and siege
+guns complete. Small discredit to her if she staggered under its onset,
+trembled and turned faint! For as she now perceived, it was exactly this
+relation of brother and sister of which she had some prescience, some dim
+intuition, from her first sight of Faircloth as he stood among the
+skeleton lobster-pots on board Timothy Proud's old boat. It was this call
+of a common blood which begot in her unreasoning panic, which she had run
+from and so wildly tried to escape. And yet it remained a gift of great
+price, a crown of gold; but oh! so very heavy--just at this moment
+anyhow--for her poor proud young head.
+
+Lifting her hand off Faircloth's, she made a motion to rise. Change of
+attitude and place might bring her relief, serve to steady her nerves and
+restore her endangered composure! Brooding over the whole singular matter
+in the peace and security of her room upstairs, her course had appeared a
+comparatively easy one, granted reasonable courage and address. But the
+young man's bodily presence, as now close beside her, exercised an
+emotional influence quite unforeseen and unreckoned with. Under it her
+will wavered. She ceased to see her way clearly, to be sure of herself.
+She grew timid, bewildered, unready both of purpose and of speech.
+
+Faircloth, meanwhile, being closely observant of her, was quick to
+detect her agitation. He drew aside her chair, and backed away, leaving
+her free to pass.
+
+"I am afraid we have talked too long," he said. "You're tired. I ought to
+have been more careful of you, remembered how ill you have been--and that
+partly through my doing too. So now, I had better bid you good-bye, I
+think, and leave you to rest."
+
+But Damaris, contriving to smile tremulous lips notwithstanding, shook
+her head. For, in lifting her hand from his, she caught sight of the
+tattooed blue-and-crimson sea-bird and the initials below it. And again
+her heart contracted with a spasm of tenderness; while those three
+letters, more fully arresting her attention, aroused in her a fascinated,
+half-shrinking curiosity. What did they mean? What could they stand for?
+She longed intensely to know--sure they were in some sort a symbol, a
+token, not without special significance for herself. But shyness and a
+quaint disposition, dating from her childhood, to pause and hover on the
+threshold of discovery, thus prolonging a period of entrancing,
+distracting suspense, withheld her. She dared not ask--in any case dared
+not ask just yet; and therefore took up his words in their literal
+application.
+
+"Indeed, you haven't talked too long," she assured him, as she went over
+to the tiger skin before the fire-place, and standing there looked down
+into the core of the burning logs. "We have only just begun to talk, so
+it isn't that which has tried me. But--if you won't misunderstand--pray
+don't--the thought of--of you, and of all that which lies between us, is
+still very new to me. I haven't quite found you, or myself in my relation
+to you, yet. Give me time, and indeed, I won't disappoint you."
+
+Faircloth, who had followed her, put his elbows on the mantelshelf, and
+sinking his head somewhat between his shoulders, stared down at the
+burning logs too.
+
+"Ah! when you take that tone, I'm a little scared lest I should turn out
+to be the disappointment, the failure, in this high adventure of ours,"
+he said under his breath.
+
+"So stay, please," the young girl went on, touched by, yet ignoring, his
+interjected comment. "Let me get as accustomed as I can now, so that I
+may feel settled. That is the way to prevent my being tired--the way to
+rest me, because it will help to get all my thinkings about you into
+place.--Yes, please stay.--That is," she added with a pretty touch of
+ceremony--"if you have time, and don't yourself wish to go."
+
+"I wish it! What, in heaven's name, could well be further from any wish
+of mine?" Faircloth broke out almost roughly, without raising his eyes.
+"Do you suppose when a man's gone thirsty many days, he is in haste to
+forego the first draught of pure water offered to him--and that after
+just putting his lips to the dear comfort of it?"
+
+"Ah! you care too much," Damaris cried, smitten by swift shrinking
+and dread.
+
+Faircloth lifted his head and looked at her, his face keen, brilliant
+with a far from ignoble emotion.
+
+"It is not, and never will be possible--so I fancy"--he said, "to care
+too much about you."
+
+And he fell into contemplation of the glowing logs again.
+
+But Damaris, seeing his transfigured countenance, hearing his rejoinder,
+penetrated, moreover, by the conviction of his entire sincerity, felt the
+weight of a certain golden crown more than ever heavy upon her devoted
+young head. She stepped aside, groping with outstretched hands behind her
+until she found and held on to the arm of the big sofa stationed at
+right angles to the hearth. And she waited, morally taking breath, to
+slip presently on to the wide low seat of it and lean thankfully against
+its solidly cushioned back for support.
+
+"Neither for you, or for my ship"--Faircloth went on, speaking, as it
+seemed, more to himself than to his now pale companion. "I dare couple
+you and her together, though she is no longer in the dew of her youth.
+Oh! I can't defend her looks, poor dear. She has seen service. Is only a
+battered, travel-weary old couple-of-thousand-ton cargo boat, which has
+hugged and nuzzled the foul-smelling quays of half the seaports of
+southern Europe and Asia. All the same--next to you--she's the best and
+finest thing life, up to now, has brought me, and I love her.--My
+affection for her, though," he went on, "is safe to be transitory. She is
+safe to have rivals and successors in plenty--unless, of course, by some
+ugly turn of luck, she and I go to the bottom in company."
+
+Faircloth broke off. A little sound, a little gesture of protest and
+distress, making him straighten himself up and turn quickly, his eyes
+alight with enquiry and laughter.
+
+"May I take that to mean I'm not quite alone in my caring," he asked;
+"but that you, Damaris, care, perhaps, just a trifling amount too?"
+
+He went across to the sofa, sat down sideways, laying his right arm along
+the back of it, and placing his left hand--inscribed with the fanciful
+device--over the girl's two hands clasped in her lap. The strong, lean
+fingers exercised a quiet, steady pressure, for a minute. After which he
+leaned back, no longer attempting to touch her, studiously indeed keeping
+his distance, while he said:
+
+"The other affection is stable for ever--safe from all rivals or
+successors. That is another reason why I jumped at the chance Sir
+Charles's letter gave me of coming here to-day, and seeing you, with this
+room--as I hoped--in which so much of your time must be spent, for
+background. I wanted to stamp a picture of you upon my memory, burn it
+right into the very tissue of my brain, so that I shall always have it
+with me, wherever I go, and however rarely we meet.--Because, as I see
+it, we shall rarely meet. We ought to be clear on that point--leave no
+frayed edges. There is a bar between us, which for the sake of others, as
+well as for your sake, it is only right and decent I should respect, a
+wall of partition through which I shouldn't attempt to break."
+
+"I know--but it troubles me," Damaris murmured. "It is sad."
+
+"Yes, of course, it is sad. But it's just the penalty that is bound to be
+paid, and which it is useless to ignore or lie to ourselves about.--So I
+shall never come, unless he--Sir Charles--sends for me as he did to-day,
+or unless you send. Only remember your picture will never leave me. I
+have it safe and sound"--Faircloth smiled at her.--"It will be with me
+just as actually and ineffaceably as this is with me."
+
+He patted the back of his left hand.
+
+"Nothing, short of death, can rub either out. I have pretty thoroughly
+banked against that, you see. So you've only to send when, and if, you
+want me. I shall turn up--oh! never fear, I shall turn up."
+
+"And I shall send--we shall both send," Damaris answered gravely, even a
+little brokenly.
+
+The crown might be heavy; but she had strangely ceased to desire to be
+rid of it, beginning, indeed, to find its weight oddly satisfying, even,
+it may be asserted, trenching on the exquisite. And, with this altered
+attitude, a freedom of spirit, greater than she had enjoyed since the
+commencement of the whole astonishing episode, since before her cousin
+Tom Verity's visit in fact, came upon her. It lightened her heart. It
+dispelled her fatigue--which throughout the afternoon had been, probably,
+more of the moral than bodily sort. Her soul no longer beat its wings
+against iron bars, fluttered in the meshes of a net; but looked forth shy
+yet serene, accepting the position in which it found itself. For
+Faircloth inspired her with deepening faith. He needed no guiding, as she
+told herself; but was strong enough, as his words convincingly testified,
+clear-sighted and quick-witted enough, to play his part in the
+complicated drama without prompting. Hadn't he done just what she
+asked?--Stayed until, by operation of some quality in himself or--could
+it be?--simply through the mysterious draw of his and her brother and
+sisterhood, she had already grown accustomed, settled in her thought of
+him, untormented by the closeness of his presence and unabashed.
+
+And having reached this vantage-point, discovering the weight of the
+crown dear now rather than irksome, Damaris permitted herself a closer
+observation of her companion than ever before. Impressions of his
+appearance she had received in plenty--but received them in flashes,
+confusing from their very vividness. Confusing, also, because each one of
+them was doubled by a haunting consciousness of his likeness to her
+father. The traits common to both men, rather than those individually
+characteristic of the younger, had been in evidence. And, in her present
+happier mood, Damaris also desired a picture to set in the storehouse of
+memory. But it must represent this brother of hers in and by himself,
+divorced, as far as might be, from that pursuing, and, to her, singularly
+agitating likeness.
+
+Her design and her scrutiny were easier of prosecution that, during the
+last few minutes, Faircloth had retired into silence, and an attitude of
+abstraction. Sitting rather forward upon the sofa, his legs crossed,
+nursing one blue serge trousered knee with locked hands, his glance
+travelled thoughtfully over the quiet, low-toned room and its varied
+contents. Later, sought the window opposite, and ranged across the garden
+and terrace walk, with its incident of small ancient cannon, to the long
+ridge of the Bar--rising, bleached, wind-swept, and notably deserted
+under the colourless sunshine, beyond the dark waters of the tide river
+which raced tumultuously seaward in flood.
+
+Seen thus in repose--and repose is a terrible tell-tale,--the lines of
+the young man's face and figure remained firm, gracefully angular and
+definite. No hint of slackness or sloppiness marred their effect. The
+same might be said of his clothes, which though of ordinary regulation
+colour and cut--plus neat black tie and stiff-fronted white shirt,
+collar, and wristbands--possessed style, and that farthest from the cheap
+or flashy. Only the gold bangle challenged Damaris' taste as touching on
+florid; but its existence she condoned in face of its wearer's hazardous
+and inherently romantic calling. For the sailor may, surely, be here and
+there permitted a turn and a flourish, justly denied to the safe
+entrenched landsman.
+
+If outward aspects were thus calculated to engage her approval and
+agreeably fill in her projected picture, that which glimmered through
+them--divined by her rather than stated, all being necessarily more an
+affair of intuition than of knowledge--gave her pleasure of richer
+quality. High-tempered she unquestionably read him, arrogant and on
+occasion not inconceivably remorseless; but neither mean nor ungenerous,
+his energy unwasted, his mind untainted by self-indulgence. If he were
+capable of cruelty to others, he was at least equally capable of turning
+the knife on himself, cutting off or plucking out an offending member.
+This appealed to the heroic in her. While over her vision, as she thus
+considered him, hung the glamour of youth which, to youth, displays such
+royal enchantments--untrodden fields of hope and promise inviting the
+tread of eager feet, the rush of glorious goings forward towards
+conquests, towards wonders, well assured, yet to be. The personality of
+this man clearly admitted no denial, as little bragged as it apologized,
+since his candour matched his force of will.
+
+Taking stock of him thus, from the corner of the sofa, imagination,
+intelligence, affections alike actively in play, Damaris' colour rose,
+her pulse quickened, and her great eyes grew wide, finely and softly gay.
+
+Faircloth moved. Turned his head. Met her eyes, and looking into them his
+face blanched perceptibly under its _couche_ of sunburn.
+
+"Damaris," he said, "Damaris, what has happened?--Stop though, you
+needn't tell me. I know. We've found one another--haven't we?--Found one
+another more in the silence than in the talking.--Queer, things should
+work that way! But it puts a seal on fact. For they couldn't so work
+unless the same stuff, the same inclination, were embedded right in the
+very innermost substance of both of us. You look rested. You look
+glad--bless you.--Isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes," she simply told him.
+
+Faircloth set his elbows on his knees, his chin on his two hands, wrist
+against wrist, and his glance ranged out over the garden again, to the
+pale strip of the Bar spread between river and sea.
+
+"Then I can go," he said, "but not because I've tired you."
+
+"I shall never be tired any more from--from being with you."
+
+"I don't fancy you will. All the same I must go, because my time's up. My
+train leaves Marychurch at six, and I have to call at the Inn, to bid my
+mother good-bye, on my way to the station."
+
+Was the perfect harmony, the perfect adjustment of spirit to spirit a wee
+bit jarred, did a mist come up over the heavenly bright sky, Faircloth
+asked himself? And answered doggedly that, if it were so, he could not
+help it. For since, by all ruling of loyalty and dignity, the wall of
+partition was ordained to stand, wasn't it safer to remind both himself
+and Damaris, at times, of its presence? He must keep his feet on the
+floor, good God--keep them very squarely on the floor--for otherwise,
+wasn't it possible to conceive of their skirting the edge of unnamable
+abysses? In furtherance of that so necessary soberness of outlook he now
+went on speaking.
+
+"But before I go, I want to hark back to a matter of quite ancient
+history--your lost shoes and stockings--for thereby hangs a tale."
+
+And he proceeded to tell her how, about a week ago, being caught by a
+wild flurry of rain in an outlying part of the island, behind the black
+cottages and Inn, he took shelter in a disused ruinous boat-house opening
+on the great reed-beds which here rim the shore. A melancholy, forsaken
+place, from which, at low tide, you can walk across the mud-flats to
+Lampit, with a pleasing chance of being sucked under by quicksands. Abram
+Sclanders' unhappy half-witted son haunted this boat-house, it seemed,
+storing his shrimping nets there, any other things as well, a venerable
+magpie's hoard of scraps and lumber; using it as a run-hole, too, when
+the other lads hunted and tormented him according to their healthy,
+brutal youthful way.
+
+--A regular joss-house, he'd made of it. And set up in one corner, white
+and ghostly--making you stare a minute when you first came inside--a
+ship's figure-head, a three-foot odd Britannia, pudding-basin bosomed and
+eagle-featured, with castellated headgear, clasping a trident in her
+hand. She, as presiding deity and--
+
+"In front of her," Faircloth said, his chin still in his hands and eyes
+gazing away to the Bar--"earth and pebbles banked up into a flat-topped
+mound, upon which stood your shoes filled with sprays of hedge fruit and
+yellow button-chrysanthemums--stolen too, I suppose, from one of the
+gardens at Lampit. They grow freely there. Your silk stockings hung round
+her neck, a posy of flowers twisted into them.--When I came on this
+exhibition, I can't quite tell you how I felt. It raised Cain in me to
+think of that degraded, misbegotten creature pawing over and playing
+about with anything which had belonged to you. I was for making
+Sclanders, his father, bring him over and give him the thrashing of his
+life, right there before the proofs of his sins."
+
+"But you didn't," Damaris cried. "You didn't. What do my shoes and
+stockings matter? I oughtn't to have left them on the shore. It was
+putting temptation in his way."
+
+Faircloth looked at her smiling.
+
+"No I didn't, and for two reasons. One that I knew--even then--you would
+find excuses, plead for mercy, as you have just now. Another, those
+flowers. If I had found--well--what I might have found, oh! he should
+have had the stick or the dog-whip without stint. But one doesn't
+practise devil-worship with flowers. It seemed to me some craving after
+beauty was there, as if the poor germ of a soul groped out of the
+darkness towards what is fair and sweet. I dared not hound it back into
+the darkness, close down any dim aspiration after God it might have. So I
+left its pitiful joss-house inviolate, the moan of the wind and sighing
+of the great reed-beds making music for such strange rites of worship as
+have been, or may be, practised within. Any god is better than
+none--that's my creed, at least. And to defile any man's god--however
+trumpery--unless you're amazingly sure you've a better one to offer him
+in place of it is to sin against the Holy Ghost."
+
+Faircloth rose to his feet.
+
+"Time's up"--he said. "I must go. Here is farewell to the most beautiful
+day of my life.--But see, Damaris"--
+
+And he knelt down, in front of her.
+
+"Leave your shoes and stockings cast away on the Bar and thereby open the
+door--for some people--on to the kingdom of heaven, if you like. But
+don't, don't, if you've the smallest mercy for my peace of mind ever
+wander about there again alone. I've a superstition against it. Something
+unhappy will come of it. It isn't right. It isn't safe. When--when I
+called you and you answered me through the mist, I had a horrible fear I
+was too late. You see I care--and the caring, after to-day, very
+certainly will not grow less. Take somebody, one of your women, always,
+with you. Promise me never to be out by yourself."
+
+Wondering, inexpressibly touched, Damaris put her hands on his shoulders.
+His hands sprang to cover them.
+
+"Of course, I promise," she said.
+
+And, closing her eyes, put up her lips to be kissed.
+
+Then the rattle of the glass door on to the garden as it shut. In the
+room a listening stillness, a great all-invading emptiness. Finally
+Hordle, with the tea-tray, and--
+
+"Mrs. Cooper, if it isn't troubling you, Miss, would be glad to have the
+house-books to pay, as she's walking up the village after tea."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CONCERNING A SERMON WHICH NEVER WAS PREACHED AND OTHER MATTERS OF
+LOCAL INTEREST
+
+
+Before passing on to more dignified matters, that period of nine days
+demands to be noted during which the inhabitants of Deadham, all very
+much agog, celebrated the wonder of Miss Bilson's indisputable
+disappearance and Damaris Verity's reported adventure.
+
+Concerning the former, Dr. Horniblow, good man, took himself seriously to
+task, deploring his past action and debating his present duty.
+
+"It is no use, Jane," he lamented to his wife. The two had retired for
+the night, darkness and the bedclothes covering them. "I am very much
+worried about my share in the matter."
+
+"But, my dear James, you really are overscrupulous. What share had you?"
+
+The clerical wife does not always see eye to eye with her spouse in
+respect of his female parishioners, more particularly, perhaps, the
+unmarried ones. Mrs. Horniblow loved, honoured, and--within reasonable
+limits--obeyed her James; but this neither prevented her being shrewd,
+nor knowing her James, after all, to be human. Remembrance of Theresa,
+heading the Deadham procession during the inspection of Harchester
+Cathedral, sandwiched in between him and the Dean, still rankled in her
+wifely bosom.
+
+"I overpersuaded Miss Bilson to accompany us on the choir treat. I forgot
+she must not be regarded as an entirely free agent. She has shown
+interest in parish work and really proved very useful and obliging. Her
+acquaintance with architecture--the technical terms, too--is unusually
+accurate for a member of your sex."
+
+"Her business is teaching," said the lady.
+
+"And I can't but fear I have been instrumental in her loss of an
+excellent position."
+
+"If her learning is as remarkable as you consider it, she will doubtless
+soon secure another."
+
+"Ah! you're prejudiced, my love. One cannot but be struck, at times, by
+the harshness with which even women of high principle, like yourself,
+judge other women."
+
+"Possibly the highness of my principles may be accountable for my
+judgments--in some cases."
+
+"Argument is very unrestful," the vicar remarked, turning over on his
+side.
+
+"But there would be an end of conversation if I always agreed with you."
+
+"Tut--tut," he murmured. Then with renewed plaintiveness--"I cannot make
+up my mind whether it is not my duty, my chivalrous duty, to seek an
+interview with Sir Charles Verity and explain--put the aspects of the
+case to him as I see them."
+
+"Call on him by all means. I'll go with you. We ought, in common
+civility, to enquire for Damaris after this illness of hers. But don't
+explain or attempt to enlarge on the case from your own point of view.
+Sir Charles will consider it an impertinence. It won't advantage Miss
+Bilson and will embroil you with the most important of your parishioners.
+The wisdom of the serpent is permitted, on occasion even recommended."
+
+"A most dangerous doctrine, Jane, most dangerous, save under authority."
+
+"What authority can be superior to that under which the recommendation
+was originally given?"
+
+"My love, you become slightly profane.--I implore you don't argue--and at
+this hour! When a woman touches on exegesis, on theology "--
+
+"All I know upon those subjects you, dear, have taught me."
+
+"Ah! well--ah! well"--the good man returned, at once mollified and
+suspicious. For might not the compliment be regarded as something of a
+back-hander? "We can defer our decision till to-morrow. Perhaps we had
+better, as you propose, call together. I need not go straight to the
+point, but watch my opportunity and slip in a word edgeways."
+
+He audibly yawned--the hint, like the yawn, a broad one. The lady did
+not take it, however. So far she had held her own; more--had nicely
+secured her ends. But further communications trembled upon her tongue.
+The word is just--literally trembled, for they might cause anger, and
+James' anger--it happened rarely--she held in quite, to herself,
+uncomfortable respect.
+
+"I fear there is a good deal of objectionable gossip going about the
+village just now," she tentatively commenced.
+
+"Then pray don't repeat it to me, my love"--another yawn and an irritable
+one. "Gossip as you know is abhorrent to me."
+
+"And to me--but one needs to be forearmed with the truth if one is to
+rebut it conclusively. Only upon such grounds should I think of
+mentioning this to you."
+
+She made a dash.
+
+"James, have you by chance ever heard peculiar rumours about young Darcy
+Faircloth's parentage?"
+
+"In mercy, Jane--what a question!--and from you! I am
+inexpressibly shocked."
+
+"So was I, when--I won't mention names--when such rumours were hinted to
+me. I assured the person with whom I was talking that I had never heard a
+word on the subject. But she said, 'One can't help having eyes.'"
+
+"Or, some of you, noses for carrion."
+
+Here he gave her the advantage. She was not slow to make play with it.
+
+"Now it is my turn to be shocked," she said--"and not, I think, James,
+without good cause."
+
+"Yes, I apologize," the excellent man answered immediately. "I apologize;
+but to have so foul a suggestion of parochial scandal let loose on me
+suddenly, flung in my teeth, as I may say--and by you! I was taken off
+my guard and expressed myself coarsely. Yes, Jane, I apologize."
+
+"Then I have you authority for contradicting these rumours?"
+
+The Vicar of Deadham groaned in the darkness, and rustled under the
+bedclothes. His perplexity was great on being thus confronted by the
+time-honoured question as to how far, in the interests of public
+morality, it is justifiable for the private individual roundly to lie.
+Finally he banked on compromise, that permanently presiding genius of the
+Church of England 'as by law established.'
+
+"You have me on the hip, my love," he told his wife quite meekly.
+
+But, as she began rather eagerly to speak, he stopped her.
+
+"Let be, my dear Jane," he bade her, "let be. I neither deny or confirm
+the rumours to which I imagine you allude. Silence is most becoming for
+us both. Continue to assure any persons, ill-advised and evil-minded
+enough to approach you--I trust they may prove but few--that you have
+never heard a word of this subject. You will never--I can confidently
+promise you--hear one from me.--I shall make it my duty to preach on the
+iniquity of back-biting, tale-bearing, scandal-mongering next Sunday,
+and put some to the blush, as I trust. St. Paul will furnish me with
+more than one text eminently apposite.--Let me think--let me
+see--hum--ah! yes."
+
+And he fell to quoting from the Pauline epistles in Greek--to the lively
+annoyance of his auditor, whose education, though solid did not include a
+knowledge of those languages vulgarly known as "dead." She naturally
+sought means to round on him.
+
+"Might you not compromise yourself rather by such a sermon, James?" she
+presently said.
+
+"Compromise myself? Certainly not.--Pray, Jane, how?"
+
+"By laying yourself open to the suspicion of a larger acquaintance with
+the origin of those rumours than you are willing to admit."
+
+The shaft went home.
+
+"This is a mere attempt to draw me. You are disingenuous."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," the lady declared. "My one object is to protect
+you from criticism. And preaching upon gossip must invite rather than
+allay interest, thus giving this particular gossip a new lease of
+life. The application would be too obvious. Clearly, James, it would
+be wiser to wait."
+
+"The serpent, again the serpent--and one I've warmed in my bosom,
+too"--Then aloud--"I will think it over, my love. Possibly your view
+may be the right one. It is worth consideration.--That must be
+sufficient. And now, Jane, I do implore you give over discussion and
+let us say good night."
+
+It may be registered as among the consequences of these nocturnal
+exercises, that Dr. Horniblow abstained from tickling the ears of his
+congregation, on the following Sunday, with a homily founded upon the sin
+tale-bearing; and that he duly called, next day, at The Hard accompanied
+by his wife.
+
+The visit--not inconceivably to his inward thanksgiving--proved
+unfruitful of opportunity for excusing Miss Bilson, to her former
+employer, by accusing himself, Sir Charles Verity's courtesy being of an
+order calculated to discourage any approach to personal topics.
+Unfruitful, also, of enlightenment to Mrs. Horniblow respecting matters
+which--as the good lady ashamedly confessed to herself--although
+forbidden by her lord, still intrigued her while, of course, they most
+suitably shocked. For the life of her she could not help looking out for
+signs of disturbance and upheaval. But found none, unless--and that
+presented a conundrum difficult of solution--Damaris' pretty social
+readiness and grace in the reception of her guests might be, in some way,
+referable to lately reported events. That, and the fact the young girl
+was--as the saying is--"all eyes"--eyes calm, fathomless, reflective,
+which yet, when you happened to enter their sphere of vision, covered
+you with a new-born gentleness. Mrs. Horniblow caught herself growing
+lyrical--thinking of stars, of twin mountain lakes, the blue-purple of
+ocean. A girl in love is blessed with just such eyes--sometimes.
+Whereupon, remembering her own two girls, May and Doris--good as gold,
+bless them, yet, her shrewdness pronounced, when compared with Damaris,
+but homely pieces--the excellent woman sighed.
+
+What did it all then amount to? Mrs. Horniblow's logic failed. "All
+eyes"--and very lovely ones at that--Damaris might be; yet her
+tranquillity and serenity appeared beyond question. Must thrilling
+mystery be voted no more than a mare's-nest?--Only, did not the fact
+remain that James had refused to commit himself either way, thereby
+naturally landing himself in affirmation up to the neck? She gave it up.
+
+But, even in the giving up, could not resist probing just a little. The
+two gentlemen were out of earshot, standing near the glass door.--How
+James' black, bow-windowed figure and the fixed red in his clean-shaven,
+slightly pendulous cheeks, did show up to be sure, in the
+light!--Unprofitable gift of observation, for possession of which she so
+frequently had cause to reproach herself.--
+
+"You still look a little run down and pale, my dear," she said. "It isn't
+for me to advise, but wouldn't a change of air and scene be good, don't
+you think?"
+
+Damaris assured her not--in any case not yet. Later, after Christmas, she
+and her father might very likely go abroad. But till then they had a full
+programme of guests.
+
+"Colonel Carteret comes to us next week; and my aunt Felicia always likes
+to be here in November. She enjoys that month at the seaside, finding it,
+she says, so poetic."
+
+Damaris smiled, her eyes at once, and more than ever, eloquent and
+unfathomable.
+
+"And I learned only this morning an old Anglo-Indian friend of ours, Mrs.
+Mackinder, whom I should be quite dreadfully sorry to miss, is spending
+the autumn at Stourmouth."
+
+Mrs. Horniblow permitted herself a dash.
+
+"At Stourmouth--yes?" she ventured. "That reminds me. I hear--how far the
+information is correct I cannot pretend to say--that kind little person,
+Miss Bilson, has been there with Miss Verity this last week. I observed
+we had not met her in the village just lately. I hope you have good news
+of her. When is she expected back?"
+
+Without hesitation or agitation came the counter-stroke.
+
+"I don't know," Damaris answered. "Her plans, I believe, are uncertain at
+present. You and Dr. Horniblow will stay to tea with us, won't
+you?"--this charmingly. "It will be here in a very few minutes--I can
+ring for it at once."
+
+And the lady laughed to herself, good-temperedly accepting the rebuff.
+For it was neatly delivered, and she could admire clever fencing even
+though she herself were pinked.--As to tea, she protested positive shame
+at prolonging her visit--for didn't it already amount rather to a
+"visitation?"--yet retained her seat with every appearance of
+satisfaction.--If the truth must be told, Mrs. Cooper's cakes were
+renowned throughout society at Deadham, as of the richest, the most
+melting in the mouth; and James--hence not improbably the tendency to
+abdominal protuberance--possessed an inordinate fondness for cakes. He
+had shown himself so docile in respect of projected inflammatory sermons,
+and of morning calls personally conducted by his wife, that the latter
+could not find it in her heart to ravish him away from these approaching
+very toothsome delights. Nay--let him stay and eat--for was not such
+staying good policy, she further reflected, advertising the fact she bore
+no shadow of malice towards her youthful hostess for that neatly
+delivered rebuff.
+
+After this sort, therefore, was gossip, for the time being at all events,
+scotched if not actually killed. Parochial excitement flagged the sooner,
+no doubt, because, of the four persons chiefly responsible for its
+creation, two were invisible and the remaining two apparently quite
+unconscious of its ever having existed.--Mrs. Lesbia Faircloth, at the
+Inn, the Vicar's wife left out of the count.--If Sir Charles Verity and
+Damaris had hurried away, gossip would have run after them with liveliest
+yelpings. But this practise of masterly inactivity routed criticism. How
+far was it studied, cynical on the part of the father, or innocent upon
+that of the daughter, she could not tell one bit; but that practically it
+carried success along with it, she saw to be indubitable. "Face the music
+and the band stops playing"--so she put it to herself, as she walked down
+the drive to the front gate, her James--was he just a trifle crestfallen,
+good man?--strolling, umbrella in hand, beside her.
+
+All subsequent outbreaks of gossip may be described as merely sporadic.
+They did not spread. As when, for instance, peppery little Dr.
+Cripps--still smarting under Dr. McCabe's introduction into preserves he
+had reckoned exclusively his own--advised himself to throw off a nasty
+word or so on the subject to Commander Battye and Captain Taylor, over
+strong waters and cigars in his surgery--tea, the ladies, and the
+card-table left to their own devices in the drawing-room meanwhile--one
+evening after a rubber of whist.
+
+"Damn bad taste, I call it, in a newcomer like Cripps," the sailor had
+remarked later to the soldier. "But if a man isn't a gentleman what can
+you expect?"--And with that, as among local persons of quality, the
+matter finally dropped.
+
+Mrs. Doubleday and Butcher Cleave, to give an example from a lower social
+level, agreed, across the former's counter in the village shop, that--
+
+"It is the duty of every true Christian to let bygones be bygones--and a
+downright flying in the face of Providence, as you may say, to do
+otherwise, when good customers, whose money you're sure of, are so
+scarce. For without The Hard and--to give everyone their due--without the
+Island also, where would trade have been in Deadham these ten years and
+more past? Mum's the word, take it from me,"--and each did take it from
+the other, with rich conviction of successfully making the best of both
+worlds, securing eternal treasure in Heaven while cornering excellent
+profits on earth.
+
+William Jennifer had many comments to make in the matter, and with
+praiseworthy reticence concluded to make them mainly to himself. The
+majority of them, it is to be feared, were humorous to the point of being
+unsuited to print, but the refrain may pass--
+
+"And to think if I hadn't happened to choose that particular day to take
+the little dorgs and the ferrets ratting, the 'ole bleesed howd'ye do
+might never have come to pass! Tidy sum, young master Darcy's in my debt,
+Lord succour him, for the rest of his nat'ral life!"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+THE WORLD BEYOND THE FOREST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AN EPISODE IN THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
+
+
+Thus far, for the surer basing of our argument, it has appeared advisable
+to proceed step by step. But the foundations being now well and truly
+laid, the pace of our narrative may, with advantage, quicken; a twelve
+month be rounded up in a page, a decade, should convenience so dictate,
+in a chapter.
+
+To the furthering of which advance, let it be stated that the close of
+the year still in question marked the date, for Damaris, of two matters
+of cardinal importance. For it was then Sir Charles Verity commenced
+writing his history of the reign of Shere Ali, covering the eleven years
+following the latter's accession to the very turbulent throne of
+Afghanistan in 1863.--Colonel Carteret may be held mainly responsible for
+the inception of this literary enterprise, now generally acclaimed a
+classic. Had not Sir William Napier, so he argued, made the soldier, as
+historian, for ever famous? And why should not Charles Verity, with his
+unique knowledge of court intrigues, of the people and the country, do
+for the campaigns of the semi-barbarous Eastern ruler, that which Sir
+William had done for Wellington's campaign in the Spanish Peninsular?
+
+Carteret prophesied--and truly as the event richly proved--a finely
+fascinating book would eventually come of it. Meanwhile--though this
+argument, in favour of the scheme, he kept to himself--the preparation of
+the said book would supply occupation and interest of which his old
+friend appeared to him to stand rather gravely in need. For that
+something was, just now, amiss with Charles Verity, Carteret could not
+disguise from himself. He was changed, in a way a little broken--so at
+least the younger man's kindly, keenly observant, blue eyes regretfully
+judged him. He fell into long silences, seeming to sink away into some
+abyss of cheerless thought; while his speech had, too often, a bitter
+edge to it. Carteret mourned these indications of an unhappy frame of
+mind. Did more--sought by all means in his power to conjure them away.
+
+"We must make your father fight his battles over again, dear witch," he
+told Damaris, pacing the terrace walk topping the sea-wall beside her,
+one evening in the early November dusk. "His record is a very brilliant
+one and he ought to get more comfort out of the remembrance of it. Let's
+conspire, you and I, to make him sun himself in the achievements and
+activities of those earlier years. What do you say?"
+
+"Oh! do it, do it," she answered fervently. "He is sad--and I am so
+afraid that it is partly my fault."
+
+"Your fault? Why what wicked practises have you been up to since I was
+here last?" he asked, teasing her.
+
+A question evoking, in Damaris, sharp inward debate. For her father's
+melancholy humour weighed on her, causing her perplexity and a measure of
+self-reproach. She would have given immensely much to unburden herself to
+this wise and faithful counsellor; and confide to him the--to
+her--strangely moving fact of Darcy Faircloth's existence. Yet,
+notwithstanding her conviction of Colonel Carteret's absolute loyalty,
+she hesitated; restrained in part by modesty, in part by the fear of
+being treacherous. Would it be altogether honourable to give away the
+secret places of Charles Verity's life--of any man's life if it came to
+that--even to so honourable and trusted a friend? She felt handicapped by
+her own ignorance moreover, having neither standards nor precedents for
+guidance. She had no idea--how should she?--in what way most men regard
+such affairs, how far they accept and condone, how far condemn them. She
+could not tell whether she was dealing with a case original and
+extraordinary, or one of pretty frequent occurrence in the experience of
+those who, as the phrase has it, know their world. These considerations
+kept her timid and tongue-tied; though old habit, combined with
+Carteret's delightful personality and the soothing influence of the dusky
+evening quiet, inclined her to confidences.
+
+"It's not anything I've done," she presently took him up gravely. "But,
+quite by chance, I learned something which I think the Commissioner Sahib
+would rather not have had me hear. I had to be quite truthful with him
+about it; but I was bewildered and ill. I blurted things out rather I'm
+afraid, and hurt him more than I need have done. I was so taken by
+surprise, you see."
+
+"Yes, I see," Carteret said, regardless of strict veracity. For he didn't
+see, though he believed himself on the road to seeing and that some
+matter of singular moment.
+
+"He was beautiful to me--beautiful about everything--everybody," she
+asserted. "And we love one another not less, but more, he and I--of that
+I am sure. Only it's different--different. We can't either of us quite go
+back to the time before--and that has helped to make him sad."
+
+Carteret listened in increasing interest aware that he sounded
+unlooked-for depths, apprehensive lest those depths should harbour
+disastrous occurrences. He walked the length of the terrace before again
+speaking. Then, no longer teasing but gently and seriously, he asked her:
+
+"Do you feel free to tell me openly about this, and let me try to help
+you--if it's a case for help?"
+
+Damaris shook her head, looking up at him through the soft enclosing
+murk, and smiling rather ruefully.
+
+"I wish I knew--I do so wish I knew," she said. "But I don't--not yet,
+anyway. Help me without my telling you, please. The book is a splendid
+idea. And then do you think you could persuade him to let us go away
+abroad, for a time? Everything here must remind him--as it does me--of
+what happened. It was quite right," she went on judicially--"for
+everyone's sake, we should stay here just the same at first. People,"
+with a scornful lift of the head Carteret noted and admired--"might have
+mistaken our reason for going away. They had to be made to understand we
+were perfectly indifferent.--I knew all that, though we never discussed
+it. One does things, sometimes, just because it's right they should be
+done, without any sort of planning--just by instinct. Still I know we
+can't be quite natural here. What happened comes between us. We're each
+anxious about the other and feel a constraint, though we never speak of
+it. That can't be avoided, I suppose, for we both suffered a good deal at
+the time--but he most, much the most because"--
+
+Damaris paused.
+
+"Because why?"
+
+"I suppose because I'm young; and then, once I got accustomed to the
+idea, I saw it meant what was very wonderful in some ways--a
+wonderfulness which, for me, would go on and on--a whole new country for
+me to explore and travel in, quite my own--and--and--which I couldn't
+help loving."
+
+"Heigh ho! heigh ho!" Carteret put in softly. "This becomes exciting,
+dear witch, you know."
+
+"I don't want to be tantalizing," she answered him, still pacing in the
+growing dimness of land and sea.
+
+The dead black mass of the great ilex trees looked to touch the low
+hanging sky. A grey gleam, here and there, lit the surface of the
+swirling tide-river. The boom of the slow plunging waves came from the
+back of the Bar, and now and again wild-fowl cried, faint and distant,
+out on the mud-flats of the Haven.
+
+"Listen," Damaris said. "It is mournful here. It tells you the same
+things over and over again. It sort of insists on them. The place seems
+so peaceful, but it never lets you alone, really. And now, after what
+happened, it never leaves him--the Commissioner Sahib--alone. It repeats
+the same story to him over and over again. It wears him as dropping water
+wears away stone. And there is no longer the same reason for staying
+there was at first. Persuade him to go away, to take me abroad. And come
+with us--couldn't you?--for a little while at least. Is it selfish to ask
+you to leave your hunting and shooting so early in the season? I don't
+want to be selfish. But he isn't well. Whether he isn't well in his body
+or only in his thinkings, I can't tell. But it troubles me. He sleeps
+badly, I am afraid. The nights must be very long and lonely when one
+can't sleep.--If you would come, it would be so lovely. I should feel so
+safe about him. You and the book should cure him between you. I'm
+perfectly sure of that. To have you would make us both so happy"--
+
+And, in her innocent importunity, Damaris slipped her hand within Colonel
+Carteret's arm sweetly coaxing him.
+
+He started slightly. Threw back his head, standing, straight and tall, in
+the mysterious twilight beside her. Raised his deerstalker cap, for a
+moment, letting the moist chill of the November evening dwell on his hair
+and forehead.
+
+Though very popular with women, Carteret had never married, making a home
+for his elder sister, Mrs. Dreydel--widow of a friend and fellow officer
+in the then famous "Guides"--and her four sturdy, good-looking boys at
+the Norfolk manor-house, which had witnessed his own birth and those of a
+long line of his ancestors. To bring up a family of his own, in addition
+to his sister's, would have been too costly, and debt he abhorred.
+Therefore, such devoirs as he paid the great goddess Aphrodite, were but
+few and fugitive--he being by nature and temperament an idealist and a
+notably clean liver. By his abstention, however, sentiment was
+fine-trained rather than extinguished. His heart remained young, capable
+of being thrilled in instant response to any appeal of high and delicate
+quality. It thrilled very sensibly, now, in response to the appeal of
+Damaris' hand, emphasizing her tender pleading regarding her father. She
+touched, she charmed him to an extent which obliged him rather sharply to
+call his senses to order. Hadn't he known her ever since she was a babe
+a span long? Wasn't she, according to all reason, a babe still, in as far
+as any decently minded male being of his mature age could be concerned?
+He told himself, at once humorously and sternly, he ought to feel so,
+think so--whether he did or not. And ought, in his case, was a word not
+to be played fast and loose with. Once uttered it must be obeyed.
+
+Wherefore, thus conclusively self-admonished, he put his cap on his head
+again and, bending a little over Damaris, patted her hand affectionately
+as it rested upon his arm.
+
+"Very good--I'll hold myself and my future at your disposition," he gaily
+said to her. "As much hunting and shooting as I care for will very well
+keep. Don't bother your pretty head about them. During the Christmas
+holidays, my nephews will be ready enough, in all conscience, to let fly
+with my guns and ride my horses, so neither will be wasted. I'll go along
+with you gladly, for no man living is dearer to me than your father, and
+no business could be more to my taste than scotching and killing the
+demons which plague him. They plague all of us, in some form or other, at
+times, as life goes on."
+
+Very gently he disengaged his arm from her hand.
+
+"Take me indoors," he said, "and give me my tea--over which we'll further
+discuss plots for kidnapping Verity and carrying him off south. The
+French Riviera for preference?--Hullo--what the deuce is that?"
+
+For, as he spoke, the two cats appearing with miraculous suddenness out
+of nowhere--as is the custom of their priceless tribe--rushed wildly
+past. Fierce, sinuous, infinitely graceful shapes, leaping high in air,
+making strange noises, chirrupings and squeakings, thudding of quick
+little paws, as they chased one another round the antiquated,
+seaward-trained cannon and pyramid of ball.
+
+For a minute or so Damaris watched them, softly laughing. Then, in the
+content bred of Carteret's promise and the joy of coming travel,
+something of their frisky spirit caught her too--a spirit which, for all
+young creatures, magically haunts the dusk. And, as they presently fled
+away up the lawn, Damaris fled after them, circling over the moist
+grass, darting hither and thither, alternately pursuing and pursued.
+
+Colonel Carteret, following soberly, revolving many thoughts, did not
+overtake her until the garden door was reached. There, upon the
+threshold, the light from within covering and revealing her, she awaited
+him. Her bosom rose and fell, her breathing being a little hurried, her
+face a little flushed. Her grave eyes sparkled and danced.
+
+"Oh! you've made me so glad, so dreadfully glad," she said. "And I never
+properly thanked you. Forgive me. I never can resist them--I went mad
+with the cats."
+
+Her young beauty appeared to Carteret very notable; and, yes--although
+she might disport herself in this childishly frolic fashion--it was
+idle to call her, or pretend her any longer a babe. For cause to him
+unknown, through force of some experience of which he remained
+ignorant, she had undeniably come into the charm and mystery of her
+womanhood--a very fair and noble blossoming before which reverently, if
+wistfully, he bowed his head.
+
+"It's good to have you declare yourself glad, dear witch, in that case
+I'm glad too," he answered her. "But as to forgiveness, I'm inclined to
+hold it over until you leave off being tantalizing--and, upon my word, I
+find you uncommonly far from leaving off just now!"
+
+"You mean until I tell you what happened?"
+
+Carteret nodded, searching her face with wise, fearless, smiling eyes.
+
+"Ah! yes," he said, "we can put it that way if you please." Damaris
+hesitated detecting some undercurrent of meaning which puzzled her.
+
+"I may never have to tell you. My father may speak of it--or you may just
+see for yourself. Only then, then"--she with a moving earnestness prayed
+him--"be kind, be lenient. Don't judge harshly--promise me you won't."
+
+And as she spoke her expression softened to a great and unconscious
+tenderness; for she beheld, in thought, a wide-winged sea-bird, above
+certain letters, tattooed in indigo and crimson upon the back of a lean
+shapely brown hand.
+
+"I promise you," Carteret said, and passed in at the door marvelling
+somewhat sadly.
+
+"Is it that?" he asked himself. "If so, it comes early. Has she gone the
+way of all flesh and fallen in love?"
+
+And this conversation, as shall presently be set forth, ushered in that
+second matter of cardinal importance, already referred to, which for
+Damaris marked the close of this eventful year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+TELLING HOW DAMARIS RENEWED HER ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BELOVED LADY OF
+HER INFANCY
+
+
+The windows of the sitting-room--upon the first floor of the long,
+three-storied, yellow-painted hotel--commanded a vast and glittering
+panorama of indented coast-line and purple sea. Here and there, in the
+middle distance, little towns, pale-walled and glistering, climbed upward
+amid gardens and olive yards from the rocky shore. Heathlands and pine
+groves covered the intervening headlands and steep valleys, save where
+meadows marked the course of some descending stream. To the north-east,
+above dark wooded foot-hills, the flushed whiteness of snow-summits cut
+delicately into the solid blue of the sky.
+
+Stretched upon the sun-faded, once scarlet cushions of the window-seat,
+Damaris absorbed her fill of light, and warmth, and colour. Pleading
+imperative feminine mendings, she stayed at home this afternoon. She felt
+disposed to rest--here in the middle of her pasture, so to say--and
+resting, both count her blessings and dream, offering hospitality to all
+and any pleasant visions which might elect to visit her. And, indeed,
+those blessings appeared a goodly company, worthy of congratulation and
+of gratitude. She let the black silk stocking, the toe of which she
+affected to darn, slip neglected on to the floor while she added up the
+pleasant column of them.
+
+The journey might be counted as a success--that to start with. For her
+father was certainly better, readier of speech and of interest in outside
+things. Oh! the dear "man with the blue eyes" had a marvellous hand on
+him--tactful, able, devoted, always serene, often even gay. Never could
+there be another so perfect, because so sane and comfortable, a friend.
+Her debt to him was of old standing and still for ever grew. How she
+could ever pay it she didn't know! Which consideration, for an instant,
+clouded her content. Not that she felt the obligation irksome; but, that
+out of pure affection, she wanted to make him some return, some
+acknowledgment; wanted to give, since to her he had so lavishly given.
+
+Then the book--of all Carteret's clever manipulations the cleverest! For
+hadn't it begun to grip her father, and that quite divertingly much? He
+was occupied with it to the point of really being a tiny bit
+self-conscious and shy. Keen on it, transparently eager--though
+contemptuous, in high mighty sort, of course, of his own eagerness when
+he remembered. Only, more than half the time he so deliciously failed to
+remember.--And with that Damaris' thought took another turn, a more
+private and personal one.
+
+For in truth the book gripped her, too, in most intimate and novel
+fashion, revealing to her the enchantments of an art in process of being
+actively realized in living, constructive effort. Herein she found, not
+the amazement of a new thing, but of a thing so natural that it appeared
+just a part of her very self, though, until now, an undiscovered one. To
+read other people's books is a joyous employment, as she well knew; but
+to make a book all one's own self, to watch and compel its growth into
+coherent form and purpose is--so she began to suspect--among the rarest
+delights granted to mortal man.
+
+Her own share of such making, in the present case, was of the humblest
+it is true, mere spade labour and hod-bearing--namely, writing from
+Charles Verity's dictation, verifying names and dates, checking
+references and quotations. Still each arresting phrase, each felicitous
+expression, the dramatic ring of some virile word, the broad onward
+sweep of stately prose in narrative or sustained description, not only
+charmed her ear but challenged her creative faculty. She put herself to
+school in respect of it all, learning day by day a lesson.--This was the
+way it should be done. Ambition prodded her on.--For mightn't she
+aspire to do it too, some day? Mightn't, granted patience and
+application, the writing of books prove to be her business, her
+vocation? The idea floated before her, vague as yet, though infinitely
+beguiling. Whereupon the whole world took on a new significance and
+splendour, as it needs must when nascent talent claims its own, asserts
+its dawning right to dominion and to freedom.
+
+And there the pathos of her father's position touched her nearly. For
+wasn't it a little cruel this remarkable gift of his should so long have
+lain dormant, unsuspected by his friends, unknown to the reading public,
+only to disclose itself, and that by the merest hazard, as a last
+resource?--It did not seem fair that he had not earlier found and enjoyed
+his literary birthright.
+
+Damaris propounded this view to Colonel Carteret with some heat. But he
+smilingly discounted her fondly indignant lament.
+
+"Better late than never anyhow, my dear witch," he said. "And just
+picture the satisfaction of this brilliant rally when, as we'd reason to
+believe, he himself reckoned the game was up! Oh! there are points about
+a tardy harvest such as this, by no means to be despised. Thrice blessed
+the man who, like your father, finding such a harvest, also finds it to
+be of a sort he can without scruple reap."
+
+Of which cryptic utterance Damaris, at the time, could--to quote her own
+phrase--"make no sense!"--Nor could she make sense of it, now, when
+counting her blessings, she rested, in happy idleness, upon the faded
+scarlet cushions of the window-seat.
+
+She remembered the occasion quite well on which Carteret thus expressed
+himself one afternoon, during their stay in Paris, on the southward
+journey. She had worn a new myrtle-green, black-braided, fur-trimmed
+cloth pelisse and hat to match, as she also remembered, bought the day
+before at a fascinating shop in the Rue Castiglione. Agreeably conscious
+her clothes were not only very much "the right thing" but decidedly
+becoming, she had gone, with him, to pay a visit of ceremony at the
+convent school--near the Church of St. Germain-les-Près--where, as a
+little girl of six, fresh from India and the high dignities of the
+Bhutpur Sultan-i-bagh, she had been deposited by her father's old friend,
+Mrs. John Pereira, who had brought her and Sarah Watson, her nurse, back
+to Europe.
+
+The sojourn at the convent--once the surprise of translation from East to
+West, from reigning princess to little scholar was surmounted--proved
+fertile in gentle memories. The visit of to-day, not only revived these
+memories, but added to their number. For it passed off charmingly.
+Carteret seemed by no means out of place among the nuns--well-bred and
+gracious women of hidden, consecrated lives. They, indeed, appeared
+instinctively drawn to him and fluttered round him in the sweetest
+fashion imaginable; he, meanwhile, bearing himself towards them with an
+exquisite and simple courtesy beyond all praise. Never had Damaris
+admired the "man with the blue eyes" more, never felt a more perfect
+trust in him, than when beholding him as _Mousquetaire au Couvent_ thus!
+
+As they emerged again into the clear atmosphere and resonance of the
+Paris streets, and made their way back by the Rue du Bac, the Pont Royal
+and the gardens of the Tuileries, to their hotel in the Rue de Rivoli,
+Carteret spoke reverently of the religious life, and the marvellous
+adaptability of the Catholic system to every need, every attitude of the
+human heart and conscience. He spoke further of the loss those inevitably
+sustain, who--from whatever cause--stand outside the creeds, unable to
+set their spiritual God-ward hopes and aspirations within a definite
+external framework of doctrine and practice hallowed by tradition.
+
+"I could almost wish those dear holy women had gathered your little soul
+into the fold, when they had you in their keeping and made a good
+Catholic of you, dearest witch," he told her. "It would have been a
+rather flagrant case of cradle-snatching, I own, but I can't help
+thinking it would have simplified many difficulties for you."
+
+"And raised a good many, too," Damaris gaily answered him. "For Aunt
+Harriet Cowden would have been furious, and Aunt Felicia distressed and
+distracted; and poor Nannie--though she really got quite tame with the
+Sisters, and came to respect them in the end--would have broken her heart
+at my being taught to worship images, and have believed hell yawned to
+devour me. Oh! I think it was more fair to wait.--All the same I loved
+their religion--I love it still."
+
+"Go on loving it," he bade her.--And at once turned the conversation to
+other themes--that of her father, Charles Verity among them, and the book
+on Afghanistan, the fair copy of the opening chapters of which was just
+completed.
+
+Then, the stimulating, insistent vivacity of Paris going a little to
+Damaris' head--since urging, as always, to fullness of enterprise,
+fullness of endeavour, giving, as always, immense joy and value to the
+very fact of living--she lamented the late development of her father's
+literary genius. A lament which called forth Carteret's consolatory
+rejoinder, along with this--to her--cryptic assertion as to the thrice
+blessed state of the man whose harvest, when tardy, is of a description
+he need not scruple to reap.
+
+"Why," she asked herself, "should he have said that unless with
+reference to himself. Reference to some private harvest which he himself
+scrupled to reap?"
+
+Damaris slipped her feet from the cushioned window-seat to the floor, and
+stooping down recovered her fallen black silk stocking. She felt
+disturbed, slightly conscience-stricken. For it had never occurred to
+her, strong, able, serene of humour and of countenance as he was, that
+the "man with the blue eyes" could have personal worries, things--as she
+put it--he wanted yet doubted whether he ought to have. Surely his
+unfailing helpfulness and sympathy gave him the right, in fee-simple, to
+anything and everything he might happen to covet. That he should covet
+what was wrong, what was selfish, detrimental to others, seemed
+incredible. And the generous pity of her youthful tenderness, her
+impatience of all privation, all disappointment or denial for those she
+held in affection, overflowed in her. She longed to do whatever would
+greatly please him, to procure for him whatever he wanted. Wouldn't it be
+delicious to do that--if she could only find out!
+
+But this last brought her up against a disquieting lesson lately
+learned.--Namely, against recognition of how very far the lives of
+men--even those we know most dearly and closely--and the lives of us
+women are really apart. She thought of her father and Darcy Faircloth and
+their entirely unsuspected relation. This dulled the edge of her
+enthusiasm. For wasn't it only too probably the same with them all?
+Loyalty compelled the question. Had not every man a secret, or secrets,
+only penetrable, both for his peace of mind and for your own, at
+considerable risk?
+
+Damaris planted her elbows on the window-sill, her chin in the hollow of
+her hands. Her eyes were solemn, her face grave with thought.--Verily the
+increase of knowledge is the increase of perplexity, if not of actual
+sorrow. Even the apparently safest and straightest paths are beset with
+"pitfall and with gin" for whoso studies to pursue truth and refuse
+subscription to illusion. Your charity should be wide as the world
+towards others. Towards yourself narrow as a hair, lest you condone your
+own weakness, greed, or error. Of temptation to any save very venial sins
+Damaris had, in her own person, little conception as yet.--Still to a
+maiden of eighteen, though she may have a generous proportion of health
+and beauty, sufficient fortune and by no means contemptible intelligence,
+noble instincts, complications and distresses, both of the practical and
+theoretic order, may, and do, at times occur. Damaris suffered the shock
+of such now; and into what further jungles of cheerless speculation she
+might have been projected it is impossible to say, had not persons and
+events close at hand claimed her attention.
+
+The Grand Hotel at St. Augustin is situated upon a long narrow
+promontory, which juts out into the sea at right angles to the main trend
+of the coast-line. It faces east, turning its back upon the little
+town--built on the site of a Roman colonial city, originally named in
+honour of the pagan Emperor rather than the Christian Confessor and
+ascetic. Mediaeval piety bestowed on it the saintly prefix, along with a
+round-arched cathedral church, of no great size, but massive proportions
+and somewhat gloomy aspect.
+
+From the terrace garden and carriage drive, immediately in front of the
+hotel, the ground drops sharply, beneath scattered pines with undergrowth
+of heather, wild lavender, gum-cistus, juniper, mastic and myrtle, to the
+narrow white beach a hundred feet below. Little paths traverse the rough
+descent. And up one of these, halting to rest now and then on a
+conveniently placed bench in the shade of some spreading umbrella pine,
+to discourse to the company of gentlemen following in her wake, or
+contemplate the view, came a notably graceful and telling figure.
+
+As the lady advanced with leisurely composure, Damaris, gazing down from
+her point of vantage in the first floor window, received the impression
+of a person almost extravagantly finished and feminine, in which all
+irregularities and originalities of Nature had suffered obliteration by
+the action of art. Not art of the grosser sort, dependent on dyes, paint
+and cosmetics. The obliteration was not superficial merely, and must have
+been achieved by processes at once subtle and profound. The result
+obtained, however, showed unquestionably charming--if in a line slightly
+finical and exotic--as she picked her way through the fragrant
+undergrowth of the pine wood, slanting sunshine playing on her dark blue
+raiment, wide-brimmed white hat, and floating veil.
+
+Coming completely into view at last, when stepping from the path on to
+the level carriage drive, a gold chain she wore, from which dangled a
+little bunch of trinkets and a long-handled lorgnette, glinted, catching
+the light. Damaris gave an exclamation of sudden and rapturous
+recognition. So far she had had eyes for the lady only; but now she took
+a rapid scrutiny of the latter's attendants. With two of them she was
+unacquainted. The other two were her father and Carteret.
+
+Whereupon rapture gave place to a pang of jealous alarm and resentment.
+For they belonged to her, those dear two; and to see them even thus
+temporarily appropriated by someone else caused her surprising agitation.
+They had been so good, so apparently content, alone with her upon this
+journey. It would be too trying, too really intolerable to have outsiders
+interfere and break up their delightful solitude _à trois_, their
+delightful intercourse! Yet, almost immediately, the girl flushed, going
+hot all over with shame, scolding herself for even passing entertainment
+of such unworthy and selfish emotions.
+
+"For it is Henrietta Pereira," she said half aloud. "My own darling,
+long-ago Henrietta, who used to be so beautifully kind to me and give me
+presents I loved above everything."
+
+And, after a pause, the note of alarm sounding again though modified to
+wistfulness--
+
+"Will she care for me still, and shall I still care for her--but I must
+care--I must--now I'm grown up?"
+
+To set which disturbing questions finally at rest, being a valiant young
+creature, Damaris permitted herself no second thoughts, no vacillation or
+delay; but went straight downstairs and crossing the strip of terrace
+garden, bare-headed as she was, waited at the head of the steps leading up
+from the carriage drive to greet the idol of her guileless infancy.
+
+To Colonel Carteret who, bringing up the rear of the little procession
+was the first to notice her advent, she made a touching and gallant
+picture. Her face had gone very pale and he saw, or fancied he saw, her
+lips tremble. But her solemn eyes shone with a steady light, and,
+whatever the excitement affecting her, she held it bravely in check.
+Noting all which he could not but speculate as to whether she had any
+knowledge of a certain romantic attachment--culminating on the one hand
+in an act of virtuous treachery, on the other in an act of
+renunciation--which had overshadowed and wrenched from its natural
+sequence so large a portion of her father's life. He earnestly hoped she
+was ignorant of all that; although the act of renunciation, made for her,
+Damaris' sake, represented a magnificent gesture if an exaggerated and
+almost fanatical one, on Charles Verity's part. It gave the measure of
+the man's fortitude, the measure of his paternal devotion. Still
+knowledge of it might, only too readily, prove a heavy burden to a young
+girl's imaginative and tender conscience. Yes--he hoped she had been
+spared that knowledge.
+
+If she had escaped it thus far--as he reflected not without
+amusement--the other actor in that rather tragic drama, now so
+unexpectedly and arrestingly present in the flesh, could be trusted not
+to enlighten her. He knew Henrietta Pereira of old, bless her hard little
+heart. Not only did she detest tragedy, but positively revelled in any
+situation where clever avoidance of everything even remotely approaching
+it was open to her. She ruled the sublime and the ridiculous alike
+impartially out of the social relation; and that with so light though
+determined a touch, so convincing yet astute a tact and delicacy, you
+were constrained not only to submit to, but applaud her strategy.
+
+Had she not within the very last hour given a masterly example of her
+powers in this line? For when he, Carteret, and Charles Verity, strolling
+in all innocence along the shore path back from St. Augustin, had to
+their infinite astonishment met her and her attendant swains face to
+face, she hadn't turned a hair. Her nerve was invincible. After clasping
+the hand of each in turn with the prettiest enthusiasm, she had
+introduced--"My husband, General Frayling--Mr. Marshall Wace, his
+cousin," with the utmost composure. Thus making over to them any
+awkwardness which might be going and effectually ridding herself of it.
+
+Carteret felt his jaw drop for the moment.--He had heard of John
+Pereira's death two years ago, and welcomed the news on her account,
+since, if report said true, that dashing cavalry officer had taken to
+evil courses. Gambling and liquor made him a nuisance, not to say
+disgrace to his regiment, and how much greater a one to his wife. Poor
+thing, she must have had a lot to endure and that of the most sordid! It
+wasn't nice to think about. Clearly Pereira's removal afforded matter for
+thankfulness.
+
+But of this speedy reconstruction on her part, in the shape of a third
+matrimonial venture, he had heard never a word. How would Verity take
+it?--Apparently with a composure as complete as her own.--And then the
+inherent humour of the position, and her immense skill and coolness in
+the treatment of it, came uppermost. Carteret felt bound to support her
+and help her out by accepting her little old General--lean-shanked and
+livery, with pompously outstanding chest, aggressive white moustache and
+mild appealing eye--as a matter of course. Bound to buck him up, and
+encourage him in the belief he struck a stranger as the terrible fellow
+he would so like to be, and so very much feared that he wasn't.
+Carteret's large charity came into play in respect of the superannuated
+warrior; who presented a pathetically inadequate effect, specially when
+seen, as now, alongside Charles Verity. Surely the contrast must hit the
+fair Henrietta rather hard? Carteret expended himself in kindly
+civilities, therefore, going so far as to say "sir" once or twice in
+addressing Frayling. Whereat the latter's timorous step grew almost
+jaunty and his chest more than ever inflated.
+
+If Henrietta carried things off to admiration in the first amazement of
+impact, she carried them off equally to admiration in her meeting with
+Damaris. It was the prettiest little scene in the world.
+
+For reaching up and placing her hands on the girl's shoulders her
+chiselled face--distinct yet fragile in outline as some rare
+cameo--suffused for once with transparent, shell-like pink, she kissed
+Damaris on either cheek.
+
+"Ah! precious child, most precious child," she fondly murmured. "What an
+enchanting surprise! How little I imagined such a joy was in store for me
+when I came out this afternoon!"
+
+And louder, for the benefit of the assistants.
+
+"Yes--here are my husband, General Frayling, and Mr. Wace his cousin--he
+shall sing to you some day--that by the way--who is travelling with us.
+But they must talk to you later. I can't spare you to them now. I am
+greedy after our long separation and want to have you all to myself."
+
+And, including the four gentlemen in a gesture of friendly farewell, she
+put her arm round Damaris' waist, gently compelling her in the direction
+of a group of buff-painted iron chairs, placed in a semicircle in the
+shade of ilex and pine trees at the end of the terrace.
+
+"I have so much to hear," she said, "so many dropped threads to pick up,
+and it is impossible to talk comfortably and confidentially in a crowd.
+Our men must really contrive to play about by themselves for a little
+while and leave me to enjoy you in peace."
+
+"But won't they mind?" Damaris asked, upon whom the spell of the elder
+woman's personality began sensibly to work.
+
+"Let them mind, let them mind," she threw off airily in answer. "So much
+the better. It will do them good. It is excellent discipline for men to
+find they can't always have exactly their own way."
+
+Which assertion served to dissipate any last remnant of jealous alarm
+Damaris' mind may have unconsciously harboured. In its place shy
+curiosity blossomed, and quick intimate pleasure in so perfectly
+fashioned and furnished a creature. For wasn't her childish adoration
+fully justified? Wasn't her darling Henrietta a being altogether
+captivating and unique? Damaris loved the feeling of that arm and hand
+lightly clasping her waist. Loved the faint fragrance--hadn't it
+intoxicated her baby senses?--pervading Henrietta's hair, her clothes,
+her whole pretty person. Loved the tinkle of the bunch of trinkets
+dangling from the long chain which reached below her waist. She had
+feared disappointment. That, as she now perceived, was altogether
+superfluous. Henrietta enthralled her eyes, enthralled her affection. She
+longed to protect, to serve her, to stand between her and every rough
+wind which blew, because she was so pretty, so extraordinarily and
+completely civilized from head to foot.
+
+No doubt in the generosity of her youthful inexperience Damaris
+exaggerated the lady's personal charm. Yet the dozen years
+intervening--since their last meeting--had, in truth, dealt mercifully
+with the latter's good looks. A trifle pinched, a trifle faded she might
+be, as compared with the Henrietta of twelve years ago; but immediately
+such damage, such wear and tear of the fleshly garment, showed at its
+least conspicuous. She negotiated the double encounter, as Carteret had
+noted, with admirable sang-froid; but not, as to the first one in any
+case, without considerably greater inward commotion than he gave her
+credit for. She was in fact keyed up by it, excited, taken out of herself
+to an unprecedented extent, her native optimism and egoism in singular
+disarray. Yet thereby, through that very excitement, she recaptured for
+the time being the physical loveliness of an earlier period. Beauty is
+very much a matter of circulation; and the blood cantered, not to say
+galloped, through Henrietta's veins.
+
+The sight of Charles Verity did indeed put back the clock for her in
+most astounding sort. Henrietta was no victim of impulse. Each of her
+three marriages had been dictated by convenience, carefully thought out
+and calculated. Over neither husband had she, for ever so brief a
+period, lost her head. But over Charles Verity she had come perilously
+near losing it--once. That, it is not too much to say, constituted the
+greatest sensation, the greatest emotion of her experience. As a rule
+the most trying and embarrassing part of encountering a former lover is
+that you wonder what, under Heaven, induced you to like him so well?
+Here the position was reversed, so that Henrietta wondered--with a
+sickening little contraction of the heart--what, under Heaven, had
+prevented her liking him much more, why, under Heaven, she ever let him
+go? Of course, as things turned out, it was all for the best, since her
+insensibility made for righteousness, or anyhow for respectability--in
+the opinion of the world the same, if not an even superior article. She
+ought to congratulate herself, ought to feel thankful. Only just now she
+didn't. On the contrary she was shaken--consciously and most
+uncomfortably shaken to the very deepest of such depths as her shallow
+soul could boast--sitting here, on a buff-painted chair in the shade of
+the pines and ilex trees, in company with Damaris, holding the girl's
+hand in both her own with a clinging, slightly insistent, pressure as it
+rested upon her lap.
+
+"Dearest child, I believe, though you have grown so tall, I should have
+recognized you anywhere," she said.
+
+"And I you," Damaris echoed. "I did, I did, after just the first
+little minute."
+
+"Ah! you've a memory for faces too?"
+
+Her glance wandered to the group of men gathered before the hotel
+portico--Sir Charles and General Frayling side by side, engaged in civil
+if not particularly animated conversation. The two voices reached her
+with a singular difference of timbre and of tone. Carteret spoke,
+apparently making some proposition, some invitation, in response to which
+the four passed into the house.
+
+Henrietta settled herself in her chair with a movement of sensible
+relief. While they remained there she must look, and it was not quite
+healthy to look.--Her good, little, old General, who only asked
+respectfully to adore and follow in her wake--a man of few demands and
+quite tidy fortune--and after poor, besotted, blustering, gambling,
+squashily sentimental and tearful Johnnie Pereira wasn't he a haven of
+rest--oh, positively a haven of rest? All the same she preferred his
+not standing there in juxtaposition to Charles Verity. She much
+preferred their all going indoors--Carteret along with the rest, if it
+came to that.
+
+She turned and smiled upon Damaris.
+
+"However good your memory for faces may be, I find it very sweet you
+should have recognized mine after 'just the first little minute,'" she
+said, with a coaxing touch of mimicry. "You haven't quite parted company
+with the baby I remember so well, even yet. I used to call you my downy
+owl, with solemn saucer eyes and fierce little beak. You were
+extraordinarily, really perplexingly like your father then. A miniature
+edition, but so faithful to the original it used, sometimes, to give me
+the quaintest jump."
+
+Henrietta mused, raising one hand and fingering the lace at her throat
+as seeking to loosen it. Damaris watched fascinated, in a way
+troubled, by her extreme prettiness. Every point, every detail was so
+engagingly complete.
+
+"You are like Sir Charles still; but I see something which is not
+him--the personal equation, I suppose, developing in you, the element
+which is individual, exclusively your own and yourself. I should enjoy
+exploring that."
+
+She looked at Damaris very brightly for an instant, then looked down.
+
+"I want to hear more about Sir Charles," she said. "Of all the
+distinguished men I have been fortunate enough to know, who--who have let
+me be their friend, no one has ever interested me more than he. We have
+known one another ever since I was a girl and his career meant so much to
+me. I followed it closely, rejoiced in his promotion, his successes; felt
+indignant--and said so--when he met with adverse criticism. I am speaking
+of his Indian career. When he accepted that Afghan command, it made a
+break. We lost touch, which I regretted immensely. From that time onward
+I only knew what any and everybody might know from the newspapers--except
+occasionally when I happened to meet Colonel Carteret."
+
+The explanation was lengthy, laboured, not altogether spontaneous.
+Damaris vaguely mystified by it made no comment. Henrietta raised her
+head, glancing round from under lowered eyelids.
+
+"You appreciate the ever-faithful Carteret?" she asked, an edge of
+eagerness in her voice.
+
+"The dear 'man with the blue eyes?' Of course I love him, we both love
+him almost better than anybody in the world," Damaris warmly declared.
+
+"And he manifestly returns your affection. But, dearest child, why
+'almost.' Is that reservation intentional or merely accidental?"
+
+Then seeing the girl's colour rise.
+
+"Perhaps it's hardly a fair question. Forgive me. I forgot how long it
+is since we met, forgot I'm not, after all, talking to the precious
+little downy owl, who had no more serious secrets than such as might
+concern her large family of dolls."
+
+"I am not sure the 'almost' was quite true." Damaris put in hastily, her
+cheeks more than ever aflame.
+
+"Yes it was, most delicious child--I protest it was. And I'm not sure I'm
+altogether sorry."
+
+Slightly, daintily, she kissed the flaming cheek.
+
+"But I do love Colonel Carteret," Damaris repeated, with much wide-eyed
+earnestness. "I trust him and depend on him as I do on nobody else."
+
+"'Almost' nobody else?"
+
+Damaris shook her head. She felt a wee bit disappointed in Henrietta.
+This persistence displeased her as trivial, as lacking in perfection of
+breeding and taste.
+
+"Quite nobody," she said. And without permitting time for rejoinder
+launched forth into the subject of the book on the campaigns of Shere
+Ali, which, as she explained, had been undertaken at Carteret's
+suggestion and with such encouraging result. She waxed eloquent regarding
+the progress of the volume and its high literary worth.
+
+"But I was a little nervous lest my father should lose his interest and
+grow slack when we were alone, and he'd only me to talk things over with
+and to consult, so I begged Colonel Carteret to come abroad with us."
+
+"Ah! I see--quite so," Henrietta murmured. "It was at your request."
+
+"Yes. He was beautifully kind, as he always is. He agreed at once, gave
+up all his own plans and came."
+
+"And stays"--Henrietta said.
+
+"Yes, for the present. But to tell the truth I'm worried about his
+staying."
+
+"Why?"--again with a just perceptible edge of eagerness.
+
+"Because, of course, I have no right to trade on his kindness, even for
+my father's sake or the sake of the book."
+
+"And that is your only reason?"
+
+"Isn't it more than reason enough? There must be other people who want
+him and things of his own he wants to do. It would be odiously selfish of
+me to interfere by keeping him tied here. I have wondered lately whether
+I oughtn't to speak to him about it and urge his going home. I was
+worrying rather over that when you arrived this afternoon, and then the
+gladness of seeing you put it out of my head. But how I wish you would
+advise me, Henrietta, if it's not troubling you too much. You and they
+have been friends so long and you must know so much better than I can
+what's right. Tell me what is my duty--about his staying, I mean--to, to
+them both, do you think?"
+
+Henrietta Frayling did not answer at once. Her delicate features
+perceptibly sharpened and hardened, her lips becoming thin as a thread.
+
+"You're not vexed with me? I haven't been tiresome and asked you
+something I shouldn't?" Damaris softly exclaimed, smitten with alarm of
+unintended and unconscious offence.
+
+"No--no--but you put a difficult question, since I have only impressions
+and those of the most, fugitive to guide me. Personally, I am always
+inclined to leave well alone."
+
+"But is this well?--There's just the point."
+
+"You are very anxious"--
+
+"Yes, I am very anxious. You see I care dreadfully much."
+
+Henrietta bent down, giving her attention to an inch of kilted
+silk petticoat, showing where it should not, beneath the hem of
+her blue skirt.
+
+"I hesitate to give you advice; but I can give you my impressions--for
+what they may be worth. Seeing Colonel Carteret this afternoon he struck
+me as being in excellent case--enviably young for his years and content."
+
+"You thought so? Yet that's just what has worried me. Once or twice
+lately I have not been sure he was quite content."
+
+"Oh! you put it too high!" Henrietta threw off. "Can one ever be sure
+anyone--even one's own poor self--is quite content?"
+
+And she looked round, bringing the whole artillery of her still great, if
+waning, loveliness suddenly to bear upon Damaris, dazzling, charming,
+confusing her, as she said:
+
+"My precious child, has it never occurred to you Colonel Carteret may
+stay on, not against has will, but very much with it? Or occurred to you,
+further, not only that the pleasures of your father's society are by no
+means to be despised; but that you yourself are a rather remarkable
+product--as quaintly engagingly clever, as you are--well--shall we
+say--handsome, Damaris?"
+
+"I am deputed to enquire whether you propose to take tea indoors, Miss
+Verity, or have it brought to you here; and, in the latter case, whether
+we have leave to join you?"
+
+The speaker, Marshall Wace--a young man of about thirty years of age--may
+be described as soft in make, in colouring slightly hectic, in manner a
+subtle cross between the theatrical and the parsonic. Which, let it be
+added, is by no means to condemn him wholesale, laugh him off the stage
+or out of the pulpit. In certain circles, indeed, these traits, this
+blend, won for him unstinted sympathy and approval. He possessed talents
+in plenty, and these of an order peculiarly attractive to the amateur
+because tentative rather than commanding. Among his intimates he was seen
+and spoken of as one cloaked with the pathos of thwarted aspirations.
+Better health, less meagre private means and a backing of influence, what
+might he not have done? His star might have flamed to the zenith!
+Meanwhile it was a privilege to help him, to such extent as his extreme
+delicacy of feeling permitted. That it really permitted a good deal, one
+way or another, displaying considerable docility under the infliction of
+benefits, would have been coarse to perceive and unpardonably brutal to
+mention.--Such, anyhow, was the opinion held by his cousin, General
+Frayling, at whose expense he now enjoyed a recuperative sojourn upon the
+French Riviera. Some people, in short, have a gift of imposing
+themselves, and Marshall Wace may be counted among that conveniently
+endowed band.
+
+He imposed himself now upon one at least of his hearers. For, though the
+address might seem studied, the voice delivering it was agreeable,
+causing Damaris, for the first time, consciously to notice this member of
+Mrs. Frayling's retinue. She felt amiably disposed towards him since his
+intrusion closed a conversation causing her no little disturbance of
+mind. Henrietta's last speech, in particular, set her nerves tingling
+with most conflicting emotions. If Henrietta so praised her that praise
+must be deserved, for who could be better qualified to give judgment on
+such a subject than the perfectly equipped Henrietta? Yet she shrank in
+distaste, touched in her maiden modesty and pride, from so frank an
+exposition of her own charms. It made her feel unclothed, stripped in the
+market-place--so to speak--and shamed. Secretly she had always hoped she
+was pretty rather than plain. She loved beauty and therefore naturally
+desired to possess it. But to have the fact of that possession thus
+baldly stated was another matter. It made her feel unnatural, as though
+joined to a creature with whom she was insufficiently acquainted, whose
+ways might not be her ways or its thoughts her thoughts. Therefore the
+young man, Marshall Wace, coming as a seasonable diversion from these
+extremely personal piercings and probings, found greater favour in her
+eyes than he otherwise might. And this with results, for Damaris'
+gratitude, once engaged, disdained to criticize, invariably tending to
+err on the super-generous side.
+
+Yes, they would all have tea out here, if Henrietta was willing. And, if
+Henrietta would for the moment excuse her, she would go and order
+Hordle--her father's man--to see to the preparation of it himself.
+Foreign waiters, whatever their ability in other departments, have no
+natural understanding of a tea-pot and are liable to the weirdest ideas of
+cutting bread and butter.
+
+With which, conscious she was guilty of somewhat incoherent chatter,
+Damaris sprang up and swung away along the terrace, through the clear
+tonic radiance, buoyant as a caged bird set free.
+
+"Go with her, Marshall, go with her," Mrs. Frayling imperatively bade
+him.
+
+"And leave you, Cousin Henrietta?"
+
+She rose with a petulant gesture.
+
+"Yes, go at once or you won't overtake her. I am tired, really wretchedly
+tired--and am best left alone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHICH CONCERNS ITSELF, INCIDENTALLY, WITH THE GRIEF OF A VICTIM OF
+CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE RECEPTION OF A BELATED CHRISTMAS GREETING
+
+
+Henrietta Frayling left the Grand Hotel, that afternoon, in a chastened
+frame of mind. Misgivings oppressed her. She doubted--and even more than
+doubted--whether she had risen to the full height of her own reputation,
+whether she had not allowed opportunity to elude her, whether she had not
+lost ground difficult to regain. The affair was so astonishingly sprung
+upon her. The initial impact she withstood unbroken--and from this she
+derived a measure of consolation. But afterwards she weakened. She had
+felt too much--and that proved her undoing. It is foolish, because
+disabling, to feel.
+
+Her treatment of Damaris she condemned as mistaken, admitting a point of
+temper. It is hard to forgive the younger generation their youth, the
+infinite attraction of their ingenuous freshness, the fact that they have
+the ball at their feet. Hence she avoided the society of the young of her
+own sex--as a rule. Girls are trying when pretty and intelligent, hardly
+less trying--though for other reasons--when the reverse. Boys she
+tolerated. In the eyes of young men she sunned herself taking her ease,
+since these are slow to criticize, swift to believe--between eighteen and
+eight-and-twenty, that is.--We speak of the mid-Victorian era and then
+obtaining masculine strain.
+
+Misgivings continued to pursue her during the ensuing evening and even
+interfered with her slumbers during the night. This--most unusual
+occurrence--rendered her fretful. She reproached her tractable and
+distressed little General with having encouraged her to walk much too
+far. In future he swore to insist on the carriage, however confidently
+she might assert the need of active exertion. She pointed out the fallacy
+of rushing to extremes; which rather cruelly floored him, since
+"rushing," in any shape or form, had conspicuously passed out of his
+programme some considerable time ago.
+
+"My wife is not at all herself," he told Marshall Wace, at breakfast next
+morning--"quite overdone, I am sorry to say, and upset. I blame myself.
+I must keep a tight hand on her and forbid over exertion."
+
+With a small spoon, savagely, daringly he beat in the top of his
+boiled egg.
+
+"I must be more watchful," he added. "Her nervous energy is deceptive. I
+must refuse to let it override my better judgment and take me in."
+
+By luncheon time, however, Henrietta was altogether herself, save for a
+pretty pensiveness, and emerged with all her accustomed amiability from
+this temporary eclipse.
+
+The Fraylings occupied a small detached villa, built in the grounds of
+the Hôtel de la Plage--a rival and venerably senior establishment to the
+Grand Hotel--situate just within the confines of St. Augustin, where the
+town curves along the glistering shore to the western horn of the little
+bay. At the back of it runs the historic high road from Marseilles to the
+Italian frontier, passing through Cannes and Nice. Behind it, too, runs
+the railway with its many tunnels, following the same, though a somewhat
+less serpentine, course along the gracious coast.
+
+To the ex-Anglo-Indian woman, society is as imperative a necessity as
+water to a fish. She must foregather or life loses all its savour; must
+entertain, be entertained, rub shoulders generally or she is lost.
+Henrietta Frayling suffered the accustomed fate, though to speak of
+rubbing shoulders in connection with her is to express oneself
+incorrectly to the verge of grossness. Her shoulders were of an order far
+too refined to rub or be rubbed. Nevertheless, after the shortest
+interval consistent with self-respect, such society as St. Augustin and
+its neighbourhood afforded found itself enmeshed in her dainty net. Mrs.
+Frayling's villa became a centre, where all English-speaking persons
+met. There she queened it, with her General as loyal henchman, and
+Marshall Wace as a professor of drawing-room talents of most varied sort.
+
+Discovery of the party at the Grand Hotel, took the gilt off the
+gingerbread of such queenings, to a marked extent, making them look
+make-shifty, lamentably second-rate and cheap. Hence Henrietta's
+fretfulness in part. For with the exception of Lady Hermione
+Twells--widow of a once Colonial Governor--and the Honourable Mrs.
+Callowgas _née_ de Brett, relict of a former Bishop of Harchester, they
+were but scratch pack these local guests of hers. Soon, however, a scheme
+of putting that discovery to use broke in on her musings. The old
+friendship must, she feared, be counted dead. General Frayling's
+existence, in the capacity of husband, rendered any resurrection of it
+impracticable. She recognized that. Yet exhibition of its tombstone, were
+such exhibition compassable, could not fail to bring her honour and
+respect. She would shine by a reflected light, her glory all the greater
+that the witnesses of it were themselves obscure--Lady Hermione and Mrs.
+Callowgas excepted of course. Carteret's good-nature could be counted on
+to bring him to the villa. And Damaris must be annexed. Assuming the rôle
+and attitude of a vicarious motherhood, Henrietta herself could hardly
+fail to gain distinction. It was a touching part--specially when played
+by a childless woman only a little--yes, really only quite a little--past
+her prime.
+
+Here, indeed, was a great idea, as she came to grasp the possibilities
+and scope of it. As chaperon to Damaris how many desirable doors would be
+open to her! Delicately Henrietta hugged herself perceiving that, other
+things being equal, her own career was by no means ended yet. Through
+Damaris might she not very well enter upon a fresh and effective phase of
+it? How often and how ruefully had she revolved the problem of advancing
+age, questioning how gracefully to confront that dreaded enemy, and
+endure its rather terrible imposition of hands without too glaring a loss
+of prestige and popularity! Might not Damaris' childish infatuation
+offer a solution of that haunting problem, always supposing the
+infatuation could be revived, be recreated?
+
+Ah! what a double-dyed idiot she had been yesterday, in permitting
+feeling to outrun judgment!--With the liveliest satisfaction Henrietta
+could have boxed her own pretty ears in punishment of her passing
+weakness.--Yet surely time still remained wherein to retrieve her error
+and restore her ascendency. Damaris might be unusually clever; but she
+was also finely inexperienced, malleable, open to influence as yet. Let
+Henrietta then see to it, and that without delay or hesitation, bringing
+to bear every ingenious social art, and--if necessary--artifice, in which
+long practice had made her proficient.
+
+To begin with she would humble herself by writing a sweet little letter
+to Damaris. In it she would both accuse and excuse her maladroitness of
+yesterday, pleading the shock of so unlooked-for a coming together and
+the host of memories evoked by it.--Would urge how deeply it affected
+her, overcame her in fact, rendering her incapable of saying half the
+affectionate things it was in her heart to say. She might touch on the
+subject of Damaris' personal appearance again; which, by literally taking
+her breath away, had contributed to her general undoing.--On second
+thoughts, however, she decided it would be politic to avoid that
+particular topic, since Damaris was evidently a little shy in respect of
+her own beauty.--Henrietta smiled to herself.--That is a form of shyness
+exceedingly juvenile, short-lived enough!
+
+Marshall should act as her messenger, she being--as she could truthfully
+aver--eager her missive might reach its destination with all possible
+despatch. A letter, moreover, delivered by hand takes on an importance,
+makes a claim on the attention, greater than that of one received by
+post. There is a personal gesture in the former mode of transmission by
+no means to be despised in delicate operations such as the present--"I
+want to set myself right with you _at once_, dearest child, in case, as I
+fear, you may have a little misunderstood, me yesterday. Accident having
+so strangely restored us to one another, I long to hold you closely if
+you will let me do so."--Yes, it should run thus, the theme embroidered
+with high-flashing colour of Eastern reminiscence--the great subtropic
+garden of the Sultan-i-bagh, for example, its palms, orange grove and
+lotus tank, the call of the green parrots, chant of the well-coollie and
+creak of the primitive wooden gearing, as the yoke of cream white oxen
+trotted down and laboriously backed up the walled slope to the well-head.
+
+Mrs. Frayling set herself to produce a very pretty piece of sentiment,
+nicely turned, decorated, worded, and succeeded to her own
+satisfaction. Might not she too, at this rate, claim possession of the
+literary gift--under stress of circumstance? The idea was a new one. It
+amused her.
+
+And what if Damaris elected to show this precious effusion to
+her father, Sir Charles? Well, if the girl did, she did. It might
+just conceivably work on him also, to the restoration of
+past--infatuation?--Henrietta left the exact term in doubt. But her hope
+of such result was of the smallest. Exhibition of a tombstone was the
+most she could count upon.--More probably he would regard it critically,
+cynically, putting his finger through her specious phrases. She doubted
+his forgiveness of a certain act of virtuous treachery even yet;
+although he had, in a measure, condoned her commission of it by making
+use of her on one occasion since, namely, that of her bringing Damaris
+back twelve years ago to Europe. But whether his attitude were cynical
+or not, he would hold his peace. Such cogent reasons existed for silence
+on his part that if he did slightly distrust her, hold her a little
+cheap, he would hardly venture to say as much, least of all to
+Damaris.--Venture or condescend?--Again Mrs. Frayling left the term in
+doubt and went forward with her schemes, which did, unquestionably just
+now, add a pleasing zest to life.
+
+The innocent subject of these machinations received both the note and its
+bearer in a friendly spirit, though she was already, as it happened, rich
+in letters to-day. The bi-weekly packet from Deadham--addressed in Mary
+Fisher's careful copy-book hand--arrived at luncheon time, and
+contained, among much of apparently lesser interest, a diverting
+chronicle of Tom Verity's impressions and experiences during the first
+six weeks of his Indian sojourn. The young man's gaily self-confident
+humour had survived his transplantation. He wrote in high feather, quite
+unabashed by the novelty of his surroundings, yet not forgetting to pay
+honour where honour was due.
+
+"It has been 'roses, roses all the way' thanks to Sir Charles's
+introductions, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful," he told
+her. "They have procured me no end of delightful hospitality from the
+great ones of the local earth, and really priceless opportunities of
+getting into touch with questions of ruling importance over here. I am
+letting my people at home know how very much I owe, and always shall owe,
+to his kindness in using his influence on my behalf at the start."
+
+Damaris glowed responsive to this fine flourish of a tone, and passed the
+letter across the small round dinner table to her father. Opened a fat
+packet, enclosed in an envelope of exaggerated tenuity, from Miss
+Felicia, only to put it aside in favour of another letter bearing an
+Italian stamp and directed in a, to her, unfamiliar hand.
+
+This was modest in bulk as compared with Miss Felicia's; but while
+examining it, while touching it even, Damaris became aware of an inward
+excitement, of a movement of tenderness not to be ignored or denied.
+
+Startled by her own prescience, and the agitation accompanying it, she
+looked up quickly to find Carteret watching her; whereupon, mutely,
+instinctively, her eyes besought him to ask no questions, make no
+comment. For an appreciable space he kept her in suspense, his glance
+holding and challenging hers in close observation. Then as though,
+not without a measure of struggle, granting her request, he smiled
+at her, and, turning his attention to the contents of his plate,
+quietly went on with the business of luncheon. Damaris meanwhile,
+conscience-stricken--she couldn't tell why--by this silent interchange
+of intelligence, this silent demand on his forbearance, on his
+connivance in her secrecy, laid the letter face downwards on the white
+table-cloth, unopened.
+
+Later, Sir Charles Verity being busy with his English correspondence and
+Carteret having disappeared--gone for a solitary walk, as she divined,
+being, as she feared, not quite pleased with her--she read it in the
+security of her bedroom, seated, for greater ease, upon the polished
+parquet floor just inside an open, southward-facing French window, where
+the breeze coming up off the sea gently fanned her face.
+
+The letter began without preamble:
+
+"We made this port--Genoa--last night. All day we have been discharging
+cargo. Half my crew has gone ashore, set on liquoring and wenching after
+the manner of unregenerate sailor-men all the world over. The other half
+follows their bad example to-morrow, as we shall be lying idle in honour
+of the Christmas festival. On board discipline is as strict as I know how
+to make it, but ashore my hand is lifted off them. So long as they turn
+up on time they are free to follow their fancy, even though it lead them
+to smutty places. My own fancies don't happen to lie that way, for which
+I in nowise praise myself. It is an affair of absence of inclination
+rather than overmuch active virtue. I am really no better than they,
+seeing I yield to the only temptation which takes me--the temptation to
+write to you. I have resisted it times out of number since I bade you
+good-bye at The Hard. But Christmas-night turns one a bit soft and
+craving for sight and touch of those who belong to one. So much I dare
+say, though I go back on nothing I said to you then about the keeping up
+of decent barriers. Only being Christmas-night-soft I give myself the
+licence of a holiday--for once. The night is clear as glass and the city
+rises in a great semicircle, pierced by and outlined in twinkling lights,
+right up to the ring of forts crowning the hills, where the sky begins--a
+sky smothered in stars. I have been out, on deck, looking at it all, at
+the black masts and funnels of the ships ranging to right and left
+against the glare of the town, and at the oily, black water, thick with
+floating filth and garbage and with wandering reflections like jewels and
+precious metals on the surface of it--the rummiest mixture of fair and
+foul. And then, all that faded out somehow--and I saw black water again,
+but clean this time and with no reflections, under a close-drawn veil of
+falling rain; and I felt to lift you out of the boat and carry you in
+across the lawn and up to your room. And then I could not hold out
+against temptation any longer, but came here into my cabin and sat down
+to write to you. The picture of you, wet and limp and helpless in my
+arms, is always with me, stamped on the very substance of my brain, as is
+the other picture of you in the drawing-room lined with book-cases, where
+we found one another for the second time. Found one another in spirit, I
+mean; an almost terribly greater finding than the first one, because it
+can go on for ever as it belongs to the part of us which does not die.
+That is my faith anyhow. To-morrow morning I will go ashore and into one
+of those big, tawdry Genoa churches, and listen to the music, standing in
+some quiet corner, and think about you and renew my vows to you. It won't
+be half bad to keep Christmas that way.
+
+"I don't pretend to be a great letter-writer, so if this one has
+funny fashions to it you must forgive both them and me. I write as I
+feel and must leave it so. The voyage has been good, and my poor old
+tub has behaved herself, kept afloat and done her best, bravely if a
+bit wheezingly, in some rather nasty seas. When we are through here I
+take her across to Tripoli and back along the African coast to
+Algiers, then across to Marseilles. I reckon to reach there in six
+weeks or two months from now. You might perhaps be willing to write a
+line to me there--to the care of my owners, Messrs. Denniver, Holland
+& Co. Their office is in the Cannebière. I don't ask you to do this,
+but only tell you I should value it more than you can quite
+know.--Now my holiday is over and I will close down till next
+Christmas-night--unless miracles happen meanwhile--so good-bye.--Here
+is a boatload of my lads coining alongside, roaring with song and as
+drunk as lords.--God bless you. In spirit I once again kiss your dear
+feet. Your brother till death and after.
+
+"DARCY FAIRCLOTH."
+
+Dazed, enchanted, held captive by the secular magic pertaining to those
+who "go down to the sea in ships" and ply their calling in the great
+waters, held captive, too, by the mysterious prenatal sympathies which
+unite those who come of the same blood, Damaris stayed very still,
+sitting child-like upon the bare polished floor, while the wind murmured
+through the spreading pines, shading the terrace below, and gently fanned
+her throat and temples.
+
+For Faircloth's letter seemed to her very wonderful, alike in its vigour,
+its simplicity and--her lips quivered--its revelation of loving.--How he
+cared--and how he went on caring!--There were coarse words in it, the
+meaning of which she neither knew nor sought to know; but she did not
+resent them. The letter indeed would have lost some of its living force,
+its convincing reality, had they been omitted. They rang true, to her
+ear. And just because they rang true the rest rang blessedly true as
+well. She gloried in the whole therefore, breathing through it a larger
+air of faith and hope, and confident fortitude. The kindred qualities of
+her own heart and intelligence, the flush of her fine enthusiasm, sprang
+to meet and join with the fineness of it, its richness of promise and of
+good omen.
+
+For a time mind and emotion remained thus in stable and exalted
+equilibrium. Then, as enchantment reached its necessary term and her
+apprehensions and thought began to work more normally, she badly wanted
+someone to speak to. She wanted to bear witness, to testify, to pour
+forth both the moving tale and her own sensations, into the ear of some
+indulgent and friendly listener. She--she--wanted to tell Colonel
+Carteret about it, to enlist his interest, to read him, in part at least,
+Darcy Faircloth's letter, and hear his confirmation of the noble spirit
+she discerned in it, its poetry, its charm. For the dear man with the
+blue eyes would understand, of that she felt confident, understand
+fully--and it would set her right with him, if, as she suspected, he was
+not somehow quite pleased with her. She caressed the idea, while, so
+doing, silence and concealment grew increasingly irksome to her. Oh! she
+wanted to speak--and to her father she could not speak.
+
+With that both Damaris' attitude and expression changed, the glory
+abruptly departing. She got up off the floor, left the window, and sat
+down very soberly, in a red-velvet covered arm-chair, placed before the
+flat stone hearth piled with wood ashes.
+
+There truly was the fly in the ointment, the abiding smirch on the
+otherwise radiant surface--as she now hailed it--of this strangely moving
+fraternal relation. The fact of it did come, and, as she feared, would
+inevitably continue to come between her and her father, marring to an
+appreciable degree their mutual confidence and sympathy. At Deadham he
+had braced himself to deal with the subject in a spirit of rather
+magnificent self-abnegation. But the effort had cost him more than she
+quite cared to estimate, in lowered pride and moral suffering. It had
+told on not only his mental but his physical health. Now that he was in
+great measure restored, his humour no longer saturnine, he no longer
+remote, sunk in himself and inaccessible, it would be not only
+injudicious, but selfish, to the verge of active cruelty, to press the
+subject again upon his notice, to propose further concessions, or further
+recognition of its existence. She couldn't ask that of him--ten thousand
+times no, she couldn't ask it--though not to ask it was to let the breach
+in sympathy and confidence widen silently and grow.
+
+So much was sadly clear to her. She unfolded Faircloth's letter and read
+it through a second time, in vain hope of discovering some middle way,
+some leading. Read it, feeling the first enchantment but all
+cross-hatched now and seamed with perplexity and regret. For decent
+barriers must stand, he declared, which meant concealment indefinitely
+prolonged, the love of brother and sister wasted, starved to the mean
+proportions of an occasional furtive letter; sacrificed, with all its
+possibilities of present joy and future comfort, to hide the passage of
+long-ago wrongdoing in which it had its source.
+
+Her hesitation went a step behind this presently, arguing as to how that
+could be sin which produced so gracious a result. It wasn't logical an
+evil tree should bear such conspicuously good fruit. Yet conscience and
+instinct assured her the tree was indeed evil--a thing of license, of
+unruly passion upon which she might not look. Had it not been her first
+thought--when Faircloth told her, drifting down the tide-river in the
+chill and dark--that he must feel sad, feel angry having been wronged by
+the manner of his birth? He had answered "yes," thereby admitting the
+inherent evil of the tree of which his existence was the fruit--adding,
+"but not often and not for long," since he esteemed the gift of life too
+highly to be overnice as to the exact method by which he became possessed
+of it. He palliated, therefore, he excused, but he did not deny.
+
+By this time Damaris' mind wheeled in a vicious circle, perpetually
+swinging round to the original starting-point. The moral puzzle proved
+too complicated for her, the practical one equally hard of solution. She
+stood between them, her father and her brother. Their interests
+conflicted, as did the duty she owed each; and her heart, her judgment,
+her piety were torn two ways at once. Would it always be thus--or would
+the pull of one prove conclusively the stronger? Would she be compelled
+finally to choose between them? Not that either openly did or ever would
+strive to coerce her. Both were honourable, both magnanimous. And, out of
+her heart, she desired to serve both justly and equally--only--only--upon
+youth the pull of youth is very great.
+
+She put her hands over her eyes, shrinking, frightened. Was it possible
+she loved Darcy Faircloth best?
+
+A knocking. Damaris slipped the letter into the pocket of her dress, and
+rising crossed the room and opened the door.
+
+Hordle stood in the pale spacious corridor without. He presented Marshall
+Wace's card. The gentleman, he said rather huffily, had called, bringing
+a message from Mrs. Frayling as Hordle understood, which he requested to
+deliver to Miss Damaris in person. He begged her to believe he was in no
+hurry. If she was engaged he could perfectly well wait.--He would do so
+in the hotel drawing-room, until it was convenient to her to allow him a
+few minutes' conversation.
+
+So, for the second time, this young man's intrusion proved by no means
+unwelcome, as offering Damaris timely escape. She went down willingly
+to receive him. Yesterday he struck her as a pleasant and agreeable
+person--and of a type with which she was unacquainted. It would be
+interesting to talk to him.--She felt anxious, moreover, to learn what
+Henrietta, lovely if not entirely satisfactory Henrietta, could
+possibly want.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BLOWING OF ONE'S OWN TRUMPET PRACTISED AS A FINE ART
+
+
+The slender little Corsican horses, red-chestnut in colour and active as
+cats, trotted, with a tinkle of bells, through the barred sunshine and
+shadow of the fragrant pine and cork woods. The road, turning inland,
+climbed steadily, the air growing lighter and fresher as the elevation
+increased--a nip in it testifying that January was barely yet out. And
+that nip justified the wearing of certain afore-mentioned myrtle-green,
+fur-trimmed pelisse, upon which Damaris' minor affections were, at this
+period, much set. Though agreeably warm and thick, it moulded her bosom,
+neatly shaped her waist, and that without any defacing wrinkle. The broad
+fur band at the throat compelled her to carry her chin high, with a not
+unbecoming effect. Her cheeks bloomed, her eyes shone bright, as she sat
+beside Mrs. Frayling in the open victoria, relishing the fine air, the
+varying prospect, her own good clothes, her companion's extreme
+prettiness and lively talk.
+
+This drive, the prelude to Henrietta's campaign, presented that lady at
+her best. The advantage of being--as Henrietta--essentially artificial,
+is that you can never, save by forgetful lapse into sincerity, be untrue
+to yourself. Hence what a saving of scruples, of self-accusation, of
+self-torment! Her plans once fixed she proceeded to carry them out with
+unswerving ease and spontaneity. She refused to hurry, her only
+criterion of personal conduct being success; and success, so she
+believed, if sound, being a plant of gradual growth. Therefore she gave
+both herself and others time. Once fairly in the saddle, she never
+strained, never fussed.
+
+Her cue to-day was to offer information rather than to require it.
+Curious about many things she might be; but gratification of her
+curiosity must wait. Damaris, on her part, listened eagerly, asking
+nothing better than to be kept amused, kept busy, helped to forget.--Not
+Faircloth's letter--very, very far from that!--but the inward conflict of
+opposing loves, opposing duties, which meditation upon his letter so
+distractingly produced. Relatively all, outside that conflict and the
+dear cause of it, was of small moment--mere play stuff at best. But her
+brain and conscience were tired. She would be so glad, for a time, only
+to think about play stuff.
+
+"I want you to go on being kind to Marshall Wace," Henrietta in the
+course of conversation presently said. "He told me how charmingly you
+received him yesterday, when he called with my note. He was so pleased.
+He is exaggeratedly sensitive owing to unfortunate family complications
+in the past."
+
+Damaris pricked up her ears, family complications having latterly
+acquired a rather painful interest for her.
+
+"Poor man--I'm sorry," she said.
+
+"His mother, a favourite cousin of my husband, General Frayling, married
+an impossible person--eloped with him, to tell the truth. Her people, not
+without reason, were dreadfully put out. The children were brought up
+rather anyhow. Marshall did not go to a public school, which he imagines
+places him at a disadvantage with other men. Perhaps it does. Men always
+strike me as being quaintly narrow-minded on that subject. Later he was
+sent to Cambridge with the idea of his taking Orders and going into the
+Church. My husband's elder brother, Leonard Frayling, is patron of
+several livings. He would have presented Marshall to the first which fell
+vacant, and thus his future would have been secured. But just as he was
+going up for deacon's orders, Marshall, rather I can't help feeling like
+a goose, developed theological difficulties. They were perfectly genuine,
+I don't doubt; but they were also singularly ill-timed--a little earlier,
+a little later, or not at all would have been infinitely more convenient.
+So there he was, poor fellow, thrown on the world at three-and-twenty
+with no profession and no prospects; for my brother-in-law washed his
+hands of him when the theological difficulties were announced. Marshall
+tried bear-leading; but people are not particularly anxious to entrust
+their boys to a non-public school man afflicted by religious doubts. He
+thought of making use of his really exquisite voice and becoming a public
+singer; but the training is fearfully expensive, and so somehow that plan
+also fell through. For a time I am afraid he was really reduced to great
+straits, with the consequence that he broke down in health. Through
+friends, my husband got to hear of Marshall's miserable
+circumstances--shortly after our marriage it was--and felt it incumbent
+upon him to go to the rescue."
+
+Henrietta paused, thereby giving extra point to what was to follow, and
+pulled the fur rug up absently about her waist.
+
+"For the last eighteen months," she said, "Marshall has practically
+made his home with us. The arrangement has its drawbacks, of course.
+For one thing the General and I are never alone, and that is a trial to
+us both. Two's company and three's none. When a husband and wife are
+really devoted they don't want always to have a third wheel to the
+domestic cart."
+
+Then, as if checking further and very natural inclination to repining,
+she looked round at Damaris, smiling from behind her thick white net veil
+with most disarming sweetness.
+
+"No--no--I'm not naughty. I don't mean to complain about it," she
+prettily protested. "For I do so strongly feel if one sets out to do good
+it shouldn't be by driblets, with your name, in full, printed in
+subscription lists against every small donation. You should plump for
+your _protégé_, and that with the least ostentation possible. The General
+and I are careful not to let people know Marshall stays with us as a
+guest. It is rather a slip speaking of it even to you; but I can trust
+you not to repeat what I say. I am sure of that."
+
+Damaris laid a hand fondly, impulsively upon the elder woman's knee.
+
+"For certain you can trust me. For certain anything you say to me is just
+between our two selves. I should never dream of repeating it."
+
+"There speaks the precious downy owl of long ago," Mrs. Frayling brightly
+cried, "bustling up in defence of its own loyalty and honour. Ah!
+Damaris, how very delicious it is to have you with me!"
+
+For, her main point having been made, she now adroitly discarded pathos.
+Another word regarding her philanthropic harbourage of the young man,
+Marshall Wace, remained to be spoken--but not yet. Let it come in later,
+naturally and without hint of insistence.
+
+"We must be together as much as possible during the next few weeks," she
+went on--"as often as Sir Charles can be persuaded to spare you to me.
+Whether the General and I shall ever make up our minds to settle down in
+a home of our own, where I could ask you to stay with us, I don't know.
+I'm afraid we are hopelessly nomadic. Therefore I am extra anxious to
+make the most of the happy accident which has thrown us together, anxious
+to get every ounce possible of intercourse out of it.--We quite
+understand you have luncheon with me on Thursday, don't we?--and that you
+stay and help me through the afternoon. I am always at home on Thursdays
+to the neighbours. They aren't all of them conspicuously well-bred or
+exciting; but I have learnt to take the rough with the smooth, the boring
+along with the gifted and brilliant. India is a good school in which to
+learn hospitality. The practise of that virtue becomes a habit. And I for
+one quite refuse to excuse myself from further exercise of it on coming
+back to Europe. The General feels with me; and we have laid ourselves out
+to be civil to our compatriots here at St. Augustin this winter. A few
+people were vexatiously stiff and starched at first; but each one of them
+has given in, in turn. They really do, I believe, appreciate our little
+social efforts."
+
+"Who wouldn't give in to you Henrietta?" Damaris murmured.
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Frayling delicately beamed on her; and, agreeable
+unanimity of sentiment being thus established, conversation between the
+two ladies for a while fell silent.
+
+The little chestnut horses, meantime, encouraged with "Oh hè-s" and "Oh
+là-s" by their driver, trotted and climbed, climbed and trotted, until
+the woodland lay below and the Signal de la Palu was reached. A wide
+level space on a crest of the foot-hills--with flag staff bearing the
+valorous tricolor, and rustic log-built restaurant offering
+refreshment--opening upon the full splendour of the Maritime Alps.
+
+Damaris stepped out of the carriage, and, patting the near horse on the
+neck in passing, went forward across the sparse turf, starred with tiny
+clear coloured flowers, to the edge of the platform.
+
+The Provençal coachman, from his perch on the box-seat of the victoria,
+his rough-caste crumpled countenance sun-baked to the solid ruddy brown
+of the soil of his own vineyard, followed her movements with approving
+glances.--For she was fresh as an opening rose the young English _Mees_,
+and though most elegant, how agile, how evidently strong!
+
+Innocent of the admiration she excited, Damaris stood absorbed, awed
+even, by the grandeur of the scene. Many hundred feet below, the rent
+chasm down which it took its course steeped in violet gloom, the
+milk-white waters of an ice-fed river impetuously journeyed to the
+fertile lowlands and the sea. Opposite, across the gorge, amazingly
+distinct in the pellucid atmosphere, rose the high mountains, the
+undefiled, untrodden and eternal snows. Azure shadow, transparent,
+ethereal, haunted them, bringing into evidence enormous rounded shoulder,
+cirque, crinkled glacier, knife-edge of underlying rock.
+
+They belonged to the deepest the most superb of life, this rent gorge,
+these mountains--like Faircloth's letter. Would beautiful and noble
+sights, such as these, always in future give her an ache of longing for
+the writer of that letter, for the romance, the poetry, of the
+unacknowledged relation he bore to her? Tears smarted hot in Damaris'
+eyes, and resolutely, if rather piteously, she essayed to wink them away.
+For to her it just now seemed, the deepest, the most superb of life was
+also in great measure the forbidden. The ache must be endured, then, the
+longing go unsatisfied, since she could only stay the pain of them by
+doing violence to plain and heretofore fondly cherished, duties.
+
+But her tears defied the primitive process of winking. Not so
+cheaply could she rid herself of their smart and the blurred
+distorted vision they occasioned. She pulled out her handkerchief
+petulantly and wiped them. Then schooled herself to a colder, more
+moderate and reasonable temper.
+
+And, so doing, her thought turned gratefully to Mrs. Frayling. For
+mercifully Henrietta was here to help fill the void; to, in a manner,
+break her fall. Henrietta didn't belong to the depths or the heights,
+that she regretfully admitted. With the eternal snows she possessed
+little or nothing in common. But, at a lower, more everyday level, had
+not she a vast amount to offer, what with her personal loveliness, her
+social cleverness, her knowledge of the world and its ways? She might not
+amount to the phoenix of Damaris' childhood's adoration; but she was very
+friendly, very diverting, delightfully kind. Damaris honestly believed
+all these excellent things of her.--She had been stupidly fastidious
+three days ago, and failed to do Henrietta justice. What she had
+learned--by chance--this afternoon, of Henrietta's unselfishness and
+generous treatment of Marshall Wace bore effectively convincing witness
+to the sweetness of her disposition and kindness of her heart. Damaris
+felt bound to make amends for that unspoken injustice, of which she now
+repented. How better could she do so than by giving herself warmly,
+without reserve or restraint, in response to the interest and attention
+Henrietta lavished upon her?--At eighteen, to be wooed by so finished and
+popular a person was no mean compliment.--She wouldn't hold back,
+suspicious and grudging; but enjoy all Henrietta so delightfully offered
+to the uttermost.
+
+And there, as though clenching the conclusion thus arrived at, Mrs.
+Frayling's voice gaily hailed her, calling:
+
+"Damaris, Damaris, here is our tea--or rather our coffee. Come, darling
+child, and partake before it gets cold."
+
+So after a brief pause, spent in determined looking, the girl bowed her
+head in mute farewell; and turned her back perhaps courageously, perhaps
+unwisely and somewhat faithlessly, upon the mountains, and the rare
+mysteries of their untrodden snows. She went across the sparse turf,
+starred with tiny clear, coloured flowers, her face stern, for all its
+youthful bloom and softness, her eyes meditative and profound.
+
+The owner of the log-built restaurant, a thick-set, grizzled veteran of
+the Franco-Prussian war, the breast of his rusty velveteen jacket proudly
+bearing a row of medals, stood talking to Mrs. Frayling, hat in hand. His
+right foot had suffered amputation some inches above the ankle, and he
+walked with the ungainly support of a crutch-topped peg-leg strapped to
+the flexed knee.
+
+As Damaris approached the carriage, he swept back the fur rug in
+gallantly respectful invitation; and, so soon as she ensconced herself on
+the seat beside Henrietta, bending down he firmly and comfortably tucked
+it round her. He declared, further, as she thanked him, it an honour in
+any capacity to serve her, since had not Madame, but this moment, so
+gracefully informed him of the commanding military career of the
+Mademoiselle's father, possessor of that unique distinction the Victoria
+Cross--a person animated, moreover, as Madame reported, by sincere
+sympathy for the tragic sorrows of well-beloved and so now cruelly
+dismembered France.
+
+Damaris heard, in this singing of her father's praises, a grateful
+reconciling strain. She found it profitable, just now, to recall the
+heroic deeds, the notable achievements which marked his record. Her
+coffee tasted the more fragrant for it, the butter the fresher, the
+honey the sweeter wherewith she spread the clean coarse home-baked bread.
+She ate, indeed, with a capital appetite, the long drive and stimulating
+air, making her hungry. Possibly even her recent emotion contributed to
+that result; for in youth heartache by no means connotes a disposition
+towards fasting, rather does diet, generous in quantity, materially
+assist to soothe its anguish.
+
+This meal, in fact, partaken of in the open, alone with Henrietta,
+object of her childhood's idolatry--the first they had shared since
+those remote and guileless years--assumed to Damaris a sacramental
+character, though of the earthly and mundane rather than transcendental
+kind. Its communion was one of good fellowship, of agreement in
+cultivation of the lighter social side; which, upon our maiden's part,
+implied tacit consent to conform to easier standards than those until
+now regulating her thought and action, implied tacit acceptance of
+Henrietta as example and as guide.
+
+Whether the latter would have found cause for self-congratulation, could
+she have fathomed the precise cause of this apparently speedy conquest
+and speedy surrender, is doubtful; since it, in fact, took its rise less
+in the fascination of devotion given, than in that of devotion denied.
+She happened to be here on the spot at a critical juncture, and thus to
+catch the young girl's heart on the rebound. That was all--that, joined
+with Damaris' instinctive necessity to play fair and pay in honest coin
+for every benefit received.
+
+So much must be said in extenuation of our nymph-like damsel's apparent
+subjection to levity--a declension which, in the sequel and in certain
+quarters, went neither unnoticed nor undeplored. But to labour this point
+is to forestall history. Immediately her change of attitude announced its
+existence innocently enough. For the sacramental meal once consumed, and
+courteous parting words bestowed upon the valiant soldier broken in his
+country's wars, the coachman mounted the box, and gathering up the reins,
+with "Ho hè's" and "ho là's," swung his horses half round the level and
+plunged them over the hill-side, along a steep woodland track, leading by
+serpentine twists and curves down to join the Corniche Road--a blonde
+ribbon rimming the indentations of the five-mile distant coast.
+
+Damaris steadied herself well back on the seat of the carriage as it
+swayed and bumped over ruts and tree-roots to the lively menace of its
+springs. She studiously kept her face turned towards her companion, a
+myrtle-green shoulder as studiously turned towards the view. For she
+found it wiser not even to glance in that direction, lest rebellious
+regrets and longings should leap on her across the violet-blotted abyss
+from out those shining Alpine citadels. While to strengthen herself in
+allegiance to Mrs. Frayling and to, what may be called, the lighter side,
+she pushed one hand into that lady's muff and coaxed the slender
+pointed-fingers hiding in the comfortable pussy-warmth within.
+
+"Tell me stories, Henrietta, please," she entreated, "about all the
+people whom you've asked to your party on Thursday. Dress them up for me
+and put them through their paces, so that I may know who they all are
+when I see them and make no mistakes, but behave to them just as you
+would wish me to."
+
+"Gradate your attentions and not pet the wrong ones?"
+
+Mrs. Frayling gave gentle squeeze for squeeze in the pussy-warmth,
+laughing a trifle impishly.
+
+"You sinful child," she said--"Gracious, what jolts--my spine will soon
+be driven through the top of my skull at this rate!--Yes, sinful in
+tempting me to gibbet my acquaintances for your amusement."
+
+"But why gibbet them? Aren't they nice, don't you care for them?"
+
+"Prodigiously, of course. Yet would you find it in the least interesting
+or illuminating if I indexed their modest virtues only?"
+
+"I think the old soldier found it both interesting and illuminating when
+you indexed my father's virtues just now."
+
+"Sir Charles's virtues hardly come under the head of modest ones," Mrs.
+Frayling threw off almost sharply. "Give me someone as well worth
+acclaiming and I'll shout with the best! But you scarcely quote your
+father as among the average, do you?--The people whom you'll meet on
+Thursday compared to him, I'm afraid, are as molehills to the mountains
+yonder. If I described them by their amiable qualities alone they'd be as
+indistinguishable and as insipid as a row of dolls. Only through their
+aberrations, their unconscious perfidies, iniquities, do they develop
+definiteness of outline and begin to live. Oh! nothing could be unkinder
+than to whitewash them. Take Mrs. Callowgas, for instance, with one eye
+on the Church, the other on the world. The permanent inconsistency of her
+attitude, as I may say her permanent squint, gives her a certain _cachet_
+without which she'd be a positive blank.--She is most anxious to meet
+you, by the way, and Sir Charles--always supposing he is self-sacrificing
+enough to come--because she knows connections of his and yours at
+Harchester, a genial pillar of the Church in the form of an Archdeacon,
+in whom, as I gather, her dear dead Lord Bishop very much put his trust."
+
+"Tom Verity's father, I suppose," Damaris murmured, her colour rising,
+the hint of a cloud too upon her brow.
+
+"And who may Tom Verity be?" Mrs. Frayling, noting both colour and cloud,
+alertly asked.
+
+"A distant cousin. He stayed with us in the autumn just before he went
+out to India. He passed into the Indian Civil Service from Oxford at the
+top of the list."
+
+"Praiseworthy young man."
+
+"Oh! but you would like him, Henrietta," the girl declared. "He is very
+clever and very entertaining too when"--
+
+"When?"
+
+"Well, when he doesn't tease too much. He has an immense amount to talk
+about, and very good manners."
+
+"Also, when he does not tease too much?--And you like him?"
+
+"I don't quite know," Damaris slowly said. "He did not stay with us
+long enough for me to make up my mind. And then other things happened
+which rather put him out of my head. He was a little conceited, perhaps,
+I thought."
+
+"Not unnaturally, being at the top of the pass list. But though other
+things put him out of your head, he writes to you?"
+
+In the pussy-warmth within her muff, Mrs. Frayling became sensible
+that Damaris' hand grew unresponsive, at once curiously stiff and
+curiously limp.
+
+"He has written twice. Once on the voyage out, and again soon after he
+arrived. The--the second letter reached me this week."
+
+Notwithstanding sunshine, the eager air, and lively bumping of the
+descent, Henrietta observed the flush fade, leaving the girl white as
+milk. Her eyes looked positively enormous set in the pallor of her face.
+They were veiled, telling nothing, and thereby--to Mrs. Frayling's
+thinking--betraying much. She scented a situation--some girlish
+attachment, budding affair of the heart.
+
+"My father gave Tom Verity letters of introduction, and he wanted us to
+know how kindly he had been received in consequence."
+
+"Most proper on his part," Mrs. Frayling said.
+
+She debated discreet questioning, probing--the establishment of herself
+in the character of sympathetic confidante. But decided against that. It
+might be impolitic, dangerous even, to press the pace. Moreover the young
+man, whatever his attractions, might be held a negligible quantity in as
+far as any little schemes of her own were concerned at present, long
+leave and reappearance upon the home scene being almost certainly years
+distant.--And, just there, the hand within the muff became responsive
+once more, even urgent in its seeking and pressure, as though appealing
+for attention and tenderness.
+
+"Henrietta, I don't want to be selfish, but won't you go on telling me
+stories about your Thursday party people?--I interrupted you--but it's
+all new, you see, and it interests me so much," Damaris rather
+plaintively said.
+
+Mrs. Frayling needed no further inducement to exercise her really
+considerable powers of verbal delineation. Charging her palette with
+lively colours, she sprang to the task--and that with a sprightly
+composure and deftness of touch which went far to cloak malice and rob
+flippancy of offence.
+
+Listening, Damaris brightened--as the adroit performer intended she
+should--under the gay cascade of talk. Laughed at length, letting finer
+instincts of charity go by the wall, in her enjoyment of neatly turned
+mockeries and the sense of personal superiority they provoked. For
+Henrietta's dissection of the weaknesses of absent friends, inevitably
+amounted to indirect flattery of the friend for whose diversion that
+process of dissection was carried out.
+
+She passed the whole troop in review.--To begin with Miss Maud Callowgas,
+in permanent waiting upon her ex-semi-episcopal widowed mother--in age a
+real thirty-five though nominal twenty-eight, her muddy complexion,
+prominent teeth and all too long back.--Her designs, real or imagined,
+upon Marshall Wace. Designs foredoomed to failure, since whatever his
+intentions--Henrietta smiled wisely--they certainly did not include Maud
+Callowgas's matrimonial future in their purview.
+
+Herbert Binning followed next--the chaplain who served the rather staring
+little Anglican church at Le Vandou, a suburb of St. Augustin much
+patronized by the English in the winter season, and a chapel somewhere in
+the Bernese Oberland during the summer months. Energetic, athletic, a
+great talker and squire of dames--in all honesty and correctness, this
+last, well understood, for there wasn't a word to be breathed against the
+good cleric's morals. But just a wee bit impressionable and flirtatious,
+as who might not very well be with such a whiney-piney wife as Mrs.
+Binning, always ailing; what mind she might (by stretch of charity) be
+supposed to possess exclusively fixed upon the chronic irregularities of
+her internal organs? Recumbency was a mania with her and she had a
+disconcerting habit of wanting to lie down on the most inconveniently
+unsuitable occasions.--To mitigate his over-flowing energies, which cried
+aloud for work, Mr. Binning took pupils. He had two exceptionably nice
+boys with him this winter, in the interval between leaving Eton and going
+up to Oxford, namely, Peregrine Ditton, Lord Pamber's younger son, and
+Harry Ellice, a nephew of Lady Hermione Twells. They were very well-bred.
+Their high spirits were highly infectious. They played tennis to
+perfection and Harry Ellice danced quite tidily into the
+bargain.--Damaris must make friends with them. They were her
+contemporaries, and delightfully fresh and ingenuous.
+
+Lady Hermione herself--here Henrietta's tone conveyed restraint, even
+comparative reverence--who never for an instant forgot she once had
+reigned over some microscopic court out in the far Colonial
+wilderness, nor allowed you to forget it either. Her glance half
+demanded your curtsy. Still she was the "real thing" and, in that,
+eminently satisfactory--genuine _grande dame_ by right both of birth
+and of training.
+
+"She won't condescend to tell me so, being resolved to keep me very much
+in my proper place," Henrietta continued; "but I learned yesterday from
+Mary Ellice--Harry's sister, who lives with her--that she is intensely
+desirous to meet Sir Charles. She wants to talk to him about Afghanistan
+and North-west Frontier policy. A brother of hers it appears was at one
+time in the Guides; and she is under the impression your father and
+Colonel Carteret would have known him.--By the way, dearest child, they
+do mean to honour me, those two, don't they, with their presence on
+Thursday?"
+
+"Of course they will, since you asked them. Why, they love to come
+and see you."
+
+"Do they?" Mrs. Frayling said--"Anyhow, let us hope so. I can trust
+Carteret's general benevolence, but I am afraid your father will be
+unutterably bored with my rubbishing little assembly."
+
+"But, of course, he'll be nice to everybody too--as tame and gentle as
+possible with them all to please you, don't you see, Henrietta."
+
+"Ah! no doubt, all to please me!" she repeated. And fell to musing,
+while the carriage, quitting at last the rough forest track, rattled out
+on to the metalled high road, white in dust.
+
+Here the late afternoon sun still lay hot. The booming plunge of the
+tideless sea, breaking upon the rocks below, quivered in the quiet air.
+Henrietta Frayling withdrew her hands from her muff, unfastened the
+collar of her sable cape. The change from the shadowed woods to this
+glaring sheltered stretch of road was oppressive. She felt strangely
+tired and spent. She trusted Damaris would not perceive her uncomfortable
+state and proffer sympathy. And Damaris, in fact, did nothing of the
+sort, being very fully occupied with her own concerns at present.
+
+Half a mile ahead, pastel-tinted, green-shuttered houses--a village of a
+single straggling street--detached themselves in broken perspective from
+the purple of pine-crowned cliff and headland beyond. Behind them the
+western sky began to grow golden with the approach of sunset. The road
+lead straight towards that softly golden light--to St. Augustin. It led
+further, deeper into the gold, deeper, as one might fancy, into the heart
+of the coming sunset, namely to the world-famous seaport of Marseilles.
+
+Damaris sought to stifle remembrance of this alluring fact, as soon as it
+occurred to her. She must not dally with it--no she mustn't. To in
+anywise encourage or dwell on it, was weak and unworthy, she having
+accepted the claims of clearly apprehended duty. She could not go back on
+her decision, her choice, since, in face of the everlasting hills, she
+had pledged herself.
+
+So she let her eyes no longer rest on the high-road, but looked out to
+sea--where, as tormenting chance would have it, the black hull of a big
+cargo boat, steaming slowly westward, cut into the vast expanse of blue,
+long pennons of rusty grey smoke trailing away from its twin rusty-red
+painted funnels.
+
+Hard-pressed, the girl turned to her companion, asking abruptly,
+inconsequently--"Is that every one whom you expect on Thursday,
+Henrietta?"
+
+For some seconds Mrs. Frayling regarded her with a curious lack of
+intelligent interest or comprehension. Her thoughts, also, had run
+forward into the gold of the approaching sunset; and she had some
+difficulty in overtaking, or restraining them, although they went no
+further than the Grand Hotel; and--so to speak--sat down there all of a
+piece, on a buff-coloured iron chair, which commanded an uninterrupted
+view of four gentlemen standing talking before the front door.
+
+"On Thursday?" she repeated--"Why Thursday?"--and her usually
+skilful hands fumbled with the fastening of her sable cape. Their
+helpless ineffectual movements served to bring her to her senses,
+bring her to herself.
+
+"Really you possess an insatiable thirst for information regarding my
+probable guests, precious child," she exclaimed. "All--of course not. I
+have only portrayed the heads of tribes as yet for your delectation. We
+shall number many others--male and female--of the usual self-expatriated
+British rank and file.--Derelicts mostly."
+
+Lightly and coldly, Henrietta laughed.
+
+"Like, for example, the General and myself. Wanderers possessed of a
+singularly barren species of freedom, without ties, without any
+sheet-anchor of family or of profession to embarrass our movements,
+without call to live in one place rather than another. All along this
+sun-blessed Riviera you will find them swarming, thick as flies,
+displaying the trumpery spites and rivalries through which, as I started
+by pointing out to you, they can alone maintain a degree of individuality
+and persuade themselves and others they still are actually alive."
+
+Shocked at this sudden bitterness, touched to the quick by generous pity,
+regardless of possible onlookers--here in the village street, where the
+hoof-beats of the trotting horses echoed loud from the house-walls on
+either side--Damaris put her arms round Henrietta Frayling, clasping,
+kissing her.
+
+"Ah! don't, Henrietta," she cried. "Don't dare to say such ugly,
+lying things about your dear self. They aren't true. They're absurdly,
+scandalously untrue.--You who are so brilliant, so greatly admired,
+who have everyone at your feet! You who are so kind too,--think of all
+the pleasure you have given me to-day, for instance--and then think
+how beautifully good you've been, and all the time are being, to poor
+Mr. Wace"--
+
+Whether Mrs. Frayling's surprising lapse into sincerity and bald
+self-criticism were intentional, calculated, or not, she was undoubtedly
+quick to see and profit by the opening which Damaris' concluding words
+afforded her.
+
+"How sweet you are, darling child! How very dear of you to scold me
+thus!" she murmured, gently disengaging herself and preening her
+feathers, somewhat disarranged by the said darling child's
+impetuous onset.
+
+"I know it is wrong to grumble. Yet sometimes--as one grows older--one
+gets a dreadful sense that the delights of life are past; and that
+perhaps one has been overscrupulous, over-timid and so missed the
+best.--That is one reason why I find it so infinitely pleasing to have
+you with me--yet pathetic too perhaps.--Why? Well, I don't know that I am
+quite at liberty to explain exactly why."
+
+Henrietta smiled at her long, wistfully and oh! so sagely.
+
+"And, indirectly, that reminds me I am most anxious you should not
+exaggerate, or run off with any mistaken ideas about my dealings with
+poor Marshall Wace. I don't deny I did find his constantly being with us
+a trial at first. But I am reconciled to it. A trifle of discipline,
+though screamingly disagreeable, is no doubt sometimes useful--good for
+one's character, I mean. And I really have grown quite attached to him.
+He has charming qualities. His want of self-confidence is really his
+worst fault--and what a trivial one if you've had experience of the
+horrid things men can do, gamble, for example, and drink."
+
+Henrietta paused, sighed. The yellow facade of the Grand Hotel came into
+sight, a pale spot amid dark trees in the distance.
+
+"And Marshall, poor fellow," she continued, "is more grateful to me,
+that I know, than words can say. So do like him and encourage him a
+little--it would be such a help and happiness to me as well as to him,
+dearest Damaris."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+IN WHICH HENRIETTA PULLS THE STRINGS
+
+
+Mrs. Frayling's afternoon party passed off to admiration. But this by no
+means exhausted her social activities. Rather did it stimulate them; so
+that, with Damaris' amusement as their ostensible object and excuse, they
+multiplied exceedingly. Henrietta was in her native element. Not for
+years had she enjoyed herself so much. This chaperonage, this vicarious
+motherhood, was rich in opportunity. She flung wide her nets, even to the
+enmeshing of recruits from other larger centres, Cannes, Antibes and
+Nice. This more ambitious phase developed later. Immediately our
+chronicle may address itself to the initial Thursday, which, for our
+nymph-like maiden, saw the birth of certain illusions destined to all too
+lengthy a span of life.
+
+Luncheon at the villa--or as Henrietta preferred it called, The
+Pavilion--set in the grounds of the Hôtel de la Plage and dependent for
+service upon that house--was served at mid-day. This left a considerable
+interval before the advent of the expected guests. Mrs. Frayling refused
+to dedicate it to continuous conversation, as unduly tiring both for
+Damaris and for herself. They must reserve their energies, must keep
+fresh. Marshall Wace was, therefore, bidden to provide peaceful
+entertainment, read aloud--presently, perhaps, sing to them at such time
+as digestion--bad for the voice when in process--might be supposed
+complete. The young man obeyed, armed with Tennyson's _Maud_ and a volume
+of selected lyrics.
+
+His performance fairly started General Frayling furtively vanished in
+search of a mild _siesta_. It inflated his uxorious breast with pride to
+have his Henrietta shine in hospitality thus. But his lean shanks
+wearied, keeping time to the giddy music. Wistfully he feared he must be
+going downhill, wasn't altogether the man he used to be, since he found
+the business of pleasure so exhaustingly strenuous. And that was beastly
+unfair to his lovely wife--wouldn't do, would not do at all, by Gad!
+Therefore did he vanish into a diminutive and rather stuffy smoking-room,
+under the stairs, unfasten his nankeen waistcoat, unfasten his
+collar-stud, doze and finally, a little anxiously, sleep.
+
+Whatever Marshall Wace's diffidence in ordinary intercourse, it
+effectually disappeared so soon as he began to declaim or to recite. The
+histrionic in him declared itself, rising dominant. Given a character to
+impersonate, big swelling words to say, fine sentiments to enunciate, he
+changed to the required colour chameleon-like. You forgot--at least the
+feminine portion of his audience, almost without exception, forgot--that
+his round light-brown eyes stared uncomfortably much; that his nose, thin
+at the root and starting with handsome aquiline promise, ended in a
+foolish button-tip. Forgot that his lips were straight and compressed,
+wanting in generous curves and in tenderness--an actor's mouth,
+constructed merely for speech. Forgot the harsh quality of the triangular
+redness on either cheek, fixed and feverish. Ceased to remark how the
+angle of the jaw stood away from and beyond the sinewy, meagre neck, or
+note the rise and fall of Adam's apple so prominent in his throat.--No
+longer were annoyed by the effeminate character of the hands, their
+retracted nails and pink, upturned finger-tips, offering so queer a
+contrast to the rather inordinate size of his feet.
+
+For the voice rarely failed to influence its hearers, to carry you indeed
+a little out of yourself by its variety of intonation, its fire and
+fervour, its languishing modulations, broken pauses, yearning melancholy
+of effect. The part of the neurotic hero of the--then--Laureate's poem,
+that somewhat pinch-beck Victorian Hamlet, suited our young friend,
+moreover, down to the ground. It offered sympathetic expression to his
+own nature and temperament; so that he wooed, scoffed, blasphemed,
+orated, drowned in salt seas of envy and self-pity, with a simulation of
+sincerity as convincing to others as consolatory to himself.
+
+And Damaris, being unlearned in the curious arts of the theatre, listened
+wide-eyed, spellbound, until flicked by the swishing skirts of fictitious
+emotion into genuine, yet covert, excitement. As the reading progressed
+Henrietta Frayling's presence increasingly sank into unimportance. More
+and more did the poem assume a personal character, of which, if the
+reader were hero, she--Damaris--became heroine. Marshall Wace seemed to
+read not to, but definitely at her; so that during more than one ardent
+passage, she felt herself go hot all over, as though alone with him, an
+acknowledged object of his adoring, despairing declarations. This she
+shrank from, yet--it must be owned--found stirring, strangely and not
+altogether unpleasantly agitating. For was not this _protégé_ of
+Henrietta's--whom the latter implored her to encourage and treat
+kindly--something of a genius? Capable of sudden and amazing
+transformation, talking to you with a modesty and deference agreeably
+greater than that of most young men of his age; then, on an instant,
+changing at will, and extraordinarily voicing the accumulated wrongs,
+joys and sorrows of universal humanity? Could Henrietta, who usually
+spoke of him in tones of commiseration, not to say of patronage, be aware
+how remarkable he really was? Damaris wondered; regarding him, meanwhile,
+with innocent respect and admiration. For how tremendously much he must
+have experienced, how greatly he must have suffered to be able to portray
+drama, express profound emotion thus! That the actor's art is but
+glorified make-believe, the actor himself too often hollow as a drum,
+though loud sounding as one, never for an instant occurred to her. How
+should it?
+
+Therefore when Mrs. Frayling--recollecting certain mysteries of the
+toilet which required attention before the arrival of her expected
+guests--brought the performance to an abrupt termination, Damaris felt a
+little taken aback, a little put about, as though someone should be
+guilty of talking millinery in church.
+
+For--"Splendid, my dear Marshall, splendid," the lady softly yet
+emphatically interrupted him. "To-day you really surpass yourself. I
+never heard you read better, and I hate to be compelled to call a halt.
+But time has flown--look."
+
+And she pointed to the blue and gold Sévres clock upon the mantelpiece.
+
+"Miss Verity is an inspiring auditor," he said, none best pleased at
+being thus arbitrarily arrested in midcourse. "For whatever merit my
+reading may have possessed, your thanks are due to her rather than to me,
+Cousin Henrietta."
+
+He spoke to the elder woman. He looked at the younger. With a nervous yet
+ponderous movement--it was Marshall Wace's misfortune always to take up
+more room than by rights belonged to his height and bulk--he got on to
+his feet. Inattentively let drop the volume of poems upon a neighbouring
+table, to the lively danger of two empty coffee cups.
+
+The cups rattled. "Pray be careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with
+some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention
+had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had
+been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She,
+therefore, hit out--to regret her indiscretion the next moment.
+
+"Nothing--nothing," she prettily added. "I beg your pardon, Marshall, but
+I quite thought those cups would fall off the table--So stupid of me."
+
+The fixed red widened, painfully inundating the young man's countenance.
+He was infuriated by his own awkwardness. Humiliated by Mrs. Frayling's
+warning, of which her subsequent apology failed to mitigate the disgrace.
+And that this should occur just in the hour of satisfied vanity, of
+agreeable success--and before Damaris! In her eyes he must be miserably
+disqualified henceforth.
+
+But his misfortunes worked to quite other ends than he anticipated. For
+Damaris came nearer, her expression gravely earnest as appealing to him
+not to mind, not to let these things vex him.
+
+"I have never heard anyone read so beautifully," she told him. "You make
+the words come alive so that one sees the whole story happening. It is
+wonderful. I shall always remember this afternoon because of your
+reading--and shall long to hear you again--often, I know, long for that."
+
+Wace bowed. This innocent enthusiasm was extremely assuaging to his
+wounded self-esteem.
+
+"You have but to ask me, Miss Verity. I shall be only too honoured,
+too happy to read to you whenever you have leisure and inclination
+to listen."
+
+But here Mrs. Frayling put her arm round Damaris' waist, affectionately,
+laughingly, and drew her towards the door.
+
+"Come, come, darling child--don't be too complimentary or Marshall will
+grow unbearably conceited.--You'll put on flannels, by the way, Marshall,
+won't you?" she added as an after-thought.
+
+"I shall not play tennis this afternoon," he answered, his nose in the
+air. "There will be plenty for a change of setts without me. I am not
+good enough for Binning and his two young aristocrats, and I don't choose
+to make sport for the Philistines by an exhibition of my ineptitude. I
+have no pretentious to being an athlete."
+
+"Nonsense, Marshall, nonsense," she took him up quickly, conscious his
+reply was not in the best taste. "You wilfully underrate yourself."
+
+Then later, as, still entwined, she conducted Damaris upstairs to her
+bed-chamber.
+
+"There you have the position in a nutshell," she said. "Still am I not
+right? For hasn't he charm, poor dear fellow, so very much cleverness--so
+really gifted isn't he?"
+
+And as the girl warmly agreed:
+
+"Ah! I am so very glad you appreciate him.--And you have yet to hear
+him sing! That takes one by storm, I confess--Unhappy Maud
+Callowgas!--But you see how frightfully on edge he is--how he turns off
+for no valid reason, imagines himself a failure, imagines himself out
+of it? In point of fact he plays a quite passable game of tennis--and
+you heard what he said? These fits of depression and self-depreciation
+amount to being tragic. One requires endless tact to manage him and
+save him from himself."
+
+Henrietta paused, sighed, sitting on the stool before her toilette table,
+neatly placing tortoiseshell hairpins, patting and adjusting her bright
+brown hair.
+
+"I could have bitten my tongue out for making that wretched slip about
+the coffee cups; but I was off my guard for once. And like all artistic
+people Marshall is a little absent-minded--absorbed to the point of not
+seeing exactly what he is doing.--Poor young man, I sometimes tremble for
+his future. Such a highly strung, sensitive nature amounts almost to a
+curse. If he got into wrong hands what mightn't the end be?--Catastrophe,
+for he is capable of fatal desperation. And I must own men--with the
+exception of my husband who is simply an angel to him--do not always
+understand and are not quite kind to him. He needs a wise loving woman to
+develop the best in him--there is so very much which is good--and to
+guide him."
+
+"Well," Damaris said, and that without suspicion of irony, "dearest
+Henrietta, hasn't he you?"
+
+Mrs. Frayling took up the ivory hand-glass, and sitting sideways on the
+dressing-stool, turned her graceful head hither and thither, to obtain
+the fuller view of her back hair.
+
+"Me? But you forget, I have other claims to satisfy. I can't look after
+him for ever. I must find him a wife I suppose; though I really shall be
+rather loath to give him up. His gratitude and loneliness touch me so
+much," she said, looking up and smiling, with a little twist in her
+mouth, as of playful and unwilling resignation, captivating to see.
+
+By which cajoleries and expression of praiseworthy sentiment, Henrietta
+raised herself notably in Damaris' estimation--as she fully intended to
+do. Our maiden kissed her with silent favour; and, mysteries of the
+toilette completed, more closely united than ever before--that is, since
+the date of the elder's second advent--the two ladies, presenting the
+prettiest picture imaginable, went downstairs again, gaily, hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CARNIVAL--AND AFTER
+
+
+Tall and slim, in the black and white of his evening clothes, Colonel
+Carteret leaned his shoulder against an iron pillar of the verandah of
+the Hôtel de la Plage, and smoked, looking meditatively down into the
+moonlit garden. Through the range of brightly lighted open windows
+behind him came the sound of a piano and stringed instruments, a subdued
+babble of voices, the whisper of women's skirts, and the sliding rush of
+valsing feet.
+
+To-night marked the culmination and apex of Henrietta Frayling's social
+effort. It was mid-March, mid-Lent--which last fact she made an
+excuse--after taking ecclesiastical opinion on the subject, namely, that
+of Herbert Binning, the Anglican chaplain--for issuing invitations to a
+Cinderella dance. Damaris Verity, it appeared, had never really, properly
+and ceremoniously "come out"--a neglect which Henrietta protested should
+be repaired. Positively, but very charmingly, she told Sir Charles it
+must. She only wished the affair could be on a larger, more worthy scale.
+This was, after all, but a makeshift--the modest best she could arrange
+under the circumstances. But he--Sir Charles--must not refuse. It would
+give her such intense pleasure to have the darling child make her
+official _début_ under her, Henrietta's, auspices. The hours would of
+necessity be early, to avoid disturbance of the non-dancing residents in
+the hotel. But, if the entertainment were bound to end at midnight, it
+could begin at a proportionately unfashionable hour. For once _table
+d'hôte_ might surely be timed for six o'clock; and the dining-room--since
+it offered larger space than any other apartment--be cleared, aired, and
+ready for dancing by a quarter-past eight.--Henrietta unquestionably had
+a way with her; proprietors, managers, servants alike hastening obedient
+to her cajoling nod.--Thanks to importations by road and rail, from other
+coast resorts, she reckoned to muster sixteen to twenty couples.--A
+rubbishing apology at best, in the matter of a "coming out" ball, for a
+girl of Damaris' position and deserts--no one could know that better than
+she, Henrietta, herself did!
+
+"A poor thing but mine own," she quoted, when enlarging upon the scheme
+to Charles Verity. "But as at Easter we are fated to scatter, I suppose,
+and go our several roads with small promise of reunion, you must really
+be gracious, dear friend, and, for old sake's sake, give in to my
+desires. It's my last chance, for heaven knows how long--not impossibly
+for ever."
+
+Carteret happened to be present during the above conversation. Had he
+not, it may be doubted whether it would ever have taken place--with this
+dash of affecting reminiscence in any case. Allusions to a common past
+were barred for excellent reasons, as between these two persons, save
+strictly in public. Even so it struck him as a humorous piece of audacity
+on the lady's part. Her effrontery touched on the colossal! But it
+succeeded, always had done so.--In his judgment of Henrietta, Carteret
+never failed to remember, being compact of chivalry and of truthfulness,
+that he had once on a time been a good half in love with her
+himself.--All the same he was not sure her close association with Damaris
+met with his approval.
+
+That association had grown, Jonah's gourd-like, during the last six
+weeks, until, as he rather uneasily noted, the two were hardly ever
+apart. Luncheons, teas, picnics, excursions, succeeded one another.
+Afternoons of tennis in the hotel grounds, the athletic gregarious
+Binning and his two pupils, Peregrine Ditton and Harry Ellice in
+attendance. Sometimes the latter's sister, Mary Ellice, joined the
+company--when Lady Hermione condescended to spare her--or the long-backed
+Miss Maud Callowgas. Afternoons of reading and song, too, supplied by
+Marshall Wace.--Carteret felt self-reproachful, yet knew his charity
+too often threatened to stop short of the young man Wace--though the
+beggar had a voice to draw tears from a stone, plague him!--At intervals,
+all-day expeditions were undertaken to Monte Carlo, or shopping raids
+upon Cannes or Nice.
+
+Yes, verily--as he reflected--Henrietta Frayling did keep the ball
+rolling with truly Anglo-Indian frivolity and persistence, here in the
+heart of Europe! And was that altogether wholesome for Damaris? He
+delighted to have the beautiful young creature enjoy herself, spread her
+wings, take her place among the courted and acclaimed. But he prized her
+too highly not to be ambitious for her; and would have preferred her
+social education to be conducted on more dignified and authorized lines,
+in the great world of London, namely, or Paris. When all came to all,
+this was hardly good enough.
+
+No one, he honestly admitted, trumpeted that last truth more loudly than
+Henrietta--at times. Nevertheless she went on and on, making the business
+of this rather second-rate pleasure-seeking daily of greater importance.
+How could Damaris be expected to discriminate, to retain her sense of
+relative values, in the perpetual scrimmage, the unceasing rush? Instinct
+and nobility of nature go an immensely long way as preservatives--thank
+God for that--still, where you have unsophistication, inexperience, a
+holy ignorance, to deal with, it is unwise to trust exclusively to their
+saving grace. Even the finest character is the safer--so he supposed--for
+some moulding and direction in its first contact with the world, if it is
+to come through the ordeal unscathed and unbesmirched. And to ask such
+moulding and direction of Henrietta Frayling was about as useful as
+asking a humming-bird to draw a water-cart.
+
+He was still fond of Henrietta and derived much silent entertainment from
+witnessing her manoeuvres. But he was under no delusion regarding her. He
+considered her quite the most selfish woman of his acquaintance, though
+also one of the most superficially attractive. Hers was a cold, not a
+hot selfishness, refined to a sort of exquisiteness and never for an
+instant fleshly or gross. But that selfishness, in its singleness of
+purpose, made her curiously powerful, curiously capable of influencing
+persons of larger and finer spirit than herself--witness her ascendency
+over Charles Verity during a long period of years, and that without ever
+giving, or even seriously compromising, herself.
+
+Into whoever she fixed her dainty little claws, she did it with an eye to
+some personal advantage. And here Carteret owned himself puzzled--for
+what advantage could she gain from this close association with Damaris?
+The girl's freshness went, rather mercilessly, to show up her fading.
+
+At times, it is true, watching her pretty alacrity of manner, hearing her
+caressing speech, he inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt,
+believe her self-forgetful, her affection genuine, guiltless of design or
+after-thought. If so, so very much the better! He was far from grudging
+her redemption, specially at the hands of Damaris.--Only were things, in
+point of fact, working to this commendable issue? With the best will in
+the world to think so, he failed to rid himself of some prickings of
+anxiety and distrust.
+
+And from such prickings he sensibly suffered to-night, as he leaned his
+shoulder against the iron pillar of the verandah at the Hôtel de la
+Plage, and looked down into the _claire obscure_ of the moonlit gardens,
+while over the polished floor of the big room at his back, the rhythmical
+tread of the dancers' feet kept time to the music of piano and sweet
+wailing strings.--For that a change showed increasingly evident in
+Damaris he could not disguise from himself. In precisely what that change
+consisted it was not easy to say. He discovered it more in an attitude of
+mind and atmosphere than in outward action or even in words said. But she
+was not quite the same as the grave and steadfast young creature who had
+asked his help for her father, and indirectly for herself, in the moist
+chill of the November twilight at The Hard--and who, receiving promise
+of such help, had darted away over the drenched lawn in company with the
+wildly gambolling cats alternately pursuing and pursued. Nor was she
+quite the same as when he had walked with her, through the resounding
+Paris streets, to pay her devoirs to her former guardians and teachers at
+the convent school; and, later returning, had spoken to her of the safety
+of religion, the high worth of the doctrine and practice of a definite
+historic creed.
+
+Her relation to her father appeared--and this pained Carteret--to lack
+its old intimacy, its intensity of consideration and tenderness. Her
+interest in the child of his brain, his belated literary experiment, was
+less sustained and spontaneous. How could it flourish in its former
+proportions when she was so much away, so often absent from morning till
+night?--Not without leave though, for she scrupulously asked permission
+before answering Henrietta's gay call and taking part in that lady's
+junketings and jaunts. Sir Charles never refused the requested
+permission; but, while granting it, did he not tend to retreat into his
+former sardonic humour, fall into long silences, become inaccessible
+again and remote? The book went forward; yet, more than once recently,
+Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly
+delivered of the admirable volume were not he--Carteret--permanently at
+hand to act midwife. An unpleasant idea pursued him that Sir Charles
+went, in some strange fashion, in fear of Damaris, of her criticism, her
+judgment. Yet fear seemed a hatefully strong and ugly word to employ as
+between a father and daughter so straitly, heretofore, bound to one
+another in love.
+
+And then--there lay the heart of the worry, proving him only too likely a
+graceless jealous middle-age curmudgeon, a senile sentimentalist, thus
+did he upbraidingly mock himself--were there not signs of Damaris
+developing into a rather thorough paced coquette? She accepted the homage
+offered her with avidity, with many small airs and graces--_à la_
+Henrietta--of a quite novel sort. Old General Frayling--poor pathetic old
+warrior--was her slave. Peregrine Ditton, Harry Ellice, even the cleric
+Binning--let alone the permanently self-conscious, attitudinizing
+Wace--with other newer acquaintances, English and foreign, ran at her
+heels. And she let them run, bless her, even encouraged their running by
+turns of naughty disdain and waywardness. She was fatal to boys--that was
+in the natural course of things. And fatal to those considerably older
+than boys--perhaps--
+
+The music flew faster and faster--stopped with a shriek and a crash.
+Laughing, talking, the dancers streamed out of the hot brightly lighted
+room into the soft peace, the delicate phantasy of the colourless
+moonlight.
+
+Carteret drew back, flattening himself against the iron pillar in the
+shadow, as they passed down the steps into the garden below; the women's
+pale airy forms and the men's dark ones, pacing the shining paths in
+groups and couples, between the flower-beds, under the flat-headed pines,
+the shaggy-stemmed palms and towering eucalyptus, in and out massed banks
+of blossoming shrubs and dwarf hedges of monthly roses.
+
+Midway in the light-hearted procession came Damaris, Peregrine Ditton on
+one side of her, Harry Ellice on the other. Leaving the main alley, the
+trio turned along a path, running parallel to the verandah, which opened
+into a circle surrounding the stone basin of a tinkling fountain,
+immediately below Colonel Carteret's post of solitary observation.
+
+Damaris carried the demi-train of her white satin gown over her arm,
+thereby revealing a wealth of lace frilled petticoat, from beneath
+which the toes of her high-heeled, white satin shoes stepped with a
+pretty measured tread. The two boys, leaning a little towards one
+another, talked across her, their voices slightly raised in argument,
+not to say dispute.
+
+"I call it rotten mean to bag my dance like that, I tell you.--Go
+away?--No I swear I won't go away, won't budge one blessed inch unless
+Miss Verity actually orders me to. If my dance was stolen, all the more
+reason I should have her to talk to now as a sort of make-up. So you
+just clear out, if you please, my good chap, and leave the field to your
+elders and betters. Remove your superfluous carcass till further
+notice.--Vamoose, my son, do you hear?"
+
+This excitedly from Peregrine Ditton. They reached the fountain. Damaris
+stayed her measured walk, and stood gazing at the jet of water in its
+uprush and myriad sparkling fall. Ellice answered chaffingly yet with an
+underlying growl; and the dispute threatened to wax warm. But the girl
+heeded neither disputant, her attention rapt in watching the play of the
+falling water.
+
+Throughout the evening she had easily been chief centre of attraction,
+besieged by partners. And those not only her present rival attendants or
+Marshall Wace; but by Mrs. Frayling's various importations, plus Mr.
+Alban Titherage--a fat, smart and very forthcoming young London
+stock-broker, lately established, in company of a pretty, silly,
+phthisis-stricken wife, at the Grand Hotel. Very much mistress of
+herself, Damaris had danced straight through the programme with an air of
+almost defiant vivacity. Now, as it seemed, her mood had changed and
+sobered. For presently Colonel Carteret saw her bosom heave, while she
+fetched a long sigh and, raising her head, glanced upwards, her great
+eyes searching the shadowed space of the verandah.
+
+The cool lunar brightness flooded her upturned face, her bare neck and
+arms, the glittering folds of her satin gown. She was exceedingly fair to
+look upon just now. For an appreciable length of time her glance met
+Carteret's and held it; giving him--though the least neurotic of men,
+calm of body and of mind--a strange sensation as of contact with an
+electric current which tingled through every nerve and vein. And this,
+although he perceived that, dazzled by the moonlight, she either did not
+see or quite failed to recognize him. An expression of disappointment,
+akin, so he read it, to hope defeated, crossed her face. She lowered her
+eyes, and moved slowly forward along the path, the boys on either side
+her. Again Peregrine Ditton took up his tale--in softened accents though
+still as one sorely injured and whose temper consequently inclines not
+unjustly to the volcanic.
+
+"Upon my honour, I think you might have given me just a minute's law,
+Miss Verity," he protested. "It was no fault of mine being late. Maud
+Callowgas kept me toddling to the most unconscionable extent. First she
+wanted an ice, and then a tumbler of lemon squash; and then she lost her
+fan, or pretended she did, and expected me to hunt for the beastly thing.
+I give you my word I was as rude as sin, in hope of shaking her off; but
+she didn't, or wouldn't, see what I was driving at. There was no getting
+away from her. I tell you she sticks like a burr, that girl, once she
+lays hold of you. Octopuses aren't in it. Her power of adhesion is
+something utterly frantic "--
+
+Here Ellice cut in with a doubtless scathing though, to Carteret,
+inaudible remark, at which Damaris laughed outright; and the fresh young
+voices trailed away in the distance alternately mocking and remonstrant.
+
+As he listened, still conscious of contact with that surprising electric
+current, Carteret found himself taking stock of his own forty-nine years
+with swift and lively repugnance. To accept the sum of them, and the
+limitations and restrictions that sum is currently supposed to entail,
+proved just now astonishingly difficult. Damaris, as beheld in the
+fantastic loveliness of the moonlight, her searching, unseeing eyes
+meeting and dwelling upon his own, the look of disappointment and defeat
+crossing her sweetly serious countenance, wrought upon him begetting a
+dangerous madness in his blood. That it was dangerous and a madness, and
+therefore promptly to be mastered and ejected, he would not permit
+himself an instant's doubt. Yet it very shrewdly plagued him, daring even
+to advance specious arguments upon its own behalf.
+
+For, when he came to consider matters, was he not in perfect health, more
+sound and fit than many a man but half his age? And were not his
+fortunes just now at a specially happy turn, his sister, Mrs. Dreydel,
+having lately been blessed with a windfall, in the shape of yearly
+income, which--did he so choose--relieved him of much expenditure on her
+account. Her eldest son had received his commission. The three younger
+boys had done well as to scholarships thereby materially reducing the
+cost of their education. Never had he, Carteret, been so free to consult
+his private desires; and never, as he knew too profoundly well, had his
+desires taken so definite and delicious a form. Nevertheless it remained
+a madness to be mastered, to be ejected.--His last thought, as his first,
+pronounced it that.
+
+Unconsciously, pushed by this stress of rather turbulent sensations,
+Carteret walked the length of the verandah and drew up in the full glare
+of the moonlight. From here he could see the curve of the shore; and,
+beyond the quay and esplanade and last scattered houses of the little
+town, the lighthouse marking the tip of the western horn of the bay. He
+could hear the soft stealthy plunge and following rush of the sea up the
+white shelving beach. Could hear also--less soothing sound--through the
+open windows of the drawing-room of the Pavilion, just across the garden,
+Marshall Wace singing, with all the impassioned fervour of his rich and
+well-trained baritone, a ballad, then much in vogue, entitled "The Lost
+Chord." The words, to Carteret's thinking, were futile, meaning anything,
+everything, or nothing, according to your private interpretation of them.
+But as to the fine quality and emotional appeal of the voice there could
+not be two opinions, as it palpitated thus in the mild night air. Was
+Damaris Verity a member of the singer's devout audience? Were her hands
+among those which now enthusiastically applauded the conclusion of the
+song? Under his breath, slowly, gently but most comprehensively, Carteret
+swore. And felt all the better for that impious exercise, even amused at
+this primitive expression of his moral and sentimental disturbance, and
+so on the high-road, as he fondly imagined, to capture his habitual
+attitude of charity and tolerance once again. But heaven had further
+trial of his fortitude and magnanimity, not to say his good honest horse
+sense, in store to-night.
+
+For, as the clapping of hands died down, the whisper of a woman's dress,
+upon the asphalt of the verandah just behind him, caught his ear, and
+Damaris came rapidly towards him.
+
+"So you are here after all, dear Colonel Sahib," she cried. "I felt you
+were when I was down there looking at the fountain. It sort of pulled at
+me with remindings of you ages and ages ago, in the gardens of the club
+at Bhutpur--when you brought me a present--a darling little green jade
+elephant in a sandalwood box, as a birthday gift from Henrietta. Later
+there was a terrible tragedy. An odious little boy broke my elephant, on
+purpose, and broke my heart along with it."
+
+Carteret made a determined effort over himself, taking her up lightly.
+
+"But not altogether past mending, dear witch--judging by existing
+appearances."
+
+"Ah! I'm none so sure of that," Damaris answered him back with a pretty
+quickness--"if it hadn't been for you. For I was very ill, when you came
+again to the Sultan-i-bagh--don't you remember?--the night of the riots
+and great fires in the Civil Lines and Cantonments, just at the breaking
+of the monsoon."
+
+"Yes, I remember," he said.
+
+And wondered to himself--thereby gaining ease and a measure of
+tranquillity, inasmuch as he thought of another man's plight rather than
+of his own--whether Damaris had knowledge of other occurrences, not
+unallied to tragedy, which had marked that same night of threatened
+mutiny and massacre and of bellowing tempest, not least among them a vow
+made by her father, Charles Verity, and made for her sake.
+
+"The whole story comes back in pictures," she went on, "whenever I look
+at fountains playing, because of the water-jets in the canal in the
+Bhutpur club garden where you gave me Henrietta's present. You see it all
+dates from then. And it came back to me specially clearly just now,
+partly because I felt lonely--"
+
+"Lonely?--How lonely," he smilingly interjected, "with a goodly youth as
+a protector on either hand?"
+
+"Yes--lonely," Damaris repeated, ignoring the allusion to her devoted if
+irascible escort. "Dance music always makes one rather sad--don't you
+think so? It seems to ache with everything one wants and hasn't got; and
+the ache goes on.--I turned homesick for--for India, and for my green
+jade elephant I used to love so dreadfully much.--I've all that is left
+of him, still wrapped in the same rice paper in the same sandalwood box
+you brought him in, put away with my best treasures in my own room at
+The Hard."
+
+She came nearer, stood beside him, bending down a little as she rested
+her hands on the top of the iron balustrade of the verandah, while her
+eyes followed the curve of the bay to where the lighthouse rose, a
+black column with flashing headpiece, above the soft glitter of the
+moonlit sea.
+
+"And homesick, Colonel Sahib, for you," she said.
+
+"For me?" he exclaimed almost involuntarily, roughly startled out of his
+partially recovered tranquillity and ease.
+
+"Yes"--she said, looking up at him. "Isn't that quite natural, since
+you have stepped in so often to help me when things have gone rather
+wrong?--I knew you must be somewhere quite close by. I sort of felt
+you were there. And you were there--weren't you? Why did you hide
+yourself away?"
+
+Carteret could not bring himself immediately to answer. He was perplexed,
+infinitely charmed, distrustful, all at once--distrustful, though for
+very different reasons, both of himself and of her.
+
+"Are things, then, going rather wrong now?" he asked presently.
+
+For he judged it wise to accept her enigmatic speech according to its
+most simple and obvious interpretation. By so doing he stood, moreover,
+to gain time; and time in his existing perplexity appeared to him of
+cardinal importance.
+
+"That's just what I'm not sure about." Damaris spoke slowly, gravely, her
+glance again fixed upon the beacon light set for the safety of passing
+ships on the further horn of the bay. "If I could be sure, I should know
+what to do--know whether it is right to keep on as--as I am. Do you see?"
+
+But what, at this juncture, Carteret did, in point of fact, most
+consciously see was the return of Henrietta Frayling's scattered guests,
+from the Pavilion and other less fully illuminated quarters, towards the
+main building of the hotel. From the improvised ball-room within chords
+struck on the piano and answering tuning of strings invited to the
+renewal of united and active festivity. In the face of consequently
+impending interruption he hazarded a trifle of admonition.
+
+"Dearest witch, you elect to speak in riddles," he gently told her. "I am
+in the dark as to your meaning; so, if I am guilty of uttering
+foolishness, you must pardon me. But I own I could wish--just a
+bit--that, in some particulars, you wouldn't keep on--I quote your own
+words--as you are, or rather have been just lately."
+
+"Why?" she asked, without moving.
+
+"Because, to be quite honest with you, I am not altogether satisfied
+about your father. I am afraid he is getting back into the habit of mind
+we set out to cure him of, you and I, last November."
+
+Damaris sprang to attention.
+
+"And I haven't noticed it. I Wouldn't stop to notice it. I have been too
+busy about my own concerns and have neglected him."
+
+Arrayed in her spotless virgin finery, her head carried proudly, though
+her eyes were sombre with self-reproach, self-accusation, and her lips
+quivered, she confronted Carteret. And his clean loyal soul went out to
+her in a poignant, an exquisite, agony of tenderness and of desire. He
+would have given his right hand to save her pain. Given his life gladly,
+just then, to secure her welfare and happiness; yet he had struck
+her--for her own good possibly--possibly just blindly, instinctively, in
+self-defence. He tried to shut down the emotion which threatened to
+betray him and steady on to the playfully affectionate tone of their
+customary intercourse; but it is to be feared the effort lacked
+convincingness of quality.
+
+"No--no," he said, "you take it altogether too hard. You exaggerate, dear
+witch, to the point of extravagance. You have been less constantly with
+your father than usual--you're the delight of his life after all, as you
+must very well know--and inevitably he has missed you. Nothing worse than
+that. The damage, such as it is, can easily be repaired."
+
+"Ah! but the damage, as you call it, starts behind all that in something
+else--something older, much deeper down, of which I doubt whether any
+lasting reparation is possible. I did try to repair it. All my going out
+with Henrietta, and this rushing about lately, began in that
+trying--truly it did, Colonel Sahib. And then I suppose I got above
+myself--as poor Nannie used to say--and came to care for the rushing
+about just for its own sake"--
+
+"My dance, I believe, Miss Verity."
+
+The speaker, Mr. Alban Titherage--well-groomed, rosy and
+self-complacent--pulled down the fronts of his white waistcoat. He
+inclined to distinct rotundity of person, and the garment in question,
+though admirable in cut, showed, what with the exertions of dancing, a
+damnable tendency, as he expressed it, to "ride up."
+
+"And my dance next afterwards, Miss Verity"--this from Peregrine Ditton,
+his youthful, well-bred, if somewhat choleric, countenance presenting
+itself over the top of the stock-broker's smooth and not conspicuously
+intelligent head.
+
+Damaris looked from one to the other of these claimants for her favour,
+with instant and very becoming composure.
+
+"I'm dreadfully sorry," she told them collectively, "but surely there is
+some mistake. Both those next dances--they are the last, I'm afraid, too,
+aren't they?--belong to Colonel Carteret."
+
+"The deuce they do!" Ditton exploded, turning scarlet. With a cocked eye
+and a jaunty movement of the head Mr. Titherage shot out his right shirt
+cuff, and pointed a stout forefinger at certain hieroglyphics inscribed
+on its glossy surface.
+
+"Your name, Miss Verity, and written with an indelible pencil, to the
+permanent embellishment of my best party-going linen and witness to your
+infidelity."
+
+"I can only repeat I am dreadfully sorry," Damaris said, with a becoming
+air of concern, "if the confusion has arisen through my fault. But"--
+
+She appealed to Carteret.
+
+"They always were your dances, weren't they?"
+
+"Without doubt," he affirmed.
+
+Amusedly and very kindly he smiled upon the angry boy and portly young
+man, although the beat of his pulse was accelerated and his throat felt
+queerly dry.
+
+"I am sure you understand how impossible it is for me to release Miss
+Verity from her promise," he said courteously. "Would you willingly do so
+yourselves, were the positions reversed and either of you happy enough to
+stand in my shoes at this moment?"
+
+Titherage gave a fat good-tempered laugh.
+
+"By George, you have me there, Colonel. Under such A1 circumstances catch
+me making way for a stranger! Not if I know it."
+
+With which he attempted jovially to put his arm through that of his
+companion in misfortune and lead Ditton away. But the latter flung off
+from him with a petulant, half-smothered oath; and, his back very
+straight, his walk very deliberate, pushed through the cheerfully
+discoursing throng into the ball-room.
+
+Damaris turned about, resting her hands on the top of the iron balustrade
+again and gazed out to sea. Her breath came with a catch in it.
+
+"Colonel Sahib," she said, proudly if just a trifle brokenly, "are
+you angry?"
+
+"Angry?--good Lord!"
+
+Then recovering control of senses and of sense--"But, dear witch," he
+asked her--"since when, if I may venture to enquire, have you become an
+adept in the fine art of--well--lying?"
+
+Damaris looked around, her face irradiated by laughter.
+
+"And you played up, oh! so beautifully quick! I was a teeny bit afraid
+you might fail me. For the idea came all of a minute, there wasn't time
+to warn you. And that was fortunate perhaps--for me. You might have had
+scruples. And I was obliged to do it. After talking about the things
+which really matter, I couldn't dance with that vulgar little man
+again--or with those jealous boys. They had an idiotic quarrel, actual
+quarrel, down in the garden. It displeased me. I told them so, and left
+them, and came here to find you--because of the fountain and the sort of
+home-sickness it gave me."
+
+Between laughing and crying, Damaris held out her hands, the white
+moonlight covering her.
+
+"Oh! I am tired of rushing about," she said. "Come and dance with
+me--it's nonsense to tell me you can't dance, and that you've forgotten
+how, because you have danced once this evening already--with Henrietta. I
+watched you and you dance better than anybody."
+
+"With Henrietta--that's rather a different matter!"
+
+"I should hope it was," Damaris took him up naughtily. "But dance with
+me, and then, then please take me home. Yes," as he tried to speak. "I
+know I had arranged to stay the night at the Pavilion. But I'll find some
+excuse to make to Henrietta--Haven't you just told me I'm proficient in
+lying?--You were going to walk back? Why shouldn't I walk with you? I
+won't be five minutes changing into my day clothes. It would be so
+fascinating down on the shore road at night. And I should get quiet all
+inside of me. I am tired of rushing about, Colonel Sahib, it hasn't been
+a success."
+
+She stopped breathless, her hands pressed over her lace and satin
+swathed bosom.
+
+"Now come and dance,--oh! so beautifully, please, come and dance."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TELLING HOW DAMARIS DISCOVERED THE TRUE NATURE OF A CERTAIN SECRET TO THE
+DEAR MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
+
+
+The beat of a tideless sea, upon the shore, is at once unrestful and
+monotonous; in this only too closely resembling the beat of the human
+heart, when the glory of youth has departed. The splendid energy of the
+flow and grateful easing of the ebb alike are denied it. Foul or fair,
+shine or storm, it pounds and pounds--as a thing chained--without
+relief of advance or of recession, always at the same level, always in
+the same place.
+
+Suspicion of this cheerless truth was borne in upon Carteret
+as--bare-headed, his overcoat upon his arm, the night being singularly
+mild and clement--he walked with Damaris through the streets of the
+silent town. The dwellers in St. Augustin, both virtuous or otherwise,
+had very effectually retired to their beds behind drawn curtains, closed
+shutters, locked doors, and gave no sign. Vacancy reigned, bringing in
+its train an effect of suspense and eeriness, causing both our friends
+involuntarily to listen, with slightly strained hearing, for sounds which
+did not come. Once a cat, nimble and thin, streaked out of a cavernous
+side-alley across the pallor of the pavement and cobbled roadway, to be
+swallowed up in a black split--knife narrow, as it seemed--between the
+blank house fronts opposite. And once, as they turned into the open space
+of the Grand Place--unreal and stark with its spidery framework of
+stalls, set up ready for to-morrow's market, under the budding plane
+trees--they encountered a tired gendarme making his round, picturesque of
+aspect in _képi_ and flowing cloak. His footsteps brisked up, as he met
+and treated them to a discreetly sympathetic and intelligent
+observation, only to lag again wearily as soon as they had passed.
+
+These were the sole creatures in St. Augustin, save themselves, visibly
+alive and awake. Yet whether other beings, other presences, unmaterial,
+imponderable, intangible, did not walk the streets along with them, is
+open to doubt. More than once Damaris shrank close to Carteret, startled
+by and apprehensive of she knew not what. For who dare say in such a
+place what leavings-over there may not be from times pre-Christian and
+remote, when mighty Rome ruled, and the ancient gods bore sway over that
+radiant coast? On the outskirts of St. Augustin you may visit a fine
+amphitheatre, still perfect save for some ruin along the upper tier of
+seats; and in the centre of the town, within a stone's throw of the
+somewhat gloomy cathedral church, may trace the airy columns and portions
+of the sculptured architrave of a reputed temple of Venus, worked into
+the facade of the municipal buildings.
+
+Turning out of the Grande Place by an avenue on the right, Damaris and
+Carteret gained the esplanade following the curve of the bay. Here a
+freshness of the sea pleasantly accosted them along with that unrestful,
+monotonous trample of waves upon the beach.
+
+Not until they reached this stage of the homeward journey, and, setting
+their faces eastward, paced the pale level asphalt of this wide
+promenade, did any sustained effort of conversation arise. Thus far they
+had proffered fugitive remarks only, lapsing speedily into somewhat
+constrained silence. For a coldness, or shyness, might appear to have
+sprung up between them, oddly holding them asunder in thought and moral
+attitude after the close association of the dance--a reaction from its
+contact so surprisingly more intimate than any they had yet experienced,
+from that harmonious rhythmic unity of purpose and of movement which, in
+dancing, alike excites emotion quasi-physical, and so alluringly serves
+to soothe and allay the emotion it excites.
+
+These aspects of their association affected Damaris but dimly, since
+speaking a language of which she barely knew the alphabet. Carteret they
+took in a different measure. He read their direction and potency with
+clear understanding, the insidious provocations and satisfactions of them
+printed in large type. With a rush, his youth returned and troubled him.
+Or was it the phantom of youth merely? His heart-beats but the beat of a
+tideless sea. He feared as much.--Oh, these tardy harvests, these tardy
+harvests--are they not to most men a plague rather than a benison, since,
+in honour and fine feeling, so abominably perilous to reap!
+
+For the greater promotion of calm and of sanity he welcomed the young
+girl's change of dress. The powder-blue walking suit, with belted jacket
+and kilted skirt, brought her more within the terms of their ordinary
+intercourse. But the impression of the fair young body, lately so close
+against his own, clothed in bride-like raiment, fresh as an opening
+flower and vaguely fragrant, could not easily be dispelled. Strive as he
+might to put it from him, the impression remained recurrent. Therefore it
+must not be held to Carteret's discredit if his senses took part with his
+nobler affections just now, against his considered judgment; or that he
+fared badly at the hands of the sea-born goddess--worshipped hero in her
+temple in ancient days, with music, with dance and with nameless rites of
+sex, when the moon rode high heaven at the full, even as to-night.
+
+Her influence was still abroad, and in his flesh Carteret shrewdly
+suffered it; yet neither basely nor bestially, being clean of life and of
+spirit. He whipped himself even, with rather sorry humour, seeing, in
+Damaris' willingness to entrust herself thus to his sole care in the
+midnight loneliness, a handsomer compliment to his morals than to his
+manhood. How little, bless her, she knew what stuff men are made
+of!--therein underrating her acquaintance with fact, as her conversation
+presently and surprisingly proved to him.
+
+The revelation began in all apparent innocence--for:
+
+"I'm not ungrateful to Henrietta," Damaris said, breaking silence softly
+yet abruptly, as speaking to herself rather than addressing him, in
+apology and argument. "And I'm dreadfully sorry to have vexed her--for
+she was vexed with me for not staying at the Pavilion to-night, as I
+promised. She was really quite cross."
+
+"She will get over that--never fear," Carteret answered off the surface.
+
+"Still it troubles me to have vexed her. I must have seemed so
+unreasonable, making silly sounding excuses--because I could not explain
+to her why I really wanted so much to go home."
+
+"You find a limit to the dear lady's powers of comprehension or of
+sympathy?" he asked, again off the surface.
+
+"I suppose I must do so, because there are things it never occurs to one
+to speak of to Henrietta."
+
+"Whole cartloads of them," Carteret comprehensively agreed.
+
+"And yet I don't know why."
+
+"Don't you? Well, I think I do perhaps know why; and knowing, I must
+confess to being not altogether sorry your confidences are restricted,
+dear witch, in that particular direction."
+
+The use of the pet name, though involuntary--possibly on that very
+account--eased his fever. Clearly he must get back to their former
+relation. Rejoice in her beauty, in her sweet faith and dependence, love
+her--yes--he admitted the word,--but for God's sake keep the physical
+side out of the business. Damaris' easily-aroused loyalty, meanwhile,
+caught alight.
+
+"Oh, but we've just been Henrietta's guests," she said, with a pretty
+mingling of appeal and rebuke--"and it seems hardly kind, does it, to
+find faults in her. She has been beautifully good to me all this time,
+ending up with this dance which she gave on purpose to please me."
+
+"And herself also," Carteret returned.
+
+--Yes decidedly he felt better, steadier, to the point of now trusting
+himself to look at his companion, notwithstanding the strange influences
+abroad in the magical moonlight, with his accustomed smiling,
+half-amused indulgence. The unremitting trample of the waves, there on
+the right, made for level-headedness actually if a little
+mercilessly--so he thought.
+
+"I don't wish to be guilty of taking Mrs. Frayling's name in vain a
+second time," he went on--"you've pulled me up, and quite rightly, for
+doing so once already--but depend upon it, she enjoyed her ball every
+morsel as much as you did. In respect of the minor delights of existence,
+she slumbers not nor sleeps, our perenially charming and skilful
+Henrietta."
+
+"You think she enjoyed it too? I am glad."
+
+Then after an interval of silence, her whole figure alert, her
+speech eager:
+
+"See there--see there, Colonel Sahib--yes, far, far out to sea--aren't
+those the lights of a ship?"
+
+"Yes," he answered--"creeping westward--bound for Toulon, most likely, or
+possibly for Marseilles."
+
+And he would have moved forward. But Damaris unaccountably lingered.
+Carteret waited a good three to four minutes to suit her convenience; but
+the delay told on him. The night and hour down here by the shore, on the
+confines of the silent town, were too full of poetry, too full of
+suggestion, of the fine-drawn excitement of things which had been and
+might not impossibly again be. It was dangerous to loiter, and in such
+company, though waves might beat out a constant reminder with merciless
+pertinacity upon the beach.
+
+"Come, dear witch, come," he at last urged her. "We still have more than
+a mile to go and a pretty stiff hill to climb. It grows late, you will be
+abominably tired to-morrow. Why this fascination for a passing steamer,
+probably some unromantic, villainously dirty old tramp too, you would not
+condescend to look at by daylight."
+
+"Because,"--Damaris began. She came nearer to him, her expression
+strangely agitated.--"Oh! Colonel Sahib, if I could only be sure it
+wasn't treacherous to tell you!"
+
+"Tell me what? One of the many things it would never occur to you to
+confide to Mrs. Frayling?" he said, trying to treat her evident emotion
+lightly, to laugh it off.
+
+"To Henrietta? Of course not. It would be unpardonable, hateful to tell
+Henrietta."
+
+She flushed, her face looking, for the moment, dark from excess of
+colour.
+
+"You are the only person I could possibly tell."
+
+Carteret moved aside a few steps. He too felt strangely agitated. Wild
+ideas, ideas of unholy aspect, presented themselves to him--ideas, again,
+beyond words entrancing and sweet. He fought with both alike, honestly,
+manfully. Returned and took Damaris' hand quietly, gently in both his.
+
+"Look here, dear witch," he said, "all this evening a--to me--unknown
+spirit has possessed you. You haven't been like yourself. You have made
+me a little anxious, a little alarmed on your account."
+
+"Oh! it isn't only this evening," she caught him up. "It has been going
+on for weeks."
+
+"So I have seen--and that is not good for you, isn't for your happiness.
+So, if I am--as you say--the only person you care to acquaint with this
+matter, had not you better tell me here and now? Better worry yourself no
+more with mysteries about it, but let us, once and for all, have the
+thing out?"
+
+"I should be thankful," Damaris said simply, looking him in the eyes--"if
+I could be sure I wasn't sacrificing some one else--their pride I
+mean--their--their honour."
+
+For a few seconds Carteret paused, meeting her grave and luminous
+glance. Then:
+
+"I think you may risk it," he said. "I promise you this some-one-else's
+honour shall be sacred to me as my own. Without your direct request no
+word of what you choose to tell me will ever pass my lips."
+
+"Ah! I'm very sure of that,"--Her smile, her voice bore transparent
+testimony to a faith which went, somewhat giddily, not only to her
+hearer's heart but to his head. "It isn't a question of your repeating
+anything; but of your thinking differently of some one you care for very
+much--and who is almost as dependent on you, Colonel Sahib, as I am
+myself. At least I fear you might.--Oh! I am so perplexed, I'm in such
+a maze," she said. "I've nothing to go on in all this, and I turn it
+over and over in my mind to no purpose till my head aches. You see I
+can't make out whether this--the thing which began it all and happened
+oh! long ago--is extraordinary--one which you--and most people like
+you--in your position, I mean--would consider very wrong and
+disgraceful; or whether it often happens and is just accepted, taken for
+granted, only not talked about."
+
+Carteret felt cold all down his spine. For what, in God's name, could
+this supremely dear and--as he watched her grave and sweetly troubled
+countenance--supremely lovely child, be driving at?
+
+"And I care so dreadfully much," she went on. "It is the story of the
+darling little green jade elephant over again--like its being broken and
+spoilt. Only now I'm grown up I don't give in and let it make me ill.
+There was a time even of that--of illness, I mean--at first just before
+you came to The Hard last autumn. But I wouldn't suffer it, I would not
+let the illness go on. I got over that. But then a second crisis occurred
+soon after we came here; and I thought Henrietta's kindness opened a way
+out. So I rushed about whenever and wherever she invited me to rush. But
+as I told you this evening--just before we had our two dances, you
+remember."
+
+"Am I likely to forget!" Carteret murmured under his breath.
+
+"The rushing about has not proved a success. I thought it would help to
+stifle certain longings and keep me nearer to my father--more at one with
+him. But it didn't, it made me neglect him. You see--you see"--the words
+were dragged from her, as by active suffering and distress of mind--"I
+had to choose between him and another person. One cannot serve two
+masters. I choose him. His claim was the strongest in duty. And I love to
+see him satisfied and peaceful. He always ranked first in everything I
+felt and did ever since I can remember; and I so want him to stay first.
+But I have been pulled two ways, and seem to have got all astray somehow
+lately. I haven't been really true to myself any more than to him--only
+frivolous and busy about silly pleasures."
+
+"Don't let the frivolity burden your precious conscience," Carteret
+comfortably told her, touched by the pathos of her self-reproach. For her
+sincerity was surely, just now, unimpeachable and she a rare creature
+indeed! Love, he could less than ever banish; but surely he might utterly
+banish distrust and fear?--"As frivolity goes, dear witch, and greed of
+pleasure, yours have been innocent enough both in amount and in quality,
+heaven knows!"
+
+"I should like to believe so--but all that's relative, isn't it? The real
+wrongness of what you do, depends upon the level of rightness you start
+from, I mean."
+
+"Insatiable casuist!" Carteret tenderly laughed at her.
+
+And with that, by common though unspoken consent, they walked
+onward again.
+
+Even while so doing, however, both were sensible that this resumption of
+their homeward journey marked a period in, rather than the conclusion of,
+their conversation. Some outside compelling force--so in any case it
+appeared to Carteret--encompassed them. It was useless to turn and
+double, indulge in gently playful digression. That force would inevitably
+make them face the innermost of their own thought, their own emotion, in
+the end. In obedience to which unwelcome conviction, Carteret presently
+brought himself to ask her:
+
+"And about this other person--for we have wandered a bit from the point
+at issue, haven't we?--whose interests as I gather clash, for some
+reason, with those of your father, and whose pride and honour you are so
+jealously anxious to safeguard."
+
+"His pride, yes," Damaris said quickly, her head high, a warmth in her
+tone. "His honour is perfectly secure, in my opinion."
+
+"Whose honour is in danger then?--Dear witch, forgive me, but don't you
+see the implication?"
+
+Damaris looked around at him with unfathomable eyes. Her lips parted, yet
+she made no answer.
+
+After a pause Carteret spoke again, and, to his own hearing, his voice
+sounded hoarse as that of the tideless sea upon the beach yonder.
+
+"Do you mean me to understand that the conflict between your father's
+interests and those of this other person--this other man's--arise from
+the fact that you love him?"
+
+"Yes," Damaris calmly declared.
+
+"Love him,"--having gone thus far Carteret refused to spare himself. He
+turned the knife in the wound--"Love him to the point of marriage?"
+
+There, the word was said. Almost unconsciously he walked onward without
+giving time for her reply.--He moistened his lips, weren't they dry as a
+cinder? He measured the height to which hope had borne him, to-night, by
+the shock, the positive agony of his existing fall. At the young girl,
+_svelte_ and graceful, beside him, he could not look; but kept his eyes
+fixed on the mass of the wooded promontory, dark and solid against the
+more luminous tones of water and of sky, some half-mile distant. Set high
+upon the further slope of it, from here invisible, the Grand Hotel
+fronted--as he knew--the eastward trending coast. Carteret wished the
+distance less, since he craved the shelter of that friendly yellow-washed
+caravanserai. He would be mortally thankful to find himself back there,
+and alone, the door of his bachelor quarters shut--away from the beat of
+the waves, away from the subtle glory of this Venus-ridden moon now
+drawing down to her setting. Away, above all, from Damaris--delivered
+from the enchantments and perturbations, both physical and moral, her
+delicious neighbourhood provoked.
+
+But from that fond neighbourhood, as he suddenly became aware, he was in
+some sort delivered already. For she stopped dead, with a strange choking
+cry; and stood solitary, as it even seemed forsaken, upon the wide grey
+whiteness of the asphalt of the esplanade. Behind her a line of
+lamps--pale burning under the moonlight--curved, in perspective, with the
+curving of the bay right away to the lighthouse. On her left the crowded
+houses of the sleeping town, slashed here and there with sharp edged
+shadows, receded, growing indistinct among gardens and groves. The
+scene, as setting to this single figure, affected him profoundly, taken
+in conjunction with that singular cry. He retraced the few steps dividing
+him from her.
+
+"Marriage?" she almost wailed, putting out her hands as though to prevent
+his approach. "No--no--never in life, Colonel Sahib. You quite dreadfully
+misunderstand."
+
+"Do I?" Carteret said, greatly taken aback, while, whether he would
+or no, unholy ideas again flitted through his mind maliciously
+assailing him.
+
+"It has nothing to do with that sort of loving. It belongs to something
+much more beautifully part of oneself--something of one's very, very own,
+right from the very beginning."
+
+"Indeed!" he said, sullenly, even roughly, his habitual mansuetude giving
+way before this--for so he could not but take it--contemptuous flinging
+of his immense tenderness, his patient, unswerving devotion, back in his
+face. "Then very certainly I must plead guilty to not understanding, or
+if you prefer it--for we needn't add to our other discomforts by
+quarrelling about the extra syllable--of misunderstanding. In my
+ignorance, I confess I imagined the love, which finds its crown and seal
+of sanctity in marriage, can be--and sometimes quite magnificently
+is--the most beautiful thing a man has to give or a woman to receive."
+
+Damaris stared at him, her face blank with wonder.
+
+Set at regular intervals between the tall blue-grey painted lamp
+standards, for the greater enjoyment of visitors and natives, stone
+benches, of a fine antique pattern, adorn St. Augustin's esplanade. Our
+much-perplexed maiden turned away wearily and sat down upon the nearest
+of these. She held up her head, bravely essaying to maintain an air of
+composure and dignity; but her shoulders soon not imperceptibly quivered,
+while, try hard as she might, setting her teeth and holding her breath,
+small plaintive noises threatened betrayal of her tearful state.
+
+Carteret, quite irrespective of the prescience common to all true lovers
+where the beloved object's welfare is concerned, possessed unusually
+quick and observant hearing. Those small plaintive noises speedily
+reached him and pierced him as he stood staring gloomily out to sea.
+Whereupon he bottled up his pain, shut down his natural and admirably
+infrequent anger, and came over to the stone bench.
+
+"You're not crying, dearest witch, are you?" he asked her.
+
+"Yes, I am," Damaris said. "What else is there left for me to
+do?--Everyone I care for I seem to make unhappy. Everything I do goes
+wrong. Everything I touch gets broken and spoilt somehow."
+
+"Endless tragedies of little green jade elephants?" he gently
+bantered her.
+
+"Yes--endless. For now I have hurt you. You are trying to be good and
+like your usual self to me; but that doesn't take me in. I know all
+through me I have hurt you--quite dreadfully badly--though I never, never
+meant to, and haven't an idea how or why."
+
+This was hardly comforting news to Carteret. He attempted no disclaimer;
+while she, after fumbling rather helplessly at the breast-pocket of her
+jacket, at last produced a folded letter and held it out to him.
+
+"Whether it's treacherous or not, I am obliged to tell you," she said,
+with pathetic desperation. "For I can't bear any more. I can't but try my
+best to keep you, Colonel Sahib. And now you are hurt, I can only keep
+you by making you understand--just everything. You may still think me
+wrong; but anyhow my wrongness will be towards somebody else, not towards
+you.--So please read this, and don't skip, because every word helps to
+explain. Read it right through before you ask me any questions--that's
+more fair all round.--If you go across there--under the lamp, I
+mean--there still is light enough, I think, for you to be able to see."
+
+And Carteret, thus admonished--partly to pacify her, partly to satisfy a
+very vital curiosity which stirred in him to compass the length, breadth,
+and height of this queer business, learn the truth and so set certain
+vague and agitating fears at rest--did as Damaris bade him. Standing in
+the conflicting gaslight and moonlight, the haunted quiet of the small
+hours broken only by the trample and wash of the sea, he read Darcy
+Faircloth's letter from its unconventional opening, to its equally
+unconventional closing paragraph.
+
+"Now my holiday is over and I will close down till next Christmas
+night--unless miracles happen meanwhile--so good-bye--Here is a boatload
+of my lads coming alongside, roaring with song and as drunk as
+lords.--God bless you. In spirit I once again kiss your dear feet"--
+
+Carteret straightened himself up with a jerk. Looked at Damaris sitting
+very still, a little sunk together, as in weariness or dejection upon the
+stone bench. His eyes blazed fierce, for once, with questions he burned
+yet dreaded to ask. But on second thoughts--they arrived to him
+swiftly--he restrained his impatience and his tongue. Mastering his heat
+he looked down at the sheet of note-paper again. He would obey Damaris,
+absorb the contents of this extraordinary document, the facts it conveyed
+both explicitly and implicitly, to the last word before he spoke.
+
+Happily the remaining words were few. "Your brother," he read, "till
+death and after"--followed by a name and date.
+
+At the name he stared fairly confounded. It meant nothing whatever to
+him.--That is, at first. Then, rising as a vision from out some
+subconscious drift of memory, he saw the cold, low-toned colouring of
+wide, smooth and lonely waters, of salt-marsh, of mud-flat and reed-bed
+in the lowering light of a late autumn afternoon--a grey, stone-built
+tavern, moreover, above the open door of which, painted upon a board,
+that same name of Faircloth figured above information concerning divers
+liquors obtainable within. Yes--remembrance grew more precise and stable.
+He recalled the circumstances quite clearly now. He had seen it on his
+way back from a solitary afternoon's wild fowl shooting on Marychurch
+Haven; during his last visit to Deadham Hard.
+
+So much was certain. But the name in its present connection? Carteret's
+imagination shied. For, to have the existence of an illegitimate son of
+your oldest and dearest friend thus suddenly thrust upon you, and that by
+a young lady of the dearest friend's family, is, to say the least of it,
+a considerable poser for any man. It may be noted as characteristic of
+Carteret that, without hesitation, he recognized the sincerity and fine
+spirit of Faircloth's letter. Characteristic, also, that having seized
+the main bearings of it, his feeling was neither of cynical acquiescence,
+or of covert and cynical amusement; but of vicarious humiliation, of
+apology and noble pitying shame.
+
+He came over and sat down upon the stone bench beside Damaris.
+
+"Dear witch," he said slowly, "this, if I apprehend it aright, is a
+little staggering. Forgive me--I did altogether, and I am afraid rather
+crassly, misunderstand. But that I could hardly help, since no remotest
+hint of this matter has ever reached me until now."
+
+Damaris let her hand drop, palm upwards, upon the cool, slightly rough,
+surface of the seat. Carteret placed the folded letter in it, and so
+doing, let his hand quietly close down over hers--not in any sense as a
+caress, but as assurance of a sympathy it was forbidden him, in decency
+and loyalty, to speak. For a while they both remained silent. Damaris
+was first to move. She put the letter back into the breast-pocket of
+her jacket.
+
+"I am glad you know, Colonel Sahib," she gravely said. "You see how
+difficult it has all been."
+
+"I see--yes"--
+
+After a pause, the girl spoke again.
+
+"I only came to know it myself at the end of last summer, quite by
+accident. I was frightened and tried not to believe. But there was no way
+of not believing. I had lost my way in the mist out on the Bar. I mistook
+the one for the other--my brother, I mean, for"--
+
+Damaris broke off, her voice failing her.
+
+"Yes," Carteret put in gently, supportingly.
+
+He leaned back, his arms crossed upon his breast, his head carried
+slightly forward, slightly bent, as he watched the softly sparkling line
+of surf, marking the edge of the plunging waves upon the sloping shore.
+Vicarious shame claimed him still. He weighed man's knowledge, man's
+freedom of action, man's standards of the permissible and unpermissible
+as against those of this maiden, whose heart was at once so much and so
+little awake.
+
+"For my father," she presently went on. "But still I wanted to deny the
+truth. I was frightened at it. For if that was true so much else--things
+I had never dreamed of until then--might also be true. I wanted to get
+away, somehow. But later, after I had been ill, and my father let him
+come and say good-bye to me before he went to sea, I saw it all
+differently, and far from wanting to get away I only longed that we
+might always be together as other brothers and sisters are. But I knew
+that wasn't possible. I was quite happy, especially after you came with
+us, Colonel Sahib, out here. Then I had this letter and the longing grew
+worse than ever. I did try to school myself into not wanting, not
+longing--did silly things--frivolous things, as I told you. But I can't
+stop wanting. It all came to a head, somehow to-night, with the dancing
+and music, and those foolish boys quarrelling over me--and then your
+showing me that--instead of being faithful to my father, I have
+neglected him."
+
+"Ah, you poor sweet dear!" Carteret said, greatly moved and
+turning to her.
+
+In response she leaned towards him, her face wan in the expiring
+moonlight, yet very lovely in its pleading and guileless affection.
+
+"And my brother is beautiful, Colonel Sahib," she declared, "not only to
+look at but in his ideas. You would like him and be friends with him,
+though he doesn't belong to the same world as you--indeed you would. And
+he is not afraid--you know what I mean?--not afraid of being alive and
+having adventures. He means to do big things--not that he has talked
+boastfully to me, or been showy. Please don't imagine that. He knows
+where he comes in, and doesn't pretend to be anybody or anything beyond
+what he is. Only it seems to me there is a streak of something original
+in him--almost of genius. He makes me feel sure he will never bungle any
+chance which comes in his way. And he has time to do so much, if chances
+do come"--this with a note of exultation. "His life is all before him,
+you see. He is so beautifully young yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FIDUS ACHATES
+
+
+In which final pronouncement of Damaris' fond tirade, Carteret heard the
+death knell of his own fairest hopes. He could not mistake the set of the
+girl's mind. Not only did brother call to sister, but youth called to
+youth. Whereat the goad of his forty-nine years pricked him shrewdly.
+
+He must accept the disabilities of the three decades, plus one year,
+which divided him in age from Damaris, as final; and range himself with
+the elder generation--her father's generation, in short. How, after
+all, could he in decency go to his old friend and say: "Give me your
+daughter." The thing, viewed thus, became outrageous, offensive not
+only to his sense of fitness, but of the finer and more delicate
+moralities. For cradle-snatching is not, it must be conceded, a
+graceful occupation; nor is a middle-aged man with a wife still in her
+teens a graceful spectacle. Sentimentalists may maunder over it in
+pinkly blushing perversity; but the naughty world thinks otherwise,
+putting, if not openly its finger to its nose, at least secretly its
+tongue in its cheek. And rightly, as he acknowledged. The implication
+may be coarse, libidinous; but the instinct producing it is a sound
+one, both healthy and just.
+
+Therefore he had best sit no longer upon stone benches by the sounding
+shore, in this thrice delicious proximity and thrice provocative magic of
+the serene southern night. All the more had best not do so, because
+Damaris proved even more rare in spirit, exquisite in moral and
+imaginative quality--so he perhaps over-fondly put it--than ever before.
+Carteret got on his feet and walked away a few paces, continuing to
+heckle himself with merciless honesty and rather unprintable
+humour--invoking even the historic name of Abishag, virgin and martyr,
+and generally letting himself "have it hot."
+
+A self-chastisement which may be accounted salutary, since, as he
+administered it, his thought again turned to a case other than his own,
+namely, that of Charles Verity. To pronounce judgment on his friend's
+past relations with women, whether virtuous or otherwise, was no business
+of his. Whatever irregularities of conduct that friend's earlier career
+may have counted, had brought their own punishment--were indeed actually
+bringing it still, witness current events. It wasn't for him, Carteret,
+by the smallest fraction to add to that punishment; but rather, surely,
+to do all in his power to lighten the weight of it. Here he found safe
+foothold. Let him invite long-standing friendship, with the father, to
+help him endure the smart of unrequited love for the daughter. To pretend
+these two emotions moved on the same plane and could counter-balance one
+another, was manifestly absurd; but that did not affect the essence of
+the question. Ignoring desire, which to-night so sensibly and
+disconcertingly gnawed at his vitals, let him work to restore the former
+harmony and sweet strength of their relation. If in the process he could
+obtain for Damaris--without unseemly revelation or invidious
+comment--that on which her innocent soul was set he would have his
+reward.--A reward a bit chilly and meagre, it is true, as compared
+with--Comparisons be damned!--Carteret left his pacing and came back to
+the stone bench.
+
+"Well, I have formed my own conclusions in respect of the whole matter.
+Now tell me what you actually want me to do, and I will see how far it
+can be compassed, dear witch." he said.
+
+Damaris had risen too, but she was troubled.
+
+"Ah! I still spoil things," she wailed. "I was so happy telling
+you about--about Faircloth. And yet somehow I've hurt you again. I
+know I have."
+
+Carteret took her by the elbow lightly, gently, carrying her onward
+beside him over the wide pallor of the asphalt.
+
+"Hurt me, you vanitatious creature? Against babes of your tender age,
+I long ago became hurt-proof"--he gaily lied to her. "What do you take
+me for?--A fledgling like the Ditton boy, or poor Harry Ellice, with
+whose adolescent affections you so heartlessly played chuck-farthing at
+our incomparable Henrietta's party to-night?--No, no--but joking apart,
+what exactly is it you want me to do for you? Take you to Marseilles
+for the day, perhaps, to meet this remarkable young sea-captain and go
+over his ship?"
+
+"He is remarkable," Damaris chimed in, repeating the epithet with eager
+and happier emphasis.
+
+"Unquestionably--if I'm to judge both by your account of him and by the
+tenor of his letter."
+
+"And you would take me? Oh! dear Colonel Sahib, how beautifully good you
+are to me."
+
+"Of course, I'll take you--if"--
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If Sir Charles gives his consent."
+
+He slipped Damaris' hand within his arm, still bearing her onward. The
+last of the long line of gas-lamps upon the esplanade, marking the curve
+of the bay, was now left behind. A little further and the road
+forked--the main one followed the shore. The other--a footpath--mounted
+to the left through the delicate gloom and semi-darkness of the wood
+clothing the promontory. Carteret did not regret that impending
+obscurity, apprehending it would be less embarrassing, under cover of it,
+to embark on certain themes which must be embarked upon were he to bring
+his purpose to full circle.
+
+"Listen, my dear," he told her, "while I expound. Certain laws of
+friendship exist, between men, which are imperative. They must be
+respected. To evade them, still worse, wilfully break them is to be
+guilty of unpardonably bad taste and bad feeling--to put it no higher.
+Had your father chosen to speak to me of this matter, well and good. I
+should have felt honoured by his confidence, have welcomed it--for he is
+dearer to me than any man living and always must be.--But the initiative
+has to come from him. Till he speaks I am dumb. For me to approach the
+subject first is not possible."
+
+"Then the whole beautiful plan falls through," she said brokenly.
+
+"No, not at all, very far from that," he comforted her. "I gather you
+have already discussed it with your father. You must lay hold of your
+courage and discuss it again. I know that won't be easy; but you owe it
+to him to be straightforward, owe it to his peculiar devotion to you.
+Some day, perhaps, when you are older and more ripe in experience, I may
+tell you, in plain language of a vow he once made for your sake--when he
+was in his prime, too, his life strong in him, his powers at their
+height. Some persons might consider his action exaggerated and fanatical.
+But such accusations can be brought against most actions really heroic.
+And that this action, specially in a man of his temperament, may claim to
+be heroic there can be, in my opinion, no manner of doubt."
+
+The path climbed steeply through the pine wood. Damaris' hand grew
+heavy on Carteret's arm. Once she stumbled, and clung to him in
+recovering her footing, thereby sending an electric current tingling
+through his nerves again.
+
+"He did what was painful, you mean, and for my sake?"
+
+"Say rather gave up something very much the reverse of painful,"
+Carteret answered, his voice not altogether under control, so that it
+struck away, loud and jarring, between the still ranks of the
+tree-trunks to right and left.
+
+"Which is harder?"
+
+"Which is much harder--immeasurably, incalculably harder, dearest witch."
+
+After a space of silence, wherein the pines, lightly stirred by some
+fugitive up-draught off the sea, murmured dusky secrets in the vault of
+interlacing branches overhead, Carteret spoke again. He had his voice
+under control now. Yet, to Damaris' hearing, his utterance was permeated
+by an urgency and gravity almost awe-inspiring, here in the loneliness
+and obscurity of the wood. She went in sudden questioning,
+incomprehensible fear of the dear man with the blue eyes. His arm was
+steady beneath her hand, supporting her. His care and protection sensibly
+encircled her, yet he seemed to her thousands of miles away, speaking
+from out some depth of knowledge and of reality which hopelessly
+transcended her experience. She felt strangely diffident, strangely
+ignorant. Felt, though she had no name for it, the mystical empire,
+mystical terror of sex as sex.
+
+"The night of the breaking of the monsoon, of those riotings and fires at
+Bhutpur, your father bartered his birthright, in a certain particular,
+against your restoration to health. The exact nature of that renunciation
+I cannot explain to you. The whole transaction lies beyond the range of
+ordinary endeavour; and savours of the transcendental--or the
+superstitious, if you please to take it that way. But call it by what
+name you will, his extravagant gamble with the Lords of Life and Death
+worked, apparently. For you got well; and you have stayed well, dear
+witch--thanks to those same Lords of Life and Death, whose favour your
+father attempted to buy with this act of personal sacrifice. He was
+willing to pay a price most men would consider prohibitive to secure your
+recovery. And, with an unswerving sense of honour, he has gone on paying,
+until that which, at the start, must have amounted to pretty severe
+discipline has crystallized into habit. What you tell me of this young
+man, Darcy Faircloth's history, goes, indirectly, to strengthen my
+admiration for your father's self-denying ordinance, both in proposing
+and in maintaining this strange payment."
+
+There--it was finished, his special pleading. Carteret felt unfeignedly
+glad. He was unaccustomed to put forth such elaborate expositions, more
+particularly of a delicate nature and therefore offering much to avoid as
+well as much to state.
+
+"So you are bound to play a straight game with him--dear child. Believe
+me he deserves it, is finely worthy of it. Be open with him. Show him
+your letter. Ask his permission--if you have sufficient courage. Your
+courage is the measure of the sincerity of your desire in this business.
+Do you follow me?"
+
+"Yes--but I shall distress him," Damaris mournfully argued.
+
+She was bewildered, and in her bewilderment held to the immediate
+and obvious.
+
+"Less than by shutting him out from your confidence, by keeping him at
+arm's length."
+
+"Neglecting him?"
+
+"Ah! so that rankles still, does it? Yes, neglecting him just a
+trifle, perhaps."
+
+"But the neglect is over--indeed, it is over and utterly done with."
+
+And in the ardour of her disclaimer, Damaris pressed against Carteret,
+her face upturned and, since she too was tall, very close to his.
+
+"Just because it is over and done with I begged you to bring me back
+with you to-night. I wanted to make a clean break with all the
+frivolities, while everything was quite clear to me. I wanted, while I
+still belonged to you, Colonel Sahib, through our so beautifully dancing
+together twice"--
+
+"God in Heaven!" Carteret said under his breath. For what a past-master
+in the art of the torturer is your white souled maiden at moments!
+
+"To go right away from all that rushing about worldliness--I don't blame
+Henrietta--she has been sweet to me--but it is worldliness, rather, isn't
+it?--and to be true to him again and true to myself. I wanted to return
+to my allegiance. You believe me, don't you? You made me see, Colonel
+Sahib, you brought my foolishness home to me--Oh! yes, I owe you endless
+gratitude and thanks. But I was uneasy already. I needed a wholesome
+shove, and you gave it. And now you deliver a much-needed supplementary
+shove--one to my courage. I obey you, Colonel Sahib, without question or
+reservation--not on the chance of getting what I long for; but because
+you have convinced me of what is right. I will tell him--tell my
+father--all about everything--to-morrow."
+
+"It is now to-morrow--and, with the night, many dreams have packed up
+their traps and fled."
+
+"But we needn't be sorry for that," Damaris declared, in prettily rising
+confidence. "The truth is going to be better than the dreams, isn't it?"
+
+"For you, yes--with all my heart, I hope."
+
+"But for you--why not for you?" she cried, smitten by anxiety regarding
+him and by swift tenderness.
+
+They had reached the end of the upward climbing path, and stepped from
+the semi-darkness of the wood into the greater clarity of the gravel
+terrace in front of the hotel. Far below unseen waves again beat upon the
+beach. The sound reached them faintly. The dome of the sky, thick sown
+with stars, appeared prodigious in expanse and in height. It dwarfed the
+block of hotel buildings upon the right. Dwarfed all visible things, the
+whole earth, indeed, which it so sensibly enclosed. Dwarfed also, and
+that to the point of desolation, the purposes and activities of
+individual human lives. How could these count, what could they matter in
+presence of the countless worlds swinging, there, through the illimitable
+fields of space?
+
+To Carteret this thought, or rather this sensation, of human
+insignificance brought a measure of stoic consolation. He lifted Damaris'
+hand off his arm, and held it, while he said, smiling at her:
+
+"For me--yes, of course. Why not? For me too, dearest witch, truth is
+assuredly the most profitable bedfellow."
+
+Then, as she shrank, drawing away a little, startled by the crudeness of
+the expression:
+
+"I enjoyed our two dances," he told her, "and I shall enjoy taking you to
+Marseilles and making Faircloth's acquaintance, if our little scheme
+works out successfully--if it is sanctioned, permitted. After that--other
+things being equal--I think I ought to break camp and journey back to
+England, to look after my property and my sister's affairs. I have gadded
+long enough. It is time to get into harness--such harness as claims me in
+these all too easy-going days. And now you must really go indoors without
+further delay, and go to bed. May the four angels of pious tradition
+stand at the four corners of it, to keep you safe in body, soul and
+spirit. Sleep the sleep of innocence and wake radiant and refreshed."
+
+"Ah! but you're sad--you are sad," Damaris cried, her lips quivering.
+"Can't I do anything?--I would do so much, would love so much--beyond
+anything--to make you unsad."
+
+The man with the blue eyes shook his head.
+
+"Impossible, alas! Your intervention, in this case, is finally ruled out,
+my sweet lamb," he affectionately, but conclusively said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WHICH FEATURES VARIOUS PERSONS WITH WHOM THE READER IS ALREADY ACQUAINTED
+
+
+Some are born great, some attain greatness, and some have it thrust upon
+them to the lively embarrassment of their humble and retiring little
+souls. To his own notable surprise, General Frayling, on the morning
+following his wife's Cinderella dance, awoke to find himself the centre
+of interest in the life of the pretty pavilion situated in the grounds of
+the Hôtel de la Plage. He owed this unaccustomed ascendency to physical
+rather than moral or intellectual causes, being possessed of a
+temperature, the complexion of the proverbial guinea, and violent pains
+in his loins and his back.
+
+These anxious symptoms developed--one cannot but feel rather unjustly--as
+the consequence of his own politeness, his amenity of manner, and the
+patient attentions he paid on the previous evening to one of his wife's
+guests. He had sat altogether too long for personal comfort in a draughty
+corner of the hotel garden, with Mrs. Callowgas. Affected by the poetic
+influences of moon, stars, and sea, affected also conceivably by pagan
+amorous influences, naughtily emanating from the neighbouring Venus
+Temple--whose elegant tapering columns adorn the façade of the local
+Mairie--Mrs. Callowgas became extensively reminiscent of her dear dead
+Lord Bishop. Protracted anecdotes of visitations and confirmation tours,
+excerpts from his sermons, speeches and charges, arch revelations of his
+diurnal and nocturnal conversation and habits--the latter tedious to the
+point of tears when not slightly immodest--poured from her widowed lips.
+The good lady overflowed. She frankly babbled. General Frayling listened,
+outwardly interested and civil, inwardly deploring that he had omitted
+to put on a waistcoat back-lined with flannel--waxing momentarily more
+conscious, also, that the iron--of the hard cold slats composing the seat
+of his garden chair--if not entering into his soul, was actively entering
+a less august and more material portion of his being through the slack of
+his thin evening trousers. He endured both tedium and bodily suffering
+with the fortitude of a saint and martyr; but next morning revealed him
+victim of a violent chill demanding medical aid.
+
+The native local practitioner was reported mono-lingual, and of small
+scientific reputation; while our General though fluent in vituperative
+Hindustani, and fairly articulate in Arabic, could lay no claim to
+proficiency in the French language. Hence probable deadlock between
+doctor and patient. Henrietta acted promptly, foreseeing danger of
+jaundice or worse; and bade Marshall Wace telegraph to Cannes for an
+English physician. As a nurse she was capable if somewhat
+unsympathetic--illness and death being foreign to her personal programme.
+She attended upon her small sick warrior assiduously; thereby earning the
+admiration of the outsiders, and abject apologies for "being such a
+confounded nuisance to you, my love," from himself. Her maid, a
+Eurasian--by name Serafina Lousada, whom she had brought with her from
+Bombay a couple of years earlier, prematurely-wrinkled of skin and
+shrunken of figure, yet whose lustrous black eyes still held the embers
+of licentious fires--would readily have shared her labours. But Henrietta
+was at some trouble to eliminate Serafina from the sick-chamber, holding
+her tendencies suspect as insidiously and quite superfluously
+sentimental, where any male creature might be concerned.
+
+Carteret and Sir Charles Verity, on the other hand, she encouraged with
+the sweetest dignity imaginable, to take turns at the bedside--and to
+look in upon her drawing-room, also, on their way back and forth thither.
+A common object and that a philanthropic one, gives unimpeachable
+occasions of intimacy. These Henrietta did not neglect, though touching
+them with a disarming pensiveness of demeanour. The invalid was, "the
+thing "--the thought of him wholly paramount with her. Her anxiety might
+be lightened, perhaps, but by no means deleted, by the attentions of
+these friends of former years.--A pretty enough play throughout, as the
+two gentlemen silently noted, the one with kindly, the other with
+sardonic, humour.
+
+Her henchman, Marshall Wace, meanwhile, Henrietta kept on the run until
+the triangular patch of colour, straining either prominent cheek-bone,
+was more than ever accentuated. There was method, we may however take it,
+in the direction of these apparently mad runnings, since they so
+incessantly landed the runner in the _salon_ of the Grand Hotel crowning
+the wooded headland. Damaris she refused to have with her. No--she
+couldn't consent to any clouding of the darling child's bright spirit by
+her private worries. Trouble, heaven knows, is bound to overtake each one
+of us more than soon enough! She--Henrietta--could endure her allotted
+portion of universal tribulation best in the absence of youthful
+witnesses.
+
+But let Marshall carry Damaris news daily--twice daily, if needs be. Let
+him read with her, sing to her; so that she, charming child, should miss
+her poor Henrietta, and their happy meetings at the little pavilion, the
+less. Especially let him seek the young girl, and strive to entertain
+her, when Sir Charles and Colonel Carteret were engaged on their good
+Samaritan visits to General Frayling.
+
+"This break in our cherished intercourse," Henrietta wrote, in one of
+those many Wace-borne bulletins, "grieves me more than I can express.
+Permit Marshall to do all in his power to make up for this hospital
+incarceration of mine. Poor dear fellow, it is such a boon to him. I
+really crave to procure him any pleasure I can--above all the pleasure of
+being with you, which he values so very highly. All his best qualities
+show in this time of trial. He is only too faithful and wears himself to
+positive fiddle-strings in my service and that of the General. I send him
+to you, darling child, for a little change and recreation--relaxation
+from the strain of my husband's illness. Marshall is so sympathetic and
+feels for others so deeply. His is indeed a rare nature; but one which
+does not, alas! always quite do itself justice. I attribute this to an
+unfortunate upbringing rather than to any real fault in himself. So be
+good to him, Damaris. In being good to him--as I have said all along--you
+are being good to your fondly loving and, just now, sorely tried
+Henrietta Frayling."
+
+All which sounded a note designed to find an echo in Damaris' generous
+heart. Which it did--this the more readily because, still penitent for
+her recent trifle of wild-oats sowing, our beloved maiden was
+particularly emulous of good works, the missionary spirit all agog in
+her. She was out to comfort, to sympathize and to sustain. Hence she
+doubly welcomed that high-coloured hybrid, Wace--actor, cleric, vocalist
+in one. Guilelessly she indulged and mothered him, overlooking his
+egoism, his touchiness and peevishness, his occasional defects of
+breeding and of taste. She permitted him, moreover, to talk without
+restraint upon his favourite subject--that of himself. To retail the
+despairs of an ailing and unhappy childhood; the thwarted aspirations of
+a romantic and sensitive boyhood; the doubts and disappointments of a
+young manhood conspicuously rich in promise, had the fates and his fellow
+creatures but shown themselves more intelligently sensible of his merits
+and his needs.
+
+For this was the burden of his recurrent lament. Throughout life he had
+been misunderstood.
+
+"But you, Miss Verity, do understand me," he almost passionately
+declared, waving white effeminate hands. "Ah! a pure influence such
+as yours"--
+
+Here, rather to Damaris' thankfulness, words appeared to fail him. He
+moved to the piano and exhaled his remaining emotion in song.
+
+Affairs had reached the above point about ten days after Henrietta's
+party and Damaris' midnight walk with Colonel Carteret by the shore of
+the sounding sea. General Frayling, though mending, was still possessed
+of a golden complexion and a temperature slightly above the normal, while
+his dutiful wife, still self-immured, was in close attendance, when an
+event occurred which occasioned her considerable speculation and
+perplexity.
+
+It came about thus. At her request Marshall Wace walked up to the
+station early that morning, to secure the English papers on their arrival
+by the mail train from Paris. After a quite unnecessarily long interval,
+in Henrietta's opinion, he returned with an irritable expression and
+flustered manner. Such, at least, was the impression she received on his
+joining her in the wide airy corridor outside the General's sick-chamber.
+
+"I thought you were never coming back," she greeted him. "What has
+detained you?"
+
+"The Paris train was late," he returned. "And--wait an instant, Cousin
+Henrietta. I want to speak to you. Yes, I am hot and tired, and I am put
+out--I don't deny it."
+
+"Why?" Henrietta asked him indifferently.
+
+Her own temper was not at its brightest and best. The office of
+ministering angel had begun most woefully to pall on her. What if this
+illness betokened a break up of health on the part of General Frayling?
+Bath chairs, hot bottles, air-cushions, pap-like meals and such kindred
+unlovelinesses loomed large ahead! That was the worst of marrying an old,
+or anyhow an oldish, man. You never could tell how soon the natural order
+of things might be reversed, and you obliged to wait hand and foot on
+him, instead of his waiting hand and foot on you. Henrietta felt fretful.
+Her looking-glass presented a depressing reflection of fine lines and
+sharpened features. If she should wilt under this prolonged obligation of
+nursing, her years openly advertise their number, and she grow faded,
+_passée_, a woman who visibly has outlived her prime? She could have
+shaken the insufficiently dying General in his bed! Yes, insufficiently
+dying--for, in heaven's name, let him make up his mind and that
+speedily--get well and make himself useful, or veritably and finally
+depart before, for the preservation of her good looks, it was too late.
+
+"I met Sir Charles Verity at the station," Wace went on. "He was coming
+out of the first class _salle d'attente_. He stopped and spoke to me,
+enquired for cousin Fred; but his manner was peculiar, autocratic to a
+degree. He made me feel in the way, feel that he was annoyed at my being
+there and wanted to get rid of me."
+
+"Imagination, my dear Marshall. In all probability he wasn't thinking
+about you one way or the other, but merely about his own affairs, his
+own--as Carteret reports--remarkably clever book.--But why, I wonder, was
+he at the station so early?"
+
+Henrietta stood turning the folded newspaper about and idly scanning the
+head-lines, while the wind, entering by the open casements at the end of
+the corridor, lifted and fluttered the light blue gauze scarf she wore
+round her shoulders over her white frilled morning gown.
+
+"He didn't tell me," the large, soft, very hot young man said. "You may
+call it imagination, Cousin Henrietta; but I can't. I am positive his
+manner was intentional. He meant to snub me, by intimating of how slight
+account I am in his estimation. It was exceedingly galling. I do not want
+to employ a vulgar expression--but he looked down his nose at me as if I
+was beneath contempt. You know that insolent, arrogant way of his?"
+
+"Oh, la-la!" Henrietta cried. "Don't be so childish!"--Though she did in
+point of fact know the said way perfectly well and admired it. Once upon
+a time hadn't Sir Charles, indeed, rather superbly practised it in
+her--Henrietta's--defence?
+
+She sighed; while her temper took a nasty turn towards her yellow-faced,
+apologetic little General, waiting patiently for sight of the English
+newspapers, under the veil of mosquito netting in his little bed. Even in
+his roaring forties--had his forties ever roared though?--she doubted
+it--not to save his life could he ever have looked down his nose at an
+offending fellow-man like that.--Ah! Charles Verity--Charles Verity!--Her
+heart misgave her that she had been too precipitate in this third
+marriage. If she had waited?--
+
+"Of course, with my wretchedly short sight, I may have been mistaken,"
+Wace continued, pointedly ignoring her interruption, "but I am almost
+convinced I recognized Colonel Carteret and Miss Verity--Damaris--through
+the open door, on the other side of the _salle d'attente,_ in the crowd
+on the platform about to take their places in the train from Cannes,
+which had just come in."
+
+Henrietta ceased to scan the head-lines or deplore her matrimonial
+precipitation.
+
+"Carteret and Damaris alone and together?" she exclaimed with
+raised eyebrows.
+
+"Yes, and it occurred to me that I there touched upon the explanation, in
+part at least, of Sir Charles Verity's offensive manner. He had been to
+see them off and was, for some reason, unwilling that we--you and I,
+cousin Henrietta--should know of their journey."
+
+Even in private life, at the very head-waters and source of her intrigues
+and her scheming, Henrietta cleverly maintained an effect of secrecy. She
+showed herself an adept in the fine art of outflanking incautious
+intruders. Never did she wholly reveal herself or her purposes; but
+reserved for her own use convenient run-holes, down which she could
+escape from even the most intimate of her co-adjutors and employees. If
+masterly in advance, she showed even more masterly in retreat; and that
+too often at the expense of her fellow intriguers. Without scruple she
+deserted them, when personal safety or personal reputation suggested the
+wisdom of so doing. Though herself perplexed and suspicious, she now
+rounded on Wace, taking a high tone with him.
+
+"But why, my dear Marshall, why?" she enquired, "should Sir Charles
+object to our--as you put it--_knowing_? That seems to me an entirely
+gratuitous assumption on your part. In all probability Mary Ellice and
+the boys were on the platform too, only you didn't happen to catch sight
+of them. And, in any case, our friends at the Grand Hotel are not
+accountable to us for their comings and goings. They are free agents, and
+it does really strike me as just a little gossipy to keep such a very
+sharp eye upon their movements.--Don't be furious with me"--
+
+Henrietta permitted herself to reach up and pat the young man on the
+shoulder, playfully, restrainingly. An extraordinarily familiar
+proceeding on her part, marking the strength of her determination to
+avoid any approach to a quarrel, since she openly denounced and detested
+all those demonstrations, as between friends and relations, which come
+under the generic title of "pawing."
+
+"No, pray don't be furious with me," she repeated. "I quite appreciate
+how sensitive you naturally must be upon the subject of Damaris."
+
+"You have given me encouragement, cousin Henrietta"--this resentfully.
+
+"And why not? Don't be disingenuous, my dear Marshall. I have given you
+something much more solid than mere encouragement, namely active help,
+opportunity. In the right direction, to the right person, I have
+repeatedly praised you. But the prize, in this case, is to him who has
+address and perseverance to win it. You possess signal advantages through
+your artistic tastes, your music, your reciting. But I have never
+disguised from you--now honestly, have I?--there were obstacles and even
+prejudices to be overcome."
+
+"Sir Charles despises me."
+
+"But his daughter gives ample proof that she does not. And--you don't
+propose to marry Sir Charles, do you?"
+
+Henrietta laughed a trifle shrilly. The tone of that laugh pierced her
+hearer's armour of egoism. He stared at her in interrogative
+surprise--observing which she hastened to retreat down a run-hole.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "it is really a little too bad to tease you, Marshall.
+But one can't but be tempted to do so at moments. You take everything so
+terribly _au grand sérieux_, my young friend."
+
+"You mean to convey that I am ponderous?"
+
+"Well--perhaps--just a shade," she archly agreed. "And of ponderosity you
+must make an effort to cure yourself.--Mind, though a fault, I consider
+it one on the right side--in the connection, that is, which we have just
+now been discussing. When a girl has as much intelligence as--we needn't
+name names, need we?--she resents perpetual chaff and piffle. They bore
+her--seem to her a flagrant waste of time. Her mind tends to scorn
+delights and live laborious days--a tendency which rectifies itself
+later as a rule. All the same in avoiding frivolity, one must not rush to
+the other extreme and be heavy in hand. A happy mien in this as in all
+things, my dear Marshall."
+
+"I cannot so far degrade myself as to be an opportunist," he returned
+sententiously.
+
+"Yet the opportunist arrives; and to arrive is the main thing, after
+all--at least I imagine so.--Now I really cannot stay here any longer
+giving you priceless advice; but must take the General his
+newspapers.--By the way, did Sir Charles say anything about coming to see
+him this afternoon?"
+
+As she asked the question Henrietta ran her eye down over the
+announcements in the Court Circular. Marshall replied in the negative.
+She made no comment, hardly appearing to notice his answer. But, as
+she stepped lightly and delicately away down the airy corridor to the
+door of the sick-room, over her blue gauze draped shoulder she flung
+back at him--
+
+"This confinement to the house is getting quite on my nerves. I must
+really allow myself a little holiday.--Take a drive to-morrow if Frederic
+is no worse. I will call at the Grand Hotel, I think, and see darling
+Damaris, just for a few minutes, myself."
+
+Information which went far to restore her hearer's equanimity. His
+affairs, as he recognized, were in actively astute safe-keeping.
+
+Marshall Wace spent the rest of the morning in the drawing-room of the
+villa, at the piano, composing a by no means despicable setting of
+Shelley's two marvellous stanzas, which commence:
+
+"Rarely, rarely comest thou,
+  Spirit of Delight!
+Wherefore hast thou left me now
+  Many a day and night?"
+
+The rich baritone voice, vibrant with apparent passion, swept out
+through the open windows, across the glittering garden. Miss Maud
+Callowgas, walking along that portion of the esplanade immediately in
+front of the hotel, paused in the grilling sunshine to listen. Heaven
+upon earth seemed to open before her pale, white-lashed eyes. If she
+could only ascertain what fortune she might eventually count on
+possessing--but Mama was so dreadfully close about everything to do with
+money! The Harchester bishopric was a fat one, worth from ten to fifteen
+thousand a year. That she knew from the odious, impudent questions asked
+about it by some horrible nonconformist member, in the House of Commons,
+just after her father's death. Surely Mama must have saved a
+considerable amount out of so princely an income? She had always kept
+down expenses at the Palace. The servants left so often because they
+declared they had not enough to eat.
+
+Then through the open window of the villa embowered in roses, there amid
+the palms and pines--and in a falling cadence too:
+
+"How shall ever one like me
+  Win thee back again?"
+
+But Maud Callowgas needed no winning, being very effectually won already,
+so it was superfluous thus movingly to ask the question. The mid-day sun
+striking through her black-and-white parasol made her feel dizzy and
+faint.--If only she could learn the amount of her fortune, she could let
+Mrs. Frayling learn the amount of it too--just casually, in the course of
+conversation, and then--Everyone said Mrs. Frayling was doing her best to
+"place" her cousin-by-marriage, to secure him a well-endowed wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+WHICH IT IS TO BE FEARED SMELLS SOMEWHAT POWERFULLY OF BILGE WATER
+
+
+Warm wind, hot sun, the confused sound and movement of a great southern
+port, all the traffic and trade of it, man and beast sweating in the
+splendid glare. Rattle of cranes, scream of winches, grind of wheels, and
+the bellowing of a big steamer, working her way cautiously through the
+packed shipping of the basin, to the blue freedom of the open sea.--Such
+was the scene which the boatswain and white-jacketed steward, leaning
+their folded arms on the bulwarks and smoking, lazily watched.
+
+The _Forest Queen_ rode high at the quayside, having discharged much, and
+taken on but a moderate amount of cargo for her homeward voyage. This was
+already stowed. She had coaled and was bound to clear by dawn. Now she
+rested in idleness, most of her crew taking their pleasure ashore, a
+Sabbath calm pervading her amid the strident activities going forward on
+every hand. The ship's dog, a curly-haired black retriever, lay on the
+clean deck in the sunshine stretched on his side, all four legs limp,
+save when, pestered beyond endurance, he whisked into a sitting position
+to snap at the all too numerous flies.
+
+The boatswain--a heavily built East Anglian, born within sight of Boston
+Stump five-and-forty years ago, his face seamed and pitted by smallpox
+almost to the extinction of expression and altogether to that of
+eyebrows, eyelashes and continuity of beard--spat deliberately and
+voluminously into the oily, refuse-stained water, lapping against the
+ship's side over twenty feet below, and resumed a desultory conversation
+which for the moment had fallen dead.
+
+"So that's the reason of his giving us hell's delight, like he has all
+day, cleaning up?--Got a lady coming aboard to tea has he? If she's too
+fine to take us as we are, a deal better let 'er stay ashore, in my
+opinion. Stuff a' nonsense all this set out, dressing up and dressing
+down. Vanity at the bottom of it--and who's it to take in?--For a tramp's
+a tramp, and a liner's a liner; and all the water in God's ocean, and all
+the rubbing and scrubbing on man's earth, won't convert the one into the
+other, bless you."
+
+He pointed away, with his pipestem, to the violet-shadowed mouth of one
+of the narrow lanes opening between the slop-shops, wine-shops, and cheap
+eating-houses--their gaudy striped, flounced awnings bellying and
+straining in the fervid southerly breeze--which lined the further side of
+the crowded quay.
+
+"As well try to wash some gutter-bred, French trollop, off the streets in
+behind there, into a white-souled, white-robed heavenly angel," he
+grumbled on. "All this purifying of the darned old hulk's so much labour
+lost. Gets the men's monkey up too, putting all this extray work on 'em."
+
+He leaned down again, folding his arms along the top of the bulwarks.
+
+"And, angel or trollop, I find no use for her, nor any other style of
+woman either, on board this 'ere blasted rusty iron coffin," he said.
+
+Whereat the stewart, a pert-eyed, dapper little cockney--amateur of the
+violin and noted impersonator of popular music-hall comedians--took him
+up in tones of amiable argument.
+
+"Your stomach's so turned on the subject of females you can't do 'em
+justice. Gone sour, regularly sour, it is. And I don't hold with you
+there, Partington, never shall and never do. I'm one as can always find a
+cosy corner in me manly bosom for the lidies--blame me if I can't, the
+pore 'elpless little lovey-doveys. After all's said and done Gawd made
+'em just as much as 'e made you, Partington, that 'e did."
+
+"And called you in, sonny, to lend 'im an 'and at the job, didn't 'e?
+All I can say is you'd both have been better employed putting in your
+time and talents somewhere else."
+
+After which sally the two smoked in silence, while the ship's dog
+alternately stretched himself on the hot boards, and started up with a
+yelp to snap at the cloud of buzzing flies again.
+
+The steward merely bided his time, however, and enquired presently with a
+nice air of nonchalance:
+
+"Never been married, Partington, 'ave you? I've often known that put a
+fellow sadly off the sex."
+
+"Never," the other replied, "though I came precious near it once, when I
+was a youngster and greener--greener even than you with your little
+lovey-doveys and your manly bosom, William, which is allowing a lot. But
+my wife as was to 'ave been--met her down Bristol way, gone blind silly
+on 'er I was--got took with the smallpox the week before the ceremony was
+pulled off, and give me all she had to spare of the disease with her
+dying breath. Soft chap as I was then, I held it as a sort of a
+compliment. Afterwards, when the crape had worn a bit brown, I saw it was
+jealousy of any other female I might come to cast my eye over as made her
+act like that."
+
+"A private sore!" William commented. "To tell you gospel truth,
+Partington, I guessed as much. But you should learn to tike the larger
+view. Blimey, you should rise above that. To be marked like you are is a
+misfortune, I don't pretend to the contrary, looking at it along the
+level so to speak. But beauty's so much dust and ashes, if yer can just
+boost yerself up to tike the larger view. Think of all that pore dying
+woman mayn't 'ave saved you from by making yer outward fascinations less
+staring to the sex? Regular honey-pot to every passing petticoat you
+might 'ave been."
+
+He broke off, springing erect and shading his eyes with one hand to
+obtain a better view.
+
+"My Sammy--whoever's the skipper a bringing 'ome 'ere with him? Dooks and
+duchesses and all the blamed airistorkracy?--English too, or I'm a
+blooming nigger.--Tea for a lidy?--I should rather think it.--Partington,
+I'm off to put meself inside of a clean jacket and make sure the
+cockroaches ain't holding a family sing-song on my best white
+table-cloth.--Say, that young ole man of ours don't stop 'arf way up the
+ladder, once 'e starts climbing. Gets to the top rung 'e does stright
+orf, s'elp me. And tikes 'is ease there, seemingly, as to the manner
+born. Looks like he does any'ow, the way 'e's behaving of hisself
+now.--So long, bo'sun," he added jauntily. "I'm called from yer side to
+descend the companion _ong route_ for higher spheres. Sounds like a
+contradiction that, but ain't so.--See you again when the docks 'as
+quitted this fond old floating 'earse of ours and took themselves back to
+their 'ereditary marble 'alls to roost."
+
+On the other side of the quay, meanwhile, in the brave dancing breeze and
+the sunshine, Darcy Faircloth stepped down on to the uneven paving just
+opposite to where the _Forest Queen_ lay. Colonel Carteret followed and
+stood aside, leaving him to hand Damaris out of the open carriage.
+
+For this was the younger man's day; and, as the elder ungrudgingly
+acknowledged, he played the part of host with a nice sense of taste, his
+hospitality erring neither in the direction of vulgar lavishness, nor of
+over-modesty and economy. Breeding tells, is fertile in social
+intuitions, as Carteret reflected, even when deformed by an ugly bar
+sinister. During the past hours he had been observant--even above his
+wont--jealous both for his friend Charles Verity and his dear charge,
+Damaris, in this peculiar association. The position was a far from easy
+one, so many slips of sorts possible; but the young merchant sea-captain
+had carried it off with an excellent simplicity and unconscious
+grace.--In respect of a conveyance, to begin with, he eschewed hiring a
+hack, and met his arriving guests, at the station, with the best which
+the stables of the _Hôtel du Louvre et de la Paix_ could produce. Had
+offered a quiet well-served luncheon at that same stately hostelry
+moreover, in preference to the more flashy and popular restaurants of the
+town. Afterwards he had driven them, in the early hours of the
+afternoon, up to the church of _Notre Dame de la Garde_, which, perched
+aloft on its eminence, godspeeds the outward bound and welcomes the
+homecoming voyager, while commanding so noble a prospect of port and
+city, of islands sacred to world-famous romance, and wide horizons of
+rich country and historic sea.
+
+And now, before parting, Faircloth brought them to his ship. To this
+private kingdom of his and all it implied--and denied too--of social
+privilege, social distinction. Implied, further, of administrative and
+personal power--all it set forth of the somewhat rugged facts of his
+profession and daily environment. Of this small world he was undisputed
+autocrat, Grand Cham of this miniature Tartary--of this iron-walled
+two-thousand-ton empire, the great white Czar.
+
+So far Carteret had lent himself to the extensive day's "outing" in a
+spirit of very sweet-tempered philosophy. He had been delightful,
+unfailing in courtesy and tactful address. Now, having analysed his
+host's character to his own satisfaction, he felt justified in giving
+himself a holiday from the office of chaperon and watch-dog. He had
+fulfilled his promise, royally done his duty by Damaris in that
+quasi-avuncular relation which he had assumed in place of a closer
+and--how profoundly more--coveted one; thereby earning temporary release
+from her somewhat over-moving neighbourhood. Not but what he had been
+keenly, almost painfully, interested in watching this drama of brother
+and sister, and gauging the impulses, the currents of action and of
+emotion which lay behind it. Gauging too the difficulties, even dangers,
+inherent in it, the glamour and the clouding of shame--whether
+conventional or real he did not pretend exactly to determine--which so
+strangely wrapped it about. To use Damaris' favourite word, they were
+very "beautiful" both in themselves and in their almost mystic affection,
+these two young creatures. And just on that very account he would be glad
+to get away from them, to be no longer onlooker, or--to put it
+vulgarly--gooseberry, fifth wheel to the cart.
+
+He went with them as far as the shoreward end of the up-sloping
+gangway.--A tall grey-clad figure, with an equally tall blue-clad figure
+on the other side of the young girl's, also tall, biscuit-coloured
+one,--a dash of pink showing in her burnt-straw hat, pink too at her
+throat and waist seen between the open fronts of her dust-coat.--But at
+the gangway he stopped.
+
+"Dear witch," he said, "I have some telegrams I should be glad to send
+off, and another small matter of business to transact in the town, so
+here, I will leave you, if you permit, in our friend's safe-keeping"--he
+smiled upon Faircloth. "At the station, at five-thirty, we meet. _Au
+revoir_, then."
+
+And, without waiting for any reply, he sauntered away along the
+sun-flooded quay between piled up bales of merchandize, wine barrels,
+heaps of sand, heaps too of evilly smelling hides, towering cases and
+crates. His shadow--clear violet upon the grey of the granite--from his
+feet onwards, travelled before him as he walked. And this leading by,
+this following of, his own shadow, casual accident of light and of
+direction though in all common sense he must account it, troubled the
+peace of the man with the blue eyes, making him feel wistful, feel past
+the zenith of his allotted earthly achievement, queerly out of the
+running, aged and consequently depressed.
+
+Upon Damaris the suddenness of his exit reacted in a sensation of
+constraint. Carteret had been very exquisite to her throughout this
+delicate adventure, throughout these hours of restrained yet exalted
+emotion. Left thus to her own resources she grew anxious, consciously
+diffident. The, in a sense, abnormal element in her relation to Faircloth
+darted down on her, so that she could not but remember how slight, after
+all, was her actual acquaintance with him, how seldom--only thrice in
+point of fact--had he and she had speech of one another.
+
+Upon Faircloth, Carteret's withdrawal also reacted, though with different
+effect. For an instant he watched the tall retreating form of this, as he
+perceived, very perfect gentleman. Then he turned to Damaris, looking her
+over from head to heel, in keen somewhat possessive fashion. And as,
+meeting his eyes, bravely if shyly, her colour deepened.
+
+"You are happy?" he affirmed rather than asked.
+
+"As the day is long," she answered him steadily.
+
+"But the day's not been overlong, by chance, has it?"
+
+"Not half long enough."
+
+"All's well, then, still." He pressed her--"You aren't weary of me yet?"
+
+Damaris reassuringly shook her head.
+
+Nevertheless she was very sensible of change in the tenor of their
+intercourse, sensible of a just perceptible hardness in his bearing and
+aspect. For some cause, the nature of which she failed to divine though
+she registered the fact of its existence, he no longer had complete faith
+in her, was no longer wholly at one with her in sympathy and in belief.
+He needed wooing, handling. And had she the knowledge and the art
+successfully to handle this sun-browned, golden-bearded, rather
+magnificent young master mariner--out here in the open too, the shout of
+the great port in her ears, the dazzle of the water and the push of the
+warm wind upon her face?
+
+"Ah, why waste precious time in putting questions to which you surely
+already know the answer?" with a touch of reproach she took him up. "Show
+me rather where you live--where you eat and sleep, where you walk up and
+down, walk quarter-deck, when you are far away there out at sea."
+
+"Does all that really interest you?"
+
+Damaris' lips quivered the least bit.
+
+"Why have you turned perverse and doubting? Isn't it because they
+interest me, above and beyond anything, beautifully interest me, that I
+am here?--It would have been very easy to stay away, if I hadn't
+wanted--as I do want--to be able to fancy you from morning until night,
+to know where you sit, know just what you first see when in the grey of
+the morning you first wake."
+
+Faircloth continued to look at her; but his expression softened, gaining
+a certain spirituality.
+
+"I have questioned more than once to-day whether I had not been foolhardy
+in letting you come here--whether distance wasn't safest, and the hunger
+of absence sweeter than the full meal of your presence for--for both of
+us, things being between us as they actually are. What if the bubble
+burst?--I have had scares--hideous scares--lest you should be
+disappointed in me."
+
+"Or you in me?" Damaris said.
+
+"No. Only your being disappointed in me could disappoint me in you--and
+hardly that, because you'd have prejudice, facts even, natural and
+obvious enough ones, upon your side. Faircloth's Inn on Marychurch Haven
+and your Indian palace, as basis to two children's memories and outlook,
+are too widely divergent, when one comes to think of it. When listening
+to you and Colonel Carteret talking at luncheon I caught very plain sight
+of that. Not that he talked of set purpose to read me a wholesome lesson
+in humility--never in life. He's not that sort. But the lesson went home
+all the more directly for that very reason.--Patience one little minute,"
+he quickly admonished her as she essayed to speak--"patience. You ask,
+with those dear wonderful eyes of yours, what I'm driving at.--This,
+beloved one--you see the waiting carriage over there. Hadn't we best get
+into it, turn the horses' heads citywards again, and drink our tea, you
+and I, on the way up to the station somewhere very much else than on
+board this rough-and-tumble rather foul-breathed cargo boat?--I'm so
+beastly afraid you may be disgusted and shocked by the interval between
+what you're accustomed to and what I am. To let you down"--
+
+Faircloth's handsome face worked. Whereat Damaris' diffidence took to
+itself wings and flew away. Her heart grew light.
+
+"Let me down?" she said. "You can't let me down. Oh! really, really
+you're a little slow of comprehension. We are in this--in everything that
+has happened since I first knew who you are, and everything which is
+going to happen from now onwards--in it together. What joins us goes
+miles, miles deeper and wider than any petty surface things. Must I tell
+you how much I care? Can't you feel it for yourself?"
+
+And she stepped before him on to the upward sloping gangway plank.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+WHEREIN DAMARIS MEETS HERSELF UNDER A NOVEL ASPECT
+
+
+Damaris threw back the bedclothes, her eyes still dim with slumber, and
+gathered herself into a sitting position, clasping her knees with both
+hands. She had a vague impression that something very pleasant awaited
+her attention; but, in the soft confusion of first awakening, could not
+remember exactly what it was.
+
+To induce clearer consciousness she instinctively parted the mosquito
+curtains, slipped her feet down over the side of the bed; and, a little
+crouched together and fumbly--baby-fashion--being still under the
+comfortable empire of sleep, crossed the room and set back the inward
+opening casements of the south window. Thereupon the outdoor freshness,
+fluttering her hair and the lace and nain-sook of her nightdress,
+brought her, on the instant, into full possession of her wandering wits.
+She remembered the nature of that charmingly pleasant something; yet
+paused, before yielding it attention, held captive by the spectacle of
+returning day.
+
+It was early. The disc of the sun still below the horizon. But shafts of
+light, striking up from it, patterned the underside of a vast dapple of
+fleecy cloud--heliotrope upon the back-cloth of blue ether--with fringes
+and bosses of scarlet flame. Against this, occupying the foreground, the
+pine trees, which sheltered the terrace, showed up a deep greenish purple
+bordering upon black.
+
+Leaning out over the polished wooden bar--which topped the ironwork of
+the window-guard--Damaris sought and gained sight of the sea. This,
+darker even than the tufted foliation of the pines--since still untouched
+by sunlight--spread dense and compact as molten metal, with here and
+there a sheen, like that of the raven's wing, upon its corrugated
+surface. To Damaris it appeared curiously forbidding. Seeing it thus she
+felt, indeed, to have taken Nature unawares, surprised her without
+disguise; so that for once she displayed her veritable face--a face not
+yet made up and camouflaged to conceal the fact of its in-dwelling terror
+from puny and defenceless man.
+
+With that the girl's thoughts flew, in longing and solicitude, to
+Faircloth, whose business so perpetually brought him into contact with
+Nature thus naked and untamed.--By now, and over as sinister a sea--since
+westward the dawn would barely yet have broke--the _Forest Queen_ must be
+steaming along the Andalusian coast, making for Gibraltar and the Straits
+upon her homeward voyage. And by some psychic alchemy, an influence more
+potent and tangible than that of ordinary thought, her apprehension fled
+out, annihilating distance, bridging intervening space. For, just as
+certainly as Damaris' fair body leaned from the open window, so certainly
+did her fair soul or--to try a closer and more scientific definition--her
+living consciousness, stand in the captain's cabin of the ocean-bound
+tramp, making Darcy Faircloth turn smiling in his sleep, he having vision
+and glad sense of her--which stayed by him, tempering his humour to a
+peculiar serenity throughout the ensuing day.
+
+That their correspondence was no fictitious one, a freak of disordered
+nerves or imagination, but sane and actual, both brother and sister could
+convincingly have affirmed. And this although time--as time is usually
+figured--had neither lot nor part in it. Such projections of personality
+are best comparable, in this respect, to the dreams which seize us in the
+very act of waking--vivid, coherent and complete, yet ended by the
+selfsame sound or touch by which they are evoked.
+
+In Damaris' case, before the scarlet, dyeing the cloud dapple, warmed to
+rose, or the dense metallic sea caught reflections of the sunrise,
+broadening incandescence, her errant consciousness was again cognizant
+of, subjected to, her immediate surroundings. She was aware, moreover,
+that the morning sharpness began to take a too unwarrantable liberty
+with her thinly clad person for comfort. She hastily locked the casements
+together; and then waited, somewhat dazed by the breathless pace of her
+strange and tender excursion, looking about her in happy amazement.
+
+And, so doing, her eyes lighted upon a certain oblong parcel lying on her
+dressing-table. There was the charmingly pleasant something which awaited
+her attention! A present, and the most costly, the most enchanting one
+(save possibly the green jade elephant of her childish adoration) she had
+ever received!
+
+She picked up, not only the precious parcel, but a hand-mirror lying near
+it; and, thus armed, bestowed herself, once more, in her still warm bed.
+
+The last forty-eight hours had been fertile in experiences and in events,
+among which the arrival of this gift could by no means be accounted the
+least exciting.--Hordle had brought the packet here to her, last night,
+about an hour after she and her father--standing under the portico--waved
+reluctant farewells to Colonel Carteret, as the hotel omnibus bore him
+and his baggage away to the station to catch the mail train through to
+Paris. This parting, when it actually came about, proved more distressing
+than she had by any means prefigured. She had no notion beforehand what a
+really dreadful business she would find it, after these months of close
+association, to say good-bye to the man with the blue eyes.
+
+"We shall miss you at every turn, dear, dear Colonel Sahib," she almost
+tearfully assured him. "How we are going ever to live without you I
+don't know."
+
+And impulsively, driven by the excess of her emotion to the point of
+forgetting accustomed habits and restraints, she put up her lips for a
+kiss. Which, thus invited, kiss Carteret, taking her face in both hands
+for the minute, bestowed upon her forehead rather than upon those
+proffered lips. Then his glance met Charles Verity's, held it in silent
+interchange of friendship needing no words to declare its quality or
+depth; and he turned away abruptly, making for the inside of the waiting
+omnibus--cavernous in the semi-darkness--distributing largesse to all and
+sundry as he went.
+
+Damaris was aware of her father's arm passed through hers, holding her
+against his side with a steadying pressure, as they went together across
+the hall on their way to the first floor sitting-room. Aware of poor,
+pretty, coughing little Mrs. Titherage's raised eyebrows and enquiring
+stare, as they passed her with her coffee, cigarette, and fat, florid
+stock-broker husband--who, by the way, had the grace to keep his eyes
+glued to the patience cards, ranged upon the small table before him,
+until father and daughter were a good half-way up the flight of stairs.
+Later, when outwardly mistress of herself, the inclination to tears
+successfully conquered and her normal half-playful gravity regained, she
+went to her bedroom, Hordle had brought her this beguiling packet.
+
+Inside the silver paper wrappings she found a red leather jewel case, and
+a note in Carteret's singularly definite hand, character rather than
+script, the severe yet decorative quality of Arabic about it.
+
+"To the dear witch," it read, "in memory of our incomparable Henrietta's
+dance, and of the midnight walk which followed it, and of our hours of
+pleasant sightseeing at Marseilles."
+
+No signature followed, only the date.
+
+Now, sitting up in bed, while the day came into full and joyous being,
+Nature's face duly decked and painted by the greatly reconciling sun,
+Damaris read the exquisitely written note again. The writing in itself
+moved her with a certain home-sickness for the East, which it seemed in
+some sort to embody and from which to hail. Then meanings she detected,
+behind the apparently light-hearted words, filled her with gratitude.
+They reminded her gently of duties accepted, promises made. They gathered
+in Faircloth, too, by implication; thus assuring her of sympathy and
+approval where she needed them most.
+
+She opened the case and, taking out the string of pearls it contained,
+turned them about and about, examining, counting, admiring their lustre
+and ethereal loveliness. They were graduated from the size of a
+hemp-seed, so she illustrated it, on either side the diamond clasp, to
+that of a marrow-fat pea. Not all of them--and this charmed her fancy as
+giving them individuality and separate life--were faultlessly perfect;
+but had minute irregularities of shape, tiny dimples in which a special
+radiance hovered. She clasped the necklace round her throat, and, holding
+up the hand-mirror, turned her head from side to side--with pardonable
+vanity--to judge and enjoy the effect.
+
+Damaris was unlearned in the commercial value of such treasures; nor did
+money seem exactly a graceful or pretty thing--in some respects our
+maiden was possessed of a very unworldly innocence--to think of in
+connection with a present. Still she found it impossible not to regard
+these jewels with a certain awe. What the dear Colonel Sahib must have
+spent on them! A small fortune she feared. In the buying of this
+all-too-costly-gift, then, consisted that business transaction he had
+made the excuse for leaving her alone with Faircloth, upon the quay
+alongside which lay the _Forest Queen_.
+
+Oh! he surpassed himself! Was too indulgent, too munificent to her!--As
+on a former occasion, she totted up the sum of his good deeds. Hadn't he
+given up his winter's sport for her sake? Didn't she--and wouldn't an
+admiring English reading public presently--owe to his suggestion her
+father's noble book? When she had run wild for a space, and sold herself
+to unworthy frivolities, hadn't he led her back into the right road, and
+that with the lightest, courtliest, hand imaginable, making all
+harmonious and sweetly perfect, once more, between her father and
+herself? Lastly, hadn't he procured her her heart's desire in the meeting
+with Darcy Faircloth--and, incidentally, given her the relief of free
+speech, now and whenever she might desire to claim it, concerning the
+strange and secret relationship which dominated her imagination and so
+enriched the hidden places of her daily life and thought?
+
+Damaris held up the hand-mirror contemplating his gift, this necklace of
+pearls; and, from that, by unconscious transition fell to contemplating
+her own face. It interested her. She looked at it critically, as at some
+face other than her own, some portrait, appraising and studying it. It
+was young and fresh, surely, as the morn--in its softness of contour and
+fine clear bloom; yet grave to the verge of austerity, owing partly to
+the brown hair which, parted in the middle and drawn down in a plain
+full sweep over the ears, hung thence in thick loose plait on either
+side to below her waist. She looked long and curiously into her own
+eyes, "dear wonderful eyes," as Faircloth, her brother, so deliciously
+called them. And with that her mouth curved into a smile, sight of which
+brought recognition, new and very moving, of her own by no means
+inconsiderable beauty.
+
+She went red, and then white almost as her white nightdress and the white
+pillows behind her. Laid the mirror hastily down, and held her face in
+both hands as--as Carteret had held it last night, at the moment of
+parting, when he had kissed not her lips but her forehead. Yet very
+differently, since she now held it with strained, clinging fingers, which
+hurt, making marks upon the flesh.--For could it be that--the other kind
+of love, such as men bear the woman of their choice, which dictated
+Carteret's unfailing goodness to her--the love that he had bitterly and
+almost roughly defended when she praised the love of brother and sister
+as dearest, purest, and therefore above all best?
+
+Was it conceivable this hero of a hundred almost fabulous adventures, of
+hair-breath escapes, and cunningly defied dangers in Oriental,
+semi-barbarous, wholly gorgeous, camps, Courts and cities, this
+philosopher of gently humorous equanimity, who appeared to weigh all
+things in an equal balance and whom she had regarded as belonging to an
+age and order superior to her own, had set his affections upon her
+singling her out from among all possible others? That he wanted her for
+his own, wanted her exclusively and as his inseparable companion, the
+object of--
+
+A sentence from the English marriage service flashed across her
+mind.--"With my body I thee worship," it ran, "and with all my worldly
+goods I thee endow."
+
+"With my body I thee worship"--He, her father's elect and beloved friend,
+in whom she had always so beautifully trusted, who had never failed her,
+the dear man with the blue eyes--and she, Damaris? Her womanhood,
+revealed to itself, at once shrank back bewildered, panic-stricken, and,
+passion-stricken, called to her aloud.
+
+For here Carteret's grace of bearing and of person, his clean health,
+physical distinction and charm, arose and confronted her. The visible,
+tangible attributes of the man--as man--presented themselves in fine
+relief, delighting her, stirring her heretofore dormant senses, begetting
+in her needs and desires undreamed of until now, and, even now, in
+substance incomprehensible. She was enchanted, fevered, triumphant; and
+then--also incomprehensibly--ashamed.
+
+As the minutes passed, though the triumph continued to subsist, the shame
+subsisted also, so that the two jostled one another striving for the
+mastery. Damaris took her hands from her face, again clasped them about
+her drawn-up knees, and sat, looking straight in front of her with
+sombre, meditative eyes. To use a phrase of her childhood, she was busy
+with her "thinkings"; her will consciously hailing emotion to the
+judgment-seat of intelligence for examination and for sentence.
+
+If this was what people commonly understand when they speak of love, if
+this was the love concerning which novelists write and poets sing--this
+riot of the blood and heady rapture, this conflict of shame and triumph
+in which the animal part of one has so loud a word to say--she didn't
+like it. It was upsetting, to the confines of what she supposed
+drunkenness must be. It spoilt things heretofore exquisite, by giving
+them too high a colour, too violent a flavour. No--she didn't like it.
+Neither did she like herself in relation to it--like this unknown,
+storm-swept Damaris. Nor--for he, alas! couldn't escape inclusion--this
+new, unfamiliar presentment of the man with the blue eyes. Yet--and here
+was a puzzle difficult of solution--even while this new presentment of
+him, and conception of his sentiment towards her, pulled him down from
+his accustomed pedestal in her regard, it erected for him another
+pedestal, more richly sculptured and of more costly material--since had
+not his manifold achievements, the whole fine legend as well as the whole
+physical perfection of him, manifested themselves to, and worked upon her
+as never before?--Did this thing, love, then, as between man and woman,
+spring from the power of beauty while soiling and lowering beauty--bestow
+on it an hour of extravagant effulgence, of royal blossoming, only to
+degrade it in the end?--The puzzle is old as humanity, old, one may say,
+as sex. Little wonder if Damaris, sitting up in her maidenly bedchamber,
+in the unsullied brightness of the early morning hour, failed to find any
+satisfactory answer to it.
+
+Her thoughts ranged out to the other members of her little local
+court--to Peregrine Ditton and Harry Ellice, to Marshall Wace. Had they
+personal experience of this disquieting matter? Was it conceivable the
+boys' silly rivalries and jealousies concerning her took their rise in
+this? Did it inspire the fervour of Marshall Wace's singing, his
+flattering dependence on her sympathy?--Suspicion widened. Everywhere she
+seemed to find hint and suggestion of this--no, she wouldn't too
+distinctly define it. Let it remain nameless.--Everywhere, except in
+respect of her father and of her brother. There she could spend her heart
+in peace. She sighed with a sweetness of relief, unclasping her hands,
+raising her fixed, bowed head.
+
+The hotel, meanwhile, was sensibly in act of coming awake. Doors opened,
+voices called. From the other side of the corridor sounded poor little
+Mrs. Titherage's hacking cough, increasing to a convulsive struggle
+before, the fit at last passing off, it sunk into temporary quiescence.
+André, the stout, middle-aged _valet de chambre_, hummed snatches of gay
+melody as he rubbed and polished the parquet flooring without. These
+noises, whether cheerful or the contrary, were at least ordinary enough.
+By degrees they gained Damaris' ear, drawing her mind from speculation
+regarding the nature, origin, prevalence and ethics of love. Soon
+Pauline, the chamber-maid, would bring her breakfast-tray, coffee and
+rolls, those pale wafer-like pats of butter which taste so good, and thin
+squares of beetroot sugar which are never half as sweet as one would
+like. Would bring hot water and her bath, too, and pay her some nicely
+turned little compliment as to the becoming effect of her night's
+sleep.--Everything would pick itself up, in short, and go on, naturally
+and comfortably just as before.
+
+Before what?
+
+Damaris straightened the hem of the sheet over the billowing edge of
+flowered down quilt; and, while so doing, her hand came in contact both
+with the mirror and the open jewel-case. She looked at this last with an
+expression bordering on reproach, unfastened the pearls from her throat,
+and laid them on the wadded, cream-coloured velvet lining. She delighted
+to possess them and deplored possessing them in the same breath. They
+spoke to her too freely and conclusively, told her too much. She would
+rather not have acquired this knowledge either of Carteret or of
+herself.--If it really were knowledge?--Again she repeated the question,
+arising from the increasing normality of surrounding things--Before what?
+
+For when all was said and done, the dear man with the blue eyes had
+veritably and very really departed. Throughout the night his train had
+been rushing north-north-westward to Paris, to England, to that Norfolk
+manor-house of his, where his sister, his nephews, all his home
+interests and occupations awaited him. What proof had she that more
+intimate and romantic affairs did not await him there, or thereabouts,
+also? Had not she, once and for all, learned the lesson that a man's
+ways are different and contain many unadvertised occupations and
+interests? If he had wished to say something, anything, special to her,
+before going away, how easily--thus she saw the business--how easily he
+might have said it! But he hadn't spoken, rather conspicuously, indeed,
+had avoided speaking. Perhaps it was all a silly, conceited mistake of
+her own--a delusion and one not particularly creditable either to her
+intelligence or her modesty.
+
+Damaris shut up the jewel-case. The pearls were entrancing; but somehow
+she did not seem to think she cared to look at them any more--just now.
+
+When her breakfast arrived she ate it in a pensive frame of mind. In a
+like frame of mind she went through the routine of her toilette. She felt
+oddly tired; oddly shy, moreover, of her looking-glass.
+
+Miss Felicia Verity had made a tentative proposal, about a week before,
+of joining her niece and her brother upon the Riviera. She reported much
+discomfort from rheumatism during the past winter. Her doctor advised a
+change of climate. Damaris, while brushing and doing up her hair,
+discovered in herself a warm desire for Miss Felicia's company. She
+craved for a woman--not to confide in, but to somehow shelter behind. And
+Aunt Felicia was so perfect in that way. She took what you gave in a
+spirit of gratitude almost pathetic; and never asked for what you didn't
+give, never seemed even to, for an instant, imagine there was anything
+you withheld from her. It would be a rest--a really tremendous rest, to
+have Aunt Felicia. She--Damaris--would propound the plan to her father as
+soon as she went downstairs.
+
+After luncheon and a walk with Sir Charles, her courage being higher, she
+repented in respect of the pearl necklace. Put it on--and with results.
+For that afternoon Henrietta Frayling--hungry for activity, hungry for
+prey, after her prolonged abstention from society--very effectively
+floated into the forefront of the local scene.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CONCERNING ITSELF WITH A GATHERING UP OP FRAGMENTS
+
+
+An unheralded invasion on the part of the physician from Cannes had
+delayed, by a day, Henrietta's promised descent upon, or rather ascent
+to, the Grand Hotel.
+
+That gentleman, whose avaricious pale grey eye belied the extreme
+silkiness of his manner--having been called to minister to Lady Hermione
+Twells in respect of some minor ailment--elected to put in the overtime,
+between two trains, in a visit to General Frayling. For the date drew
+near of his yearly removal from the Riviera to Cotteret-les-Bains, in the
+Ardennes, where, during the summer season, he exploited the physical
+infelicities and mental credulities of his more wealthy fellow-creatures.
+The _établissement_ at Cotteret was run by a syndicate, in which Dr.
+Stewart-Walker held--in the name of an obliging friend and solicitor--a
+preponderating number of shares. At this period of the spring he always
+became anxious to clear up, not to say clear out, his southern clienètle
+lest any left-over members of it should fall into the clutches of one of
+his numerous local rivals. And, in this connection, it may be noted as
+remarkable to how many of the said clientèle a "cure" at
+Cotteret-les-Bains offered assurance of permanent restoration to health.
+
+Among that happy band, as it now appeared, General Frayling might
+be counted. The dry, exciting climate of St. Augustin, and its
+near neighbourhood to the sea, were calculated to aggravate the
+gastric complications from which that polite little warrior so
+distressingly suffered.
+
+"This, I fear we must recognize, my dear madam, is a critical period with
+your husband; and treatment, for the next six months or so, is of
+cardinal importance; I consider high inland air, if possible forest air,
+indispensable. What I should _like_ you to do is to take our patient
+north by slow stages; and I earnestly counsel a course of waters before
+the return to England is attempted."
+
+Thereupon, agreeable visions of festive toilettes and festive casinos
+flitting through Henrietta's mind, she named Homburg and other German
+spas of world-wide popularity. But at such ultra-fashionable resorts, as
+Dr. Stewart-Walker, with a suitable air of regret, reminded her, the
+season did not open until too late to meet existing requirements.
+
+"Let me think, let me think," he repeated, head sagely bent and
+forefinger on lip.
+
+He ran through a number of Latin terms, to her in the main
+incomprehensible; then looked up, relieved and encouraging.
+
+"Yes, we might, I believe, safely try it. The medical properties of the
+springs--particularly those of La Nonnette--meet our patient's case
+excellently. And I should not lose sight of him--a point, I own, with me,
+for your husband's condition presents features of peculiar interest.
+Cotteret-les-Bains, my dear madam--in his case I can confidently
+recommend it. Lady Hermione talks of taking the cure at Cotteret this
+spring. But about that we shall see--we shall see. The question demands
+consideration. As you know, Lady Hermione is charmingly outspoken,
+emphatic; but I should be false to my professional honour, were I to
+allow her wishes to colour my judgment.--Meanwhile I have reason to know
+that other agreeable people are going to Cotteret shortly. Not the rank
+and file. For such the place does not pretend to cater. There the
+lucrative stock-broker, or lucrative Jew, is still a _rara avis_. Long
+may he continue to be so, and Cotteret continue to pride itself on its
+exclusiveness!--In that particular it will admirably suit you, Mrs.
+Frayling."
+
+To a compliment so nicely turned Henrietta could not remain insensible.
+Before the destined train bore Dr. Stewart-Walker back to his more
+legitimate zone of practise, she saw herself committed to an early
+striking of camp, with this obscure, if select, _ville d'eaux_ as her
+destination.
+
+In some respects the prospect did not smile on her. Yet as, next day,
+emancipated at length from monotonies of the sick-chamber, she drove
+behind the free-moving little chestnut horses through the streets of the
+town--sleepy in the hot afternoon quiet--and along the white glaring
+esplanade, Henrietta admitted the existence of compensations. In the
+brilliant setting of some world-famous German spa, though she--as she
+believed--would have been perfectly at her ease, what about her
+companions? For in such scenes of high fashion, her own good clothes are
+not sufficient lifebelt to keep a pretty woman quite complacently afloat.
+Your male associates must render you support, be capable of looking the
+part and playing up generally, if your enjoyment is to be complete. And
+for all _that_ Marshall Wace, frankly, couldn't be depended on. Not only
+was he too unmistakably English and of the middle-class; but the clerical
+profession, although he had so unfortunately failed it, or it so unkindly
+rejected him, still seemed to soak through, somehow, when you saw him in
+public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his
+trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and
+that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the
+footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or
+sample of "neck-wear." To head a domestic procession, in eminently
+cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very palpable invalid
+and a probable curate in mufti, demanded an order of courage to which
+Henrietta felt herself entirely unequal. Preferable the obscurity of
+Cotteret-les-Bains--gracious heaven, ten thousand times preferable!
+
+Did not Dr. Stewart-Walker, moreover, hold out hopes that, by following
+his advice, the General's strength might be renewed, if not precisely
+like that of the eagle, yet in the more modest likeness of some good,
+biddable, burden-bearing animal--the patient ass, if one might so put it
+without too obvious irony? As handyman, aide-de-camp, and, on occasion,
+her groom of the chambers, the General had deserved very well of
+Henrietta. He had earned her sincere commendation. To restore him to that
+level of convenient activity was, naturally, her main object; and if a
+sojourn at some rather dull spot in the Ardennes, promised to secure this
+desired end, let it be accepted without hesitation. For the proverbial
+creaking, yet long-hanging, gate--here Henrietta had the delicacy to take
+refuge in hyperbole--she had no liking whatever. She could not remember
+the time when Darby and Joan had struck her as an otherwise than
+preposterous couple, offspring of a positively degraded sentimentality.
+
+But there, since it threatened depressing conclusions, Henrietta agreed
+with herself to pursue the line of reflection no further.--"Sufficient
+unto the day"--to look beyond is, the thirties once passed, to raise
+superfluous spectres. And this day, in itself supplied food for
+reflections of a quite other character; ones which set both her curiosity
+and partiality for intrigue quite legitimately afire.
+
+The morning post had brought her a missive from Colonel Carteret
+announcing his "recall" to England, and deploring the imposed haste of
+it as preventing him from making his adieux to her in person. The
+letter contained a number of flattering tributes to her own charms and
+to old times in India, the pleasures of which--unforgettable by him--he
+had had the happiness of sharing with her. Yet--to her reading of
+it--this friendly communication remained enigmatic, its kindly
+sentences punctuated by more than one interjectional enquiry. Namely,
+what was the cause of this sudden "recall"? And what was his reason for
+not coming to say good-bye to her? Haste, she held an excuse of almost
+childish transparency. It went deeper than that. Simply he had wanted
+not to see her.
+
+Since the night of the dance no opportunity had occurred for observing
+Carteret and Damaris when together.--Really, how General Frayling's
+tiresome illness shipwrecked her private plans!--And, from the beginning,
+she had entertained an uneasy suspicion regarding Carteret's attitude.
+Men can be so extraordinarily feeble-minded where young girls are
+concerned! Had anything happened during her withdrawal from society? In
+the light, or rather the obscurity, of Carteret's letter, a visit to
+Damaris became more than ever imperative.
+
+Her own competence to extract the truth from that guileless maiden,
+Henrietta in nowise questioned. "The child," she complacently told
+herself, when preparing to set forth on her mission, "is like wax in
+my hands."
+
+The above conviction she repeated now, as the horses swept the victoria
+along the shore road, while from beneath her white umbrella she
+absently watched the alternate lift and plunge of the dazzling
+ultramarine and Tyrian purple sea upon the polished rocks and pebbles
+of the shelving beach.
+
+To Henrietta Nature, save as decoration to the human drama, meant
+nothing. But the day was hot, for the time of year royally so, and this
+rejoiced her. She basked in the sunshine with a cat-like luxury of
+content. Her hands never grew moist in the heat, nor her hair untidy, her
+skin unbecomingly red, nor her general appearance in the least degree
+blousy. She remained enchantingly intact, unaffected, except for an added
+glint, an added refinement. To-day's temperature justified the adoption
+of summer attire, of those thin, clear-coloured silk and muslin fabrics
+so deliciously to her taste. She wore a lavender dress. It was new, every
+pleat and frill inviolate, at their crispest and most uncrumpled. In this
+she found a fund of permanent satisfaction steeling her to intrepid
+enterprise.
+
+Hence she scorned all ceremonies of introduction. She dared to pounce.
+Having ascertained the number of Sir Charles Verity's sitting-room she
+refused obsequious escort, tripped straight upstairs unattended, rapped
+lightly, opened the door and--with swift reconnoitering of the scene
+within--announced her advent thus:
+
+"Damaris, are you there? Ah! yes. Darling child. At last!"
+
+During that reconnoitering she inventoried impressions of the room and
+its contents.--Cool, first--blue walls, blue carpet, blue upholstering of
+sofa and of chairs. Not worn or shabby, but so graciously faded by sun
+and air, that this--decoratively speaking--most perilous of colours
+became innocuous, in a way studious, in keeping with a large
+writing-table occupying the centre of the picture, laden with manuscripts
+and with books. The wooden outside shutters of two of the three windows
+were closed, which enhanced the prevailing coolness and studiousness of
+effect. Red cushions, also agreeably faded, upon the window-seats, alone
+echoed, in some degree, the hot radiance obtaining out of doors--these,
+and a red enamelled vase holding sprays of yellow and orange-copper
+roses, placed upon a smaller table before which Damaris sat, her back
+towards the invader.
+
+At the sound of the latter's voice, the girl started, raised her head
+and, in the act of looking round, swept together some scattered sheets of
+note-paper and shut her blotting-book.
+
+"Henrietta!" she cried, and thereupon sprang up; the lady, meanwhile,
+advancing towards her with outstretched arms, which enclosed her in a
+fragrant embrace.
+
+"Yes--nothing less than Henrietta"--imprinting light kisses on either
+cheek. "But I see you are busy writing letters, dearest child. I am in
+the way--I interrupt you?"
+
+And, as Damaris hastily denied that such was the case:
+
+"Ah! but I do," she repeated. "I have no right to dart in on you thus _à
+l'improviste_. It is hardly treating such an impressive young
+person--absolutely I believe you have grown since I saw you last!--yes,
+you are taller, darling child--handsomer than ever, and a tiny bit
+alarming too--what have you been doing with, or to, or by
+yourself?--Treating her--the impressive young person, I mean--with proper
+respect. But it was such a chance. I learnt that you were alone"--A fib,
+alas! on Henrietta's part.--"And I couldn't resist coming. I so longed to
+have you, like this, all to myself. What an eternity since we met!--For
+me a wearing, ageing eternity. The duties of a sick-room are so horribly
+anxious, yet so deadening in their repetition of ignoble details. I could
+not go through with them, honestly I could not--though I realize it is a
+damning admission for a woman to make--if it wasn't that I am rather
+absurdly attached to what good Dr. Stewart-Walker persists in calling
+'our patient.' Is not that enough in itself?--To fall from all normal
+titles and dignities and become merely a patient? No, joking apart, only
+affection makes nursing in any degree endurable to me. Without its saving
+grace the whole business would be too unpardonably sordid."
+
+She pursed up her lips, and shivered her graceful shoulders with the
+neatest exposition of delicate distaste.
+
+"And too gross. But one must face and accept the pathetic risk of being
+eventually converted in _garde malade_ thus, if one chooses to marry a
+man considerably older than oneself. It is a mistake. I say so though I
+committed it with my eyes open. I was betrayed by my affection."
+
+As she finished speaking Henrietta stepped across to the sofa and sat
+down. The airy perfection of her appearance lent point to the plaintive
+character of this concluding sentence. The hot day, the summer
+costume--possibly the shaded room also--combined to strip away a good ten
+years from her record. Any hardness, any faint sense of annoyance, which
+Damaris experienced at the abruptness of her guest's intrusion melted.
+Henrietta in her existing aspect, her existing mood proved irresistible.
+Our tender-hearted maiden was charmed by her and coerced.
+
+"But General Frayling is better, isn't he?" she asked, also taking her
+place upon the sofa. "You are not any longer in any serious anxiety about
+him, darling Henrietta? All danger is past?"
+
+"Oh, yes--he is better of course, or how could I be here? But I have
+received a shock that makes me dread the future."
+
+Which was true, though in a sense other than that in which her hearer
+comprehended it. For the studious atmosphere of the room reacted upon
+Henrietta, as did its many silent testimonies to Sir Charles Verity's
+constant habitation. This was his workshop. She felt acutely conscious
+of him here, nearer to him in idea and in sentiment than for many years
+past. The fact that he did still work, sought new fields to conquer,
+excited both her admiration and her regrets. He disdained to be laid on
+the shelf, got calmly and forcefully down off the shelf and spent his
+energies in fresh undertakings. Once upon a time she posed as his
+Egeria, fancying herself vastly in the part. During the Egerian period
+she lived at a higher intellectual and emotional level than ever before
+or since, exerting every particle of brain she possessed to maintain
+that level. The petty interests of her present existence, still more,
+perhaps, the poor odd and end of a yellow little General in his
+infinitely futile sick-bed, shrank to a desolating insufficiency. Surely
+she was worthy--had, anyway, once been worthy--of better things than
+that? The lavender dress, notwithstanding its still radiantly uncrumpled
+condition, came near losing its spell. No longer did she trust in it as
+in shining armour. Her humour soured. She instinctively inclined to
+revenge herself upon the nearest sentient object available--namely to
+stick pins into Damaris.
+
+"Sweetest child," she said, "you can't imagine how much this room means
+to me through its association with your father's wonderful book.--Oh!
+yes, I know a lot about the book. Colonel Carteret has not failed to
+advertise his acquaintance with it. But, what have I said?"
+
+For at mention of that gentleman's name Damaris, so she fancied, changed
+colour, the bloom fading upon her cheeks, while her glance became
+reserved, at once proud and slightly anxious.
+
+"Is it forbidden to mention the wonderful book at this stage of its
+development? Though even if it were," she added, with a rather impish
+laugh, looking down at and fingering the little bunch of trinkets,
+attached to a long gold chain, which rested in her lap--"Carteret would
+hardly succeed in holding his peace. Speak of everything, sooner or
+later, he must."
+
+She felt rather than saw Damaris' figure grow rigid.
+
+"Have you ever detected that small weakness in him? But probably not. He
+keeps overflowings for the elder members of his acquaintance, and in the
+case of the younger ones does exercise some caution. Ah! yes, I've no
+doubt he seems to you a model of discretion. Yet, in point of fact, when
+you've known him as long as I, you will have discovered he is a more than
+sufficiently extensive sieve."
+
+Then, fearing she had gone rather far, since Damaris remained rigid
+and silent:
+
+"Not a malicious sieve," the lady hastened to add, raising her eyes. "I
+don't imply that for a single instant. On the contrary I incline to
+believe that his attitude of universal benevolence is to blame for this
+inclination to gossip. It is so great, so all-enclosing, that I can't
+help feeling it blunts his sense of right and wrong to some extent. He is
+the least censorious of men and therefore--though it may sound cynical to
+say so--I don't entirely trust his judgment. He is too ready to make
+excuses for everyone.--But, my precious child, what's the matter? What
+makes you look so terrifically solemn and severe?"
+
+And playfully she put her hand under the girl's chin, drawing the grave
+face towards her, smilingly studying, then lightly and daintily kissing
+it. In the course of this affectionate interlude, the string of pearls
+round Damaris' throat, until now hidden by the V-shaped collar of her
+soft lawn shirt, caught Henrietta's eye. Their size, lustre and worth
+came near extracting a veritable shriek of enquiry and jealous admiration
+from her. But with praiseworthy promptitude she stifled her astonishment
+and now really rampant curiosity. Damaris but half yielded to her
+blandishments. She must cajole more successfully before venturing to
+request explanation. Therefore she cried, soothingly, coaxfully:
+
+"There--there--descend from those imposing heights of solemnity, or upon
+my word you will make me think my poor little visit displeases and bores
+you. That would be peculiarly grievous to me, since it is, in all
+probability, my last."
+
+"Your last?" Damaris exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, darling child, the fiat, alas! has gone forth. We are ordered away
+and start for Cotteret-les-Bains in a day or two. Dr. Stewart-Walker
+considers the move imperative on account of General Frayling's health.
+This was only settled yesterday. Marshall would have rushed here to tell
+you; but I forbade him. I felt I must tell you myself. I confess it is a
+blow to me. Our tenancy of the Pavilion expires at the end of the month;
+but I proposed asking for an extension, and, if that failed, taking up
+our abode at the hotel for a while. To me Dr. Stewart-Walker's orders
+come as a bitter disappointment, for I counted on remaining until
+Easter--remaining just as long as you and Sir Charles and Carteret
+remained, in fact."
+
+Here the bloom, far from further extinction, warmed to a lovely blush.
+Henrietta's curiosity craned its naughty neck standing on tiptoe. But,
+the blush notwithstanding, Damaris looked at her with such sincerity of
+quickening affection and of sympathy that she again postponed
+cross-examination.
+
+For over this piece of news our maiden could--in its superficial aspects
+at all events--lament in perfect good faith. She proceeded to do so,
+eagerly embracing the opportunity to offer thanks and praise. All
+Henrietta's merits sprang into convincing evidence. Had not her
+hospitality been unstinted--the whole English colony had cause to mourn.
+
+"But for you they'd still be staring at one another, bristling like so
+many strange dogs," Damaris said. "And you smoothed them all down so
+divertingly. Oh! you were beautifully clever in that. It was a lesson in
+the art of the complete hostess. While, as for me, Henrietta, you've
+simply spoiled me. I can never thank you enough. Think of the amusements
+past counting you planned for me, the excursions you've let me share with
+you--our delicious drives, and above all my coming-out dance."
+
+Whereat Mrs. Frayling disclaimingly shook her very pretty head.
+
+"In pleasing you I have merely pleased myself, dearest, so in that
+there's no merit.--Though I do plead guilty to but languid enthusiasm
+for girls of your age as a rule. Their conversation and opinions are
+liable to set my teeth a good deal on edge. I have small patience, I'm
+afraid, at the disposal of feminine beings at once so omniscient and so
+alarmingly unripe.--But you see, a certain downy owl, with saucer eyes
+and fierce little beak, won my heart by its beguiling ways a dozen
+years ago."
+
+"Darling Henrietta!" Damaris softly murmured; and, transported by
+sentiment to that earlier date when the said darling Henrietta
+commanded her unqualified adoration, began playing with the
+well-remembered bunch of trinkets depending from the long gold chain
+the lady wore about her neck.
+
+Watching her, Mrs. Frayling sighed.
+
+"Ah, my child, the thought of you is inextricably joined to other
+thoughts upon which I should be far wiser not to dwell--far wiser to put
+from me and forget--only they are stronger than I am--and I can't."
+
+There was a ring of honest human feeling in Henrietta Frayling's
+voice for once.
+
+"No, no--I am more justly an object of commiseration than anyone I leave
+behind me at St. Augustin."
+
+And again she laughed, not impishly, but with a hardness altogether
+astonishing to her auditor.
+
+"Think," she cried, "of my sorry fate!--Not only a wretchedly ailing
+husband on my hands, needing attention day and night, but a wretchedly
+disconsolate young lover as well. For poor Marshall will be
+inconsolable--only too clearly do I foresee that.--Picture what a pair
+for one's portion week in and week out!--Whereas you, enviable being, are
+sure of the most inspiring society. Everything in this quiet room"--
+
+She indicated the laden writing-table with a quick, flitting gesture.
+
+"So refreshingly removed from the ordinary banal hotel _salon_--is
+eloquent of the absorbing, far-reaching pursuits and interests amongst
+which you live. Who could ask a higher privilege than to share your
+father's work, to be his companion and amanuensis?"--She paused, as
+emphasising the point, and then mockingly threw off--"Plus the smart
+_beau sabreur_ Carteret, as devoted bodyguard and escort, whenever you
+are not on duty. To few women of your age, or indeed of any age, is
+Fortune so indulgent a fairy godmother as that!"
+
+Astonished and slightly resentful at the sharpness of her guest's
+unprovoked onslaught, Damaris had dropped the little bunch of trinkets
+and backed into her corner of the sofa.
+
+"Colonel Carteret has gone," she said coldly, rather irrelevantly, the
+statement drawn from her by a vague instinct of self-defence.
+
+"Gone!" Henrietta echoed, with equal irrelevance. For she was singularly
+discomposed.
+
+"Yes, he started for England last night. But you must know that already,
+Henrietta. He wrote to you--he told me so himself."
+
+But having once committed herself by use of a word implying ignorance,
+Mrs. Frayling could hardly do otherwise than continue the deception.
+Explanation would be too awkward a business. The chances of detection,
+moreover, were infinitesimal. There were things she meant to say which
+would sound far more unstudied and obvious could she keep up the fiction
+of ignorance. This, quickly realizing, she again and more flagrantly
+fibbed. The voluntary lie acts as a tonic giving you--for the moment at
+least--most comforting conceit of your own courage and perspicacity. And
+Henrietta just now stood in need of a tonic. She had been strangely
+overcome by the force of her own emotion--an accident which rarely
+happened to her and which she very cordially detested when it did.
+
+"Someone must have omitted to post the letter, then," she said, with a
+suitable air of annoyance. "How exceedingly careless--unless it has not
+been sent over from the hotel to the Pavilion. I have been obliged, more
+than once, to complain of the hall porter's very casual delivery of my
+letters. I will make enquiries directly, if I don't find it on my return.
+But this is all by the way. Tell me, dearest child, what is the reason of
+Colonel Carteret's leaving so suddenly? Is it not surprisingly
+unexpected?"
+
+"He was wanted at home on business of some sort," Damaris replied, as she
+felt a little lamely. She was displeased, worried by Henrietta. It was
+difficult to choose her words. "He has been away for a long time, you
+see. I think he has been beautifully unselfish in giving up so much of
+his time to us."
+
+"Do you?" Henrietta enquired with meaning. "If I remember right we
+discussed that point once before. I can repeat now what I then told you,
+with even firmer assurance, namely, that he struck me as remarkably well
+pleased with himself and his surroundings and generally content."
+
+"Of course he loves being with my father," Damaris hastened to put in,
+having no wish to enlarge on the topic suggested by the above speech.
+
+"Of course. Who doesn't, or rather who wouldn't were they sufficiently
+fortunate to have the chance. But come--to be honest--_je me demande_, is
+it exclusively Sir Charles whom Carteret loves to be with?"
+
+And as she spoke, Henrietta bent forward from the waist, her dainty
+lavender skirts spread out on the faded blue of the sofa mattress, the
+contours of her dainty lavender bodice in fine relief against the faded
+blue cushions, her whole person, in the subdued light, bright and
+apparently fragile as some delicate toy of spun glass. She put out her
+hand, and lightly, mischievously, touched the string of pearls encircling
+the girl's throat.
+
+"And what is the meaning of these, then," she asked, "you sweetly
+deceiving little puss!"
+
+It was cleverly done, she flattered herself. She asserted nothing,
+implied much, putting the onus of admission or denial upon Damaris. The
+answer came with grave and unhesitating directness.
+
+"Colonel Carteret gave them to me."
+
+"So I imagined. They are the exquisite fruit, aren't they, of the little
+expedition by train of two days ago?"
+
+Damaris' temper rose, but so did her protective instinct. For that
+journey to Marseilles, connected as it was with the dear secret of Darcy
+Faircloth, did not admit of investigation by Henrietta.
+
+"About where and when Colonel Carteret may have got them for me, I know
+nothing," she returned. "He left them to be given to me last night
+after he went."
+
+She unclasped the necklace.
+
+"They are very lovely pearls, aren't they? Pray look at them if you care
+to, Henrietta," she said.
+
+Thus at once invited and repulsed--for that it amounted to a repulse she
+could not but acknowledge--Mrs. Frayling advised herself a temporary
+retreat might be advisable. She therefore discoursed brightly concerning
+pearls and suchlike costly frivolities. Inwardly covetousness consumed
+her, since she possessed no personal ornament of even approximate value.
+
+The conversation drifted. She learned the fact of Miss Felicia's
+projected arrival, and deplored her own approaching exile the less. Only
+once, long ago, had she encountered Miss Verity. The memory afforded her
+no satisfaction, for that lady's peculiar brand of good breeding and--as
+she qualified it--imbecility, did not appeal to her in the least. There
+was matter of thankfulness, therefore, she had not elected to join Sir
+Charles and Damaris sooner. She would undoubtedly have proved a most
+tiresome and impeding element. Unless--here Henrietta's mind
+darted--unless she happened to take a fancy to Marshall. Blameless
+spinsters, of her uncertain age and of many enthusiasms, did not
+infrequently very warmly take to him--in plain English, fell over head
+and ears in love with him, poor things, though without knowing it, their
+critical faculty being conspicuous by its absence where their own hearts
+were concerned.--By the way that was an idea!--Swiftly Henrietta reviewed
+the possibilities it suggested.--As an ally, an auxiliary, Miss Felicia
+might be well worth cultivation. Would it not be diplomatic to let
+Marshall stay on at the Hôtel de la Plage by himself for a week or so?
+The conquest of Miss Felicia might facilitate another conquest on which
+her--Henrietta's--mind was set. For such mature enamoured virgins,
+as she reflected, are almost ludicrously selfless. To ensure the
+happiness of the beloved object they will even donate to him their
+rival.--Yes--distinctly an idea! But before attempting to reduce it to
+practice, she must make more sure of her ground in another direction.
+
+During the above meditation, Henrietta continued to talk off the
+surface, her mind working on two distinct planes. Damaris, off the
+surface, continued to answer her.
+
+Our maiden felt tired both in body and in spirit. She felt all "rubbed
+up the wrong way"--disturbed, confused. The many moral turns and twists
+of Henrietta's conversation had been difficult to follow. But from
+amid the curious maze of them, one thing stood out, arrestingly
+conspicuous--Henrietta believed it then also. Believed Carteret cared for
+her "in _that_ way"--thus, with a turning aside of the eyes and
+shrinking, she phrased it. It wasn't any mistaken, conceited imagination
+of her own since Henrietta so evidently shared it. And Henrietta must be
+reckoned an expert in that line, having a triad of husbands to her
+credit--a liberality of allowance in matrimony which had always appeared
+to Damaris as slightly excessive. She had avoided dwelling upon this so
+outstanding feature of her friend's career; but that it gave assurance of
+the latter's ability to pronounce upon "caring in _that_ way" was she now
+admitted incontestable.
+
+Whether she really felt glad or sorry Henrietta's expert opinion
+confirmed her own suspicions, Damaris could not tell. It certainly tended
+to complicate the future; and for that she was sorry. She would have
+liked to see the road clear before her--anyhow for a time--complications
+having been over numerous lately. They were worrying. They made her feel
+unsettled, unnatural. In any case she trusted she shouldn't suffer again
+from those odious yet alluring feelings which put her to such shame this
+morning.--But--unpleasant thought--weren't they, perhaps, an integral
+part of the whole agitating business of "caring in _that_ way?"
+
+Her eyes rested in wide meditative enquiry upon Henrietta, Henrietta
+sitting up in all her finished elegance upon the faded blue sofa and so
+diligently making company conversation. Somehow, thus viewing her, it
+was extremely difficult to suppose Henrietta had ever experienced
+excited feelings. Yet--the wonder of it!--she'd actually been married
+three times.
+
+Then, wearily, Damaris made a return upon herself. Yes--she was glad,
+although it might seem ungrateful, disloyal, the man with the blue eyes
+had gone away. For his going put off the necessity of knowing her own
+mind, excused her from making out exactly how she regarded him, thus
+relegating the day of fateful decision to a dim distance. Henrietta
+accused him of being a sieve.--Damaris grew heated in strenuous denial.
+That was a calumny which she didn't and wouldn't credit. Still you could
+never be quite sure about men--so she went back on the old, sad,
+disquieting lesson. Their way of looking at things, their angle of
+admitted obligation is so bewilderingly different!--Oh! how thankful she
+was Aunt Felicia would soon be here. Everything would grow simpler,
+easier to understand and to manage, more as it used to be, with dear Aunt
+Felicia here on the spot.
+
+At this point she realized that Mrs. Frayling was finishing a sentence to
+the beginning of which she had not paid the smallest attention. That was
+disgracefully rude.
+
+"So I am to go home then, dearest child, and break it to Marshall that he
+stands no chance--my poor Marshall, who has no delightful presents with
+which to plead his cause!"
+
+"Mr. Wace?--Plead his cause? What cause? I am so sorry,
+Henrietta--forgive me. It's too dreadful, but I am afraid I wasn't quite
+listening"--this with most engaging confusion.
+
+"Yes--his cause. I should have supposed his state of mind had been
+transparently evident for many a long day."
+
+"But indeed--Henrietta, you must be mistaken. I don't know what you
+mean"--the other interposed smitten by the liveliest distress and alarm.
+
+The elder lady waved aside her outcry with admirable playfulness and
+determination.
+
+"Oh! I quite realize how crazy it must appear on his part, poor dear
+fellow, seeing he has so little to offer from the worldly and commercial
+standpoint. As he himself says--'the desire of the moth for the star, of
+the night for the morrow.' Still money and position are not everything
+in life, are they? Talent is an asset and so, I humbly believe, is the
+pure devotion of a good man's heart. These count for something, or used
+to do so when I was your age. But then the women of my generation were
+educated in a less sophisticated school. You modern young persons are
+wiser than we were no doubt, in that you are less romantic, less easily
+touched.--I have not ventured to give Marshall much encouragement. It
+would have been on my conscience to foster hopes which might be dashed.
+And yet I own, darling child, your manner not once nor twice, during our
+happy meetings at the Pavilion, when he read aloud to us or sang, gave me
+the impression you were not entirely indifferent. He, I know, has thought
+so too--for I have not been able to resist letting him pour out his hopes
+and fears to me now and then. I could not refuse either him or myself
+that indulgence, because"--
+
+Mrs. Frayling rose, and, bending over our much tried and now positively
+flabbergasted damsel, brushed her hair with a butterfly kiss.
+
+"Because my own hopes were also not a little engaged," she said. "Your
+manner to my poor Marshall, your willingness to let him so often be with
+you made me--perhaps foolishly--believe not only that his sad life might
+be crowned by a signal blessing, but you might be given to me some day as
+a daughter of whom I could be intensely proud. I have grown to look upon
+Marshall in the light of a son, and his wife would"--
+
+Damaris had risen also. She stood at bay, white, strained, her lips
+quivering.
+
+"Do--do you mean that I have behaved badly to Mr. Wace, Henrietta? That I
+have flirted with him?"
+
+Mrs. Frayling drew her mouth into a naughty little knot. There were
+awkward corners to be negotiated in these questions. She avoided them by
+boldly striking for the open.
+
+"Oh! it is natural, perfectly natural at your rather thoughtless time of
+life. Only Marshall's admiration for you is very deep. He has the poetic
+temperament which makes for suffering, for despair as well as for
+rapture. And his disillusionments, poor boy, have been so grievously
+many.--But Colonel Carteret--yes--dearest child, I do quite follow.--It's
+an old story. He has always had _des bonnes fortunes_."
+
+Since her return to Europe, Mrs. Frayling had become much addicted to
+embellishing her conversation with such foreign tags, not invariably, it
+may be added, quite correctly applied or quoted.
+
+"Women could never resist him in former days in India. They went down
+before his charms like a row of ninepins before a ball. I don't deny a
+passing _tendresse_ for him myself, though I was married and very happily
+married. So I can well comprehend how he may take a girl's fancy by
+storm. _Sans peur et sans reproche_, he must seem to her.--And so in the
+main, I dare say, he is. At worst a little easy-going, owing to his
+cultivation of the universally benevolent attitude. Charity has a habit
+of beginning at home, you know; and a man usually views his own
+delinquencies at least as leniently as he views those of others. But that
+leniency is part of his charm--which I admit is great.--Heaven forbid, I
+should undermine your faith in it, if there is anything settled between
+you and him."
+
+"But there isn't, there isn't," Damaris broke in, distressed beyond all
+calmness of demeanour. "You go too fast, Henrietta. You assume too
+much. Nothing is settled of--of that sort. Nothing of that sort has
+ever been said."
+
+Mrs. Frayling raised her eyebrows, cast down her eyes, and fingered the
+bunch of trinkets hanging from her gold chain in silence for a few
+seconds. The ring of sincerity was unquestionable--only where did that
+land her? Had not she, in point of fact, very really gone too fast? In
+defeat Henrietta became unscrupulous.
+
+"Merely another flirtation, Damaris?" she said. "Darling child, I am just
+a wee bit disappointed in you."
+
+Which, among her many fibs, may rank amongst her most impudent and
+full-fed, though by no means her last.
+
+Here, the door opened behind her. Henrietta turned alertly, hailing any
+interruption which--her bolt being shot--might facilitate her retreat
+from a now most embarrassing situation. After all she had planted more
+than one seed, which might fruitfully grow, so at that she could leave
+matters.--The interruption, however, took a form for which she was
+unprepared. To her intense disgust her nerves played her false. She gave
+the oddest little stifled squeak as she met Charles Verity's glance,
+fixed upon her in cool, slightly ironic scrutiny.
+
+Some persons very sensibly bring their mental atmosphere along with them.
+You are compelled to breathe it whether you like or not. The atmosphere
+Charles Verity brought with him, at this juncture, was too masculine,
+intellectually too abstract yet too keenly critical, for comfortable
+absorption by Henrietta's lungs. Her self-complacency shrivelled in it.
+She felt but a mean and pitiful creature, especially in her recent
+treatment of Damaris. It was a nasty moment, the more difficult to
+surmount because of that wretchedly betraying squeak. Fury against
+herself gingered her up to action. She must be the first to speak.
+
+"Ah! how delightful to see you," she said, a little over-playing the
+part--"though only for an instant. I was in the act of bidding Damaris
+farewell. As it is I have scandalously outstayed my leave; but we had a
+thousand and one things, hadn't we, to say to one another."
+
+She smiled upon both father and daughter with graceful deprecation.
+
+"_Au, revoir_, darling child--we must manage to meet somehow, just once
+more before I take my family north"--
+
+And still talking, new lavender dress, trinkets, faint fragrance and all,
+she passed out on to the corridor accompanied by Sir Charles Verity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WHICH RECOUNTS A TAKING OF SANCTUARY
+
+
+Left alone Damaris sat down on the window-seat, within the shelter of the
+wooden shutters which interposed a green barred coolness between her and
+the brilliant world without. That those two, her father and Henrietta
+Frayling, should thus step off together, the small, softly crisp,
+feminine figure beside the tall, fine-drawn and--in a way--magnificent
+masculine one, troubled her. Yet she made no attempt to accompany or to
+follow them. Her head ached. Her mind and soul ached too. She felt spent
+and giddy, as from chasing round and round in an ever-shifting circle
+some tormenting, cleverly lovely thing which perpetually eluded her.
+Which thing, finally, floated out of the door there, drawing a
+personage unmeasurably its superior, away with it, and leaving
+her--Damaris--deserted.
+
+Leaving, moreover, every subject on which its nimble tongue had lighted,
+damaged by that contact--at loose ends, frayed and ravelled, its inwove
+pattern just slightly discoloured and defaced. The patterned fabric of
+Damaris' thought and inner life had not been spared, but suffered
+disfigurement along with the rest. She felt humiliated, felt unworthy.
+The ingenious torments of a false conscience gnawed her. Her better
+judgment pronounced that conscience veritably false; or would, as she
+believed, so pronounce later when she had time to get a true perspective.
+But, just now, she could only lamentably, childishly, cry out against
+injustice. For wasn't Henrietta mainly responsible for the character of
+her intercourse with Marshall Wace? Hadn't Henrietta repeatedly entreated
+her to see much of him, be kind to him?--Wishing, even in her present
+rebellion to be quite fair, she acknowledged that she had enjoyed his
+singing and reading; that she had felt pleased at his eagerness to
+confide his troubles to her and talk confidentially about himself. She
+not unwillingly accepted a mission towards him, stimulated thereto by
+Henrietta's plaudits and thanks.
+
+And--and Colonel Carteret? For now somehow she no longer, even in
+thought, could call him by her old name for him, "the dear man with the
+blue eyes."--Could it be true, as Henrietta intimated, that he went
+through life throwing the handkerchief first to one woman and then to
+another? That there was no real constancy or security in his affections,
+but all was lightly come and lightly go with him?
+
+How her poor head ached! She held it in both hands and closed her
+eyes.--She would not think any more about Colonel Carteret. To do so made
+her temples throb and raised the lump, which is a precursor of tears, in
+her throat.
+
+No--she couldn't follow Henrietta's statements and arguments either way.
+They were self-contradictory. Still, whose ever the fault, that the young
+man Wace should be unhappy on her account, should think she--Damaris--had
+behaved heartlessly to him, was quite dreadful. Humiliating too--false
+conscience again gnawing. Had she really contracted a debt towards him,
+which she--in his opinion and Henrietta's--tried to repudiate? She seemed
+to hear it, the rich impassioned voice, and hear it with a new
+comprehension. Was "caring in _that_ way" what it had striven to tell
+her; and had she, incomparably dense in missing its meaning, appeared to
+sanction the message and to draw him on? Other people understood--so at
+least Henrietta implied; while she, remaining deaf, had rather cruelly
+misled him. Ought she not to do something to make up? Yet what could she
+do?--It had never occurred to her that--that--
+
+She held her head tight. Held it on, as with piteous humour she told
+herself, since she seemed in high danger of altogether losing it.--Must
+she believe herself inordinately stupid, or was she made differently to
+everybody else? For, as she now suspected, most people are constantly
+occupied, are quite immensely busy about "caring in _that_ way." And she
+shrank from it; actively and angrily disliked it. She felt smirched, felt
+all dealings as between men and women made suspect, rendered ugly, almost
+degraded by the fact--if fact it was--of that kind of caring and excited
+feelings it induces, lurking just below the surface, ready to dart
+out.--And this not quite honestly either. The whole matter savoured of
+hypocrisy, since the feelings disguised themselves in beautiful sounds,
+beautiful words, clothing their unseemliness with the noble panoply of
+poetry and art, masquerading in wholesome garments of innocent
+good-comradeship.
+
+--A grind of wheels on the gravel below. Henrietta's neat limpid accents
+and Charles Verity's grave ones. The flourish and crack of a whip and
+scrambling start of the little chestnut horses. The rhythmical beat of
+their quick even trot and thin tinkle of their collar bells receding into
+the distance.
+
+These sounds to our sorrowfully perplexed maiden opened fresh fields of
+uneasy speculation. For those diverse accents--the speakers being
+unseen--heard thus in conjunction, seized on and laboured her
+imagination. Throughout the past months of frequent meeting, Damaris had
+never quite understood her father's attitude towards Henrietta Frayling.
+It was marked by reserve; yet a reserve based, as she somehow divined,
+upon an uncommon degree of former intimacy. Judging from remarks let drop
+now and again by Henrietta, they knew, or rather had known, one another
+very well indeed. This bore out Damaris' own childhood's recollections;
+though in these last she was aware of lacunae, of gaps, of spaces
+unbridged by any coherent sequence of remembered events. A dazzling and
+delicious image, the idol of her baby adoration--thus did memory paint
+that earlier Henrietta. Surrounding circumstances remained shadowy. She
+could not recall them even in respect of herself, still less in respect
+of her father. So that question, as to the past, ruled the present. What
+had parted them, and how did they to-day envisage one another? She could
+not make out. Had never, indeed, attempted seriously to make out, shying
+from such investigation as disloyal and, in a way, irreverent. Now
+investigation was forced on her. Her mind worked independent of her will,
+so that she could neither prevent or arrest it. Sir Charles showed
+himself scrupulously attentive and courteous to General Frayling. He
+offered no spoken objection to her association with Henrietta. Yet an
+unexplained element did remain. Subtlely, but perceptibly, it permeated
+both her father's and Henrietta's speech and bearing. She, Damaris, was
+always conscious of a certain constraint beneath their calm and
+apparently easy talk. Was their relation one of friendship or of covert
+enmity?--Or did these, just perceptible, peculiarities of it betoken
+something deeper and closer still?
+
+Suspicion once kindled spreads like a conflagration.--Damaris' hands
+dropped, a dead weight, into her lap. She sat, strained yet inert, as
+though listening to catch the inner significance of her own unformulated
+question, her eyes wide and troubled, her lips apart. For might it not be
+that they had once--long ago--in the princely, Eastern pleasure palace of
+her childhood--cared in _that_ way?
+
+Then the tears which, what with tiredness and the labour pains of her
+many conflicting emotions, had threatened more than once to-day, came
+into their own. She wept quietly, noiselessly, the tears running down her
+cheeks unchecked and unheeded. For there was no escape. Turn where she
+would, join hands with whom she would in all good faith and innocence,
+this thing reared its head and, evilly alluring looked at her. Now it set
+its claim upon her well-beloved Sultan-i-bagh--and what scene could in
+truth be more sympathetic to its display? She felt the breath of high
+romance. Imagination played strange tricks with her. She could feel, she
+could picture, a drama of rare quality with those two figures as
+protagonists. It dazzled while wounding her. She remembered Faircloth's
+words, spoken on that evening of fateful disclosure when knowledge of
+things as they are first raped her happy ignorance, while the boat
+drifted through the shrouding darkness of rain upon the inky waters of
+the tide-river.--"They were young," he had said, "and mayn't we allow
+they were beautiful? They met and, God help them, they loved."
+
+The statement covered this case, also, to a nicety. It explained
+everything. But what an explanation, leaving her, Damaris, doubly
+orphaned and desolate! For the first case, that of which Faircloth
+actually had spoken, brought her royal, if secret compensation in the
+brotherhood and sisterhood it made known. But this second case brought
+nothing, save a sense of being tricked and defrauded, the victim of a
+conspiracy of silence. For nothing, as it now appeared, was really her
+own, nor had really belonged to her. "Some one," so she phrased it in the
+incoherence of her pain, "had always been there before her." What she
+supposed her exclusive property was only second-hand, had been already
+owned by others. They let her play at being first in the field, original
+and sole proprietress, because it saved them trouble by keeping her quiet
+and amused. But all the while they knew better and must have smiled at
+her possessive antics once her silly back was turned. And here Damaris
+lost sight of reasonable proportion and measure, exaggerating wildly, her
+pride and self-respect cut to the quick.
+
+It was thus, in the full flood of mystification and resentment, Charles
+Verity found her when presently he returned. Sensible of something very
+much amiss, since she stayed within the shadow of the closed shutters,
+silent and motionless, he crossed the room and stood before her looking
+down searchingly into her upturned face. Stubborn in her misery, she met
+his glance with mutinous, and hard, if misty, eyes.
+
+"Weeping, my dear? Is the occasion worth it? Has Mrs. Frayling then
+taken so profound a hold?" he asked, his tone mocking, chiding her yet
+very gently.
+
+Damaris hedged. To expose the root of her trouble became impossible under
+the coercion of that gently bantering tone.
+
+"It's not Henrietta's going; but that I no longer mind her going."
+
+"A lost illusion--yes?" he said.
+
+"I can't trust her. She--she isn't kind."
+
+"Eh?" he said. "So you too have made that illuminating little discovery.
+I supposed it would be only a matter of time. But you read character, my
+dear, more quickly than I do. What it has taken you months to discover,
+took me years."
+
+His frankness, the unqualified directness of his response, though
+startling, stimulated her daring.
+
+"Then--then you don't really like Henrietta?" she found audacity
+enough to say.
+
+"Ah! there you rush too headlong to conclusions," he reasoned, still with
+that same frankness of tone. "She is an ingenious, unique creature,
+towards whom one's sentiments are ingenious and unique in their turn. I
+admire her, although--for you are right there--she is neither invariably
+trustworthy nor invariably kind. Admire her ungrudgingly, now I no longer
+ask of her what she hasn't it in her to give. Limit your demand and you
+limit the risks of disappointment--a piece of wisdom easier to enunciate
+than to apply."
+
+Lean, graceful, commanding under the cloak of his present gentle humour,
+Charles Verity sat down on the faded red cushion beside Damaris, and laid
+one arm along the window-ledge behind her. He did not touch her; being
+careful in the matter of caresses, reverent of her person, chary of
+claiming parental privileges unasked.
+
+"In the making of Henrietta Frayling," he went on, "by some accident soul
+was left out. She hasn't any. She does not know it. Let us hope she never
+will know it, for it is too late now for the omission to be rectified."
+
+"Are you laughing at me?" Damaris asked, still stubborn, though his
+presence enclosed her with an at once assuaging and authoritative charm.
+
+"Not in the least. I speak that which I soberly believe. Just as some
+ill-starred human creatures are born physically or mentally
+defective--deformed or idiots--so may they be born spiritually
+defective. Why not? My reason offers no scientific or moral objection to
+such a belief. In other respects she is conspicuously perfect. But,
+verily, she has no soul; and the qualities which--for happiness or
+misery--draw their life from the soul, she does not possess. Therefore
+she sparkles, lovely and chill as frost. Is as astute as she is cold at
+heart; and can, when it suits her purpose, be both false and cruel
+without any subsequent prickings of remorse. But this very coldness and
+astuteness save her from misdeeds of the coarser kind. Treacherous she
+has been, and, for aught I know, may on occasions still be. But, though
+temptation has pretty freely crossed her path, she has never been other
+than virtuous. She is a good woman--in the accepted, the popular sense of
+the word."
+
+Silence stole down upon the room. Damaris remained motionless, leaning
+forward gathered close into herself, her hands still heavy in her lap.
+Could she accept this statement as comfort, or must she bow under it
+as rebuke?
+
+"Why," she asked at last huskily--the tears were no longer upon her
+cheeks but queerly in her throat, impeding utterance, "do you tell me
+these things?"
+
+"To prevent you beholding lying visions, my dear, or dreaming lying
+dreams of what might very well have been but--God be thanked--never has
+been--never was.--Think a minute--remember--look."
+
+And once more Damaris felt the breath of high romance and touched drama
+of rare quality, with those same two figures as protagonists, and that
+same Indian pleasure palace as their stage; but this time with a notable
+difference of sentiment and of result.
+
+For she visualized another going of Henrietta, a flight before the dawn.
+Saw, through a thick scent-drenched atmosphere, between the expiring
+lamp-light and broadening day, a deserted child beating its little hands,
+in the extremity of its impotent anguish, upon the pillows of a
+disordered unmade bed. Saw a man, too, worn and travel-stained from long
+riding throughout the night, lost to all decent dignities of
+self-control, savage with the animalism of frustrated passion, rage to
+and fro amidst the litter of a smart woman's hurried packing, a trail of
+pale blue ribbon plucking at and tripping him entangled in the rowels of
+his spurs.
+
+All this she saw; and knew that her father--sitting on the cushioned
+window-seat beside her, his legs crossed, his chin sunk on his
+breast--saw it also. That he, indeed, voluntarily and of set purpose made
+her see, transferring the living picture from his consciousness to her
+own. And, as she watched, each detail growing in poignancy and
+significance she--not all at once, but gropingly, rebelliously and only
+by degrees--comprehended that purpose, and the abounding love, both of
+herself and of justice, which dictated it. Divining the root of her
+trouble and the nature of her suspicion he took this strange means to
+dissipate them. Setting aside his natural pride, he caused her to look
+upon his hour of defeat and debasement, careless of himself if thereby he
+might mend her hurt and win her peace of mind.
+
+Damaris was conquered. Her stubbornness went down before his sacrifice.
+All the generosity in her leapt forth to meet and to acclaim the signal
+generosity in him--a generosity extended not only towards herself but to
+Henrietta Frayling as well. This last Damaris recognized as superb.--He
+bade her remember. And, seeing in part through her own eyes, in part
+through his, she penetrated more deeply into his mind, into the rich
+diversity and, now mastered, violence of his character, than could
+otherwise have been possible. She learnt him from within as well as from
+without. He had been terrible--so she remembered--yet beautiful in his
+fallen god-head. She had greatly feared him under that aspect. Later, she
+more than ever loved him; and that with a provenant, protective and, baby
+though she was, a mothering love. He was beautiful now; but no longer
+terrible, no longer fallen--if not the god-head, yet the fine flower of
+his manhood royally and very sweetly disclosed. Her whole being yearned
+towards him; but humbly, a note of lowliness in her appreciation, as
+towards something exalted, far above her in experience, in
+self-knowledge and self-discipline.
+
+She was, indeed, somewhat overwhelmed, both by realization of his
+distinction and of her own presumption in judging him, to the point of
+being unable as yet to look him in the face. So she silently laid hold of
+his hand, drew it down from the window-ledge and round her waist.
+Slipping along the cushioned seat until she rested against him, she laid
+her head back upon his shoulder. Testimony in words seemed superfluous
+after that shared consciousness, seemed impertinent even, an anti-climax
+from which both taste and insight recoiled.
+
+For a while Charles Verity let the silent communion continue. Then, lest
+it should grow enervating, to either or to both, he spoke of ordinary
+subjects--of poor little General Frayling's illness, of Miss Felicia's
+plans, of his own book. It was wiser for her, better also for himself, to
+step back into the normal thus quietly closing the door upon their dual
+act of retrospective clairvoyance.
+
+Damaris, catching his intention, responded; and if rather languidly yet
+loyally played up. But, before the spell was wholly broken and frankness
+gave place to their habitual reserve, there was one further question she
+must ask if the gnawings of that false conscience, begotten in her by
+Henrietta's strictures, were wholly to cease.
+
+"Do you mind if we go back just a little minute," she said.
+
+"Still unsatisfied, my dear?"
+
+"Not unsatisfied--never again that as between us two, Commissioner Sahib.
+You have made everything beautifully, everlastingly smooth and clear."
+
+"Then why tempt Providence, or rather human incertitude, by going back?"
+
+"Because--can I say it quite plainly?"
+
+"As plainly as you will."
+
+"Because Henrietta tells me I have--have flirted--have played fast and
+loose with--with more than one person."
+
+A pause, and the question came from above her--her head still lying
+against his breast--with a trace of severity, or was it anxiety?
+
+"And have you?"
+
+"Not intentionally--not knowingly," Damaris said.
+
+"If that is so, is it not sufficient?"
+
+"No--because she implies that I have raised false hopes, and so entangled
+myself--and that I ought to go further, that, as I understand her, I
+ought to be ready to marry--that it is not quite honourable to withdraw."
+
+Charles Verity moved slightly, yet held her close. She felt the rise and
+fall of his ribs as he breathed slow and deep.
+
+"Do you want to marry?" he at last asked her.
+
+"No," she said, simply. "I'd much rather not, if I can keep out of it
+without acting unfairly by anyone--if you don't agree with Henrietta, and
+don't think I need. You don't want me to marry do you?"
+
+"God in heaven, no," Charles Verity answered. He put her from him, rose
+and moved about the room.
+
+"To me, the thought of giving you in marriage to any man is little short
+of abhorrent," he said hoarsely.
+
+For fear clutched him by the throat. The gift of pearls, the little scene
+of last night, and Damaris' emotion in bidding Carteret farewell,
+confronted him. The idea had never occurred to him before. Now it glared
+at him, or rather he glared at it. It would be torment to say "yes"; and
+yet very difficult to say his best friend "nay." Anger kindled against
+Henrietta Frayling. Must this be regarded as her handiwork? Yet he could
+hardly credit it. Or had she some other candidate--Peregrine Ditton,
+young Harry Ellice?--But they were mere boys.--Of Marshall Wace he never
+thought, the young man being altogether outside his field of vision in
+this connection.
+
+Long habit of personal chastity made Charles Verity turn, with a greater
+stabbing and rending of repulsion, from the thought of marriage for
+Damaris. She asserted she had no wish to marry, that she--bless her sweet
+simplicity!--would rather not. But this bare broaching of the subject
+threw him into so strange a tumult that, only too evidently, he was no
+competent observer, he laboured under too violent a prejudice. He had no
+right to demand from others the abstinence he chose himself to practise.
+Carteret, in desiring her, was within his rights. Damaris within hers,
+were she moved by his suit. Marriage is natural, wholesome, the
+God-ordained law and sanction of human increase since man first drew
+breath here upon earth. To condemn obedience to that law, by placing any
+parental embargo upon Damaris' marriage, would be both a defiance of
+nature and act of grossest selfishness.
+
+He sat down on the window-seat again; and forced himself to put his arm
+around that fair maiden body, destined to be the prize, one day, of some
+man's love; the prey--for he disdained to mince matters, turning the
+knife in the wound rather--the prey of some man's lust. He schooled
+himself, while Damaris' heart beat a little tempestuously under his hand,
+to invite a conclusion which through every nerve and fibre he loathed.
+
+"My dear," he said, "I spoke unadvisedly with my lips just now, letting
+crude male jealousy get the mastery of reason and common sense. Put my
+words out of your mind. They were unjustifiable, spoken in foolish heat.
+If you are in love with anyone"--
+
+Damaris nestled against him.
+
+"Only with you, dearest, I think," she said.
+
+Charles Verity hesitated, unable to speak through the exquisite blow she
+delivered and his swift thankfulness.
+
+"Let us put the question differently then--translating it into the
+language of ordinary social convention. Tell me, has anyone
+proposed to you?"
+
+Damaris, still nestling, shook her head.
+
+"No--no one. And I hope now, no one will. I escaped that, partly thanks
+to my own denseness.--It is not an easy thing, Commissioner Sahib, to
+explain or talk about. But I have come rather close to it lately,
+and"--with a hint of vehemence--"I don't like it. There is something in
+it which pulls at me but not at the best part of me. So that I am divided
+against myself. Though it does pull, I still want to push it all away
+with both hands. I don't understand myself and I don't understand it, I
+would rather be without it--forget it--if you think I am free to do so,
+if you are satisfied that I haven't intentionally hurt anyone or
+contracted a--a kind of debt of honour?"
+
+"I am altogether satisfied," he said. "Until the strange and ancient
+malady attacks you in a very much more virulent form, you are free to
+cast Henrietta Frayling's insinuations to the winds, to ignore them and
+their existence."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+THROUGH SHADOWS TOWARDS THE DAWN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WHICH CARRIES OVER A TALE OF YEARS, AND CARRIES ON
+
+
+The last sentence was written. His work finished. And, looking upon his
+completed creation, Charles Verity saw that it was good. Yet, as he put
+the pen back in the pen-tray and, laying the last page of manuscript face
+downwards upon the blotting-paper passed his hand over it, he was less
+sensible of exultation than of a pathetic emptiness. The book had come to
+be so much part of him that he felt a nasty wrench when he thus finally
+rid himself of it.
+
+He had kept the personal pronoun out of it, strictly and austerely,
+desiring neither self-glorification nor self-advertisement. Yet his mind
+and attitude towards life seasoned and tempered the whole, giving it
+vitality and force. This was neither a "drum-and-trumpet history"
+designed to tickle the vulgar ear, nor a blank four-wall depository of
+dry facts, names, dates, statistics, such as pedants mustily adore; but a
+living thing, seen and felt. Not his subconscious, but that much finer
+and--as one trusts--more permanent element in our human constitution, his
+super-conscious self found expression in its pages and travelled freely,
+fruitfully, through them amid luminous and masterful ideas. At times the
+intellectual sweep threatened to be overdaring and overwide; so that, in
+the interests of symmetry and balance of construction, he had been forced
+to clip the wings of thought, lest they should bear him to regions too
+remotely high and rare. Race, religion, customs and the modifications of
+these, both by climate and physical conformation of the land on the face
+of which they operate, went to swell the interest and suggestion of his
+theme. In handling such varied and coloured material the intellectual
+exercise had been to him delicious, as he fashioned and put a fine edge
+to passages of admirable prose, coined the just yet startling epithet,
+perfected the flow of some graceful period, and ransacked the English
+language for fearless words in which to portray the mingled splendour and
+vileness of a barbaric oriental Court, the naked terrors of tribal feuds
+and internecine war.
+
+The occupation had, indeed, proved at once so refreshing and so absorbing
+that he went leisurely, lengthening out the process of production until
+it came nearer covering the thirty months of elephantine gestation than
+the normal human nine.
+
+With but two brief sojourns to England, for the consultation of certain
+authorities and of his publishers, the said near on thirty months were
+passed in wandering through Southern France, Central Italy, and, taking
+ship from Naples to Malaga, finally through Eastern and Northern Spain.
+Charles Verity was too practised a campaigner for his power of
+concentration to depend on the stability or familiarity of his
+surroundings. He could detach himself, go out into and be alone with his
+work, at will. But the last chapter, like the first, he elected to write
+in the study at The Hard. A pious offering of incense, this, to the
+pleasant memory of that excellent scholar and devoted amateur of letters,
+his great-uncle, Thomas Clarkson Verity, whose society and conversation
+awakened the literary sense in him as a schoolboy, on holiday from
+Harchester, now nearly five decades ago. He judged it a matter of good
+omen, moreover,--toying for the moment with kindly superstition--that the
+book should issue from a house redeemed by his kinsman from base and
+brutal uses and dedicated to the worship of knowledge and of the printed
+word. That fat, soft-bodied, mercurial-minded little gentleman--to whom
+no record of human endeavour, of human speculation, mental or moral
+experiment, came amiss--would surely relish the compliment, if his
+curious and genial ghost still, in any sort, had cognizance of this, his
+former, dwelling-place.
+
+The Hard, just now, showed a remarkably engaging countenance, the year
+standing on the threshold of May.--Mild softly bright weather made amends
+for a wet and windy April, with sunshine and high forget-me-not blue
+skies shading to silver along the sea-line. The flower-beds, before the
+garden house-front, were crowded with early tulips, scarlet, golden, and
+shell-pink. Shrubberies glowed with rhododendrons, flamed with azaleas.
+At the corner of the battery and sea-wall, misty grey-green plumes of
+tamarisk veiled the tender background of grey-blue water and yellow-grey
+sand. Birds peopled the scene. Gulls, in strong fierce flight, laughed
+overhead. Swallows darted back and forth, ceaselessly twittering, as they
+built their cup-shaped mud nests beneath the eaves. Upon the lawn
+companies of starlings ran, flapping glossy wings, squealing, whistling;
+to the annoyance of a song thrush, in spotted waistcoat and neatly
+fitting brown _surtout_, who, now tall, now flattened to the level of the
+turf, its head turned sideways, peered and listened, locating the
+presence of the victim worm.--Three or four vigorous pecks--the starlings
+running elsewhere--to loosen the surrounding soil, and the moist pink
+living string was steadily, mercilessly, drawn upward into the
+uncompromising light of day, to be devoured wriggling, bit by bit, with
+most unlovely gusto.--The chaff-chaff sharpened his tiny saw tipping
+about the branches of the fir trees in the Wilderness, along with the
+linnets, tits, and gold-finches.
+
+Such, out of doors, was the home world which received Damaris after those
+many months of continental travel, on the eve of her twenty-first
+birthday. To pass from the dynamic to the static mode must be always
+something of an embarrassment and trial, especially to the young with
+whom sensation is almost disconcertingly direct and lively. Damaris
+suffered the change of conditions not without a measure or doubt and
+wonder. For they made demands to which she had become unaccustomed, and
+to which she found it difficult to submit quite naturally and simply. A
+whole social and domestic order, bristling with petty obligations, closed
+down upon her, within the bounds of which she felt to move awkwardly, at
+first, conscious of constraint.
+
+Sympathetic Mrs. Cooper, comely and comfortable Mary, and the Napoleonic
+Patch, still reigned in house and stable. Laura had returned to her
+former allegiance on the announcement of "the family's" arrival, and
+other underlings had been engaged by the upper servants in conclave. To
+these latter entered that Ulysses, Mr. Hordle, so rendering the
+establishment once again complete.
+
+The neighbours duly called--Dr. and Mrs. Horniblow, conscious of notable
+preferment, since high ecclesiastical powers had seen fit to present the
+former to a vacant canonry at Harchester. For three months yearly he
+would in future be resident in the cathedral city. This would necessitate
+the employment of a curate at Deadham, for the spiritual life of its
+inhabitants must by no means suffer through its vicar's promotion. At the
+moment of Sir Charles and Damaris' return the curate excitement was at
+its height. It swept through the spinster-ranks of the congregation like
+an epidemic. They thrilled with unacknowledgeable hopes. The Miss
+Minetts, though mature, grew pink and quivered, confessing themselves not
+averse to offering board and lodging to a suitable, a well-connected,
+well-conducted paying guest. To outpourings on the enthralling subject of
+the curate, Damaris found herself condemned to listen from every feminine
+visitor in turn. It held the floor, to the exclusion of all other topics.
+Her own long absence, long journeys, let alone the affairs of the world
+at large, were of no moment to these very local souls. So our young lady
+retired within herself, deploring the existence of curates in general,
+and the projected, individual, Deadham curate in particular, with a
+heartiness she was destined later to remember. Had it been
+prophetic?--Not impossibly so, granted the somewhat strange prescience by
+which she was, at times, possessed.
+
+For the psychic quality that, from a child, now and again had manifested
+itself in her--though happily unattended by morbid or hysteric
+tendencies, thanks to her radiant health--grew with her growth. To her,
+in certain moods and under certain conditions, the barrier between things
+seen and unseen, material and transcendental, was pervious. It yielded
+before the push of her apprehension, sense of what it guards, what it
+withholds within an ace of breaking through.
+
+Affairs of the heart would, so far, seem to have begun and ended with the
+winter spent at St. Augustin. Now and again Damaris met an Englishman, or
+foreigner, who stirred her slightly. But if one accident of travel
+brought them together, another accident of travel speedily swept them
+apart. The impression was fugitive, superficial, fading out and causing
+but momentary regret. Colonel Carteret she only saw in London, during
+those two brief visits to England. He had been captivating, treating her
+with playful indulgence, teasing a little; but far away, somehow--so she
+felt him--though infinitely kind. And the dear man with the blue
+eyes--for she could use her old name for him again now, though she
+couldn't quite tell why--looked older. The sentimental passage at St.
+Augustin assumed improbability--a fact over which she should, in all
+reason, have rejoiced, yet over which she, in point of fact when safe
+from observation, just a little wept.
+
+From Henrietta some few letters reached her. One of them contained the
+news that Marshall Wace, surmounting his religious doubts and
+scruples--by precisely what process remained undeclared--had at last
+taken Holy Orders. Concerning this joyful consummation Henrietta waxed
+positively unctuous. "He had gone through so much"--the old cry!--to
+which now was added conviction that his own trials fitted him to minister
+the more successfully to his brethren among the sorely tried.
+
+"His preaching will, I feel certain, be quite extraordinarily original
+and sympathetic--full of poetry. And I need hardly tell you what an
+immense relief it is both to the General and to myself to feel he is
+settled in life, and that his future is provided for--though not,
+alas! in the way I fondly hoped, and which--for his happiness' sake
+and my own--I should have chosen," she insidiously and even rather
+cynically wrote.
+
+But, if in respect of the affections our maiden, during these two years,
+made no special progress and gained no further experimental knowledge of
+the perilous workings of sex, her advance in other departments was ample.
+
+For faith now called to her with no uncertain note. The great spiritual
+forces laid hold of her intelligence and imagination, drawing, moulding,
+enlightening her. In the library of a somewhat grim hotel at Avila, in
+old Castile, she lighted upon an English translation of the life of St.
+Theresa--that woman of countless practical activities, seer and sybil,
+mystic and wit. The amazing biography set her within the magic circle of
+Christian feminine beatitude; and opened before her gaze mighty
+perspectives of spiritual increase, leading upward through unnumbered
+ranks of prophets, martyrs, saints, angelic powers, to the feet of the
+Virgin Mother, with the Divine Child on her arm.--He, this last, as
+gateway, intermediary, between the human soul and the mystery of God
+Almighty, by whom, and in whom, all things visible and invisible subsist.
+For the first time some dim and halting perception, some faintest hint
+and echo, reached Damaris of the awful majesty, the awful beauty of the
+fount of Universal Being; and, caught with a great trembling, she
+worshipped.
+
+This culminating perception, in terms of time, amounted to no more than a
+single flash, the fraction of an instant's contact. An hour or so later,
+being very young and very human, the things of everyday resumed their
+sway. A new dress engaged her fancy, a railway journey through--to
+her--untrodden country excited her, a picturesque street scene held her
+delighted interest. Nevertheless that had taken place within her--call it
+conversion, evocation, the spiritual receiving of sight, as you
+please--upon which, for those who have once experienced it, there is no
+going back while life and reason last. Obscured, overlaid, buried beneath
+the dust of the trivial and immediate, the mark of revelation upon the
+forehead and the heart can never be obliterated quite. Its resurrection
+is not only possible but certain, if not on the near side, then surely on
+the farther side of death.
+
+And not only did faith thus call her, at this period, but art, in its
+many forms, called her likewise. The two, indeed, according to her
+present understanding of them, moved--though at different levels--side by
+side, singularly conjoined, art translating faith into terms of sound,
+form and colour, faith consecrating and supplementing art. All of which,
+as she pondered, appeared to her only fitting and reasonable--the object
+of art being to capture beauty and touch reality, the substance of faith
+being nothing less than beauty and reality absolute.
+
+With Sir Charles sometimes, but more often with her aunt, Miss
+Felicia--most enthusiastic, diligent and ingenuous of sightseers--she
+visited buildings of historic interest, galleries of statuary and of
+pictures. For here, too, in architecture, in marble god or hero, upon
+painted panel or canvas, she caught, at moments, some flickering shadow
+of the everlasting light, touched at moments both by its abiding terror
+and the ecstasy of its everlasting youth. But this appreciation of the
+height and grandeur of man's endeavour was new in her. To Nature she had
+from childhood, been curiously near. She sought expression and
+confirmation of it with silent ardour, her mind aflame with the joy of
+recognition. And, as daily, hourly background to these her many
+experiments and excursions, was the stable interest of her father's book.
+For in the pages of that, too, she caught sight of beauty and reality of
+no mean order, held nobly to ransom through the medium of words.
+
+And while this high humour still possessed her, alive at every point,
+her thoughts--often by day, still oftener in dreams or wakeful
+intervals by night--rapt away beyond the stars, she was called upon, as
+already noted, to pass abruptly from the dynamic to the static mode.
+Called on to embrace domestic duties, and meet local social
+obligations, including polite endurance of long-drawn disquisitions
+regarding Canon Horniblow's impending curate. The drop proved
+disconcerting, or would have eminently done so had not another
+element--disquieting yet very dear--come into play.
+
+Meantime the change from the stimulating continental atmosphere to the
+particularly soft and humid, not to say stagnant, English one, acted as a
+drop too. She drooped during the process of acclimatization. The fetid
+sweet reek off the mud-flats of the Haven oppressed and strangely pursued
+her, so that she asked for the horses to take her to the freshness of the
+high lying inland moors, for a boat to carry her across the tide-river to
+the less confined air and outlook of the Bar. Sight and sense of the
+black wooden houses, upon the forbidden island, hanging like disreputable
+boon companions about the grey stone-built inn, oppressed and strangely
+pursued her too. She could see them from her bedroom between the red
+trunks of the bird-haunted Scotch firs in the Wilderness. First thing, on
+clear mornings, the sunlight glittered on the glass of their small
+windows. Last thing, at night, the dim glow of lamp-light showed through
+open doorway, or flimsy curtain from within. They stood alone, but
+curiously united and self-sufficing, upon the treeless inhospitable piece
+of land, ringed by the rivers, the great whispering reed-beds and the
+tide. Their life was strangely apart from, defiant of, that of the
+mainland and the village. It yielded obedience to traditions and customs
+of an earlier, wilder age; and in so much was sinister, a little
+frightening. Yet out of precisely this rather primitive and archaic
+environment came Darcy Faircloth, her half-brother, the human being
+closest to her by every tie of blood and sentiment in the world save
+one--the father of them both. The situation was startling, alike in its
+incongruities and in its claims.
+
+During those two years of continental wandering--following upon her
+meeting with him at Marseilles--the whole sweet and perplexing matter of
+Faircloth had fallen more or less into line, taking on a measure of
+simplicity and of ease. She thought of him with freedom, wrote to him
+when he could advise her of his next port of call.--To him at Deadham, by
+his request, he being very careful for her, she never wrote.--And
+therefore, all the more perhaps, being here at Deadham, his home and all
+the suggestive accessories of it so constantly before her eyes, did her
+relation to him suffer a painful transformation. In remembrance she had
+come to picture him on board his ship, governing his little floating
+kingdom with no feeble or hesitating sway. But here every impeding fact
+of class and education, every worldly obstacle to his and her
+intercourse, above all the hidden scandal of his birth sprang into high
+relief. All the dividing, alienating influences of his antecedents, his
+social position and her own, swung in upon her with aggravated intensity
+and pathos.
+
+Away, she felt sweetly secure of him. Sure his and her bond remained
+inviolate. Sure his affection never wavered or paled, but stood always at
+the flood, a constant quantity upon which she could draw at need; or--to
+change the metaphor--a steady foundation upon which her heart could
+safely build. He would not, could not, ever fail her. This had been
+sufficient to stay her longing for sight and speech of him, her longing
+for his bodily presence. But now, in face of the very concrete facts of
+the island, the inn, which bore his name and where his mother lived and
+ruled, of the property he owned, the place and people to which--by half
+at least of his nature and much more than half his memory--he belonged,
+the comfort of this spiritual esoteric relation became but a meagre
+evasive thing. It was too unsubstantial. Doubts and fears encircled it.
+She grew heart-sick for some fresh testimony, some clear immediate
+assurance that time and absence had not staled or undermined the romance.
+
+If only she could speak of it! But that was forbidden by every obligation
+of filial piety. Never had her relation to her father been more tender,
+more happy; yet only through sudden pressure of outward circumstance
+could she speak to him of Faircloth. To do so, without serious necessity,
+would be, as she saw it, a wanton endangering of his peace.--If only the
+dear man with the blue eyes hadn't removed himself! She had counted upon
+his permanent support and counsel, on his smoothing away difficulties
+from the path of her dealings with Faircloth; but he appeared to have
+given her altogether the go-by, to have passed altogether out of her
+orbit. And meditating, in the softly bright May weather beneath those
+high forget-me-not blue skies, upon his defection, our maiden felt quite
+desperately experienced and grown up, thrown back upon her own resources,
+thrown in upon her rather solitary life.
+
+Throughout the summer visitors came and went; but never those two desired
+figures, Faircloth or Carteret. Dr. McCabe, vociferous in welcome,
+affectionate, whimsical and choleric, trundled over from Stourmouth on a
+bicycle of phenomenal height.
+
+"On the horse without wheels I'm proficient enough," he declared. "Know
+the anatomy of the darlin' beast as well as I do my own, inside and out.
+But, be dashed, if the wheels without the horse aren't beyond me quite.
+Lord love you, but the skittish animal's given me some ugly knocks, cast
+me away, it has, in the wayside ditch, covering me soul with burning
+shame, and me jacket with malodorous mud."
+
+At intervals Aunt Harriet Cowden and Uncle Augustus drove over in state
+the twelve miles from Paulton Lacy--the lady faithful to garments dyed,
+according to young Tom Verity, in the horrid hues of violet ink. She
+expressed her opinions with ruthless frankness, criticized, domineered,
+put all and sundry in--what she deemed--"their place"; and departed for
+the big house on the confines of Arnewood Forest again, to, had she but
+known it, a chorus of sighings of relief from those she left behind her
+and on whose emotional and intellectual tastes and toes she so
+mercilessly trod.
+
+Garden parties, tennis tournaments, the Napworth cricket week, claimed
+Damaris' attendance in turn, along with agreeable display of her foreign
+spoils in the matter of Paris hats and frocks. Proofs arrived in big
+envelopes perpetually by post; first in the long, wide-margined galley
+form, later in the more dignified one of quire and numbered page. The
+crude, sour smell of damp paper and fresh printer's ink, for the first
+time assailed our maiden's nostrils. It wasn't nice; yet she sniffed it
+with a quaint sense of pleasure. For was it not part of the whole
+wonderful, beautiful business of the making of books? To the artist the
+meanest materials of his art have a sacredness not to be denied or
+ignored. They go to forward the birth of the precious whole, and hence
+are redeemed, for him, from all charge of common or uncleanness.
+
+Finally Miss Felicia, arriving in mid-June, paid an unending visit, of
+which Damaris felt no impatience. Miss Felicia during the last two years
+had, indeed, become a habit. The major affairs of life it might be both
+useless and unwise to submit to her judgment. She lost her way in them,
+fluttering ineffectual, gently hurried and bird-like. But, in life's
+minor affairs, her innocent enthusiasm was invaluable as an encouraging
+asset. It lent point and interest to happenings and occupations otherwise
+trivial or monotonous. If silly at times, she never was
+stupid--distinction of meaning and moment.--A blameless creature,
+incapable of thinking, still more of speaking, evil of the worst or
+weakest, her inherent goodness washed about you like sun-warmed water, if
+sterile yet translucently pure.
+
+And so the months accumulated. The clear colours of spring ripened to the
+hotter gamut of mid-summer, to an August splendour of ripening harvest in
+field, orchard and hedgerow, and thence to the purple, russet and gold of
+autumn. The birds, their nesting finished, ceased from song, as the
+active care of hungry fledglings grew on them. The swallows had gathered
+for their southern flight, and the water-fowl returned from their
+northern immigration to the waters and reed-beds of the Haven, Sir
+Charles Verity's book, in two handsome quarto volumes, had been duly
+reviewed and found a place of honour in every library, worth the name, in
+the United Kingdom, before anything of serious importance occurred
+directly affecting our maiden. Throughout spring, summer and the first
+weeks of autumn, she marked time merely. Her activities and emotions--in
+as far, that is, as outward expression of these last went--were
+vicarious, those of others. She glowed over and gloried in the triumph of
+her father's book, it is true, but it was his adventure, after all,
+rather than her own.
+
+Then suddenly, as is the way with life, events crowded on one
+another, the drama thickened, sensation was tuned to a higher pitch.
+And it all began, not unludicrously, through the praiseworthy, if
+rather ill-timed moral indignation of Canon Horniblow's newly
+installed curate, Reginald Sawyer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+RECALLING, IN SOME PARTICULARS, THE EASIEST RECORDED THEFT IN
+HUMAN HISTORY
+
+
+He was short, neat, spectacled, in manner prompt and perky, in age under
+thirty, a townsman by birth and education, hailing from Midlandshire.
+Further, a strong advocate of organization, and imbued with the deepest
+respect for the obligations and prerogatives of his profession upon the
+ethical side. He took himself very seriously; and so took, also, the
+decalogue as delivered to mankind amid the thunders of Sinai. Keep the
+Ten Commandments, according to the letter, and you may confidently expect
+all things, spiritual and temporal, to be added unto you--such was the
+basis of his teaching and of his private creed.
+
+He came to Deadham ardent for the reformation of that remote, benighted
+spot, so disgracefully, as he feared--and rather hoped--behind the times.
+He suspected its canon-vicar of being very much too easy-going; and its
+population, in respect of moral conduct, of being lamentably lax. In
+neither of which suppositions, it must be admitted, was he altogether
+incorrect. But he intended to alter all that!--Regarding himself thus, in
+the light of a providentially selected new broom, he applied himself
+diligently to sweep. A high-minded and earnest, if not conspicuously
+well-bred young man, he might in a suburban parish have done excellent
+work. But upon Deadham, with its enervating, amorous climate and queer
+inheritance of forest and seafaring--in other words poaching and
+smuggling--blood, he was wasted, out of his element and out of touch. The
+slow moving South Saxon cocked a shrewd sceptical eye at him, sized him
+up and down and sucked in its cheek refusing to be impressed. While by
+untoward accident, his misfortune rather than his fault, the earliest of
+his moral sweepings brought him into collision with the most reactionary
+element in the community, namely the inhabitants of the black cottages
+upon the Island.
+
+The event fell out thus. The days shortened, the evenings lengthened
+growing misty and secret as October advanced. The roads became plashy and
+rutted, the sides of them silent with fallen leaves under foot. An odd
+sense of excitement flickers through such autumn twilights. Boys herded
+in little troops on wickedness intent. Whooping and whistling to disarm
+their elders' suspicion until the evil deed should be fairly within
+reach, then mum as mice, stealthily vanishing, becoming part and parcel
+of the earth, the hedge, the harsh dusky grasses of the sand-hills, the
+foreshore lumber on the beach.
+
+Late one afternoon, the hour of a hidden sunset, Reginald Sawyer called
+at The Hard; and to his eminent satisfaction--for social aspirations were
+by no means foreign to him--was invited to remain to tea. The
+ladies--Damaris and Miss Felicia--were kind, the cakes and cream
+superlative. He left in high feather; and, at Damaris' suggestion, took a
+short cut through the Wilderness and by a path crossing the warren to the
+lane, leading up from the causeway, which joins the high-road just
+opposite the post office and Mrs. Doubleday's shop. By following this
+route he would save quite half a mile on his homeward journey; since the
+Grey House, where he enjoyed the Miss Minetts' assiduous and genteel
+hospitality, is situate at the extreme end of Deadham village on the road
+to Lampit.
+
+Out on the warren, notwithstanding the hour and the mist, it was still
+fairly light, the zigzagging sandy path plainly visible between the
+heath, furze brakes, stunted firs and thorn bushes. The young clergyman,
+although more familiar with crowded pavements and flare of gas-lamps than
+open moorland in the deepening dusk, pursued his way without difficulty.
+What a wild region it was though! He thought of the sober luxury of the
+library at The Hard, the warmth, the shaded lights, the wealth of books;
+of the grace of Damaris' clothing and her person, and wondered how
+people of position and education could be content to live in so out of
+the way and savage a spot. It was melancholy to a degree, in his
+opinion.--Oh! well, he must do his best to wake it up, infuse a spirit of
+progress into it more in keeping with nineteenth-century ideas. Everyone
+would be grateful to him--
+
+A little questioning pause--assurance in momentary eclipse. Then with
+renewed cheerfulness--Of course they would--the upper classes, that is.
+For they must feel the disadvantages of living in such a back-water. He
+gave them credit for the wish to advance could they but find the way.
+All they needed was leadership, which Canon Horniblow--evidently past
+his work--was powerless to supply. He, Sawyer, came as a pioneer. Once
+they grasped that fact they would rally to him. The good Miss Minetts
+were rallying hard, so to speak, already. Oh! there was excellent
+material in Deadham among the gentlefolk. It merely needed working,
+needed bringing out.
+
+From the lower, the wage-earning class, sunk as it was in ignorance, he
+must, he supposed, expect but a poor response, opposition not impossibly.
+Opposition would not daunt him. You must be prepared to do people good,
+if not with, then against their will. He was here to make them rebel
+against and shake off the remnants of the Dark Ages amid which they so
+extraordinarily appeared still to live. He had no conception so low a
+state of civilization could exist within little over a hundred miles of
+the metropolis!--It was a man's work, anyhow, and he must put his back
+into it. Must organize--word of power--organize night classes, lectures
+with lantern slides, social evenings, a lads' club. Above all was there
+room and necessity for this last. The Deadham lads were very rowdy, very
+unruly. They gathered at corners in an objectionable manner; hung about
+the public-house. He must undersell the public-house by offering counter
+attractions. Amongst the men he suspected a sad amount of drinking. Their
+speech, too, was so reprehensibly coarse. He had heard horrible language
+in the village street. He reproved the offenders openly, as was his duty,
+and his admonitions were greeted with a laugh, an insolent, offensive,
+jeering laugh.
+
+Sawyer cut at the dark straggling furzes bordering the path with his
+walking-stick. Recollection of that laugh made him go red about the ears;
+made his skin tingle and his eyes smart. It represented an insult not
+only to himself but to his cloth. Yet he'd not lost control of himself,
+he was glad to remember, though the provocation was rank--
+
+He cut at the furze again, being by nature combative. And--stopped short,
+with a start, a tremor running through him. Something rustled, scuttled
+away amongst the bushes, and something flapped upward behind him into the
+thick lowering sky above. A wailing cry--whether human, or of bird or
+beast, he was uncomfortably ignorant--came out of the mist ahead, to be
+answered by a like and nearer cry from a spot which he failed, in his
+agitation, to locate.
+
+Under ordinary conditions the young cleric was neither troubled by
+imagination nor lacking in pluck. His habitual outlook was sensible,
+literal and direct. But, it must be owned, this wide indistinct
+landscape, over which pale vapours trailed and brooded, the immense
+loneliness of the felt rather than seen, expanse of water, marsh and
+mud-flat of the Haven--the tide being low--along with the goblin
+whispering chuckle of the river speeding seaward away there on his left,
+made him oddly jumpy and nervous. No human being was in sight, neither
+did any human dwelling show signs of habitation. He wished he had gone
+round by the road and through the length of the village. He registered a
+vow against short cuts--save in broad daylight--for his present
+surroundings inspired him with the liveliest distrust. They were to him
+positively nightmarish. He suffered the nastiest little fears of what
+might follow him, what might, even now, peer and lurk. Heretofore he had
+considered the earth as so much dead matter, to be usefully and
+profitably exploited by all-dominant man--specially by men of his own
+creed and race. But now the power of the earth laid hands on him. She
+lived, and mankind dwindled to the proportions of parasitic insects, at
+most irritating some small portions of her skin, her vast indifferent
+surface. Such ideas had never occurred to him before. He resented
+them--essayed to put them from him as trenching on blasphemy.
+
+Starting on again, angry alike with himself for entertaining, and with
+the unknown for engendering, such subversive notions, his pace
+unconsciously quickened to a run. But the line of some half-dozen ragged
+Scotch firs, which here topped the low cliff bordering the river, to his
+disordered vision seemed most uncomfortably to run alongside him,
+stretching gaunt arms through the encircling mist to arrest his flight.
+
+He regarded them with an emotion of the liveliest antipathy; consciously
+longing, meanwhile, for the humming thoroughfares of his native
+industrial town, for the rattle and grind of the horse-trams, the
+brightly lighted shop-fronts, the push all about him of human labour, of
+booming trade and vociferous politics. Even the glare of a gin palace,
+flooding out across the crowded pavement at some street corner, would
+have, just now, been fraught with solace, convinced prohibitionist though
+he was. For he would, at least, have been in no doubt how to feel towards
+that stronghold of Satan--righteously thanking God he was not as those
+reprehensible others, who passed in and out of its ever-swinging doors.
+While towards this earth dominance, this dwarfing of human life by the
+life of things he had hitherto called inanimate, he did not know how to
+feel at all. It attacked some unarmoured, unprotected part of him.
+Against its assault he was defenceless.
+
+With a sense of escape from actual danger, whether physical or moral he
+did not stay to enquire, he stumbled, a few minutes later, through a gap
+in the earth-bank into the wet side lane. Arrived, he gave himself a
+moment's breathing space. It was darker here than out upon the warren;
+but, anyhow, this was a lane. It had direction and meaning. Men had
+constructed it for the linking up of house with house, hamlet with
+hamlet. Like all roads, it represented the initial instinct of communal
+life, the basis of a reasoned social order, of civilization in short.
+He walked forward over the soft couch of fallen, water-soaked leaves,
+his boots squelching at times into inches of sucking mud, and his
+spirits rose. He began to enter into normal relations both with himself
+and with things in general. A hundred yards or so and the village green
+would be reached.
+
+Then on his left, behind an ill-kept quick-set hedge that guarded a strip
+of garden and orchard, he became aware of movement. Among the apple trees
+three small figures shuffled about some dark recumbent object. For the
+most part they went on all fours, but at moments reared up on their hind
+legs. Their action was at once silent, stealthy and purposeful. Our young
+clergyman's shortness of sight rendered their appearance the more
+peculiar. His normal attitude was not so completely restored, moreover,
+but that they caused him another nervous tremor. Then he grasped the
+truth; while the detective, latent in every moralist, sprang to
+attention. Here were criminals to be brought to justice, criminals caught
+red-handed. Reginald Sawyer, having been rather badly scared himself,
+lusted--though honestly ignorant of any personal touch in the matter--to
+very badly scare others.
+
+Standing back beside the half-open gate, screened by the hedge, here high
+and straggling, he awaited the psychological moment, ready to pounce. To
+enter the orchard and confront these sinners with their crime, if their
+activities did by chance happen to be legitimate, was to put himself
+altogether in the wrong. He would bide his time, would let them conclude
+their--in his belief--nefarious business and challenge them as they
+passed out.
+
+Nor had he long to wait. The two smaller boys, breathing hard, hoisted
+the bulging, half-filled sack on to the back of their bigger
+companion; who, bowed beneath its weight, grunting with exertion,
+advanced towards the exit.
+
+Sawyer laid aside his walking-stick, and, as the leader of the procession
+came abreast of him, pounced. But missed his aim. Upon which the boy cast
+down the sack, from the mouth of which apples, beets, turnips rolled into
+the road; and, with a yelp, bolted down the lane towards the causeway,
+leaving his accomplices to their fate. These, thrown into confusion by
+the suddenness of his desertion, hesitated and were lost. For, pouncing
+again, and that the more warily for his recent failure, Sawyer collared
+one with either hand.
+
+They were maladorous children; and the young clergyman, grasping woollen
+jersey-neck and shirt-band, the backs of his hands in contact with the
+backs of their moist, warm, dirty little necks, suffered disgust, yet
+held them the more firmly.
+
+"I am convinced you have no right to that fruit or to those vegetables.
+You are stealing. Give an account of yourselves at once."
+
+And he shook them slightly to emphasize his command. One hung on his
+hand, limp as a rag. The other showed fight, kicking our friend liberally
+about the shins, with hobnailed boots which did, most confoundly, hurt.
+
+"You lem' me go," he cried. "Lem' me go, or I'll tell father, and first
+time you come along by our place 'e'll set the ratting dawgs on to you.
+Our ole bitch 'as got 'er teeth yet. She'll bite. Ketch the fleshy part
+of your leg, she will, and just tear and bite."
+
+This carrying of war into the enemy's country proved as disconcerting as
+unexpected, while to mention the sex of an animal was, in Reginald
+Sawyer's opinion, to be guilty of unpardonable coarseness. The atmosphere
+of a Protestant middle-class home clung to him yet, begetting in him a
+squeamishness, not to say prudery, almost worthy of his hostesses, the
+Miss Minetts. He shook the culprits again, with a will. He also blushed.
+
+"If you were honest you would be anxious to give an account of
+yourselves," he asserted, ignoring the unpleasant matter of the dogs. "I
+am afraid you are very wicked boys. You have stolen these vegetables and
+fruits. Thieves are tried by the magistrates, you know, and sent to
+prison. I shall take you to the police-station. There the constable will
+find means to make you confess."
+
+Beyond provoking a fresh paroxysm of kicking, these adjurations were
+without result. His captives appeared equally impervious to shame,
+contrition or alarm. They remained obstinately mute. Whereupon it began
+to dawn upon their captor that his position risked becoming not a little
+invidious, since the practical difficulty of carrying his threats into
+execution was so great. How could he haul two sturdy, active children,
+plus a sack still containing a goodly quantity of garden produce, some
+quarter of a mile without help? To let them go, on the other hand, was
+to have them incontinently vanish into those trailing whitish vapours
+creeping over the face of the landscape. And, once vanished, they were
+lost to him, since he knew neither their names nor dwelling place; and
+could, with no certainty, identify them, having seen them only in the
+act of struggle and in this uncertain evening light. He felt himself
+very nastily planted on the horns of a dilemma, when on a sudden there
+arrived help.
+
+A vehicle of some description turned out of the main road and headed
+down the lane.
+
+Laocoön-like, flanked on either hand by a writhing youthful figure,
+Reginald Sawyer called aloud:
+
+"Hi!--Stop, there--pray, stop."
+
+Darcy Faircloth lighted down out of a ramshackle Marychurch station fly,
+and advanced towards the rather incomprehensible group.
+
+"What's happened? What's the matter?" he said. "What on earth do you want
+with those two youngsters?"
+
+"I want to convey them to the proper authorities," Sawyer answered, with
+all the self-importance he could muster. He found his interlocutor's
+somewhat abrupt and lordly manner at once annoying and impressive, as
+were his commanding height and rather ruffling gait. "These boys have
+been engaged in robbing a garden. I caught them in the act, and it is my
+duty to see that they pay the penalty of their breach of the law. I count
+on your assistance in taking them to the police-station."
+
+"You want to give them in charge?"
+
+"What else?--The moral tone of this parish is, I grieve to say,
+very low."
+
+Sawyer talked loud and fast in the effort to assert himself.
+
+"Low and coarse," he repeated. "Both as a warning to others, and in
+the interests of their own future, an example must be made of these
+two lads."
+
+"Must it?" Faircloth said, towering above him in the pale
+bewildering mist.
+
+The little boys, who had remained curiously and rather dangerously still
+since the advent of this stranger, now strained together, signalling,
+whispering. Sawyer shook them impatiently apart.
+
+"Steady there, please," Faircloth put in sharply. "It strikes me you take
+a good deal upon yourself. May I ask who you are?"
+
+"I am the assistant priest," Reginald began. But his explanation was cut
+short by piping voices.
+
+"It's Cap'en Darcy, that's who it is. We never meant no 'arm, Cap'en.
+That we didn't. The apples was rotting on the ground, s'h'lp me if they
+wasn't. Grannie Staples was took to the Union last Wednesday fortnight,
+and anyone's got the run of her garden since. Don't you let the new
+parson get us put away, Cap'en. We belongs to the Island--I'm William
+Jennifer's Tommy, please Cap'en, and 'e's Bobby Sclanders 'e is."
+
+And being cunning, alike by nature and stress of circumstance, they
+pathetically drooped, blubbering in chorus:
+
+"We never didn't mean no 'arm, Cap'en. Strike me dead if we did."
+
+At which last implied profanity Reginald Sawyer shuddered, loosening
+his grasp.
+
+Of what followed he could subsequently give no definite account. The
+dignities of his sacred profession and his self-respect alike reeled
+ignominiously into chaos. He believed he heard the person, addressed as
+Captain Darcy, say quietly:
+
+"Cut it, youngsters. Now's your chance."
+
+He felt that both the children violently struggled, and that the round
+hard head of one of them butted him in the stomach. He divined that
+sounds of ribald laughter, in the distance, proceeded from the driver
+of the Marychurch station fly. He knew two small figures raced whooping
+down the lane attended by squelchings of mud and clatter of heavy
+soled boots.
+
+Knew, further, that Captain Darcy, after nonchalantly picking up the
+sack, dropping it within the garden hedge and closing the rickety gate,
+stood opposite him and quite civilly said:
+
+"I am sorry I could not give you the sort of assistance, sir, which you
+asked. But the plan would not have worked."
+
+Sawyer boiled over.
+
+"You have compounded a felony and done all that lay in your power to
+undermine my authority with my parishioners. Fortunately I retain the
+boys' names and can make further enquiries. This, however, by no means
+relieves you of the charge of having behaved with reprehensible levity
+both towards my office and myself."
+
+"No--no," Faircloth returned, goodnaturedly. "Sleep upon it, and you will
+take an easier view of the transaction. I have saved you from putting
+unmerited disgrace upon two decent families and getting yourself into hot
+water up to the neck. I know these Deadham folk better than you do. I'm
+one of them, you see, myself. They've uncommonly long memories where
+they're offended, though it may suit them to speak you soft. Take it from
+me, you'll never hound them into righteousness. They turn as stubborn as
+so many mules under the whip."
+
+He hailed the waiting flyman.
+
+"Good evening to you, sir," he said. And followed by the carriage, piled
+with sea-chest and miscellaneous baggage, departed into the
+mysteriousness of deepening dusk.
+
+Had the young clergyman been willing to leave it at that, all might yet
+have been well, his ministry at Deadham a prolonged and fruitful one,
+since his intentions, at least, were excellent. But, as ill-luck would
+have it, while still heated and sore, every feather on end, his natural
+combativeness almost passionately on top, turning out in the high-road he
+encountered Dr. Cripps, faring westward like himself on the way to visit
+a patient at Lampit. The two joined company, falling into a conversation
+the more confidential that the increasing darkness gave them a sense of
+isolation and consequent intimacy.
+
+Of all his neighbours, the doctor--a peppery disappointed man, struggling
+with a wide-strewn country practice mainly prolific of bad debts,
+conscious of his own inefficiency and perpetually smarting under imagined
+injuries and slights--was the very last person to exercise a mollifying
+influence upon Sawyer in his existing angry humour. The latter recounted
+and enlarged upon the insults he had just now suffered. His hearer fanned
+the flame of indignation with comment and innuendo--recognized Faircloth
+from the description, and proceeded to wash his hands in scandalous
+insinuation at the young sea-captain's expense.
+
+For example, had not an eye to business dictated the sheltering from
+justice of those infant, apple-stealing reprobates? Their respective
+fathers were good customers! The islanders all had the reputation of hard
+drinkers--and an innkeeper hardly invites occasion to lower his receipts.
+The inn stood in old Mrs. Faircloth's name, it is true; but the son
+profited, at all events vicariously, by its prosperity. A swaggering
+fellow, with an inordinate opinion of his own ability and merits; but in
+that he shared a family failing. For arrogance and assumption the whole
+clan was difficult to beat.
+
+"You have heard whose son this young Faircloth is, of course?"
+
+Startled by the question, and its peculiar implication, Reginald Sawyer
+hesitatingly admitted his ignorance.
+
+The Grey House stands flush with the road, and the two gentlemen finished
+their conversation upon the doorstep. Above them a welcoming glow shone
+through the fanlight; otherwise its windows were shuttered and blank.
+
+"This is a matter of common knowledge," Dr. Cripps said; "but one about
+which, for reasons of policy, or, more truly, of snobbery, it is the
+fashion to keep silent. So, for goodness' sake, don't give me as your
+authority if you should ever have occasion to speak of it"--
+
+And lowering his voice he mentioned a name.
+
+"As like as two peas," he added, "when you see them side by side--which,
+in point of fact, you never do. Oh! I promise you the whole dirty
+business has been remarkably well engineered--hush-money, I suppose.
+Sometimes I am tempted to think poverty is the only punishable sin in
+this world. For those who have a good balance at their bankers there is
+always a safe way out of even the most disgraceful imbroglios of this
+sort. But I must be moving on, Mr. Sawyer. I sympathize with your
+annoyance. You have been very offensively treated. Good night."
+
+The young clergyman remained planted on the doorstep, incapable of
+ringing the bell and presenting himself to his assiduously attentive
+hostesses, the Miss Minetts, for the moment.
+
+He was, in truth, indescribably shocked. Deadham presented itself to
+his mind as a place accursed, a veritable sink of iniquity. High and
+low alike, its inhabitants were under condemnation.--And he had so
+enjoyed his tea with the ladies at The Hard. Had been so flattered by
+their civility, spreading himself in the handsome room, agreeably
+sensible of its books, pictures, ornaments, and air of cultured
+leisure.--While behind all that, as he now learned, was this glaring
+moral delinquency! Never had he been more cruelly deceived. He felt
+sick with disgust. What callousness, what hypocrisy!--He recalled his
+disquieting sensations in crossing the warren. Was the very soil of
+this place tainted, exhaling evil?
+
+He made a return upon himself. For what, after all, was he here for save
+to let in light and combat evil, to bring home the sense of sin to the
+inhabitants of this place, convincing them of the hatefulness of the
+moral slough in which they so revoltingly wallowed. He must slay and
+spare not. He saw himself as David, squaring up to Goliath, as Christian
+fighting single-handed against the emissaries of Satan who essayed to
+defeat his pilgrimage. Yes, he would smite these lawbreakers hip and
+thigh, whatever their superficial claims to his respect, whatever their
+worldly position. He would read them all a lesson--that King Log, Canon
+Horniblow, included.
+
+He at once pitied and admired himself, not being a close critic of
+his own motives; telling himself he did well to be angry, while
+ignoring the element of personal pique which gave point and
+satisfaction to that anger.
+
+He was silent and reserved with the Miss Minetts at supper; and retired
+early to his own room to prepare a sermon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BROTHER AND SISTER
+
+
+Upon the Sunday morning following, Damaris went to the eleven o'clock
+service alone. Miss Felicia Verity attended church at an earlier hour
+to-day, partly in the interests of private devotion, partly in those of a
+person she had warmly befriended in the past, and wanted to befriend in
+the present--but with delicacy, with tact and due consideration for the
+susceptibilities of others. She wished earnestly to effect a
+reconciliation; but not to force it. To force it was to endanger its
+sincerity and permanence. It should seem to come about lightly,
+naturally. Therefore did she go out early to perfect her plans--of which
+more hereafter--as well as to perform her religious duties. Sir Charles
+Verity was from home, staying with Colonel Carteret for partridge
+shooting, over the Norfolk stubble-fields. The habit of this annual visit
+had, for the last two seasons, been in abeyance; but now, with his return
+to The Hard, was pleasantly revived, although this autumn, owing to
+business connected with the publication of his book, the visit took place
+a few weeks later than usual.
+
+Hence did Damaris--arrayed in a russet-red serge gown, black velvet
+collar and cuffs to its jacket of somewhat manly cut, and a russet-red
+upstanding plume in her close-fitting black velvet hat--set forth alone
+to church. This, after redirecting such letters as had arrived for her
+father by the morning post. One of them bore the embossed arms of the
+India Office, and signature of the, then, Secretary of State for that
+department in the corner of the envelope. She looked at it with a measure
+of respect and curiosity, wondering as to the purport of its contents.
+She studied the envelope, turning it about in the hope of gleaning
+enlightenment from its external aspect. Still wondering, slightly
+oppressed even by a persuasion--of which she could not rid herself--that
+it held matters of no common moment closely affecting her father, she
+went out of the house, down the sheltered drive, and through the entrance
+gates. Here, as she turned inland, the verve of the clear autumn morning
+rushed on her, along with a wild flurry of falling leaves dancing to the
+breath of the crisp northerly breeze.
+
+A couple of fine days, with a hint of frost in the valley by night, after
+a spell of soft mists and wet, sent the leaves down in fluttering
+multitudes, so that now all trees, save the oaks only, were bare.
+These--by which the road is, just here, overhung--still solidly clothed
+in copper, amber and--matching our maiden's gown--in russet-red, offered
+sturdy defiance to the weather. The sound of them, a dry crowded
+rustling, had a certain note of courage and faithfulness in it which
+caused Damaris to wait awhile and listen; yet a wistfulness also, since
+to her hearing a shudder stirred beneath its bravery, preluding the
+coming rigours of winter.
+
+And that wistfulness rather strangely enlarged its meaning and area, as
+the reiterated ting, tang, tong of Deadham's church bells recalled the
+object of her walk. For English church services, of the parochial variety
+such as awaited her, had but little, she feared, to give. Little, that
+is, towards the re-living of those instants of exalted spiritual
+perception which had been granted to her at distant Avila.
+
+In overstrained and puritanic dread of idolatory, the English Church has
+gone lamentably far to forfeit its sacramental birthright. It savours too
+strongly of the school and class-room, basing its appeal upon words, upon
+spoken expositions, instructive no doubt, but cold, academic. It offers
+no tangible object of worship to sight or sense. Its so-called altars are
+empty. Upon them no sacrifice is offered, no presence abidingly dwells.
+In its teaching the communion of saints and forgiveness of sins are
+phrases rather than living agencies. Its atmosphere is self-conscious,
+its would-be solemnity forced.--This, in any case, was how Damaris saw
+the whole matter--though, let us hasten to add, she was modest enough to
+question whether the fault might not very well be in herself rather than
+in our national variant of the Christian Faith. Many sweet, good
+persons--dear Aunt Felicia among them--appeared to find Anglican
+ministrations altogether sufficient for their religious needs. But to
+Damaris those ministrations failed to bring any moment of vision, of
+complete detachment. She must be to blame, she supposed--which was
+discouraging, a little outcasting and consequently sad.
+
+In a somewhat pensive spirit she therefore, pursued her way, until, where
+the prospect widened as she reached the village green, a larger sky
+disclosed itself flaked with light cirrus cloud. This glory of space, and
+the daring northerly breeze blowing out from it, sent her fancy flying.
+It beckoned to journeyings, to far coasts and unknown seas--an offshore
+wind, filling the sails of convoys outward bound. And, with the thought
+of ships upon the sea, came the thought of Darcy Faircloth, and that with
+sharp revolt against the many existing hindrances to his and her
+intercourse. Freedom seemed abroad this morning. Even the leaves declared
+for liberty, courting individual adventure upon the wings of that daring
+wind. And this sense of surrounding activity worked upon Damaris, making
+her doubly impatient of denials and arbitrary restraints. She sent her
+soul after Darcy Faircloth across the waste of waters, fondly, almost
+fiercely seeking him. But her soul refused to travel, curiously turning
+homeward again, as though aware not the prodigious fields of ocean, nor
+any loud-voiced foreign port of call, held knowledge of him, but rather
+the immediate scene, the silver-glinting levels of the Haven and lonely
+stone-built inn.
+
+Deadham church, originally a chapelry of Marychurch Abbey, crowns a green
+monticule in the centre of Deadham village, backed by a row of big
+elms.--A wide, low-roofed structure, patched throughout the course of
+centuries beyond all unity and precision of design; yet still showing
+traces of Norman work in the arch of the belfry and in the pillars
+supporting the rafters of the middle aisle. At the instance of a former
+vicar, the whole interior received a thick coat of whitewash, alike over
+plaster and stone. This, at the time in question, had been in places
+scraped off, bringing to light some mural paintings of considerable
+interest and antiquity.
+
+In the chancel, upon the gospel side, is a finely-carved tomb, with
+recumbent figures of an armoured knight and richly-robed lady, whose
+slippered feet push against the effigy of a particularly alert,
+sharp-muzzled little hound. The two front pews, in the body of the
+church, at the foot of the said tomb, are allotted to the owner and
+household at The Hard. The slender, lively little hound and the two
+sculptured figures lying, peaceful in death, for ever side by side,
+touched and captivated Damaris from the first time she set eyes on them.
+She reverenced and loved them, weaving endless stories about them when,
+in the tedium of prayer or over-lengthy sermon, her attention, all too
+often, strayed.
+
+This morning the three bells jangled altogether as she reached the
+churchyard gate. Then the smallest tolled alone, hurrying stragglers. She
+was indeed late, the bulk of the congregation already seated, the Canon
+at the reading-desk and Mrs. Horniblow wheezing forth a voluntary upon
+the harmonium, when she walked up the aisle.
+
+But, during her brief passage, Damaris could not but observe the
+largeness of the assembly. An uncommon wave of piety must have swept over
+the parish this morning! The Battyes and Taylors were present in force.
+Farmers and tradespeople mustered in impressive array. Even Dr.
+Cripps--by no means a frequent churchgoer--and his forlorn-looking,
+red-eyed little wife were there. The Miss Minetts had a lady with them--a
+plump, short little person, dressed with attempted fashion, whose back
+struck Damaris as quaintly familiar, she catching a glimpse of it in
+passing. Most surprising of all, William Jennifer headed a contingent
+from the Island, crowding the men's free seats to right and left of the
+west door. An expectancy, moreover, seemed to animate the throng. Then
+she remembered, the new curate, Reginald Sawyer, had informed her and
+Miss Felicia two evenings ago when he had called and been bidden to stay
+to tea, that he would preach for the first time at the eleven o'clock
+service. So far he had only occupied the pulpit on Sunday afternoons,
+when a country congregation is liable to be both scanty and somnolent.
+To-day he would prove himself before the heads of tribes, before the
+notables. And Damaris wished him well, esteeming him a worthy young man,
+if somewhat provincial and superfluously pompous.
+
+In the servants' pew directly behind, Mary and Mrs. Cooper were duly
+ensconced, supported by Mr. Patch, two small male Patches, white-collared
+and shining with excess of cleanliness, wedged in between him and his
+stable sub-ordinate Conyers, the groom. The Hard thus made a commendably
+respectable show, as Damaris reflected with satisfaction.
+
+She stood, she knelt, her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the
+tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog
+serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and
+droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The
+choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch.
+And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting
+excursions right and left. For half-way through the litany some belated
+worshipper arrived, causing movement in the men's free seats. This oddly
+disturbed her. Her mind flew again to Faircloth, and the strange
+impression of her own soul's return declaring this and no other to be his
+actual neighbourhood. And if it indeed were so?--Damaris thrust back the
+emotions begotten of that question, as unpermissibly stormy at this time
+and in this place.
+
+She tried to fix her thoughts wholly upon the office. But, all too soon
+they sprang aside again, now circling about the enigmatic back beheld in
+the Miss Minetts' pew. Of whom did that round, dressy little form remind
+her? Why--why--of Theresa, of course. Not Theresa, genius and saint of
+Spanish Avila; but Theresa Bilson, her sometime governess-companion of
+doubtfully amiable memory. She longed to satisfy herself, but could only
+do so by turning round and looking squarely--a manoeuvre impossible
+during the prayers, but which might be accomplished later, when the
+congregation rose to sing the hymn before the sermon.
+
+She must wait. And during that waiting light, rather divertingly, broke
+in on her. For supposing her belief as to the lady's identity correct,
+must not dear Aunt Felicia be party to this resurrection? Had not she
+known, and stolen forth this morning to perfect some innocent plot of
+peace-making? In furtherance of which she now cunningly remained at home,
+thus leaving Damaris free to offer renewal of favour or withhold it as
+she pleased. Was not that deliciously characteristic of Aunt Felicia and
+her permanent effort to serve two masters--to make everybody happy, and,
+regardless of conflicting interests, everybody else too?--Well, Damaris
+was ready to fulfil her wishes. She bore Theresa no ill-will. An
+inclination to grudge or resentment seemed to her unworthy. Whatever
+Theresa's tiresomenesses, they were over and done with, surely, quite
+immensely long ago.
+
+The hymn given out and the tune of it played through, the assembly
+scraped and rustled to its feet. Damaris standing, in height overtopping
+her neighbours, discreetly turned her head. Let her eyes rest an instant,
+smiling, upon the upturned polished countenances of the two small
+Patches--shyly watching her--and then seek a more distant goal. Yes,
+veritably Theresa Bilson in the flesh--very much in the flesh, full of
+face and plump of bosom, gold-rimmed glasses gleaming, her mouth opened
+wide in song. It was a little astonishing to see her so unchanged. For
+how much had happened since the day of that choir-treat, at Harchester,
+which marked her deposition, the day of Damaris' sleep in the sunshine
+and awakening in the driving wet out on the Bar.--The day wherein so much
+began, and so much ended, slashed across and across with an extravagance
+of lasting joy and lasting pain!--In the sense of it all Damaris lost
+herself a little, becoming forgetful of her existing situation. She
+looked past, over Theresa and beyond.
+
+At the extreme end of the church, in the last of the free seats where
+the light from the west door streamed inward, a man's figure detached
+itself with singular distinctness from the background of whitewashed
+wall. He, too, overtopped his fellows, and that by several inches. And
+from the full length of the building, across the well-filled benches, his
+glance sought and met that of Damaris, and held it in fearless, high
+security of affection not to be gainsaid.
+
+The nice, clean-shining little Patches, still watching shyly out of their
+brown, glossy, mouse-like eyes, to their extreme mystification saw the
+colour flood Damaris' face, saw her lips tremble and part as in prelude
+to happy speech. Then saw her grow very pale, and, turning away, clutch
+at the head of the alert little hound. Mrs. Cooper delivered herself of a
+quite audible whisper to the effect--"that Miss Damaris was took
+faint-like, as she feared." And Mary leaned forward over the front of the
+pew in quick anxiety. But our maiden's weakness was but passing. She
+straightened herself, stood tall and proudly again, looking at the knight
+and his lady lying so peacefully side by side upon their marble couch.
+She gathered them into her gladness--they somehow sympathized, she felt,
+in her present sweet and poignant joy. Her soul had known best, had been
+right in its homing--since Faircloth was here--was here.
+
+That sweet, poignant joy flooded her, so that she wordlessly gave thanks
+and praise. He was in life--more, was within sight of her, hearing the
+same sounds, breathing the same air. Across the short dividing space,
+spirit had embraced spirit. He claimed her.--Had not his will, indeed,
+far more than any curiosity regarding the identity of poor, plump little
+Theresa, compelled her to look around?
+
+She demanded nothing further, letting herself dwell in a perfection of
+content--without before or after--possible only to the pure in heart and
+to the young.
+
+The hymn concluded, Damaris knelt, while Reginald Sawyer, having mounted
+into the pulpit, read the invocation; mechanically rose from her knees
+with the rest, and disposed herself in the inner corner of the pew,
+sitting sideways so that her left hand might rest upon the carven marble
+margin of the tomb. She liked touch of it still, in the quietude of her
+great content, cherishing a pretty fancy of the knight and his lady's
+sympathy and that also of their sprightly little footstool dog.
+
+Otherwise she was deaf to outward things, deliciously oblivious, wrapped
+away sweetly within herself. Hence she quite failed to notice how
+awkwardly Sawyer stumbled, treading on the fronts of his long surplice
+when going up the pulpit stairs. How he fumbled with his manuscript as
+he flattened it out on the cushioned desk. Or how husky was his voice,
+to the point of the opening sentences being almost inaudible. The young
+clergyman suffered, indeed, so it appeared, from a painfully excessive
+fit of nervousness. All this she missed, not awakening from her state of
+blissful trance until the sermon had been under way some good five to
+ten minutes.
+
+Her awakening even then was gradual. It was also unpleasant. It began in
+vague and uneasy suspicion of something unusual and agitating toward. In
+consciousness of a hushed and strained attention, very foreign to the
+customary placid, not to say bovine, indifference of the ordinary country
+congregation. The preacher's voice was audible enough now, in good truth,
+though still under insufficient control. It roared, cracked upward,
+approaching a scream. Sentences trod on one another's heels, so rapid was
+his delivery; or bumped and jolted so overlaid was it with emphasis. He,
+dealt in ugly words, too--"lies, drunkenness, theft, profanity;" and
+worse still, "uncleanness, adultery, carnal debauchery." For not venial
+sins only, but mortal sins likewise were rife in Deadham, as he averred,
+matters of common knowledge and everyday occurrence--tolerated if not
+openly encouraged, callously winked at. The public conscience could
+hardly be said to exist, so indurated was it, so moribund through lack of
+stimulation and through neglect. Yet such wickedness, sooner or later,
+must call down the vengeance of an offended God. It would be taken upon
+these lawbreakers. Here or hereafter these evil-livers would receive the
+chastisement their deeds invited and deserved. Let no man deceive
+himself. God is just. He is also very terrible in judgment. Hell yawns
+for the impenitent.
+
+Breathless, he paused; and a subdued sigh, an instinctive shuffling of
+feet ran through the assembly.--Yet these were but generalities after
+all, often heard before, when you came to think, though seldom so
+forcibly put. Every man made liberal gift of such denunciations to his
+neighbours, rather than applied their lesson to himself. But Reginald
+Sawyer was merely gathering energy, gathering courage for more detailed
+assault. He felt nervous to the verge of collapse--a new and really
+horrible experience. His head was hot, his feet cold. The temptation
+simply and crudely to give in, bundle down the pulpit stairs and bolt,
+was contemptibly great. His eyesight played tricks on him. Below there,
+in the body of the church, the rows of faces ran together into irregular
+pink blots spread meaninglessly above the brown of the oaken pews, the
+brown, drab, and black, too, of their owners' Sunday best. Here and
+there a child's light frock or white hat intruded upon the prevailing
+neutral tints; as did, in a startling manner, Damaris Verity's
+russet-red plume and suit.
+
+Time and again, since he began his sermon, had that dash of rich colour
+drawn his reluctant attention. He recoiled from, oddly dreaded it--now
+more than ever, since to him it rather mercilessly focussed the subject
+and impending climax of his denunciatory address.
+
+The pause began to affect the waiting congregation, which stirred
+uneasily. Some one coughed. And Sawyer was a sufficiently practised
+speaker to know that, once you lose touch with an audience, it is next to
+impossible successfully to regain your ascendency over it. Unless he was
+prepared to accept ignominious defeat he must brace himself, or it would
+be too late. He abominated defeat. Therefore, summoning all his native
+combativeness, he took his own fear by the throat, straightened his
+manuscript upon the desk, and vehemently broke forth into speech.
+
+--Did his hearers deny or doubt the truth of his assertions, suppose that
+he spoke at random, or without realization of the heavy responsibility
+he incurred in advancing such accusations? They were in error, so he told
+them. He advanced no accusations which he could not justify by examples
+chosen from among themselves, from among residents in this parish. He
+would be false to his duty both to them--his present audience--and to his
+and their Creator, were he to abstain from giving those examples out of
+respect of persons. Other occupants of this pulpit might have--he feared
+had--allowed worldly considerations to influence and silence them.
+
+A nasty cut this, at the poor vicar-canon, increasingly a prey to
+distracted fidgets, sitting helpless in the chancel.
+
+But of such pusillanimity, such time-serving, he--Reginald
+Sawyer--scorned to be guilty. The higher placed the sinner, the more
+heinous the sin.--He would deal faithfully with all, since not only was
+the salvation of each one in jeopardy, but his own salvation was in peril
+likewise, inasmuch as, at the dread Last Assize, he would be required to
+give account of his stewardship in respect of this sinful place.
+
+Thus far Damaris had listened in deepening distaste. Surely the young man
+very much magnified his office, was in manner exaggerated, in matter
+aggressive and verbose? Notwithstanding its attempted solemnity and heat,
+his sermon seemed to be conventional, just a "way of talking," and a
+conceited one at that. But, as he proceeded to set forth his promised
+examples of local ill-living, distaste passed into bewilderment and
+finally into a sense of outrage, blank and absolute. He named no names,
+and wrapped his statements up in Biblical language. Yet they remained
+suggestive and significant enough. He spoke, surely, of those whose
+honour was dearest to her, whom she boundlessly loved. Under plea of
+rebuking vice, he laid bare the secrets, violated the sanctities of their
+private lives. Yet was not that incredible? All decencies of custom and
+usage forbade it, stamped such disclosure as unpermissible, fantastic. He
+must be mad, or she herself mad, mishearing, misconceiving him.
+
+"Adulterous father, bastard son--publican sheltering youthful offenders
+from healthy punishment in the interests of personal gain."--Of that last
+she made nothing, failed to follow it. But the rest?--
+
+It was true, too. But not as he represented it, all its tragic beauty,
+all the nobleness which tempered and, in a measure at least, discounted
+the great wrong of it, stripped away--leaving it naked, torn from its
+setting, without context and so without perspective. Against this not
+only her tenderness, but sense of justice, passionately fought. He made
+it monstrous and, in that far, untrue, as caricature is untrue, crying
+aloud for explanation and analysis. Yet who could explain? Circumstances
+of time and place rendered all protest impossible. Nothing could be done,
+nothing said. Thus her beloved persons were exposed, judged, condemned
+unheard, without opportunity of defence.
+
+And realizing this, realizing redress hopelessly barred, she cowered
+down, her head bowed, almost to the level of the marble couch whereon the
+figures of knight and lady reposed in the high serenity of love and
+death. Happier they than she, poor child, for her pride trailed in the
+dust, her darling romance of brother and sister and all the rare pieties
+of her heart, defiled by a shameful publicity, exposed for every Tom,
+Dick and Harry to paw over and sneer at!
+
+Horror of a crowd, which watches the infliction of some signal disgrace,
+tormented her imagination, moreover, to the temporary breaking of her
+spirit. Whether that crowd was, in the main, hostile or sympathetic
+mattered nothing. The fact that it silently sat there, silently observed,
+made every member of it, for the time, her enemy. Even the trusted
+servants just behind, comfortable comely Mary, soft Mrs. Cooper, the
+devoted Patch, were hateful to her as the rest. Their very loyalty--which
+she for no instant doubted--went only to fill the cup of her humiliation
+to the brim.
+
+Reginald Sawyer's voice continued; but what he said now she neither heard
+nor cared. Her martyrdom could hardly suffer augmentation, the whole
+world seemed against her, she set apart, pilloried.--But not alone.
+Faircloth was set apart, pilloried, also. And remembering this, her
+courage revived. The horror of the crowd lifted. For herself she could
+not fight; but for him she could fight, with strength and conviction, out
+of the greatness of her love for him, out of her recognition that the
+ignominy inflicted upon him was more bitter, more cruel, than any
+inflicted upon her. For those who dare, in a moment the worst can turn
+best.--She would make play with the freedom which this breach of
+convention, of social reticence, of moral discretion, conferred upon her.
+The preacher had gone far in demolition. She would go as far, and
+further, in construction, in restitution. Would openly acknowledge the
+bond which joined Faircloth to her and to her people, by openly claiming
+his protection now, in this hour of her disgrace and supreme dismay. She
+would offer no excuse, no apology. Only there should be no more attempted
+concealment or evasion of the truth on her part, no furtiveness in his
+and her relation. Once and for all she would make her declaration, cry it
+from the house-top in fearless yet tender pride.
+
+Damaris stood up, conspicuous in her red dress amid that rather drab
+assembly as a leaping flame. She turned about, fronting the perplexed and
+agitated congregation, her head carried high, her face austere for all
+its youthful softness, an heroic quality, something, indeed, superlative
+and grandiose in her bearing and expression, causing a shrinking in those
+who saw her and a certain sense of awe.
+
+Her eyes sought Faircloth again. Found him, and unfalteringly spoke with
+him, bidding him claim her as she, claimed him, bidding him come. Which
+bidding he obeyed; and that at the same rather splendid level of
+sentiment, worthily sustaining her abounding faith in him. For a touch of
+the heroic and superlative was present in his bearing and expression,
+also, as he came up the church between the well-filled pews--these
+tenanted, to left and right, by some who figured in his daily life,
+figured in his earliest recollections, by others, newcomers, to him, even
+by sight, barely known; yet each and all, irrespective of age, rank, and
+position, affecting his outlook and mental atmosphere in some particular,
+as every human personality does and must, with whom one's life, ever so
+transiently, is thrown. Had he had time to consider them, this cloud of
+witnesses might have proved disturbing even to his masterful will and
+steady nerve. But he had not time. There was for him--so perfectly--the
+single object, the one searching yet lovely call to answer, the one act
+to be performed.
+
+Reaching the front pew upon the gospel side, Darcy Faircloth took
+Damaris' outstretched hand. He looked her in the eyes, his own
+worshipful, ablaze at once with a great joy and a great anger; and then
+led her back, down the length of the aisle, through the west door into
+the liberty of the sunshine and the crisp northerly wind outside.
+
+Standing here, the houses and trees of the village lay below them. The
+whole glinting expanse of the Haven was visible right up to the town of
+Marychurch gathered about its long-backed Abbey, whose tower, tall and in
+effect almost spectral, showed against the purple ridges of forest and
+moorland beyond. Over the salt marsh in the valley, a flock of plovers
+dipped and wheeled, their backs and wide flapping wings black, till, in
+turning, their breasts and undersides flashed into snow and pearl.
+
+And because brother and sister, notwithstanding diversities of upbringing
+and of station, were alike children of the open rather than of cities,
+born to experiment, to travel and to seafaring round this ever-spinning
+globe, they instinctively took note of the extensive, keen though
+sun-gilded prospect--before breaking silence and giving voice to the
+emotion which possessed them--and, in so doing, found refreshment and a
+brave cleansing to their souls.
+
+Still holding Faircloth's hand, and still silent, her shoulder touching
+his now and again in walking, Damaris went down the sloping path, hoary
+lichen-stained head-and-foot stones set in the vivid churchyard grass--as
+yet unbleached by the cold of winter--on either side. The sense of his
+strength, of the fine unblemished vigour of his young manhood, here
+close beside her--so strangely her possession and portion of her natural
+inalienable heritage--filled her with confident security and with a
+restful, wondering calm. So that the shame publicly put on her to shed
+its bitterness, her horror of the watching crowd departed, fading out
+into unreality. Though still shaken, still quivering inwardly from the
+ordeal of the past hour, she already viewed that shame and horror as but
+accidents to be lived down and disregarded, by no means as essential
+elements in the adventurous and precious whole. Presently they would
+altogether lose their power to wound and to distress her, while this
+freedom and the closer union, gained by means of them, continued
+immutable and fixed.
+
+It followed that, when in opening the churchyard gate and holding it back
+for her to pass, Faircloth perforce let go her hand and, the spell of
+contact severed, found himself constrained to speak at last, saying:
+
+"You know you have done a mighty splendid, dangerous thing--no less than
+burned your boats--and that in the heat of generous impulse, blind,
+perhaps--I can't but fear so--to the heavy cost."
+
+Damaris could interrupt him, with quick, sweet defiance:
+
+"But there is no cost!"
+
+And, to drive home the sincerity of her disclaimer, and further reassure
+him, she took his hand again and held it for an instant close against her
+bosom, tears and laughter together present in her eyes.
+
+"Ah! you beautiful dear, you beautiful dear," Faircloth cried, brokenly,
+as in pain, somewhat indeed beside himself. "Before God, I come near
+blessing that blatant young fool and pharisee of a parson since he has
+brought me to this."
+
+Then he put her a little way from him, penetrated by fear lest the white
+love which--in all honour and reverence--he was bound to hold her in,
+should flush ever so faintly, red.
+
+"For, after all, it is up to me," he said, more to himself than to her,
+"to make very sure there isn't, and never--by God's mercy--shall be,
+any cost."
+
+And with that--for the avoidance of the congregation, now streaming
+rather tumultuously out of church--they went on across the village green,
+hissed at by slow waddling, hard-eyed, most conceited geese, to the lane
+which leads down to the causeway and warren skirting the river-bank.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WHEREIN MISS FELICIA VERITY CONCLUSIVELY SHOWS WHAT SPIRIT SHE IS OF
+
+
+Her attraction consisted in her transparency, in the eager simplicity
+with which she cast her home-made nets and set her innocuous springes.
+To-day Miss Felicia was out to wing the Angel of Peace, and crowd that
+celestial messenger into the arms of Damaris and Theresa Bilson
+collectively and severally. Such was the major interest of the hour. But,
+for Miss Felicia the oncoming of middle-age by no means condemned the
+lesser pleasures of life to nullity. Hence the minor interest of the hour
+centred in debate as to whether or not the thermometer justified her
+wearing a coat of dark blue silk and cloth, heavily trimmed with ruchings
+and passementerie, reaching to her feet. A somewhat sumptuous garment
+this, given her by Sir Charles and Damaris last winter in Madrid. She
+fancied herself in it greatly, both for the sake of the dear donors, and
+because the cut of it was clever, disguising the over-narrowness of her
+maypole-like figure and giving her a becoming breadth and fulness.
+
+She decided in favour of the coveted splendour; and at about a
+quarter-past twelve strolled along the carriage-drive on her way to the
+goose green and the village street. There, or thereabouts, unless her
+plot lamentably miscarried, she expected to meet her niece and that
+niece's ex-governess-companion, herded in amicable converse by the
+pinioned Angel of Peace. Her devious and discursive mind fluttered to and
+fro, meanwhile, over a number of but loosely connected subjects.
+
+Of precisely what, upon a certain memorable occasion, had taken place
+between her brother, Sir Charles, and poor Theresa--causing the latter
+to send up urgent signals of distress to which she, Miss Felicia,
+instantly responded--she still was ignorant. Theresa had, she feared,
+been just a wee bit flighty, leaving Damaris unattended while herself
+mildly gadding. But such dereliction of duty was insufficient to account
+for the arbitrary fashion in which she had been sent about her business,
+literally--the word wasn't pretty--chucked out! Miss Felicia always
+suspected there must be _something_, she would say _worse_--it sounded
+harsh--but something _more_ than merely that. Her interpretations of
+peculiar conduct were liable to run in terms of the heart. Had Theresa,
+poor thing, by chance formed a hopeless attachment?--Hopeless, of course,
+almost ludicrously so; yet what more natural, more comprehensible,
+Charles being who and what he was? Not that he would, in the faintest
+degree, lend himself to such misplaced affection. Of that he was
+incapable. The bare idea was grotesque. He, of course, was guiltless.
+But, assuming there _was_ a feeling on Theresa's side, wasn't she equally
+guiltless? She could not help being fascinated.--Thus Miss Felicia was
+bound to acquit both. Alike they left the court without a stain on their
+respective characters.
+
+Not for worlds would she ever dream of worrying Charles by attempting to
+reintroduce poor Theresa to his notice. But with Damaris it was
+different. The idea that any persons of her acquaintance were at sixes
+and sevens, on bad terms, when, with a little good will on their part
+and tactful effort upon hers, they might be on pleasant ones was to her
+actively afflicting. To drop an old friend, or even one not
+conspicuously friendly if bound to you by associations and habit,
+appeared to her an offence against corporate humanity, an actual however
+fractional lowering of the temperature of universal charity. The loss to
+one was a loss to all--in some sort. Therefore did she run to adjust, to
+smooth, to palliate.
+
+Charles was away--it so neatly happened--and Theresa Bilson here, not, it
+must be owned, altogether without Miss Felicia's connivance. If darling
+Damaris still was possessed of a hatchet she must clearly be given, this
+opportunity to bury it. To have that weapon safe underground would be,
+from every point of view, so very much nicer.
+
+At this point in her meditations beneath the trees bordering the carriage
+drive, their bare tops swaying in the breeze and bright sunshine, Miss
+Felicia fell to contrasting the present exhilarating morning with that
+dismally rainy one, just over three years ago, when--regardless of her
+sister, Mrs. Cowden's remonstrances--she had come here from Paulton Lacy
+in response to Theresa's signals of distress. Just at the elbow of the
+drive, so she remembered, she had met a quite astonishingly good-looking
+young man, brown-gold bearded, his sou'wester and oilskins shining with
+wet. She vaguely recalled some talk about him with her brother, Sir
+Charles, afterwards during luncheon.--What was it?--Oh! yes, of course,
+it was he who had rescued Damaris when she was lost out on the Bar, and
+brought her home down the tide-river by boat. She had often wanted to
+know more about him, for he struck her at the time as quite out of the
+common, quite remarkably attractive. But on the only occasion since when
+she had mentioned the subject, Damaris drew in her horns and became
+curiously uncommunicative. It was all connected, of course, with the dear
+girl's illness and the disagreeable episode of Theresa's dismissal.--How
+all the more satisfactory, then, that the Theresa business, in any case,
+was at this very hour in process of being set right! Miss Felicia had
+advised Theresa how to act--to speak to Damaris quite naturally and
+affectionately, taking her good-will for granted. Damaris would be
+charming to her, she felt convinced.
+
+Felicia Verity held the fronts of her long blue coat together, since the
+wind sported with them rather roughly, and went forward with her quick,
+wavering gait.
+
+It was a pity Damaris did not marry she sometimes felt. Of course,
+Charles would miss her quite terribly. Their love for one another was so
+delightful, so really unique. On his account she was glad.--And yet--with
+a sigh, while the colour in her thin cheeks heightened a little--lacking
+marriage a woman's life is rather incomplete. Not that she herself had
+reason for complaint, with all the affection showered upon her! The last
+two years, in particular, had been abundantly blessed thanks to Charles
+and Damaris. She admired them, dear people, with all her warm heart and
+felt very grateful to them.
+
+Here it should be registered, in passing, that the resilience of Felicia
+Verity's inherent good-breeding saved her gratitude from any charge of
+grovelling, as it saved her many enthusiasms from any charge of
+sloppiness. Both, if exaggerated, still stood squarely, even gallantly
+upon their feet.
+
+Her mind switched back to the ever fertile question of the married and
+the single state. She often wondered why Charles never espoused a second
+wife. He would have liked a son surely? But then, were it possible to
+find a fault in him, it would be that of a little coldness, a little
+loftiness in his attitude towards women. He was too far above them in
+intellect and experience, she supposed, and through all the remarkable
+military commands he had held, administrative posts he had occupied,
+quite to come down to their level. In some ways Damaris was very like
+him--clever, lofty too at moments. Possibly this accounted for her
+apparent indifference to affairs of the heart and to lovers. Anyhow, she
+had ample time before her still in relation to all that.
+
+Miss Felicia passed into the road. About fifty yards distant she saw the
+servants--Mary, Mrs. Cooper and Patch--standing close together in a
+quaint, solemn, little bunch. The two small Patches circled round the
+said bunch, patiently expectant, not being admitted evidently to whatever
+deliberations their elders and betters had in hand.
+
+Felicia Verity's relations with the servants were invariably excellent.
+Yet, finding them in mufti, outside the boundaries of her brother's
+demesne thus, she was conscious of a certain modesty, hesitating alike to
+intrude upon their confabulations and to pass onward without a trifle
+amiable of talk. She advanced, smiling, nodded to the two women, then--
+
+"A delicious day, isn't it, Patch?" she said, adding, for lack of a more
+pertinent remark--"What kind of sermon did the new curate, Mr. Sawyer,
+give you?--A good one, I hope?"
+
+A pause followed this guileless question, during which Mary looked on the
+ground, Mrs. Cooper murmured: "Oh! dear, oh, dear!" under her breath, and
+Patch swallowed visibly before finding voice to reply:
+
+"One, I regret to say, ma'am, he never ought to have preached."
+
+"Poor young man!" she laughed it off. "You're a terribly severe critic,
+I'm afraid, Patch. Probably he was nervous."
+
+"And reason enough. You might think Satan himself stood at his elbow, the
+wicked things he said."
+
+This statement, coming from the mild and cow-like Mrs. Cooper, caused
+Felicia Verity the liveliest surprise. She glanced enquiringly from one
+to the other of the little group, reading constraint and hardly repressed
+excitement in the countenance of each. Their aspect and behaviour struck
+her, in fact, as singular to the point of alarm.
+
+"Mary," she asked, a trifle breathlessly, "has anything happened? Where
+is Miss Damaris?"
+
+"Hadn't she got back to The Hard, ma'am, before you came out?"
+
+"No--why should she? You and the other servants always reach home first."
+
+"Miss Damaris went out before the rest," Mrs. Cooper broke forth in
+dolorous widowed accents. "And no wonder, pore dear young lady, was it,
+Mr. Patch? My heart bled for her, ma'am, that it did."
+
+Miss Felicia, gentle and eager, so pathetically resembling yet not
+resembling her famous brother, grew autocratic, stern as him
+almost, for once.
+
+"And you allowed Miss Damaris to leave church alone--she felt unwell,
+I suppose--none of you accompanied her? I don't understand it at
+all," she said.
+
+"Young Captain Faircloth went out with Miss Damaris. She wished it,
+ma'am," Mary declared, heated and resentful at the unmerited rebuke. "She
+as good as called to him to come and take her out of church. It wasn't
+for us to interfere, so we held back."
+
+"Captain Faircloth? But this becomes more and more extraordinary! Who is
+Captain Faircloth?"
+
+"Ah! there you touch it, you must excuse my saying, ma'am." Mrs.
+Cooper gasped.
+
+But at this juncture, Patch, rising to the height of masculine
+responsibility, flung himself gallantly--and how unwillingly--into the
+breach. He was wounded in his respect and respectability alike, wounded
+for the honour of the family whom he had so long and faithfully served.
+He was fairly cut to the quick--while these three females merely darkened
+judgment by talking all at cross purposes and all at once. Never had the
+solid, honest coachman found himself in a tighter or, for that matter, in
+anything like so tight a place. But, looking in the direction of the
+village, black of clothing, heavy of walk and figure, he espied, as he
+trusted, approaching help.
+
+"If you please, ma'am," he said, touching his black bowler as he
+spoke, "I see Canon Horniblow coming along the road. I think it would
+be more suitable for him to give you an account of what has passed.
+He'll know how to put it with--with the least unpleasantness to all
+parties. It isn't our place--Mrs. Cooper's, Mary's, or mine--if you'll
+pardon my making so free with my opinion, to mention any more of
+what's took place."
+
+Felicia Verity, now thoroughly frightened, darted forward. The fronts of
+her blue coat again flew apart, and that rich garment stood out in a
+prodigious frill around and behind her from the waist, as she leaned on
+the wind, almost running in her agitation and haste.
+
+"My dear Canon," she cried, "I am in such anxiety. I learn something has
+happened to my niece, who I had come to meet. Our good servants are so
+distractingly mysterious. They refer me to you. Pray relieve my
+uncertainty and suspense."
+
+But, even while she spoke, Miss Felicia's anxiety deepened, for the
+kindly, easy-going clergyman appeared to suffer, like the servants, from
+some uncommon shock. His large fleshy nose and somewhat pendulous
+cheeks were a mottled, purplish red. Anger and deprecation struggled in
+his glance.
+
+"I was on my way to The Hard," he began, "to express my regrets--offer my
+apologies would hardly be too strong a phrase--to your niece, Miss
+Verity, and to yourself. For I felt compelled, without any delay, to
+dissociate myself from the intemperate procedure of my colleague--of my
+curate. He has used, or rather misused, his official position, has
+grievously misused the privileges of the pulpit--the pulpit of our parish
+church--to attack the reputation of private individuals and resuscitate
+long-buried scandals."
+
+The speaker was, unquestionably, greatly distressed. Miss Felicia,
+though more than ever bewildered, felt for him warmly. It pained her
+excessively to observe how his large hands clasped and unclasped, how
+his loose lips worked.
+
+"Let me assure you," he went on, "though I trust that is superfluous--"
+
+"I am certain it is, dear Dr. Horniblow," she feelingly declared.
+
+"Thanks," he replied. "You are most kind, most indulgent to me, Miss
+Verity.--Superfluous, I would say, to assure you that my colleague
+adopted this deplorable course without my knowledge or sanction. He
+sprang it on me like a bomb-shell. As a Christian my conscience, as a
+gentleman my sense of fair play, condemns his action."
+
+"Yes--yes--I sympathize.--I am convinced you are incapable of any
+indiscretion, any unkindness, in the pulpit or out of it. But why, my
+dear Canon, apologize to us? How can this unfortunate sermon affect me or
+my niece? How can the scandal you hint at in any respect concern us?"
+
+"Because," he began, that mottling of purple increasingly deforming his
+amiable face.--And there words failed him, incontinently he stuck. He
+detested strong language, but--heavens and earth--how could he put it to
+her, as she gazed at him with startled, candid eyes, innocent of guile as
+those of a babe? Only too certainly no word had reached her of the
+truth. The good man groaned in spirit for, like Patch, he found himself
+in a place of quite unexampled tightness, and with no hope of shunting
+the immense discomfort of it on to alien shoulders such as had been
+granted the happier Patch.
+
+"Because," he began again, only to suffer renewed agony of wordlessness.
+In desperation he shifted his ground.
+
+"You have heard, perhaps, that your niece, Miss Damaris, left the church
+before the conclusion of the sermon? I do not blame her"--
+
+He waved a fatherly hand. Miss Verity acquiesced.
+
+"Or rather was led out by--by Captain Faircloth--a young officer in the
+mercantile marine, whose abilities and successful advance in his
+profession this village has every reason to respect."
+
+He broke off.
+
+"Let us walk on towards The Hard. Pray let us walk on.--Has no rumour
+ever reached you, Miss Verity, regarding this young man?"
+
+The wildest ideas flitted through Miss Felicia's brain.
+
+--The figure in shiny oilskins--yet preposterous, surely?--After all, an
+affair of the heart--misplaced affection--Damaris?--Did this account for
+the apparent indifference?
+
+--How intensely interesting; yet how unwise.--How--but she must keep her
+own counsel. The wind, now at her back, glued the blue coat
+inconveniently against and even between her legs, unceremoniously
+whisking her forward.
+
+"Rumours--oh, none," she protested.
+
+"None?" he echoed despairingly. "Pray let us walk on."
+
+A foolish urgency on his part this, she felt, since she was already
+almost on the run.
+
+"None that, by birth, Captain Faircloth is somewhat nearly related to
+your family--to your--your brother, Sir Charles, in fact?"
+
+There, the incubus was off his straining chest at last! He felt easier,
+capable of manipulating the situation to some extent, smoothing down its
+rather terrible ascerbities.
+
+"Such connections do," he hastened to add, "as we must regretfully
+admit, exist even in the highest, the most exalted circles.
+Irregularities of youth, doubtlessly deeply repented of. I repeat sins
+of youth, at which only the sinless--and they, alas! to the shame of my
+sex are lamentably few--can be qualified to cast a stone.--You, you
+follow me?"
+
+"You mean me to understand"--
+
+"Yes, yes--exactly so--to understand that this young man is
+reputed to be"--
+
+"Thank you, my dear Canon--thank you," Felicia Verity here interposed
+quickly, yet with much simple dignity, for on a sudden she became
+singularly unflurried and composed.
+
+"I do, I believe, follow you," she continued.--"You have discharged your
+difficult mission with a delicacy and consideration for which I am
+grateful; but I am unequal to discussing the subject in further detail
+just now.--To me, you know, my brother is above criticism. Whatever
+incidents may--may belong to former years, I accept without cavil or
+question, in silence--dear Dr. Horniblow--in silence. His wishes upon
+this matter--should he care to confide them to me--and those of my
+niece, will dictate my conduct to--towards my nephew, Captain
+Faircloth.--Believe me, in all sincerity, I thank you. I am very much
+indebted to you for the information you have communicated to me. It
+simplifies my position. And now," she gave him her hand, "will you pardon
+my asking you to leave me?"
+
+Walking slowly--for he felt played out, pretty thoroughly done for, as he
+put it, and beat--back to the vicarage and his belated Sunday dinner:--
+
+"And of such are the Kingdom of Heaven," James Horniblow said to
+himself--perhaps truly.
+
+He also said other things, distinctly other things, in which occurred the
+name of Reginald Sawyer whose days as curate of Deadham were numbered. If
+he did not resign voluntarily, well then, pressure must, very certainly,
+be employed to make him resign.
+
+Meanwhile that blue-coated, virginal member of the Kingdom of Heaven
+sped homeward at the top of her speed. She was conscious of immense
+upheaval. Never had she felt so alive, so on the spot. The portals of
+highest drama swung wide before her. She hastened to enter and pour forth
+the abounding treasures of her sympathy at the feet of the actors in this
+most marvellous piece. That her own part in it must be insignificant,
+probably not even a speaking one, troubled her not the least. She was out
+for them, not for herself. It was, also, characteristic of Miss Felicia
+that she felt in nowise shocked. Not the ethical, still less the social
+aspects of the drama affected her, but only its human ones. These dear
+people had suffered, and she hadn't known it. They suffered still. She
+enclosed them in arms of compassion.--If to the pure all things are pure,
+Felicia Verity's purity at this juncture radiantly stood the test. And
+that, not through puritanical shutting of the eyes or juggling with fact.
+As she declared to Canon Horniblow, she accepted the incident without
+question or cavil--for her brother. For herself, any possibility of
+stepping off the narrow path of virtue, and exploring the alluring,
+fragrant thickets disposed to left of it and to right, had never, ever so
+distantly, occurred to her.
+
+She arrived at The Hard with a bright colour and beating heart. Crossed
+the hall and waited at the drawing-room door. A man's voice was audible
+within, low-toned and grave, but very pleasant. It reminded her curiously
+of Charles--Charles long ago on leave from India, lightening the heavy
+conventionalities of Canton Magna with his brilliant, enigmatic, and--to
+her--all too fugitive presence. Harriet had never really appreciated
+Charles--though she was dazzled by his fame at intervals--didn't really
+appreciate him to this day. Well, the loss was hers and the gain
+indubitably Felicia's, since the elder sister's obtuseness had left the
+younger sister a free field.--At thought of which Felicia softly laughed.
+
+Again she listened to the man's voice--her brother Charles's delightful
+young voice. It brought back the glamour of her girlhood, of other
+voices which had mingled with his, of dances, picnics, cricket matches,
+days with the hounds. She felt strangely moved, transported; also
+strangely shy--so that she debated retirement. Did not, of course,
+retire, but went into the drawing-room with a gentle rush, a dart
+between the stumpy pillars.
+
+"I hoped that I should find you both," she said. "Yes," to Damaris'
+solemn and enquiring eyes--"I happened to meet our good, kind Canon and
+have a little conversation with him. I hope"--to Faircloth--"you and I
+may come to know one another better, know one another as friends. You are
+not going?--No, indeed, you must stay to luncheon. It would grieve
+me--and I think would grieve my brother Charles also, if you refused to
+break bread in this house."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DEALING WITH EMBLEMS, OMENS AND DEMONSTRATIONS
+
+
+Deadham resembled most country parishes in this, that, while revelling in
+internal dissensions, when attacked from without its inhabitants promptly
+scrapped every vendetta and, for the time being, stood back to back
+against the world.
+
+As one consequence of such parochial solidarity, the village gentry set
+in a steady stream towards The Hard on the Monday afternoon following
+the historic Sunday already chronicled. Commander and Mrs. Battye
+called. Captain and Mrs. Taylor called, bringing with them their
+daughter Louisa, a tight-lipped, well instructed High School mistress,
+of whom her parents stood--one couldn't but notice it--most wholesomely
+in awe. As is the youthful cuckoo in the nest of the hedge sparrow, so
+was Louisa Taylor to the authors of her being.--Mrs. Horniblow called
+also, flanked by her two girls, May and Doris--plain, thick-set,
+energetic, well-meaning young persons, whom their shrewd mother loved,
+sheltered, rallied, and cherished, while perfectly aware of their
+limitations as to beauty and to brains. Immediately behind her slipped
+in Mrs. Cripps. The doctor abstained, conscious of having put a match to
+the fuse which had exploded yesterday's astounding homiletic torpedo.
+The whole affair irritated him to the point of detestable ill-temper.
+Still, if only to throw dust in the public eye, the house of Cripps must
+be represented. He therefore deputed the job--like so many another
+ungrateful one--to his forlorn-looking and red-eyed spouse. This vote of
+confidence, if somewhat crudely proposed and seconded, was still so
+evidently sincere and kindly meant that Damaris and Miss Felicia felt
+constrained to accept it in good part.
+
+Conversation ran upon the weather, the crops, the migratory wild fowl
+now peopling the Haven, the Royal Family--invariably a favourite topic
+this, in genteel circles furthest removed from the throne--in anecdotes
+of servants and of pets interspersed with protests against the rise in
+butcher Cleave's prices, the dullness of the newspapers and the
+surprising scarcity of eggs.--Ran on any and every subject, in short,
+save that of sermons preached by curates enamoured of the Decalogue.
+
+Alone--saving and excepting Dr. Cripps--did the Miss Minetts fail to put
+in an appearance. This of necessity, since had not they, figuratively
+speaking, warmed the viper in their bosoms, cradled the assassin upon
+their hearth? They were further handicapped, in respect of any
+demonstration, by the fact of Theresa Bilson's presence in their midst.
+Owing to the general combustion, Miss Felicia and the Peace Angel's joint
+mission had gone by the wall. Theresa was still an exile from The Hard,
+and doomed to remain so as the event proved. With that remarkable
+power--not uncommon in her sex--of transmuting fact, granted the healing
+hand of time, from defeat to personal advantage, she had converted her
+repulse by Sir Charles Verity into a legend of quite flattering quality.
+She had left The Hard because--But--
+
+"She must not be asked to give chapter and verse. The position had been
+_extremely_ delicate. Even now she could barely speak of it--she had gone
+through too much. To be more explicit"--she bridled--"would trench upon
+the immodest, almost. But just _this_ she _could_ say--she withdrew from
+The Hard three years ago, because she saw withdrawal would be best for
+_others_. Their peace of mind had been her object."
+
+The above guarded confidences the Miss Minetts, hanging upon her lips,
+received with devout admiration and fully believed. And, the best of it
+was, Theresa had come by now, thanks to frequent rehearsal, fully to
+believe this version herself. At the present juncture it had its
+convenience, since she could declare her allegiance to her former
+employer unimpaired. Thereby was she at liberty to join in the local
+condemnation of Reginald Sawyer and his sermon. She did so with an
+assumption of elegant, if slightly hysterical, omniscience. This was not
+without its practical side. She regretted her inability to meet him at
+meals. In consequence the Miss Minetts proposed he should be served in
+his own sitting-room, until such time as it suited him to find another
+place of residence than the Grey House. For their allegiance went on all
+fours with Theresa's. It was also unimpaired. Propriety had been outraged
+on every hand; matters, heretofore deemed unmentionable, rushed into the
+forefront of knowledge and conversation; yet never had they actually
+enjoyed themselves so greatly. The sense of being a storm
+centre--inasmuch as they harboured the viper assassin--produced in
+them an unexampled militancy. Latent sex-antagonism revealed itself.
+The man, by common consent was down; and, being down, the Miss Minetts
+jumped on him, pounded him, if terms so vulgar are permissible in
+respect for ladies so refined. For every sin of omission, committed
+against their womanhood by the members of his sex, they made him
+scapegoat--unconsciously it is true, but effectively none the less. From
+being his slaves they became his tormentors. Never was young fellow more
+taken aback. Such revulsions of human feeling are instructive--deplorable
+or diverting according as you view it.
+
+Meanwhile that portion of the local gentry aforesaid, whom awkward
+personal predicament--as in the case of Dr. Cripps and the Miss
+Minetts--did not preclude from visiting The Hard, having called early on
+Monday afternoon also left early, being anxious to prove their civility
+of purest water, untainted by self-seeking, by ulterior greed of tea and
+cakes. It followed that Damaris found herself relieved of their somewhat
+embarrassed, though kindly and well-intentioned, presence before sunset.
+And of this she was glad, since the afternoon had been fruitful of
+interests far more intimate and vital in character.
+
+While Captain and Mrs. Taylor, with their highly superior offspring
+Louisa, still held the floor, Damaris received a telegram from her
+father announcing a change of plans involving his immediate return.
+
+"Send to meet the seven-thirty at Marychurch," so the pink paper
+instructed her. "Carteret comes with me. When we arrive will explain."
+
+On reception of the above, her first thought was of the letter forwarded
+yesterday from the India Office, bearing the signature of the Secretary
+of State. And close on the heels of that thought, looking over its
+shoulder, indeed, in the effort--which she resisted--to claim priority,
+was the thought of the dear man with the blue eyes about to be a guest,
+once again, under this roof. This gave her a little thrill, a little
+gasp, wrapping her away to the borders of sad inattention to Louisa
+Taylor's somewhat academic discourse.--The girl's English was altogether
+too grammatical for entire good-breeding. In that how very far away from
+Carteret's!--Damaris tried to range herself with present company. But the
+man with the blue eyes indubitably held the centre of the stage. She wore
+the pearls to-day he gave her at St. Augustin. In what spirit did he
+come?--She hoped in the earlier one, that of the time when she so
+completely trusted him. For his counsel, dared she claim it in that
+earlier spirit, would be of inestimable value just now. She so badly
+needed someone in authority to advise with as to the events of yesterday,
+both in their malign and their beneficent aspects. Aunt Felicia had risen
+to the height of her capacity--dear thing, had been exquisite; but she
+would obey orders rather than issue them. Her office was not to lead, but
+rather to be led. And that the events of yesterday opened a new phase of
+her own and Faircloth's relation to one another appeared beyond dispute.
+Where exactly did the curve of duty towards her father touch that
+relation, run parallel with or intersect it? She felt perplexed.
+
+After tea, Miss Felicia having vanished on some affair of her
+own--Damaris asked no question, but supposed it not unconnected with the
+now, since Sir Charles was about to return, permanently exiled
+Theresa--our maiden went upstairs, in the tender evening light, on
+domestic cares intent. She wished to assure herself that the chintz
+bedroom, opening off the main landing and overlooking the lawn and front
+garden, had been duly made ready for Colonel Carteret. She took a
+somewhat wistful pleasure in silently ministering to his possible small
+needs in the matter of sufficient wealth of towels, candles and soap. She
+lengthened out the process. Lingered, rearranged the ornaments upon the
+mantelpiece, the bunch of sweet-leafed geranium--as yet unshrivelled by
+frost--and belated roses, placed in a vase upon the toilet-table.
+
+In so doing she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror, and paused,
+studying it. Her looks were not at their best. She was wan.--That might,
+in part, be owing to the waning light. Around her eyes were dark circles,
+making them appear unnaturally large and solemn. So yesterday's emotions
+had left their mark! The nervous strain had been considerable and she
+showed it. One cannot drink the cup of shame, however undeserved, with
+physical any more than with mental impunity. She still felt a little
+shattered, but hoped neither her father nor Carteret would remark her
+plight. If the whole affair of yesterday could, in its objectionable
+aspects, be kept from Sir Charles's knowledge she would be infinitely
+glad. And why shouldn't it be? Without permission, Aunt Felicia certainly
+would not tell. Neither would the servants. The parish had given
+testimony, this afternoon, both of its good faith and its discretion.
+
+So much for the objectionable side of the matter. But there was another
+side, far from objectionable, beautiful in sentiment and in promise. And,
+still viewing her reflection in the glass, she saw her eyes lose their
+solemnity, lighten with a smile her lips repeated. This was where
+Carteret's advice would be of so great value. How much ought she to tell
+her father of all that?
+
+For, from amidst the shame, the anger, the strain and effort, Faircloth
+showed, to her thinking, triumphant, satisfying alike to her affection
+and her taste. In no respect would she have asked him other than he was.
+
+She moved across to the window, and sat down there, looking out over the
+garden and battery, with its little cannons, to the Bar, and sea beyond
+which melted into the dim primrose and silver of the horizon. Such colour
+as existed was soft, soothing, the colour of a world of dreams, of
+subdued and voiceless fancies. It was harmonious, restful as an
+accompaniment to vision.--Damaris let it lap against her consciousness,
+encircling, supporting this, as water laps, also encircling and
+supporting--while caressing, mysteriously whispering against a boat's
+side--a boat lying at its moorings, swinging gently upon an even
+keel.--And her vision was of Faircloth, exclusively of him, just now.
+
+For he had stayed to luncheon yesterday. A meal, to him in a sense
+sacred, as being the first eaten by him in his father's house. So
+graciously invited, how, indeed, could he do otherwise than stay? And,
+the initial strangeness, the inherent wonder of that sacred character
+wearing off, he found voice and talked not without eloquence. Talked of
+his proper element, the sea, gaining ease and self-possession from the
+magnitude and manifold enchantments of his theme.
+
+To him, as to all true-born sailor-men--so Damaris divined--the world is
+made of water, with but accident of land. Impeding, inconvenient accident
+at that, too often blocking the passage across or through, and
+constraining you to steer a foolishly, really quite inordinately
+divergent course. Under this obstructive head the two Americas offend
+direfully, sprawling their united strength wellnigh from pole to pole.
+The piercing of their central isthmus promised some mitigation of this
+impertinence of emergent matter; though whether in his, the speaker's
+lifetime, remained--so he took it--open to doubt. The "roaring forties,"
+and grim blizzard-ridden Fuegian Straits would long continue, as he
+feared, to bar the way to the Pacific. Not that his personal fancy
+favoured West so much as East. Not into the sunset but into the sunrising
+did he love to sail some goodly black-hulled ship.--And as he talked,
+more especially at his mention of this eastward voyaging, those manifold
+enchantments of his calling stirred Damaris' imagination, making her
+eyes bright as the fabled eyes of danger, and fathomless as well.
+
+But the best came later. For, Mary having served coffee, Miss Felicia,
+making an excuse of letters to be written, with pretty tact left them to
+themselves. And Faircloth, returning after closing the door behind her
+fluttering, gently eager figure, paused behind Damaris' chair.--Jacobean,
+cane-panelled, with high-carved back and arms to it. Thomas Clarkson
+Verity had unquestionably a nice taste in furniture.--The young
+sea-captain rested his right hand on the dark terminal scroll-work, and
+bending down, laid his left hand upon Damaris' hand, covering it as it
+lay on the white damask table-cloth.
+
+"Have I done what I should, and left undone what I shouldn't do, my dear
+and lovely sister?" he asked her, half-laughing and half-abashed. "It's a
+tricky business being here, you know--to put it no higher than that. And
+it might, with truth, be put far higher. I get so horribly fearful of
+letting you down in any way--however trivial--before other people. I
+balance on a knife-edge all the while."
+
+"Have no silly fears of that sort," Damaris said quickly, a trifle
+distressed.
+
+For it plucked at her sisterly pride in him that he should, even by
+implication, debase himself, noting inequality of station between himself
+and her. She held the worldly aspects of the matter in contempt. They
+angered her, so that she impulsively banished reserve. Leaning forward,
+she bent her head, putting her lips to the image of the flying
+sea-bird--which so intrigued her loving curiosity--and those three
+letters tattooed in blue and crimson upon the back of his hand.
+
+"There--there"--she murmured, as soothing a child--"does this
+convince you?"
+
+But here broke off, her heart contracting with a spasm of wondering
+tenderness. For under that pressure of her lips she felt his flesh quiver
+and start. She looked up at the handsome bearded face, so close above
+her, in swift enquiry, the potion--as once before--troubling her that, in
+touching this quaint stigmata, she inflicted bodily suffering. And, as
+on that earlier occasion, asked the question:
+
+"Ah! but have I hurt you?"
+
+Faircloth shook his head, smiling. Words failed him just then and he went
+pale beneath the overlay of clear brown sunburn.
+
+"Then tell me what this stands for?" she said, being herself strangely
+moved, and desirous to lower the temperature of her own emotion--possibly
+of his as well. "Tell me what it means."
+
+"Just a boy's fear and a boy's superstition--a bit morbid, both of them,
+perhaps--that is as I see things now. For I hold one should leave one's
+body as it pleased the Almighty to make it, unblemished by semi-savage
+decorations which won't wash off."
+
+Faircloth moved away, drew his chair up nearer the head of the table,
+the corner between them, so that his hand could if desire prompted again
+find hers.
+
+"By the way, I'm so glad you don't wear ear-rings, Damaris," he said.
+"They belong to the semi-savage order of decoration. I hate them. You
+never will wear them? Promise me that."
+
+And she had promised, somewhat diverted by his tone of authority and of
+insistence.
+
+"But about this?" she asked him, indicating the blue and crimson symbol.
+
+"As I say, fruit of fear and superstition--a pretty pair in which to put
+one's faith! All the same, they went far to save my life, I fancy--for
+which I thank them mightily being here, with you, to-day."
+
+And he told her--softening the uglier details, as unfit for a
+gently-nurtured woman's hearing--a brutal story of the sea. Of a sailing
+ship becalmed in tropic waters, waiting, through long blistering days and
+breathless sweltering nights, for the breeze which wouldn't come--a
+floating hell, between glaring skies and glaring ocean--and of bullyings,
+indignities and torments devised by a brain diseased by drink.
+
+"But was there no one to interfere, no one to protect you?" Damaris
+cried, aghast.
+
+"A man's master in his own ship," Faircloth answered. "And short of
+mutiny there's no redress. Neither officers nor men had a stomach for
+mutiny. They were a poor, cowed lot. Till this drunken madness came on
+him he had been easy going enough. They supposed, when it passed, he'd
+be so again. And then as he reserved his special attentions for me,
+they were willing to grin and bear it--or rather let me bear it, just
+stupidly letting things go. It was my first long voyage. I'd been lucky
+in my skippers so far, and was a bit soft still. A bit conceited, I
+don't doubt, as well. He swore he'd break my spirit--for my own good,
+of course--and he came near succeeding.--But Damaris, Damaris, dear,
+don't take it to heart so. What does it matter? It did me no lasting
+harm, and was all over and done with--would have been forgotten too,
+but for the rather silly sign of it--years and years ago. Let us talk
+no more about it."
+
+"Oh, no!--go on--please, go on," she brokenly prayed him.
+
+So he told her, further, how at Singapore, the outward voyage at last
+ended, he was tempted to desert; or, better still, put an end, once and
+for all, to the whole black business of living. And how, meditating on
+the methods of such drastic deliverance--sitting in the palm-shaded
+verandah of a fly-blown little eating-house, kept by a monkey-faced,
+squint-eyed Japanese--he happened to pick up a Calcutta newspaper. He
+read its columns mechanically, without interest or understanding, his
+mind still working on methods of death, when a name leapt at him weighted
+with personal meaning.
+
+"It hit me," Faircloth said, "full between the eyes, knocking the
+cry-baby stuff out of me, and knocking stuff of very different order in.
+For I wanted something stronger than mother-love--precious though that
+is--to brace me up and put some spunk into me just then.--Sir Charles was
+campaigning in Afghanistan, and this Calcutta paper sang his praises to a
+rousing tune. Lamented the loss of him to the Indian Government, and the
+lack of appreciation and support of him at home which induced him to take
+foreign service. Can't you imagine how all this about a great soldier,
+whose blood after all ran in my veins, pulled me clean up out of the
+slime, where suicide tempted the soft side of me, into another world?--A
+sane world, in which a man can make good, if only he's pluck to hold
+on.--Yes, he saved me; or at all events roused the spirit in me which
+makes for salvation, and which that drunken brute had almost killed. But,
+because I was only a boy as yet, with a boy's queer instincts and
+extravagancies, I made the monkey-faced, Japanese eating-house
+keeper--who added artistic tattooing to other and less reputable ways of
+piling up a fortune--fix the sea-bird, for faith in my profession--and
+those three initials of my own name and a name not altogether my own,
+right here.--Fix them for remembrance and for a warning of which I could
+never get free. Always I should be forced to see it. And others must see
+it too. Through it my identity--short of mutilation--was indestructibly
+established. From that identity, henceforward, there wasn't any possible
+running away."
+
+Faircloth had ended on a note of exultation, calmly sounded yet profound.
+
+And upon that final note Damaris dwelt now, sitting on the chintz-covered
+window-seat of the room which Carteret would to-night inhabit. She went
+through the cruel story again, while the transparent twilight drew its
+elfin veil over all things, outdoor and in.
+
+The crescent moon, a slender, upright wisp of a thing, climbed the
+southern sky. And Damaris' soul was strangely satisfied, for the story,
+if cruel, was one of restitution and the healing of a wrong. To her
+father--his father--the boy had turned in that bad hour, which very
+perfectly made for peace between them. The curve of her duty to the one,
+as she now apprehended, in nowise cut across or deflected the curve of
+her duty towards the other. The two were the same, were one. And this,
+somehow, some day, when time and sentiment offered opportunity for such
+disclosure, she must let her father know. She must repeat to him the
+story of the eating-house and its monkey-faced proprietor--of
+questionable reputation--away in tropic Singapore. It could hardly fail
+to appeal to him if rightly told. About the events and vulgar publicity
+of yesterday nothing need be said. About this, within careful limits,
+much; and that, with, as she believed, happiest result. She had succeeded
+in bringing father and son together in the first instance. Now, with this
+pathetic story as lever, might she not hope to bring them into closer,
+more permanent union? Why should not Faircloth, in future, come and go,
+if not as an acknowledged son, yet as acknowledged and welcome friend, of
+the house? A consummation this, to her, delightful and reasonable as
+just. For had not the young man passed muster, and that triumphantly--she
+again told herself--in small things as well as great, in things of social
+usage and habit, those "little foxes" which, as between class and class,
+do so deplorably and disastrously "spoil the grapes?"
+
+Therefore she began to invent ingenious speeches to Carteret and to her
+father. Hatch ingenious schemes and pretty plots--in the style of dear
+Aunt Felicia almost!--Was that lady's peace-making passion infectious, by
+chance? And supposing it were, hadn't it very charming and praiseworthy
+turns to it--witness Felicia's rather noble gathering in and acceptance
+of Faircloth yesterday.
+
+Arriving at which engaging conclusion, Damaris felt minded to commune for
+a space with the restful loveliness of the twilight, before going
+downstairs again and seeking more definite employment of books or
+needlework. She raised the window-sash and, kneeling on the
+chintz-covered cushioned window-seat, leaned out.
+
+The gardeners to-day had rooted up the geraniums and dug over the empty
+flower beds, just below, preparatory to planting them with bulbs for
+spring blossoming. The keen, pungent scent of the newly-turned earth
+hung in the humid air, as, mingling with it--a less agreeable
+incense--did the reek of the mud-flats. On the right the twin ilex trees
+formed a mass of soft imponderable gloom. Above and behind them the sky
+was like smoked crystal. The lawn lay open and vacant. Upon it nothing
+hopped or crept. The garden birds had eaten their suppers long since,
+and sought snug bosky perching places for the night. Even the unsleeping
+sea was silent, the tide low and waveless, no more than a languid ripple
+far out upon the shelving sands. All dwelt in calm, in a brooding
+tranquillity which might be felt.
+
+Damaris listened to the silence, until her ears began to suspect its
+sincerity. Sounds were there in plenty, she believed, were her hearing
+sharp enough to detect them. They naughtily played hide-and-seek with
+her, striking a chord too deep or too thinly acute for human sense.
+Sights were there too, had her eyes but a cat's or an owl's keener
+faculty of seeing. Behind the tranquillity she apprehended movement and
+action employing a medium, obeying impulses, to us unknown. Restfulness
+fled away, but, in place of it, interest grew. If she concentrated her
+attention and listened more carefully, she should hear; looked more
+steadily, she should see.
+
+Just because she was tired, a little shattered still and spent, did this
+predominance of outward nature draw her, imposing itself. It beckoned
+her; and, through passing deficiency of will, she followed its beckoning,
+making no serious effort to resist. With the consequence she presently
+did hear sounds, but sounds surely real and recognizable enough.
+
+Coming from the shore eastwards, below the sea-wall along the river
+frontage, ponies walked, or rather floundered, fetlock deep in blown
+sand--a whole drove of them to judge by the confused and muffled
+trampling of their many hoofs. The drop from the top of the sea-wall to
+the beach was too great, and the space between the foot of the wall and
+the river-bank and breakwater too confined, for her to see the animals,
+even had not oncoming darkness rendered all objects increasingly
+ill-defined.
+
+But the confused trampling instead of keeping along the foreshore, as in
+all reason it should, now came up and over the sea-wall, on to the
+battery, into the garden, heading towards the house, Damaris strained her
+eyes through the tranquil obscurity, seeking visible cause of this
+advancing commotion, but without effect. Yet all the while, as her
+hearing clearly testified, the unseen ponies hustled one another,
+plunging, shying away from the swish and crack of a long-thonged whip.
+One stumbled and rolled over in the sand.--For although the mob was
+half-way up the lawn by now, the shuffling, sliding sand stayed always
+with them.--After a nasty struggle it got on to its feet, tottering
+forward under savage blows, dead lame. Another, a laggard, fell into its
+tracks, and lay there foundered, rattling in the throat.
+
+By this time the foremost of the drove came abreast the house front,
+where Sir Charles Verity's three ground-floor rooms, with the corridor
+behind them, ranged out from the main building. The many-paned
+semicircular windows of these rooms dimly glistened, below their
+fan-shaped, slated roofs. The crowding scurry of scared, over-driven
+animals was so indisputable that Damaris expected a universal smashing of
+glass. But the sound of many hoofs, still muted by sliding sand, passed
+straight on into and through the house as though no obstacle intervened
+barring progress.
+
+The many-paned windows remained intact, undemolished, dimly glistening
+beneath their slated roofs. The garden stretched vacant, as before, right
+away to the battery, in the elusive twilight, a sky of smoked
+crystal--through which stars began to show faintly, points of cold
+blurred light--above the gloom of the ilex trees to the west, and in the
+south, above the indistinguishable sea, the slender moon hanging upright,
+silver and sickle-shaped.
+
+Thus far Damaris' entire consciousness had resided in and been limited to
+her auditory sense; concentration being too absorbed and intense to allow
+room for reasoning, still less for scepticism or even astonishment. She
+had watched with her ears--as the blind watch--desperate to interpret,
+instant by instant, inch by inch, this reconstructed tragedy of long-dead
+man and long-dead beast. There had been no thinking round the central
+interest, no attempted reading of its bearing upon normal events. Mind
+and imagination were fascinated by it to the exclusion of all else. It
+acted as an extravagant dream acts, abrogating all known laws of cause
+and effect, giving logic and science the lie, negativing probability,
+making the untrue true, the impossible convincingly manifest.
+
+Not, indeed, until she beheld Mary Fisher, deep-bosomed and comely, in
+black gown, white apron and cap, moving within those rooms
+downstairs--still echoing, as they surely must, to that tumultuous and
+rather ghastly equine transit--did the extraordinary character of the
+occurrence flash into fullness of relief.
+
+Mary, meanwhile, set down her flat candlestick upon the big writing-table
+in Sir Charles's study, lighted lamps and drew blinds and curtains. Went
+into the bedroom next door and dressing-room beyond, methodically
+performing the evening ritual of "shutting up." Her shadow marched with
+her, as though mockingly assisting in her operations, now crouching, now
+leaping ahead, blotting a ceiling, extending itself upon a wall space.
+Other shadows, thrown by the furniture, came forth and leapt also,
+pranced, skipping back into hiding as the candle-light shifted and
+passed. But save this indirect admission of the immaterial and grotesque,
+everything showed reassuringly ordinary, the woman herself unconcerned,
+ignorant of disturbance.
+
+Damaris rose from her kneeling posture upon the window-seat and,
+standing, lowered the sash. Once was enough. It was no longer incumbent
+upon her to listen or to look. If these ghostly phenomena were repeated
+they could convey nothing more to her, nothing fresh. They had delivered
+their message--one addressed wholly and solely to herself, so she judged,
+since Mary had so conspicuously no suspicion of it.
+
+Our maiden's lips were dry. Her heart beat in her ears. Yet she was in no
+degree unnerved. Seldom indeed had she been more mistress of her powers,
+self-realized and vigilant. Nor did she feel tired any more, infirm of
+will and spent. Rather was she consciously resolute to encounter and
+withstand events--of what order she did not know as yet but events of
+moment and far-reaching result, already on the road, journeying toward
+her hotfoot. They were designed to test and try her. Would do their
+utmost to overwhelm, to submerge her, were she weak. But she didn't
+intend them to submerge her. She bade weakness quit, all her young
+courage rising in arms.
+
+The marvellous things she just now heard, so nearly saw--for it had come
+very near to seeing, hadn't?--were _avant couriers_ of these same
+journeying events, their appointed prelude. She could explain neither how
+nor why--but, very certainly, somehow. Nor could she explain the
+relation--if any--coupling together the said marvels heard and the
+events. Nevertheless, she knew the former rode ahead, whether in
+malignity or mercy, to forewarn her. This place, The Hard, in virtue of
+its numerous vicissitudes of office and of ownership, of the memories and
+traditions which it harboured, both sinister, amiable, erudite,
+passionate, was singularly sentient, replete with influences. In times of
+strain and stress the normal wears thin, and such lurking influences are
+released. They break bounds, shouting--to such as have the psychic
+genius--convincing testimony of their existence.
+
+All this Damaris perceived, standing in the middle of the room while the
+silver crescent moon looked in at her. The stillness once again was
+absolute. The dusk, save where the windows made pale squares upon the
+carpet, thick. The four-post bed, gay enough by day with hangings and
+valences patterned in roses on a yellow ground, looked cavernous.
+Carteret would lie under its black canopy to-night if--
+
+"If all goes well."
+
+Damaris said the words aloud, her thought becoming personal and
+articulate.
+
+Once before she had heard the smugglers' ponies, waiting in this same
+room. Waiting at the open window to catch the first rumble of the wheels
+of a returning carriage. Her poor dear Nannie, Sarah Watson, was
+returning home after a summer holiday spent with her own people in the
+north. And Damaris, younger then by nearly five years, had listened
+impatiently, ready to skirmish down into the front hall--directly the
+carriage turned the elbow of the drive--and enclose her faithful nurse
+and foster-mother in arms of child-like love. But destiny ruled otherwise.
+In vain she waited. Sarah Watson returned no more, death having elected
+to take her rather horribly to himself some hours previously amid the
+flaming wreckage of a derailed express.
+
+What did this second hearing presage? A like vain waiting and disclosure
+of death-dealing accident? Notwithstanding her attitude of high
+resolution, the question challenged Damaris in sardonic fashion from
+beneath the black canopy of the great bed. Her hand went up to the string
+of pearls which, on a sudden, grew heavy about her throat.
+
+"But not--not--pray God, the dear man with the blue eyes," she cried.
+
+She was glad to be alone, in the encompassing semi-dark, for a warm wave
+of emotion swept over her, an ardour hardly of the spiritual sort. Had
+she deceived herself? Was she, in truth, desirous Carteret should
+approach her solely according to that earlier manner, in which she so
+simply trusted him? Did she hail his coming as that of a wise counsellor
+merely--or--
+
+But here Mary--still pursuing the time-honoured ritual of shutting
+up--entered candle in hand, the landing showing brightly lit behind her.
+
+"Dear heart alive!" she exclaimed, "whoever's that? You, Miss Damaris?
+Alone here in the dark. You did make me jump. But there," she added,
+repentant of her unceremonious exclamation, "I don't know what possesses
+us all to-night. The least thing seems to make you jump. Mrs. Cooper's
+all of a twitter, and Laura--silly girl--is almost as bad. I suppose it's
+the weather being so quiet after yesterday's gale. For my own part I
+always do like a wind about. It seems company, particularly these long
+evenings if you're called on to go round the house by yourself."
+
+All of which amounted to an admission, as Damaris was not slow to detect.
+She was still under the empire of emotion. The abrupt intrusion affected
+her. She, too, needed to carry off the situation.
+
+"Poor Mary," she said, "you have been frightened--by what? Did you hear
+anything you could not account for when you were down in the library
+just now?"
+
+The answer came after a pause, as though the speaker were suspicious,
+slightly unwilling to commit herself.
+
+"No, Miss Damaris, not in Sir Charles's rooms or in the west wing either.
+Whatever unaccountable noises there ever is belong to this old part of
+the house."
+
+She set her candlestick on the dressing-table, and went to each window in
+turn, drawing blinds down and curtains across. So doing she continued to
+talk, moving to and fro meanwhile with a firm, light tread.
+
+"Not that I pay much attention to such things myself. I don't hold it's
+right. It's my opinion there's no sort of nonsense you can't drive
+yourself into believing once you let ideas get a root in you. I've seen
+too much of Mrs. Cooper giving away like that. The two winters you and
+Sir Charles was abroad I'd a proper upset with her--though we are good
+friends--more than once. After sundown she was enough to terrify you out
+of your life--wouldn't go here and wouldn't go there for fear of she
+didn't know what. Tempting Providence, I call it, and spoke to her quite
+sharp. If ever I wanted to go over to spend an hour or two with father
+and mother in Marychurch, I was bound to ask Mrs. Patch and the children
+to come in and keep her company. There's no sense in putting yourself
+into such a state. It makes you a trouble to yourself and everybody else.
+And in the end, a thousand to one if anything comes of all the turmoil
+and fuss--Mrs. Cooper, to be only fair to her, when she's in a reasonable
+humour, allows as much."
+
+Mary stepped across to the bed and doubled back the quilt, preparatory to
+turning down the fine linen sheet. She felt she had extracted herself
+from a somewhat invidious position with flying colours; and, in the
+process, had administered timely advice. For it wasn't suitable Miss
+Damaris should be moping alone upstairs at odd times like this. It all
+came of yesterday's upset.--Her righteous anger blazed against the
+clerical culprit. In that connection there was other matter of which she
+craved to deliver herself--refreshing items of local gossip, sweet as
+honey to the mouth did she but dare retail them. She balanced the
+question this way and that. Would satisfaction outweigh offence, or
+offence satisfaction, on the part of Miss Damaris? You could not be sure
+how she'd take things--quite. And yet she ought to know, for the affair
+certainly placed Captain Faircloth in a pleasant light. Only one who was
+every inch a gentleman would behave so handsomely as he had.
+
+She stretched across the bed to smooth the slightly wrinkled surface of
+the sheet. This gymnastic feat necessitated the averting of her face and
+turning of her back.
+
+"There's a fine tale going round of how the Island lads--wild young
+fellows ready for any pranks--served Mr. Sawyer, the curate," she began.
+"They say William Jennifer put them up to it, having a grudge against him
+for trying to get his youngest boy taken up for stealing apples last
+week. They planned to give him a ducking in the pool just above the
+ferry, where the water's so deep under the bank. And if Captain Faircloth
+hadn't happened to come along, for certain they'd have made Mr. Sawyer
+swim for it. Mr. Patch hears they handled him ever so rough, tore his
+coat, and were on the very tick of pitching him in. But Captain Faircloth
+would not suffer it. He took a very high line with them, it is said. And
+not content with getting Mr. Sawyer away, walked with him as far as the
+Grey House to protect him from any further interference."
+
+She gave the pillows sundry judicious strokings and pats.
+
+"I hope Mr. Sawyer's properly thankful, for it isn't many that would have
+shown him so much leniency as that."
+
+She would have enjoyed labouring the point. But comment appeared to her,
+under the circumstances, to trench on impertinence. Facts spoke for
+themselves. She restrained herself, fetched her candlestick from the
+dressing-table, and stood by the open door, thereby enjoining her young
+lady's exit.
+
+Thus far Damaris maintained silence, but in passing out on to the
+landing, she said--"Thank you. I am glad to know what has happened."
+
+Encouraged by which acknowledgment, the excellent woman ventured
+further advice.
+
+"And now, miss, you must please just lie down on the schoolroom sofa and
+get a little sleep before the gentlemen and Mr. Hordle arrive back. There
+is a good two hours to wait yet, and I'll call you in plenty of time for
+you to dress. You don't look altogether yourself, miss. Too much talking
+with all that host of callers. You are properly fagged out. I'll get Mrs.
+Cooper to beat up an egg for you in a tumbler of hot milk, with a
+tablespoonful of sherry and just a pinch of sugar in it. That will get
+your circulation right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHOWING HOW SIR CHARLES VERITY WAS JUSTIFIED OF HIS LABOURS
+
+
+Which homely programme being duly executed, worked restorative wonders.
+Matter, in the sublimated form of egg-flip, acted upon mind beneficially
+through the functions of a healthy, if weary, young body. Our maiden
+slept, to dream not of ghostly ponies or other uncomfortably discarnate
+creatures; but of Darcy Faircloth in his pretty piece of Quixotism,
+rescuing a minister of the Church of England "as by law established" from
+heretical baptismal rites of total immersion. The picture had a rough
+side to it, and also a merry one; but, beyond these, generous dealing
+wholly delightful to her feeling. She awoke soothed and restored, ready
+to confront the oncoming of events--whatever their character--in a spirit
+of high confidence as well as of resolution.
+
+With the purpose of advertising this brave humour she dressed herself in
+her best. I do not deny a love of fine clothes in Damaris. Yet in her own
+home, and for delectation of the men belonging to her, a woman is surely
+free to deck herself as handsomely as her purse allows. "Beauty
+unadorned" ceased to be practicable, in self-respecting circles, with the
+expulsion of our first parents from the paradisaic state; while beauty
+merely dowdy, is a pouring of contempt on one of God's best gifts to the
+human race. Therefore I find no fault with Damaris, upon this rather
+fateful evening, in that she clothed herself in a maize-coloured silk
+gown flowered in faint amber and faint pink. Cut in the piece from
+shoulder to hem, according to a then prevailing fashion, it moulded
+bosom, waist and haunches, spreading away into a demi-train behind. The
+high Medici collar of old lace, at the back of the square décolletage,
+conferred dignity; the hanging lace of the elbow sleeves a lightness. Her
+hair, in two wide plaits, bound her head smoothly, save where soft
+disobedient little curls, refusing restriction, shaded her forehead and
+the nape of her neck.
+
+After a few seconds of silent debate she clasped Carteret's pearls about
+her throat again; and so fared away, a creature of radiant aspect, amid
+sombre setting of low ceilings and dark carpeted floors, to await the
+advent of the travellers.
+
+These arrived some little while before their time, so that the girl, in
+her gleaming dress, had gone but half-way down the staircase when they
+came side by side into the hall.--Two very proper gentlemen, the moist
+freshness of the night attending them, a certain nobility in their
+bearing which moved her to enthusiasm, momentarily even bringing a mist
+before her eyes. For they were safe and well both of them, so she
+joyously registered, serene of countenance, moreover, as bearers of glad
+tidings are. Whatever the ghostly ponies foretold could be no evil
+shadowing them--for which she gave God thanks.
+
+Meanwhile, there without, the light of the carriage lamps pierced the
+enclosing gloom, played on the silver plating of harness, on the shining
+coats of the horses, whose nostrils sent out jets of pale steam. Played
+over the faces of the servants, too, Mary and Laura just within the open
+door, Hordle and Conyers outside loading down the baggage from the back
+of the mail-phaeton, and on Patch, exalted high above them on the
+driving-seat.
+
+As Damaris paused, irradiated by the joy of welcome and of forebodings
+falsified, upon the lowest step of the staircase, Sir Charles turned
+aside and tenderly kissed her.
+
+"My darling," he said.
+
+And Carteret, following him an instant later, took her by both hands and,
+from arm's length, surveyed her in smiling admiration he made no effort
+to repress.
+
+"Dear witch, this is unexpected good fortune. I had little thought of
+seeing you so soon--resplendent being that you are, veritably clothed
+with sunshine."
+
+"And with your pearls," she gaily said.
+
+"Ah! my poor pearls," he took her up lightly. "I am pleased they still
+find favour in your sight. But aren't you curious to learn what has made
+us desert our partridge shooting at an hour's notice, granting the pretty
+little beggars unlooked-for length of life?"
+
+His blue eyes laughed into hers. There was a delightful atmosphere about
+him. Something had happened to him surely--for wasn't he, after all, a
+young man even yet?
+
+"Yes--what--what has brought you, Colonel Sahib?" Damaris laughed back at
+him, bubbling over with happy excitement.
+
+"Miracles," he answered. "A purblind Government at last admits the error
+of its ways and proposes to make reparation for its neglect of a notable
+public-servant."
+
+"You?" she cried.
+
+Carteret shook his head, still surveying her but with a soberer glance.
+
+"No--no--not me. In any case there isn't any indebtedness to
+acknowledge--no arrears to pay off. I have my deserts.--To a man
+immensely my superior. Look nearer home, dear witch."
+
+He made a gesture in the direction of his host.
+
+"My Commissioner Sahib?"
+
+"Yes--your Commissioner Sahib, who comes post haste to request your dear
+little permission, before accepting this tardy recognition of his
+services to the British Empire."
+
+"Ah! but that's too much!" the girl said softly, glancing from one to the
+other, enchanted and abashed by the greatness of their loyalty to and
+prominent thought of her.
+
+"Has this made him happy?" she asked Carteret, under her breath. "He
+looks so, I think. How good that this has come in time--that it hasn't
+come too late."
+
+For, in the midst of her joyful excitement, a shadow crossed Damaris'
+mind oddly obscuring the light. She suffered a perception things might so
+easily have turned out otherwise; a suspicion that, had the reparation of
+which Carteret spoke been delayed, even by a little, its beloved
+recipient would no longer have found use for or profit in it. Damaris
+fought the black thought, as ungrateful and faithless. To fear disaster
+is too often to invite it.
+
+Just at this juncture Miss Felicia made hurried and gently eager
+irruption into the hall; and with that irruption the tone of prevailing
+sentiment declined upon the somewhat trivial, even though warmly
+affectionate. For she fluttered round Sir Charles, as Mary Fisher helped
+divest him of his overcoat, in sympathetic overflowings of the simplest
+sort.--"She had been reading and failed to hear the carriage, hence her
+tardy appearance. Let him come into the drawing-room at once, out of
+these draughts. There was a delightful wood fire and he must be chilled.
+The drive down the valley was always so cold at night--particularly where
+the road runs through the marsh lands by Lampit."
+
+In her zeal of welcome Miss Verity was voluble to the point of
+inconsequence, not to say incoherence. Questions poured from her. She
+appeared agitated, quaintly self-conscious, so at least it occurred to
+Damaris. Finally she addressed Carteret.
+
+"And you too must be frozen," she declared. "How long it is since we met!
+I have always been so unlucky in just missing you here! Really I believe
+I have only seen you once since you and Charles stayed with us at Canton
+Magna.--You were both on leave from India. I dare not think how many
+years ago that is--before this child"--her candid eyes appealingly sought
+those of Damaris--"before this child existed. And you are so wonderfully
+unaltered."
+
+Colour dyed her thin face and rather scraggy neck. Only the young should
+blush. After forty such involuntary exhibitions of emotion are
+unattractive, questionably even pathetic.
+
+"Really time has stood still with you--it seems to me, Colonel Carteret."
+
+"Time has done better than stand still," Damaris broke in, with a rather
+surprising imperiousness. "It has beautifully run backwards--lately."
+
+And our maiden, in her whispering gleaming dress, swept down from the
+step, swept past the sadly taken aback Miss Felicia, and joined her
+father. She put her hand within his arm.
+
+"Come and warm yourself--come, dearest," she said, gently drawing him
+onward into the long room, where from above the range of dark
+bookshelves, goggle-eyed, pearl-grey Chinese goblins and monsters, and
+oblique-eyed Chinese philosophers and saints looked mysteriously down
+through the warm mellow light.
+
+Damaris was conscious of a singular inward turmoil. For Miss Felicia's
+speeches found small favour in her ears. She resented this open claiming
+of Carteret as a member of the elder generation. Still more resented her
+own relegation to the nullity of the prenatal state. Reminiscences, in
+which she had neither lot nor part, left her cold. Or, to be accurate,
+bred in her an intemperate heat, putting a match to jealousies which,
+till this instant, she had no knowledge of. Touched by that match they
+flared to the confusion of charity and reverence. Hence, impulsively,
+unscrupulously, yet with ingenious unkindness, she struck--her tongue a
+sword--to the wounding of poor Miss Felicia. And she felt no necessity
+for apology. She liked to be unkind. She liked to strike. Aunt Felicia
+should not have been so self-assertive, so tactless. She had brought
+chastisement upon herself. It wasn't like her to behave thus. Her
+enthusiasms abounded; but she possessed a delicate appreciation of
+relative positions. She never poached. This came perilously near
+poaching.--And everything had danced to so inspiring a tune, the movement
+of it so delicious! Now the evening was spoilt. The first fine alacrity
+of it could not be recaptured--which was all Aunt Felicia's fault.--No,
+for her unkindness Damaris felt no regret.
+
+It may be remarked that our angry maiden's mind dwelt rather upon the
+snub she had inflicted on Miss Verity, than upon the extensive compliment
+she had paid, and the challenge she had delivered, to Carteret. Hearing
+her flattering declaration, his mind not unnaturally dwelt more upon the
+latter. It took him like a blow, so that from bending courteously over
+the elder lady's hand, he straightened himself with a jerk. His eyes
+followed the imperious, sun-clad young figure, questioning and keenly
+alert. To-day he had liberally enjoyed the pleasures of friendship, for
+Charles Verity had been largely and generously elate. But Damaris'
+outburst switched feeling and sentiment onto other lines. They became
+personal. Were her words thrown off in mere lightness of heart, or had
+she spoken deliberately, with intention? It were wiser, perhaps, not to
+ask. He steadied his attention on to Miss Felicia once more, but not
+without effort.
+
+"You always said kind and charming things, I remember," so he told her.
+"You are good enough to say them still."
+
+Damaris stood by her father, upon the tiger skin before the hearth.
+
+"Tell me, dearest?" she prayed him.
+
+Charles Verity put his hand under her chin, turned up her face and looked
+searchingly at her. Her beauty to-night was conspicuous and of noble
+quality. It satisfied his pride. Public life invited him, offering him
+place and power. Ranklings of disappointment, of detraction and slight,
+were extinguished. His soul was delivered from the haunting vexations of
+them. He was in the saddle again, and this radiant woman-child, whom he
+so profoundly loved, should ride forth with him for all the world to
+see--if she pleased. That she would please he had no doubt. Pomp and
+circumstance would suit her well. She was, moreover, no slight or frothy
+piece of femininity; but could be trusted, amid the glamour of new and
+brilliant conditions, to use her judgment and to keep her head.
+Increasingly he respected her character as well as her intelligence. He
+found in her unswerving sense of right and wrong, sense of honour
+likewise. Impetuous she might be, swift to feel and to revolt; but of
+tender conscience and, on occasion, royally compassionate. Now he could
+give her fuller opportunity. Could place her in circumstances admittedly
+enviable and prominent. From a comparative back-water, she should gain
+the full stream--and that stream, in a sense, at the flood.
+
+Rarely, if ever, had Charles Verity experienced purer pleasure, touched a
+finer level of purpose and of hope than to-day, when thinking of and now
+when looking upon Damaris. He thankfully appraised her worth, and in
+spirit bowed before it, not doatingly or weakly but with reasoned
+conviction. Weighed in the balances she would not be found wanting, such
+was his firm belief. For himself he accepted this recall to active
+participation in affairs, active service to the State, with a lofty
+content. But that his daughter, in the flower of her young womanhood,
+would profit by this larger and more distinguished way of life, gave the
+said recall its deeper values and its zest.
+
+Still he put her off awhile as to the exact announcement, smiling upon
+her in fond, yet stately approval.
+
+"Let the telling keep until after dinner, my dear," he bade her. "Pacify
+the cravings of the natural man for food and drink. The day has been
+fertile in demands--strenuous indeed to the point of fatigue. So let us
+comfort ourselves inwardly and materially before we affront weighty
+decisions."
+
+He kissed her cheek.
+
+"By the way, though, does it ever occur to you to think of the Bhutpur
+Sultan-i-bagh and wish to go East again?"
+
+And Damaris, with still uplifted chin, surveyed him gravely and with a
+certain wistfulness, Miss Felicia's attempted poaching forgotten and an
+impression of Faircloth vividly overtaking her. For they were so
+intimately, disturbingly alike, the father and the son, in voice as well
+as in build and feature.
+
+"Go East?" she said, Faircloth's declared preference for sailing into the
+sunrise present to her. "Why, I go East in my dreams nearly every night.
+I love it--love it more rather than less as I grow older. Of course I
+wish to go--some day. But that's by the way, Commissioner Sahib. All that
+I really want, now, at once, is to go wherever you go, stay wherever you
+stay. You won't ask me to agree to any plan which parts us, will
+you?--which takes you away from me?"
+
+"Ruth to a strange Naomi, my dear," he answered. "But so be it. I desire
+nothing better than to have you always with me.--But I will not keep you
+on tenter-hooks as to your and my projected destination. Let them bring
+in dinner in half an hour. Carteret and I shall be ready. Meanwhile, read
+this--agreeing to relegate discussion of it to a less hungry season."
+
+And taking the letter she had forwarded to him yesterday, bearing the
+imprint of the Indian Office, from the breast pocket of his shooting
+coat, he put it into her hand.
+
+The appointment--namely, that of Lieutenant-Governor of an Indian
+presidency famous in modern history, a cradle of great reputations and
+great men, of English names to conjure with while our Eastern Empire
+endures--was offered, in terms complimentary above those common to
+official communications. Sir Charles Verity's expert knowledge, not only
+of the said mighty province but of the turbulent kingdom lying beyond its
+frontiers, marked him as peculiarly fitted for the post. A campaign
+against that same turbulent kingdom had but recently been brought to a
+victorious conclusion. His influence, it was felt, might be of supreme
+value at this juncture in the maintenance of good relations, and
+consolidation of permanent peace.
+
+Damaris' heart glowed within her as she read the courteous praiseful
+sentences. Even more than through the well-merited success of his book,
+did her father thus obtain and come into the fullness of his own at last.
+Her imagination glowed, too, calling up pictures of the half-remembered,
+half-fabulous oriental scene. The romance of English rule in India, the
+romance of India itself, its variety, its complexity, the multitude of
+its gods, the multitude of its peoples, hung before her as a mirage,
+prodigal in marvels, reaching back and linking up through the centuries
+with the hidden wisdom, the hidden terror of the Ancient of Days.
+
+To this land of alien faiths and secular wonders, she found herself
+summoned, not as casual sightseer or tourist, but as among the handful of
+elect persons who count in its social, political and administrative life.
+In virtue of her father's position, her own would be both conspicuous and
+assured. An intoxicating prospect this for a girl of one-and-twenty!
+Intoxicating, yet, as she envisaged it, disquieting likewise. She
+balanced on the thought of all it demanded as well as all it offered, of
+all it required from her--dazed by the largeness of the purview, volition
+in suspense.
+
+Carteret was the first to reappear, habited in the prescribed black and
+white of evening male attire. In the last six months he had, perhaps, put
+on flesh; but this without detriment to the admirable proportions of his
+figure. It retained its effect of perfect response to the will within,
+and all its natural grace. His fair hair and moustache were still almost
+untouched with grey. His physical attraction, in short, remained
+unimpaired. And of this Damaris was actually, if unconsciously, sensible
+as he closed the door and, passing between the stumpy pillars, walked up
+the long narrow room and stood, his hands behind him, his back to the
+pleasantly hissing and crackling fire of driftwood.
+
+"Alone, dear witch?" he said, and, seeing the open letter in her
+hand--"Well, what do you make of this proposition?" And yet again, as she
+raised serious pondering eyes--"You find it an extensive order?"
+
+"I find it magnificent for him--beautifully as it should be, adequate
+and right."
+
+"And for yourself?" Carteret asked, aware of a carefulness in her
+language and intrigued by it.
+
+"Magnificent for me, too--though it takes away my breath."
+
+"You must learn to breathe deeper, that's all," he returned, gently
+teasing her.
+
+"And who is to teach me to breathe deeper, dear Colonel Sahib," she
+quickly, and rather embarrassingly, asked. "Not my father. He'll have
+innumerable big things to do and to do them without waste of energy he
+must be saved at every point. He must not fritter away strength in
+coaching me in my odds and ends of duties, still less in covering up my
+silly mistakes."
+
+"Oh! you exaggerate difficulties," he said, looking not at her but at the
+fierce yellow and black striped tiger skin at his feet.--Bless the lovely
+child, what was she driving at?
+
+Carteret started for Deadham under the impression he had himself
+thoroughly in hand, and that all danger of certain inconvenient emotions
+was passed. He had lived them down, cast them out. For over two years now
+he had given himself to the superintendence of his estate, to county
+business, to the regulation of his sister's--happily more
+prosperous--affairs, to the shepherding of his two elder nephews in their
+respective professions and securing the two younger ones royally good
+times during their holidays at home. Throughout the hunting season,
+moreover, he rode to hounds on an average of three days a week. Such
+healthy sport helps notably to deliver a man from vain desires, by
+sending his body cleanly weary to bed and to sleep o' nights.
+
+By such varied activities had Carteret systematically essayed to rid
+himself of his somewhat exquisite distemper, and, when coming to Deadham,
+honestly believed himself immune, sane and safe. He was proportionately
+disturbed by finding the cure of this autumn love-madness less complete
+than, fool-like, he had supposed. For it showed disquieting signs of
+resurrection even when Damaris, arrayed in the sheen of silken sunlight,
+greeted him at the staircase foot, and an alarming disposition finally to
+fling away head-cloth and winding-sheet when she petulantly broke in upon
+Miss Verity's faded memories of Canton Magna with the flattering
+assertion that time had run backward with him of late.
+
+Now alone with her, confident, moreover, of her maidenly doubts
+and pretty self-distrust, he felt at a decided disadvantage. The
+detached, affectionately friendly, the avuncular--not to say
+grandfatherly--attitude escaped him. He could not play that part.
+
+"Oh! you exaggerate difficulties," he therefore told her, with a
+singular absence of his habitual mansuetude, his tone trenching on
+impatience. "Instinct and common sense will teach you-mother-wit, too-of
+which, you may take it from me, you have enough and to spare.-Let alone
+that there will be a host of people emulous of guiding your steps aright,
+if your steps should stand in need of guidance which I venture to doubt.
+Don't underrate your own cleverness." Hearing him, sensible of his
+apparent impatience and misconceiving the cause of it, Damaris' temper
+stirred. She felt vexed. She also felt injured.
+
+ "What has happened to you, Colonel Sahib?" she asked him squarely. "I
+ see nothing foolish in what I have said. You wouldn't have me so
+ conceited that I rushed into this immense business without a qualm,
+ without any thought whether I can carry it out creditably--with credit
+ to him, I mean?"
+
+ Thus astonishingly attacked, Carteret hedged.
+
+ "Miss Verity, of course, will be"--he began.
+
+ Damaris cut him short.
+
+ "Aunt Felicia is an angel, a darling," she declared, "but--but"--
+
+ And there stopped, pricked by a guilty conscience. For to expose Miss
+ Felicia's inadequacies and enlarge on her ineligibility for the position
+ of feminine Chief of the Staff, struck her as unworthy, a meanness to
+ which, under existing circumstances, she could not condescend to stoop.
+
+ Carteret looked up, to be entranced not only by the fair spectacle of
+ her youth but by her delicious little air of shame and self-reproach.
+ Evidently she had caught herself out in some small naughtiness--was both
+ penitent and defiant, at once admitting her fault and pleading for
+ indulgence. He suspected some thought at the back of her mind which he
+ could neither exactly seize nor place. She baffled him with her changes
+ of mood and of direction--coming close and then slipping from under his
+ hand. This humour was surely new in her. She would not leave him alone,
+ would not let him rest. Had she developed, since last he had converse
+ with her, into a practised coquette?
+
+"Look here, dear witch," he said, making a return upon himself, and
+manfully withstanding the sweet provocation of her near neighbourhood.
+"We seem to be queerly at cross purposes. I can't pretend to follow the
+turnings and doublings of your ingenious mind. I gather there is
+something you want of me. To be plain, then, what is it?"
+
+"That--that you shouldn't desert me--desert us--in this crisis. You have
+never deserted me before--never since I can first remember."
+
+"I desert you--good Lord!" Carteret exclaimed, his hands dropping at his
+sides with an odd sort of helplessness.
+
+"Ah! that's asking too much, I suppose," she said. "I'm selfish even to
+think of it. Yet how can I do otherwise? Don't you understand how all
+difficulties would vanish, and how beautifully simple and easy everything
+would be if you coached me--if you, dear Colonel Sahib, went with us?"
+
+The man with the blue eyes looked down at the tiger skin again, his
+countenance strained and blanched.
+
+More than ever did he find her humour baffling. Not once nor twice had
+he, putting force upon himself, resisted the temptation to woo
+her--witness his retirement from St. Augustin and his determined
+abstinence from intercourse with her since. But now, so it might
+veritably appear, the positions were reversed and she wooed him. Though
+whether pushed to that length merely by wayward fancy, by some
+transient skittish influence or frolic in the blood, or by realized
+design he had no means of judging.--Well, he had bidden her be plain,
+and she, in some sort at least, obeyed him. It behooved him, therefore,
+to be plain in return, in as far as a straightforward reading of her
+meaning would carry.
+
+"So you think all would be simple and easy were I to go with you and your
+father?" he said, both speech and manner tempered to gentleness. "I am
+glad to have you think so--should be still more glad could I share your
+belief. But I know better, dearest witch--know that you are mistaken.
+This is no case of desertion--put that out of your precious mind once
+and for all--but of discretion. My being in attendance, far from
+simplifying, would embroil and distort your position. An elderly
+gentleman perpetually trotting"--
+
+"Don't," Damaris cried, holding up both hands in hot repudiation. "Don't
+say that. There's distortion if you like! It's ugly--I won't have it, for
+it is not true."
+
+In the obvious sincerity of which denunciation Carteret found balm; yet
+adhered to his purpose.
+
+"But it is true, alas; and I therefore repeat it both for your admonition
+and my own. For an elderly gentleman trotting at a young girl's heels is
+a most unedifying spectacle--giving occasion, and reasonably, to the
+enemy to blaspheme--bad for her in numberless ways; and, if he's any
+remnant of self-respect left in him, is anything better than a fatuous
+dotard, damnably bad for him as well. Do you understand?"
+
+Damaris presented a mutinous countenance. She would have had much ado to
+explain her own motives during this ten minutes' conference. If her
+mental--or were they not rather mainly emotional?--turnings and doublings
+proved baffling to her companion, they proved baffling to herself in an
+almost greater degree. Things in general seemed to have gone into the
+melting-pot. So many events had taken place, so many more been
+preshadowed, so many strains of feeling excited! And these were
+confusingly unrelated, or appeared to be so as yet. Amongst the confusion
+of them she found no sure foothold, still less any highway along which to
+travel in confidence and security. Her thought ran wild. Her intentions
+ran with it, changing their colour chameleon-like from minute to minute.
+Now she was tempted to make an equivocal rejoinder.
+
+"To understand," she said, "is not always, Colonel Sahib, necessarily
+to agree."
+
+"I am satisfied with understanding and don't press for agreement," he
+answered, and on an easier note--"since to me it is glaringly evident
+you should take this fine flight unhandicapped. My duty is to stand
+aside and leave you absolutely free--not because I enjoy standing aside,
+but"--he would allow sentiment such meagre indulgence--"just exactly
+because I do not."
+
+Here for the second time, at the crucial moment, Felicia Verity made
+irruption upon the scene. But though her entrance was hurried, it
+differed fundamentally from that earlier one; so that both the man and
+the girl, standing in the proximity of their intimate colloquy before the
+fire, were sensible of and arrested by it. She was self-forgetful,
+self-possessed, the exalted touch of a pure devotion upon her.
+
+"I have been with my brother Charles," she began, addressing them both.
+"I happened to see Hordle coming from the library--and I put off dinner.
+I thought, darling"--this to Damaris, with a becoming hint of
+deference--"I might do so. I gathered that Charles--that your
+father--wished it. He has not been feeling well."
+
+And as Damaris anxiously exclaimed--
+
+"Yes"--Miss Felicia went on--"not at all well. Hordle told me. That was
+why I went to the library. He hoped, if he waited and rested for a little
+while, the uncomfortable sensations might subside and it would be
+needless to mention them. He did not want any fuss made. We gave him
+restoratives, and he recovered from the faintness. But he won't be equal,
+he admits, to coming in to dinner. Colonel Carteret must be hungry--your
+father begs us to wait no longer, I assured him we would not. Hordle is
+with him. He should not be alone, I think, while any pain continues."
+
+"Pain--pain?" Damaris cried, her imagination rather horribly caught by
+the word. "But is he hurt, has he had some accident?"
+
+While Carteret asked tersely: "Pain--and where?"
+
+"Here," Felicia answered, laying her hand upon her left side over the
+heart. She looked earnestly at Carteret as she spoke, conveying to him an
+alarm she sought to spare Damaris.
+
+"He tries to make little of it, and assures me it was only the heat of
+the house which caused him discomfort after the cold air out of doors.
+It may be only that, but I think we ought to make sure."
+
+Again, and with that same becoming hint of deference, she turned to
+her niece.
+
+"So I sent orders that Patch should drive at once to Stourmouth and fetch
+Dr. McCabe. I did not stop to consult you because it seemed best he
+should take out the horses before they were washed down and stabled."
+
+"Yes--but I can go to him?" Damaris asked.
+
+"Darling--of course. But I would try to follow his lead, if I were
+you--treat it all lightly, since he so wishes. Your father knows best in
+most things--and may know best in this. Please God it is so."
+
+Left alone with Carteret.
+
+"I am anxious--most cruelly anxious about my brother," she said.
+
+While Damaris, sweeping across the hall and down the corridor in her
+sunshine silken dress, repeated:
+
+"The ponies--the smugglers' ponies," a sob in her throat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TELLING HOW CHARLES VERITY LOOKED ON THE MOTHER OF HIS SON
+
+
+"Which is equivalent to saying, 'Hear the conclusion of the whole
+matter,' isn't it, McCabe?"
+
+Dr. McCabe's square, hairy-backed hands fumbled with the stethoscope as
+he pushed it into his breast pocket, and, in replying, his advertised
+cheerfulness rang somewhat false.
+
+"Not so fast, Sir Charles--in the good Lord's name, not so fast. While
+there's life there's hope, it's me settled opinion. I'm never for signing
+a patient's death-warrant before the blessed soul of him's entirely
+parted company with its mortal tenement of clay. The normal human being
+takes a mighty lot of killing in my experience, where the will to live is
+still intact. Let alone that you can never be quite upsides with Nature.
+Ah! she's an astonishing box of tricks to draw on where final
+dissolution's concerned. She glories to turn round on your pathological
+and biological high science; and, while you're measuring a man for his
+coffin, to help him give death the slip."
+
+Charles Verity slightly shifted his position--and that with singular
+carefulness--against the pillows in the deep red-covered chair. His
+hands, inert and bluish about the finger-tips, lay along the padded arms
+of it. The jacket of his grey-and-white striped flannel sleeping-suit was
+unfastened at the throat, showing the irregular lift and fall of his
+chest with each laboured breath. His features were accentuated, his face
+drawn and of a surprising pallor.
+
+The chair, in which he sat, had been brought forward into the wide arc of
+the great window forming the front of the room. Two bays of this stood
+open down to the ground. Looking out, beyond the rich brown of the
+newly-turned earth in the flower-beds, the lawn stretched away--a dim
+greyish green, under the long shadows cast by the hollies masking the
+wall on the left, and glittering, powdered by myriads of scintillating
+dewdrops, where the early sunshine slanted down on it from between their
+stiff pinnacles and sharply serrated crests.
+
+In the shrubberies robins sang, shrilly sweet. A murmur of waves,
+breaking at the back of the Bar, hung in the chill, moist, windless air.
+Presently a handbarrow rumbled and creaked, as West--the head gardener,
+last surviving relic of Thomas Clarkson Verity's reign--wheeled it from
+beneath the ilex trees towards the battery, leaving dark smudgy tracks
+upon the spangled turf.
+
+Arrived at his objective, the old gardener, with most admired
+deliberation, loaded down long-handled birch-broom, rake and hoe; and
+applied himself to mysterious peckings and sweeping of the gravel around
+the wooden carriages of the little cannon and black pyramid of
+ball.--Man, tools, and barrow were outlined against the pensive
+brightness of autumn sea and autumn sky, which last, to southward, still
+carried remembrance of sunrise in a broad band of faint yellowish pink,
+fading upward into misty azure and barred with horizontal pencillings of
+tarnished silver cloud.
+
+Thus far Charles Verity had watched the progress of the bowed,
+slow-moving figure musingly. But now, as the iron of the hoe clinked
+against the gravel flints, he came back, so to say, to himself and back
+to the supreme question at issue. He looked up, his eyes and the
+soundless ironic laughter resident in them, meeting McCabe's twinkling,
+cunning yet faithful and merry little eyes, with a flash.
+
+"The work of the world is not arrested," he said. "See, that
+octogenarian, old West. He wheeled ill-oiled, squeaking barrows and
+hacked at the garden paths when I was a Harchester boy. He wheels the one
+and hacks at the other even yet--a fact nicely lowering to one's private
+egotism, when you come to consider it. Why, then, my good friend,
+perjure yourself or strive to mince matters? The work of the world will
+be done whether I'm here to direct the doing of it or not.--Granted I am
+tough and in personal knowledge of ill-health a neophyte. My luck
+throughout has been almost uncanny. Neither in soldiering nor in sport,
+from man or from beast, have I ever suffered so much as a scratch. I have
+borne a charmed life--established a record for invulnerability, which
+served me well in the East where the gods still walk in the semblance of
+man and miracle is still persistently prevalent. Accident has passed me
+by--save for being laid up once, nearly thirty years ago, with a broken
+ankle in the house of some friends at Poonah."
+
+He ceased speaking, checking, as it seemed, disposition to further
+disclosure; while the soundless laughter in his eyes found answering
+expression upon his lips, curving them, to a somewhat bitter smile
+beneath the flowing moustache.
+
+"In to-day's enforced idleness how persistently cancelled episodes and
+emotions rap, ghostly, on the door demanding and gaining entrance!" he
+presently said. "Must we take it, Doctor, that oblivion is a fiction,
+merciful forgetfulness an illusion; and that every action, every
+desire--whether fulfilled or not--is printed indelibly upon one's memory,
+merely waiting the hour of weakness and physical defeat to show up?"
+
+"The Lord only knows!" McCabe threw off, a little hopelessly. This was
+the first utterance approaching complaint; and he deplored it for his
+patient's sake. He didn't like that word defeat.
+
+Then, to his hearer's relief with a softened accent, Charles Verity took
+up his former theme.
+
+"Save for a trifling go of fever now and again, illness has given me the
+go-by equally with accident. But, for all my ignorance of such
+afflictions I know, beyond all shadow of doubt, that a few repetitions of
+the experience of last night must close any man's account. Experiment is
+more enlightening than argument. There is no shaking the knowledge you
+arrive at through it."
+
+McCabe, standing at ease by the open window, untidy, hirsute, unkempt,
+rammed his hands down into his gaping trouser pockets and nodded
+unwilling agreement.
+
+"The attack was bad," he said. "I'm not denying it was murderously bad.
+And all the harder on you because, but for the one defaulting organ, your
+heart, you're as sound as a bell. You're a well enough man to put up a
+good fight; and that, you see, cuts both ways, be danged to it."
+
+"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.--You know as well as I do
+the Indian appointment will never be gazetted."
+
+"There you have me, Sir Charles, loath though I am to admit as much. I'd
+be a liar if I denied it would not."
+
+"How long do you give me then? Months, or only weeks?"
+
+"That depends in the main on yourself, in as far as I can presume to
+pronounce. With care"--
+
+"Which means sitting still here"--
+
+"It does."
+
+Charles Verity raised his shoulders the least bit.
+
+"Not good enough, McCabe," he declared, "not good enough. There are rites
+to be duly performed, words to be said, which I refuse to neglect. Oh,
+no, don't misunderstand me. I don't need professional help to accomplish
+my dying. Were I a member of your communion it might be different, but I
+require no much-married parsonic intermediary to make my peace with God.
+I am but little troubled regarding that. Shall not the judge of all the
+earth do right?--Nevertheless, there remain rites to be decently
+performed. I must make my peace with man--and still more with
+woman--before I go hence and am no more seen. But, look here, I have no
+wish to commit myself too soon, and risk the bathos of an anti-climax by
+having to perform them twice, repeat them at a later date.--So how long
+do you give me--weeks? Too generous an estimate? A week, then
+or--well--less?"
+
+"You want it straight?"
+
+"I want it straight."
+
+"More likely days. God grant I am mistaken. With your fine constitution,
+as I tell you, you are booked to put up a good fight. All the same, to be
+honest, Sir Charles, it was touch and go more than once last night."
+
+In the room an interval of silence, and without song of the robins and
+murmur of the sea, nearer now and louder as the rising tide lapped up the
+sands at the back of the Bar. The faint yellow-pink after-thought of
+sunrise and pencillings of tarnished cloud alike had vanished into the
+all-obtaining misty blue of the upper sky. Heading for the French coast,
+a skein of wild geese passed in wedge-shaped formation with honking cries
+and the beat of strong-winged flight. The barrow creaked again, wheeled
+some few yards further along the battery walk.
+
+"Thanks--so I supposed," Sir Charles Verity calmly said.
+
+He stretched himself, falling into a less constrained and careful
+posture. Leaned his elbow on the chair-arm, his chin in the hollow of his
+hand, crossed the right leg over the left.
+
+"Twenty-four hours will give me time for all which is of vital
+importance. The rest must, and no doubt perfectly will, arrange
+itself.--Oh! I'll obey you within reasonable limits, McCabe. I have no
+craving to hurry the inevitable conclusion. These last hours possess
+considerable significance and charm--an impressiveness even, which it
+would be folly to thrust aside or waste."
+
+Once more he looked up, his tone and expression devoid now of all
+bitterness.
+
+"I propose to savour their pleasant qualities to the full. So make
+yourself easy, my good fellow," he continued with an admirable
+friendliness. "Go and get your breakfast. Heaven knows you've most
+thoroughly earned it, and a morning pipe of peace afterwards.--The bell
+upon the small table?--Yes--oh, yes--and Hordle within earshot. I've
+everything I require; and, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, shall be
+glad enough of a respite from this course of food and drink, potions and
+poultices--remedial to the delinquent flesh no doubt, but a notable
+weariness to the-spirit.--And, see here, report to the two ladies, my
+sister and--and Damaris, that you leave me in excellent case, free of
+discomfort, resting for a time before girding up my loins to meet the
+labours of the day."
+
+Charles Verity closed his eyes in intimation of dismissal, anxious to be
+alone the better to reckon with that deeper, final loneliness which
+confronted him just now in all its relentless logic.
+
+For, though his mind remained lucid, self-realized and observant, his
+control of its action and direction was incomplete owing to bodily
+fatigue. Hence it lay open to assault, at the mercy of a thousand and one
+crowding thoughts and perceptions. And over these he desired to gain
+ascendency--to drive, rather than be driven by them. The epic of his
+three-score years, from its dim, illusive start to this dramatic and
+inexorable finish--but instantly disclosed to him in the reluctant
+admissions of the good-hearted Irish doctor--flung by at a double, in
+coloured yet incoherent progression, so to speak, now marching to
+triumphant blare of trumpet, now to roll of muffled drum. Which
+incoherence came in great measure of the inalienable duality of his own
+nature--passion and austerity, arrogance and self-doubt, love--surpassing
+most men's capacity of loving--and a defacing strain of cruelty,
+delivering stroke and counter-stroke. From all such tumult he earnestly
+sought to be delivered; since not the thing accomplished--whether for
+fame, for praise or for remorse--not, in short, what has been, but what
+was, and still more what must soon be, did he need, at this juncture,
+dispassionately to contemplate.
+
+That sharp-toothed disappointment gnawed him, is undeniable, when he
+thought of the culminating gift of happy fortune, royally satisfying to
+ambition, as unexpectedly offered him as, through his own unlooked-for
+and tragic disability, it was unexpectedly withdrawn. But disappointment
+failed to vex him long. A more wonderful journey than any possible
+earthly one, a more majestic adventure than that of any oriental
+proconsulship, awaited him. For no less a person than Death issued the
+order--an order there is no disobeying. He must saddle up therefore, bid
+farewell, and ride away.
+
+Nor did he flinch from that ride with Death, the black captain, as
+escort, any more than, during the past night, he had flinched under the
+grip of mortal pain. For some persons the call to endurance brings actual
+pleasure--of a grim heroic kind. It did so to Charles Verity. And not
+only this conscious exercise of fortitude, this pride of bearing bodily
+anguish, but a strange curiosity worked to sustain him. The novelty of
+the experience, in both cases, excited and held his interest, continued
+to exercise it and to hold.
+
+Now, as in solitude his mental atmosphere acquired serenity and
+poise--the authority of the past declining--this matter of death
+increasingly engrossed him. For it trenches on paradox, surely, that the
+one absolutely certain event in every human career is also the most
+unexplored and practically incredible.--An everyday occurrence, a
+commonplace, concerning which there remains nothing new, nothing
+original, to be written, sung or said; yet a mystery still inviolate,
+aching with the alarm of the undiscovered, the unpenetrated, to each
+individual, summoned to accept its empire! He had sent others to their
+death. Now his own turn came and he found it, however calmly considered,
+a rather astounding business. An ending or a beginning?--Useless, after
+all, to speculate. The worst feature of it, not improbably, this same
+preliminary loneliness, this stripping naked, no smallest comfort left
+you of human companionship, or even of humble material keepsake from out
+the multitude of your familiar possessions here in the dear accustomed
+human scene.
+
+The gates of death open. You pass them. They close behind you. And what
+then?--The whole hierarchy of heaven, the whole company of your
+forerunners thither--beloved and honoured on earth--may be gathered to
+hail the homing soul within those amazing portals; or it may drop, as a
+stone into a well, down the blank nothingness of the abyss.--Of all
+gambles invented by God, man or devil--so he told himself--this daily,
+hourly gamble of individual dissolution is the biggest. Man's heart
+refuses the horror of extinction, while his intellect holds the question
+in suspense. We hope. We believe. From of old fair promises have been
+made us; and, granted the gift of faith, hope and belief neighbour upon
+assurance. But certainty is denied. No mortal, still clothed in flesh,
+has known, nor--the accumulated science of the ages notwithstanding--does
+know, actually and exactly, that which awaits it.
+
+Thus, anyhow, in the still, tender brightness of the autumn morning,
+while Nature and men alike pursued their normal activities and
+occupations, did this singular matter appear to Charles Verity--he,
+himself, arbitrarily cut off from all such activities and occupations
+in the very moment of high fruition. Had death been a less eminent
+affair, or less imminent, the sarcasm of his position might have seemed
+gross to the point of insult. But, the longer he envisaged it, the more
+did the enduring enigma and its accompanying uncertainty allure. Not as
+victim, but rather as conqueror of the final terror, did he begin to
+regard himself.
+
+Meanwhile, though reason continued to hold the balance even between
+things positively known and things imagined only and hoped for, the
+god-ward impulse strengthened in him. Not by conscious or convincing
+argument from within, but by all-powerful compulsion from without, was
+his thought borne onward and upward to increasing confidence. So that he
+asked himself--as so many another, still unwearied, still enamoured of
+attainment, has asked in like case--whether impending divorce of soul and
+body may not confer freedom of a wider range and nobler quality, powers
+more varied and august than the mind, circumscribed by conditions of time
+and sense, has yet conception of?
+
+To him such development seemed possible--certainly. Probable?--Ah, well,
+perhaps--perhaps. Which brought him back to his former contention, that
+its inherent loneliness constitutes the bitterest sting of death.
+Smiling, he quoted the ancient, divinely tender saying: "There is a child
+in each one of us which cries at the dark."
+
+While, in swift reaction, he yearned towards battle where amid the
+fierce and bloody glory of the fight, souls of heroes troop forth
+together, shouting, into everlasting day or--sceptical reason shaking a
+sadly sage head once again--into everlasting night.
+
+He stretched out his hand instinctively for the bell on the little table
+at his elbow. Hordle answered his summons, grey of countenance from
+alarm, anxiety, and broken rest.
+
+"Let Miss Damaris know I shall be glad to see her when she is free to
+come to me," he said.
+
+And here, although our damsel's reputation for courage and resource may,
+thereby, sustain some damage, I am constrained to state that while in the
+sick-room Miss Felicia shone, Damaris gave off but a vacillating and
+ineffective light.
+
+Imagination is by no means invariably beneficent. The very liveliness of
+the perceptions which it engenders may intimidate and incapacitate. Upon
+Damaris imagination practised this mischief. Becoming, for the time, that
+upon which she looked, sharing every pang and even embroidering the
+context, she weakened, in some sort, to the level of the actual sufferer,
+helpless almost as he through the drench of overwhelming sympathy. She
+had been taken, poor child, at so villainous a disadvantage. Without
+preparation or warning--save of the most casual and inadequate--her
+humour wayward, she a trifle piqued, fancying her pretty clothes, her
+pretty looks, excited, both by the brilliant prospect presented by the
+Indian appointment and by her delicate passage of arms with Carteret, she
+was compelled of a sudden to witness the bodily torment of a human being,
+not only by her beloved beyond all others, but reverenced also. The
+impression she received was of outrage, almost of blasphemy. The cruelty
+of life lay uncovered, naked and open to her appalled and revolted
+consciousness. She received a moral, in addition to a physical shock,
+utterly confounding in its crudity, its primitive violence.
+
+The ravage of pain can be, in great measure, surmounted and concealed;
+but that baser thing, functional disturbance--in this case present as
+heart spasm, threatening suffocation, with consequent agonized and
+uncontrollable struggle for breath--defies concealment. This
+manifestation horrified Damaris. The more so that, being unacquainted
+with the sorry spectacle of disease, her father, under the deforming
+stress of it, appeared to her as a stranger almost--inaccessible to
+affection, hideously removed from her and remote. His person and
+character, to her distracted observation, were altered beyond recognition
+except during intervals, poignant to the verge of heart-break, when
+passing ease restored his habitual dignity and grace.
+
+Thus, while Miss Felicia and Carteret--with Hordle and Mary Fisher as
+assistants--ministered to his needs in as far as ministration was
+possible, she stood aside, consumed by misery, voluntarily effacing
+herself. Backed away even against the wall, out of range of the
+lamp-light, stricken, shuddering, and mute. Upon Dr. McCabe's arrival and
+assumption of command, Carteret, finding himself at liberty to note her
+piteous state, led her out into the passage and then to the long
+drawing-room, with gentle authority. There for a half-hour or more--to
+him sadly and strangely sweet--he sat beside her, while the tears
+silently coursed down her cheeks, letting her poor proud head rest
+against his shoulder, his arm supporting her gracious young body still
+clothed in all the bravery of her flowered silken sunshine dress.
+
+Later, Mary bringing more favourable news of Sir Charles--pain and
+suffocation having yielded for the time being to McCabe's
+treatment--Carteret persuaded her to go upstairs and let the said Mary
+put her to bed. Once there she slept the sleep of exhaustion, fatigue and
+sorrow mercifully acting as a soporific, her capacity for further thought
+or feeling literally worn out.
+
+During that session in the drawing-room Damaris, to his thankfulness, had
+asked no questions of him. All she demanded child-like, in her extremity,
+had been the comfort and security of human contact. And this he gave her
+simply, ungrudgingly, with a high purity of understanding, guiltless of
+any shadow of embarrassment or any after-thought. Their lighter, somewhat
+enigmatic relation of the earlier evening was extinguished, swamped by
+the catastrophe of Charles Verity's illness. Exactly in how far she
+gauged the gravity of that illness and its only too likely result, or
+merely wept, unnerved by the distressing outward aspect of it, Carteret
+could not determine. But he divined, and rightly, that she was in process
+of ranging herself, at least subconsciously, with a new and terrible
+experience which, could she learn the lesson of it aright would temper
+her nature to worthy issues.
+
+Hence, with a peculiar and tender interest, he watched her when, coming
+down in the morning, he found her already in the dining-room, the
+pleasant amenities of a well-ordered, hospitable house and household
+abundantly evident.
+
+Whatever the tragic occurrences of the last twelve hours, domestic
+discipline was in no respect relaxed. The atmosphere of the room
+distilled a morning freshness. Furniture and flooring shone with polish,
+a log fire, tipped by dancing flames, burned in the low wide grate. Upon
+the side-table, between the westward facing windows, a row of silver
+chafing-dishes gave agreeable promise of varied meats; as did the tea and
+coffee service, arrayed before Damaris, of grateful beverage. While she
+herself looked trim, and finished in white silk shirt and russet-red
+suit, her toilet bearing no sign of indifference or of haste.
+
+That her complexion matched her shirt in colour--or rather in all absence
+of it--that her face was thin, its contours hardened, her eyebrows drawn
+into a little frown, her eyes enormous, sombre and clouded as with
+meditative thought, increased, in Carteret's estimation, assurance of her
+regained self-mastery and composure. Nor did a reticence in her manner
+displease him.
+
+"I have persuaded Aunt Felicia to breakfast upstairs," she told him. "Dr.
+McCabe sends me word he--my father--wishes to rest for the present, so I
+engaged Aunt Felicia to rest too. She was wonderful."
+
+Damaris' voice shook slightly, as did her hand lifting the coffee-pot.
+
+"She stayed up all night. So did you, I'm afraid, didn't you,
+Colonel Sahib?"
+
+"Oh, for me that was nothing. A bath, a change, and ten minutes out there
+on the battery watching the sun come up over the sea," Carteret said. "So
+don't waste compassion on me. I'm as fit as a fiddle and in no wise
+deserve it."
+
+"Ah! but you and Aunt Felicia did stay," she repeated, her hands still
+rather tremulously busy with coffee-pot and milk jug. "You were faithful
+and I no better than a shirker. I fell through, miserably lost myself,
+which was selfish, contemptible. I am ashamed. Only I was so startled. I
+never really knew before such--such things could be.--Forgive me, Colonel
+Sahib. I have been to Aunt Felicia and asked her forgiveness
+already.--And don't think too meanly of me, please. The shirking is over
+and done with for always. You may trust me it never will happen again--my
+losing myself as I did last night, I mean."
+
+In making this appeal for leniency, her eyes met Carteret's fairly for
+the first time; and he read in them, not without admiration and a twinge
+of pain, both the height of her new-born, determined valour and the depth
+of her established distress.
+
+"You needn't tell me that, you needn't tell me that, dear witch," he
+answered quickly. "I was sure of it all along. I knew it was just a phase
+which would have no second edition. So put any question of shame or need
+of forgiveness out of your precious head. You were rushed up against
+circumstances, against a revelation, calculated to stagger the most
+seasoned campaigner. You did not shirk; but it took you a little time to
+get your bearings. That was all. Don't vex your sweet soul with quite
+superfluous reproaches.--Sugar? Yes, and plenty of it I am afraid.--But
+you, too, must eat."
+
+And on her making some show of repugnance--
+
+"See here, we can't afford to despise the day of small things, of minor
+aids to efficiency, dearest witch," he wisely admonished her.
+
+Whereupon, emulous to please him, bending her will to his, Damaris
+humbled herself to consumption of a portion of the contents of the
+chafing-dishes aforesaid. To discover that, granted a healthy subject,
+sorrow queerly breeds hunger, the initial distaste for food--in the main
+a sentimental one--once surmounted.
+
+Later McCabe joined them. Recognized Damaris' attitude of valour, and
+inwardly applauded it, although himself in woeful state. For he was hard
+hit, badly upset. Conscious of waste of tissue, he set about to restore
+it without apology or hesitation, trouble putting an edge to appetite in
+his case also, and that of formidable keenness. Bitterly he grieved,
+since bearing the patient, he feared very certainly to lose, an uncommon
+affection. He loved Charles Verity; while, from the worldly standpoint,
+his dealings with The Hard meant very much to him--made for glory, a
+feather in his cap visible to all and envied by many. Minus the fine
+flourish of it his position sank to obscurity. As a whist-playing,
+golf-playing, club-haunting, Anglo-Indian ex-civil surgeon--and Irishman
+at that--living in lodgings at Stourmouth, he commanded meagre
+consideration. But as chosen medical-attendant and, in some sort,
+retainer of Sir Charles Verity he ranked. The county came within his
+purview. Thanks to this connection with The Hard he, on occasion, rubbed
+shoulders with the locally great. Hence genuine grief for his friend was
+black-bordered by the prospect of impending social and mundane loss. The
+future frowned on him, view it in what terms he might. To use his own
+unspoken phrase, he felt "in hellishly low water."
+
+One point in particular just now worried him. Thus, as fish, eggs,
+porridge, hot cakes, honey, and jam disappeared in succession, he opened
+himself to Damaris and Carteret. A difficult subject, namely that of a
+second opinion.--Let no thought of any wounding of his susceptibilities
+operate against the calling in of such. He was ready and willing to meet
+any fellow practitioner they might select--a Harley Street big-wig, or
+Dr. Maskall, of Harchester, whose advice in respect of cardiac trouble
+was wide sought.
+
+He had, however, but just launched the question when Hordle entered and,
+walking to the head of the table, addressed Damaris.
+
+"Sir Charles desires me to say he will be glad to see you, miss, when you
+are at liberty," he told her in muffled accents.
+
+She sprang up, to pause an instant, irresolute, glancing wide-eyed
+at Carteret.
+
+He had risen too. Coming round the corner of the table, he drew back her
+chair, put his hand under her elbow, went with her to the door.
+
+"There is nothing to dread, dearest witch," he gently and quietly said.
+"Have confidence in yourself. God keep you--and him.--Now you are quite
+ready? That's right.--Well, then go."
+
+Carteret waited, looking after her until, crossing the hall followed by
+Hordle, she passed along the corridor out of sight. Silent, preoccupied,
+he closed the door and took a turn the length of the room before resuming
+his place at the opposite side of the table to McCabe, facing the light.
+
+The doctor, who had ceased eating and half risen to his feet at the
+commencement of this little scene, watched it throughout; at first
+indifferent, a prey to his own worries, but soon in quickening interest,
+shrewd enquiry and finally in dawning comprehension.
+
+"Holy Mother of Mercy, so that's the lay of the land, is it?" and his
+loose lips shaped themselves to a whistle, yet emitted no sound. To
+obliterate all signs of which tendency to vulgar expression of
+enlightenment he rubbed moustache, mouth and chin with his napkin,
+studying Carteret closely meanwhile.
+
+"In the pink of condition, by Gad--good for a liberal twenty years yet,
+and more--bar accident. Indefinite postponement of the grand climacteric
+in this case.--All the same a leetle, lee-tie bit dangerous, I'm
+thinking, for both, if she tumbles to it."
+
+Then aloud--"Has the poor darling girl grasped the meaning of her
+father's illness do you make out, Colonel grasped the ugly
+eventualities of it?"
+
+Carteret slowly brought his glance to bear on the speaker.
+
+"I believe so, though she has not actually told me as much," he
+said--"And now about this question of a second opinion, McCabe?"
+
+The easily huffed Irishman accepted the reproof in the best spirit
+possible, as confirming his own perspicacity.
+
+"Quite so. Flicked him neatly on the raw, and he winced. All the same
+he's a white man, a real jewel of a fellow, worthy of good fortune if the
+ball's thrown his way. I wonder how long, by-the-by, this handsome game's
+been a-playing?"
+
+With which, as requested, he returned to the rival claims of Harley
+Street and Harchester in respect of a consulting physician.
+
+Carteret proved a faithful prophet, for in truth there was nothing to
+dread the beloved presence once entered, as Damaris thankfully
+registered.
+
+The sun by now topped the hollies and shone into the study, flinging a
+bright slanting pathway across the dim crimson, scarlet and blue of the
+Turkey carpet. Charles Verity stood, in an open bay of the great window,
+looking out over the garden. Seen thus, in the still sunlight, the tall
+grey-clad figure possessed all its accustomed, slightly arrogant repose.
+Damaris thrilled with exalted hope. For the young are slow to admit even
+the verdict of fact as final. His attitude was so natural, so unstrained
+and unstudied, that the message of ghostly warning yesterday evening was
+surely discounted; while the subsequent terror of the night, that hideous
+battle with pain and suffocation, became to her incredible, an evil dream
+from which, in grateful ecstasy, she now awoke.
+
+Her joy found expression.
+
+"Dearest, dearest, you sent for me.--Is it to let me see you are
+really better, more beautifully recovered than they told me or I
+ventured to suppose?"
+
+Her voice broke under a gladness midway between tears and laughter.
+
+"The envious blades of Atropos' scissors have not cut the mortal thread
+yet anyhow," he answered, smiling, permitting himself the classic conceit
+as a screen to possible emotion. "But we won't build too much on the
+clemency of Fate. How long she proposes to wait before closing her
+scissors it is idle to attempt to say."
+
+He laid his hands on Damaris' shoulders. Bent his head and kissed
+her upward pouted lips--thereby hushing the loving disclaimer which
+rose to them.
+
+"So we will keep on the safe side of the event, my wise child," he
+continued. "Make all our preparations and thus deny the enemy any
+satisfaction of taking us unawares.--Can you write a business
+letter for me?"
+
+"A dozen, dearest, if you wish," Damaris assented eagerly. Yet that
+image of the scissors stayed by her. Already her joy was sensibly
+upon the wane.
+
+"Oh! one will be sufficient, I think--quite sufficient for this morning."
+
+Charles Verity turned his head, looking seaward through the
+tranquil sunshine.
+
+"That Indian appointment has to be suitably thanked for and--declined."
+
+Damaris drew back a step so as to gain a clearer view of him. The
+hands resting on her shoulders were oddly inert, so she fancied,
+forceless and in temperature cold. Even through the thickness of cloth
+jacket and silk shirt she was aware of their lifelessness and chill.
+This roused rebellion in her. Her instinct was for fight. She made a
+return on McCabe's suggestion regarding further advice. She would
+demand a consultation, call in expert opinion. The dear man with the
+blue eyes--here her white face flushed rosy--would manage all that for
+her, and compel help in the form of the last word of medical science
+and skill.
+
+"Might not your letter be put off for just a few days?" she pleaded, "in
+case--until"--
+
+But Charles Verity broke in before she could finish her tender protest,
+a sadness, even hint of bitterness in his tone.
+
+"You covet this thing so much," he said. "Your heart is so set on it?"
+
+She made haste to reassure him.--No, no not that way, not for her. How
+could it signify, save on his account? She only cared because greedy of
+his advancement, greedy to have him exalted--placed where he belonged, on
+the summit, the apex, so that all must perceive and acknowledge his
+greatness. As to herself--and the flush deepened, making her in aspect
+deliciously youthful and ingenious--she confessed misgivings. Reported
+her talk with Carteret concerning the subject, and the scolding received
+from him thereupon.
+
+"One more reason for writing in the sense I propose, then," her father
+declared, "since it sets your over-modest doubts and qualms at rest, my
+dear. That is settled."
+
+His hands weighed on her shoulders as though he suddenly needed and
+sought support.
+
+"I will sit down," he said. "There are other matters to be discussed, and
+I can, perhaps, talk more easily so."
+
+He went the few steps across to the red chair. Sank into it. Leaned
+against the pillows, bending backward, his hand pressed to his left
+side. His features contracted, and his breath caught as of one spent
+with running. And Damaris, watching him, again received that desolating
+impression of change, of his being in spirit far removed, inaccessible
+to her sympathy, a stranger. He had gone away and rather terribly left
+her alone.
+
+"Are you in pain?" she asked, agonized.
+
+"Discomfort," he replied. "We will not dignify this by the name of pain.
+But I must wait for a time before dictating the letter. There's something
+I will ask you to do for me, my dear, meanwhile."
+
+"Yes"--He paused, shifted his position, closed his eyes.
+
+"Have you held any communication with--"
+
+He stopped, for the question irked him. Even at this pass it went against
+the grain with him to ask of his daughter news of his son.
+
+But in that pause our maiden's scattered wits very effectually
+returned to her.
+
+"With Darcy Faircloth?" she said. And as Charles Verity bowed his head in
+assent--"Yes, I should have told you already but--but for all which has
+happened. He was here the day before yesterday. He came home from church
+with me.--That was my doing, not his, to begin with. You mustn't think he
+put himself forward--took advantage, I mean, of your being away. If there
+is any blame it is mine."
+
+"Mine, rather--and of long standing. God forgive me!"
+
+But Damaris, fairly launched now upon a wholly welcome topic, would have
+none of this. To maintain her own courage, and, if it might be, combat
+that dreaded withdrawal of his spirit into regions where she could not
+follow, she braced herself to reason with him.
+
+"No--there indeed you are mistaken, dearest," she gently yet confidently
+asserted. "You take the whole business topsy-turvy fashion, quite wrong
+way round. I won't weary you with explanations of exactly what led to
+Darcy Faircloth coming here with me on Sunday. But you ought to know that
+he and Aunt Felicia met. I hadn't planned that. It just happened. And she
+was lovely to him--lovely to us both. She made him stay to
+luncheon--inviting him in your name."
+
+"I seem to possess a singular gift for saddling my relations with the
+payment of my bad debts," Charles Verity remarked.
+
+"But there isn't any bad debt--that's what I so dearly want you to
+believe, what I'm trying so hard, Commissioner Sahib, to tell you,"
+Damaris cried. "Afterwards, when he and I were alone by ourselves, the
+ice broke somehow, he gave himself away and said beautiful things--things
+about you which made me delightfully happy, and showed how he has felt
+towards you all along."
+
+Simply, without picking of her words, hesitation or artifice, Damaris
+repeated that somewhat sinister tale of the sea. Of a sailing ship,
+becalmed through burning days and stifling nights in tropic waters. Of
+the ill-doings of a brutal, drunken captain. Of a fly-blown eating-house
+in Singapore. Of the spiritual deliverance there achieved through sight
+of Charles Verity's name and successful record in the columns of a
+Calcutta newspaper; and the boy's resultant demand for the infliction of
+some outward and visible sign, some inalienable stigmata, which should
+bear perpetual witness to the fact of his parentage.
+
+"So you see"--
+
+Damaris kindled, standing before him, flamed indeed to a rare
+carelessness of convention, of enjoined pruderies and secrecies.--
+
+"You gave him the beautiful gift of life to begin with; and saved his
+life later when he was so miserably tempted to end it. As he loves life,
+where then is the debt?--Not on your side certainly, dearest."
+
+Listening to which fondly exalted sophistries--for sophistries from
+worldly and moral standpoint alike must he not surely pronounce
+them?--Charles Verity still received comfort to his soul. They ought to
+be reckoned mistaken, of course, transparently in error, yet neither son
+nor daughter condemned him. Neither did his sister, in the pathetic
+innocence and purity of her middle-age maidenhood.
+
+This moved him to thankfulness, none the less genuine because shot with
+self-mockery. For he was curious to observe how, as the last urgings of
+ambition and thirst of power fell away from him,--he riding under escort
+of Death, the black captain--all tributes of human tenderness and
+approval gained in value.--Not the approval of notable personages, of
+those high in office, nor even that of sympathetic critics and readers;
+but of persons in his own immediate voisinage, bound to him by
+friendship, by association, or the tie of blood.--Their good-will was
+precious to him as never before. He craved to be in perfect amity with
+every member of that restricted circle. Hence it vexed and fretted him to
+know the circle incomplete, through the exclusion of one rather
+flagrantly intimate example. Yet to draw the said member, the said
+example, within the circle, yielding it the place which it might
+rightfully aspire to occupy, amounted--after half a lifetime of
+abstention and avoidance--to a rather tremendous demonstration, one which
+might well be hailed as extravagant, as a courting of offence possible
+only to a sentimental egoist of most aggravated kind.
+
+And he was tired--had no smallest inclination towards demonstrations. For
+the threatening of heart spasm, to which he lately denied the title of
+pain, though of short duration, affected him adversely, sapping his
+strength. His mind, it is true, remained clear, even vividly receptive;
+but, just as earlier this morning, his will proved insufficient for its
+direction or control. He mused, his chin sunk on his breast, his left
+hand travelling down over the long soft moustache, his eyes half closed.
+Thought and vision followed their own impulse, wandering back and forth
+between the low-caste eating-house in the sweltering heat and perfumed
+stenches of the oriental, tropic seaport; and the stone-built English
+inn--here on Marychurch Haven--overlooking the desolate waste of
+sand-hills, the dark reed-beds and chill gleaming tides.
+
+For love of Damaris, his daughter, while still in the heat of his prime,
+he had foresworn all traffic with women. Yet now, along with the tacitly
+admitted claims of the son, arose the claim of the mistress, mother of
+that son--in no sensual sort, but with a certain wildness of bygone
+romance, wind and rain-swept, unsubstantial, dim and grey. Ever since
+conviction of the extreme gravity of his physical condition dawned on
+him, the idea of penetrating the courts of that deserted sanctuary had
+been recurrent. In the summing up of his human, his earthly, experience,
+romance deserved, surely, a word of farewell? Damaris' story served to
+give the idea a fuller appeal and consistency.
+
+But he was tired--tired. He longed simply to drift. It was infinitely
+distasteful to him definitely to plan, or to decide respecting anything.
+
+Meanwhile his continued silence and abstraction wore badly upon Damaris.
+She had steeled herself; had flamed, greatly daring. Now reaction set in.
+Her effort proved vain. She had failed. For once more she recognized that
+an unknown influence, a power dark and incalculably strong--so she
+figured it--regained ascendency over her father, working to the insidious
+changing of his nature, strangely winning him away. Waiting for some
+response, some speech or comment on his part, fear and the sense of
+helplessness assailed, and would have submerged her, had she not clung to
+Carteret's parting "God bless you" and avowed faith in her stability, as
+to a wonder-working charm. Nor did the charm fail in efficacy.--Oh!
+really he was a wonderful sheet-anchor, "the shadow of a great rock in a
+weary land," that dear man with the blue eyes! Consciously she blessed
+him.--And, thanks to remembrance of him, presently found voice and
+purpose once again.
+
+"You aren't displeased with me, dearest?" she asked.
+
+"Displeased?" Charles Verity repeated, at first absently. "Displeased, my
+dear, no--why?"
+
+"We didn't do wrong?"--labouring the point, the more fully to recall and
+retain him--"Didn't take too much upon ourselves--Aunt Felicia, I mean,
+and I--by persuading Darcy Faircloth to stay on Sunday, by entertaining
+him when you were away? Or--or have I been stupid, dearest, and
+thoughtlessly wearied you by talking too much and too long?"
+
+"Neither," he said. "On the contrary, all you have told me goes to lessen
+certain difficulties, make the crooked, in some degree, straight and
+rough places plain."
+
+For, if Faircloth had been here so recently, broken bread too in the
+house, so he argued, it became the easier to bid him return. And Charles
+Verity needed to see him, see him this morning--since purpose of
+farewells, to be spoken in those long-deserted courts of romance,
+stiffened, becoming a thing not merely to be turned hither and thither
+in thought, but to be plainly and directly done.--"Send for him in your
+own name," he said. "Explain to him how matters stand, and ask him to
+talk with me."
+
+And, as Damaris agreed, rejoiced by the success of her adventurous
+diplomacy, making to go at once and give the required instructions--
+
+"Stay--stay a moment," her father said, and drew her down to sit on the
+chair-arm, keeping her hand in his, and with his other hand stroking it
+wistfully. For though certain difficulties might be sensibly lessened,
+they were not altogether removed; and he smiled inwardly, aware that not
+even in the crack of doom are feminine rights over a man other than
+conflicting and uncommonly ticklish to adjust.
+
+"Before we commit ourselves to further enterprises, my darling, let us
+quite understand one another upon one or two practical points--bearing in
+mind the blades of Atropos' envious scissors. My affairs are in
+order"--Damaris shrank, piteously expostulated.
+
+"Oh! but must we, are we obliged to speak of those things? They grate on
+me--Commissioner Sahib, they are ugly. They hurt."
+
+"Yes--distinctly we are obliged to speak of them. To do so can neither
+hasten nor retard the event. All the more obliged to speak of them,
+because I have never greatly cared about money, except for what I could
+do with it.--As a means, of vast importance. As an end,
+uninteresting.--So it has been lightly come and lightly go, I am afraid.
+All the same I've not been culpably improvident. A portion of my income
+dies with me; but enough remains to secure you against any anxiety
+regarding ways and means, if not to make you a rich woman. I have left an
+annuity to your Aunt Felicia. Her means are slender, dear creature, and
+her benevolence outruns them, so that she balances a little anxiously, I
+gather, on the edge of debt. The capital sum will return to you
+eventually. Carteret and McCabe consented, some years ago, to act as my
+executors. Their probity and honour are above reproach.--Now as to this
+place--if you should ever wish to part with it, let Faircloth take it
+over. I have made arrangements to that effect, about which I will talk
+with him when he comes.--Have no fear lest I should say that which might
+wound him. I shall be as careful, my dear, of his proper pride as of my
+own.--Understand I have no desire to circumscribe either your or his
+liberty of action unduly. But this house, all it contains, the garden,
+the very trees I see from these windows, are so knitted into the fabric
+of my past life that I shrink--with a queer sense of homelessness--from
+any thought of their passing into the occupation of strangers.--Childish,
+pitifully weak-minded no doubt, and therefore the more natural that one
+should crave a voice, thus in the disposition of what one has learned
+through long usage so very falsely to call one's own!"
+
+"We will do exactly what you wish, even to the littlest particular, I
+promise you--both for Faircloth and for myself," Damaris answered,
+forcing herself to calmness and restraint of tears.
+
+He petted her hands silently until, as the minutes passed, she began once
+more to grow fearful of that dreadful unknown influence insidiously
+possessing him and winning him away. And he may have grown fearful of it
+too, for he made a sharp movement, raising his shoulders as though
+striving to throw off some weight, some encumbrance.
+
+"There is an end, then, of business," he said, "and of such worldly
+considerations. I need worry you with them no more. Only one thing
+remains, of which, before I speak to others, it is only seemly, my
+darling, I should speak to you."
+
+Charles Verity lifted his eyes to hers, and she perceived his spirit as
+now in nowise remote; but close, evident almost to the point of alarm. It
+looked out from the wasted face, at once--to her seeing--exquisite and
+austere, reaching forward, keenly curious of all death should reveal,
+unmoved, yet instinct with the brilliance, the mirthfulness even, of
+impending portentous adventure.
+
+"You know, Damaris, how greatly I love and have loved you--how dear you
+have been to me, dearer than the satisfaction of my own flesh?"
+
+Speech was beyond her. She looked back, dazzled and for the moment
+broken.
+
+"Therefore it goes hard with me to ask anything which might, ever so
+distantly, cause you offence or distress. Only time presses. We are
+within sight of the end."
+
+"Ah! no--no," she exclaimed, wrenching away her hands and beating them
+together, passion of affection, of revolt and sorrow no more to be
+controlled. "How can I bear it, how can I part with you? I will not, I
+will not have you die.--McCabe isn't infallible. We must call in other
+doctors. They may be cleverer, may suggest new treatment, new remedies.
+They must cure you--or if they can't cure, at least keep you alive for
+me. I won't have you die!"
+
+"Call in whom you like, as many as you like, my darling, the whole
+medical faculty if it serves to pacify or to content you," he said,
+smiling at her.
+
+Damaris repented. Took poor passion by the throat, stifling its
+useless cries.
+
+"I tire you. I waste your strength. I think only of myself, of my own
+grief, most beloved, my own consuming grief and desolation.--See--I will
+be good--I am good. What else is there you want to have me do?"
+
+"This--but recollect you are free to say me nay, without scruple or
+hesitation. I shall not require you to give your reasons, but shall bow,
+unreservedly, to your wishes. For you possess a touchstone in such
+questions as the one now troubling me, which, did I ever possess it, I
+lost, as do most men, rather lamentably early in my career. If you suffer
+me to do so, I will ask Darcy Faircloth to bring his mother here to me,
+this evening at dusk, when her coming will not challenge impertinent
+observation--so that I may be satisfied no bitterness colours her thought
+of me and that we part in peace, she and I."
+
+Damaris got up from her seat on the arm of the red-covered chair. She
+stood rigid, her expression reserved to blankness, but her head
+carried high.
+
+"Of course," she said, a little hoarsely, and waited. "Of course. How
+could I object? Wasn't it superfluous even to ask me? Your word,
+dearest, is law."
+
+"But in the present case hardly gospel?"
+
+"Yes--gospel too--since it is your word. Gospel, that is, for me. Let
+Darcy Faircloth bring his mother here by all means. Only I think,
+perhaps, this is all a little outside my province. It would be better you
+should make the--the appointment with him yourself. I will send to him
+directly. Patch can take a note over to the island. I would prefer to
+have Patch go as messenger than either of the other men."
+
+She walked towards the door. Stopped half-way and turned, hearing her
+father move. And as she turned--her eyes quick with enquiry as to his
+case, but inscrutable as to her own--Charles Verity rose too and held
+out his arms in supreme invitation. She came swiftly forward and kissed
+him, while with all the poor measure of force left him, he strained her
+to his breast.
+
+"Have I asked too much from you, Damaris, and, in the desire to make
+sure of peace elsewhere, endangered the perfection of my far dearer
+peace with you?"
+
+She leaned back from the waist, holding her head away from him and laid
+her hand on his lips.
+
+"Don't blaspheme, most beloved," she said, "I have no will but yours."
+
+Again she kissed him, disengaged herself very gently, and went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTH WHICH IS ALSO CHAPTER THE LAST
+
+
+At Lady's Oak--an ancient forest boundary--where the main road forks,
+Damaris swung the dog-cart to the left, across the single-arch stone
+bridge spanning the Arne; and on, up the long winding ascent from the
+valley-bottom to the moorlands patched with dark fir plantations, which
+range inland from behind Stourmouth. This constituted the goal of her
+journey; for, the high-lying plateau reached, leagues of open country are
+disclosed north and west, far as the eye carries, to the fine bare
+outline of the Wiltshire Downs. She asked for wide prospects, for air and
+ample space; but as floored by stable earth rather than by the eternal
+unrest and "fruitless, sonorous furrows" of the sea.
+
+Ever since the day of the funeral, now nearly a fortnight ago, Damaris
+had kept within the sheltering privacy of the house and grounds. That
+day, one of soft drizzling rain and clinging ground fog, had also been to
+her one of hardly endurable distraction. Beneath assumption of respectful
+silence, it jarred, boomed, took notes, debated, questioned. Beneath
+assumption of solemnity, it peeped and stared. Her flayed nerves and
+desolated heart plagued her with suspicions of insincerity.
+
+In as far as Colonel Carteret controlled proceedings all had been marked
+by reverent simplicity. But where the carcass is, the eagles,
+proverbially, gather. And unfeathered fowl, in their own estimation
+eminently representative of that regal species, flocked to Deadham church
+and to The Hard.
+
+If--to vary our metaphor--some, in the past, inclined to stone the living
+prophet, these now outvied one another in their alacrity to bedeck his
+tomb. Dr. Cripps, for example, hurried to offer himself as pall-bearer--a
+request the more readily disposed of that there was no pall. While
+Archdeacon Verity, to cite a second example and from a higher social
+level, supported by his elder son Pontifex--domestic chaplain to the
+Bishop of Harchester--insisted on sharing with Canon Horniblow the
+melancholy honour of reading the burial service.
+
+For the rest, the head, and lesser members of the family, from the big
+house at Canton Magna, were solidly, not to say rather aggressively in
+evidence. With them Mrs. Cowden and her husband-satellite, the Honourable
+Augustus joined forces on arriving from Paulton Lacy.--Lord Bulparc drove
+over from Napworth Castle. The country, indeed, showed up with
+commendable indifference to depressing atmospheric conditions. Marychurch
+sent a contingent. Stourmouth followed suit in the shape of General
+Frayling--attended by Marshall Wace in full clerical raiment--bearing a
+wreath of palm, violets, and myrtle wholly disproportionate in bulk and
+circumference to his own shrivelled and rather tottery form.--Of this
+unlooked for advent more hereafter.--Other distinguished soldiers came
+from Aldershot and down from town. A permanent Under Secretary, correct
+but visibly bored, represented the India Office.
+
+The parish, neglecting its accustomed industries and occupations,
+mustered in strength; incited thereto, not only by the draw of recently
+resurrected scandal, but by news of the appointment recently offered Sir
+Charles Verity, which had somehow got noised abroad. The irony of his
+illness and death occurring precisely when he was invited to mount
+nothing less--according to local report--than an oriental throne,
+sufficed to stir the most lethargic imagination. Moralists of the
+Reginald Sawyer school might read in this the direct judgment of an
+offended deity. Deadham, however, being reprehensibly clannish, viewed
+the incident otherwise; and questioned--thanks to an ingeniously inverted
+system of reasoning--whether the said Reginald Sawyer hadn't laid himself
+open to a charge of manslaughter or of an even graver breach of the
+Decalogue.
+
+Theresa Bilson--in whose hat artificial buttercups and daisies hastily
+made room for bows of crape--lurked in the humble obscurity of the free
+seats near the west door. To right and left she was flanked by a guardian
+Miss Minett; but these ladies to-day were but broken reeds on which to
+lean. They still laboured under a sense of having been compromised, and
+of resultant social ostracism. This, although their former parsonic
+lodger had vanished from the scene on the day following his threatened
+immersion--a half-hearted proposition on his part of "facing out the
+undeserved obloquy, living down the coarse persecution" meeting with as
+scant encouragement from his ecclesiastical superior, the vicar, as from
+themselves. Theresa--it really was hard on her--shared their eclipse.
+Hence the humble obscurity of the free seats, where she sniffed, dabbed
+her eyes and gurgled, unheeded and unseen.
+
+Finally young Tom Verity--home on his first long leave--having
+accompanied the family party from Canton Magna and feeling his sense of
+humour unequal to the continued strain of their sublime insularity,
+benevolently herded two stately, though shivering, turbanned native
+gentlemen, who reached Deadham during the early stages of the ceremony no
+one quite knew whence or when. In the intervals of his self-imposed
+duties, he found time to admire the rich unction of his father, the
+Archdeacon's manner and voice.
+
+"_Plus ça change, plus la même chose_," he quoted gleefully. "What a
+consummate fraud the dear old governor is; and how deliciously innocent
+of the fact, that he imposes upon no one half so successfully as he does
+upon himself!"
+
+Our young man also found time, from afar, to admire Damaris; but, let it
+be added, to a very different tune. Her beauty came as surprise to him
+as having much more than fulfilled its early promise. He found it
+impressive beyond that of any one of the many ladies, mature or callow,
+with whom it was his habit largely to flirt. So far he could
+congratulate himself on having successfully withstood the wiles of
+matrimony--but by how near a shave, at times by how narrow a squeak! If
+that fine parental fraud, the Archdeacon, had but known!--Tom,
+undeterred by the solemnity of the occasion, hunched up his shoulders
+like a naughty boy expecting his ears boxed.--But then--thank the
+powers, the Archdeacon so blessedly and refreshingly didn't, and, what
+was more, didn't in the very least want to know. He never asked for
+trouble; but, like the priest and Levite of sacred parable, carefully
+passed by on the other side when trouble was about.
+
+Our young friend looked again at Damaris. Yes--she had beauty and in the
+grand manner, standing there at the foot of the open brick-lined grave,
+calm, immobile, black-clad, white-faced, in the encircling melancholy of
+the drizzling mist. With the family grouped about her, large-boned,
+pompous, well-fed persons, impervious to general ideas as they were
+imperviously prosperous, he compared her to a strayed deer amongst a
+herd of store cattle. Really, with the exception of his cousin Felicia
+and--naturally--of himself, the Verity breed was almost indecently true
+to type. Prize animals, most of them, he granted, still cattle--for
+didn't he detect an underlying trace of obstinate bovine ferocity in
+their collective aspect?
+
+Damaris' calm and immobility exceeded theirs. But in quality and source
+how far removed, how sensitive and intelligent! Her mourning was in the
+grand manner, too, her grief sincere and absolute to the extent of a
+splendid self-forgetfulness. She didn't need to pose; for that forgotten
+self could be trusted--in another acceptation of the phrase--never to
+forget itself.
+
+And here Tom Verity's agreeable frivolity, the astute and witty
+shiftiness of mind and--in a degree--of practice, for which he so readily
+found excuses and forgave himself, made place for nobler apprehensions.
+Not merely Damaris', just now, rather tragic beauty moved and impressed
+him; but some quality inherent in her upon which he felt disposed to
+confer the title of genius. That was going far.--Mentally he pulled
+himself up short.--For wasn't it going altogether too far--absurdly so?
+What the dickens did this excessive admiration portend? Could he have
+received the _coup de foudre_?--He had to-day a fancy for French tags, in
+reaction from the family's over-powering Englishness.--That wouldn't suit
+his book in the very least. For in the matters of the affections he held
+it thriftless, to the confines of sheer lunacy, to put all your eggs into
+one basket. He, therefore, politicly abstained from further observation
+of Damaris; and, with engaging assiduity, reapplied himself to herding
+the two native gentlemen through the remainder of the ceremony and, at
+the conclusion of it, into the mildewed luxury of a Marychurch landau.
+
+Deadham parish went home to its tea that evening damp, not to say
+dripping, but well pleased with the figure it had cut in the public eye.
+For it had contributed its quota to contemporary history; and what parish
+can, after all, do more! Reporters pervaded it armed with note-books and
+pencils. They put questions, politely requested a naming of names. The
+information furnished in answer would reach the unassailable authority of
+print, giving Deadham opportunity to read the complimentary truth about
+itself. Still better, giving others opportunity to read the complimentary
+truth about Deadham. Hence trade and traffic of sorts, with much
+incidental replenishing of purses. Great are the uses of a dead prophet
+to the keepers of his tomb! Not within the memory of the oldest
+inhabitant had any funeral been so largely or honourably attended. Truly
+it spelled excellent advertisement--and this although two persons,
+calculated mightily to have heightened interest and brought up dramatic
+and emotional values, were absent from the scene.
+
+For Lesbia Faircloth, giving her barman and two women servants a holiday,
+closed the inn at noon. Alone within the empty house, she locked the
+outer doors. Drew the blinds, reducing the interior to uniform,
+shadow-peopled obscurity, with the exception of her own bed-chamber.
+There she left one small square window--set deep in the stone work of the
+wall--open and uncurtained.
+
+It faced the causeway and perspective of lane skirting the warren and
+leading to the high road and village. Looking out thence, in winter when
+the trees were bare, she could see Deadham church, crowning its
+monticule, part of the sloping graveyard and, below these in the middle
+distance, the roofs and gables of the village street.
+
+To-day the view was obliterated. For here, at the river level, mist and
+drizzle took the form of fog. Opaque, chill and dank, it drifted in
+continuous, just perceptible, undulations past and in at the open
+casement. Soon the air of the room grew thick and whitish, the dark oak
+furniture and the floor boards furred with moisture. Yet, her methodical
+closure of the house complete, Lesbia Faircloth elected to sit in full
+inward sweep of it, drawing a straight-backed chair, mounted on roughly
+carpentered rockers, close to the window.
+
+A handsome woman still, though in her late fifties, erect and of
+commanding presence, her figure well-proportioned if somewhat massive.
+Her dark hair showed no grey. Her rather brown skin was clear, smooth and
+soft in texture. Her eyes clear, too, watchful and reticent; on
+occasion--such as the driving of a business bargain say, or of a drunken
+client--hard as flint. Her mouth, a wholesome red, inclined to fullness;
+but had been governed to straightness of line--will dominant, not only in
+her every movement, but in repose as she now sat, the chair rockers at a
+backward tilt, her capable and well-shaped hands folded on her black
+apron in the hollow of her lap.
+
+Putting aside all work for once, and permitting herself a space of
+undisturbed leisure, she proceeded to cast up her account with love and
+life in as clear-headed, accurate a fashion as she would have cast up the
+columns of cash-book or ledger--and found the balance on the credit side.
+So finding it, she turned her head and looked across the room at the wide
+half-tester wooden bed, set against the inner wall--the white crochet
+counterpane of which, an affair of intricate fancy patterns and
+innumerable stitches, loomed up somewhat ghostly and pallid through the
+gloom. A flicker of retrospective victory passed across her face,
+attesting old scores as paid. For there, through sleepless nights,
+nursing the ardours and disgust of her young womanhood, she lay barren
+beside her apple-cheeked, piping-voiced spouse, his wife in name only.
+There later, times having, as by miracle, changed for her, she gave
+birth to her son.
+
+If somewhat pre-christian in instinct and in nature, the child of a more
+ancient and a simpler world, she was in no sort slow of intelligence or
+wanton. What had been, sufficed her. She cried out neither for further
+indulgence of passion, nor against barriers imposed by circumstance and
+class. That which she had done, she had done open-eyed, counting and
+accepting the cost. Since then wooers were not lacking; but she turned a
+deaf ear to all and each. A frank materialist in some ways, she proved an
+idealist in this. No subsequent love passage could rival, in wonder or
+beauty, that first one; since, compared with Charles Verity, the men who
+subsequently aspired to her favours--whether in wedlock or out--were, to
+her taste, at best dull, loutish fellows, at worst no more than human
+jackasses or human swine.
+
+And, through it all, she possessed the boy on whom to spend her heart, in
+whose interests to employ her foresight and singular capacity of
+money-making. For love's sake therefore, and for his sake also, she had
+lived without reproach, a woman chary even of friendship, chary, too, of
+laughter, chary above all of purposeless gaddings and of gossip.
+Business, and the boy's sea-going or returning, might take her as far as
+Southampton, Plymouth, Cardiff, more rarely London or some northern port.
+But Deadham village rarely beheld her, and never, it is to be feared, did
+the inside of Deadham church.
+
+Yet Deadham church bell plaintively, insistently tolling, the sound
+reaching her muted by the thickness of the fog, kept her attention on the
+stretch for the ensuing hour. Startling as it was poignant, Charles
+Verity's demand to see her, six days ago, brought the story of her love
+to full circle. Their meeting had been of the briefest, for he was
+exhausted by pain. But that he had sent, and she had gone, was unlocked
+for largesse on the part of fortune, sufficient to give her deep-seated
+and abiding sense of healing and of gain. And this stayed by her now,
+rather than any active call for mourning.
+
+She inhaled the dank chillness of the fog gratefully. It suited the
+occasion better far than sunshine and bright skies. For winter,
+darkness, sullen flowing waters and desolate crying winds furnished the
+accompaniment of those earlier meetings. Hearing the tolling bell she
+strove to relive them, and found she did so with singularly mounting
+wealth and precision of detail. Not only vision but sense pushed
+backward and inward, revitalizing what had been; until she ached with
+suspense and yearning, shrewdly evaded dangers, surmounted obstructions
+by action at once bold and wary and tasted the transfiguring rapture of
+the end attained.
+
+In the soberness of her middle years, occupied as she was with the rough,
+exacting business of the inn, and with the management of accumulating
+landed and other property--anxiety born of her son's perilous calling
+never absent from her thought--Lesbia Faircloth inclined to live
+exclusively in the present. Hence the colours of her solitary passion had
+somewhat faded, becoming clouded and dim. Recent events--led by the ugly
+publicity of Reginald Sawyer's sermon--served to revive those colours.
+To-day they glowed rich and splendid, a robing of sombre glory to her
+inward and backward searching sight.
+
+The bell tolled quicker, announcing the immediate approach of the dead.
+Lesbia listened, her head raised, her face, turned to open window, felt
+over by the clammy, impalpable fingers of the fog.
+
+Now they bore the coffin up the churchyard path, as she timed it. She
+wondered who the bearers might be, and whether they carried it shoulder
+high? The path was steep; and Charles Verity, though spare and lean,
+broad of chest and notably tall. Bone tells. They would feel the weight,
+would breathe hard, stagger a little even and sweat.
+
+And with this visualizing of grim particulars, love, bodily love and
+desire of that which rested stark and for ever cold within the narrow
+darkness of the coffin--shut away from all comfort of human contact and
+the dear joys of a woman's embrace--rushed on her like a storm, buffeted
+and shook her, so that she looked to right and to left as asking help,
+while her hands worked one upon the other in the hollow of her lap.
+
+Nor did Darcy Faircloth figure in Deadham's record funeral gathering.
+Upon the day preceding it, having watched by Charles Verity's corpse
+during the previous night, he judged it well to take his new command--a
+fine, five-thousand-ton steamer, carrying limited number of passengers
+as well as cargo, and trading from Tilbury to the far East and to Japan,
+via the Cape.
+
+In his withdrawal, at this particular date, Miss Felicia hailed a counsel
+of perfection which commanded, and continued to command, alike her
+enthusiastic approval and unfeigned regret. For that he should so
+seasonably efface himself, argued--in her opinion--so delightful a
+nature, such nice thought for others, such chivalrous instincts and
+excellent good taste!--All the more lamentable, then, effacement should
+be, from social, moral or other seasons, required.--Yet for the family to
+gain knowledge of certain facts without due preparation--how utterly
+disastrous! Think of her half-sister, Harriet Cowden, for instance, with
+a full-grown and, alas! wrong-way-about, step-nephew bounced on her out
+of a clear sky, and on such an occasion too.--The bare notion of what
+that formidable lady, not only might, but quite certainly would look and
+say turned Miss Felicia positively faint.--No--no, clearly it had to
+be--it had to be--or rather--she became incoherent--had not to be, if
+only for dearest Charles's sake. Yet what a ten thousand pities; for
+notwithstanding the plebeian origin on the mother's side, didn't
+Faircloth--these reflections came later--really surpass every male Verity
+present, young Tom included, though she confessed to a very soft spot in
+her heart for young Tom?--Surpass them, just as her brother Charles had
+always surpassed them in good looks and charm as in inches, above all in
+his air of singular good-breeding? And how extraordinarily he had
+transmitted this last to Faircloth, notwithstanding the--well, the
+drawback, the obstacle to--Miss Felicia did not finish the sentence,
+though in sentiment becoming sweetly abandoned. For how she would have
+revelled, other things being equal--which they so deplorably weren't--in
+shaking this singularly attractive nephew in the family's collective
+face, just to show them what dearest Charles--who they never had quite
+understood or appreciated--could do in the matter of sons, when he once
+set about it, even against admittedly heavy odds!
+
+As it was, she had to pacify her gentle extravagance by subjecting the
+said nephew's hand to a long tremulous pressure at parting.--He, worn,
+blanched, a little strange from the night's lonely and very searching
+vigil; she patchily pink as to complexion, fluttered, her candid eyes
+red-lidded.--Pacify herself by assuring him she could never express how
+deeply she had felt his unselfish devotion during this time of
+trouble--felt his--his perfect attitude towards her dearest brother--his
+father--or the consideration he had shown towards Damaris and herself.
+
+"You can count on my unswerving affection, my dear Darcy," she had
+said. Adding with, to him, very touching humility--"And any affection
+you have to give me in return I shall cherish most gratefully, be very
+sure of that."
+
+All which, as shall presently be shown, brings our narrative, though by
+devious courses, back to Damaris sweeping the dog-cart to the left across
+the bridge spanning the Arne, and on up the long winding ascent, from the
+woods and rich meadows in the valley to the wide prospects and keener air
+of the moorland above.
+
+Until now, as already chronicled, she had remained in house or garden,
+prey to an apathy which, while not amounting to definite ill-health,
+refused interest and exertion. She could not shake it off. To her all
+things were empty, blank, immensely purposeless. Religion failed to touch
+her state--religion, that is, in the only form accessible. The interior
+of some frowning Gothic church of old Castile, or, from another angle, of
+some mellow Latin basilica, might have found the required mystic word to
+say to her. But Protestantism, even in its mild Anglican form, shuts the
+door on its dead children with a heavy hand.--And she suffered this
+religious coldness, although any idea that death of the body implies
+extinction of the spirit, extinction of personality, never occurred to
+her. Damaris' sense of the unseen was too ingrained, her commerce with it
+too actual for that. No--the spirit lived on. He, her most beloved, lived
+on, himself, his very self; but far away from her. In just this consisted
+the emptiness, the unspeakable and blank bitterness--he was somewhere and
+she could not reach him. The dreadful going away of his spirit, against
+which she had fought during the thirty-six hours of his illness, had
+reached its ordained consummation--that was all.
+
+The body which had contained and by that beloved spirit been so nobly
+animated, in its present awful peace, its blind dumb majesty, meant
+scarcely more to her than some alabaster or waxen effigy of her dead. It
+was so like, yet so terrifyingly unlike Charles Verity in life!--She had
+visited it morning and evening, since to leave it in solitude appeared
+wanting in reverence. Throughout each night she thankfully knew that
+either Carteret, McCabe or Faircloth watched by it. Yet to her it hardly
+retained as much of her father's natural presence as the clothes he had
+worn, the books and papers littering his writing-table, the chair he
+preferred to sit in, his guns and swords upon the wall, or the collection
+of fishing-rods, walking-sticks and his spud stacked in a corner.
+
+After the strain and publicity of the funeral her apathy deepened,
+perplexing and saddening Carteret and bringing Miss Felicia near to
+veritable wailing. For while thanking them both she, in fact, put them
+both aside. This in no sour or irritable humour; but with a listlessness
+and apartness hopeless to overcome. She prayed them to give her time.
+Soon she would begin again; but not just yet. She "couldn't begin again
+to order--couldn't make herself begin again. They must not trouble, only
+be patient with her, please, a little longer--she wasn't, indeed she
+wasn't, pretending"--a statement which, in its simplicity, cut Carteret
+to the quick--for "she meant to begin again directly she could."
+
+To-day the weather took an encouraging turn for the better. Following
+the spell of fog and wet a northerly wind at last arose. It swept the sky
+clear of clouds, the land of melancholy vapours, begetting a brilliance
+of atmosphere which wooed our maiden to come forth and once more affront
+the open. She therefore ordered the dog-cart at two o'clock. Would
+herself drive; and, "if Aunt Felicia didn't mind and think her
+unsociable, would take Patch for sole company, because then"--renewed
+apologies--"she needn't talk and she felt disinclined to do so."
+
+During the first half mile or so, as must be confessed, each prick of
+the black horse's ears and change in his pace sent a quake through her,
+as did the sight of every vehicle upon the road she passed or met. Her
+nerve was nowhere, her self-confidence in tatters. But, since this
+parlous state was, in the main, physical, air and movement, along with
+the direct call on her attention, steadied the one and knit up the
+ravelled edges of the other. By the time the plateau was reached and the
+hill lay behind her, she could afford to walk the horse, tentatively
+invite her soul, and attempt to hold communion with Nature. Sorrow--as
+well as the Napoleonic Patch--still sat very squarely beside her; but
+the nightmare of mortality, with consequent blankness and emptiness, was
+no longer omnipresent. Interest again stirred in her, the healthy
+instinct of going on.
+
+Except in the foreground, where foxy browns of withered bracken and
+pink-shot browns of withered heather gave richness of tone, the colouring
+of the great view was somewhat cold. It dealt in thin, uncertain green,
+the buff of stubble, in sharp slate-like blues blended in places with
+indigo, the black purple of hawthorn hedges and grey-brown filigree of
+leafless trees.--This did her good, she asking to be strengthened and
+stimulated rather than merely soothed. To feel the harsh, untainted wind
+break against her, hear it shrill through the dry, shivering grasses of
+the roadside and sturdy spires of heath, to see it toss the dark crests
+and tufted branches of the outstanding firs at the edge of the
+plantation, brought up her morale. Brought her resignation, moreover--not
+of the self-indulgent order, of bowed head and languidly folded hands;
+but of the sort which acknowledges loss and sorrow as common to the sum
+of human experience, places it in its just relation to the rest, and,
+though more heavily weighted than before, takes up the onward march,
+sobered perhaps yet undismayed.
+
+Sins of omission began to prick her. The domestic establishment ran on
+wheels, even during the recent stress and agitation, though she had
+ceased to exercise control over it. Now it must be reorganized--and
+probably on a less liberal footing.--But these were minor questions,
+comparatively simple to cope with. Her life had been full, it must find
+fresh purpose, fresh interest and occupation, in a word, be refilled.
+
+Literature allured her. She dreamed of wonderful tellings, dreamed of the
+engrossing joys of the written word. But in what form--poetry, essay,
+history, novel?--The extreme limitation of her own knowledge, or rather
+the immensity of her own ignorance, confronted her. And that partly
+through her own fault, for she had been exclusive, fastidious, disposed
+to ignore both truths and people who offended her taste or failed to
+strike her fancy. Hitherto she had been led by fancy and feeling rather
+than by reasoned principle. She must at once simplify, broaden and
+democratize her outlook. Must force herself to remember that respect is,
+in some sort, due to everything--however unbeautiful, however even vile
+or repugnant--which is a constant quantity in human affairs and human
+character, due to everything in the realm of Nature also, however
+repellent, if it _is_ really so, actually exists.
+
+In this connection the mysterious and haunting question of sex obtruded
+itself. And, along with it, the thought of two eminently diverse persons,
+namely Lesbia Faircloth and the dear, the more than ever dear, man with
+the blue eyes. That, in his agony, her father should have desired the
+visit of the former, once his mistress, had been very bitter to bear,
+provoking in Damaris a profound though silent jealousy. This had even
+come in some degree between her and Faircloth. For, in proportion as
+that visit more effectually united father and son, it abolished her
+position as intermediary between the two.
+
+Recalling the incident jealousy moved her now, so that she gathered up
+the reins hastily and touched the horse with the whip. It sprang
+forward, danced and behaved, before settling down to the swinging trot
+which, in so handsome a fashion, ate up the blond road crossing the
+brown expanse of moor.
+
+Damaris was surprised and distressed by the vehemence of her own emotion.
+That her jealousy was retrospective, and belonged to a past now over and
+done with, she admitted. Yet, thinking of her father's demand to see
+Lesbia, how amazingly deep it went, how profound, and lasting is the
+empire of "feeling in _that_ way"--so she put it, falling back on her
+phrase of nearly three years ago, first coined at St. Augustin.
+
+And this was where Carteret came in.--For he alone, of all men, had made
+her, Damaris, ever consciously "feel in _that_ way."--A fact of immense
+significance surely, could she but grasp the full, the inner meaning of
+it--and one which entered vitally into the matter of "beginning again."
+Therefore, so she argued, the proposed simplifying, broadening,
+democratizing of her outlook must cover--amongst how much else!--the
+whole astonishing business of "feeling in _that_ way."
+
+She shrank from the conclusion as unwelcome. The question of sex was
+still distasteful to her. But she bade herself, sternly, not to shrink.
+For without some reasoned comprehension of it--as now dawned on her--the
+ways of human beings, of animals, of plants and, so some say, even of
+minerals, are unintelligible, arbitrary, and nonsensical. It is the push
+of life itself, essential, fundamental, which makes us "feel in _that_
+way"--the push of spirit yearning to be clothed upon with flesh, made
+visible and given its chance to enter the earthly arena, to play an
+individual part in the beautiful, terrible earthly scene. Therefore she
+must neglect it, reject it no longer. It had to be met and understood, if
+she would graduate in the school of reality; and in what other possible
+school is it worth while to graduate?
+
+Reaching which climax in her argument, the selfishness of her recent
+behaviour became humiliatingly patent to her. From the whole household,
+but especially from Carteret and Aunt Felicia, she had taken all and
+given nothing in return. She had added to their grief, their anxieties,
+by her silence, her apathy, her whimsies.
+
+"Patch," she asked suddenly, "which is the shortest way home, without
+going through Stourmouth and Marychurch? "--And, under his instructions,
+turned the dog-cart down a grassy side-track, heading south-east--her back
+now to the wind and inland country, her face to the larger horizon, the
+larger if more hazardous freedom of the sea.
+
+Conversation, started thus by her enquiry, flourished in friendly,
+desultory fashion until, about three-quarters of an hour later, the front
+gates of The Hard came in sight. By then afternoon merged itself in early
+evening. Lights twinkled in the windows of the black cottages, upon the
+Island, and in those of Faircloth's inn. The sky flamed orange and
+crimson behind the sand-hills and Stone Horse Head. The air carried the
+tang of coming frost. Upon the hard gravel of the drive, the wheels of
+the dog-cart grated and the horse's hoofs rang loud.
+
+Another Damaris came home to the Damaris who had set forth--a Damaris
+rested, refreshed, invigorated, no longer a passive but an active agent.
+Nevertheless, our poor maiden suffered some reaction on re-entering the
+house. For, so entering, her loss again confronted her as an actual
+entity. It sat throned in the lamp-lit hall. It demanded payment of
+tribute before permitting her to pass. Its attitude amounted, in her too
+fertile imagination, to a menace. Here, within the walls which had
+witnessed not only her own major acquaintance with sorrow, but so many
+events and episodes of strange and, sometimes, cruel import--super-normal
+manifestations, too, of which last she feared to think--she grew undone
+and weak, disposed to let tears flow, and yield once more to depression
+and apathy. The house was stronger than she. But--but--only stronger,
+surely, if she consented to turn craven and give way to it?--Whereupon
+she consciously, of set purpose, defied the house, denied its right to
+browbeat thus and enslave her. For had not she this afternoon, up on the
+moorland, found a finer manner of mourning than it imposed, a manner at
+once more noble and so more consonant with the temper and achievements of
+her beloved dead? She believed that she had.
+
+On the hall table lay a little flight of visiting cards. Her mind
+occupied in silent battle with the house, Damaris glanced at them
+absently and would have passed on. But something in the half-deciphered
+printed names caught her attention. She bent lower, doubting if she could
+have read aright.
+
+"Brig.-General and Mrs. Frayling."--Two smaller cards, also bearing the
+General's name, ranged with two others bearing that of "The Rev. Marshall
+Wace." A written inscription, in the corner of each, notified a leading
+hotel in Stourmouth as the habitat of their respective owners.
+
+This little discovery affected Damaris to a singular extent. She had
+small enough wish for Henrietta Frayling's society at this juncture;
+still less for that of her attendant singer-reciter-parson. Yet their
+names, and the train of recollections evoked by these, made for the
+normal, the average, and, in so far, had on her a wholesome effect. For
+Henrietta, of once adored and now somewhat tarnished memory--soulless,
+finished, and exquisitely artificial to her finger-tips, beguiling others
+yet never herself beguiled beyond the limits of a flawless
+respectability--was wonderfully at odds with high tragedies of
+dissolution. How had the house received such a guest? How put up with her
+intrusion? But wasn't the house, perhaps, itself at a disadvantage, its
+sting drawn in presence of such invincible materialism? For how impress a
+creature at once so light and so pachydermatous? The position lent itself
+to rather mordant comedy.
+
+In this sense, though not precisely in these phrases, did Damaris
+apprehend matters as, still holding Henrietta Frayling's visiting card
+in her hand, she crossed the hall and went into the drawing-room.
+
+There, from upon the sofa behind the tea-table, through the warm soft
+radiance of shaded lamps and glowing fire, Felicia Verity uplifted her
+voice in somewhat agitated greeting. She made no preliminary affectionate
+enquiries--such as might have been expected--regarding her niece's outing
+or general well-being, but darted, not to say exploded, into the
+declaration:
+
+"Darling, I am so exceedingly glad you weren't at home!--Mrs.
+Frayling's card?"
+
+This, as the girl sat down on the sofa beside her.
+
+"Then you know who's been here. I didn't intend to see anyone--unless
+poor little Theresa--But no, truly no one. Both Hordle and Mary were off
+duty--I ought not to have let them be away at the same time, perhaps, but
+I did feel they both needed a holiday, don't you know.--And either they
+had forgotten to give Laura my orders, or she lost her head, or was
+talked over. I daresay Mrs. Frayling insisted."
+
+"Henrietta is not easily turned from her purpose," Damaris said.
+
+"Exactly.--A very few minutes' conversation with her convinced me of
+that. And so I felt it would be unfair to blame Laura too severely. I
+should suppose Mrs. Frayling excessively clever in getting her own way.
+Poor Laura--even if she did know my orders, she hadn't a chance."
+
+"Not a chance," Damaris repeated.
+
+Once convalescence initiated, youth speedily regains its elasticity; and
+Aunt Felicia with her feathers ruffled, Aunt Felicia upon the warpath
+thus, presented a novel spectacle meriting observation. Evidently she and
+Henrietta had badly clashed!--A nice little demon of diversion stirred
+within Damaris. For the first time for many days she felt amused.
+
+"Excessively clever," Miss Felicia continued.
+
+--Without doubt the dear thing was finely worked up!--
+
+"And, though I hardly like to make such accusation, none too scrupulous
+in her methods. She leads you on with a number of irrelevant comments
+and questions, until you find she's extracted from you a whole host of
+things you never meant to say. She is far too inquisitive--too
+possessive."
+
+Miss Felicia ended on an almost violent note.
+
+"Yes, Henrietta has a tiresome little habit of having been there first,"
+Damaris said, a touch of weariness in her tone remembering past
+encounters.
+
+Miss Felicia, caught by that warning tone, patted her niece's rather
+undiscoverable knee--undiscoverable because still covered by a heavy
+fur-lined driving coat--lovingly, excitedly.
+
+"If you choose to believe her, darling," she cried, "which I, for one,
+emphatically don't."
+
+Following which ardent profession of faith, or rather of scepticism, Miss
+Felicia attempted to treat the subject broadly. She soared to
+mountain-tops of social and psychological astuteness; but only to make
+hasty return upon her gentler self, deny her strictures, and snatch at
+the skirts of vanishing Christian charity.
+
+"Men aren't so easily led away," she hopefully declared. "Nor can I think
+Mrs. Frayling so irresistible to each and all as she wishes one to
+imagine. She must magnify the number and, still more, the permanence of
+her conquests. No doubt she has been very much admired. I know she was
+lovely. I saw her once ages ago, at Tullingworth. Dearest Charles," the
+words came softly, as though her lips hesitated to pronounce them in so
+trivial a connection--"asked me to call on her as I was staying in the
+neighbourhood. She had a different surname then, by the way, I remember."
+
+"Henrietta has had four in all--counting in her maiden name, I mean."
+
+"Exactly," Miss Felicia argued, "and that, no doubt, does prejudice me a
+little against her. I suppose it is wrong, but when a woman marries so
+often one can't help feeling as if she ended by not being married at
+all--a mere change of partners, don't you know, which does seem rather
+shocking. It suggests such an absence of deep feeling.--Poor thing, I
+dare say that is just her nature; still it doesn't attract me. In fact
+it gives me a creep.--But I quite own she is pretty still, and
+extraordinarily well dressed--only too well dressed, don't you know, that
+is for the country.--More tea, darling. Yes, Mrs. Cooper's scones are
+particularly good this afternoon.--I wish I liked her better, Mrs.
+Frayling, I mean, because she evidently intends to be here a lot in
+future. She expressed the warmest affection for you. She was very
+possessive about you, more I felt than she'd any real right to be. That,
+I'm afraid, put my back up--that and one or two other things. She and
+General Frayling think of settling in Stourmouth for good, if Mr. Wace is
+appointed to the Deadham curacy."
+
+"The curacy here?" Damaris echoed, a rather lurid light breaking
+in on her.
+
+Miss Felicia's glance was of timid, slightly distressed, enquiry.
+
+"Yes," she said, "Mr. Wace has applied for the curacy. He and General
+Frayling were to have an interview with Canon Horniblow this afternoon.
+They dropped Mrs. Frayling here on their way to the vicarage, and sent
+the fly back for her. She talked a great deal about Mr. Wace and his
+immense wish to come here. She gave me to understand it was his one
+object to"--
+
+The speaker broke off, raised her thin, long-fingered hands to her
+forehead.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "but really I feel perhaps, darling, it is
+better to warn you. She implied--oh! she did it very cleverly, really, in
+a way charmingly--but she implied that things had gone very hard with Mr.
+Wace that winter at St. Augustin, and that all he went through has
+remarkably developed and strengthened his character--that it, in fact,
+was what determined him to take Holy Orders. His difficulties melted
+before his real need for the support of religion. It would have all been
+most touching if one had heard a story of such devotion from anyone
+but--but her, about anyone but him--under the circumstances, poor young
+man--because--darling--well, because of you."
+
+"Of me?" Damaris stiffened.
+
+"Yes--that is just the point. Mrs. Frayling left me in no doubt. She was
+determined to make me understand just what Mr. Wace's attitude had been
+towards you--and that it is still unchanged."
+
+Damaris got up. Pulled off her driving coat, gloves and hat. Threw them
+upon the seat of a chair. The act was symbolic. She felt suffocated,
+impelled to rid herself of every impediment. For wasn't she confronted
+with another battle--a worse one than that with the house, namely, a
+battle with her long-ago baby-love, and her father's love
+too--Henrietta.--Henrietta, so strangely powerful, so amazingly
+persistent--Henrietta who enclosed you in arms, apparently so soft but
+furnished with suckers, octopus arms adhering, never letting you go? She
+had played with the idea of this intrusion of Henrietta's and its effect
+upon Miss Felicia, at first as something amusing. It ceased to be
+amusing. It frightened her.
+
+"And my attitude is unchanged, too," she said presently, gravely proud.
+"I didn't want to marry Marshall Wace then. I was dreadfully sorry when
+Henrietta told me he cared for me. I don't want to marry him or have
+him care for me one bit more now. I think it very interfering of
+Henrietta to trouble you with this. It is not the moment. She might at
+least have waited."
+
+"So I felt," Miss Felicia put in. She watched her niece anxiously, as the
+latter went across to the fire-place and stood, her back to the room,
+looking down into the glowing logs.
+
+For she had--or rather ought she not to have?--another communication to
+make which involved the fighting of a battle on her own account, not
+against Henrietta Frayling, still less against Damaris, but against
+herself. It trembled on the tip of her tongue. She felt impelled, yet
+sorrowed to utter it. Hence her wishes and purposes jostled one another,
+being tenderly, bravely, heroically even, contradictory. In speaking she
+invited the shattering of a dream of personal election to happiness--a
+late blossoming happiness and hence the more entrancing, the more
+pathetic. That any hope of the dream's fulfilment was fragile as glass,
+lighter than gossamer, the veriest shadow of a shade, her natural
+diffidence and sane sense, alike, convinced her. For this very cause, the
+dream being of the sweetest and most intimate, how gladly would she have
+cherished the enchanting foolishness of it a trifle longer!--Her act of
+heroism would earn no applause, moreover, would pass practically
+unnoticed. No one would be aware of her sacrifice. She would only gain
+the satisfaction of knowing she had done the perfectly right and generous
+thing by two persons who would never share that knowledge.--She
+blushed.--Heaven forbid they ever should share it--and thank her.
+
+"Mrs. Frayling--I don't want"--
+
+Miss Felicia stopped.
+
+"What don't you want?"--This from Damaris over her shoulder, the pause
+being prolonged.
+
+"To set you against her, darling"--
+
+"I think," Damaris said, "I know all about Henrietta."
+
+"She insinuates so much," Miss Felicia lamented.--"Or seems to do so. One
+grows wretchedly suspicious of her meaning. Perhaps I exaggerate and
+misjudge her.--She is quite confusingly adroit; but I extremely disliked
+the way in which she spoke of Colonel Carteret."
+
+Damaris bent a little forward, holding her skirt back from the scorch of
+the fire, her eyes still downcast.
+
+"How did she speak of him?"
+
+"Oh! all she said was very indirect--but as though he had not played
+quite fair with her on some occasion. And--it's odious to repeat!--as if
+that was his habit with women, and with unmarried girls as well--as if he
+was liable to behave in a way which placed them in a rather invidious
+position while he just shuffled out of all responsibility himself. She
+hinted his staying on with us here was a case in point--that it might
+give people a wrong idea altogether. That, in short--at least thinking it
+over I feel sure this is the impression she meant to convey to me--that
+he is indulging his chronic love of philandering at your expense."
+
+"And thereby standing in the light of serious lovers such as
+Marshall Wace?"
+
+After a moment Damaris added:
+
+"Is that your idea of Colonel Carteret, Aunt Felicia?"
+
+"Ah! No, indeed no," the poor lady cried, with rather anguished
+sincerity. Then making a fine effort over herself:
+
+"Least of all where you are concerned, my darling."
+
+And she drifted hastily on to her feet. The curtains were still undrawn;
+and, through the window opposite, she caught sight of a tall figure
+coming up across the lawn in the frosty twilight.
+
+"Pardon me if I run away. I've forgotten a note I meant to send to poor
+little Theresa Bilson.--I must let Laura have it at once, or she mayn't
+catch the postman," she said with equal rapidity and apparent
+inconsequence.
+
+As Felicia Verity passed out into the hall, at one end of the avenue of
+stumpy pillars, Carteret came in at the other end through the garden
+door. He halted a moment, dazzled by the warmth and light within after
+the clair-obscure of the frosty dusk without, and looked round the room
+before recognizing the identity of its remaining occupant. Then:
+
+"Ah! you--dear witch," he said. "So you're home. And what of your drive?"
+
+Damaris turned round, all of a piece. Her hands, white against the black,
+the fingers slightly apart, still pressed back the skirt of her dress as
+though saving it from the fire scorch, in quaintly careful childish
+fashion. Her complexion was that of a child too, in its soft brightness.
+And the wonder of her great eyes fairly challenged Carteret's wits.
+
+"A babe of a thousand years," he quoted to himself. "Does that look grow
+out of a root of divine innocence, or of quite incalculable wisdom?"
+
+"I told you if you would be patient with me I should begin again. I have
+begun again, dear Colonel Sahib."
+
+"So I perceive," he answered her.
+
+"Is it written so large?" she asked curiously.
+
+"Very large," he said, falling in with her humour. "And where does the
+beginning lead to?"
+
+"I wish you'd tell me.--Henrietta has begun again too."
+
+"I know it," he said. "Our incomparable Henrietta overtook me on her way
+from here to the Vicarage, and bestowed her society on me for the better
+part of half an hour. She was in astonishing form."
+
+Carteret came forward and stood on the tiger skin beside Damaris. Mrs.
+Frayling's conversation had given him very furiously to think, and his
+thoughts had not proved by any means exhilarating.
+
+"Does this recrudescence of our Henrietta, her beginning again, affect
+the scope and direction of your own beginning again, dearest witch?" he
+presently enquired, in singularly restrained and colourless accents.
+
+"That depends a good deal upon you--doesn't it, Colonel Sahib?" our
+maiden gravely answered.
+
+Carteret felt as though she dealt him a blow. The pain was numbing. He
+could neither see, nor could he think clearly. But he traced Mrs.
+Frayling's hand in this, and could have cursed her elaborately--had it
+been worth while. But was anything worth while, just now? He inclined to
+believe not--so called himself a doating fool. And then, though
+tormented, shaken, turned his mind to making things easy for Damaris.
+
+"Oh! I see that," he told her. "And now you have got hold of your
+precious little self again and made a start, it's easy enough to manage
+your affairs--in as far as they need any management of mine--from a
+distance. This beginning again is triumphant. I congratulate you! You're
+your own best physician. You know how to treat your case to a marvel. So
+I abdicate."
+
+"But why? Why abdicate? Do you mean go away? Then Henrietta was right.
+What she said was true. I never believed her. I"--
+
+Damaris grew tall in her shame and anger. The solemn eyes blazed.
+
+"Yes--pray go," she said. "It's unwarrantable the way I kept you
+here--the way I've made use of you. But, indeed, indeed, I am very
+grateful, Colonel Sahib. I ought to have known better. But I didn't. I
+have been so accustomed all my life to your help that I took it all for
+granted. I never thought how much I taxed your forbearance or encroached
+on your time.--That isn't quite true though. I did have scruples; but
+little things you said and did put my scruples to sleep. I liked having
+them put to sleep.--Now you must not let me or my business interfere any
+more.--Oh! you've treated me, given to me, like a prince," she declared,
+rising superior to anger and to shame, her eyes shining--"like a king.
+Nobody can ever take your place or be to me what you've been. I shall
+always love to think of your goodness to--to him--my father--and to
+me--always--all my life."
+
+Damaris held out her hands.
+
+"And that's all.--Now let us say no more about this. It's difficult. It
+hurts us both, I fancy, a little."
+
+But Carteret did not take her proffered hands.
+
+"Dear witch," he said, "we've spoken so freely that I am afraid we must
+speak more freely still--even though it pains you a little perhaps, and
+myself, almost certainly very much more. I love you--not as a friend, not
+as an amiable elderly person should love a girl of your age.--This isn't
+an affair of yesterday or the day before yesterday. You crept into my
+heart on your sixth birthday--wasn't it?--when I brought you a certain
+little green jade elephant from our incomparable Henrietta, and found you
+asleep in a black marble chair, set on a blood-red sandstone platform,
+overlooking the gardens of the club at Bhutpur. And you have never crept
+out of it again--won't do so as long as body and mind hang together, or
+after. It has been a song of degrees.--For years you were to me a
+delicious plaything; but a plaything with a mysterious soul, after which
+I felt, every now and again, in worship and awe. The plaything stage came
+to an end when I was here with you before we went to Paris, four years
+ago. For I found then, beyond all question of doubt, that I loved you as
+a man only loves once, and as most men never love at all. I have tried
+to keep this from you because I have no right to burden your youth with
+my middle-age."
+
+Carteret smiled at her.
+
+"It has not been altogether easy to hold my peace, dearest witch," he
+said. "The seven devils of desire--of which you knew nothing, bless
+you"--"I'm not sure that I do know nothing," Damaris put in quietly.
+She looked him over from head to heel, and the wonder of her great
+eyes deepened.
+
+"It isn't wrong?" she said, brokenly, hoarsely. "I don't think it can
+be wrong?"
+
+Then, "You will be good to my brother, to Darcy Faircloth, and let me see
+him quite, quite often!"
+
+And lastly, her lips trembling:
+
+"It is beautiful, more beautiful than I ever knew about, to have you for
+quite my own, Colonel Sahib."
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12520 ***
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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12520 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12520)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Deadham Hard, by Lucas Malet
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Deadham Hard
+
+Author: Lucas Malet
+
+Release Date: June 4, 2004  [eBook #12520]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEADHAM HARD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Project Gutenberg Beginners'
+Projects, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+DEADHAM HARD
+
+A Romance
+
+BY LUCAS MALET
+
+(MARY ST. LEGER HARRISON)
+
+Author of "Sir Richard Calmady," "The Wages of Sin," etc.
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Youth has no boundaries, age has the grave."--BULGARIAN PROVERB
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAR FRIEND ACROSS THE OCEAN C. E. O. VEVEY 1899 LONDON 1919
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK I  THE HOUSE OF THE TAMARISKS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+       I. TELLING HOW, UNDER STRESS OF CIRCUMSTANCES, A HUMANIST TURNED
+          HERMIT
+
+      II. ENTER A YOUNG SCHOLAR AND GENTLEMAN OF A HAPPY DISPOSITION AND
+          GOOD PROSPECTS
+
+     III. THE DOUBTFULLY HARMONIOUS PARTS OF A WHOLE
+
+      IV. WATCHERS THROUGH THE SMALL HOURS
+
+       V. BETWEEN RIVER AND SEA
+
+      VI. IN WHICH THE PAST LAYS AN OMINOUS HAND ON THE PRESENT
+
+     VII. A CRITIC IN CORDUROY
+
+
+BOOK II  THE HARD SCHOOL OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
+
+       I. IN MAIDEN MEDITATION
+
+      II. WHICH CANTERS ROUND A PARISH PUMP
+
+     III. A SAMPLING OF FREEDOM
+
+      IV. OUT ON THE BAR
+
+       V. WHEREIN DAMARIS MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HIDDEN WAYS OF
+          MEN
+
+      VI. RECOUNTING AN ASTONISHING DEPOSITION
+
+     VII. A SOUL AT WAR WITH FACT
+
+    VIII. TELLING HOW TWO PERSONS, OF VERY DIFFERENT MORAL CALIBRE, WERE
+          COMPELLED TO WEAR THE FLOWER OF HUMILIATION IN THEIR RESPECTIVE
+          BUTTONHOLES
+
+      IX. AN EXPERIMENT IN BRIDGE-BUILDING OF WHICH TIME ALONE CAN FIX
+          THE VALUES
+
+       X. TELLING HOW MISS FELICIA VERITY UNSUCCESSFULLY ATTEMPTED A
+          RESCUE
+
+      XI. IN WHICH DAMARIS RECEIVES INFORMATION OF THE LOST SHOES AND
+          STOCKINGS--ASSUMPTION OF THE GOD-HEAD
+
+     XII. CONCERNING A SERMON WHICH NEVER WAS PREACHED AND OTHER MATTERS
+          OF LOCAL INTEREST
+
+
+BOOK III  THE WORLD BEYOND THE FOREST
+
+       I. AN EPISODE IN THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE MAN WITH THE BLUE
+          EYES
+
+      II. TELLING HOW DAMARIS RENEWED HER ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BELOVED
+          LADY OF HER INFANCY
+
+     III. WHICH CONCERNS ITSELF, INCIDENTALLY, WITH THE GRIEF OF A VICTIM
+          OF CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE RECEPTION OF A BELATED CHRISTMAS
+          GREETING
+
+      IV. BLOWING ONE'S OWN TRUMPET PRACTISED AS A FINE ART
+
+       V. IN WHICH HENRIETTA PULLS THE STRINGS
+
+      VI. CARNIVAL--AND AFTER
+
+     VII. TELLING HOW DAMARIS DISCOVERED THE TRUE NATURE OF A CERTAIN
+          SECRET TO THE DEAR MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
+
+    VIII. FIDUS ACHATES
+
+      IX. WHICH FEATURES VARIOUS PERSONS WITH WHOM THE READER IS ALREADY
+          ACQUAINTED
+
+       X. WHICH IT IS TO BE FEARED SMELLS SOMEWHAT POWERFULLY OF BILGE
+          WATER
+
+      XI. WHEREIN DAMARIS MEETS HERSELF UNDER A NOVEL ASPECT
+
+     XII. CONCERNING ITSELF WITH A GATHERING UP OF FRAGMENTS
+
+    XIII. WHICH RECOUNTS A TAKING OF SANCTUARY
+
+
+BOOK IV  THROUGH SHADOWS TOWARDS THE DAWN
+
+       I. WHICH CARRIES OVER A TALE OF YEARS, AND CARRIES ON
+
+      II. RECALLING, IN SOME PARTICULARS, THE EASIEST RECORDED THEFT IN
+          HUMAN HISTORY
+
+     III. BROTHER AND SISTER
+
+      IV. WHEREIN MISS FELICIA VERITY CONCLUSIVELY SHOWS WHAT SPIRIT SHE
+          IS OF
+
+       V. DEALING WITH EMBLEMS, OMENS AND DEMONSTRATIONS
+
+      VI. SHOWING HOW SIR CHARLES VERITY WAS JUSTIFIED OF HIS LABOURS
+
+     VII. TELLING HOW CHARLES VERITY LOOKED ON THE MOTHER OF HIS SON
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTH WHICH IS ALSO CHAPTER THE LAST
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE HOUSE OF THE TAMARISKS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+TELLING HOW, UNDER STRESS OF CIRCUMSTANCE, A HUMANIST TURNED HERMIT
+
+
+A peculiar magic resides in running water, as every student of earth-lore
+knows. There is high magic, too, in the marriage of rivers, so that the
+spot where two mingle their streams is sacred, endowed with strange
+properties of evocation and of purification. Such spots go to the making
+of history and ruling of individual lives; but whether their influence is
+not more often malign than beneficent may be, perhaps, open to doubt.
+
+Certain it is, however, that no doubts of this description troubled the
+mind of Thomas Clarkson Verity, when, in the closing decade of the
+eighteenth century, he purchased the house at Deadham Hard, known as
+Tandy's Castle, overlooking the deep and comparatively narrow channel by
+which the Rivers Arne and Wilner, after crossing the tide-flats and
+salt-marsh of Marychurch Haven, make their swift united exit into
+Marychurch Bay. Neither was he troubled by the fact that Tandy's
+Castle--or more briefly and familiarly Tandy's--for all its commonplace
+outward decency of aspect did not enjoy an unblemished moral or social
+reputation. The house--a whitewashed, featureless erection--was planted
+at right angles to the deep sandy lane leading up from the shore, through
+the scattered village of Deadham, to the three-mile distant market town
+of Marychurch.
+
+Standing on a piece of rough land--bare, save for a few stunted Weymouth
+pines, and a fringe of tamarisk along the broken sea-wall--Tandy's, at
+the date in question, boasted a couple of bowed sash-windows on either
+side the front and back doors; and a range of five other windows set flat
+in the wall on the first floor. There was no second storey. The slate
+roofs were mean, low-pitched, without any grace of overshadowing eaves.
+At either end, a tall chimney-stack rose like the long ears of some
+startled, vacant-faced small animal. Behind the house, a thick plantation
+of beech and sycamore served to make its square blank whiteness visible
+for a quite considerable distance out to sea. Built upon the site of some
+older and larger structure, it was blessed--or otherwise--with a system
+of vaults and cellars wholly disproportionate to its existing size. One
+of these, by means of a roughly ceiled and flagged passage, gave access
+to a heavy door in the sea-wall opening directly on to the river
+foreshore.
+
+Hence the unsavoury reputation of the place. For not only did it supply a
+convenient receiving house for smuggled goods, but a convenient
+rendezvous for the more lawless characters of the neighbourhood--a
+back-of-beyond and No Man's Land where the devil could, with impunity,
+have things very much his own way. In the intervals of more serious
+business, the vaults and cellars of Tandy's frequently resounded to the
+agonies and brutal hilarities of cock-fights, dog-fights, and other
+repulsive sports and pastimes common to the English--both gentle and
+simple--of that virile but singularly gross and callous age. Nevertheless
+to Thomas Clarkson Verity, man of peace and of ideas, Tandy's
+represented--and continued to represent through over half a
+century--rescue, security, an awakening in something little short of
+paradise from a long-drawn nightmare of hell. He paid an extortionate
+price for the property at the outset, and spent a small fortune on the
+enlargement of the house and improvement of the grounds, yet never
+regretted his bargain.
+
+For, in good truth, when, in the spring of 1794, the soft, nimble,
+round-bodied, very polite, learned and loquacious little gentleman first
+set eyes upon its mean roofs, prick ears and vacant whitewashed
+countenance, he had been horribly shocked, horribly scared--for all the
+inherited valour of his good breeding--and, above all, most horribly
+disappointed. History had played very dirty pranks with him, which he
+found it impossible as yet to forgive.
+
+Five years earlier, fired, like many another generous spirit, by
+extravagant hope of the coming regeneration of mankind, he hurried off to
+Paris after the opening of the National Assembly and fall of the
+Bastille. With the overture to the millennium in full blast, must he not
+be there to hear and see? Associating himself with the Girondist party he
+assisted, busily enthusiastic, at the march of tremendous events, until
+the evil hour in which friend began to denounce friend, and heads, quite
+other than aristocratic--those of men and women but yesterday the idols
+and chosen leaders of the people--went daily to the filling of _la veuve_
+Guillotine's unspeakable market-basket. The spectacle proved too
+upsetting both to Mr. Verity's amiable mind and rather queasy stomach.
+Faith failed; while even the millennium seemed hardly worth purchasing at
+so detestable a cost. He stood altogether too close to the terrible
+drama, in its later stages, to distinguish the true import or progression
+of it. Too close to understand that, however blood-stained its cradle,
+the goodly child Democracy was veritably, here and now, in the act of
+being born among men. Rather did he question whether his own fat little
+neck was not in lively danger of being severed; and his own head--so full
+of ingenious thoughts and lively curiosity--of being sent flying to join
+those of Brissot and Verginaud, of wayward explosive Camille and sweet
+Lucile Desmoulins, in that same unspeakable basket.
+
+And to what end? For could he suppose the human race would be nearer, by
+the veriest fraction of a millimetre, to universal liberty, equality, and
+prosperity, through his insignificant death? Modesty, and a natural
+instinct of self-preservation alike answered, "never a jot." Whereupon
+with pertinacious, if furtive, activity he sought means of escape. And,
+at length, after months of hiding and anxious flitting, found them in the
+shape of a doubtfully seaworthy, and undoubtedly filthy, fishing-smack
+bound from Le Havre to whatever port it could make on the English south
+coast. The two days' voyage was rough, the accommodation and company to
+match. Mr. Verity spent a disgusting and disgusted forty-eight hours, to
+be eventually put ashore, a woefully bedraggled and depleted figure, in
+the primrose, carmine, and dove-grey of a tender April morning on the wet
+sand just below the sea-wall of Tandy's Castle.
+
+Never was Briton more thankful to salute his native land, or feel the
+solid earth of it under his weary and very shaky feet. He, an epicure,
+ate such coarse food, washed down by such coarse ale, as Tandy's could
+offer with smiling relish. Later, mounted on a forest pony--an
+ill-favoured animal with a wall-eye, pink muzzle, bristly upper and
+hanging lower lip, more accustomed to carry a keg of smuggled spirits
+strapped beneath its belly than a cosmopolitan savant and social reformer
+on its back--he rode the three miles to Marychurch, proposing there to
+take the coach to Southampton and, after a measure of rest and refitting,
+a post-chaise to Canton Magna, his elder brother's fine place lying in a
+fold of the chalk hills which face the Sussex border.
+
+The pony moved slowly and sullenly; but its rider felt no impatience. His
+humour was of the kindliest. His heart, indeed, came near singing for
+joy, simply, spontaneously, even as the larks sang, climbing up and
+upward from salt marsh and meadow, on either side the rutted road, into
+the limpid purity of the spring sky. A light wind flapped the
+travel-stained, high-collared blue cloth cloak which he wore; and brought
+him both the haunting fetid-sweet reek of the mud flats--the tide being
+low--and the invigorating tang of the forest and moorland, uprolling
+there ahead, in purple and umber to the pale northern horizon. Against
+that sombre background, fair and stately in the tender sunlight as a
+church of vision or dream, Marychurch Abbey rose above the roofs and
+chimneys of the little town.
+
+During the latter half of the eighteenth century, not only were
+religious systems very much at a discount among persons of intelligence,
+but the Deity himself was relegated to the position of an exploded idea,
+becoming an object of vituperation, witty or obscene according to the
+humour of the individual critic. As one of the illuminated, Mr. Verity
+did not escape the prevailing infection, although an inborn amenity of
+disposition saved him from atheism in its more blatantly offensive forms.
+The existence of the Supreme Being might be, (probably was) so he feared,
+but "a fond thing vainly imagined". Yet such is the constitution of the
+human mind that age confers a certain prestige and authority even upon
+phantoms and suspected frauds. Hence it followed that Mr. Verity, in the
+plenitude of his courtesy, had continued to take off his hat--secretly
+and subjectively at all events--to this venerable theological delusion,
+so dear through unnumbered centuries to the aching heart and troubled
+conscience of humanity.
+
+But in the present glad hour of restored security--his head no longer in
+danger of plopping, hideously bodiless, into _la veuve's_ basket, his
+inner-man, moreover, so recently and rackingly evacuated by that
+abominable Channel passage, now comfortably relined with Tandy's meat and
+drink--he went further in the way of acknowledgment. A glow of very vital
+gratitude swept over him, so that looking at the majestic church--secular
+witness to the soul's faith in and need of Almighty God's protective
+mercy and goodness--he took off his hat, no longer metaphorically but
+actually, and bowed himself together over the pommel of the saddle with
+an irresistible movement of thanksgiving and of praise.
+
+Recovering himself after a minute or so--"Almost thou persuades! me
+to be a Christian," he said aloud, shaking his head remonstrantly at
+the distant church, while tears started to his busy, politely
+inquisitive eyes.
+
+Then, striving by speech to bring his spirits to their accustomed
+playfulness and poise, he soliloquized thus, still aloud:
+
+"For, to be candid, what convincing argument can I advance, in the light
+of recent experience, to prove that Rousseau, my friends the
+Encyclopeadists, or even the great M. de Voltaire, were really wiser in
+their generation, truer lovers of the people and safer guides, than St.
+Benedict--of blessed memory, since patron of learning and incidentally
+saviour of classic literature--whose pious sons raised this most
+delectable edifice to God's glory seven hundred years ago?--The tower is
+considerably later than the transepts and the nave--fifteenth century I
+take it,--Upon my soul, I am half tempted to renounce my allegiance and
+to doubt whether our modern standards of civilization surpass, in the
+intelligent application of means to ends, those of these mediaeval
+cenobites, and whether we are saner philanthropists, deeper philosophers,
+more genial humanists than they!"
+
+But here his discourse suffered mortifying interruption. He became aware
+the pony stood stock-still in the middle of the road; and, turning its
+head, so that he beheld its pink muzzle, bristly upper and hanging lower
+lip in disagreeable profile, regarded him with malevolent contempt out of
+its one sound eye, as who should say:
+
+"What's the silly fellow trumpeting like this about? Doesn't the veriest
+noodle contrive to keep a quiet tongue in his head out on the highway?"
+
+Sensible of a snub, Mr. Verity jerked at the reins and clapped his heels
+into the creature's sides, as smartly as fatigue and native civility
+permitted, sending it forward at a jog-trot. Nevertheless his
+soliloquy--a silent one now--continued, and that with notable
+consequences to others besides himself.
+
+For his thought still dallied with the subject of the monastic life, as
+lived by those same pious Benedictines here in England long ago. Its
+reasoned rejection of mundane agitations, its calm, its leisure, its
+profound and ardent scholarship were vastly to his taste,--A man touching
+middle-age might do worse, surely, than spend his days between worship
+and learning, thus?--He saw, and approved, its social office in offering
+sanctuary to the fugitive, alms to the poor, teaching to the ignorant,
+consolation to the sick and safe passage heavenward to the dying. Saw,
+not without sympathy, its more jovial moments--its good fellowship,
+shrewd and witty conversation, well salted stories--whereat a man laughs
+slyly in his sleeve--its good cheer, too, with feasts on holy-days and
+high-days, rich and succulent.--And in this last connection, as he
+reflected, much was to be said for the geographical position of
+Marychurch; since if river mists and white dullness of sea fog, drifting
+in from the Channel, were to hand, so, also, in their season, were fresh
+run salmon, snipe, wood-cock, flocks of wild duck, of plover and other
+savoury fowl.
+
+For in this thankfulness of awakening from the hellish nightmare of the
+Terror, Mr. Verity's facile imagination tended to run to another extreme.
+With all the seriousness of which he was capable he canvassed the notion
+of a definite retirement from the world. Public movements, political and
+social experiments ceased to attract him. His appetite for helping to
+make the wheels of history go round had been satisfied to the point of
+nausea. All he desired was tranquillity and repose. He was free of
+domestic obligations and close family ties. He proposed to remain
+so--philosophy his mistress, science his hand-maid, literature his
+pastime, books (remembering the bitter sorrows of the tumbril and
+scaffold in Paris) in future, his closest friends.
+
+But, unfortunately, though the great church in all its calm grave,
+beauty still held the heart the fair landscape, the monastery, which
+might have sheltered his renunciation, had been put to secular uses or
+fallen into ruin long years ago. If he proposed to retire from the
+world, he must himself provide suitable environment. Marychurch Abbey,
+at the end of the eighteenth century, had very certainly nothing to
+offer him under that head.
+
+And then, with a swiftness of conception and decision possible only to
+mercurial-minded persons, his thought darted back to Tandy's, that
+unkempt, morally malodorous back-of-beyond and No Man's Land. Its vacant
+whitewashed countenance and long-eared chimney-stacks had welcomed him,
+if roughly and grudgingly, to England and to peace. Was he not in some
+sort thereby in debt to Tandy's bound by gratitude to the place? Should
+he not buy it--his private fortune being considerable--and there plant
+his hermitage? Should he not renovate and transform it, redeeming it from
+questionable uses, by transporting thither, not himself only but his fine
+library, his famous herbarium, his cabinets of crystals, of coins, and of
+shells? The idea captivated him. He was weary of destruction, having seen
+it in full operation and practised on the gigantic scale. Henceforth he
+would devote all the energy he possessed to construction--on however
+modest and private a one--to a building up, as personal protest against
+much lately witnessed wanton and chaotic pulling-down.
+
+In prosecution of which purpose, hopeful once more and elate, bobbing
+merrily cork-like upon the surface of surrounding circumstance--although
+lamentably deficient, for the moment, in raiment befitting his position
+and his purse--Mr. Verity spent two days at the Stag's Head, in
+Marychurch High Street. He made enquiries of all and sundry regarding
+the coveted property; and learned, after much busy investigation that
+the village, and indeed the whole Hundred of Deadham, formed an outlying
+and somewhat neglected portion of his acquaintance, Lord Bulparc's
+Hampshire estate.
+
+Here was solid information to go upon. Greatly encouraged, he took the
+coach to Southampton, and thence up to town; where he interviewed first
+Lord Bulparc's lawyers and then that high-coloured, free-living
+nobleman himself.
+
+"Gad, sir," the latter assured him, "you're heartily welcome to the damn
+little hole, as far as I'm concerned, if you have the bad taste to fancy
+it. I suppose I ought to speak to my son Oxley about this just as a
+matter of form. Not that I apprehend Oxley will raise any difficulties as
+to entail--you need not fear that. We shall let you off easy enough--only
+too happy to oblige you. But I warn you, Verity, you may drop money
+buying the present tenant out. If half my agent tells me is true, the
+fellow must be a most confounded blackguard, up to the eyes in all
+manner of ungodly traffic. By rights we ought to have kicked him out
+years ago. But," his lordship chuckled--"I scruple to be hard on any man.
+We're none of us perfect, live and let live, you know. Only my dear
+fellow, I'm bound to put you on your guard; for he'll stick to the place
+like a leech and blood-suck you like a leech too, as long as there's a
+chance of getting an extra guinea out of you by fair means or foul."
+
+To which process of blood-sucking Mr. Verity was, in fact, rather
+scandalously subjected before Tandy's Castle passed into his possession.
+But pass into his possession it finally did, whereupon he fell joyously
+to the work of reconstructive redemption.
+
+First of all he ordered the entrance of the underground passage, leading
+to the river foreshore, to be securely walled up; and, with a fine
+disregard of possible unhealthy consequences in the shape of choke-damp,
+the doorways of certain ill-reputed vaults and cellars to be filled with
+solid masonry. Neither harborage of contraband, cruel laughter of man, or
+yell of tortured beast, should again defile the under-world of
+Tandy's!--Next he had the roof of the main building raised, and given a
+less mean and meagre angle. He added a wing on the left containing
+pleasant bed-chambers upstairs, and good offices below; and, as crowning
+act of redemption, caused three large ground-floor rooms, backed by a
+wide corridor, to be built on the right in which to house his library and
+collections. This lateral extension of the house, constructed according
+to his own plans, was, like its designer, somewhat eccentric in
+character. The three rooms were semicircular, all window on the southern
+garden front, veritable sun-traps, with a low sloped roofing of
+grey-green slate to them, set fan-wise.
+
+Such was the house at Deadham Hard when Mr. Verity's labours were
+completed. And such did it remain until a good eighty years later, when
+it was visited by a youthful namesake and great-great nephew, under
+circumstances not altogether unworthy of record.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ENTER A YOUNG SCHOLAR AND GENTLEMAN OF A HAPPY DISPOSITION AND
+GOOD PROSPECTS
+
+
+The four-twenty down train rumbled into Marychurch station, and Tom
+Verity stepped out of a rather frousty first-class carriage on to the
+platform. There hot still September sunshine, tempered by a freshness off
+the sea, met him. The effect was pleasurable, adding delicate zest to the
+enjoyment of living which already possessed him. Coming from inland, the
+near neighbourhood of the sea, the sea with its eternal invitation,
+stirred his blood.
+
+For was not he about to accept the said invitation in its fullest and
+most practical expression? Witness the fact that, earlier in the day, he
+had deposited his heavy baggage at that house of many partings, many
+meetings, Radley's Hotel, Southampton; and journeyed on to Marychurch
+with a solitary, eminently virgin, cowhide portmanteau, upon the
+yellow-brown surface of which the words--"Thomas Clarkson Verity,
+passenger Bombay, first cabin R.M.S. _Penang_"--were inscribed in the
+whitest of lettering. His name stood high in the list of successful
+candidates at the last Indian Civil Service examination. Now he reaped
+the reward of past endeavour. For with that deposition of heavy baggage
+at Radley's the last farewell to years of tutelage seemed to him to be
+spoken. Nursery discipline, the restraints and prohibitions--in their
+respective degrees--of preparatory school, of Harchester, of Oxford; and,
+above all and through all, the control and admonitions of his father, the
+Archdeacon, fell away from him into the limbo of things done with,
+outworn and outpaced.
+
+This moved him as pathetic, yet as satisfactory also, since it set him
+free to fix his mind, without lurking suspicion of indecorum, upon the
+large promise of the future. He could give rein to his eagerness, to his
+high sense of expectation, while remaining innocent of impiety towards
+persons and places holding, until now, first claim on his obedience and
+affection. All this fell in admirably with his natural bent.
+Self-reliant, agreeably egotistical, convinced of the excellence of his
+social and mental equipment, Tom was saved from excess of conceit by a
+lively desire to please, an even more lively sense of humour, and an
+intelligence to which at this period nothing came amiss in the way of new
+impressions or experiences.
+
+And, from henceforth, he was his own master, his thoughts, actions,
+purposes, belonging to himself and to himself alone. Really the position
+was a little intoxicating! Realizing it, as he sat in the somewhat stuffy
+first-class carriage, on that brief hour's journey from Southampton to
+Marychurch, he had laughed out loud, hunching up his shoulders saucily,
+in a sudden outburst of irrepressible and boyish glee.
+
+But as the line, clearing the purlieus of the great seaport, turns
+south-westward running through the noble oak and beech woods of Arnewood
+Forest, crossing its bleak moorlands--silver pink, at the present season,
+with fading heather--and cutting through its plantations of larch and
+Scotch fir, Tom Verity's mood sobered. He watched the country reeling
+away to right and left past the carriage windows, and felt its peculiarly
+English and sylvan charm. Yet he saw it all through a dazzle, as of
+mirage, in which floated phantom landscapes strangely different in
+sentiment and in suggestion.--Some extravagantly luxuriant, as setting to
+crowded painted cities, some desert, amazingly vacant and desolate; but,
+in either case, poetic, alluring, exciting, as scenes far removed in
+climate, faith and civilization from those heretofore familiar can hardly
+fail to be. India, and all which India stands for in English history,
+challenged his imagination, challenged his ambition, since in virtue of
+his nationality, young and inexperienced though he was, he went to her as
+a natural ruler, the son of a conquering race. And this last thought
+begot in him not only exultation but an unwonted seriousness. While, as
+he thus meditated, from out the dazzle as of mirage, a single figure grew
+into force and distinctness of outline, a figure which from his childhood
+had appealed to him with an attraction at once sinister and heroic--that,
+namely, of a certain soldier and ex-Indian official, his kinsman, to pay
+a politic tribute of respect to whom was the object of his present
+excursion.
+
+In Catholic countries the World gives its children to the Church. In
+Protestant countries the process is not infrequently reversed, the Church
+giving its children to the World, and that with an alacrity which argues
+remarkable faith and courage--of a sort! Archdeacon Verity had carefully
+planned this visit for his son, although it obliged the young man to
+leave home two days earlier than he need otherwise have done. It was
+illuminating to note how the father brought all the resources of a fine
+presence, an important manner and full-toned archidiaconal voice to bear
+upon proving the expediency of the young man visiting this particular
+relation, over whose career and reputation he had so often, in the past,
+pursed up his lips and shaken his head for the moral benefit of the
+domestic circle.
+
+For the Archdeacon, in common with the majority of the Verity family, was
+animated by that ineradicable distrust of anything approaching genius
+which distinguishes the English country, or rather county, mind. And that
+Sir Charles Verity had failed to conform to the family tradition of
+solid, unemotional, highly respectable, and usually very wealthy,
+mediocrity was beyond question. He had struck out a line for himself;
+and, as the event disclosed, an illustrious one. This the Archdeacon,
+being a good Conservative, disapproved. It worried him sadly, making him
+actually, if unconsciously, exceedingly jealous. And precisely on that
+account, by an ingenious inversion of reasoning, he felt he owed it to
+abstract justice--in other words to his much disgruntled self--to make
+all possible use of this offending, this renegade personage, when
+opportunity of so doing occurred. Now, learning on credible authority
+that Sir Charles's name was still one to conjure with in India, it
+clearly became his duty to bid his son seek out and secure whatever
+modicum of advantage--in the matter of advice and introductions--might be
+derivable from so irritating a source.
+
+All of which, while jumping with his own desires, caused Tom much sly
+mirth. For might it not be counted among the satisfactory results of his
+deposition of heavy baggage at Radley's that, for the first time in his
+life, he was at liberty to regard even his father, Thomas Pontifex
+Verity, Archdeacon of Harchester and Rector of Canton Magna, in a true
+perspective? And he laughed again, though this time softly, indulgently,
+able in the plenitude of youthful superiority to extend a kindly
+tolerance towards the foibles and ingenuous hypocrisies of poor
+middle-age.
+
+But here the train, emerging from the broken hilly country on the
+outskirts of the forest, roared along the embankment which carries the
+line across the rich converging valleys of the Wilner and the Arne. Tom
+ceased to think either of possible advantage accruing to his own
+fortunes, or these defects of the family humour which had combined to
+dictate his present excursion, his attention being absorbed by the beauty
+of the immediate outlook. For on the left Marychurch came into view.
+
+The great, grey, long-backed abbey stands on a heart-shaped peninsula of
+slightly rising ground. Its western tower, land-mark for the valleys and
+seamark for vessels making the Haven, overtops the avenue of age-old elms
+which shade the graveyard. Close about the church, the red brick and
+rough-cast houses of the little market-town--set in a wide margin of
+salt-marsh and meadow intersected by blue-brown waterways--gather, as a
+brood of chickens gathers about a mothering hen. Beyond lie the pale
+glinting levels of the estuary, guarded on the west by gently upward
+sloping cornlands and on the south by the dark furze and heath-clad mass
+of Stone Horse Head. Beyond again, to the low horizon, stretches the
+Channel sea.
+
+The very simplicity of the picture gives it singular dignity and repose.
+Classic in its clearness of outline and paucity of detail, mediaeval in
+sentiment, since the great Norman church dominates the whole, its appeal
+is at once wistful and severe. And, this afternoon, just as the nearness
+of the sea tempered the atmosphere lifting all oppressive weight from the
+brooding sunshine, so did it temper the colouring, lending it an ethereal
+quality, in which blue softened to silver, grey to lavender, while green
+seemed overspread by powdered gold. The effect was exquisite, reminding
+Tom of certain water-colour drawings, by Danvers and by Appleyard,
+hanging in the drawing-room of the big house at Canton Magna, and of
+certain of Shelley's lyrics--both of which, in their different medium,
+breathed the same enchantment of natural and spiritual loveliness, of
+nameless desire, nameless regret. And, his nerves being somewhat strained
+by the emotions of the day, that enchantment worked upon him strangely.
+The inherent pathos of it, indeed, took him, as squarely as unexpectedly,
+by the throat. He suffered a sharp recoil from the solicitation of the
+future, an immense tenderness towards the past.--A tenderness for those
+same years of tutelage and all they had brought him, not only in
+over-flowing animal spirits, happy intercourse and intellectual
+attainment; but in their limitation of private action, their security of
+obligation, of obedience to authority, which at the time had seemed
+irksome enough and upon release from which he had so recently
+congratulated himself.
+
+Love of home, of England, of his own people--of the Archdeacon, in even
+his most full-voiced and moralizing mood--love of things tested,
+accustomed and friendly, touched him to the quick. Suddenly he asked
+himself to what end was he leaving all these and going forth to encounter
+untried conditions, an unknown Nature, a moral and social order equally
+unknown? Looking at the peaceful, ethereally lovely landscape, set in
+such close proximity and notable contrast to the unrest of that historic
+highway of the nations, the Channel sea, he felt small and lonely,
+childishly diffident and weak. All the established safety and comfort of
+home, all the thoughtless irresponsible delights of vanished boyhood,
+pulled at his heart-strings. He wanted, wanted wildly, desperately, not
+to go forward but to go back.
+
+Mind and body being healthy, however, the phase was a passing one, and
+his emotion, though sincere and poignant, of brief duration. For young
+blood--happily for the human story, which otherwise would read altogether
+too sad--defies forebodings, gaily embraces risks; and, true soldier of
+fortune, marches out to meet whatever fate the battlefield of manhood may
+hold for it, a song in its mouth and a rose behind its ear.
+
+Tom Verity speedily came to a steadier mind, pouring honest contempt upon
+his momentary lapse from self-confidence. He was ashamed of it. It
+amounted to being silly, simply silly. He couldn't understand, couldn't
+account for it. What possessed him to get a regular scare like this? It
+was too absurd for words. Sentiment?--Yes, by all means a reasonable
+amount of it, well in hand and thus capable of translation--if the fancy
+took you--into nicely turned elegiac verse; but a scare, a scare pure and
+simple, wasn't to be tolerated! And he got up, standing astraddle to
+brace himself against the swinging of the train, while he stretched,
+settling himself in his clothes--pulled down the fronts of his waistcoat,
+buttoned the jacket of his light check suit; and, taking off his
+wide-awake, smoothed his soft, slightly curly russet-coloured hair with
+his hand. These adjustments, and the assurance they induced that his
+personal appearance was all which it should be, completed his moral
+restoration. He stepped down on to the platform, into the serene light
+and freshness, as engaging and hopeful a youth of three and twenty as any
+one need ask to see.
+
+"For The Hard? Very good, sir. Sir Charles's trap is outside in the
+station yard. One portmanteau in the van? Quite so. Don't trouble
+yourself about it, sir. I'll send a porter to bring it along."
+
+This from the station-master, with a degree of friendly deference far
+from displeasing to the recipient of it.
+
+Whatever the defects of the rank and file of the Verity family in
+respect of liberal ideas, it can safely be asserted of all its members,
+male and female, clerical and lay, alike, that they belonged to the
+equestrian order. Hence it added considerably to Tom's recovered
+self-complacency to find a smart two-wheel dog-cart awaiting him, drawn by
+a remarkably well-shaped and well-groomed black horse. The coachman was
+to match. Middle-aged, clean-shaven, his Napoleonic face set as a mask,
+his undress livery of pepper-and-salt mixture soberly immaculate. He
+touched his hat when our young gentleman appeared and mounted beside him;
+the horse, meanwhile, shivering a little and showing the red of its
+nostrils as the train, with strident whistlings, drew out of the station
+bound westward to Stourmouth and Barryport.
+
+Later the horse broke up the abiding inertia of Marychurch High Street,
+by dancing as it passed the engine of a slowly ambulant thrashing
+machine; and only settled fairly into its stride when the three-arched,
+twelfth century stone bridge over the Arne was passed, and the
+road--leaving the last scattered houses of the little town--turned south
+and seaward skirting the shining expanse of The Haven and threading the
+semi-amphibious hamlets of Horny Cross and Lampit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DOUBTFULLY HARMONIOUS PARTS OF A WHOLE
+
+
+A long, low, rectangular and rather narrow room, supported across the
+centre--where passage walls had been cut away--by an avenue of dumpy
+wooden pillars, four on either side, leading to a glass door opening on
+to the garden. A man's room rather than a woman's, and, judging by
+appearances, a bachelor's at that.--Eighteenth-century furniture, not
+ignoble in line, but heavy, wide-seated, designed for the comfort of
+bulky paunched figures arrayed in long napped waistcoats and full-skirted
+coats. Tabaret curtains and upholsterings, originally maroon, now dulled
+by sea damp and bleached by sun-glare to a uniform tone in which colour
+and pattern were alike obliterated. Handsome copperplate engravings of
+Pisa and of Rome, and pastel portraits in oval frames; the rest of the
+whity brown panelled wall space hidden by book-cases. These surmounted by
+softly shining, pearl-grey Chinese godlings, monsters, philosophers and
+saints, the shelves below packed with neatly ranged books.
+
+A dusky room, in spite of its rounded, outstanding sash-windows, two on
+either side the glass door; the air of it holding, in permanent solution,
+an odour of leather-bound volumes. A place, in short, which, though not
+inhospitable, imposed itself, its qualities and traditions, to an extent
+impossible for any save the most thick-skinned and thick-witted wholly to
+ignore or resist.
+
+Young Tom Verity, having no convenient armour-plating of stupidity,
+suffered its influence intimately as--looking about him with quick
+enquiring glances--he followed the man-servant across it between the
+dumpy pillars. He felt self-conscious and disquieted, as by a smile of
+silent amusement upon some watchful elderly face. So impressed, indeed,
+was he that, on reaching the door, he paused, letting the man pass on
+alone to announce him. He wanted time in which to get over this queer
+sensation of shyness, before presenting himself to the company assembled,
+there, in the garden outside.
+
+Yet he was well aware that the prospect out of doors--its amplitude of
+mellow sunlight and of space, its fair windless calm in which no leaf
+stirred--was far more attractive than the room in the doorway of which he
+thus elected to linger.
+
+For the glass-door gave directly on to an extensive lawn, set out,
+immediately before the house front, with scarlet and crimson geraniums in
+alternating square and lozenge-shaped beds. Away on the right a couple of
+grey-stemmed ilex trees--the largest in height and girth Tom had ever
+seen--cast finely vandyked and platted shadow upon the smooth turf.
+Beneath them, garden chairs were stationed and a tea-table spread, at
+which four ladies sat--one, the elder, dressed in crude purple, the other
+three, though of widely differing ages and aspect, in light coloured
+summer gowns.
+
+To the left of the lawn, a high plastered wall--masked by hollies, bay,
+yew, and at the far end by masses of airy, pink-plumed tamarisk--shut off
+the eastward view. But straight before him all lay open, "clean away to
+the curve of the world" as he told himself, not without a pull of emotion
+remembering his impending voyage. For, about sixty yards distant, the
+lawn ended abruptly in a hard straight line--the land cut off sheer, as
+it seemed, at the outer edge of a gravelled terrace, upon which two small
+antiquated cannon were mounted, their rusty muzzles trained over swirling
+blue-green tide river and yellow-grey, high-cambered sand-bar out to sea.
+
+Between these innocuous engines of destruction, little black cannon balls
+had been piled into a mimic pyramid, near to which three men stood
+engaged in desultory conversation. One of them, Tom observed as markedly
+taller, more commanding and distinguished in bearing, than his
+companions. Even from here, the whole length of the lawn intervening,
+his presence, once noted, became of arresting importance, focussing
+attention as the central interest, the one thing which vitally mattered
+in this gracious scene--his figure silhouetted, vertically, against those
+long horizontal lines of river, sand-bar, and far-away delicate junction
+of opal-tinted sea with opal-tinted sky.
+
+Whereupon Tom became convicted of the agreeable certainty that no
+disappointment awaited him. His expectations were about to receive
+generous fulfilment. This visit would prove well worth while. So
+absorbed, indeed, was he in watching the man whom he supposed--and
+rightly--to be his host, that he failed to notice one of the ladies rise
+from the tea-table and advance across the lawn, until her youthful
+white-clad form was close upon him, threading its way between the glowing
+geranium beds.
+
+Then--"You are my cousin, Thomas Verity?" the girl asked, with a grave
+air of ceremony.
+
+"Yes--and you--you are my cousin Damaris," he answered as he felt
+clumsily, being taken unaware in more respects than one, and, for all his
+ready adaptability, being unable to keep a note of surprise out of his
+voice and glance.
+
+He had known of the existence of this little cousin, having heard--on
+occasion--vaguely irritated family mention of her birth at a time when
+the flame of the Mutiny still burned fiercely in the Punjab and in Oudh.
+To be born under such very accentuated circumstances could, in the eyes
+of every normal Verity, hardly fail to argue a certain obtrusiveness and
+absence of good taste. He had heard, moreover, disapproving allusions to
+the extravagant affection Sir Charles Verity was said to lavish upon this
+fruit of a somewhat obscure marriage--his only surviving child. But the
+said family talk, in Tom's case, had gone in at one ear and out at the
+other--as the talk of the elder generation mostly does, and will, when
+the younger generation is solidly and wholesomely convinced of the
+overwhelming importance of its own personal affairs. Consequently, in
+coming to Deadham Hard, Tom had thought of this little cousin--in as far
+as it occurred to him to think of her at all--as a child in the
+schoolroom who, beyond a trifle of good-natured notice at odd moments,
+would not enter into the count or matter at all. Now, awakening to the
+fact of her proximity, he awoke to the further fact that, with one
+exception, she mattered more than anything or anybody else present.
+
+She was, in truth, young--he had been quite right there. Yet, like the
+room in the doorway of which he still lingered, like the man standing on
+the terrace walk--to whose tall figure the serene immensities of sea and
+sky acted as back-cloth and setting--she imposed herself. Whether she was
+pretty or plain, Tom was just now incapable of judging. He only knew
+that her eyes were wonderful. He never remembered to have seen such
+eyes--clear, dark blue-grey with fine shading of eyelash on the lower as
+well as the upper lid. Unquestionably they surpassed all ordinary
+standards of prettiness. Were glorious, yet curiously embarrassing; too
+in their seriousness, their intent impartial scrutiny--under which last,
+to his lively vexation, the young man felt himself redden.
+
+And this, considering his superiority in age, sex, and acquirements, was
+not only absurd but unfair somehow. For did not he, as a rule, get on
+charmingly well with women, gentle and simple, old and young, alike? Had
+he not an ingratiating, playfully flirtatious way with them in which he
+trusted? But flirtatiousness, even of the mildest description, would not
+do here. Instinctively he recognized that. It would not pay at all--in
+this stage of the acquaintance, at all events. He fell back on civil
+speeches; and these rather laboured ones, being himself rather
+discountenanced.
+
+"It is extremely kind of you and Sir Charles to take me on trust like
+this," he began. "Believe me I am very grateful. Under ordinary
+circumstances I should never have dreamed of proposing myself. But I am
+going out to India for the first time--sailing in the _Penang_ the day
+after to-morrow. And, as I should be so near here at Southampton, it was,
+I own, a great temptation to ask if I might come for a night. I felt--my
+father felt--what a privilege it would be for me, a really tremendous
+piece of luck, to meet Sir Charles before I started. Such a rare and
+memorable send off for me, you know!"
+
+"We were very glad you should propose yourself," Damaris answered, still
+with her grave air of ceremony.
+
+"Awfully good of you, I'm sure," the young man murmured.--No, she didn't
+stare. He could not honestly call it staring. It was too calm, too
+impersonal, too reserved for that. She looked, with a view to arriving
+at conclusions regarding him. And he didn't enjoy the process--not in
+the least.
+
+"My father is still interested in everything connected with India," she
+went on. "He will like to talk to you. We have people with us this
+afternoon whom he could not very well leave, or he would have driven into
+Marychurch himself to fetch you. Dr. McCabe, who we knew at Bhutpur long
+ago, came over unexpectedly from Stourmouth this morning; and my Aunt
+Harriet Cowden telegraphed that she and Uncle Augustus would bring Aunt
+Felicia, who is staying with them at Paulton Lacy, here to tea.--But, of
+course, you know them quite well--Uncle Augustus, I mean, and my aunts."
+
+"Do I not know them!" Tom replied with meaning; while, humour getting the
+upper hand thanks to certain memories, he smiled at her.
+
+And, even at this early period in his career, it must be conceded that
+Tom Verity's smile was an asset to be reckoned with. Mischievous to the
+verge of impudence; but confidential, too, most disarmingly friendly--a
+really vastly engaging smile, which, having once beheld, most persons
+found themselves more than ready to behold often again.
+
+Under its persuasive influence Damaris' gravity relaxed. She lowered her
+eyes, and the soft warm colour deepened in her cheeks.
+
+Her steady gaze removed, the young man breathed more freely. He
+congratulated himself. Intercourse was in act of becoming normal and
+easy. So far it had been quite absurdly hind-leggy--and for him, _him_,
+to be forced into being hind-leggy by a girl of barely eighteen! Now he
+prepared to trot gaily, comfortably, off on all fours, when she spoke,
+bringing him up to the perpendicular again with a start.
+
+"I love Aunt Felicia very dearly," she announced, as though in protest
+against some implied and subtle disloyalty.
+
+"But don't we all love Cousin Felicia?" he returned, promptly, eager to
+maintain his advantage. "Isn't she kindness incarnate, Christian
+charity personified? As for me, I simply dote on her; and with reason,
+for ever since those remote ages in which I wore scratchy pinafores and
+horrid little white socks, she has systematically and pertinaciously
+spoiled me whenever she stayed at Canton Magna.--Oh! she is an
+institution. No family should be without her. When I was small she gave
+me chocolates, tin soldiers, pop-guns warranted to endanger my
+brothers' and sisters' eyesight. And now, in a thousand ways, conscious
+and unconscious," he laughed quietly, naughtily, the words running over
+each other in the rapidity of his speech--"she gives me such a blessed
+good conceit of myself!"
+
+And Damaris Verity, caught by the wave of his light-heartedness and
+inherent desire to please, softened again, her serious eyes alight for
+the moment with answering laughter. Whereupon Tom crossed the threshold
+and stood close beside her upon the grass in the brooding sunshine, the
+beds of scarlet and crimson geraniums ranging away on glowing perspective
+to left and right. He glanced at the three ladies seated beneath the
+giant ilexes, and back at his companion. He felt absurdly keen further to
+excite her friendliness and dispel her gravity.
+
+"Only one must admit cousin Harriet is quite another story," he went on
+softly, saucily. "Any conceit our dear Felicia rubs in to you, Harriet
+most effectually rubs out. Isn't it so? I am as a worm, a positive worm
+before her--can only 'tremble and obey' like the historic lady in the
+glee. She flattens me. I haven't an ounce of kick left in me. And then
+why, oh why, tell me, Damaris, does she invariably and persistently
+clothe herself in violet ink?"
+
+"It is her colour," the girl said, her eyes still laughing, her lips
+discreetly set.
+
+"But why, in heaven's name, should she have a colour?" he demanded. "For
+identification, as I have a red and white stripe painted on my steamer
+baggage? Really that isn't necessary. Can you imagine losing cousin
+Harriet? Augustus Cowden mislaying her, for example; and only recovering
+her with joyful cries--we take those for granted in his case, of
+course--at sight of the violet ink? Not a bit of it. You know as well as
+I do identification marks can't ever be required to secure her return,
+because under no conceivable circumstances could she ever be lost. She is
+there, dear lady, lock, stock, and barrel, right there all the time. So
+her raiment of violet amounts to a purely gratuitous advertisement of a
+permanently self-evident fact.--And such a shade too, such a positively
+excruciating shade!"
+
+But here a movement upon the terrace served, indirectly, to put a term to
+his patter. For Sir Charles Verity, raising his voice slightly in passing
+emphasis, turned and moved slowly towards the little company gathered at
+the tea-table. His two companions followed, the shorter of them
+apparently making answer, the words echoing clearly in genial richness of
+affirmation across the intervening space--"And so it was, General, am I
+not recalling the incident myself? Indeed you're entirely right."
+
+"Come," Damaris said, with a certain brevity as of command.
+
+"And feel a worm?"
+
+"No--come and speak to my father."
+
+"Ah! I shall feel a worm there too," the young man returned, an engaging
+candour in his smiling countenance; "and with far better reason, unless I
+am greatly mistaken."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WATCHERS THROUGH THE SMALL HOURS
+
+
+Love, ill-health and debt being, as yet, unknown quantities to young Tom
+Verity, it followed that insomnia, with its thousand and one attendant
+miseries, was an unknown quantity likewise. Upon the eve of the stiffest
+competitive examination those, now outlived, years of tutelage had
+imposed on him, he could still tumble into bed secure of lapsing into
+unconsciousness as soon as his head fairly touched the pillow. Dreams
+might, and usually did, visit him; but as so much incidental music
+merely to the large content of slumber--tittering up and down, too
+airily light-footed and evanescent to leave any impress on mind or
+spirits when he woke.
+
+This night, at Deadham Hard, marked a new departure; sleep proving a less
+absolute break in continuity of sensation, a less absolute barrier
+between day and day.
+
+The Honourable Augustus and Mrs. Cowden, and Felicia Verity, not without
+last words, adjurations, commands and fussings, started on their
+twelve-mile drive home to Paulton Lacy about six o'clock. A little later
+Dr. McCabe conveyed himself, and his brogue, away in an ancient hired
+landau to catch the evening train from Marychurch to Stourmouth. Dinner
+followed, shortly after which Damaris vanished, along with her
+governess-companion, Miss Theresa Bilson--a plump, round-visaged,
+pink-nosed little person, permanently wearing gold eyeglasses, the
+outstanding distinction of whose artless existence consisted, as Tom
+gathered from her conversation, in a tour in Rhineland and residence of
+some months' duration at the university town of Bonn.
+
+Then, at last, came the harvest of the young man's excursion, in the
+shape of first-hand records of war and government--of intrigue and of
+sedition, followed by stern retributive chastisement--from that famous
+soldier, autocratic and practised administrator, his host.
+
+In the opinion of a good many persons Tom Verity's bump of reference
+showed very insufficient development. Dons, head-masters, the pedagogic
+and professorial tribe generally, he had long taken in his stride quite
+unabashed. Church dignitaries, too, left him saucily cool. For--so at
+least he argued--was not his elder brother, Pontifex, private chaplain to
+the Bishop of Harchester? And did not this fact--he knowing poor old
+Ponty as only brother can know brother--throw a rather lurid light upon
+the spiritual and intellectual limitations of the Bench? In respect of
+the British aristocracy, his social betters, he also kept an open mind.
+For had not Lord Bulparc's son and heir, little Oxley, acted as his fag,
+boot-black and bacon-frier, for the best part of a year at school?
+Notwithstanding which fact--Lord Oxley was of a mild, forgiving
+disposition--had not he, Tom, spent the cricket week several summers
+running at Napworth Castle; where, on one celebrated occasion, he bowled
+a distinguished Permanent Under-Secretary first ball, and, on another,
+chided a marquis and ex-Cabinet Minister for misquoting Catullus.
+
+Yet now, sitting smoking and listening to those records of eastern rule
+and eastern battle, in the quiet lamp-light of the long room--with its
+dark book-cases, faintly gleaming Chinese images, and dumpy pillars--his
+native cheekiness faded into most unwonted humility. For he was
+increasingly conscious of being, to put it vulgarly "up against something
+pretty big." Conscious of a personality altogether too secure of its own
+power to spread itself or, in the smallest degree, bluff or brag. Sir
+Charles Verity struck him, indeed, as calm to the confines of cynicism.
+He gave, but gave of his abundance, royally indifferent to the cost.
+There was plenty more where all this came from, of knowledge, of
+initiative and of thought. Only once or twice, during the course of their
+long talk, did the young man detect any sign of personal feeling. Then
+for an instant, some veil seemed to be lifted, some curtain drawn aside;
+while, with dazzling effect, he became cognizant of underlying
+bitterness, underlying romance--of secret dealings of man with man, of
+man with woman, and the dealing, arbitrary, immutable, final, of Death
+and a Greater than Death, with both.
+
+These revelations though of the briefest, over before he fairly grasped
+their import, gone like a breath, were still sufficient to discredit many
+preconceived ideas and enlarge his mental horizon to a somewhat anxious
+extent. They carried him very far from life as lived at Canton Magna
+Rectory; very far from all, indeed, in which the roots of his experience
+were set, thus producing an atmosphere of doubt, of haunting and
+insidious unrest.
+
+And of that atmosphere he was particularly sensible when, standing in
+the hall, flat candlestick in hand, he at last bade Sir Charles Verity
+good night.
+
+"It has been a wonderful evening, sir," he said, simply and modestly.
+"You have been awfully kind in sparing me so much of your time; but,
+indeed, it has not been time wasted. I begin to measure a little what
+India means, I hope. Certainly I begin to measure the depth of my own
+ignorance. I see I have nearly everything of essential importance still
+to learn. And that is a pretty large order--almost staggeringly large now
+that, thanks to you, I begin to realize the vastness of the amount."
+
+"The majority of men in your Service never realize it," Charles Verity
+returned. "They run in blinkers from first to last.--Not that I underrate
+their usefulness. They are honest, painstaking, thoroughly reliable,
+according to their lights. They do excellent journeyman work. But there
+lies the heart of the whole matter.--Are you content to do journeyman
+work only; or do you aspire to something greater?--If the former, then
+you had best forget me and all I have told you this evening as fast as
+possible. For it will prove a hindrance rather than a help, confusing the
+issues.--No--no--listen a moment, my dear boy"--
+
+This kindly, indulgently even, as Tom made a gesture of repudiation and
+began to speak.
+
+"If the latter--well, the door stands open upon achievement by no means
+contemptible, as the opportunities of modern life go; but, it is only
+fair to warn you, upon possibilities of trouble, even of disaster, by no
+means contemptible either. For, remember, the world is so constituted
+that if you elect to drive, rather than be driven, you must be prepared
+to take heavy risks, pay heavy penalties. Understand"--
+
+He laid his hand on the young man's shoulder.
+
+"I do not pose as a teacher, still less as a propagandist. I do not
+attempt to direct the jury. The choice rests exclusively with
+yourself.--And here rid your mind of any cant about moral obligations.
+Both ways have merit, both bring rewards--of sorts--are equally
+commendable, equally right. Only this--whether you choose blinkers, your
+barrel between the shafts and another man's whip tickling your loins, or
+the reins in your own hands and the open road ahead, be faithful to your
+choice. Stick to it, through evil report as well as through good."
+
+He lifted his hand off Tom's shoulder. And the latter, looking round at
+him was struck--in mingled admiration and repulsion--by his likeness to
+some shapely bird of prey, with fierce hooked beak and russet-grey eyes,
+luminous, cruel perhaps, yet very sad.
+
+"Above all be careful in the matter of your affections," Sir Charles went
+on, his voice deepening. "As you value your career, the pride of your
+intellect,--yes--and the pride of your manhood itself, let nothing
+feminine tempt you to be unfaithful to your choice. Tempt you to be of
+two minds, to turn aside, to turn back. For, so surely as you do, you
+will find the hell of disappointment, the hell of failure and regret,
+waiting wide-mouthed to swallow you, and whatever span of life may remain
+to you, bodily up."
+
+He checked himself, breaking off abruptly, the veil lowered again, the
+curtain drawn into place.
+
+"There," he said, "we have talked enough, perhaps more than enough. You
+have a long day before you to-morrow, so my dear boy, go to bed. My
+quarters are down here."
+
+He made a gesture towards the dark corridor opening off the far side
+of the hall.
+
+"You know your way? The room on the right of the landing."
+
+"Yes. I know my way, thanks, sir," Tom answered--
+
+And, thus dismissed, went on upstairs, carrying the silver flat
+candlestick, while his shadow, black on the panelled wall, mounted beside
+him grotesquely prancing step by step.
+
+The furnishing of his room was of a piece with all below, solid yet not
+uncomely. It included a four-post bed of generous proportions, hangings,
+curtains and covers of chintz, over which faded purple and crimson roses
+were flung broadcast on a honey-yellow ground. The colourings were
+discreetly cheerful, the atmosphere not unpleasantly warm, the quiet,
+save for the creaking of a board as he crossed the floor, unbroken.
+Outwardly all invited to peaceful slumber. And Tom felt more than ready
+to profit by that invitation this last night on shore, last night in
+England. His attention had been upon the stretch for a good many hours
+now, since that--after all rather upsetting--good-bye to home and family
+at Canton Magna, following an early and somewhat peripatetic breakfast.
+Notwithstanding his excellent health and youthful energy, mind and body
+alike were somewhat spent. He made short work of preparation, slipped in
+between the fine cool linen sheets, and laid his brown head upon the soft
+billowing pillows, impatient neither to think nor feel any more but
+simply to sleep.
+
+For some two hours or so he did sleep, though not without phantasmagoria
+queerly disturbing. The sweep of his visions was wide, ranging from that
+redoubtable county lady, Harriet Cowden _née_ Verity--first cousin of his
+father, the Archdeacon, and half-sister to his host--in her violet-ink
+hued gown, to fury of internecine strife amid the mountain fastnesses of
+Afghanistan,--from the austere and wistful beauty of the grey,
+long-backed Norman Abbey rising above the roofs and chimneys of the
+little English market-town, to the fierce hectic splendour of Eastern
+cities blistering in the implacable sun-glare of the Indian plains. Days
+on the Harchester playing fields, days on the river at Oxford, and still
+earlier days in the Rectory nursery at home; bringing with them sense of
+small bitter sorrows, small glorious triumphs, of laughter and uproarious
+fun, of sentimental passages at balls, picnics, garden parties, too, with
+charmingly pretty maidens who, in all probability, he would never clap
+eyes on again--all these, and impressions even more illusive and
+fugitive, playing hide-and-seek among the mazelike convolutions of his
+all too active brain.
+
+Then, on a sudden, he started up in bed, aware of external noise and
+movement which brought him instantly, almost painfully, broad awake.
+
+For a quite appreciable length of time, while he sat upright in the warm
+darkness, Tom failed either to locate the noise which had thus roused
+him, or to interpret its meaning. It appeared to him to start at the
+river foreshore, pass across the garden, into and through the
+ground-floor suite of rooms and corridor which Sir Charles had indicated
+as reserved to his particular use.--What on earth could it be? What did
+it remind him of?--Why, surely--with a start of incredulous
+recognition--the sound of hoofs, though strangely confused and muffled,
+such as a mob of scared, over-driven horses might make, floundering
+fetlock deep in loose sand.
+
+Alive with curiosity he sprang out of bed, groped his way across to the
+window and, putting up the blind, leaned out.
+
+A coppery waning moon hung low in the south-east, and sent a pale rusty
+pathway across the sea to where, behind the sand-bar, rippling waves
+broke in soft flash and sparkle. Its light was not strong enough to
+quench that of the stars crowding the western and the upper sky. Tom
+could distinguish the black mass of the great ilex trees on the right.
+Could see the whole extent of the lawn, the two sentinel cannon and
+pyramid of ammunition set on the terrace along the top of the sea-wall.
+And nothing moved there, nothing whatever. The outstretch of turf was
+vacant, empty; bare--so Tom told himself--as the back of his own hand.
+The sounds seemed to have ceased now that sight denied them visible cause
+of existence; and he began to wonder whether his hearing had not played
+him false, whether the whole thing was not pure fancy, a delusion born of
+agitated dreams.
+
+He pushed the sash up as far as it would go and leaned further out of the
+window. The luscious scent of a late flowering species of lonercera,
+trained against the house wall, saluted his nostrils, along with a
+fetid-sweet reek off the mud-flats of the Haven. Away in the village a
+dog yelped, and out on the salt-marshes water-fowl gave faint whistling
+cries. Then all settled down into stillness, save for the just audible
+chuckle and suck of the river as the stream met the inflowing tide.
+
+The stillness pleased him. For so many nights to come there would be none
+of it; but ceaselessly the drumming of the engines, quiver of the screw,
+and wash of the water against the ship's side.--All the same he did not
+quite like the colour of the moon or that frayed flattened edge of it
+westward. Why is there always something a trifle menacing about a waning
+moon? He did not like the smell of the mud-flats either. It might not be
+actually unhealthy; but it suggested a certain foulness. He yawned, drew
+back into the room, and straightening himself up, stretched his hands
+above his head. He would get into bed again. He was dog-tired--yes, most
+distinctly bed!
+
+Then he stopped short, listening, hastily knelt down by the window and
+again leaned out. For once more he heard horses coming up from the shore,
+across the garden, into and through the house, hustling and trampling one
+another as they shied away from the whip.--There were laggards too--one
+stumbled, rolled over in the sand, got on its feet after a nasty
+struggle, and tottered onward dead lame. Another fell in its tracks and
+lay there foundered, rattling in the throat.
+
+The sounds were so descriptive, so explicit and the impression produced
+on Tom Verity's mind so vivid that, carried away by indignation, he found
+himself saying out loud:
+
+"Curse them, the brutes, the cowardly brutes, mishandling their cattle
+like that! They"--
+
+And he stopped confounded, as it came home to him that throughout the
+course of this cruel drama he had seen nothing, literally nothing, though
+he had heard so convincingly much. A shiver ran down his spine and he
+broke into a sweat, for he knew beyond question or doubt not so much as a
+shadow,--let alone anything material--had breasted the sea-wall, passed
+over the smooth level turf, or entered--how should it?--the house.
+
+The garden lay outspread before him, calm, uninvaded by any alien being,
+man or animal. The great ilex trees were immobile, fixed as the eternal
+stars overhead. And he shrank in swift protest, almost in terror, being
+called on thus to face things apparently super-normal, forces unexplored
+and uncharted, defying reason, giving the lie to ordinary experience and
+ordinary belief. Reality and hallucination, jostled one another in his
+thought, a giant note of interrogation written against each. For which
+was the true and which the false? Of necessity he distrusted the evidence
+of his own senses, finding sight and hearing in direct conflict thus.
+
+The two or three minutes that followed were among the most profoundly
+disagreeable Tom ever had spent. But at last, a door opened below,
+letting forth a shaft of mellow lamp-light. It touched the flower-beds on
+the left edging the lawn, giving the geraniums form and colour, laying
+down a delicate carpet of green, transmuting black into glowing scarlet.
+Tall and spare in his grey and white sleeping-suit, Sir Charles Verity
+sauntered out, and stood, smoking, looking out to sea.
+
+Earlier that night, downstairs in the sitting-room, he seemed a storm
+centre, generating much perplexity and disquiet. But now Tom welcomed his
+advent with a sense of almost absurd satisfaction. To see what was
+solidly, incontrovertibly, human could not but be, in itself, a mighty
+relief.--Things began to swing into their natural relation, man, living
+man, the centre, the dominant factor once more. He, Tom, could now shift
+all responsibility, moreover. If the master of the house was on guard,
+he might wash his hands of these hateful ghostly goings on--if ghostly
+they were--leaving the whole matter to one far stronger and more
+competent than himself.
+
+Whereupon he went back to bed; and slept profoundly, royally, until
+Hordle the man-servant, moving about the bright chintz bedecked room,
+preparing his bath and laying out his clothes, awoke him to the sweetness
+of another summer day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BETWEEN RIVER AND SEA
+
+
+"We had a grand talk last night--Sir Charles was in splendid form. I
+enjoyed it down to the ground."
+
+Tom Verity lay, at full length on the upward sloping, sun-warmed bank of
+sand and shingle. Only to youth is given enjoyment of perfect laziness
+joined with perfect physical vigour. Just because he felt equal to
+vaulting the moon or long-jumping an entire continent, should such
+prodigious feats be required of him, could he lie thus in glorious
+idleness letting the earth cradle and the sun soak into him. Doubts and
+disturbances of last night melted in daylight to an almost ludicrous
+nothingness and self-confidence reigned; so that he declared the world a
+super-excellent place, snapping his fingers at problems and mysteries. A
+spark of curiosity pricked him still, it is true, concerning the origin
+of certain undeniably queer aural phenomena. He meant to satisfy that
+curiosity presently; but the subject must be approached with tact. He
+must wait on opportunity.
+
+A few paces from and above him, Damaris sat on the crown of the ridge,
+where the light southerly wind, coming up now and again off the sea,
+fanned her. A white knitted jersey, pulled on over her linen dress,
+moulded the curve of her back, the round of her breasts and turn of her
+waist, showing each movement of her gracious young body to the hips, as
+she leaned forward, her knees drawn up and her feet planted among the
+red, orange, and cream-grey flints and pebbles.
+
+Looking up at her, Tom saw her face foreshortened in the shade of her
+broad brimmed garden hat, a soft clear flush on it born of health, fresh
+air and sunlight, her eyes shining, the blue of the open sea in their
+luminous depths. He received a new impression of her. She belonged to the
+morning, formed part of the gladness of universal Nature, an unfettered
+nymph-like being. To-day her mood was sprightly, bidding farewell to
+ceremony. Yet, he felt, she remained perplexing, because more detached
+than is the feminine habit, poised and complete in herself.
+
+And this detachment, this suppression of the sentimental or social
+note--he being admittedly a very personable fellow--piqued Tom's male
+vanity, so that he rallied her with:
+
+"But by the way, why did you vanish so early, why didn't you stay with us
+after dinner last night?"
+
+"I did not want to vanish," she answered. "Nothing is more delightful
+than hearing my father talk. But had I stayed Miss Bilson would have
+supposed herself free to stay too, and that would have spoiled the
+evening. My father doesn't choose to talk freely before Miss Bilson,
+because she gets into a foolish excited state and interrupts and asks
+questions. She overflows with admiration and that annoys and bores him."
+
+"'She brought him butter in a lordly dish,'" Tom quoted. "The ill-advised
+Bilson. Can't one just see her!"
+
+"And it is not her place to admire out loud," Damaris continued. "Over
+and over again I have tried to explain that to her. But in some ways, she
+is not at all clever. She can't or won't understand, and only tells Aunt
+Felicia I am wanting in sympathy and that I hurt her feelings. She has
+unreasonably many feelings, I think, and they are so easily hurt. I
+always know when the hurting takes place because she sniffs and then
+plays Mendelssohn's Songs without Words on the schoolroom piano."
+
+Tom chuckled. She had a caustic tongue on occasion, this
+nymph-like creature!
+
+"Alas, poor Bilson!" he said. "For, as Sir Charles walked across the
+garden with us down to the ferry, didn't I hear those same sugary
+melodies tinkling out of some upper open window?"
+
+"I am afraid you did. You see she had made up her mind to come with me."
+
+"And you were forced to intimate you found yourself quite equal to
+conducting the expedition unshepherded?"
+
+"I did not mean to be unkind, but she would have been so dreadfully in
+the way"--
+
+Damaris gathered up a handful of little pebbles, and let them dribble
+down slowly between her outspread fingers while, turning her head, she
+gazed away out to sea.
+
+"This is a day by itself," she said. "It looks like jewels, topazes,
+turquoise, and pearls; and it seems full of things which half tell
+themselves, and then hide from or pass you by.--I wanted to watch it all
+and think; and, she doesn't do it on purpose I know, but somehow Miss
+Bilson always interferes with my thinking."
+
+Both the tone and substance of this discourse proved slightly startling
+to its hearer. They carried the conversation into regions transcendental;
+and to his blissful laziness, the rarefied air of those regions was
+unwelcome. To breathe it demanded exertion. So he said, chaffingly:
+
+"Do I interfere with your thinking? I hope not. But if I offend that way,
+speak but a word and I disappear like a shot."
+
+"Oh! no," she answered. "How could you interfere? You are part of it. You
+started it, you see, because you are going to India."
+
+Whereat, failing to catch the sequence of ideas, male vanity plumed
+itself, tickled to the point of amusement. For was not she a child after
+all, transparently simple and candid, and very much a woman-child at
+that! Tom turning on his side raised himself on one elbow, smiling at her
+with easy good-nature.
+
+"How charming of you to adopt me as a special object of thought, and care
+so much about my going."
+
+But patronage proved short-lived. The girl's colour deepened, but her
+eyes dwelt on him coldly.
+
+"I have only been thinking how fortunate you are, and seeing pictures in
+my mind of what you will see which will be new to you--and--and
+remembering."
+
+"Oh! of course, I am lucky, tremendously lucky," he hastened to declare,
+laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in
+itself, knocking the insularity out of a man--if he has any receptive
+faculty that is--and ridding him of all manner of stodgy prejudices. I
+don't the least undervalue my good fortune.--But you talk of remembering.
+That's stretching a point surely. You must have been a mere baby, my dear
+Damaris, when you left India."
+
+"No, I was six years old, and I remember quite well. All my caring for
+people, all my thinking, begins there, in the palace of the Sultan-i-bagh
+at Bhutpur and the great compound, when my father was Chief
+Commissioner."
+
+Her snub duly delivered, and she secure it had gone home, Damaris unbent,
+graciously communicative as never before.
+
+"It was all so beautiful and safe there inside the high walls, and yet a
+teeny bit frightening because you knew there were other things--as there
+are to-day--which you felt but couldn't quite see all about you.
+Sometimes they nearly pushed through--I was always expecting and I like
+to expect. It hurt me dreadfully to go away; but I had been very ill.
+They were afraid I should die and so Dr. McCabe--he was here when you
+arrived yesterday--insisted on my being sent to Europe. A lady--Mrs.
+Pereira--and my nurse Sarah Watson took me to Paris, to the convent
+school where I was to be educated. It was all very strange, but the nuns
+were kind. I liked their religion, and I got accustomed to the other
+little girls. I had rooms of my own; and French friends of my father's
+visited me and took me out on half-holidays. And Aunt Felicia came over
+to fetch me for the summer vacations and brought me here"--
+
+Damaris pointed across the tide-way to the river frontage, including with
+one sweeping gesture the whole demesne of The Hard from the deep lane on
+the one hand, opening funnel-like upon the shore, past sea-wall--topped
+at the corner by pink plumed tamarisk, the small twin cannons and pyramid
+of ball--the lawn and irregular white house overlooking it, backed and
+flanked by rich growth of trees, to a strip of sandy warren and pine
+scrub on the other, from out which a line of some half-dozen purple
+stemmed, red branched Scotch firs, along with the grey stone built Inn
+and tarred wooden cottages on the promontory beyond, showed through a
+dancing shimmer of heat haze, against the land-locked, blue and silver
+waters of Marychurch Haven.
+
+"I did not like being here at all at first," she told him. "I thought it
+a mean place only fit for quite poor people to live in. The house seemed
+so pinched and naked without any galleries or verandahs. And I was afraid
+because we had so few servants and neither door-keepers or soldiers. I
+could not believe that in England there is so little need for protection
+against disaffected persons and thieves. The sunshine was pale and thin,
+and the dusk made me sad. At Bhutpur the sun used to drop in flame behind
+the edge of the world and night leap on you. But here the day took so
+long dying. Aunt Felicia used to praise what she called 'the long sweet
+English twilight,' and try to make me stop out in the garden to enjoy it
+with her. But I could not bear it. The colours faded so slowly. It seemed
+like watching some helpless creature bleed to death silently, growing
+greyer minute by minute and feebler. I did not want to watch, but go
+indoors where the lamps were lighted and it was warm and cosy. I used to
+cry dreadfully, when I could get away by myself where Aunt Felicia and
+the maids could not see me, cry for my father--he resigned the
+Commissionership, you know, when I was sent home and took service in
+Afghanistan under the Ameer--and for my darling friend, Mrs. Pereira, and
+for the Sultan-i-bagh, where I knew strangers lived now. For the lotus
+tank and orange grove, and all my little tame animals and my pretty
+play-places I should never, never see any more"--
+
+Overcome by which intimate memories, Damaris' grave voice--which had
+taken on a chanting cadence, at once novel and singularly pleasing to the
+young man's ear--quavered and broke.
+
+"Poor little exiled princess!" he cried, all his facile kindness to the
+fore again. "Yes, it must have been cruelly hard on you. You must have
+suffered. No wonder you cried--cried buckets full."
+
+And drawn by pity for that desolate, tropic-bred little child, Tom got on
+to his feet and crunched up the loose shingle to the crest of the ridge,
+full of a lively desire to pacify and console. But here the soft breeze
+met and caressed him, and the whole plain of the tranquil sea came into
+view--turquoise shot with pearl, as Damaris recently figured it, and
+fringed with topaz where waves, a few inches high and clear as glass,
+broke on the yellow sand at the back of the Bar just below.
+
+"How wonderfully lovely!" he exclaimed, carried out of himself by the
+extreme fairness of the scene. And, his hands in his trouser pockets he
+stood staring, while once again the pull of home, of England, of
+tenderness for all that which he was about to leave, dimmed his eyes and
+raised a lump in his throat.
+
+"Upon my word, you must be difficult to please if this place doesn't
+please you or come up to your requirements, Damaris," he said, presently
+sitting down beside her. "No Arabian Nights palace in Asia, I grant you;
+yet in its own humbler and--dare I say?--less showy, manner not easy to
+beat. Breathe this enchanting air. See the heavenly tints with which our
+good dirty useful old Channel has adorned itself. Can you ask for more,
+you insatiable person, in the way of beauty?"
+
+Then, slightly ashamed of his outburst, Tom practised a delightful smile,
+at once sentimental and flirtatious.
+
+"No, on second thoughts, my dear princess, I keep my commiseration for my
+wretched self--every crumb of it. For I am the lonely exile--that is, I
+am just about to be--not you. Be advised, don't quarrel with the good
+gifts of the gods. Deadham Hard is frankly entrancing. How willingly
+would I put off taking ship for your vaunted India, and spend the
+unending cycles of eternity here--with you, well understood--in this most
+delectable spot instead."
+
+Whereupon Damaris, with mingled gravity and haste, her head bent, so
+that hat-crown and hat-brim were presented to the young man's observation
+rather than her face, proceeded to explain she had spoken not of the
+present but of the past. From the time Sir Charles returned to inhabit
+it, The Hard was transformed; his presence conferring interest and
+dignity upon it, rendering it a not unworthy dwelling-place
+indeed--should any such happen that way--for sages, conquerors, or even
+kings. He cared for the little property, a fact to her all sufficient.
+For him it held the charm of old associations. The pleasantest days of
+his boyhood were spent here with Thomas Clarkson Verity, his great
+uncle--who eventually left him the property--nor had he ever failed later
+to visit it when home on leave. In pious remembrance of that distant era
+and of his entertaining and affectionate, if somewhat eccentric, host and
+friend he forbade any alteration in the house or grounds. It continued
+to-day just as old Mr. Verity left it. There was no break, even in
+details of furnishing or arrangement, with the past. This, to Sir
+Charles, added to the natural restfulness of the place. Now after the
+great achievements and responsibilities of his Eastern career he found
+retirement congenial. The soft equable climate benefited his health.
+Rough shooting and good fishing could be had in plenty--stag-hunting,
+too, in Arnewood Forest, when he inclined to such sport. The Hard was
+sufficiently easy of access from town for friends to come and stay with
+him. Convenient for crossing to the Continent too, when he took his
+yearly cure at Aix or at Vichy, or went south for a couple of months, as
+last winter for instance, to Cette, Montpelier and across, by Pau, to the
+Atlantic seaboard at St. Sebastian, Biarritz, and Bayonne.
+
+"When my father travels I go with him," Damaris said, raising her head
+and looking at the young man with proud, deliberate eyes. "We both
+suffered too much, we must never be separated again. And when we go
+abroad, we go alone. There is no one to give advice or interfere. We take
+Hordle, to pack and look after the baggage. We are always together, and
+I am always happy. I wish we could live like that always, with no settled
+home. But after a while, my father grows tired of hotels. He begins to
+wish for the quiet of The Hard, and all the things he is accustomed to.
+And then, naturally, I begin to wish for it too."
+
+From which statement, made as he judged with intention, Tom apprehended
+an attachment of no common order existing between these two persons,
+father and child. If, as family gossip disapprovingly hinted, the
+affection given appeared to trench on exaggeration, the affection
+returned was of kindred quality, fervid, self-realized, absorbing, and
+absorbed. Comparing it with his own humorously tolerant filial attitude,
+Tom felt at once contrite and injured. The contrast was glaring. But
+then, as he hastened to add--though whether in extenuation of his own, or
+of his father's, shortcomings remained open to question--wasn't the
+contrast between the slightly pompous, slightly bow-windowed, provincial,
+Tory cleric and this spare, inscrutable soldier and ruler, glaring
+likewise? To demand that the one should either experience or inspire the
+same emotions as the other was palpably absurd! Hence (comfortable
+conclusion!) neither he, Tom, nor the Archdeacon was really to
+blame.--Only, as he further argued, once the absurdity of that same
+demand admitted, were you not free to talk of exaggeration, or of the
+"grand manner," as you chose? Were not the terms interchangeable, if you
+kept an open mind? His personal acquaintance with the "grand manner" in
+respect of the affections, with heroical love, amounted, save in
+literature, to practically nothing; yet instinctively he applied those
+high sounding phrases to the attachment existing between Damaris and her
+father. Both as discovery and, in some sort, as challenge to his own
+preconceived ideas and methods this gave him food for serious thought.
+
+He made no attempt at comment or answer; but sat silent beside the girl,
+bare-headed in the soft wind and sunlight, between the flowing river and
+tranquil sea.
+
+The "grand manner"--that was how, naturally, without posing or bombast,
+these two persons envisaged life for good or evil--for this last, too,
+might be possible!--shaped their purposes and conduct. Sir Charles, he
+knew, had played for big stakes. Damaris, he felt intuitively, young
+though she was, played and would play for them likewise. He looked at her
+with awakened speculation, awakened curiosity. What, he wondered, would
+come of it. Did it make her attractive or the reverse? Really he wasn't
+at all sure. Whereat he grew restive, the claims of inherent masculine
+superiority, let alone those of public school, university and an
+honourable profession, asserting themselves. He began to question whether
+this young lady did not take up an undue amount of room, thus cramping
+him and denying his powers of conversation suitable opportunity of
+display. Was not it about time gently to reduce her, relegate her to a
+more modest position? To achieve which laudable result--he acted, of
+course, for her good exclusively--he prepared to broach the subject of
+the unaccountable noises which disturbed his rest last night. He would
+cross-examine her as to their origin, thereby teasing and perhaps even
+discountenancing her somewhat.
+
+But before Tom could put his benevolent scheme into execution, his
+attention was unexpectedly diverted, a quite new element projecting
+itself upon the scene.
+
+For some little while an open boat, a hoary though still seaworthy tub of
+a thing, deep in draught and broad in the beam, loaded up with
+lobster-pots--the skeleton ribs of them black against the surrounding
+expanse of shining turquoise and pearl--had slowly neared the Bar from
+seaward. The bows, in which a small, withered old man bent double over
+the oars, cocked up on end. The stern, where a young man stood erect
+among the lobster-pots, was low in the water. Now, as the nose of the
+boat grounded, the young man clambered along the gunwale, and balancing
+for a minute, tall and straight, on the prow, took a flying leap across
+the wide intervening space of breaking wave and clear water, alighting on
+his feet, upon the firm sand beyond.
+
+"Good for him! Neatly done," Tom Verity murmured, appreciating the grace
+and vigour of the action.
+
+The young man, meanwhile, turning, called to the rower: "Thank you
+heartily for putting me ashore, Daddy Proud. I'll go across home by the
+ferry. But see here, can you manage her by yourself or shall I help shove
+her off for you?"
+
+"Lord love 'ee, I can manage her sure enough," the other called back
+shrilly and a trifle truculently. "I knows 'er ways and she knows her
+master--ought to by now the old strumpet, if years count for
+anythink. So don't 'ee go wetting yer dandy shoes for the likes of
+her and me, Cap'en."
+
+And keckling with thin wheezy laughter he straightened his back, and,
+planting one oar in the sand, set the boat afloat again skilfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+IN WHICH THE PAST LAYS AN OMINOUS HAND ON THE PRESENT
+
+
+Down here on the shore, in the serene morning atmosphere, voices carried
+with peculiar distinctness. Every word of the brief colloquy had reached
+Tom Verity; and one word at least possessed an Elizabethan flavour
+forbidden to ears Victorian, feminine and polite. Noting it Tom reddened
+and glanced uneasily at his companion, all inclination to tease giving
+place to a laudable desire to shield her from annoyance. But Damaris,
+judging by her demeanour, was unaware of any cause of offence; whence,
+with relief he concluded that either she had not heard, or that the rank
+expression conveyed nothing intelligible to her mind.
+
+Her open hand pressed down upon the rough surface of the pebbles, she
+leaned a little backward, her lithe body twisted sideways from the waist,
+while she scrutinized the man upon the sands below. And that the latter
+presented a gallant and even distinguished appearance, though arrayed in
+leather-peaked cap, blue serge reefer jacket and trousers which had
+evidently seen service, Tom could not but admit, as he stood just clear
+of the ripples of incoming tide staring idly after the receding boat with
+its cargo of black ribbed skeleton lobster-pots.--A spirited-looking,
+well-made fellow, no doubt; merchant captain or more probably mate--Tom
+took him to be about eight-and-twenty--but in an altogether different
+rank of life to themselves and therefore a quite unsuitable object for
+prolonged and earnest attention. His advent should be treated as an
+accident, not elevated thus to the importance of an event. It was not
+quite good taste on Damaris' part Tom felt; and he made a show of rising,
+saying as he did so, by way of excuse:
+
+"It is wonderfully charming out here. I am loath to break up our little
+_tête-à-tête;_ but time waits for no man, worse luck, and if I am to
+catch my train I must start directly after luncheon. Sir Charles was good
+enough to promise me various letters of introduction to persons in, high
+places. He told me to remind him about them. I don't want to be greedy
+but I should like those letters. Perhaps I ought to be getting back so as
+to see your father about them."
+
+But before Damaris had time to collect her thoughts and reply, the man in
+the peaked cap had further asserted his presence. Either becoming
+conscious of her observation, or caught by something in Tom Verity's
+speech, he wheeled round and looked up at the two in swift, almost
+haughty, enquiry. To Tom he vouchsafed little more than a glance, but
+upon Damaris his eyes fastened. For a good minute he stared at her, as
+though in some sort holding her to ransom. Then with an upward jerk of
+the head and an ejaculation, half smothered oath, half sharp laughter--as
+of one who registers eminently ironic conclusions--he began deliberately
+ascending the slope.
+
+Tom Verity, though possessed of plentiful cheekiness towards the majority
+of his elders and betters, was no fire-eater. He preferred diplomacy to
+war; and would adroitly evade rather than invite anything approaching a
+scene, specially in the presence of a woman. Yet under existing
+circumstances retreat had become, as he perceived, not only undignified
+but useless. So in his best Oxford manner--a manner ornate, at that
+period, and quite crushingly superior--he raised his shoulders, smiled
+faintly, resignedly, and disposed himself in an easier attitude, saying:
+
+"Better wait, perhaps, my dear Damaris. I would sooner risk losing those
+precious letters than acquire a possible escort for you--and for
+myself--down to the river and across the ferry."
+
+And he threw a meaning glance over his shoulder, indicating the
+obtrusive stranger.
+
+So doing he received a disturbing impression. For seen thus, at close
+quarters, not only was the said stranger notably, even astonishingly
+good-looking, but he bore an arresting likeness in build, in carriage, in
+expression to--
+
+Tom paused perplexed, racking his brains.--For who, the deuce, was it?
+Where had he seen, and that as he could have sworn quite recently, this
+same forceful countenance lit by russet-grey eyes at once dauntless and
+sad, deep-set, well apart, the lids of them smooth and delicately
+moulded? The man's skin was tanned, by exposure, to a tint but a few
+shades lighter than that of his gold-brown beard--a beard scrupulously
+groomed, trimmed to a nicety and by no means deforming the lower part of
+the face since the line of jaw and chin remained clearly discernible.
+
+Tom turned away and looked absently at The Hard in its broad reposeful
+frame of lawn and trees. The cool green foliage of a bank of
+hydrangeas--running from the great ilexes to the corner of the
+house--thick-set with discs of misty pink and blue blossom took his
+fancy, as contrast to the beds of scarlet and crimson geranium naming in
+the sun. But below any superficial sense of pleasure in outward things,
+thought of that likeness--and likeness, dash it all, to whom?--still
+vexed him as a riddle he failed to guess. Obligation to guess it, to find
+the right answer, obsessed him as of vital interest and importance,
+though, for the life of him, he could not tell why. His sense of
+proportion, his social sense, his self-complacency, grew restive under
+the pressure of it. He told himself it wasn't of the smallest
+consequence, didn't matter a fig, yet continued to cudgel his memory.
+And, all the while, the sound of deliberate footsteps crunching over the
+dry rattling shingle, nearer and nearer, contributed to increase his
+inward perturbation.
+
+The footsteps halted close behind him--while for a sensible length of
+time a shadow lay across him shutting off the genial warmth--and started
+again, passing to the left, as the intruder traversed the crown of the
+ridge a few paces from where Damaris was seated, and pursued his way down
+to the river-shore on the other side.
+
+"At last--I thank you!" Tom broke out impatiently.
+
+He felt incomprehensibly nervous; and angry with himself for so feeling.
+
+"Commend me to our friend for taking his time about things, and
+incidentally wasting ours--yours and mine, I mean! What on earth did he
+want? He certainly treated us to a sufficiently comprehensive inspection.
+Well, I hope he was satisfied. By the same token, have you any conception
+who the fellow is?"
+
+Damaris shook her head. She, too, appeared perturbed. Her eyebrows were
+drawn into a little frown and her expression was perplexed to the point
+of child-like distress.
+
+"Not any," she answered simply. "Some one staying at Faircloth's Inn
+possibly. People come there from Marychurch to spend the day during the
+summer. Old Timothy Proud, the lobster-catcher, who brought him round in
+his boat, lives at one of the cottages close to the Inn. No," she
+repeated, "I have no conception who he is, and yet his face seemed
+familiar. I had a feeling that I knew him quite well--had seen him often,
+oh! very often before."
+
+"Ah! then you were puzzled by some mysterious likeness,"--Tom began
+eagerly, smiling at her. And stopped short, open-mouthed, assailed by so
+apparently preposterous a recognition that for the minute it left him
+fairly speechless.
+
+But Damaris, busy with her own sensations, her glance still following the
+blue-clad figure along the shore and out on to the tumble-down wooden
+jetty, failed to remark his embarrassment and thus gave him time to
+recover his scattered wits.
+
+"Jennifer is bringing the ferry-boat across," she said presently, "so you
+won't have to wait much longer. Not that you need be at all anxious about
+those letters. It is not my father's habit to forget a promise. Most
+likely they were written last night before he went to bed. He sleeps
+badly, I am sorry to say, and is glad to cheat the wakeful hours by
+reading and doing his correspondence until late."
+
+As she spoke the young girl rose to her feet, pulling the close-fitting
+jersey down over her hips and, stooping, dusted particles of sand off the
+hem of her dress.
+
+"There--that's better. Now I am tidy. Shall we go home, cousin Tom?"
+she asked.
+
+Her eyes shone with inward excitement and she carried her head proudly,
+but her face was white. And he, sensible that she had suddenly hardened
+towards him and strove, he could not divine why, to keep him at arm's
+length, turned perversely teasing again. He would not await a more
+convenient season. Here and now he would satisfy his curiosity--and at
+her expense--regarding one at least of the queer riddles Deadham Hard had
+sprung on him.
+
+"I did not know your father suffered from sleeplessness," he said. "It
+must be horribly trying and depressing. I am glad, in a way, you have
+told me, because it may account for my seeing him go out into the garden
+from the study last night, or rather very early this morning. It would be
+about two o'clock. I put down his appearance to another cause, and"--
+
+He smiled at her, delightfully ingratiating, assaugingly apologetic.
+
+"Shall I own it?--one which, frankly, struck me as a little upsetting and
+the reverse of pleasant."
+
+"Weren't you comfortable? I am so sorry," Damaris exclaimed, instincts of
+hospitality instantly militant. "What was wrong? You should have called
+someone--rung for Hordle. What was it?"
+
+"No--no--my dear Damaris, don't vex yourself I entreat you. I was in
+clover, luxuriously comfortable. You've allotted me a fascinating room
+and perfect dream of a bed. I feel an ungrateful wretch for so much as
+mentioning this matter to you after the way in which you have indulged
+me. Only something rather extraordinary really did happen, of which I
+honestly confess I am still expiring to find a reasonable and not too
+humiliating explanation. For, though I blush to own it"--
+
+He laughed softly, humping up his shoulders after the manner of a naughty
+small boy dodging a well-merited box on the ear.--
+
+"Yes, I blush to own it, but I was frightened, downright frightened. I
+quailed and I quaked. The sight of Sir Charles stepping out of the study
+window filled me with abject rapture. Metaphorically speaking, my craven
+soul squirmed at his heels. He was to me as a strong tower and house of
+defence.--But look here, Damaris, joking apart, tell me weren't you
+disturbed, didn't you hear any strange noises last night?"
+
+"No, none." She hesitated, then with evident reluctance--"I sleep in the
+new wing of the house."
+
+"Which you imply, might make a difference?" Tom asked.
+
+"The older servants would tell you that it does."
+
+"And you agree with them?"
+
+Damaris had a moment of defective courage.
+
+"I would rather not discuss the subject, cousin Tom," she said and moved
+away down over the shifting shingle.
+
+At first her progress was sober, even stately. But soon, either from the
+steep, insecure nature of the ground or from less obvious and material
+cause, her pace quickened until it became a run. She ran neatly, deftly,
+all of a piece as a boy runs, no trace of disarray or feminine
+floundering in her action. More than ever, indeed, did she appear a fine
+nymph-like creature; so that, watching her flight Tom Verity was touched
+alike with self-reproach and admiration. For he had succeeded in
+asserting himself beyond his intention. Had overcome, had worsted her;
+yet, as it occurred to him, won a but barren victory. That she was
+alienated and resentful he could hardly doubt, while the riddle he had
+rather meanly used to procure her discomfiture remained unanswered as
+ever, dipped indeed only deeper in mystery. He was hoist with his own
+petard, in short; and stood there nonplussed, vexed alike at himself and
+at circumstance.
+
+A soft wind, meanwhile, caressed him, as hesitating, uncertain what to do
+next, he glanced out over the smiling sea and then back at the delicate
+shore line, the white house, the huge evergreen trees and brilliant
+flower garden. A glamour covered the scene. It was lovely, intimately,
+radiantly lovely as he had lately declared it. Yet just now he grew
+distrustful, as though its fair seeming cloaked some subtle trickery and
+deceit. He began to wish he had not undertaken this expedition to
+Deadham; but gone straight from the normal, solidly engrained
+philistinism of dear old Canton Magna to join his ship. In coming here he
+had, to put it vulgarly, bitten off more than he could chew. For the
+place and its inhabitants seemed to have a disintegrating effect on him.
+Never in all his life had he been such a prey to exterior influences,
+been twisted and turned to and fro, weather-cock fashion, thus. It was
+absurd, of course, to take things too seriously, yet he could not but
+fear the Archdeacon's well-intentioned bit of worldliness and his own
+disposition to court whatever family prejudice pronounced taboo, were in
+process of leading him a very questionable little dance.
+
+Reaction, however, set in before long, as with so lively, light-hearted a
+temperament, it was bound to do, the healthy scepticism, healthy optimism
+of untried three-and-twenty rising to the surface buoyant as a cork.
+
+Tom Verity shook himself, took off his hat, smoothed his hair, settled
+his tie, hitched up the waist of his trousers, stamping to get them into
+place, laughed a little, calling himself every sort of silly ass, and
+then swung away down the side of the long ridge in pursuit of Damaris.
+He acknowledged his treatment of her had been lacking in chivalry. He
+hadn't shown himself altogether considerate or even kind. But she
+challenged him--perhaps unconsciously--and once or twice had come near
+making him feel small.--Oh! there were excuses for his behaviour! Now
+however he would sail on another tack. Would placate, discreetly cherish
+her until she couldn't but be softened and consent to make it up. After
+all maidens of her still tender age are not precisely adamant--such at
+least was his experience--where a personable youth is concerned. It only
+needed a trifle of refined cajolery to make everything smooth and to
+bring her round.
+
+He overtook the fugitive as she reached the low wooden jetty crawling,
+like some giant but rather dilapidated black many-legged insect, out over
+the stream. Its rows of solidly driven piles were intact, but the staging
+they supported had suffered damage from the rush of river floods, let
+alone from neglect and age. Handrails were broken down, planks rotted and
+wrenched away leaving gaps through which the cloudy greenish blue water
+could be seen as it purred and chuckled beneath. Here, at the river
+level, it was hot to the point of sultriness, the air heavy, even
+stagnant, since the Bar shut off the southerly breeze.
+
+"Upon my word one requires to be in training to race you, my dear
+Damaris," the young man said gaily, ostentatiously mopping his forehead.
+"And I'm disgracefully soft just now, I know. You beat me utterly and
+ignominiously; but then you did have a good three minutes' start. In
+common honesty you can't deny that"--
+
+The girl made no response, but began mounting the few sand-strewn steps
+on to the jetty. He saw her face in profile, the delicate upward curve of
+her long dark eyelashes in the shade of her hat. Saw, too, that her soft
+lips quivered as with the effort to repress an outburst of tears. And
+this affected him as the wounding of some strong free creature might,
+stirring his blood in a fashion new to him and strange. For not only did
+he find it piteous; but unseemly, unpermissible somehow, yet marvellously
+sweet, startling him out of all preconceived light diplomatic plans,
+plucking shrewdly at his complacently unawakened heart.
+
+He came close to her, and putting his hand under her elbow gently held
+it.
+
+"Pray, pray be careful," he said. "I don't trust this crazy little pier
+of yours one atom. Any one of these boards looks capable of crumbling and
+letting one through.--And, Damaris, please don't be cross with me or I
+shall be quite miserable. Forgive my having asked you stupid questions. I
+was a blundering idiot. Of course, what I heard last night was just some
+echo, some trick of wind or of the river and tide. I was half asleep and
+imagined the whole thing most likely, magnified sounds as one does,
+don't you know, sometimes at night. Your father talked wonderfully, and I
+went to bed dazzled, such imagination as I possess all aflame"--
+
+But Damaris shook her head, while her elbow rested rigid upon the palm
+of his hand.
+
+"No--what you heard was real," she answered. "I heard once myself--and
+the people here know about it. They say the dead smugglers still drive
+their ponies up from the beach, across the lawn where the old road was,
+and, as it sounds, through the round rooms downstairs, in which my father
+lives, on their way up into the forest.--You cannot help seeing--although
+you see nothing--how the ponies are ill-used, hounded and flogged. The
+last of the drove are lame and utterly worn out. They stumble along
+anyhow and one falls. Oh! it is cruel, wicked. And it is--was, really
+true, cousin Tom. It must have happened scores of times before old Mr.
+Verity, your namesake, put a stop to the iniquity by buying The Hard--I
+have only heard the ponies driven once, about this time in September last
+year--just before something very sad, quite of my own, happened"--
+
+Damaris stopped, her lips quivering again and too much for speech.
+
+"Don't tell me any more. I can't bear you to be distressed. Pray, pray
+don't"--the young man urged incoherently while his grasp on her elbow
+tightened somewhat.
+
+For he felt curiously flurried and put about; near cursing himself
+moreover for having helped to break up her high serenity thus. The whole
+thing was manifestly impossible as he told himself, outside every
+recognized law of Nature and sound science. Even during the mistrustful
+phantasy-breeding watches of the night, when reason inclines to drag
+anchor setting mind and soul rather wildly adrift, he had refused
+credence to the apparent evidence of his own senses. Now in broad
+daylight, the generous sunshine flooding him, the smooth river purring
+and glittering at his feet, belief in grim and ghostly happenings became
+more than ever inadmissible, not to say quite arrantly grotesque. Yet
+Damaris' version of those same happenings tallied with his own in every
+point. And that her conviction of their reality was genuine, profound
+indeed to the point of pain, admitted neither of question nor of doubt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A CRITIC IN CORDUROY
+
+
+William Jennifer, who successfully combined in his single person the
+varied offices of ferryman, rat-catcher, jobbing gardener, amateur
+barber, mender of sails and of nets, brought the heavy, flat-bottomed
+boat alongside the jetty. Shipping the long sweeps, he coughed behind his
+hand with somewhat sepulchral politeness to give warning of his presence.
+
+"Sweethearting--lost to sight and hearing, espoused to forgetfulness," he
+murmured, peering up at the two cousins standing in such close proximity
+to one another upon the black staging above.
+
+For William Jennifer was a born lover of words and maker of phrases,
+addicted to the bandying of pleasantries, nicely seasoned to their
+respective age, sex and rank, with all he met; and, when denied an
+audience, rather than keep silence holding conversation with himself.
+
+The hot morning induced thirst, which, being allayed by a couple of pints
+at Faircloth's Inn, induced desire for a certain easiness of costume. His
+waistcoat hung open--he had laid aside his coat--displaying a broad
+stitched leather belt that covered the junction between buff corduroy
+trousers and blue-checked cotton shirt. On his head, a high
+thimble-crowned straw hat, the frayed brim of it pulled out into a poke
+in front for the better shelter of small, pale twinkling eyes set in a
+foxy face.
+
+The said face, however--for all its sharp-pointed nose, long upper lip,
+thin gossipy mouth, tucked in at the corners and opening, redly
+cavernous, without any showing of teeth, a stiff sandy fringe edging
+cheeks and chin from ear to ear--could on occasion become utterly blank
+of expression. It became so now, as Tom Verity, realizing the fact of its
+owner's neighbourhood, moved a step or two away from Damaris and,
+jumping on board himself, proceeded with rather studied courtesy to hand
+her down into the boat.
+
+"Looks as there might have been a bit of a tiff betwixt 'em"--Thus
+Jennifer inwardly. Then aloud--"Put you straight across the ferry, sir,
+or take you to the breakwater at The Hard? The tide's on the turn, so
+we'd slip down along easy and I'm thinking that 'ud spare Miss Verity the
+traipse over the shore path. Wonnerful parching in the sun it is for the
+latter end of September."
+
+"Oh! to the breakwater by all means," Tom answered with alacrity.
+
+For reaction had set in. Not only was the young man still slightly
+flustered, but vexed by the liveliness of his own emotions. Everything
+to-day savoured of exaggeration. The most ordinary incidents distended,
+inflated themselves in a really unaccountable manner. So that, frankly,
+he fought shy of finding himself alone with Damaris again. She seemed so
+constantly to betray him into ill-regulated feeling, ill-considered
+speech and action, which tended to endanger the completeness of his
+self-esteem. Therefore, although admitting his attitude to be scantily
+heroic, he welcomed the prospect of the ferryman's chaperonage until such
+time as her father or her discarded lady-in-waiting, the innocent and
+pink-nosed Bilson, should effect his final deliverance.
+
+"Yes, it is uncommonly hot," he repeated, while, with both arms extended,
+he worked to keep the side of the boat from bumping against the range of
+piles, backing it clear of the jetty into the fairway of the river. He
+found exertion pleasant, steadying.
+
+"Neither Miss Verity nor I shall be sorry to be saved the walk along
+that basting path. That is," he added, smiling with disarming
+good-temper, "if we're not blocking business and keeping you too long
+away from the ferry."
+
+But Jennifer, mightily pleased at his company and having, moreover,
+certain scandalous little fishes of his own to fry--or attempt to
+fry--waved the objection aside.
+
+The ferry could very well mind itself for a while, he said; and if
+anyone should come along they must just hold hands with patience till he
+got back, that was all. But passengers were few and far between this time
+of year and of day. The "season"--as was the new-fangled fashion to call
+it--being now over; trippers tripped home again to wheresoever their
+natural habitat might be. The activities of boys' schools, picnic
+parties, ambulant scientific societies and field-clubs--out in pursuit of
+weeds, of stone-cracking, and the desecration of those old heathen
+burying barrows on Stone Horse Head quieted off for the time being.
+Deadham, meanwhile, in act of repossessing its soul in peace and
+hibernating according to time-honoured habit until the vernal equinox.
+
+Not that he, Jennifer, as he explained, owned to any quarrel with the
+alien invasion. Good for trade they were, that tripper lot, though
+wonnerful simple, he must say, when they came to talk, blessed with an
+almighty wide swallow for any long-eared fairy tale you liked to put on
+them. Mortal full of senseless questions, too, fit to make anybody
+laugh!--Whereat overcome by joyous memories of human folly, he opened the
+red cavern of his apparently toothless mouth, barking up audible mirth,
+brief and husky, from the depth of a beer-slaked throat.
+
+He leaned forward while speaking, resting chest and elbows on the
+oars--only now and again dipping the blades in the water to steady the
+boat in its course as it moved smoothly onward borne by brimming stream
+and tide. From out the shadow of his thimble-crowned hat he looked up
+knowingly, with the freemasonry of assured good-temper at Tom, who stood
+before him hands in pockets, friendly and debonair, class distinctions
+for the moment quite forgot. For, let alone immediate convenience of
+chaperonage, the young man found unexpected entertainment in this typical
+South Saxon, relic, as it struck him, of a bygone age and social order.
+Might not that tough and somewhat clumsy body, that crafty, jovial, yet
+non-committal countenance, have transferred themselves straight from the
+pages of Geoffrey Chaucer into nineteenth-century life? Here, was a
+master of primitive knowledge and of arts not taught in modern Board (or
+any other) Schools; a merry fellow too, who could, as Tom divined, when
+company and circumstances allowed, be broadly, unprintably humorous.
+
+So, in this last connection perhaps, it was just as well that Damaris
+still appeared somewhat implacable. Coming on board she had passed
+Jennifer--who rowed amidships--and gone right forward, putting as wide a
+distance as conditions permitted between her cousin and herself. Now, as
+she sat on a pile of red-brown seine nets in the bow of the boat, she
+kept her face averted, looking away down the cool liquid highway, and
+presenting to his observation a graceful, white-clad but eminently
+discouraging back. Her attitude repelled rather than invited advances, so
+at least Tom, watching her, certainly thought. This justified his not
+following her but staying where he was, and leaving her to herself.
+Whereupon annoyance again beset him; for it was very little to his credit
+to have mismanaged his dealings with her and alienated her sympathies
+thus. With her, it was very evident, he had not been at all a success.
+And it pricked his young vanity very shrewdly not to be a success.
+
+From these unsatisfactory reflections William Jennifer's voice, prefaced
+by a warning cough, recalled him.
+
+"Making any long stay in these parts, sir?" he enquired.
+
+And when Tom explained that a few hours from now would witness the
+termination of his visit, and that, in all probability, many years of
+absence from England lay ahead--
+
+"Indeed, indeed, to be sure. Who'd have thought it for a young gentleman
+of the quality-like yourself! But, there, some are born under the
+traveller's star, sir--created with a roving spirit. And the Lord help
+'em, I say, for they're so made as to be powerless to help themselves
+seemingly. Rove they must and will, if they are to taste any
+contentment--an itch in their feet from the cradle nought but foreign
+lands'll serve to pacify. The sight of the ocean now, seems fairly
+tormenting to 'em till they can satisfy themselves of what's on the far
+side of it."
+
+But, here, the boat being unduly drawn aside by the suck of some local
+current, Jennifer was constrained to apply his mind to navigation. He
+dipped the long sweeps, and with a steady powerful pull straightened the
+course to midstream. Then raising the glistening blades, off which the
+water dripped white and pattering, he leaned forward again, resting
+elbows and chest on the butt-end of the oars, and once more addressed
+himself to polite conversation.
+
+"Not as I've been greatly troubled that way myself. Had my chance of
+going to sea and welcome many's the time when I was a youngster. But
+always a one for the land, I was. Never had any special fancy for salt
+water, though I do make my living of it now, as you may say, in a sense."
+
+During this biographical excursion Tom Verity's attention wandered. His
+eyes dwelt on Damaris. She had altered her position turning half round as
+she scanned the strip of sandy warren with its row of sentinel Scotch
+firs bordering the river. Seen thus, three-quarter face, Tom realized
+suddenly not only how really beautiful she was--or rather could at
+moments be--but how strangely she resembled Sir Charles her father. There
+was likeness not of features alone; but, for all her youthful freshness,
+a reflection of his strength, his inscrutability. Whereupon rather
+unworthy curiosity reawoke in Tom Verity, to satisfy which he was tempted
+to descend to methods not entirely loyal.
+
+Damaris, sitting to windward, must be out of earshot assuredly, yet he
+lowered his voice as he said:
+
+"By the way, talking of going to sea, can you tell me anything about the
+young sailor whom you took across the ferry just before fetching Miss
+Verity and me? I am pretty sure I have met him before and yet I can't
+place him somehow."
+
+Jennifer shot a sharply enquiring glance at the speaker; for here, at
+first sight, appeared rare opportunity of that same coveted and
+scandalous fish-frying! Yet he debated the wisdom of immediate indulgence
+in that merry pastime, inherent suspicion of class for class, suspicion
+too, of this young gentleman's conspicuously easy, good-natured manner,
+preaching caution. A show of friendliness supplies fine cover for the
+gaining of one's own ends.--Hadn't he, Jennifer, practised the friendly
+manoeuvre freely enough himself on occasion? And he did not in the least
+relish the chance of walking into a trap, instead of jovially baiting
+one. So he dipped the oars again, and answered slowly as though the
+question taxed his memory sorely, his face vacant of expression as an
+empty plate.
+
+"Brought him across before I started to fetch you and the young lady,
+sir, did I? To be sure, there, let me see. I've had several sea-going
+chaps of sorts back and forth this morning. Come and go most days, they
+do, come and go without my taking any particular account--the Lord
+forgive me, for it ain't over civil--unless strangers should hail me, or
+someone out of the common such as Miss Verity and yourself. A passing
+show, sir, half the time those I carry; no more to me, bless you, than so
+many sand-fleas a-hopping on the beach.--Mr. Blackmore--coast-guard
+officer he is--I fetched him across early, with one of his men coming
+round from the Head. And that poor lippity-lop, Abram Sclanders'
+eldest.--Pity he wasn't put away quiet-like at birth!--Terrible drag he
+is on Abram and always will be. Anybody with an ounce of gumption might
+have seen he'd be a short-wit from the first.--I took him over; but that
+'ud the opposite way about, as he wanted to go shrimping back of the Bar
+so he said."
+
+Jennifer paused as in earnest thought.
+
+"No, not a soul to merit your attention, to-day, sir, that I can call to
+mind. Unless"--with an upward look of returning intelligence--"but that
+ain't very likely either--unless it should be Darcy Faircloth. I'd clean
+forgot him, so I had. Cap'en Faircloth, as some is so busy calling 'im,
+now, in season and out of season till it's fairly fit to make you
+laugh.--Remarkable tall, Johnny-head-in-air young feller with a curly
+yaller beard to him."
+
+"That's the man!" Tom exclaimed.
+
+He had distrusted Jennifer's show of ignorance, believing he was being
+fenced with, played with, even royally lied to; but this merely served to
+heighten his curiosity and amusement. Something of moment must lie, he
+felt, behind so much wandering talk, something of value, purposely and
+cunningly withheld until time was ripe for telling disclosure.
+
+"Darcy Faircloth--Captain Faircloth?" he could not but repeat, and with
+such honest puzzlement and evident desire for further enlightening as to
+overcome his hearer's hesitation.
+
+"No--not a likely person for you to be in any wise acquainted with, sir,"
+Jennifer returned, wary still, though yielding--"even if you didn't
+happen to be a bit new to Deadham yourself, as I may put it. For been
+away mostly from his natural home here, young Faircloth has, ever since
+he was a little shaver. Mrs. Faircloth--owns the Inn there and all the
+appurtenances thereof, sheds, cottages, boats, and suchlike, she
+does--always had wonnerful high views for him. Quite the gentleman Darcy
+must be, with a boarding school into Southampton and then the best of the
+Merchant Service--no before the mast for him, bless you. There was a snug
+little business to count on, regular takings in the public, week in and
+week out--more particularly of late years in the summer--let alone the
+rest of the property--he being the only son of his mother, too, and she a
+widow woman free to follow any whimsies as took her about the lad."
+
+Jennifer gave some slow, strong strokes, driving the lumbering boat
+forward till the water fairly hissed against its sides. And Tom Verity
+still listened, strangely, alertly interested, convinced there was more,
+well worth hearing, to follow.
+
+"Oh! there's always bin a tidy lot of money behind young Darcy, and is
+yet I reckon, Mrs. Faircloth being the first-class business woman she is.
+Spend she may with one hand, but save, and make, she does and no mistake,
+Lord love you, with the other. Singular thing though," he added
+meditatively, his face growing wholly expressionless, "how little Darcy,
+now he's growed up, features old Lemuel his father. Squinny, red-cheeked
+little old party, he was; thin as a herring, and chilly, always chilly,
+sitting over the fire in the bar-parlour winter and summer too--small
+squeaky voice he had minding any one of a penny whistle. But a warm man
+and a close one--oh! very secret. Anybody must breakfast overnight and
+hurry at that--eat with their loins girded, as you may say, to get
+upsides with old Lemuel."
+
+He ceased speaking, and glanced round over his shoulder calculating
+the distance to the breakwater, for the boat drew level with the
+sea-wall of rough-hewn pinkish-grey granite along the river frontage
+of The Hard gardens.
+
+"There's some as 'ud tell you it was the surprise of old Lemuel's life to
+find himself a parent," he added, eyeing Tom slyly as he spoke, his mouth
+remaining open as in preparation for coming laughter.
+
+For those same scandalous little fishes were well into the frying-pan,
+now--sizzling, frizzling. And this was a vastly agreeable moment to
+William Jennifer, worth waiting for, worth scheming for. Unprintable
+humour looked out of his twinkling eyes while he watched to see how far
+Tom Verity caught his meaning. Then as the young man flushed, sudden
+distaste, even a measure of shame invading him, Jennifer, true artist in
+scandal, turned the conversation aside with an air of indulgent apology.
+
+"But, lor, there, you know how people'll talk in a little country place
+where there ain't much doing!--And it ain't for me to speak of what
+happened back in those times, being barely out of my teens then and away
+cow-keeping over Alton way for Farmer Whimsett. Regular chip of the old
+block, he was. Don't breed that sort nowadays. As hearty as you like, and
+swallered his three pints of home-brewed every morning with his breakfast
+he did, till he was took off quite sudden in his four-score-and-ten
+twelve months ago come Michaelmas."
+
+Upon the terrace, by the pyramid of ball and the two little cannons, Sir
+Charles Verity stood, holding a packet of newly written letters in his
+hand and smoking, while he watched the approaching boat. Damaris rose
+from the pile of red-brown fishing-nets and waved to him. Jennifer, too,
+glanced up, steadying both oars with one hand while he raised the other
+to the brim of his thimble-crowned hat. A couple of minutes more and he
+would part company with his passenger, and so judged it safe to indulge
+himself with a final fish-frying.
+
+"Mortal fine figure of a man, Sir Charles even yet," he said to Tom
+admiringly. "But anybody should have seen him as a young gentleman. When
+he used to visit here in old Mr. Verity's time, none in the country-side
+could hold a candle to him for looks, as you may say. Turned the females'
+heads he did. Might have had his pick of the lot, maids and wives alike
+for 'arf a word. Well, good-bye to you, sir"--and, as certain coin
+changed hands--"thank ye, sir, kindly. Wish you a pleasant voyage and a
+rare good picking up of honours and glories, and gold and silver
+likewise, there across the seas and oceans where you're a-going to."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE HARD SCHOOL OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN MAIDEN MEDITATION
+
+
+It was afternoon, about five o'clock. The fine September weather, hot and
+cloudless, lasted still. The air was heavy with garden scents, the
+aromatic sweetness of sun-baked gorse and pine-scrub on the warren, and
+with the reek off the mud-flats of the Haven, the tide being low. Upon
+the sandy skirts of the Bar, across the river just opposite, three
+cormorants--glossy black against the yellow--postured in extravagant
+angular attitudes drying their wings. Above the rim of the silver-blue
+sea--patched with purple stains in the middle distance--webs of steamer
+smoke lay along the southern sky. Occasionally a sound of voices, the
+creak of a wooden windlass and grind of a boat's keel upon the pebbles as
+it was wound slowly up the foreshore, came from the direction of the
+ferry and of Faircloth's Inn. The effect was languorous, would have been
+enervating to the point of mental, as well as physical, inertia had not
+the posturing cormorants introduced a note of absurdity and the tainted
+breath of the mud-flats a wholesome reminder of original sin.
+
+Under these conditions, at once charming and insidious, Damaris Verity,
+resting in a wicker deck-chair in the shade of the great ilex trees,
+found herself alone, free to follow her own vagrant thoughts,
+perceptions, imaginations without human let or hindrance. Free to dream
+undisturbed and interrogate both Nature and her own much wondering soul.
+
+For Sir Charles was away, staying with an old friend and former
+brother-in-arms, Colonel Carteret, for a week's partridge shooting over
+the Norfolk stubble-fields. Sport promised to be good, and Damaris had
+great faith in Colonel Carteret. With him her father was always amused,
+contented, safe. Hordle was in attendance, too, so she knew his comfort
+in small material matters to be secure. She could think of him without
+any shadow of anxiety, her mind for once at rest. And this she enjoyed.
+For it is possible to miss a person badly, long for their return
+ardently, yet feel by no means averse to a holiday from more active
+expenditure of love on their account.
+
+And Theresa Bilson--pleasing thought!--was, for the moment, absent also,
+having gone to tea with the Miss Minetts. Two maiden ladies, these, of
+uncertain age, modest fortune and unimpeachable refinement, once like
+Theresa herself, members of the scholastic profession; but now, thanks to
+the timely death of a relative--with consequent annuities and life
+interest in a ten-roomed, stone-built house of rather mournful aspect in
+Deadham village--able to rest from their ineffectual labours, support the
+Church, patronize their poorer and adulate their richer neighbours to
+their guileless hearts' content.
+
+Gentility exuded from the Miss Minetts, and--if it is permissible
+slightly to labour the simile--their pores were permanently open. Owing
+both to her antecedent and existing situation, it may be added, Theresa
+Bilson was precious in their sight. For had she not in the past, like
+themselves, sounded the many mortifications of a governess' lot; and was
+she not now called up higher, promoted indeed to familiar, almost hourly,
+intercourse with the great? Miss Felicia Verity was known to treat her
+with affection. Mrs. Augustus Cowden, that true blue of county dames and
+local aristocrats, openly approved her. She sat daily at Sir Charles
+Verity's table and helped to order his household. What more genuine
+patents of gentility could be asked? So they listened with a pleasure,
+deep almost to agitation, to her performances upon the piano, her
+reminiscences of Bonn and the Rhine Provinces, and, above all, to her
+anecdotes of life at The Hard and of its distinguished owner's habits and
+speech. Thus, by operation of the fundamental irony resident in things,
+did Theresa Bilson, of all improbable and inadequate little people,
+become to the Miss Minetts as a messenger of the gods; exciting in them
+not only dim fluttering apprehensions of the glories of art and delights
+of foreign travel, but--though in their determined gentility they knew it
+not--of the primitive allurements and mysteries of sex.
+
+The moral effect of this friendship upon Theresa herself was not,
+however, of the happiest. Fired by their interest in her recitals she was
+tempted to spread herself. At first almost unconsciously, for by instinct
+she was truthful, she embroidered fact, magnifying her office not only in
+respect of her ex-pupil Damaris but of Damaris' father also. She
+represented herself as indispensable to both parent and child, until she
+more than half believed that flattering fiction. She began to reckon
+herself an essential element in the establishment at The Hard, the pivot
+indeed upon which it turned. Whereupon a rather morbid craving for the
+Miss Minetts' society developed in her. For, with those two credulous
+ladies as audience, she could fortify herself in delusion by recounting
+all manner of episodes and incidents not as they actually had, but as she
+so ardently desired they might have, taken place.--A pathetic form of
+lying this, though far from uncommon to feminine and--more
+especially--spinster practice and habit!
+
+Still Theresa was not so besotted but that lucid intervals now and again
+afflicted her. One seized her this afternoon, as she prepared to bid
+Damaris good-bye. Either conscience pricked with unusual sharpness, or
+the young girl's smiling and unruffled acquiescence in her departure
+aroused latent alarms. She began to excuse her action in leaving her
+charge thus solitary, to protest her devotion; becoming, it may be added,
+red and agitated in the process. Her thick, short little fingers worked
+nervously on the crook handle of her white cotton umbrella. Her round
+light-coloured eyes grew humid to the point of fogging the lenses of her
+gold-rimmed glasses.
+
+"But why should you worry so now, just as you are starting, Billy?"
+Damaris reasoned, with the rather cruel logic of cool eighteen in face of
+hot and flustered nine-and-thirty. "Only at luncheon you were telling me
+how much you always enjoy spending an afternoon at the Grey House. I
+thought you looked forward so much to going. What has happened to turn
+you all different, like this, at the last minute?"
+
+"Nothing has happened exactly; but I have scruples about visiting my
+own friends and letting you remain alone when Sir Charles is from home.
+It might appear a dereliction of duty--as though I took advantage of
+his absence."
+
+"Nobody would think anything so foolish," Damaris declared. "And then you
+knew he would be away this week when you made the engagement."
+
+Theresa gulped and prevaricated.
+
+"No, surely not--I must have mistaken the date."
+
+"But you were quite happy at luncheon, and you couldn't have mistaken the
+date then," Damaris persisted.
+
+Whereupon poor Theresa lost herself, the worthy and unworthy elements in
+her nature alike conspiring to her undoing. In her distraction she
+sniffed audibly. A tear ran down either side of her pink shiny nose and
+dropped on the folds of shepherd's-plaid silk veiling her plump bosom.
+For, with some obscure purpose of living up to her self-imposed
+indispensability, Miss Bilson was distinctly dressy at this period,
+wearing her best summer gown on every possible occasion and tucking a
+bunch of roses or carnations archly in her waist-belt.
+
+"Do you think it kind to insist so much on my passing forgetfulness?" she
+quavered. "The habit of criticizing and cavilling at whatever I say grows
+on you, Damaris, and it so increases the difficulties of my position. I
+know I am sensitive, but that is the result of my affection for you. I
+care so deeply, and you are not responsive. You chill me. As I have told
+dear Miss Felicia--for I must sometimes unburden myself"--
+
+This hastily, as Damaris' eyes darkened with displeasure.
+
+--"For the last year, ever since you have nominally been out of the
+schoolroom, I have seen my influence over you lessen, and especially
+since poor Mrs. Watson's death"--
+
+"We will not talk about Nannie, please," Damaris said quietly.
+
+"Yes, but--as I told your Aunt Felicia--since then I have tried more than
+ever to win your entire confidence, to make up to you for the loss of
+poor Watson and fill her place with you."
+
+"No one else can ever fill the place of the person one has loved,"
+Damaris returned indignantly. "It isn't possible. I should be ashamed to
+let it be possible. Nannie was Nannie--she had cared for me all my life
+and I had cared for her. She belongs to things about which you"--
+
+And there the girl checked herself, aware of something almost ludicrously
+pitiful in the smug tearful countenance and stumpy would-be fashionable
+figure. Hit a man your own size, or bigger, by all means if you are game
+to take the consequences. But to smite a creature conspicuously your
+inferior in fortune--past, present, and prospective--is unchivalrous, not
+to say downright mean-spirited. So Damaris, swiftly repentant, put her
+arm round the heaving shoulders, bent her handsome young head and kissed
+the uninvitingly dabby cheek--a caress surely counting to her for
+righteousness.
+
+"Don't find fault with me any more, Billy," she said. "Indeed I never
+hurt you on purpose. But there are such loads of things to think
+about, that I get absorbed in them and can't attend sometimes directly
+on the minute."
+
+"Absent-mindedness should be corrected rather than encouraged," Miss
+Bilson announced, sententious even amid her tears.
+
+"Oh! it amounts to more than absent-mindedness I'm afraid--a sort of
+absent-every-thingedness when it overtakes me. For the whole of me seems
+to go away and away, hand in hand and all together," Damaris said, her
+eyes alight with questions and with dreams. "But don't let us discuss
+that now," she added. "It would waste time, and it is you who must go
+away and away, Billy, if you are not to put the poor Miss Minetts into a
+frantic fuss by being late for tea. They will think some accident has
+happened to you. Don't beep them in suspense, it is simply
+barbarous.--Good-bye, and don't hurry back. I have heaps to amuse me.
+I'll not expect you till dinner-time."
+
+Thus did it come about that Damaris reposed in a deck chair, under the
+shade of the great ilex trees, gazing idly at the webs of steamer smoke
+hanging low in the southern sky, at the long yellow-grey ridge of the Bar
+between river and sea, and at the cormorants posturing in the hot
+afternoon sunshine upon the sand.
+
+Truly she was free to send forth her soul upon whatever far fantastic
+journey she pleased. But souls are perverse, not to be driven at will,
+choosing their own times and seasons for travel. And hers, just now,
+proved obstinately home-staying--had no wings wherewith to fly, but must
+needs crawl a-fourfoot, around all manner of inglorious personal matters.
+For that skirmish with her ex-governess, though she successfully bridled
+her tongue and conquered by kindness rather than by smiting, had clouded
+her inward serenity, not only by its inherent uselessness, but by
+reminding her indirectly of an occurrence which it was her earnest desire
+to forget.
+
+Indirectly, mention of her beloved nurse, Sarah Watson--who journeying
+back from a visit to her native Lancashire, just this time last year, had
+met death swift and hideous in a railway collision--recalled to Damaris
+the little scene, of a week ago, with Tom Verity when ho had asked her,
+in the noonday sunshine out on the Bar, for some explanation of his
+strange nocturnal experience. She went hot all over now, with exaggerated
+childish shame, thinking of it. For had not she, Damaris Verity, though
+nurtured in the creed that courage is the source and mother of all
+virtues, shown the white feather, incontinently turned tail and run away?
+Remembrance of that running scorched her, so that more than once,
+awakening suddenly in the night, her fair young body was dyed rose-red
+with the disgrace of it literally from head to heel. She was bitterly
+humiliated by her own poltroonery, ingenuously doubtful as to whether she
+could ever quite recover her self-respect; glad that every day put two
+hundred miles and more of sea between her and Tom Verity, since he had
+witnessed that contemptible fall from grace.
+
+Nevertheless, after her first consternation--in which, to avoid further
+speech with him she had sought refuge among the unsavoury seine nets in
+the fore-part of Jennifer's ferry-boat--Tom Verity's probable opinion of
+her undignified action troubled her far less than the cause of the said
+action itself. For exactly what, after all, had so upset her, begetting
+imperative necessity of escape? Not the apparent confirmation of that
+ugly legend concerning ghostly ponies driven up across The Hard garden
+from the shore. From childhood, owing both to temperament and local
+influences, her apprehension of things unseen and super-normal had been
+remarkably acute. From the dawn of conscious intelligence these had
+formed an integral element in the atmosphere of her life; and that
+without functional disturbance, moral or physical, of a neurotic sort.
+She felt no morbid curiosity about such matters, did not care to dwell
+upon or talk of them.--Few persons do who, being sane in mind and body,
+are yet endowed with the rather questionable blessing of the Seer's sixth
+sense.--For while, in never doubting their existence her reason
+acquiesced, her heart turned away, oppressed and disquieted, as from
+other mysterious actualities common enough to human observation, such as
+illness, disease, deformity, old age, the pains of birth and of death.
+Such matters might perplex and sadden, or arouse her indignant pity; but,
+being strong with the confidence of untouched youth and innocence, they
+were powerless, in and by themselves, to terrify her to the contemptible
+extremity of headlong flight.
+
+This she recognized, though less by reasoning than by instinct; and so
+found herself compelled to search deeper for the cause of her recent
+disgrace. Not that she willingly prosecuted that search; but that the
+subject pursued her, simply refusing to leave her alone. Continually it
+presented itself to her mind, and always with the same call for escape,
+the same foreboding of some danger against which she must provide.
+Always, too, it seemed to hinge upon Tom Verity's visit, and something in
+her relation to the young man himself which she could not define. She
+revolved the question now--Theresa being safely packed off to her
+tea-party--in shade of the ilex trees, with solemn eyes and finely
+serious face.
+
+There was not anything unusual in receiving visitors at The Hard. Men
+came often to see her father, and she took her share in entertaining all
+such comers as a matter of course. Some she "didn't much care about,"
+some she liked. But, with the exception of Colonel Carteret from
+childhood her trusted friend and confidant, their coming and going was
+just part of the accustomed routine, a survival from the life at the
+Indian summer palace of long ago, and made no difference. Yet, though she
+was still uncertain whether she did like Tom Verity or not, his coming
+and going had indisputably made a difference. It marked, indeed, a new
+departure in her attitude and thought. Her world, before his advent, was
+other than that in which she now dwelt.
+
+For one thing, Tom was much younger than the majority of her father's
+guests--a man not made but still early in the making, the glamour of
+promise rather than the stark light of finality upon him. This affected
+her; for at eighteen, a career, be it never so distinguished, which has
+reached its zenith, in other words reached the end of its tether, must
+needs have a touch of melancholy about it. With the heat of going on in
+your own veins, the sight of one who has no further go strikes chill to
+the heart. And so, while uncertain whether she quite trusted him or not,
+Damaris--until the unlucky running away episode--had taken increasing
+pleasure in this new cousin's company. It both interested and diverted
+her. She had not only felt ready to talk to him; but,--surprising
+inclination!--once the ice of her natural reserve broken, to talk to him
+about herself.
+
+Half-shyly she dwelt upon his personal appearance.--A fine head and
+clever face, the nose astute, slightly Jewish in type, so she thought.
+His eyes were disappointing, too thickly brown in colour, too opaque.
+They told you nothing, were indeed curiously meaningless; and, though
+well set under an ample brow, were wanting in depth and softness owing to
+scantiness of eyelash. But his chin satisfied her demands. It was square,
+forcible, slightly cleft; and his mouth, below the fly-away reddish
+moustache, was frankly delightful.--Damaris flushed, smiling to herself
+now as she recalled his smile. Whereupon the humiliation of that thrice
+wretched running away took a sharper edge. For she realized, poor child,
+how much--notwithstanding her proud little snubbing of him--she coveted
+his good opinion, wished him to admire and to like her; wanted, even
+while she disapproved his self-complacency and slightly doubted his
+truthfulness, to have him carry with him a happy impression of her--carry
+it with him to that enchanted far Eastern land in which all the poetry of
+her childhood had its root. For, if remembrance of her remained with him,
+and that agreeably, she herself also found "Passage to India" in a sense.
+And this idea, recondite though it was, touched and charmed her fancy--or
+would have done so but for the recollection of her deplorable
+flight.--Oh! what--what made her run away? From what had she thus run? If
+she could only find out! And find, moreover, the cause sufficient to
+palliate, to some extent at least, the woefulness of her cowardice.
+
+But at this point her meditation suffered interruption. The three
+cormorants, having finished their sun-bath, rose from the sand and
+flapped off, flying low and sullenly in single file over the sea parallel
+with the eastward-trending coast-line.
+
+With the departure of the great birds her surroundings seemed to lose
+their only element of active and conscious life. The brooding sunlit
+evening became oppressive, so that in the space of a moment Damaris
+passed from solitude, which is stimulating, to loneliness, which is only
+sad. Meanwhile the shadow cast by the ilex trees had grown sensibly
+longer, softer in outline, more transparent and finely intangible in
+tone, and the reek of the mud-flats more potent, according to its habit
+at sundown and low tide.
+
+It quenched the garden scents with a fetid sweetness, symbolic perhaps of
+the languorous sheltered character of the scene and of much which had or
+might yet happen there--the life breath of the _genius loci_, an at once
+seductive and, as Tom Verity had rightly divined, a doubtfully wholesome
+spirit! Over Damaris it exercised an unwilling fascination, as of some
+haunting refrain ending each verse of her personal experience. Even when,
+as a little girl of eight, fresh from the gentle restraints and rare
+religious and social amenities of an aristocratic convent school in
+Paris, she had first encountered it, it struck her as strangely
+familiar--a thing given back rather than newly discovered, making her
+mind and innocent body alike eager with absorbed yet half-shuddering
+recognition. A good ten years had elapsed since then, but her early
+impression still persisted, producing in her a certain spiritual and
+emotional unrest.
+
+And at that, by natural transition, her thought turned from Tom Verity to
+fix itself upon the one other possible witness of her ignominy--namely,
+the young master mariner who, coming ashore in Proud, the
+lobster-catcher's cranky boat, had walked up the shifting shingle to the
+crown of the ridge and stood watching her, in silence, for a quite
+measurable period, before passing on his way down to the ferry. For, from
+her first sight of him, had he not seemed to evoke that same sense of
+remembrance, to be, like the reek off the mud-flats, already well-known,
+something given back to her rather than newly discovered? She was still
+ignorant as to who ho was or where he came from, having been far too
+engrossed by mortification to pay any attention to the conversation
+between her cousin and Jennifer during their little voyage down the
+tide-river, and having disdained to make subsequent enquiries.--She had a
+rooted dislike to appear curious or ask questions.--But now, reviewing
+the whole episode, it broke in on her that the necessity for escape and
+foreboding of danger, which culminated in her flight, actually dated
+from the advent of this stranger rather than from Tom's request for
+enlightenment concerning unaccountable noises heard in the small hours.
+
+Damaris slipped her feet down off the leg-rest, and sat upright, tense
+with the effort to grasp and disentangle the bearings of this revelation.
+Was her search ended? Had she indeed detected the cause of her
+discomfiture; or only pushed her enquiry back a step further, thus
+widening rather than limiting the field of speculation? For what
+conceivable connection, as she reflected, could the old lobster-catcher's
+passenger have with any matter even remotely affecting herself!
+
+Then she started, suddenly sensible of a comfortable, though warmly
+protesting, human voice and presence at her elbow.
+
+"Yes, you may well look astonished, Miss Damaris. I know how late it is,
+and have been going on like anything to Lizzie over her carelessness.
+Mrs. Cooper's walked up the village with Laura about some extra meat
+that's wanted, and when I came through for your tea if that girl hadn't
+let the kitchen fire right out!--Amusing herself down in the stable-yard,
+I expect, Mrs. Cooper being gone.--And the business I've had to get a
+kettle to boil!"
+
+Verging on forty, tall, dark, deep-bosomed and comely, a rich flush on
+her cheeks under the clear brown skin thanks to a kitchen fire which
+didn't burn and righteous anger which did, Mary Fisher, the upper
+housemaid, set a tea-tray upon the garden table beside Damaris' chair.
+
+"That's what comes of taking servants out of trades-peoples' houses," she
+went on, as she marshalled silver tea-pot and cream-jug--embossed with
+flamboyant many-armed Hindu deities--hot cakes, ginger snaps and
+saffron-sprinkled buns. "You can't put any real dependence on them, doing
+their work as suits themselves just anyhow and anywhen. Mrs. Cooper and I
+knew how it would be well enough when Miss Bilson engaged Lizzie Trant
+and Mr. Hordle said the same. But it wasn't one atom of use for us to
+speak. The Miss Minetts recommended the girl--so there was the finish of
+it. And that's at the bottom of your being kept waiting the best part of
+a hour for your tea like this, Miss."
+
+Notwithstanding the exactions of a somewhat tyrannous brain and her
+conviction of high responsibilities, the child, which delights to be
+petted, told stories and made much of, was strong in Damaris still. This
+explosion of domestic wrath on her behalf proved eminently soothing. It
+directed her brooding thought into nice, amusing, everyday little
+channels; and assured her of protective solicitude, actively on the
+watch, by which exaggerated shames and alarms were withered and
+loneliness effectually dispersed. She felt smoothed, contented. Fell,
+indeed, into something of the humour which climbs on to a friendly lap
+and thrones it there blissfully careless of the thousand and one ills,
+known and unknown, which infant flesh is heir to. She engaged the comely
+comfortable woman to stay and minister further to her.
+
+"Pour out my tea for me, Mary, please," she said, "if you're not busy.
+But isn't this your afternoon off, by rights?"
+
+And Mary, while serving her, acknowledged that not only was it "by
+rights" her "afternoon off;" but that Mr. Patch, the coachman, had
+volunteered to drive her into Marychurch to see her parents when he
+exercised the carriage horses. But, while thanking him very kindly, she
+had refused. Was it likely, she said, she would leave the house with Sir
+Charles and Mr. Hordle away, and Miss Bilson taking herself off to visit
+friends, too?
+
+From which Damaris gathered that, in the opinion of the servants' hall,
+Theresa's offence was rank, it stank to heaven. She therefore, being
+covetous of continued contentment, turned the conversation to less
+controversial subjects; and, after passing notice of the fair weather,
+the brightness of the geraniums and kindred trivialities, successfully
+incited Mary to talk of Brockhurst, Sir Richard Calmady's famous place in
+the north of the county, where--prior to his retirement to his native
+town of Marychurch, upon a generous pension--her father, Lomas Fisher,
+had for many years occupied the post of second gardener. Here was
+material for story-telling to the child Damaris' heart's content! For
+Brockhurst is rich in strange records of wealth, calamity, heroism, and
+sport, the inherent romance of which Mary's artless narrative was
+calculated to enhance rather than dissipate.
+
+So young mistress listened and maid recounted, until, the former
+fortified by cakes and tea, the two sauntered, side by side--a tall
+stalwart black figure, white capped and aproned and an equally tall
+but slender pale pink one--down across the lawn to the battery where
+the small obsolete cannon so boldly defied danger of piracy or
+invasion by sea.
+
+The sun, a crimson disc, enormous in the earth-mist, sank slowly, south
+of west, behind the dark mass of Stone Horse Head. The upper branches of
+the line of Scotch firs in the warren and, beyond them, the upper windows
+of the cottages and Inn caught the fiery light. Presently a little wind,
+thin, perceptibly chill, drew up the river with the turning of the tide.
+It fluttered Mary Fisher's long white muslin apron strings and lifted her
+cap, so that she raised her hand to keep it in place upon her smooth
+black hair. The romance of Brockhurst failed upon her tongue. She grew
+sharply practical.
+
+"The dew's beginning to rise, Miss Damaris," she said, "and you've only
+got your house shoes on. You ought to go indoors at once."
+
+But--"Listen," Damaris replied, and lingered.
+
+The whistling of a tune, shrill, but true and sweet, and a rattle of
+loose shingle, while a young man climbed the seaward slope of the Bar.
+The whistling ceased as he stopped, on the crest of the ridge, and stood,
+bare-headed, contemplating the sunset. For a few seconds the fiery light
+stained his hands, his throat, his hair, his handsome bearded face; then
+swiftly faded, leaving him like a giant leaden image set up against a
+vast pallor of sea and sky.
+
+Mary Fisher choked down a hasty exclamation.
+
+"Come, do come, Miss Damaris, before the grass gets too wet," she said
+almost sharply. "It's going to be a drenching dew to-night."
+
+"Yes--directly--in a minute--but, Mary, tell me who that is?"
+
+The woman hesitated.
+
+"Out on the Bar, do you mean? No one I am acquainted with, Miss."
+
+"I did not intend to ask if he was a friend of yours," Damaris
+returned, with a touch of grandeur, "but merely whether you could tell
+me his name."
+
+"Oh! it's Mrs. Faircloth's son I suppose--the person who keeps the Inn. I
+heard he'd been home for a few days waiting for a ship"--and she turned
+resolutely towards the house. "It's quite time that silver was taken
+indoors and the library windows closed. But you must excuse me, Miss
+Damaris, I can't have you stay out here in that thin gown in the damp.
+You really must come with me, Miss."
+
+And the child in Damaris obeyed. Dutifully it went, though the soul of
+the eighteen-year-old Damaris was far away, started once more on an
+anxious quest.
+
+She heard the loose shingle shift and rattle under Faircloth's feet as he
+swung down the near slope to the jetty. The sound pursued her, and again
+she was overtaken--overwhelmed by foreboding and desire of flight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHICH CANTERS ROUND A PARISH PUMP
+
+
+Not until the second bell was about to cease ringing did Theresa
+Bilson--fussily consequential--reappear at The Hard.
+
+During the absence of the master of the house she would have much
+preferred high tea in the schoolroom, combined with a certain laxity as
+to hours and to dress; but Damaris, in whom the sense of style was
+innate, stood out for the regulation dignities of late dinner and evening
+gowns. To-night, however, thanks to her own unpunctuality, Miss Bilson
+found ample excuse for dispensing with ceremonial garments.
+
+"No--no--we will not wait," she said, addressing Mary and her attendant
+satellite, Laura, the under-housemaid, as--agreeably ignorant of the
+sentiment of a servants' hall which thirsted for her blood--she passed
+the two standing at attention by the open door of the dining-room. "I am
+not going to change. I will leave my hat and things down here--Laura can
+take them to my room later--and have dinner as I am."
+
+During the course of that meal she explained how she had really quite
+failed to observe the hour when she left the Grey House. Commander and
+Mrs. Battye were at tea there; and the vicar--Dr. Horniblow--looked in
+afterwards. There was quite a little meeting, in fact, to arrange the
+details of the day after to-morrow's choir treat. A number of upper-class
+parishioners, she found, were anxious to embrace this opportunity of
+visiting Harchester, and inspecting the Cathedral and other sights of
+that historic city, under learned escort. It promised to be a most
+interesting and instructive expedition, involving moreover but moderate
+cost.--And every one present--Theresa bridled over her salmon cutlet and
+oyster sauce--everyone seemed so anxious for her assistance and advice.
+The vicar deferred to her opinion in a quite pointed manner; and spoke,
+which was so nice of him, of her known gift of organization. "So we claim
+not only your sympathy, Miss Bilson, but your active co-operation," he
+had said. "We feel The Hard should be officially represented."
+
+Here the speaker became increasingly self-conscious and blushed.
+
+"What could I do, therefore, but remain even at the risk of being a
+trifle late for dinner?" she asked. "It would have been so extremely
+uncivil to the Miss Minetts to break up the gathering by leaving before
+full agreement as to the arrangements had been reached. I felt I must
+regard it as a public duty, under the circumstances. I really owed it to
+my position here, you know, Damaris, to stay to the last."
+
+It may be observed, in passing, that Miss Bilson was fond of food and
+made a good deal of noise in eating, particularly when, as on the present
+occasion, she combined that operation with continuous speech. This may
+account for Damaris bestowing greater attention on the manner than the
+matter of her ex-governess' communications. She was sensible that the
+latter showed to small advantage being rather foolishly excited and
+elate, and felt vexed the maids should hear and see her behaving thus. It
+could hardly fail to lower her in their estimation.
+
+As to the impending parochial invasion of Harchester--during the earlier
+stages of dinner Damaris hardly gave it a second thought, being still
+under the empire of impressions very far removed from anything in the
+nature of choir treats. She still beheld the fiery glare of an expiring
+sunset, and against the ensuing pallor of sea and sky a leaden-hued
+human, figure strangely, almost portentously evident. That it appeared
+noble in pose and in outline, even beautiful, she could not deny. But
+that somehow it frightened her, she could equally little deny. So it came
+about that once again, as Mary and her satellite Laura silently waited
+at table, and as Theresa very audibly gobbled food in and words out,
+Damaris shrank within herself seeming to hear a shrill sweet whistling
+and the shatter of loose pebbles and shifting shingle under Faircloth's
+pursuing feet.
+
+The young man's name aroused her interest, not to say her curiosity, the
+more deeply because of its association, with a locality exploration of
+which had always been denied her--a Naboth's vineyard of the imagination,
+near at hand, daily in sight, yet personal acquaintance with which she
+failed to possess even yet. The idea of an island, especially a quite
+little island, a miniature and separate world, shut off all by itself, is
+dreadfully enticing to the infant mind--at once a geographical entity and
+a cunning sort of toy. And Faircloth's Inn, with the tarred wooden houses
+adjacent, was situated upon what, to all intents and purposes, might pass
+as an island since accessible only by boat or by an ancient paved
+causeway daily submerged at high tide.
+
+Skirting the further edge of the warren, a wide rutted side lane leads
+down to the landward end of the said causeway from the village green,
+just opposite Deadham post office and Mrs. Doubleday's general shop.--A
+neglected somewhat desolate strip of road this, between broken earthbanks
+topped by ragged firs, yet very paintable and dear to the sketch-book of
+the amateur. In summer overgrown with grass and rushes, bordered by
+cow-parsley, meadowsweet, pink codlings-and-cream, and purple flowered
+peppermint, in winter a marsh of sodden brown and vivid green; but at all
+seasons a telling perspective, closed by the lonely black and grey island
+hamlet set in the gleaming tide.
+
+Small wonder the place stirred Damaris' spirit of enquiry and adventure!
+She wanted to go there, to examine, to learn how people lived cut off
+from the mainland for hours twice every day and night. But her early
+attempts at investigation met with prompt discouragement from both her
+nurse and her aunt, Felicia Verity. And Damaris was not of the
+disposition which plots, wheedles, and teases to obtain what it wants;
+still less screams for the desired object until for very weariness
+resistance yields. Either she submitted without murmuring or fearlessly
+defied authority. In the present case she relinquished hope and purpose
+obediently, while inwardly longing for exploration, of her "darling
+little island" all the more.
+
+But authority was not perhaps altogether unjustified of its decision, for
+the inhabitants of the spot so engaging to Damaris' imagination were a
+close corporation, a race of sailors and fishermen and, so said rumour,
+somewhat rough customers at that. They lived according to their own
+traditions and unwritten laws, entertained a lordly contempt for
+wage-earning labourers and landsmen, and, save when money was likely to
+pass, were grudging of hospitality even to persons of quality setting
+foot within their coasts.
+
+To their reprehensible tendencies in this last respect the Miss Minetts
+could bear painful witness, as--with hushed voices and entreaties the
+sorry tale might "go no further"--they more than once confided to Theresa
+Bilson. For one Saturday afternoon--unknown to the vicar--being zealous
+in the admonishing of recalcitrant church-goers and rounding up of
+possible Sunday-school recruits, they crossed to the island at low tide;
+and in their best district visitor manner--too often a sparkling blend of
+condescension and familiarity, warranted to irritate--severally demanded
+entrance to the first two of the black cottages.--The Inn they avoided.
+Refined gentlewomen can hardly be expected, even in the interests of
+religion, to risk pollution by visiting a common tavern, more
+particularly when a company of half-grown lads and blue jerseyed men--who
+may, of course, have been carousing within--hangs about its morally
+malodorous door.
+
+Of precisely what followed their attempted violation of the privacy of
+those two cottages, even the Miss Minetts themselves could subsequently
+give no very coherent account. They only knew that some half-hour later,
+with petticoats raised to a height gravely imperilling decency, they
+splashed landward across the causeway--now ankle-deep in water--while the
+lads congregated before the Inn laughed boisterously, the men turned away
+with a guffaw, dogs of disgracefully mixed parentage yelped, and the
+elder female members of the Proud and Sclanders families flung phrases
+lamentably subversive of gentility after their retreating figures from
+the foreshore.
+
+Modesty and mortification alike forbade the outraged ladies reporting the
+episode to Dr. Horniblow in extenso. But they succeeded in giving Miss
+Bilson a sufficiently lurid account of it to make "the darling little
+island," in as far as her charge, Damaris, was concerned, more than ever
+taboo. Their request that the story might "go no further" she interpreted
+with the elasticity usually accorded to such requests; and proceeded, at
+the first opportunity, to retail the whole shocking occurrence to her
+pupil as an example of the ingratitude and insubordination of the common
+people. For Theresa was nothing if not conservative and aristocratic.
+From such august anachronisms as the divine right of kings and the Stuart
+succession, down to humble bobbing of curtseys and pulling of forelocks
+in to-day's village street, she held a permanent brief for the classes as
+against the masses. Unluckily the Miss Minetts' hasty and watery
+withdrawal, with upgathered skirts, across the causeway had appealed to
+Damaris' sense of comedy rather than of tragedy.--She didn't want to be
+unkind, but you shouldn't interfere; and if you insisted on interfering
+you must accept whatever followed. The two ladies in question were richly
+addicted to interfering she had reason to think.--And then they must have
+looked so wonderfully funny scuttling thus!
+
+The picture remained by her as a thing of permanent mirth. So it was
+hardly surprising, in face of the dominant direction of her thoughts
+to-night, that, when the Miss Minetts' name punctuated Theresa's
+discourse recurrent as a cuckoo-cry, remembrance of their merrily
+inglorious retirement from the region of Faircloth's Inn should present
+itself. Whereupon Damaris' serious mood was lightened as by sudden
+sunshine, and she laughed.
+
+Hearing which infectiously gay but quite unexpected sound, Miss Bilson
+stopped dead in the middle both of a nectarine and a sentence.
+
+"What is the matter, Damaris?" she exclaimed. "I was explaining our
+difficulty in securing sufficient conveyances for some of our party to
+and from Marychurch station. I really do not see any cause for amusement
+in what I said."
+
+"There wasn't anything amusing, dear Billy, I'm sure there wasn't,"
+Damaris returned, the corners of her mouth still quivering and her eyes
+very bright. "I beg your pardon. I'm afraid I wasn't quite attending. I
+was thinking of something else. You were speaking about the carriage
+horses, weren't you? Yes."
+
+But Theresa turned sulky. She had been posing, planing in mid-air around
+the fair castles hope and ambition are reported to build there. Her fat
+little feet were well off the floor, and that outbreak of laughter let
+her down with a bump. She lost her head, lost her temper and her
+opportunity along with it, and fell into useless scolding.
+
+"You are extremely inconsequent and childish sometimes, Damaris," she
+said. "I find it most trying when I attempt to talk to you upon practical
+subjects, really pressing subjects, and you either cannot or will not
+concentrate. What can you expect in the future when you are thrown more
+on your own resources, and have not me--for instance--always to depend
+upon, if you moon through life like this? It must lead to great
+discomfort not only for yourself but for others. Pray be warned in time."
+
+Damaris turned in her chair at the head of the table. A station not
+unconnected, in Theresa's mind, with the internal ordering of those same
+air-built castles, and consistently if furtively coveted by her. To Sir
+Charles's chair at the bottom of the table, she dared not aspire, so
+during his absence reluctantly retained her accustomed place at the side.
+
+"You need not wait any longer, Mary," Damaris said, over her shoulder.
+
+"Why?" Theresa began fussily, as the two maids left the room.
+
+"Why?" Damaris took her up. "Because I prefer our being alone during
+the remainder of this conversation. I understand that you want to ask
+me about something to do with this excursion to Harchester. What is
+it, please?"
+
+"My dear Damaris," the other protested, startled and scenting unexpected
+danger, "really your manner"--
+
+"And yours.--Both perhaps would bear improvement. But that is by the way.
+What is it, please, you want?"
+
+"Really you assert yourself"--
+
+"And you forget yourself--before the servants, too, I do not like it at
+all. You should be more careful."
+
+"Damaris," she cried aghast, confounded to the verge of tears--"Damaris!"
+
+"Yes--I am giving you my full attention. Pray let us be practical," the
+young girl said, sitting up tall and straight in the shaded lamp-light,
+the white dinner-table spread with gleaming glass and silver, fine china,
+fruit and flowers before her, the soft gloom of the long low room behind,
+all tender hint of childhood banished from her countenance, and her eyes
+bright now not with laughter but with battle. "Pray let us finish with
+the subject of the choir treat. Then we shall be free to talk about more
+interesting things."
+
+Miss Bilson waved her hands hysterically.
+
+"No--no--I never wish to mention it again. I am too deeply hurt by your
+behaviour to me, Damaris--your sarcasm.--Of course," she added, "I see I
+must withdraw my offer. It will cause the greatest inconvenience and
+disappointment; but for that I cannot hold myself responsible, though it
+will be most painful and embarrassing to me after the kind appreciation I
+have received. Still I must withdraw it"--
+
+"Withdraw what offer?"
+
+"Why the offer I was explaining to you just now, when you ordered the
+maids out of the room. You really cannot deny that you heard what I said,
+Damaris, because you mentioned the carriage horses yourself."
+
+Theresa sipped some water. She was recovering if not her temper, yet her
+grasp on the main issue. She wanted, so desperately, to achieve her
+purpose and, incidentally, to continue to play, both for her own benefit
+and that of the parish, her self-elected role of Lady Bountiful, of
+"official representative of The Hard"--as Dr. Horniblow by a quite
+innocent if ill-timed flourish of speech had unfortunately put it.
+
+"The conveyances in the village are insufficient to take the whole party
+to the station," she continued. "An extra brake can be had at the Stag's
+Head in Mary church; but a pair of horses must be sent in to-morrow
+afternoon to bring it over here. I saw"--she hesitated a moment--"I
+really could see no objection to Patch taking our horses in to fetch the
+brake, and driving a contingent to the station in it next morning."
+
+"And meeting the train at night, I suppose?" Damaris said calmly.
+
+"Of course," Theresa answered, thus unconsciously declaring herself a
+rank outsider, and rushing blindly upon her fate.
+
+For what thoroughbred member of the equestrian order does not know that
+next--and even that not always--to the ladies of his family and,
+possibly, the key of his cellar, an Englishman's stable is sacrosanct?
+Dispose of anything he owns rather than his horses. To attempt touching
+them is, indeed, to stretch out your hand against the Ark of the Covenant
+and risk prompt withering of that impious limb. Yet poor Theresa
+blundered on.
+
+"I told the vicar that, Sir Charles being from home, I felt I might make
+the offer myself, seeing how much it would simplify the arrangements and
+how very little work Patch has when you and I are alone here. It is a
+pity there is not time to obtain Sir Charles's sanction. That would be
+more proper, of course, more satisfactory. But under the circumstances it
+need not, I think, be regarded as an insuperable objection. I told the
+Miss Minetts and the vicar"--
+
+Here Miss Bilson blushed, applying fork and spoon, in coy confusion, to
+the remains of the nectarine upon her plate.
+
+"I told them," she repeated, "knowing Sir Charles as well as I do, I felt
+I might safely assure them of that."
+
+In Damaris, meanwhile, anger gradually gave place to far more complex
+emotions. She sat well back in her chair, and clasped her hands firmly in
+her flowered Pompadour-muslin lap. Her eyes looked enormous as she kept
+them fixed gravely and steadily upon the speaker. For extraordinary ideas
+and perceptions concerning the said speaker crowded into her young head.
+She did not like them at all. She shrank from dwelling upon or following
+them put. They, indeed, made her hot and uncomfortable all over. Had
+Theresa Bilson taken leave of her senses, or was she, Damaris, herself in
+fault--a harbourer of nasty thoughts? Consciously she felt to grow older,
+to grow up. And she did not like that either; for the grown-up world, to
+which Theresa acted just now as doorkeeper, struck her as an ugly and
+vulgar-minded place. She saw her ex-governess from a new angle--a more
+illuminating than agreeable one, at which she no longer figured as
+pitiful, her little assumptions and sillinesses calling for the
+chivalrous forbearance of persons more happily placed; but as actively
+impertinent, an usurper of authority and privileges altogether outside
+her office and her scope. She was greedy--not a pretty word yet a true
+one, covering both her manner of eating and her speech. Registering which
+facts Damaris was sensible of almost physical repulsion, as from
+something obscurely gross. Hence it followed that Theresa must, somehow,
+be stopped, made to see her own present unpleasantness, saved from
+herself in short--to which end it became Damaris' duty to unfurl the flag
+of revolt.
+
+The young girl arrived at this conclusion in a spirit of rather pathetic
+seriousness. It is far from easy, at eighteen, to control tongue and
+temper to the extent of joining battle with your elders in calm and
+dignified sort. To lay about you in a rage is easy enough. But rage is
+tiresomely liable to defeat its own object and make you make a fool of
+yourself. Any unfurling of the flag would be useless, and worse than
+useless, unless it heralded victory sure and complete--Damaris realized
+this. So she kept a brave front, although her pulse quickened and she had
+a bad little empty feeling around her heart.
+
+Fortunately, however, for her side of the campaign, Theresa--emboldened
+by recapitulation of her late boastings at the Miss Minetts'
+tea-table--hastened to put a gilded dome to her own indiscretion and
+offence. For nothing would do but Damaris must accompany her on this
+choir treat! She declared herself really compelled to press the point. It
+offered such an excellent opportunity of acquiring archaeological
+knowledge--had not the Dean most kindly promised to conduct the party
+round the Cathedral himself and deliver a short lecture _en route_?--and
+of friendly social intercourse, both of which would be very advantageous
+to Damaris. As she was without any engagement for the day clearly neither
+should be missed. Of course, everyone understood how unsuitable it would
+be to ask Sir Charles to patronize parish excursions and events.--Here
+Miss Bilson became lyrical, speaking with gasping breath and glowing
+face, of "a call to exalted spheres of action, of great Proconsuls,
+Empire Builders, Pillars of the State."--Naturally you hesitated to
+intrude on the time and attention of such a distinguished person--that in
+point of fact was her main reason for disposing of the matter of the
+carriage horses herself. How could she trouble Sir Charles with such a
+homely detail?--But Damaris' case, needless to remark, was very
+different. At her age it was invidious to be too exclusive. Miss Felicia
+Verity felt--so she, Theresa, was certain--that it was a pity Damaris did
+not make more friends in the village now she was out of the schoolroom.
+May and Doris Horniblow were sweet girls and highly educated. They, of
+course, were going. And Captain Taylor, she understood would bring his
+daughter, Louisa--who was home for a few days before the opening of term
+at the Tillingworth High School where she was second mistress.
+
+"It is always well to realize the attainments of young people of your own
+age, even if they are not in quite the same social grade as yourself.
+Your going would give pleasure too. It will be taken as a compliment to
+the vicar and the Church--may really, in a sense, be called patriotic
+since an acknowledgment of the duty we owe, individually, to the local
+community of which we form part. And then," she added, naively giving
+herself away at the last, "of course, if you go over to the station in
+the brake Patch cannot make any difficulties about driving it."
+
+Here Theresa stayed the torrent of her eloquence and looked up, to find
+Damaris' eyes fixed upon her in incredulous wonder.
+
+"Have you nothing to say, dear, in answer to my proposition?" she
+enquired, with a suddenly anxious, edgy little laugh.
+
+"I am afraid I have a lot to say, some of which you won't like."
+
+"How so?" Theresa cried, still playfully. "You must see how natural and
+reasonable my suggestion is." Then becoming admonitory. "You should learn
+to think a little more of others.--It is a bad habit to offer opposition
+simply for opposition's sake."
+
+"I do not oppose you for the mere pleasure of opposing," Damaris began,
+determined her voice should not shake. "But I'm sorry to say, I can't
+agree to the horses being used to draw a loaded brake. I could not ask
+Patch. He would refuse and be quite right in refusing. It's not their
+work--nor his work either."
+
+She leaned forward, trying to speak civilly and gently.
+
+"There are some things you don't quite understand about the stables, or
+about the servants--the things which can't be done, which it's impossible
+to ask.--No,--wait, please--please let me finish"--
+
+For between astonishment, chagrin, and an inarticulate struggle to
+protest, Miss Bilson's complexion was becoming almost apoplectic and her
+poor fat little cheeks positively convulsed.
+
+"I dislike saying such disagreeable things to you, but it can't be
+avoided. It would be cowardly of me not to tell you the truth.--You shall
+have the brougham the day after to-morrow, and I'll write to Miss Minett
+in the morning, and tell her you will call for her and her sister, on
+your way to Marychurch, and that you will bring them back at night. I
+will give Patch his orders myself, so that there may be no confusion. And
+I will subscribe a pound to the expenses of the choir treat. That is all
+I can promise in the way of help."
+
+"But--but--Damaris, think of the position in which you place me! I cannot
+be thrust aside thus. I will not submit. It is so humiliating, so--so--I
+offered the horses. I told the vicar he might consider it settled about
+the extra brake"--
+
+"I know. That was a mistake. You had no right to make such an offer."
+
+For justice must take its course. Theresa must be saved from herself.
+Still her implacable young saviour, in proportion as victory appeared
+assured, began to feel sad. For it grew increasingly plain that Theresa
+was not of the stuff of which warriors, any more than saints, are made.
+Stand up to her and she collapsed like a pricked bubble.--So little was
+left, a scum of colourless soap suds, in which very certainly there is no
+fight. Again she showed a pitiful being, inviting chivalrous forbearance.
+
+"You are very hard," she lamented, "and you are always inclined to side
+with the servants against me. You seem to take pleasure in undermining
+my influence, while I am so ready and anxious to devote myself to you.
+You know there is nothing, nothing I would not do for you and--and for
+Sir Charles."
+
+Theresa choked, coughed, holding her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+"And what reward do I meet with?" she asked brokenly. "At every turn I am
+thwarted. But you must give way in this case, Damaris. Positively you
+must. I cannot allow myself to be publicly discredited through your
+self-will. I promised the horses for the extra brake. The offer was made
+and accepted--accepted, you understand, actually accepted. What will the
+vicar say if the arrangement is upset? What will every one think?"
+
+Damaris pushed her chair back from the table and rose to her
+feet.--Forbearance wore threadbare under accusation and complaint. No,
+Theresa was not only a little too abject, but a little too disingenuous,
+thereby putting herself beyond the pale of rightful sympathy. Even while
+she protested devotion, self looked out seeking personal advantage. And
+that devotion, in itself, shocked Damaris' sense of fitness where it
+involved her father. It wasn't Theresa's place to talk of devotion
+towards him!
+
+Moreover the young girl began to feel profoundly impatient of all this to
+do and bother. For wasn't the whole affair, very much of a storm in a
+teacup, petty, paltry, quite unworthy of prolonged discussion such as
+this? She certainly thought so, in her youthful fervour and inexperience;
+while--the push of awakening womanhood giving new colour and richness
+to her conception of life--nature cried out for a certain extravagance in
+heroism, in largeness of action of aspiration. She was athirst for noble
+horizons, in love with beauty, with the magnificence of things, seen and
+unseen alike. In love with superb objectives even if only to be reached
+through a measure of suffering, and--searching, arresting, though the
+thought was to her--possibly through peril of death.
+
+In such moods there is small room for a Bilson régime and outlook. A
+flavour of scorn marked her tone as she answered at last:
+
+"Oh, you can lay the blame on me--or rather tell the truth, which amounts
+to the same thing. Say that, my father being away, I refused my consent
+to the horses being taken out. Say you appealed to me but I was
+hopelessly obstinate. It is very simple."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A SAMPLING OF FREEDOM
+
+
+When two persons, living under the same roof, have the misfortune to fall
+out a hundred and one small ways are ready to hand for the infliction of
+moral torment. The weak, it may be added, are not only far more addicted
+to such inflictings than the strong, but far more resourceful in their
+execution. Theresa Bilson's conduct may furnish a pertinent example.
+
+From the moment of emerging from her bed-chamber, next morning, she
+adopted an attitude which she maintained until she regained the chaste
+seclusion of that apartment at night. During no instant of the
+intervening hours did she lapse from studied speechlessness unless
+directly addressed, nor depart from an air of virtuous resignation to
+injustice and injury--quite exquisitely provoking to the onlooker. Twice
+during the morning Damaris, upon entering the schoolroom, discovered her
+in tears, which she proceeded to wipe away, furtively, with the greatest
+ostentation.--Dramatic effect, on the second occasion was, however,
+marred by the fact that she was engaged in retrimming a white chip hat,
+encircled by a garland of artificial dog-roses, blue glass grapes and
+assorted foliage--an occupation somewhat ill-adapted to tragedy. In
+addition to making her ex-pupil--against whom they were mainly
+directed--first miserable and then naughtily defiant by these manoeuvres,
+she alienated any sympathy which her red-rimmed eyelids and dolorous
+aspect might otherwise have engendered in the younger and less critical
+members of the establishment, by sending Alfred, the hall-boy, up to the
+vicarage with a note and instructions to wait for an answer, at the very
+moment when every domestic ordinance demanded his absorption in the
+cleaning of knives and of boots. Being but human, Alfred naturally
+embraced the heaven-sent chance of dawdling, passing the time of day with
+various cronies, and rapturously assisting to hound a couple of wild,
+sweating and snorting steers along the dusty lane, behind the churchyard,
+to Butcher Cleave's slaughter-house: with the consequence that his menial
+duties devolved upon Laura and Lizzie, who, supported by the heads of
+their respective departments, combined to "give him the what for," in no
+measured terms upon his eventual and very tardy return.
+
+It is not too much to say that, by luncheon time Theresa--whether
+wilfully or not--had succeeded in setting the entire household by the
+ears; while any inclinations towards peace-making, with which Damaris
+might have begun the day, were effectively dissipated, leaving her
+strengthened and confirmed in revolt. Around the stables, and the
+proposed indignity put upon Patch and the horses, this wretched quarrel
+centred so--as at once a vote of confidence and declaration of
+independence--to the stables Damaris finally went and ordered the
+dog-cart at three o'clock. For she would drive, and drive, throughout the
+course of this gilded September afternoon. Drive far away from foolishly
+officious and disingenuous Theresa, far from Deadham, so tiresome just
+now in its irruption of tea-parties and treats. She would behold peaceful
+inland horizons, taste the freedom of spirit and the content which the
+long, smooth buff-coloured roads, leading to unknown towns and unvisited
+country-side, so deliciously give.
+
+She stood at the front door, in blue linen gown, white knitted jersey and
+white sailor hat, buttoning her tan doeskin driving-gloves, a gallant,
+gravely valiant young creature, beautifully unbroken as yet by any real
+assent to the manifold foulness of life--her faith in the nobility of
+human nature and human destiny still finely intact. And that was just
+where her revolt against poor Theresa Bilson came in. For Theresa broke
+the accepted law, being ignoble; and thereby spoiled the fair pattern,
+showed as a blot.--Not that she meant to trouble any more about Theresa
+just now. She was out simply to enjoy, to see and feel, rather than
+reason, analyse or think. So she settled herself on the sloping
+high-cushioned seat, bracing her feet against the driving iron, while
+Mary, reaching up, tucked the dust-rug neatly about her skirts.
+Patch--whose looks and figure unmistakably declared his
+calling--short-legged and stocky, inclining to corpulence yet nimble on
+his feet, clean shaven, Napoleonic of countenance, passed reins and whip
+into her hands as Tolling, the groom, let go the horse's head.
+
+The girl squared her shoulders a little, and the soft colour deepened in
+her cheeks, as she swung the dog-cart down the drive and out of the
+entrance gate into the road--here a green-roofed tunnel, branches meeting
+overhead, thickly carpeted with dry sand blown inward from the beach--and
+on past the whitewashed cottages, red brick and grey stone houses of
+Deadham village, their gardens pleasant with flowers, and with apple and
+pear trees weighted down by fruit. Past the vicarage and church, standing
+apart on a little grass-grown monticule, backed by a row of elms, which
+amid their dark foliage showed here and there a single bough of
+verdigris-green or lemon-yellow--first harbingers of autumn. Into the
+open now, small rough fields dotted with thorn bushes and bramble-brakes
+on the one side; and on the other the shining waters of the Haven.
+Through the hamlet of Lampit, the rear of whose dilapidated sheds and
+dwellings abut on reed-beds and stretches of unsightly slime and ooze. A
+desolate spot, bleak and wind-swept in winter, and even under blue skies,
+as to-day basking in sunshine, degraded by poverty and dirt.
+
+Some half-mile further is Horny Cross where, as the name indicates, four
+roads meet. That from Deadham to the edge of the forest runs north; the
+other, from Beaupres-on-Sea to Marychurch, Stourmouth and Barryport, due
+west. Damaris, having a fancy to keep the coast-line out of sight, chose
+the former, following the valley of the Arne, between great flat meadows
+where herds of dairy cows, of red Devons and black Welsh runts, feed in
+the rich deep grass. In one place a curve of the river brings it, for
+three hundred yards or more, close under the hanging woods, only the
+width of the roadway between the broad stream and living wall of trees.
+Here transparent bluish shadow haunted the undergrowth, and the air grew
+delicately chill, charged with the scent of fern, of moist earth, leaf
+mould, and moss.
+
+Such traffic as held the road was leisurely, native to the scene and
+therefore pleasing to the sight.--For the age of self-moving machines on
+land had barely dawned yet; while the sky was still wholly inviolate.--A
+white tilted miller's wagon, a brewer's dray, each drawn by well-favoured
+teams with jingling bells and brass-mounted harness, rumbling farm carts,
+a gypsy van painted in crude yellow, blue, and red and its accompanying
+rabble of children, donkeys and dogs, a farmer's high-hung, curtseying
+gig, were in turn met or passed. For the black horse, Damaris driving it,
+gave place to none, covering the mounting tale of miles handsomely at an
+even, swinging trot.
+
+At Lady's Oak, a noble tree marking some ancient forest boundary and
+consequently spared when the needs of the British Navy, during the French
+wars of the early years of the century, condemned so many of its fellows
+to the axe--the flattened burnished dome of which glinted back the
+sunlight above a maze of spreading branches and massive powder-grey
+trunk--the main road forks. Damaris turned to the left, across the
+single-arch stone bridge spanning the Arne, and drove on up the long
+winding ascent from the valley to the moorland and fir plantations which
+range inland behind Stourmouth. This constituted the goal of her journey,
+for once the high-lying plateau reached, leagues of country open out far
+as the eye carries to the fine, bare outline of the Wiltshire downs.
+
+She checked the horse, letting it walk, while she took stock of her
+surroundings.
+
+It may be asserted that there are two ways of holding converse with
+Nature. The one is egotistic and sentimental, an imposing of personal
+tastes and emotions which betrays the latent categoric belief that the
+existence of external things is limited to man's apprehension of them--a
+vilely conceited if not actually blasphemous doctrine! The other is that
+of the seeker and the seer, who, approaching in all reverence, asks no
+more than leave to listen to the voice of external things--recognizing
+their independent existence, knowing them to be as real as he is, as
+wonderful, in their own order as permanent, possibly as potent even for
+good and evil as himself. And it was, happily, according to this latter
+reading of the position, instinctively, by the natural bent of her mind,
+that Damaris attempted converse with the world without.
+
+The glory of the heather had passed, the bloom now showing only as
+silver-pink froth upon an ocean of warm brown. But the colouring was
+restful, the air here on the dry gravel soil light and eager, and the
+sense of height and space exhilarating. A fringe of harebells, of orange
+hawkweed and dwarf red sorrel bordered the road. Every small oasis of
+turf, amongst the heath and by the wayside, carried its pretty crop of
+centaury and wild thyme, of bed-straw, milkwort, and birdsfoot trefoil.
+Furzechats tipped about the gorse bushes, uttering a sharp, gay, warning
+note. A big flight of rooks, blue-black against the ethereal blue of the
+distance, winged their way slowly homeward to the long avenue of dark
+trees leading to a farm in the valley. The charm of the place was clear
+and sane, its beauty simple almost to austerity. This the young girl
+welcomed. It washed her imagination free of the curious questionings,
+involuntary doubts and suspicions, which the house and garden at The
+Hard, steeped in tradition, thick with past happenings, past passions,
+were prone to breed in her. No reek off the mud-flats, any more than over
+luscious garden scents, tainted the atmosphere. It was virgin as the soil
+of the moorland--a soil as yet untamed and unfertilized by the labour of
+man. And this effect of virginity, even though a trifle _farouche_,
+harsh, and barren in the perfection of its purity, appealed to Damaris'
+present mood. Her spirit leapt to meet it in proud fellowship. For it
+routed forebodings. Discounted introspective broodings. Discounted even
+the apparently inevitable--since nobody and nothing, so the young girl
+told herself with a rush of gladly resolute conviction, is really
+inevitable unless you permit or choose to have them so.--Gallant this,
+and the mother of brave doings; though--as Damaris was to discover later,
+to the increase both of wisdom and of sorrow--a half-truth only. For man
+is never actually master of people or of things; but master, at most, of
+his own attitude towards them. In this alone can he claim or exercise
+free-will.
+
+Then--because general ideas, however inspiriting, are rather heavy diet
+for the young, immature minds growing quickly tired in the efforts to
+digest them--Damaris, having reached this happy, if partially erroneous,
+climax of emancipation, ceased to philosophize either consciously or
+unconsciously. The russet moorland and spacious landscape shut the door
+on her, had no more to tell her, no more to say. Or, to be strictly
+accurate, was it not rather perhaps that her power of response, power to
+interpret their speech and assimilate their message had reached its term?
+All her life the maturity of her brain had inclined--rather
+fatiguingly--to outrun the maturity of her body, so that she failed "to
+continue in one stay" and trivial hours trod close on the heels of hours
+of exaltation and of insight.
+
+With a sigh and a sense of loss--as though noble companions had withdrawn
+themselves from her--she gathered up the reins and sent the horse
+forward. She fell into comfortable friendly conversation with the
+Napoleonic-countenanced Patch, moreover, consulting him as to the
+shortest way, through the purlieus of Stourmouth, into the Marychurch
+high road and so home to Deadham Hard. For, to tell the truth, she became
+aware she was hungry and very badly in want of her tea.
+
+Theresa Bilson, setting out the next morning in solitary state, contrived
+to maintain the adopted attitude until the front gates were safely
+passed. Then she relaxed and looked out of the brougham windows with a
+fussy brightness more consonant to the joys of impending union with the
+Miss Minetts and the day's impending trip. She made no further effort to
+secure Damaris' participation in the social and educational advantages
+which it promised. On the contrary she left the young lady severely alone
+and at home, as one administering well-merited punishment. Thus
+effectively demonstrating, as she wished to believe, her personal
+authority; and suiting, as she would have stoutly denied, her personal
+convenience. For Damaris on a string, plus the extra brake and carriage
+horses, was one story; Damaris on her own, minus those animals and
+much-debated vehicle, quite another. Unless the presence of her ex-pupil
+could be made to redound to her own glory, Theresa much preferred
+reserving representation of The Hard and its distinguished proprietor
+wholly and solely to herself. So in the spirit of pretence and of
+make-believe did she go forth; to find, on her return, that spirit prove
+but a lying and treacherous ally--and for more reasons than one.
+
+It happened thus. Supported by the two brindled tabby house cats,
+Geraldine and Mustapha--descendants of the numerous tribe honoured,
+during the last half-century of his long life, by Thomas Clarkson
+Verity's politely affectionate patronage--Damaris spent the greater part
+of the morning in the long writing room.
+
+She had judged and condemned Theresa pretty roundly it is true,
+nevertheless she felt a little hurt and sore at the latter's treatment
+of her. Theresa need not have kept up the quarrel till the very last so
+acridly. After all, as she was going out purely for own pleasure and
+amusement, she might have found something nice and civil to say at
+parting. And then the mere fact of being left behind, of being out of
+it, however limited the charms of a party, has a certain small stab to
+it somehow--as most persons, probing youthful experiences, can testify.
+It is never quite pleasant to be the one who doesn't go!--The house,
+moreover, when her father was absent, always reminded Damaris of an
+empty shrine, a place which had lost its meaning and purpose. To-day,
+though windows and doors were wide open letting in a wealth of sunshine,
+it appeared startlingly lifeless and void. The maids seemed unusually
+quiet. She heard no movement on the staircase or in the rooms above.
+Neither gardener nor garden-boy was visible. She would have hailed the
+whirr of the mowing machine or swish of a broom on the lawn.--Oh! if
+only her poor dear Nannie were still alive, safe upstairs, there in the
+old nursery!
+
+And at that the child Damaris felt a lump rise in her throat. But the
+girl, the soon-to-be woman, Damaris choked it down bravely. For nobody,
+nothing--so she assured herself, going back to the lesson learned
+yesterday upon the open moorland--is really inevitable unless you suffer
+or will it so to be. Wherefore she stiffened herself against recognition
+of loneliness, stiffened herself against inclination to mourning, refused
+to acquiesce in or be subjugated by either and, to the better forgetting
+of them, sought consolation among her great-great uncle's books.
+
+For at this period Damaris was an omnivorous reader, eager for every form
+of literature and every description of knowledge--whether clearly
+comprehended or not--which the beloved printed page has to give. An
+eagerness, it may be noted, not infrequently productive of collisions
+with Theresa, and at this particular juncture all the more agreeable to
+gratify on that very account. For Theresa would have had her walk only in
+the narrow, sheltered, neatly bordered paths of history and fiction
+designed, for the greater preservation of female innocence, by such
+authors as Miss Sewell, Miss Strickland, and Miss Yonge. Upon Damaris,
+however, perambulation of those paths palled too soon. Her intellect and
+heart alike demanded wider fields of drama, of religion and of science,
+above all wider and less conventional converse with average human nature,
+than this triumvirate of Victorian sibyls was willing or capable to
+supply. It is undeniable that, although words and phrases, whole episodes
+indeed, were obscure even unintelligible to her, she found the memoirs of
+Benvenuto Cellini and Saint Simon more interesting than the "Lives of the
+Queens of England; Vathek," more to her taste than "Amy Herbert"; and,
+if the truth must be told, "The Decameron," and "Tristram Shandy" more
+satisfying to her imagination than "The Heir of Redcliffe" or "The Daisy
+Chain." To Damaris it seemed, just now, that a book the meaning of which
+was quite clear to her and could be grasped at sight, hardly repaid the
+trouble of reading, since it afforded no sense of adventure, no
+excitement of challenge or of pursuit, no mirage of wonder, no delightful
+provocation of matters outside her experience and not understood. About
+these latter she abstained from asking questions, having much faith in
+the illuminating power of the future. Given patience, all in good time
+she would understand everything worth understanding.--That there are
+things in life best not understood, or understood only at your peril, she
+already in some sort divined.--Hence her reading although of the order
+obnoxious to pedants, as lacking in method and accurate scholarship, went
+to produce a mental atmosphere in which honest love of letters and of
+art, along with generous instincts of humanity quicken and thrive.
+
+On this particular morning Damaris elected to explore to the Near East,
+in the vehicle of Eöthen's virile and luminous prose. She sat in one of
+the solid wide seated arm-chairs at the fire-place end of a long room,
+near a rounded window, the lower sash, of which she raised to its full
+height. Outside the row of geranium beds glowed scarlet and crimson in
+the calm light. Beyond them the turf of the lawn was overspread by
+trailing gossamers, and delicate cart-wheel spider's webs upon which the
+dew still glittered. In the shrubberies robins sang; and above the river
+great companies of swallows swept to and fro, with sharp twitterings,
+restlessly gathering for their final southern flight.
+
+No sooner had Damaris fairly settled down with her book, than Mustapha
+jumped upon her knees; and after, preliminary buttings and tramplings,
+curled himself round in gross comfort, his soft lithe body growing warmer
+and heavier, on her lap, as his sleep deepened. Where a bar of sunshine
+crossed the leather inset of the writing-table, just beside her in the
+window, Geraldine--his counterpart as to markings and colouring, but
+finer made, more slender of barrel and of limb--fitted herself into the
+narrow space between a silver inkstand and a stack of folded newspapers,
+her fore-paws tucked neatly under her chest, furry elbows outward. Her
+muzzle showed black, as did the rims of her eyelids which enhanced the
+brightness and size of her clear, yellow-green eyes. Her alert, observant
+little head was raised, as, with gently lashing tail, she watched an
+imprisoned honey-bee buzzing angrily up and down between the
+window-sashes.
+
+An elfin creature, Geraldine,--repaying liberal study. Scornfully secure
+of the potency of her own charms where mankind, or Tomcat-kind, might be
+concerned, royally devoid of morals, past-mistress in all sprightly,
+graceful, feline devilries, she was yet a fond mother, solicitous to the
+point of actual selflessness regarding the safety and well-being of her
+successive and frequently recurrent litters. She suckled, washed, played
+with and educated those of her kittens who escaped the rigours of
+stable-bucket and broom, until such time as they were three to four
+months old. After which she sent them flying, amid cuffings and spittings
+extraordinary, whenever they attempted to approach her; and, oblivious of
+their orphaned and wistful existence, yielded herself with bewitching
+vivacity, to fresh intrigues and amours new.
+
+The long quiet morning indoors, with cats and books for company, at once
+soothed Damaris and made her restless. After luncheon she put on hat,
+gloves, and walking shoes, and went down across the lawn to the sea-wall.
+Waylaying her in the hall, Mary had essayed to learn her programme, and
+anchor her as to time and place by enquiring when and where tea should be
+served. But Damaris put the kindly woman off.--She couldn't say
+exactly--yet--would ring and let Mary know when she came in. If any one
+called, she was not at home.
+
+In truth her active young body asked for movement and exercise, while
+scenes and phrases from the pages of Eöthen still filled her mind. She
+longed for travel. Not via Marychurch to Harchester, well understood,
+shepherded by Theresa Bilson, the members of the Deadham Church choir and
+their supporters; but for travel upon the grand scale, with all its
+romance and enlargement of experience, its possible dangers and certain
+hardships, as the author of Eöthen had known it and her father, for that
+matter, had known it in earlier days too. She suffered the spell of the
+East--always haunting the chambers of her memory and ready to be stirred
+in active ascendency, as by her morning's reading to-day--suffered the
+spell not of its mysterious cities and civilizations alone, but of its
+vast solitudes and silences, desert winds and desert sands.
+
+And hence it came about that, as her mood of yesterday sent her inland to
+pacify her imagination by gazing at the peaceful English country-side, so
+her present mood sent her down to the shore to satisfy, or rather further
+stimulate, her nostalgia for the East by gazing out to sea.
+
+The cause in both cases was the same, namely, the inward tumult of her
+awakening womanhood, and still more, perhaps, the tumult of awakening
+talent which had not as yet found its appointed means of expression. She
+was driven hither and thither by the push of her individuality to
+disengage itself from adventitious surroundings and circumstances, and
+realize its independent existence.--A somewhat perilous crisis of
+development, fruitful of escapades and unruly impulses which may leave
+their mark, and that a disfiguring one, upon the whole of a woman's
+subsequent career.
+
+Immediately, however, Damaris' disposition to defy established convention
+and routine took the mildest and apparently most innocuous form--merely
+the making, by herself, of a little expedition which, accompanied by
+others, she had made a hundred times before. From the terrace she went
+down the flight of steps, built into the width of the sea-wall, whence a
+tall wrought-iron gate opens direct upon the foreshore. Closing it behind
+her, she followed the coastguard-path, at the base of the
+river-bank--here a miniature sand cliff capped with gravel, from eight
+to ten feet high--which leads to the warren and the ferry. For she would
+take ship, with foxy-faced William Jennifer as captain and as crew, cross
+to the broken-down wooden jetty and, landing there, climb the crown of
+the Bar and look south-east, over the Channel highway, towards far
+distant countries of the desert and the dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OUT ON THE BAR
+
+
+All which was duly accomplished though with a difference. For on reaching
+the head of the shallow sandy gully opening on the tide, where the
+flat-bottomed ferry-boat lay, Damaris found not Jennifer but the withered
+and doubtfully clean old lobster-catcher, Timothy Proud, in possession.
+This disconcerted her somewhat. His appearance, indeed--as he stood
+amongst a miscellaneous assortment of sun-bleached and weather-stained
+foreshore lumber, leaning the ragged elbows of his blue jersey upon the
+top of an empty petroleum barrel and smoking a dirty clay pipe--was so
+far from inviting, that the young girl felt tempted to relinquish her
+enterprise and go back by the way she had come.
+
+But, as she hesitated, the old man catching sight of her and scenting
+custom, first spat and then called aloud.
+
+"Might 'e be wanting the Ferry, Miss?" Thus directly challenged, Damaris
+could not but answer in the affirmative.
+
+"Put 'e across to the Bar?" he took her up smartly. "Nat'rally I
+will--bean't I here for the very purpose?--Put 'e across I will and on
+the tick too."
+
+And, after further expectoration, relinquishing the support of the oil
+barrel, he joined her and shambled down the sandy track at her side,
+talking. Damaris hastened her step; but bent back and creaking breath
+notwithstanding, Proud kept pace with her, his speech and movements alike
+animated by a certain malicious glee.
+
+"William 'e give hisself an 'oliday," he explained, "to take the little
+dorgs and ferrets up to Butcher Cleave's ratting. Powerful sight of
+varmin there allers be round they sheds and places. Comes after the
+innards and trimmings they do, as bold as you please."
+
+"Oh, yes--no doubt. I understand," Damaris said, at once anxious to
+arrest the flow of his unsavoury eloquence yet to appear civil, since she
+was about to make use of his services.
+
+"'Normous great rats they be," he however continued, with evident relish.
+"'Normous and fierce as tigers, the rascals, what with feasting on flesh
+and fatness like so many lords. So 'mind the ferry for me, will you,
+Daddy,' William says, coming round where was I taking my morning pint
+over at the Inn. 'You're a wonderful valorous man of your years'--and so
+thank the powers, Miss, I be--'can handle the old scraw as clever as I
+can myself,' William says. 'There ain't much about water, salt or fresh,
+nor whatsoever moves on the face of it, nor down below in the belly of
+it, any man can teach you.' Which may seem putting it a bit high yet
+ain't no more than truth and justice, Miss, so you needn't fear to trust
+yourself across the ferry along of me."
+
+"I have no fear," Damaris answered curtly and loftily, holding herself
+very erect, her face slightly flushed, her eyes war-like.
+
+For he was a repulsive old man, and said repulsive things such as she had
+never heard put thus plainly into words before. She felt soiled by even
+this brief association with him. She wanted to hear no more of his ugly
+high-coloured talk, although of his skill as a waterman she entertained
+no doubt. Stepping lightly and quickly up on to the square stern of the
+ferry-boat, she went forward and kept her back resolutely turned upon the
+old fellow as he scrambled on board after her, shoved off and settled to
+the oars. The river was low, and sluggish from the long drought with
+consequently easy passage to the opposite bank. It took but a short five
+minutes to reach the jetty, crawling like some gigantic, damaged,
+many-legged insect out over the smooth gleaming water.
+
+Instead of the legal twopence, Damaris dropped a couple of shillings into
+Daddy Proud's eager hand--with a queenly little air; and, without
+waiting for his thanks, swung herself up on to the black planking and
+turned to go down the sand-strewn wooden steps.
+
+"Pleased to fetch 'e back, Miss, any hour you like to name," Proud called
+after her, standing up and fingering the shillings with one hand while
+with the other he steered the boat's side away from the slippery
+weed-grown piles.
+
+"Thank you, I don't quite know when I shall be back," she answered over
+her shoulder.
+
+For her main desire was to get quit of his unpleasant neighbourhood. She
+would go for a long walk by the coast-guard path across the sand-hills,
+right out to Stone Horse Head. Would stay out till sundown, in the hope
+that by then Jennifer might have seen fit to exchange the manly joys of
+ratting for his more prosaic duties at the ferry, and so save her from
+further association with his displeasing deputy.
+
+But, the ridge of the Bar reached, other thoughts and impulses took
+possession of her. For the sea this afternoon showed an infinitely
+beguiling countenance. Not as highway of the nations, still less as
+violent and incalculable, holding cruelties of storm and tempest in its
+heart, did it present itself to her view; but rather as some gentle,
+softly inviting and caressing creature decked forth in the changeful
+colours of a dove's neck and breast. Opaline haze veiled the horizon,
+shutting off all unrestful sense of distance. The tide was low and little
+waves, as of liquid crystal, chased one another over the gleaming sands.
+Out to where the haze met and covered it the smooth expanse of sea was
+unbroken by passing boat or ship; nor was any person within sight upon
+the long line of the beach. Damaris found herself alone--but deliciously
+alone, with this enchanted dream sea for companion in the sunshine, under
+the vault of tender blue sky.
+
+And, for the present at least, she asked nothing better, humanity being
+at a decided discount with her, thanks first to the extreme tiresomeness
+of Theresa Bilson and later the extreme unsavouriness of Timothy Proud.
+The element thus eliminated, nothing interfered, nothing jarred; so that
+she could yield herself to an ecstasy of contemplation, active rather
+than passive, in that imagination, breaking the bounds of personality,
+made her strangely one with all she looked on. Consciousness of self was
+merged in pure delight. Never could she remember to have felt so
+light-hearted, so happy with the spontaneous, unconditioned happiness
+which is sufficient to itself, unclouded by thought of what has been or
+what may be.
+
+Pushed by her own radiant emotion and an instinct, deriving from it, to
+draw even closer to that Everlasting Beauty of Things which is uncreated
+by and independent of the will and work of man, she ran down the slope,
+and sitting on the shingle slipped off her shoes and stockings. Took off
+her hat, too, and leaving the lot lying there, just above high-tide mark,
+gathered her skirts in one hand, and, bare-headed thus and bare-footed,
+danced out over the wet gleaming sands a graceful flying figure, until
+the little waves played and purred about her ankles. Her action was
+symbolic, born of the gay worship welling up within her, a giving of
+herself to the shining infinite of Nature as just now manifest--things
+divine and eternal glimmering through at her--in this fair hour of
+solitude and brooding peace.
+
+Till her mood softened, Damaris danced thus alone, unwitnessed on the
+shore. Then, as she sobered, happy still though the crisis of ecstasy had
+passed, smaller seeings began to charm her fancy and her eyes.--Pinkish
+yellow starfish, long ribbons of madder-red or emerald seaweed, their
+colours the more living and vivid for the clear water covering them.
+Presently a company of five birds--their mottled brown and olive bodies
+raised on stilt-like legs thin as a straw--claimed her notice. So
+bewitched was she by their quaint and pretty ways, that she could not but
+follow them as they chased one another in and out of the rippling waves,
+ran quickly and bowed catching something eatable floating upon the tide,
+scattered and then joined up into a joyous chorus of association with
+gentle twittering cries. Watching them, dreaming, standing now and again
+looking out over the sweet wonder of the placid sea, sometimes wading
+ankle deep, sometimes walking on the firm floor of uncovered sand,
+Damaris passed onward losing count of time.
+
+The birds led her eastward, up channel, to the half-mile distant nose of
+the Bar, round which the rivers, released at last from their narrow
+channel, sweep out into Marychurch Bay. Here, on a sudden, they took
+wing, and Damaris looking after them, bade them an unwilling farewell,
+for their innocent society had been sweet. And with that she became aware
+she was really quite tired and would be glad to rest awhile, the
+afternoon being young yet, before turning homeward. The longer she stayed
+the more hope there was of finding Jennifer at the ferry; and more than
+ever, the glamour of her wild hour of Nature worship still upon her, did
+she recoil from any sort of association with foul old Timothy Proud.
+
+Therefore she went up across the moist gleaming levels to the
+tide-line, and picking her way carefully among the black jumble of
+seaweed and sea-litter which marked it, sat down in a fan-shaped
+depression in the dry, clean, blown sand some few paces above. The
+sunshine covered it making it warm to her bare feet. The feel and blond
+colour of it brought to mind her reading of this morning--a passage in
+Eöthen telling of the striking of camp at dawn, the desert waiting to
+claim its own again and obliterate, with a single gesture, all sign or
+token of the passing sojourn of man. Clasping her hands behind her
+head, Damaris lay back, the warm sand all around her, giving beneath
+her weight, fitted itself into the curves of her body and limbs--only
+it visible and the soft blue of the sky above. For a little while she
+rested open-eyed in the bright silent stillness, and then, unknowing of
+the exact moment of surrender, she stretched with a fluttering sigh,
+turned on her side and dreamlessly slept.
+
+And, while she thus slept, two events took place eminently germane to the
+further unfolding of this history.--The weather changed, and the local
+degenerate, Abram Sclanders' half-idiot son--the poor "lippity-lop" who,
+according to Jennifer, had far better been "put away quiet-like at
+birth"--committed theft.
+
+Of the first event, Damaris gradually became sensible, before her actual
+awakening. She grew restless, her bed of sand seeming robbed of comfort,
+bleak and uneasy, so that she started up, presently, into a sitting
+position, rubbing her eyes with her fists baby-fashion, unable for the
+minute to imagine how or why she came to be lying like this out on the
+Bar, hatless, shoe and stockingless. Looking about her, still in
+questioning bewilderment, she observed that in the south-west a great
+bank of cloud had risen. It blotted out the sun, deadening all colour.
+The opaline haze, turned to a dull falling mist, closed down and in,
+covering the sand-hills and the dark mass of Stone Horse Head and even
+blurring the long straight lines of the sandbank and nearer shingle. The
+sea had risen, but noiselessly, creeping up and up towards her, no line
+of white marking the edge of its slothful oncoming.
+
+Damaris stood up, pulling her white jersey--the surface of it already
+furred with moisture--low over her hips. For she felt shivery, and the
+air was thick and chill to breathe causing a tightness in her throat.
+
+"The glory has departed, very much departed, so I had best make haste to
+depart also," she told herself; but told herself gallantly, smiling at
+her own strange plight in a spirit of adventure, discovering in it the
+excitement of novel experience.
+
+She picked her way over the shingle and black sea litter of high-water
+mark, and started to run along the narrow strip between it and the
+advancing tide. To run would circulate her blood, warm her through and
+keep her gallant humour up; still she had to own she found this heavy
+going, for her feet were numb and the sand seemed to pluck at and weigh
+them down. Her run slackened to a walk. Then she ventured a yard or two
+out into the shallow water, hoping there to meet with firmer foothold;
+but here it proved altogether too cold. She had the misfortune, moreover,
+to tread on the top end of a razor shell, buried upright, which cut the
+skin making her limp from pain and sharpness of smarting. So perforce,
+she took to the deep blown sand again above high-water mark, and ploughed
+along slowly enough in growing weariness and discomfort.
+
+Never, surely, was any half-mile so long as this between the place of her
+farewell to the mottled stilt-legged birds and subsequent sleeping, and
+the place where she left her hat and shoes and stockings! In the dimness
+and chill of the falling mist, it seemed to lengthen and lengthen to an
+altogether incomprehensible extent. Time and again she stopped and
+scanned the ground immediately before her, certain she should see there
+those so lightly discarded and now so earnestly desired items of
+clothing. Once in possession of them she would simply scurry home. For
+visions of warm, dry pretty garments, of Mary's, comely ministering
+presence, of tea, of lamp-light and--yes, she would allow herself that
+culminating luxury--of a fine log fire in the long sitting-room,
+presented themselves to her imagination in most alluring sequence--the
+spirit of adventure, meanwhile, as must be owned, beginning to sing small
+and hang a diminished head.
+
+But on a sudden, raising her eyes from their persistent search, Damaris
+realized she must have missed and already passed the spot. For she was
+close upon the tract of sand-hills--a picture of desolation in the sullen
+murk, the winding hollows between their pale formless elevations bearing
+a harsh growth of neutral tinted sword-like grasses.
+
+She had come too far by a quarter of a mile at least, so she judged, and
+must turn her face eastward again and laboriously plough her way back.
+But the return journey was crowned with no better success than the
+outward one. Carefully, methodically she quartered the beach; but simply
+her things weren't there, had vanished, leaving neither token or trace.
+
+She was confronted moreover by the unpleasant fact that it grew late.
+Soon the dusk would fall, its coming hastened by the mist, now settling
+into a steady drizzle of rain precursor of a dark and early night. To
+hunt any longer would be useless. She must give it up. Yet her maidenly
+pride, her sense of what is seemly and becoming, revolted from exposing
+herself to Timothy Proud's coarse leering glances or even--should he by
+luck be her waterman--to Jennifer's more respectful curiosity,
+dishevelled and but half-dressed as she was. And then the actual distance
+to be traversed appeared to her dishearteningly great. For she was
+weary--quite abominably weary now she came to think of it. Her feet were
+bruised and blistered. They ached. Her throat ached too, and she
+shivered. Cold, though it was, she must wait a minute or two and rest
+before attempting the ascent of the slope.
+
+Damaris sat down, pulling her skirts as low as they would come over her
+bare legs, and clasping her hands round her knees, bowed, huddled
+together to gain, if it might be, some sensation of warmth. For a little
+she thought of that only--warmth--her mind otherwise a blank. But soon
+the consuming sadness of the place in the waning light penetrated her
+imagination, penetrated, indeed, her whole being. Only a few hours ago
+she had danced here, in ecstasy born of the sunshine, the colour, the
+apparently inexhaustible beauty of things uncreated by, and independent
+of, the will and work of man. Contrast that scene, and the radiant
+emotion evoked by it, with this? Which was real, the enduring revelation?
+Was this truth; the other no more than mirage--an exquisite dissembling
+and lovely lie?
+
+Such thoughts are hardly wholesome at eighteen--hardly wholesome perhaps
+at any age, if life is to be lived sweetly, with honest profit to one's
+own soul and to the souls of others. Yet remembering back, down the dim
+avenues of childhood, Damaris knew she did not formulate the question,
+entertain the suspicion, for the first time. Only, until now, it had
+stayed in the vague, a shapeless nightmare horror, past which she could
+force herself to run with shut eyes. It didn't jump out of the vague,
+thank goodness, and bar her passage. But now no running or shutting of
+eyes availed. It had jumped out. She stared at it, and, in all its
+undermining power of discouragement, it stared back.--What if the deepest
+thing, the thing which alone lasted, the thing which, therefore, you
+were bound in the end to accept, to submit to, was just darkness, sorrow,
+loneliness of worn body and shrinking spirit, by the shore of a cold,
+dumb, and tenantless, limitless sea--what then?
+
+From which undesirable abyss of speculation she was aroused by the sound
+of her own name--"Damaris Verity, hey--Damaris Verity"--shouted, not
+roughly though in tones of urgent command, from above and behind her on
+the crest of the Bar. Along with it came the rattle of shifting shingle
+under a strong active tread.
+
+Hearing which the young girl's senses and faculties alike sprang to
+attention. She rose from her dejected attitude, stood up and faced round,
+forgetful of aches and weariness and of woeful ultimate questionings,
+while in glad surprise her heart went out to meet and welcome the--to
+her--best beloved being in this, no longer, sorry world.
+
+For even thus, at some fifty yards distant through the blur of falling
+rain, the figure presented to her gaze, in height, build, and fashion of
+moving, was delightfully familiar, as were the tones of the voice which
+had hailed her--if in not quite equal degree the manner of that hail.
+Some change in his plans must have taken place, or some letter miscarried
+advising her of her father's earlier return. Finding her out he had come
+to look for her.--This was perfectly as it should be. Had Colonel
+Carteret come home with him, she wondered. And then there flashed through
+her, with a singular vividness, recollection of another, long, long ago
+escapade--when as a still almost baby child she had stepped off alone, in
+daring experiment, and fallen asleep, in the open as to-day. But in
+surroundings how amazingly different!--A place of fountains, cypresses
+and palms, she curled up in a black marble chair, set throne fashion,
+upon a platform of blood red sandstone, an age-old Oriental garden
+outstretched below. Colonel Carteret--"the man with the blue eyes" as she
+always had called him--awakened her, bringing an adorable and, as it
+proved in the sequel, a tragic birthday gift.--Tragic because to it
+might, actually if indirectly, be traced the breaking up of her
+childhood's home in the stately Indian pleasure palace of the
+Sultan-i-bagh at Bhutpur, her separation from her father and exile--as
+she had counted it--to Europe.
+
+It is among the doubtful privileges of highly sensitized natures, such as
+Damaris', that, in hours of crisis, vision and pre-vision go hand in
+hand. As there flashed through her remembrance of that earlier sleep in
+the open, there flashed through her also conviction that history would
+still further repeat itself. Now, as then, the incident of sleep preluded
+the receipt of a gift, adorable perhaps, yet freighted with far-reaching
+consequences to herself and her future. Of just what that gift might
+consist she had no idea; but of its approach she felt as certain as of
+the approach of the man swinging down through the rain over the rattling
+pebbles. And her gladness of welcome declined somewhat. She could have
+cried off, begged for postponement. For she was very tired, after all.
+She didn't want anything now, anything which--however delightful in
+itself--demanded effort, demanded even the exertion of being very
+pleased. She shied away, in short. And then commendably rallied her
+forces, resolute not to be found unworthy or ungrateful.
+
+"Yes--come. I am here," she called in response to that lately heard
+calling of her name, desiring to make an act of faith whereby to assure
+herself she was indeed ready, and assure her hearer of her readiness to
+accept the impending gift.
+
+"I am here," she began again to affirm, but stopped abruptly, the words
+choking in her throat.
+
+For, as with decreasing distance the figure grew distinct, she saw, to
+her blank amazement, not Sir Charles Verity, her father, as she expected,
+but the blue reefer jacket, peaked cap, and handsome bearded face of
+Darcy Faircloth, the young merchant sea-captain, emerge from the blur of
+the wet. And the revulsion of feeling was so sharp, the shock at once so
+staggering and intimate--as summing up all the last ten days confused
+experience--that Damaris could not control herself. She turned away with
+a wail of distress, threw out her hands, and then, covering her eyes with
+them, bowed her head.
+
+The young man came forward and stood near her; but an appreciable time
+elapsed before he spoke. When he presently did so, his voice reached
+her as again singularly familiar in tone, though strange in diction and
+in accent.
+
+"I'm sorry if I startled you," he began, "but I hailed you just now, and
+you told me to come.--I concluded you meant what you said. Not, I'm
+afraid, that your giving your permission or withholding it would have
+made much difference in the upshot. Timothy Proud let on, in my hearing,
+that he set you across the river soon after two o'clock, and that there'd
+been no call for the ferry since. So I took one of my own boats and just
+came over to look for you--in case you might have met with some mishap or
+strayed among the sand-hills and couldn't find your"--
+
+Thus far he spoke with studied calm and restraint. But here, as though
+struck by a fresh and very objectionable idea, he broke out:
+
+"Nothing has happened has it? No cowardly brute has interfered with
+you or upset you? Dear God alive, don't tell me I'm too late, don't
+tell me that."
+
+Upon Damaris this sudden, though to her unaccountable, violence and heat
+acted as a cordial. She raised her head, pushing back the damp hair from
+her forehead, and displaying a proud if strained and weary face.
+
+"No," she said, "of course not. Who would venture to be rude to me? I
+have not seen anyone all the afternoon--until now, when you came. And,"
+she added by way of further explanation--she didn't want to be ungracious
+or unkind, but she did want, in justice to herself, to have this
+understood--"in the distance I didn't recognize you. I mistook you for
+someone else"--
+
+"Who else?" he took her up, and with a queer flicker--if of a smile, then
+one with a keenish edge to it--in his eyes and about his mouth.
+
+"For my father," Damaris answered. "It was a stupid mistake, because he
+is away staying in Norfolk for partridge shooting, and I have not any
+real reason to expect him home for several days yet."
+
+"But in this deceptive light," Faircloth took her up again, while--as she
+could not help observing--that flicker became more pronounced. It seemed
+silently to laugh and to mock.--"Oh! to be sure that accounts for your
+mistake as to my identity. One sees how it might very well come about."
+
+He took off his cap, and threw back his head looking up into the
+low wet sky.
+
+"At night all cats are grey, aren't they," he went on, "little ones as
+well as big? And it's close on night now, thanks to this dirty weather.
+So close on it, that--though personally I'm in no hurry--I ought to get
+you back to The Hard, or there'll be a regular hue and cry after
+you--rightly and probably too, if your servants and people have any
+notion of their duty."
+
+"I am quite ready," Damaris said.
+
+She strove to show a brave front, to keep up appearances; but she felt
+helpless and weak, curiously confused by and unequal to dealing with
+this masterful stranger--who yet, somehow did not seem like a stranger.
+Precisely in this was the root of her confusion, of her inability to
+deal with him.
+
+"But hardly as you are," he commented, on her announcement she was ready.
+"Let me help to put on your shoes and stockings for you first." And this
+he said so gently and courteously, that Damaris' lips began to quiver,
+very feminine and youthful shame at the indignity of her present plight
+laying hold on her.
+
+"I can't find them," she pitifully declared. "I have looked and looked,
+but I can't find them anywhere. I left my things just here. Can anyone
+have stolen them while I was out at the end of the Bar? It is so
+mysterious and so dreadfully tiresome. I should have gone home long ago,
+before the rain began, if I could have found them."
+
+And with that, the whole little story--childish or idyllic as you
+please--of sunshine and colour, of beguiling birds beguiling sea, of
+sleep, and uneasy awakening when the cloud-bank rising westward devoured
+the fair face of heaven, of mist and fruitless seeking, even some word of
+the fear which forever sits behind and peeps over the shoulder of all
+wonder and all beauty, got itself--not without eloquent passages--quickly
+yet gravely told. For the young man appeared to derive considerable
+pleasure from listening, from watching her and from questioning her
+too--still, gently and courteously though closely, as if each detail were
+of interest and of value.
+
+"And now you know all about it, Captain Faircloth," Damaris said in
+conclusion, essaying to laugh at her own discomfiture. "And I am very
+tired, so if you will be kind enough to row me across the ferry, I shall
+be grateful to you, and glad, please, to go home at once."
+
+"By all means," he answered. "Only, you know, I can't very well let you
+cut your feet to pieces on these cruel stones, so I am just going to
+carry you up over the Bar"--
+
+"No--no--I can perfectly well walk. I mean to walk--see," she cried.
+
+And started courageously up the rough ascent, only to slip, after a few
+paces, and to stagger. For as soon as she attempted to move, she felt
+herself not only weak, but oddly faint and giddy. She lurched forward,
+and to avoid falling instinctively clutched at her companion's
+outstretched hand. Exactly what passed between the young man and young
+girl in that hand-clasp--the first contact they had had of one
+another--it might seem far-reached and fantastic to affirm; yet that it
+steadied not only Damaris' trembling limbs, but her trembling and
+over-wrought spirit, is beyond question. For it was kind and more than
+kind--tender, and that with the tenderness of right and usage rather than
+of sentimental response to a passing sentimental appeal.
+
+"There, there," he said, "what's the use of working to keep up this
+little farce any longer? Just give in--you can't put off doing so in the
+end. Why not at once, then, accept defeat and spare both yourself and me
+pain? You are no more fit to walk, than you are fit to fly--to fly away
+from me!--That's what you want, isn't it? Ah! that flight will come, no
+doubt, all in good time.--But meanwhile, be sensible. Put your left arm
+round my neck--like this, yes. Then--just a little hoist, and, if you'll
+not worry but keep still, nothing's easier."
+
+As he spoke, Faircloth stooped, lightly and with no apparent exertion
+lifting her high, so that--she clasping his neck as instructed--the main
+weight of her body rested upon his shoulder. With his right arm he held
+her just above the waist, his left arm below her knees cradling her.
+
+"Now rest quiet," he said. "Know you are safe and think only of
+comfortable things--among them this one, if you care to, that for once in
+my life I am content."
+
+Yet over such yielding and treacherous ground, upward to the crown of the
+ridge and downward to the river, progress could not be otherwise than
+slow. Twilight, and that of the dreariest and least penetrable, overtook
+them before Faircloth, still carrying the white-clothed figure, reached
+the jetty. Here, at the bottom of the wooden steps he set Damaris down,
+led her up them and handed her into the boat--tied up to, and the tide
+being at the flood, now little below the level of the staging.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WHEREIN DAMARIS MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HIDDEN WAYS OF MEN
+
+
+Throughout their singular journey--save for briefest question and answer
+about her well-being at the commencement of it--the two had kept silence,
+as though conscious Faircloth's assertion of contentment struck a chord
+any resolution of which might imperil the simplicity of their relation.
+Thus far that relation showed a noble freedom from embarrassment. It
+might have continued to do so but for a hazardous assumption on his part.
+
+When first placing Damaris in the stern of the boat, the young man
+stripped off his jacket and, regardless of her vaguely expressed protest,
+wrapped it round her feet. It held the living warmth of his body; and,
+chilled, dazed, and spent, as Damaris was, that warmth curiously soothed
+her, until the ink-black boat floating upon the brimming, hardly less
+inky, water faded from her knowledge and sight. She drooped together,
+passing into a state more comparable to coma than to natural slumber, her
+will in abeyance, thought and imagination borne under by the immensity of
+her fatigue.
+
+As Faircloth, meanwhile, pulled clear of the outstanding piles of the
+jetty, he heard voices and saw lights moving down by the ferry on the
+opposite shore. But these, and any invitation they might imply, he
+ignored. If the hue and cry after Damaris, which he had prophesied, were
+already afoot, he intended to keep clear of it, studiously to give it the
+slip. To this end, once in the fairway of the river he headed the boat
+downstream, rowing strongly though cautiously for some minutes, careful
+to avoid all plunge of the oars, all swish of them or drip. Then, the
+lights now hidden by the higher level and scrub of the warren, he sat
+motionless letting the boat drift on the seaward setting current.
+
+The fine rain fell without sound. It shut out either bank creating a
+singular impression of solitude and isolation, and of endlessness too.
+There seemed no reason why it should ever cease. And this delusion of
+permanence, the enclosing soft-clinging darkness served to heighten. The
+passage of time itself seemed arrested--to-morrow becoming an
+abstraction, remote and improbable, which could, with impunity, be left
+out of the count. With this fantastic state of things, Faircloth had no
+quarrel. Though impatient of inaction, as a rule definite and autocratic
+enough, he really wasn't aware of having any particular use for
+to-morrow. Content still held sway. He was satisfied, profoundly, yet
+dreamingly, satisfied by an achievement long proposed, long waited for,
+the door upon which had opened to-day by the merest accident--if anything
+can justly be called accident, which he inclined to believe it could not.
+
+He had appointed, it should be added, a limit in respect of that
+achievement, which he forbade himself to pass; and it was his habit very
+rigidly to obey his own orders, however little disposed he might be to
+obey those of other people. He had received, as he owned, more than he
+could reasonably have expected, good measure pressed down and running
+over. The limit was now reached. He should practise restraint--leave the
+whole, affair where it stood. But the effect of this darkness, and of
+drifting, drifting, over the black water in the fine soundless rain, with
+its illusion of permanence, and of the extinction of to-morrow--and the
+retributions and adjustments in which to-morrow is so frequently and
+inconveniently fertile--enervated him, rendering him a comparatively easy
+prey to impulse, should impulse chance to be stirred by some adventitious
+circumstance. The Devil, it may be presumed, is very much on the watch
+for such weakenings of moral fibre, ready to pounce, at the very shortest
+notice, and make unholy play with them!
+
+To Faircloth's ruminative eyes, the paleness in the stern of the boat,
+indicating Damaris Verity's drooping figure, altered slightly in outline.
+Whereupon he shipped the oars skillfully and quietly, and going aft knelt
+down in front of her. Her feet were stretched out as, bowed together, she
+sat on the low seat. His jacket had slipped away exposing them to the
+weather, and the young man laying his hands on them felt them cold as in
+death. He held them, chafed them, trying to restore some degree of
+circulation. Finally, moved by a great upwelling of tenderness and of
+pity, and reckoning her, since she gave no sign, to be asleep, he bent
+down and put his lips to them.
+
+But immediately the girl's hands were upon his shoulders.
+
+"What are you doing, oh! what are you doing?" she cried.
+
+"Kissing your feet."
+
+Then the Devil, no doubt, flicking him, he let go restraint, disobeyed
+his own orders, raised his head, and looking at her as in the enfolding
+obscurity she leaned over him, said:
+
+"And, if it comes to that, who in all the round world has a better right
+than I, your brother, to kiss your feet?"
+
+For some, to him, intolerable and interminable seconds, Faircloth waited
+after he had shot his bolt. The water whispered and chuckled against the
+boat's sides in lazy undertones, as it floated down the sluggish stream.
+Beyond this there was neither sound nor movement. More than ever might
+time be figured to stand still. His companion's hands continued to rest
+upon his shoulders. Her ghostly, dimly discerned face was so near his own
+that he could feel, now and again, her breath upon his forehead; but she
+was silent. As yet he did not repent of his cruelty. The impulse which
+dictated it had not spent itself. Nevertheless this suspense tried him.
+He grew impatient.
+
+"Damaris," he said, at last, "speak to me."
+
+"How can I speak to you when I don't understand," she answered gravely.
+"Either you lie--which I should be sorry to accuse you of doing--or you
+tell me a very terrible thing, if, that is, I at all comprehend what you
+say.--Are you not the son of Mrs. Faircloth, who lives at the inn out by
+the black cottages?"
+
+"Yes, Lesbia Faircloth is my mother. And I ask for no better. She has
+squandered love upon me--squandered money, upon me too; but wisely and
+cleverly, with results. Still--" he paused--"well, it takes two,
+doesn't it, to make a man? One isn't one's mother's son only."
+
+"But Mrs. Faircloth is a widow," Damaris reasoned, in wondering
+directness. "I have heard people speak of her husband. She was married."
+
+"But not to my father. Do you ask for proofs--just think a minute. Whom
+did you mistake me for when I called you and came down over the Bar in
+the dusk?"
+
+"No--no--" she protested trembling exceedingly. "That is not possible.
+How could such a thing happen?"
+
+"As such things mostly do happen. It is not the first case, nor will it
+by a long way, I reckon, be the last. They were young, and--mayn't we
+allow--they were beautiful. That's often a good deal to do with these
+accidents. They met and, God help them, they loved."
+
+"No--no--" Damaris cried again.
+
+Yet she kept her hands on Faircloth's shoulders, clinging to him in the
+excessive travail of her innocent spirit--though he racked her--for
+sympathy and for help.
+
+"For whom, after all, did you take me?" he repeated. "If there wasn't
+considerable cause it would be incredible you should make such a mistake.
+Can you deny that I am hall-marked, that the fact of my parentage is
+written large in my flesh?"
+
+He felt her eyes fixed on him, painfully straining to see him through the
+rain and darkness; and, when she spoke again, he knew she knew that he
+did not lie.
+
+"But wasn't it wrong" she said.
+
+"I suppose so. Only as it gave me life and as I love life I'm hardly the
+person to deliver an unbiased opinion on that point."
+
+"Then you are not sad, you are not angry?" Damaris presently and rather
+unexpectedly asked.
+
+"Yes--at times both, but not often or for long together. As I tell you I
+love life--love it too well to torment myself much about the manner of my
+coming by it. It might show more refinement of feeling perhaps to hang my
+head and let a certain ugly word blast my prospects. But I don't happen
+to see the business that way. On the contrary I hope to get every ounce
+of advantage out of it I can--use it as a spur rather than a hobble. And
+I love my profession too. It gives you room and opportunity. I am waiting
+now for my first ship, my first command. That's a fine thing and a strong
+one. For your first ship is as a bride to you, and your first command
+makes you as a king among men. Oh! on a small scale I grant; but, as far
+as it reaches, your authority is absolute. On board your own ship you are
+master with a vengeance--if you like. And I do like."
+
+Faircloth said the last few words softly, but with a weight of meaning
+not to be misunderstood. He bent down, once more, chafed Damaris' feet
+and wrapped his jacket carefully round them.
+
+"And, while you and I are alone together, there is something--as we've
+spoken so freely--which I want to tell you, so that there may be no
+misconception about me or about what I want.--As men in my rank of life
+go, I am well off. Rich--again on a small scale; but with means
+sufficient to meet all my needs. I'm not a spend-thrift by nature,
+luckily. And I have amply enough not only to hold my own in my profession
+and win through, but to procure myself the pleasures and amusements I
+happen to fancy. I want you to remember that, please. Tell me is it quite
+clear to you?"
+
+"Yes," Damaris said, "you have made it quite clear."
+
+Yet for the first time he jarred on her, as with a more than superficial
+difference of breeding and of class. This mention of money offended her
+taste, seeming to lower the level upon which their extraordinary and--to
+her--terrible conversation had thus far moved. It hurt her with another
+kind of hurting--not magnificent, not absorbing, but just common. That in
+speaking of money he was protecting himself, proudly self-guarding his
+own honour and that of his mother, Lesbia Faircloth, never, in her
+innocence of what is mean and mercenary, occurred to Damaris.
+
+So she took her hands off his shoulders and clasped them in her lap.
+Clasped them with all her poor strength, striving even in this extreme,
+to maintain some measure of calm and of dignity. She must hold out, she
+told herself, just simply by force of will hold out, till she was away
+from him. After that, chaos--for thoughts, discoveries, apprehensions of
+possibilities in human intercourse hitherto undreamed of, were marshalled
+round her in close formation shoulder to shoulder. They only waited. An
+instant's yielding on her part, and they would be on to her, crushing
+down and in, making her brain reel, her mind stagger under their stifling
+crowded assault.
+
+"Go back and row," she said, at once imploring and imperious. "Row
+quickly. I am very tired. I am cold. I want to be at home--to be in my
+own place."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RECOUNTING AN ASTONISHING DEPOSITION
+
+
+Theresa Bilson bustled upstairs. Barring the absence of the extra brake,
+which had caused--and for this she could not be sorry since didn't it
+justify her "attitude" towards her recalcitrant ex-pupil?--some
+inconvenient overcrowding in transit to and from the station, and barring
+the rain, which set in between five and six o'clock, the expedition to
+Harchester passed off with considerable _éclat_. Such, in any case, was
+Theresa's opinion, she herself having figured conspicuously in the
+foreground. During the inspection of the Cathedral the Dean paid her
+quite marked attention; thanks, in part, to her historical and
+archaeological knowledge--of which she made the most, and to her
+connection with the Verity family--of which she made the most also. In
+precisely what that connection might consist, the learned and timid old
+gentleman, being very deaf and rather near-sighted, failed to gather. He
+determined, however, to be on the safe side.
+
+"Our genial Archdeacon," he said, "and his distinguished kinsman, Sir
+Charles? Ah! yes--yes--indeed--to be sure--with the greatest pleasure."
+
+And he motioned the blushing Theresa to fall into step with him, and with
+Dr. Horniblow, at the head of the Deadham procession.
+
+The afterglow of that triumphal progress irradiated her consciousness
+still, when--after depositing the Miss Minetts upon their own doorstep,
+with playful last words recalling the day's mild jokes and rallyings--she
+drove on to The Hard to find the household there in a state of sombre and
+most admired confusion.
+
+Thus to arrive home in possession of a fine bag of news, only to
+discover an opposition and far finer bag ready awaiting you may well
+prove trying to the most high-souled and amiable of temper. By this time,
+between success and fatigue, Theresa could not be justly described as
+either high-souled or sweet tempered. She was at once inflated and on
+edge, and consequently hotly indignant, as though the unfairest march
+possible had been stolen upon her.
+
+She bustled upstairs, and crossing the landing turned into the schoolroom
+passage--a long, lamp-lit vista, hung with old Chinese wall-paper, the
+running pattern of buds and flowers, large out of all proportion to the
+bridges, palms, pagodas and groups of little purple and blue-clad men and
+women disposed, in dwindling perspective, upon its once white surface.
+Half-way along the passage, their backs towards her, Mary and Mrs.
+Cooper, the cook--a fair, mild middle-aged, and cow-like person, of ample
+proportions--stood conversing in smothered tones.
+
+"And it's my belief he's been and told her, or anyhow that she guesses,
+pore dear young lady," the latter, with upraised hands, lamented.
+
+Theresa just caught these strange words. Caught too, Mary's hurried
+rejoinder--"For mercy's sake, Mrs. Cooper, not a hint of that to any
+living soul"--before the two women, sensible of the swish and patter of
+her self-important entry, turned and moved forward to meet, or--could it
+be?--to intercept her. Their faces bore a singular expression, in Mrs.
+Cooper's case of sloppy, in Mary's of stern yet vivid alarm. Deeply
+engaged though she was with her private grievance, Miss Bilson could not
+but observe this. It made her nervous.
+
+"What is the meaning," she began, her voice shrill with agitation, "of
+the extraordinary story about Miss Damaris which Laura reports to me?
+Someone is evidently very much in fault."
+
+"Please don't speak quite so loud, Miss," Mary firmly admonished her.
+"I've just got Miss Damaris quieted off to sleep, and if she's roused up
+again, I won't answer for what mayn't happen."
+
+"But what has happened? I insist upon knowing," Theresa declared, in
+growing offence and agitation.
+
+"Ah! that's just what we should be thankful enough to have you tell us,
+Miss," Mrs. Cooper chimed in with heavy and reproachful emphasis upon
+the pronouns.
+
+To even the mild and cow-like revenge is sweet. Though honestly
+distressed and scared, the speaker entertained a most consoling
+conviction she was at this moment getting even with Theresa Bilson and
+cleverly paying off old scores.
+
+"The pore dear young lady's caught her death as likely as not, out
+there across the river in the wet, let alone some sneaking rascal
+making off with her stockings and shoes. When I saw her little naked
+feet, all blue with the cold, it made my heart bleed, regularly bleed,
+it did. I could only give thanks her Nanna, pore Mrs. Watson, who
+worshipped the very ground Miss Damaris trod on, was spared living to
+see that afflicting sight."
+
+Then with a change of tone exasperating--as it was designed to be--to
+one, at least, of her hearers, she added:
+
+"I'll have that soup ready against Miss Damaris wakes, Mary, in case she
+should fancy it. Just touch the bell, will you, and I'll bring it up
+myself. It's not suitable to give either of the girls a chance for
+prying. They're a deal too curious as it is. And I'm only too pleased to
+watch with you, turn and turn about, as I told you, whenever you feel to
+require a rest. Lizzie will have to see to the cooking anyhow--except
+what's wanted for Miss Damaris. I couldn't put my mind into kitchen work
+to-night, not if you paid me ever so."
+
+And on large flat feet she moved away towards the back-staircase, leading
+down to the offices from the far end of the passage, leaving an odour of
+pastry behind her and of cloves.
+
+"To think of what to-morrow may bring, ah! dear me," she murmured
+as she went.
+
+During the ten minutes or so which immediately followed Theresa Bilson
+boxed the compass in respect of sensations, the needle, as may be noted,
+invariably quivering back to the same point--namely, righteous anger
+against Damaris. For was not that high-spirited maiden's imperviousness
+to influence and defiance of authority--her, Theresa's, influence and
+authority--the mainspring of all this disastrous complication? Theresa
+found it convenient to believe so, and whip herself up to almost frantic
+determination in that belief. It was so perfectly clear. All the more
+clear because her informant, Mary, evidently did not share her belief.
+Mary's account of to-day's most vexatious transactions betrayed
+partizanship and prejudice, such as might be expected from an uneducated
+person, offering--as Theresa assured herself--a pertinent example of the
+workings of "the servant mind." Nevertheless uneasy suspicion dogged her,
+a haunting though unformulated dread that other persons--one person above
+all others--might endorse Mary's prejudices rather than her own, so
+reasonably based, conviction.
+
+"If only Mr. Patch had been in there'd have been somebody to depend on,"
+the woman told her, recounting the anxious search after vanished Damaris.
+"But he'd driven into Marychurch of course, starting ever so early
+because of the parcels he had your orders to call for at the several
+shops, before meeting the train. And the gardeners had left work on
+account of the wet; so we'd nobody to send to make enquiries anywhere
+except Tolling, and that feather-head Alfred, who you can't trust half a
+minute out of your sight." Here she paused in her narrative and made a
+move, adroitly driving Theresa Bilson before her out on to the landing,
+thus putting a greater distance between that tormented spinster and the
+neighbourhood of Damaris' bed-chamber. Her handsome brown eyes held the
+light of battle and her colour was high. She straightened a chair,
+standing against the wall at the stair-head, with a neatly professional
+hand in passing.
+
+"Mrs. Cooper and I were fairly wild waiting down on the sea-wall with the
+lantern, thinking of drowning and--worse,--when"--she glanced sharply at
+her companion and, lowering her eyes altered the position of the chair by
+a couple of inches--"when Captain Faircloth's boat came up beside the
+breakwater and he carried Miss Damaris ashore and across the garden."
+
+"Stop"--Theresa broke in--"I do not follow you. Faircloth, Captain
+Faircloth? You are not, I earnestly hope, speaking of the owner of that
+low public-house on the island?"
+
+"Yes--him," Mary returned grimly, her eyes still lowered.
+
+"And do you mean me to understand that this young man carried Miss
+Damaris--actually carried her"--Miss Bilson choked and cleared her throat
+with a foolish little crowing sound--"carried her all the way into the
+house--in his arms?"
+
+"Yes, in his arms, Miss. How else would you have had him carry her?--And,
+as gentle and careful as any woman could, too--into the house and right
+upstairs here"--pointing along the passage as if veritably beholding the
+scene once more--"and into her own bedroom."
+
+"How shocking. How extremely improper!"
+
+Theresa beat her fat little hands hysterically together. She credited
+herself with emotions of the most praiseworthy and purest; ignorant that
+the picture conjured up before her provoked obscure physical jealousies,
+obscure stirrings of latent unsatisfied passion. More than ever, surely,
+did the needle quiver back to that fixed point of most righteous anger.
+
+"Such--such a proceeding cannot have been necessary. It ought not to have
+been permitted. Why did not Miss Damaris walk?"
+
+"Because she was in a dead faint, and we'd all the trouble in life to
+bring her round."
+
+"Indeed," she said, and that rather nastily. "I am sorry, but I cannot
+but believe Miss Damaris might have made an effort to walk--with your
+assistance and that of Cooper, had you offered it. As I remarked at
+first, someone is evidently very much to blame. The whole matter must be
+thoroughly sifted out, of course. I am disappointed, for I had great
+confidence in you and Cooper--two old servants who might really have been
+expected to possess some idea of the--the respect due to their master's
+daughter. What will Sir Charles say when he hears of this objectionable
+incident?"
+
+"That's just what Mrs. Cooper and I are wondering, Miss," Mary took her
+up with so much meaning that Miss Bilson inwardly quailed, sensible of
+having committed a rather egregious blunder. This she made efforts to
+repair by sheering off hurriedly on another tack.
+
+"Not that I shall trouble Sir Charles with the matter, unless
+circumstances arise which compel me to do so--as a duty. My great object,
+of course, is at all times to spare him any domestic annoyance."
+
+She began pulling off her gloves, a new pair and tight. Her hands were
+moist and the glove-fingers stuck, rendering their removal lengthy and
+difficult.
+
+"To-morrow I shall have a thorough explanation with Miss Damaris and
+decide what action it is my duty to take after hearing her version of the
+events of this afternoon. I should prefer speaking to her to-night--"
+
+"Miss Damaris isn't fit to talk about anything to-night."
+
+Theresa pulled at the right-hand glove--the kid gave with a little
+shriek, the thumb splitting out. She was in a state of acute indecision.
+Could she retire from this contest without endangering her authority,
+without loss of prestige, or must she insist? She had no real wish to
+hasten to her ex-pupil's bedside. She would be glad to put off doing so,
+glad to wait. She was conscious of resentment rather than affection. And
+she felt afraid, unformulated suspicion, unformulated dread, again
+dogging her. That Damaris was really ill, she did not believe for an
+instant. Damaris had excellent health. The maids exaggerated. They
+delighted in making mysteries. Uneducated persons are always absurdly
+greedy of disaster, lugubriously credulous.--Yes, on the whole she
+concluded to maintain her original attitude, the attitude of yesterday
+and this morning; concluded it would be more telling to keep up the
+fiction of disgrace--because--Theresa did not care to scrutinize her own
+motives or analyse her own thought too closely. She was afraid, and she
+was jealous--jealous of Damaris' beauty, of the great love borne her by
+her father, jealous of the fact that a young man--hadn't she, Theresa,
+seen the young sea-captain once or twice in the village recently and been
+fluttered by his notable good looks?--had rescued the girl, and carried
+her home, carried her up here across the landing and along the familiar
+schoolroom passage, with its patterned Chinese wall-paper, gently and
+carefully, in his arms.
+
+And these qualifying terms--gentle and careful--rankled to the point even
+of physical disturbance, so that Miss Bilson again became guilty of
+inelegantly choking, and clearing her throat for the second time with a
+foolish crowing sound.
+
+"I will postpone my interview with Miss Damaris until after breakfast
+to-morrow," she said, thus leaving Mary Fisher virtually, if not
+admittedly, master of the field.
+
+But long before breakfast time, in the grey and mournful autumn
+morning, Patch rattled the dog-cart the seven miles into Stourmouth, as
+fast as the black horse could travel, to fetch Damaris' old friend, the
+retired Indian Civil surgeon, Dr. McCabe. For, coming to herself, in
+the intervals of distracted fever dreams, she had asked for him, going
+back by instinct to the comfort of his care of her in childish
+illnesses long ago. Since she was ill enough, so Mary said, to need a
+doctor, let it be him.
+
+"Not Mr. Cripps out of the village, or Dr. Risdon from Marychurch. I
+won't see them. I will not see anyone from near here. Keep them away from
+me," she commanded. "I know Miss Bilson will try to send for one or the
+other. But I won't see either. Promise you'll keep them away."
+
+When, after his visit, Theresa Bilson, considerably flustered and
+offended, found McCabe breakfasting in the dining-room and offered
+profuse apologies for the inconvenience to which he must have been put by
+so early and unnecessary a call, the tender-hearted and garrulous, but
+choleric Irishman cut her uncommonly short.
+
+"And would you be supposing then, that if the dear blessed child should
+be desirous of consulting me I wouldn't have rejoiced to come to her a
+thousand times as early and from ten thousand times as far?" he enquired,
+between large mouthfuls of kidney and fried bacon. "The scheming little
+pudding-faced governess creature, with a cherry nose and an envious eye
+to her"--he commented to himself.
+
+"But you do not apprehend anything serious?" Theresa said
+stiffly--"Merely a slight chill?"
+
+"With a temperature dancing up and down like a mad thing between a
+hundred and one and a hundred and three? I'm dashed if I like the looks
+of her at all, at all, Miss Bilson; and I am well acquainted with her
+constitution and her temperament. She's as delicate a piece of feminine
+mechanism as it's ever been my fortune to handle, and has been so from a
+child. Mind and body so finely interwoven that you can't touch the one
+without affecting the other--that is where danger comes in.--And I am
+glad to find she has so competent a nurse as Mary Fisher--a wholesome
+woman and one to put faith in. I have given my full instructions to her."
+
+"But I"--Theresa began fussily, her face crimson.
+
+"Oh! I don't doubt you're devotion itself; only my first consideration is
+my patient, and so I make free to use my own judgment in the selection of
+my assistants. No disrespect to you, my dear lady. You are at home in
+more intellectual spheres than that of the sick-room. And now," he wiped
+his mouth with his napkin, twinkling at her over the top of it with small
+blue-grey eyes, at once merry, faithful, and cunning--"I'll be bidding
+you good-bye till the evening. I have told Mary Fisher I'll be glad to
+sleep here to-night. And I'll despatch a telegram to Sir Charles on my
+way through the village."
+
+"Sir Charles?" Theresa cried.
+
+"Yes," he answered her. "I find the darling girl's illness as
+serious as that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A SOUL AT WAR WITH FACT
+
+
+The deepest and most abiding demand of all sentient creatures, strong and
+weak alike, is for safety, or, that being unattainable, for a sense of
+safety, an illusion even of safety.
+
+This, so universal demand, dictated, in Damaris' case, her prayer for Dr.
+McCabe's attendance. He belonged to the safeties of her childhood, to the
+securely guarded, and semi-regal state--as, looking back, she recalled
+it--of the years when her father held the appointment of Chief
+Commissioner at Bhutpur. Dr. McCabe was conversant with all that; the
+sole person available, at this juncture, who had lot or part in it. And,
+as she had foreseen--when drifting down the tide-river in the rain and
+darkness--once the supporting tension of Faircloth's presence removed,
+chaos would close in on her. It only waited due opportunity. That
+granted, as a tempest-driven sea it would submerge her. In the welter of
+the present, she clutched at the high dignities and distinctions of the
+past as at a lifebelt. Not vulgarly, in a spirit of self-aggrandizement;
+but in the simple interests of self-preservation, as a means of keeping
+endangered sanity afloat. For the distinctions and dignities of that
+period were real too, just as uncontrovertible a contribution to her
+knowledge of men and of things, just as vital an element in her
+experience, as chaos let loose on her now. The one in no degree
+invalidated the truth or actuality of the other.
+
+But to keep this in mind, to remember it all the time, while imagination
+galloped with fever brought on by chill and exposure, and reason
+wandered, losing touch with plain commonsense through the moral shock she
+had sustained, was difficult to the point of impossibility. She needed a
+witness, visible and material, to the fact of those former happier
+conditions; and found it, quaintly enough, in the untidy person and
+humorous, quarrelsome, brick-dust coloured face--as much of the said
+face, that is, as was discoverable under the thick stiff growth of sandy
+hair surrounding and invading it--of the Irish doctor, as he sat by her
+bed, ministered to and soothed her with reverent and whimsical delicacy.
+
+As long as he was there, her room retained its normal, pleasant and
+dainty aspect. All Damaris' little personal effects and treasures
+adorning dressing and writing-tables, the photographs and ornaments upon
+the mantelshelf, her books, the prints and pictures upon the walls--even
+the white dimity curtains and covers, trellised with small faded pink and
+blue roses--seemed to smile upon her, kindly and confiding. They wanted
+to be nice, to console and encourage her--McCabe holding them in place
+and in active good-will towards her, somehow, with his large freckled,
+hairy-backed hands. But let him go from the room, let him leave her, and
+they turned wicked, behaving as they had behaved throughout the past
+rather dreadful night and adding to the general chaos by tormenting
+tricks and distortions of their own.
+
+The beloved photographs of her father, in particular, were cruel. They
+grew inordinately large, stepped out of their frames, and stalked to and
+fro in troops and companies. The charcoal drawing of him--done last year
+by that fine artist, James Colthurst, as a study for the portrait he was
+to paint--hanging between the two western windows, at right angles to her
+bed where she could always see it, proved the worst offender. It did not
+take the floor, it is true, but remained in its frame upon the wall. Yet
+it too came alive, and looked full at her, compelling her attention,
+dominating, commanding her; while, slowly, deliberately it changed, the
+features slightly losing their accentuation, growing youthful, softer in
+outline, the long drooping moustache giving place to a close-cut beard.
+The eyes alone stayed the same, steady, luminous, a living silence in
+them at once formidable and strangely sad. Finally--and this the poor
+child found indescribably agitating and even horrible--their silence was
+broken by a question. For they asked what she, Damaris, meant to say,
+meant to do, when he--her father, the all-powerful Commissioner Sahib of
+her babyhood's faith and devotion--came home here, came back?
+
+Yet whose eyes, after all, were they which thus asked? Was it not, rather
+the younger man, the bearded one, who claimed, and of right, an answer to
+that question? And upon Damaris it now dawned that these two, distinct
+yet interchangeable personalities--imprisoned, as by some evil magic in
+one picture--were in opposition, in violent and impious conflict, which
+conflict she was called upon, yet was powerless, to avert or to assuage.
+
+Not once but many times--since the transformation was persistently
+recurrent--the girl turned her face to the wall to gain relief from the
+sight of it and the demand it so fearfully embodied, pressing her dry
+lips together lest any word should escape them. For the whole matter, as
+she understood it was secret, sacred too as it was agonizing. No one must
+guess what lay at the root of her present suffering--not even comfortable
+devoted Mary, nor that invaluable lifebelt, Dr. McCabe. She held the
+honour of both those conflicting interchangeable personalities in her
+hands; and, whether she were strong enough to adjust their differences or
+not, she must in no wise betray either of them. The latent motherhood in
+her cried out to protect and to shield them both, to spare them both. For
+in this stage of the affair, while the hallucinations of deadly fever--in
+a sense mercifully--confused her, its grosser aspects did not present
+themselves to her mind. She wandered through mazes, painful enough to
+tread; but far removed from the ugliness of vulgar scandal. That her
+sacred secret, for instance, might be no more than a _secret de
+Polichinelle_ suspected by many, did not, so far, occur to her.
+
+Believing it to be her exclusive property, therefore, she, inspired by
+tender cunning, strove manfully to keep it so. To that end she made play
+with the purely physical miseries of her indisposition.--With shivering
+fits and scorching flushes, cold aching limbs and burning, aching head.
+With the manifold distractions of errant blood which, leaving her heart
+empty as a turned-down glass, drummed in her ears and throbbed behind her
+eyeballs. These discomforts were severely real enough, in all conscience,
+to excuse her for being self-occupied and a trifle selfish; to justify a
+blank refusal to receive Theresa Bilson, or attempt to retail and discuss
+the events of yesterday. All she craved was quiet, to be left alone, to
+lie silent in the quiet light of the covered grey day.
+
+In the earlier hours of it, silver rain showers travelled across the sea
+to spend themselves, tearfully, against the panes of her bedroom
+windows. But towards evening the cloud lifted, revealing a watery
+sunset, spread in timid reds and yellows behind Stone Horse Head and the
+curving coast-line beyond, away to Stourmouth and Barryport. The faint
+tentative colours struck in long glinting shafts between the trunks and
+branches of the stone pines and Scotch firs in the so-called
+Wilderness--a strip of uncultivated land within the confines of the
+grounds dividing the gardens from the open Warren to the West--and
+gleamed in at the windows, faintly dyeing the dimity hangings and
+embroidered linen counterpane of Damaris' bed.
+
+Throughout the afternoon she had been less restless. So that Mary Fisher,
+judging her to be fairly asleep, some five minutes earlier had folded her
+needlework together, and, leaving the chair where she sat sewing, went
+softly from the room.
+
+But that brightening of sunset disturbed Damaris, bringing her slowly
+awake. For a time she lay watching, though but half consciously the
+tinted radiance as--the trees now stirred by a little wind drawing out of
+the sunset--it shifted and flitted over the white surfaces. At first it
+pleased her idle fancy. But presently distressed her, as too thin, too
+chill, too restlessly unsubstantial, the veriest chippering ghost of
+colour and of light. It affected her with a desolating sadness as of
+failure; of great designs richly attempted but petering out into a
+pitiful nothingness; of love which aped and mimicked, being drained of
+all purpose and splendour of hot blood; of partings whose sorrow had lost
+its savour, yet which masqueraded in showy crape for a heart-break long
+grown stale and obsolete.
+
+Her temperature rushed up; and she threw off the bedclothes, raising
+herself on her elbow, while the shafts of thin brightness wavered
+fitfully. Through them she saw the photographs of her father step out of
+their frames again, and growing very tall and spare, stalk to and fro.
+Other figures joined them--those of women. Her poor dear Nannie, in the
+plain quaker-grey cotton gown and black silk apron she used to wear, even
+through the breathless hot-weather days, at the Sultan-i-bagh long ago.
+And Henrietta Pereira, too, composed and delicately sprightly, arrayed in
+full flounced muslins and fine laces with an exquisiteness of high
+feminine grace and refinement which had enthralled her baby soul and
+senses, and, which held her captive by their charm even yet. A handsome,
+high-coloured full-breasted, Eurasian girl, whom she but dimly
+recollected, was there as well. And with these another--carrying very
+certainly no hint of things oriental about her--an English woman and of
+the people, in dull homely clothing, grave of aspect and of bearing; yet
+behind whose statuesque and sternly patient beauty a great flame seemed
+to quiver, offering sharp enough contrast to the frail glintings of the
+rain-washed sunset amid which she, just now, moved.
+
+At sight of the last comer, Damaris started up, tense with wonder and
+excitement, since she knew--somehow--this final visitant belonged not to
+the past so much as to the present, that her power was unexhausted and
+would go forward to the shaping of the coming years. Which knowledge drew
+confirmation from what immediately followed. For, as by almost
+imperceptible degrees the brightness faded in the west, the figures, so
+mysteriously peopling the room, faded out also, until only the woman in
+homely garments was left. By her side stood the charcoal drawing of Sir
+Charles Verity from off the wall--or seemed to do so, for almost at
+once, Damaris saw that dreaded interchange of personality again take
+place. Saw the strongly marked features soften in outline, the face grow
+bearded yet younger by full thirty years.
+
+Both the woman and the young man looked searchingly at her; and in the
+eyes of both she read the same question--what did she mean to do, what to
+say, when her father, the object of her adoration, came home to her, came
+back to Deadham Hard?
+
+"I will do right," she cried out loud to them in answer, "Only trust me.
+I am so tired and it is all so difficult to believe and to understand.
+But I am trying to understand. I shall understand, if you will give me
+time and not hurry me. And, when I understand, indeed, indeed, you may
+trust me, whatever it costs, to do right."
+
+Just then Mary opened the door, entering quickly, and behind her came Dr.
+McCabe, to find Damaris talking, talking wildly, sitting up, parched and
+vivid with fever, in the disordered bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+TELLING HOW TWO PERSONS, OF VERY DIFFERENT MORAL CALIBRE, WERE COMPELLED
+TO WEAR THE FLOWER OF HUMILIATION IN THEIR RESPECTIVE BUTTONHOLES
+
+
+Cross-country connections by rail were not easy to make, with the
+consequence that Sir Charles Verity,--Hordle, gun-cases, bags and
+portmanteaux, in attendance--did not reach The Hard until close
+upon midnight.
+
+Hearing the brougham at last drive up, Theresa Bilson felt rapturously
+fluttered. Her course had been notably empty of situations and of
+adventure; drama, as in the case of so many ladies of her profession--the
+pages of fiction notwithstanding--conspicuously cold-shouldering and
+giving her the go-by. Now, drama, and that of richest quality might
+perhaps--for she admitted the existence of awkward conjunctions--be said
+to batter at her door. She thought of the Miss Minetts, her ever-willing
+audience. She thought also--as so frequently during the last, in some
+respects, extremely unsatisfactory twenty-four hours--of Mr. Rochester
+and of Jane Eyre. Not that she ranged herself with Jane socially or as to
+scholastic attainments. In both these, as in natural refinement,
+propriety and niceness of ideas, she reckoned herself easily to surpass
+that much canvassed heroine. The flavour of the evangelical
+charity-school adhered--incontestably it adhered, and that to Jane's
+disadvantage. No extravagance of Protestantism or of applied
+philanthropy, thank heaven, clouded Theresa's early record. The genius of
+Tractarianism had rocked her cradle, and subsequently ruled her studies
+with a narrowly complacent pedantry all its own. Nevertheless in moments
+of expansion, such as the present, she felt the parallel between her own
+case and that of Jane did, in certain directions, romantically hold.
+Fortified by thought of the Miss Minetts' agitated interest in all which
+might befall her, she indulged in imaginary conversations with that great
+proconsul, her employer--the theme of which, purged of lyrical
+redundancies, reduced itself to the somewhat crude announcement that
+"your daughter, yes, may, alas, not impossibly be taken from you; but I,
+Theresa, still remain."
+
+When, however, a summons to the presence of the said employer actually
+reached her, the bounce born of imaginary conversations, showed a
+tendency, as is its habit, basely to desert her and soak clean away. She
+had promised herself a little scene, full of respectful solicitude, of
+sympathy discreetly offered and graciously accepted, a drawing together
+through the workings of mutual anxiety leading on to closer intercourse,
+her own breast, to put it pictorially, that on which the stricken parent
+should eventually and gratefully lean. But in all this she was
+disappointed, for Sir Charles did not linger over preliminaries. He came
+straight and unceremoniously to the point; and that with so cold and
+lofty a manner that, although flutterings remained, they parted company
+with all and any emotions even remotely allied to rapture.
+
+Charles Verity stood motionless before the fire-place in the long
+sitting-room. He still wore a heavy frieze travelling coat, the fronts of
+it hanging open. His shoulders were a trifle humped up and his head bent,
+as he looked down at the black and buff of the tiger skin at his feet.
+When Theresa approached with her jerky consequential little walk--pinkly
+self-conscious behind her gold-rimmed glasses--he glanced at her,
+revealing a fiercely careworn countenance, but made no movement to shake
+hands with or otherwise greet her. This omission she hardly noticed,
+already growing abject before his magnificence--for thus did his
+appearance impress her--which, while claiming her enthusiastic
+admiration, enjoined humility rather than the sentimental expansions in
+which her imaginary conversations had so conspicuously abounded.
+
+"I have seen Dr. McCabe," he began. "His report of Damaris' condition is
+very far from reassuring. He tells me her illness presents peculiar
+symptoms, and is grave out of all proportion to its apparent cause. This
+makes me extremely uneasy. It is impossible to question her at present.
+She must be spared all exertion and agitation. I have not attempted to
+see her yet."
+
+He paused, while anger towards her ex-pupil waxed warm in Theresa once
+again. For the pause was eloquent, as his voice had been when speaking
+about his daughter, of a depth of underlying tenderness which filled his
+hearer with envy.
+
+"I must therefore ask you, Miss Bilson," he presently went on, "to give
+me a detailed account of all that took place yesterday. It is important I
+should know exactly what occurred."
+
+Whereat Theresa, perceiving pitfalls alike in statement and in
+suppression of fact, hesitated and gobbled to the near neighbourhood of
+positive incoherence, while admitting, and trying to avoid admitting, how
+inconveniently ignorant of precise details she herself was.
+
+"Perhaps I erred in not more firmly insisting upon an immediate enquiry,"
+she said. "But, at the time, alarm appeared so totally uncalled for. I
+assumed, from what was told me, and from my knowledge of the strength of
+Damaris' constitution, that a night's rest would fully restore her to her
+usual robust state of health, and so deferred my enquiry. The servants
+were excited and upset, so I felt their account might be misleading--all
+they said was so confused, so far from explicit. My position was most
+difficult, Sir Charles," she assured him and incidentally, also, assured
+herself. "I encountered most trying opposition, which made me feel it
+would be wiser to wait until this morning. By then, I hoped, the maids
+would have had time to recollect themselves and recollect what is
+becoming towards their superiors in the way of obedience and respect."
+
+Charles Verity threw back his head with a movement of impatience, and
+looked down at her from under his eyelids--in effect weary and a
+little insolent.
+
+"We seem to be at cross purposes, Miss Bilson," he said. "You do not, I
+think quite follow my question. I did not ask for the servants' account
+of the events of yesterday--whatever those events may have been--but for
+your own."
+
+"Ah! it is so unfortunate, so exceedingly unfortunate," Theresa broke
+out, literally wringing her hands, "but a contingency, an accident, which
+I could not possibly have foreseen--I cannot but blame Damaris, Sir
+Charles"--
+
+"Indeed?" he said.
+
+"No, truly I cannot but blame her for wilfulness. If she had
+consented--as I so affectionately urged--to join the choir treat to
+Harchester, this painful incident would have been spared us."
+
+"Am I to understand that you went to Harchester, leaving my daughter
+here alone?"
+
+"Her going would have given so much pleasure in the parish," Theresa
+pursued, dodging the question with the ingenuity of one who scents mortal
+danger. "Her refusal would, I knew, cause sincere disappointment. I could
+not bring myself to accentuate that disappointment. Not that I, of
+course, am of any importance save as coming from this house, as--as--in
+some degree your delegate, Sir Charles."
+
+"Indeed?" he said.
+
+"Yes, indeed," Theresa almost hysterically repeated.
+
+For here--if anywhere--was her chance, as she recognized. Never again
+might she be thus near to him, alone with him--the normal routine made it
+wholly improbable.--And at midnight too. For the unaccustomed lateness of
+the hour undoubtedly added to her ferment, provoking in her obscure and
+novel hopes and hungers. Hence she blindly and--her action viewed from a
+certain angle--quite heroically precipitated herself. Heroically, because
+the odds were hopelessly adverse, her equipment, whether of natural or
+artificial, being so conspicuously slender. Her attempt had no backing in
+play of feature, felicity of gesture, grace of diction. The commonest
+little actress that ever daubed her skin with grease-paint, would have
+the advantage of Theresa in the thousand and one arts by which, from
+everlasting, woman has limed twigs for the catching of man. Her very
+virtues--respectability, learning, all the proprieties of her narrowly
+virtuous little life--counted for so much against her in the present
+supreme moment of her self-invented romance.
+
+"You hardly, I dare say," she pursued--"how should you after the
+commanding positions you have occupied?--appreciate the feelings of the
+inhabitants of this quiet country parish towards you. But they have a
+lively sense, believe me, of the honour you confer upon them, all and
+severally--I am speaking of the educated classes in particular, of
+course--by residing among them. They admire and reverence you so much, so
+genuinely; and they have extended great kindness to me as a member of
+your household. How can I be indifferent to it? I am thankful, Sir
+Charles, I am grateful--the more so that I have the happiness of knowing
+I owe the consideration with which I am treated, in Deadham, entirely to
+you.--Yes, yes," she cried in rising exaltation, "I do not deny that I
+went to Harchester yesterday--went--Dr. Horniblow thus expressed it when
+inviting me--'as representing The Hard.' I was away when Damaris made
+this ill-judged excursion across the river to the Bar. Had she confided
+her intention to me, I should have used my authority and forbade her. But
+recently we have not been, I grieve to say, on altogether satisfactory
+terms, and our parting yesterday was constrained, I am afraid."
+
+Theresa blushed and swallowed. Fortunately her sense of humour was
+limited; but, even so, she could not but be aware of a dangerous decline.
+Not only of bathos, but of vulgar bathos, from which gentility revolted,
+must she be the exponent, thanks to Damaris' indiscretion!
+
+"You require me to give you the details, Sir Charles," she resumed, "and
+although it is both embarrassing and repugnant to me to do so, I obey. I
+fear Damaris so far forgot herself--forgot I mean what is due to her age
+and position--as to remove her shoes and stockings and paddle in the
+sea--a most unsuitable and childish occupation. While she was thus
+engaged her things--her shoes and stockings--appear to have been stolen.
+In any case she was unable to find them when tired of the amusement she
+came up on to the beach. Moreover she was caught in the rain. And I
+deeply regret to tell you--but I merely repeat what I learned from Mary
+Fisher and Mrs. Cooper when I returned--it was not till after dark, when
+the maids had become so alarmed that they despatched Tolling and Alfred
+to search for her, that Damaris landed from a boat at the breakwater,
+having been brought down the river--by--by"--
+
+Throughout the earlier portion of her recital Charles Verity stood in the
+same place and same attitude staring down at the tiger skin. Twice or
+thrice only he raised his eyes, looking at the speaker with a flash of
+arrogant interrogation.
+
+Upon one, even but moderately, versed in the secular arts of twig-liming,
+such flashes would have acted as an effective warning and deterrent. Not
+so upon Theresa. She barely noticed them, as blindly heroic, she pounded
+along leading her piteous forlorn hope. Her chance--her unique chance, in
+nowise to be missed--and, still more, those obscure hungers, fed by the
+excitement of this midnight _tête-à-tête,_ rushed her forward upon the
+abyss; while at every sputtering sentence, whether of adulation,
+misplaced prudery, or thinly veiled animosity towards Damaris, she became
+more tedious, more frankly intolerable and ridiculous to him whose favour
+she so desperately sought. Under less anxious circumstances Charles
+Verity might have been contemptuously amused at this exhibition of futile
+ardour. Now it exasperated him. Yet he waited, in rather cruel patience.
+Presently he would demolish her, if to do so appeared worth the trouble.
+Meanwhile she should have her say, since incidentally he might learn
+something from it bearing upon the cause of Damaris' illness.
+
+But now, when, at the climax of her narrative, Theresa--seized by a spasm
+of retrospective resentment and jealousy, the picture of the young man
+carrying the girl tenderly in his arms across the dusky lawns arising
+before her--choked and her voice cracked up into a bat-like squeaking,
+Charles Verity's self-imposed forbearance ran dry.
+
+"I must remind you that neither my time nor capacity of listening are
+inexhaustible, Miss Bilson," he said to her. "May I ask you to be so good
+as to come to the point. By whom was Damaris rescued and brought home
+last night?"
+
+"Ah! that is what I so deeply regret," Theresa quavered, still
+obstinately dense and struggling with the after convulsion of her choke.
+"I felt so shocked and annoyed on your account, Sir Charles, when the
+maids told me, knowing how you would disapprove such a--such an incident
+in connection with Damaris.--She was brought home, carried"--she
+paused--"carried indoors by the owner of that objectionable public-house
+on the island. He holds some position in the Mercantile Marine, I
+believe. I have seen him recently once or twice myself in the
+village--his name is Faircloth."
+
+Theresa pursed up her lips as she finished speaking. The glasses of her
+gold pince-nez seemed to gleam aggressively in the lamp-light. The backs
+of the leather-bound volumes in the many book-cases gleamed also, but
+unaggressively, with the mellow sheen--as might fancifully be figured--of
+the ripe and tolerant wisdom their pages enshrined. The pearl-grey
+porcelain company of Chinese monsters, saints and godlings, ranged above
+them placid, mysteriously smiling, gleamed as well.
+
+For a time, silence, along with these various gleamings, sensibly, even a
+little uncannily, held possession of the room. Then Charles Verity moved,
+stiffly, and for once awkwardly, all of a piece. Backed against the
+mantelshelf, throwing his right arm out along it sharply and
+heavily--careless of the safety of clock and of ornaments--as though
+overtaken by sudden weakness and seeking support.
+
+"Faircloth? Of course, his name is Faircloth." he repeated absently.
+"Yes, of course."
+
+But whatever the nature of the weakness assailing him, it soon,
+apparently, passed. He stood upright, his face, perhaps, a shade more
+colourless and lean, but in expression fully as arrogant and formidably
+calm as before.
+
+"Very well, Miss Bilson," he began. "You have now given me all the
+information I require, so I need detain you no longer--save to say
+this.--You will, if you please, consider your engagement as my daughter's
+companion terminated, concluded from to-night. You are free to make such
+arrangements as may suit you; and you will, I trust, pardon my adding
+that I shall be obliged by your making them without undue delay."
+
+"You do not mean," Theresa broke out, after an interval of speechless
+amazement--"Sir Charles, you cannot mean that you dismiss me--that I am
+to leave The Hard--to--to go away?"
+
+"I mean that I have no further occasion for your services."
+
+Theresa waved her arms as though playing some eccentric game of ball.
+
+"You forget the servants, the conduct of the house, Damaris' need of a
+chaperon, her still unfinished education--All are dependent upon me."
+
+"Hardly dependent," he answered. "These things, I have reason to think,
+can safely be trusted to other hands, or be equally safely be left to
+take care of themselves."
+
+"But why do you repudiate me?" she cried again, rushing upon her fate in
+the bitterness of her distraction. "What have I done to deserve such
+harshness and humiliation?"
+
+"I gave the most precious of my possessions--Damaris--into your keeping,
+and--and--well--we see the result. Is it not written large enough, in all
+conscience, for the most illiterate to read?--So you must depart, my dear
+Miss Bilson, and for everyone's sake, the sooner the better. There can be
+no further discussion of the matter. Pray accept the fact that our
+interview is closed."
+
+But Theresa, now sensible that her chance was in act of being finally
+ravished away from her, fell--or rose--perhaps more truly the
+latter--into an extraordinary sincerity and primitiveness of emotion.
+She cast aside nothing less than her whole personal legend, cast aside
+every tradition and influence hitherto so strictly governing her conduct
+and her thought. Unluckily the physical envelope could not so readily be
+got rid of. Matter retained its original mould, and that one neither
+seductive nor poetic.
+
+She went down upon her fat little knees, held her fat little hands aloft
+as in an impassioned spontaneity of worship.
+
+"Sir Charles," she prayed, while tears running down her full cheeks
+splashed upon her protuberant bosom--"Sir Charles"--
+
+He looked at the funny, tubby, jaunty, would-be smart, kneeling figure.
+
+"Oh! you inconceivably foolish woman," he said and turned away.
+
+Did more than that--walked out into the hall and to his own rooms,
+opening off the corridor. In the offices a bell tinkled. Theresa
+scrambled on to her feet, just as Hordle, in response to its summons,
+arrived at the sitting-room door.
+
+"Did you ring, Miss?" he asked grudgingly. Less than ever was she in
+favour with the servants' hall to-night.
+
+Past intelligible utterance, Theresa merely shook her head in reply. Made
+a return upon herself--began to instruct him to put out the lamps in the
+room. Remembered that now and henceforth the right to give orders in this
+house was no longer hers; and broke into sobbing, the sound of which her
+handkerchief pressed against her mouth quite failed to stifle.
+
+About an hour later, having bathed and changed, Sir Charles Verity made
+his way upstairs. Upon the landing Dr. McCabe met him.
+
+"Better," he said, "thank the heavenly powers, decidedly better.
+Temperature appreciably lower, and the pulse more even. Oh! we're on the
+road very handsomely to get top dog of the devil this bout, believe me,
+Sir Charles."
+
+"Then go to bed, my dear fellow," the other answered. "I will take
+over the rest of the watch for you. You need not be afraid. I can be an
+admirable sick-nurse on occasion. And by the way, McCabe, something has
+come to my knowledge which in my opinion throws considerable light upon
+the symptoms that have puzzled you. Probably I shall be more sure of my
+facts before morning. I will explain to you later, if it should seem
+likely to be helpful to you in your treatment of the case. Just now, as
+I see it, the matter lies exclusively between me"--he smiled looking at
+his companion full and steadily--"between me"--he repeated, "and my
+only child."
+
+All which upon the face of it might, surely, be voted encouraging
+enough. Yet:
+
+"Should there be any that doubt the veritable existence of hell fire,"
+the doctor told himself, as he subsequently and thankfully pulled on his
+night-shirt, "to recover them, and in double quick time, of their heresy
+let 'em but look in my friend Verity's eyes."--And he rounded off the
+sentence with an oath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AN EXPERIMENT IN BRIDGE-BUILDING OF WHICH TIME ALONE CAN FIX THE VALUES
+
+
+Damaris lay on her side, her face turned to the wall. When Charles
+Verity, quietly crossing the room, sat down in an easy chair, so placed
+at the head of the half-tester bed as to be screened from it by the
+dimity curtains, she sighed and slightly shifted her position.
+
+Leaning back, he crossed his legs and let his chin drop on his breast.
+He had barely glanced at her in passing, receiving a vague impression
+of the outline of her cheek, of her neck, and shoulders, of her head,
+dark against the dim whiteness on which it rested, and the long dark
+stream of her hair spread loose across the pillows. He had no wish for
+recognition--not yet awhile. On the contrary, it was a relief to have
+time in which silently to get accustomed to her presence, to steep
+himself in the thought of her, before speech should define the new
+element intruded, as he believed, into his and her relation. Though
+little enough--too little, so said some of his critics--hampered by
+fear in any department, he consciously dreaded the smallest
+modification of that relation. Among the many dissatisfactions and
+bitternesses of life, it shone forth with a steady light of purity and
+sweetness, as a thing unspoiled, unbreathed on, even, by what is
+ignoble or base. And not the surface of it alone was thus free from all
+breath of defilement. It showed clear right through, as some gem of the
+purest water. To keep it thus inviolate, he had made sacrifices in the
+past neither easy nor inconsiderable to a man of his temperament and
+ambitions. Hence that its perfection should be now endangered was to
+him the more exquisitely hateful.
+
+Upon the altar of that hatred, promptly without scruple he sacrificed
+the wretched Theresa. Most of us are so constituted that, at a certain
+pass, pleasure--of a sort--is to be derived from witnessing the anguish
+of a fellow creature. In all save the grossly degenerate that pleasure,
+however, is short-lived. Reflection follows, in which we cut to ourselves
+but a sorry figure. With Charles Verity, reflection began to follow
+before he had spent many minutes in Damaris' sick-room. For here the
+atmosphere was, at once, grave and tender, beautifully honest in its
+innocence of the things of the flesh.--The woman had been inconceivably
+foolish, from every point of view. If she had known, good heavens, if she
+had only known! But he inclined now to the more merciful view that,
+veritably, she didn't know; that her practical, even her theoretic,
+knowledge was insufficient for her to have had any clear design. It was
+just a blind push of starved animal instinct. Of course she must go. Her
+remaining in the house was in every way unpermissible; still he need not,
+perhaps, have been so cold-bloodedly precipitate with her.
+
+Anyhow the thing was done--it was done--He raised his shoulders and
+making with his hands a graphic gesture of dismissal, let his chin drop
+on to his breast again.
+
+For the East had left its mark on his attitude towards women with one
+exception--that of his daughter--Charles Verity, like most men, not
+requiring of himself to be too rigidly consistent. Hence Theresa, and
+all which pertained to her, even her follies, appeared to him of
+contemptibly small moment compared with the developments for which those
+follies might be held accidentally responsible. His mind returned to
+that main theme painfully. He envisaged it in all its bearings, not
+sparing himself. Suffered, and looked on at his own suffering with a
+stoicism somewhat sardonic.
+
+Meanwhile Damaris slept. His nearness had not disturbed her, indeed he
+might rather suppose its effect beneficent. For her breathing grew even,
+just sweetly and restfully audible in the intervals of other sounds
+reaching him from out of doors.
+
+The wind, drawing out of the sunset, freshened during the night. Now it
+blew wet and gustily from south-west, sighing through the pines and
+Scotch firs in the Wilderness. A strand of the yellow Banksia rose,
+trained against the house wall, breaking loose, scratched and tapped at
+the window-panes with anxious appealing little noises.
+
+Many years had elapsed since Charles Verity spent a night upstairs in
+this part of the house, and by degrees those outdoor sounds attracted his
+attention as intimately familiar. They carried him back to his boyhood,
+to the spacious dreams and projects of adolescence. He could remember
+just such gusty wet winds swishing through the trees, such petulant
+fingering of errant creepers upon the windows, when he stayed here during
+the holidays from school at Harchester, on furlough from his regiment,
+and, later, on long leave from India, during his wonderful little
+great-uncle's lifetime.
+
+And his thought took a lighter and friendlier vein, recalling that
+polished, polite, encyclopedic minded and witty gentleman, who had lived
+to within a few months of his full century with a maximum of interest and
+entertainment to himself, and a minimum of injury or offence to others.
+To the last he retained his freshness of intellectual outlook, his
+insatiable yet discreet curiosity. Taking it as a whole, should his life
+be judged a singularly futile or singularly enviable one? Nothing
+feminine, save on strictly platonic lines, was recorded to have entered
+it at any period. Did that argue remarkable wisdom or defective courage,
+or some abnormal element in a composition otherwise deliciously mundane
+and human?
+
+Charles had debated this often. Even as a boy it had puzzled him. As a
+young man he had held his own views on the subject, not without lasting
+effect. For one winter he had passed at The Hard, in the fine bodily
+health and vigour of his early thirties, this very lack of women's
+society contributed, by not unnatural reaction, to force the idea of
+woman hauntingly upon him--thereby making possible a strange and hidden
+love passage off the Dead Sea fruit of which he was in process of
+supping here to-night.
+
+He moved, bent forward, setting his elbows on the two chair arms,
+closing his eyes as he listened, and leaning his forehead upon his
+raised hands. For in the plaintive voice of the moist, fitful
+southwesterly wind how, to his bearing, the buried, half-forgotten drama
+re-lived and reenacted itself!
+
+It dated far back, to a period when his career was still undetermined,
+hedged about by doubts and uncertainties--before the magnificent and
+terrible years of the Mutiny brought him, not only fame and distinction,
+but a power of self-expression and of plain seeing.--Before, too, his not
+conspicuously happy marriage. Before the Bhutpur appointment tested and
+confirmed his reputation as a most able if most autocratic ruler. Before,
+finally, his term of service under the Ameer in Afghanistan--that
+extraordinary experience of alternate good and evil fortune in barbaric
+internecine warfare, the methods and sentiments of which represented a
+swing back of three or four centuries, Christianity, and the attitude of
+mind and conduct Christianity inculcates, no longer an even nominal
+factor, Mahomet, sword in hand, ruthlessly outriding Christ.
+
+He had done largely more than the average Englishman, of his age and
+station, towards the making of contemporary history. Yet it occurred to
+him now, sitting at Damaris' bedside, those intervening years of
+strenuous public activity, of soldiering and of administration, along
+with the honours reaped in them, had procured cynically less substantial
+result, cynically less ostensible remainder, than the brief and hidden
+intrigue which preceded them. They sank away as water spilt on sand--thus
+in his present pain he pictured it--leaving barely a trace. While that
+fugitive and unlawful indulgence of the flesh not only begot flesh, but
+spirit,--a living soul, henceforth and eternally to be numbered among the
+imperishable generations of the tragic and marvellous children of men.
+
+Then, aware something stirred close to him, Charles Verity looked up
+sharply, turning his head; to find Damaris--raised on one elbow planted
+among the pillows--holding aside the dimity curtain and gazing
+wonderingly yet contentedly in his face.
+
+"Commissioner Sahib," she said, softly, "I didn't know you'd come back.
+I've had horrid bad dreams and seemed to see you--many of you--walking
+about. The room was full of you, you over and over again; but not like
+yourself, frightening, not loving me, busy about something or somebody
+else. I didn't at all enjoy that.--But I am awake now, aren't I? I
+needn't be frightened any more; because you do love me, don't you--and
+this really is you, your very ownself?"
+
+She put up her face to be kissed. But he, in obedience to an humility
+heretofore unfelt by and unknown to him, leaning sideways kissed the hand
+holding aside the curtain rather than the proffered lips.
+
+"Yes, my darling, very surely it is me," he said. "Any multiplication of
+specimens is quite superfluous--a single example of the breed is enough,
+conceivably more than enough."
+
+But to his distress, while he spoke, he saw the content die out of
+Damaris' expression and her eyes grow distended and startled. She glanced
+oddly at the hand he had just kissed and then at him again.
+
+"It seems to me something must have happened which I can't exactly
+remember," she anxiously told him, sitting upright and leaving go the
+curtain which slipped back into place shutting off the arm-chair and its
+occupant. "Something real, I mean, not just bad dreams. I know I had to
+ask you about it, and yet I didn't want to ask you."
+
+Charles Verity rose from his place, slowly walked the length of the room;
+and, presently returning, stood at the foot of the bed. Damaris still sat
+upright, her hands clasped, her hair hanging in a cloud about her to
+below the waist. The light was low and the shadow cast by the bed-curtain
+covered her. But, through it, he could still distinguish the startled
+anxiety of her great eyes as she pondered, trying to seize and hold some
+memory which escaped her. And he felt sick at heart, assured it could be
+but a matter of time before she remembered; convinced now, moreover, what
+she would, to his shame and sorrow, remember in the end.
+
+The purity in which he delighted, and to which he so frequently and
+almost superstitiously had turned for refreshment and the safeguarding of
+all the finest instincts of his own very complex nature, would, although
+she remembered, remain essentially intact. But, even so, the surface of
+it must be, as he apprehended, henceforth in some sort dimmed, and that
+by the breath of his own long ago misdoing. The revelation of passion and
+of sex, being practically and thus intimately forced home on her, the
+transparent innocence of childhood must inevitably pass away from her;
+and, through that same passing she would consciously go forward,
+embracing the privileges and the manifold burdens, the physical and
+emotional needs and aspirations of a grown woman. The woman might,
+would--such was his firm belief--prove a glorious creature. But it was
+not she whom he wanted. Her development, in proportion as it was rich and
+complete, led her away from and made her independent of him.--No, it
+wasn't she, but the child whom he wanted. And, standing at the foot of
+Damaris' bed, he knew, with a cruel certainty, he was there just simply
+to watch the child die.
+
+Yes, it was a mere matter of time. Sooner or later she would put a
+leading question--her methods being bravely candid and direct. Of course,
+it was open to him to meet that question with blank denial, open to him
+to lie--as is the practice of the world when such damnably awkward
+situations come along.--A solution having, in the present case, the
+specious argument behind it that in so doing he would spare her, save her
+pain, in addition to the obvious one that he would save his own skin.
+Moreover, if he lied he could trust Damaris' loyalty. Whether she
+believed it or not, she would accept his answer as final. No further
+question upon the subject would ever pass her lips. The temptation was
+definite and great. For might not the lie, if he could stomach his
+disgust at telling it, even serve to prolong the life of the child?
+Should he not sell his honour to save his honour--if it came to that?
+
+Thus he debated, his nature battling with itself, while at that battle he
+stoically, for a time, looked on. But when, at last, the climax was
+reached, and Damaris commenced to speak, stoicism dragged anchor. For he
+could conquer neither his disgust nor his sorrow, could find courage
+neither for his denial nor for watching the child die. Leaving the foot
+of the bed, he went and sat down in the arm-chair, where the dimity
+curtain screened Damaris from his, and him from Damaris' sight.
+
+"Commissioner Sahib," she began, her voice grave and low, "it has come
+back to me--the thing I had to ask you, but it is very hard to say. If it
+makes you angry, please try to forgive me--because it does hurt me to ask
+you. It hurts me through and through. Only I can't speak of it. I
+oughtn't just to leave it. To leave it would be wrong--wrong by you."
+
+"Very well, my darling, ask me then," he said, a little hoarsely.
+
+"You have heard about my being out on the Bar and--and all that?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have heard."
+
+"Captain Faircloth, who found me and brought me home, told me something."
+
+Damaris' voice broke into tones of imploring tenderness.
+
+"I love you, Commissioner Sahib, you know how I love you--but--but is
+what Captain Faircloth told me true?"
+
+Whereupon temptation surged up anew, inviting, inciting Charles Verity
+to lie--dressing up that lie in the cloak of most excellent charity, of
+veritable duty towards Damaris' fine courage and her precious innocence.
+And he hedged, keeping open, if only for a few minutes longer, the way
+of escape.
+
+"How can I answer until I know what he did tell you?" he took her up, at
+last, almost coldly.
+
+"That he is your son--is my brother," Damaris said.
+
+Even at this pass, Charles Verity waited before finally committing
+himself, thereby unwittingly giving sentiment--in the shape of the
+Powers of the Air--the chance to take a rather unfairly extensive hand
+in the game.
+
+For while he thus waited, he could not but be aware, through the tense
+silence otherwise reigning in the room, of the tap and scratch of the
+rose-spray upon the window-panes; of the swish of the moist gusty wind
+sweeping from across the salt-marsh and mud-flats of the Haven--from the
+black cottages, too, beyond the warren, gathered, as somewhat sinister
+boon companions, about the bleak, grey stone-built Inn. And this served
+to transfix his consciousness with visions of what once had been--he
+knowing so exactly how it would all sound, all look out there, the
+wistful desolation, the penetrating appeal bred of the inherent sadness
+of the place on a wild autumn night such as this.
+
+"Yes," he said at last, and putting a great constraint upon himself he
+spoke calmly, without sign of emotion. "What the young man told is true,
+Damaris, perfectly true."
+
+"I--I thought so," she answered back, gravely. "Though I didn't
+understand"--And, after a moment's pause, with a certain hopelessness of
+resignation--"Though I don't understand even now."
+
+In her utterance Charles Verity so distinctly heard the last words of
+the--to him--dying child, that, smitten with raging bitterness of grief
+and of regret, he said:
+
+"Nevertheless it is, in my opinion, disgraceful, abominable, that he
+should have made the occasion, or, to put the matter at its best, have
+taken advantage of the occasion, when you were alone and, in a sense, at
+his mercy, to tell you this most unhappy thing."
+
+"No, no," Damaris cried, in her generous eagerness catching back the
+curtain and looking at him nobly unselfconscious, nobly zealous to defend
+and to set right. "You mustn't think that. He didn't start with any
+intention of telling me. He fancied I might have lost my way among the
+sand-hills, that I might be frightened or get some harm, and so came
+straight to look for me, and take care of me. He was very beautifully
+kind; and I felt beautifully safe with him--safe in the same way I feel
+safe with you, almost."
+
+Her mouth was soft, her eyes alight--dangerously alight now, for
+her pulse had quickened. As she pleaded and protested her
+temperature raced up.
+
+"It happened later," she went on, "when we were in the boat, and it was
+partly my fault. He wrapped my feet up in his coat. They were very cold.
+And he believed I was asleep because I didn't speak or thank him. I was
+so tired, and everything seemed so strange. I couldn't rouse myself
+somehow to speak. And as he wrapped them in his coat, he kissed my feet,
+thinking I shouldn't know. But I wasn't asleep, and it displeased me. I
+felt angry, just as you felt when you condemned him just now."
+
+"Ah! as I felt just now!" he commented, closing his eyes and, just
+perceptibly, bowing his head.
+
+"Yes, Commissioner Sahib, as you felt just now--but as, please you
+mustn't go on feeling.--What he had done seemed to me treacherous; and it
+pained as well as displeased me. But in all that I was unjust and
+mistaken.--And it was then, because he saw he'd pained me, displeased and
+made me angry, that he told me in self-defence--told me to show he wasn't
+treacherous, but had the right--a right no one else in all the world has
+over me except yourself."
+
+"And you believed this young man, you forgave his audacity, and admitted
+his right?" Sir Charles said.
+
+He leaned back in the angle of the chair, away from her, smiling as he
+spoke--a smile which both bade farewell and mocked at the sharpness and
+futility of the grief which that farewell brought with it. For this was a
+grown woman who pleaded with him surely, acting as advocate? A child,
+compelled to treat such controversial, such debatable matters at all,
+would have done so to a different rhythm, in a different spirit.
+
+"Forgave him? But after just the first, when, I had time to at all think
+of it," Damaris answered with rather desperate bravery, "I couldn't see
+there was anything for me to forgive. It was the other way about. For
+haven't I so much which he might very well feel belonged, or should have
+belonged, to him?"
+
+"You cut deep, my dear," Sir Charles said quietly.
+
+Still holding back the curtain with one hand, Damaris flung herself
+over upon her face. She would not give way, she would not cry, but her
+soul was in travail. These words, as coming from her father, were
+anguish to her. She could look at him no longer, and lying outstretched
+thus, the lines of her gracious body, moulded by the embroidered linen
+quilt, quivered from head to heel. Still that travail of soul should
+bring forth fruit. She would not give in, cost what anguish it might,
+till all was said.
+
+"I only want to do what is right," she cried, her voice half stifled by
+the pillows. "You know, surely you know, how I love you, Commissioner
+Sahib, from morning till night and round till morning again, always and
+above all, ever since I can first remember. But this is different to
+anything that has ever happened to me before, and it wouldn't be right
+not to speak about it. It would be there all the time, and it would
+creep in between us--between you and me--and interfere in all my
+thinking about you."
+
+"It may very well do that in any case, my dear," he said.
+
+"No--no," Damaris answered hotly, "not if I do right now--right by both.
+For you must not entertain wrong ideas about him--about Captain Faircloth
+I mean. You must not suppose he said a word about my having what might,
+or ought to be his. He couldn't do so. He isn't the least that sort of
+person. He took pains to make me understand--I couldn't think why at
+first, it seemed a little like boasting--that he is quite well off and
+that he's very proud of his profession. He doesn't want anything
+from--from us. Oh! no," she cried, "no."
+
+And, in her excitement, Damaris raised herself, from the small of her
+back, resting on her elbows, sphinx-like in posture, her hands and
+arms--from the elbows--stretched out in front of her across the pillows.
+Her face was flushed, her eyes blazed. There was storm and vehemence in
+her young beauty.
+
+"No--he's too much like you, you yourself, Commissioner Sahib, to want
+anything, to accept anything from other people. He means to act for
+himself, and make people and things obey him, just as you yourself do.
+And," she went on, with a daring surely not a little magnificent under
+the circumstances--"he told me he loved life too well to care very much
+how he came by it to begin with."
+
+Damaris folded her arms, let her head sink on them as she finished
+speaking, and lay flat thus, her face hidden, while she breathed short
+and raspingly, struggling to control the after violence of her emotion.
+
+The curtain hung straight. The wind took up its desolate chant again. And
+Sir Charles Verity sat back in the angle of the arm-chair, motionless,
+and, for the present, speechless.
+
+In truth he was greatly moved, stirred to the deep places of perception,
+and of conscience also. For this death of childhood and birth of
+womanhood undoubtedly presented a rare and telling spectacle, which, even
+while it rent him, in some aspects enraged and mortified him, he still
+appreciated. He found, indeed, a strangely vital, if somewhat cruel,
+satisfaction in looking on at it--a satisfaction fed, on its more humane
+and human side, by the testimony to the worth of the unknown son by the
+so well-beloved daughter. Respecting himself he might have cause for
+shame; but respecting these two beings for whose existence--whether born
+in wedlock or out of it--he was responsible, he had no cause for shame.
+In his first knowledge of them as seen together, they showed strong,
+generous, sure of purpose, a glamour of high romance in their
+adventitious meeting and companionship.
+
+This was the first, the unworldly and perhaps deepest view of the matter.
+In it Charles Verity allowed himself to rest, inactive for a space. That
+there were, not one, but many other views of the said matter, very
+differently attuned and coloured he was perfectly well aware. Soon these
+would leap on him, and that with an ugly clamour which he consciously
+turned from in repulsion and weary disgust. For he was very tired, as he
+now realized. The anxiety endured during his tedious cross-country
+journey, the distasteful tragic-comedy of the _scéne de séduction_ so
+artlessly made him by unlucky Theresa Bilsen, followed by this prolonged
+vigil; lastly the very real tragedy--for such it in great measure
+remained and must remain--of his interview with Damaris and the re-living
+of long buried drama that interview entailed, left him mentally and
+physically spent. He fell away into meditation, mournful as it was
+indefinite, while the classic lament of another age and race formed
+itself silently upon his lips.
+
+"_Comprehenderunt me iniquitates meae, et non potui ut viderem.
+Multiplicatae sunt super capillos capitis mei; et cor meum dereliquit
+me_," he quoted, in the plenitude of his existing discouragement.
+
+At his time of life, he told himself, earth held no future; and in
+heaven--as the Churches figure it--namely, an adjustment of the balance
+on the other side death, his belief was of the smallest. A sea of
+uncertainty, vast, limitless, laps the shores of the meagre island of the
+present--which is all we actually have to our count. Faith is a
+gift.--You possess it, or you possess it not; yet without it--
+
+But here his attention was caught, and brought home to that very present,
+by a movement upon the bed and Damaris' voice, asking tremulously:
+
+"Commissioner Sahib are you angry, too angry to speak to me?"
+
+Whereupon Charles Verity got up, gathered back the curtain stuffing it in
+between the head board and the wall, and stood, tall, spare, yet
+graceful, looking down at her. Whether from fatigue or from emotion, his
+expression was softer, his face less keen than usual, and the likeness
+between him and Darcy Faircloth proportionately and notably great.
+
+"No, my dear," he said, "why should I be angry? What conceivable right
+have I to be angry? As a man sows so does he reap. I only reap to-day
+what I sowed eight or nine-and-twenty years ago--a crop largely composed
+of tares, though among those tares I do find some modicum of wheat. Upon
+that modest provision of wheat I must make shift to subsist with the best
+grace I may. No, don't cry, my darling. It is useless. Tears never yet
+altered facts. You will only do yourself harm, and put a crown to my
+self-reproach."
+
+He sat down on the side of the bed, taking her hand, holding and
+coaxing it.
+
+"Only let there be no doubt or suspicion on your part, my dear," he went
+on. "As you have travelled so far along this dolorous way, take courage
+and travel a little farther. To stop, to turn back, is only to leave your
+mind open to all manner of imaginations worse very likely than the truth.
+I will be quite plain with you. This episode--which I do not attempt to
+explain or excuse--took place, and ended, several years before I first
+met your mother. And it ended absolutely. Never, by either written or
+spoken word, have I held any communication with Lesbia Faircloth since.
+Never have I attempted to see her--this in the interests of her
+reputation every bit as much as in those of my own. For her station in
+life she was a woman of remarkable qualities and character. She had made
+an ugly, a repulsive marriage, and she was childless.--More than this it
+is not seemly I should tell you."
+
+Charles Verity waited a minute or so. He still coaxed Damaris' hand,
+calmly, soothingly. And she lay very still watching him; but with
+half-closed eyes, striving to prevent the tears which asked so
+persistently to be shed. For her heart went out to him in a new and
+over-flowing tenderness, in an exalted pity almost maternal. Never had she
+felt him more attractive, more, in a sense, royally lovable than in this
+hour of weariness, of moral nakedness, and humiliation.
+
+"Not until I had rejoined my regiment in India," he presently continued,
+in the same low even tones, "did I hear of the birth of her son. I have
+never seen him--or made enquiries regarding him. I meant to let the
+dead bury its dead in this matter. For everyone concerned it seemed best
+and wisest so. Therefore all you have told me to-night comes as news to
+me--and in some respects as good news. For I gather I have no reason to
+be ashamed of this young man--which on your account, even more than on my
+own, is so much clear gain.--But I oughtn't to have brought you here to
+live at Deadham. I ought to have taken the possibility of some accidental
+revelation, such as the present one, into serious account and saved you
+from that. To expose you, however remotely, to the risk was both callous
+and stupid on my part. I own I have a strong sentiment for this house. It
+seemed natural and restful to return to it--the only house to call a
+home, I have ever had. And so much has happened during the last eight or
+nine-and-twenty years, to occupy my mind, that I had grown indifferent
+and had practically forgotten the risks. This was selfish,
+self-indulgent, lacking in consideration and reverence towards you,
+towards your peace of mind, your innocence.--And for it, my darling, I
+beg your forgiveness."
+
+Damaris sat up in the bed, raised her face to be kissed.
+
+"No--no," she implored him, "don't say that. I can't bear to have you say
+it--to have you speak as if you had been, could ever be anything but
+beautiful and perfect towards me. I can't have you, not even for a little
+minute, step down, from the high place, which is your own, and talk of
+forgiveness. It hurts me.--I begin to understand that your world, a man's
+world, is different to my world--the world, I mean, in which I have been
+brought up. I know what is right for myself--but it would be silly to
+believe mine is the only rightness"--
+
+"Ah!" Charles Verity murmured, under his breath, "alas! for the child
+that is dead."
+
+And leaning forward he kissed her lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+TELLING HOW MISS FELICIA VERITY UNSUCCESSFULLY ATTEMPTED A RESCUE
+
+
+With the assistance of the Miss Minetts, reinforced by a bribe of five
+shillings, Theresa Bilson procured a boy on a bicycle, early the
+following morning, to convey a note the twelve miles to Paulton Lacy--Mr.
+Augustus Cowden's fine Georgian mansion, situate just within the Southern
+boundaries of Arnewood Forest. Miss Felicia Verity, to whom the note was
+addressed, still enjoyed the hospitality of her sister and
+brother-in-law; but this, as Mrs. Cowden gave her roundly to understand,
+must not be taken to include erratic demands upon the stables. If she
+required unexpectedly to visit her brother or her niece at Deadham Hard,
+she must contrive to do so by train, and by such hired conveyances as the
+wayside station of Paulton Halt at this end of her journey, and of
+Marychurch at the other, might be equal to supplying.
+
+"In my opinion, Felicia, it is quite ridiculous you should attempt to go
+there at all to-day," Mrs. Cowden, giving over for the moment her study
+of the _Morning Post,_ commandingly told her. "If Damaris has got a cold
+in her head through some imprudence, and if Charles has called Miss
+Bilson over the coals for not being more strict with her, that really is
+no reason why Augustus' and my plans for the afternoon should be set
+aside or why you should be out in the rain for hours with your
+rheumatism. I shall not even mention the subject to Augustus. We arranged
+to drive over to Napworth for tea, and I never let anything interfere
+with my engagements to the Bulparcs as you know. I encourage Augustus to
+see as much as possible of his own people.--I have no doubt in my own
+mind that the account of Damaris' illness is absurdly exaggerated. You
+know how Charles spoils her! She has very much too much freedom; and
+little Miss Bilson, though well-meaning, is incapable of coping with a
+headstrong girl like Damaris. She ought--Damaris ought I mean--to have
+been sent to a finishing school for another year at least. She might then
+have found her level. If Charles had consulted me, or shown the least
+willingness to accept my advice, I should have insisted upon the
+finishing school. It would have been immensely to Damaris' advantage. I
+have known all along that the haphazard methods of her education were
+bound to have deplorable results.--But look here, Felicia, if you really
+intend to go on this wild-goose-chase notwithstanding the rain, let the
+boy who brought the note order Davis' fly for you on his way back. He
+passes Paulton Halt. I shall not expect you before dinner to-night. Now
+that is settled."
+
+With which she returned to her interrupted study of the _Morning Post_.
+
+The above pronouncement while rendering Felicia Verity somewhat uneasy,
+in nowise turned her from her purpose. Her powers of sympathy were as
+unlimited as they were confused and, too often, ineffective. Forever she
+ran after the tribulations of her fellow creatures, pouring forth on them
+treasures of eager sympathy, but without discrimination as to whether the
+said tribulations were in fact trivial or profound, deserving or
+deserved. That anyone under any circumstances, should suffer, be
+uncomfortable or unhappy, filled her with solicitude. The loss of an
+eyelash, the loss of a fortune, the loss of the hope of a lifetime
+equally ranked. Illness and disease appealed to her in hardly less degree
+than unfortunate affairs of the heart. She practised the detection of
+extenuating circumstances as one might practise a fine art. She wallowed
+in sentiment, in short; but that with such native good-breeding and
+singleness of mind, as went far to redeem the said wallowings from
+morbidity or other offence. Her friends and acquaintances loved her,
+quite unconscionably made use of her, secretly laughed at her, grew weary
+of her, declared that "of such are the Kingdom of Heaven;" and, having
+successfully exploited her, turned with relief to the society of persons
+frankly belonging to the kingdoms of earth. Men petted but did not
+propose to her; affected to confide in her, but carefully withheld the
+heart of their confessions. Tall, thin, gently hurried and bird-like, she
+yet bore a quaint, almost mirthful, resemblance to her brother, Sir
+Charles Verity. Such was the lady who responded, in a spirit of liveliest
+charity, to Theresa's wildly waved flag of distress.
+
+By the time Miss Verity reached Marychurch the rain amounted to a
+veritable downpour. Driven by the southwesterly wind, it swept in sheets
+over the low-lying country, the pallid waters, drab mud-flats, dingy
+grey-green salt-marsh, and rusty brown reed-beds of the estuary. The
+dusty road, running alongside this last through the hamlets of Horny
+Cross and Lampit, grew hourly deeper in gritty mud. Beyond question
+summer and all its dear delights were departed and the chill mournfulness
+of autumn reigned in their stead.
+
+With the surrounding mournfulness, Miss Verity's simple, yet devious,
+mind played not ungratefully. For it seemed to her to harmonize with the
+true inwardness of her mission, offering a sympathetic background to the
+news of her niece's indisposition and the signals of distress flown by
+her little _protégée_, Theresa Bilson. The note addressed to her by the
+latter was couched in mysterious and ambiguous phrases, the purport of
+which she failed to grasp. Theresa's handwriting, usually so neat and
+precise, was wobbly, bearing unmistakable traces of severe agitation and
+haste. She hinted at nothing short of catastrophe, though whether in
+relation to herself, to her ex-pupil, or to Sir Charles, Miss Verity
+couldn't for the life of her discover. It was clear in any case, however,
+that affairs at The Hard had, for cause unknown, gone quite startlingly
+astray, and that Theresa found herself entirely unequal to righting
+them--hence her outcry.
+
+Under these circumstances, it struck Miss Verity as only tasteful and
+tactful that her approach to the distracted dwelling should take place
+unheralded by rumble of wheels or beat of horse-hoofs, should be pitched
+in a, so to speak, strictly modest and minor key. On arriving at the
+front gate she therefore alighted and, bidding her grumpy and streaming
+flyman take himself and his frousty landau to the Bell and Horns in
+Deadham village there to await her further orders, proceeded to walk up
+the carriage-drive under the swaying, dripping trees.
+
+About fifty yards from the gate the drive turns sharply to the left; and,
+just at the turn, Miss Verity suddenly beheld a tall figure clad in a
+seaman's oilskins and sou'wester, coming towards her from the direction
+of the house. Youth and good looks--more especially perhaps masculine
+ones--whatever rank of life might exhibit them, acted as a sure passport
+to Miss Verity's gentle heart. And the youth and good looks of the man
+approaching her became momentarily more incontestable. His bearing, too,
+notwithstanding the clumsiness of his shiny black over-garment, had a
+slightly ruffling, gallantly insolent air to it, eminently calculated to
+impress her swift and indulgent fancy.
+
+The young man, on his part, calmly took stock of her appearance, as she
+beat up against the wind, her flapping waterproof cloak giving very
+inefficient protection to the rather girlish dove-grey cashmere dress,
+picked out with pink embroidery, beneath it. At first his eyes challenged
+hers in slightly defiant and amused enquiry. But as she smiled back at
+him, sweetly eager, ingenuously benignant, his glance softened and his
+hand went up to his sou'wester with a courteous gesture.
+
+"What weather!" she exclaimed. "How fearfully wet!"--while her expression
+testified to a flattering interest and admiration.
+
+"Yes, it's a wild day," he said, in answer. "I expect We've seen the last
+of the sun, anyhow for this week."
+
+The incident, though of the most casual and briefest, gave a new
+direction to Miss Verity's thought. It pleased and intrigued her,
+bringing a pretty blush to her thin cheeks. "Who and what can he be?" she
+said to herself. "Where can I have seen him before?" And the blush
+deepened. "I must really describe him to Charles and find out who he is."
+
+This monologue brought her as far as the front door, at which, it may be
+added, she--though by no means impatient--did in point of fact ring twice
+before the man-servant answered it. Although Mr. Hordle had the reputation
+of "being fond of his joke" in private life, in his official capacity his
+manner offered a model of middle-aged sedateness and restraint. To-day
+neither humour nor reserve were in evidence, but a harassed and hunted
+look altogether surprising to Miss Verity. He stared at her, stared past
+her along the drive, before attempting to usher her into the hall and
+relieve her of her umbrella and her cloak.
+
+"Sir Charles doesn't expect me, Hordle," she said. "But hearing Miss
+Damaris was unwell I came over from Paulton Lacy at once."
+
+"Quite so, ma'am. Sir Charles has not left his room yet. He did not reach
+home till late, and he sat up with Miss Damaris the rest of the night."
+
+"Oh! dear--did he? Then, of course, I wouldn't disturb him on any
+account, Hordle. I had better see Miss Bilson first. Will you tell her
+I am here?"
+
+"I can send Laura to enquire, ma'am. But, I doubt if Miss Bilson, will
+care to come downstairs at present."
+
+"She is with Miss Damaris?"
+
+"No, ma'am, Miss Bilson is not with Miss Damaris."
+
+Hordle paused impressively, sucking in his under lip.
+
+"If I might presume to advise, ma'am, I think it would be wise you should
+see Miss Bilson in the schoolroom--and go up by the back staircase,
+ma'am, if you don't object so as to avoid passing Miss Damaris' bedroom
+door. I should not presume to suggest it, ma'am, but that our orders as
+to quiet are very strict."
+
+In this somewhat ignominious method of reaching her objective Miss
+Verity, although more and more mystified, amiably acquiesced--to be
+greeted, when Hordle throwing open the schoolroom door formally announced
+her, by a sound closely resembling a shriek.
+
+Entrenched behind a couple of yawning trunks, a litter of feminine
+apparel and of personal effects--the accumulation of a long term of
+years, for she was an inveterate hoarder--encumbering every available
+surface, the carpet included, Theresa Bilson stood as at bay.
+
+"My dear friend," Miss Verity exclaimed advancing with kindly
+outstretched hands--"what is the meaning of this?"--She looked at the
+miscellaneous turn-out of cupboards and chests of drawers, at the display
+of garments not usually submitted to the public gaze. "Are you preparing
+a rummage sale or are you--but no, surely not!--are you packing? I cannot
+describe how anxious I am to hear what has occurred. My sister, Mrs.
+Cowden, was extremely adverse to my facing the bad weather; but, I felt
+your note could only be answered in person. Let me hear everything."
+
+She drew Theresa from behind the luggage entrenchments, and, putting
+aside an assortment of derelict hats and artificial flowers strewn in
+most admired confusion on the sofa, made her sit down upon the said piece
+of furniture beside her.
+
+Whereupon, in the pensive, rain-washed, mid-day light, which served to
+heighten rather than mitigate the prevailing, very unattractive and
+rather stuffy disorder obtaining in the room, Theresa Bilson, not without
+chokings and lamentations, gave forth the story of her--to herself quite
+spectacular--deposition from the command of The Hard and its household.
+She had sufficiently recovered her normal attitude, by this time, to pose
+to herself, now as a heroine of one of Charlotte Bronte's novels, now as
+a milder and more refined sample of injured innocence culled from the
+pages of Charlotte Yonge. A narrow, purely personal view inevitably
+embodies an order of logic calculated to carry conviction; and Theresa,
+even in defeat, retained a degree of self-opinionated astuteness. She
+presented her case effectively. To be discharged, and that in disgrace,
+to be rendered homeless, cast upon the world at a moment's notice, for
+that which--with but trifling, almost unconscious, manipulation of
+fact--could be made to appear as nothing worse than a venial error of
+judgment, did really sound and seem most unduly drastic punishment.
+
+Miss Verity's first instinct was to fling herself into the breech; and,
+directly her brother emerged from his room, demand for her _protégée_
+redress and reinstatement. Her second instinct was--she didn't, in truth,
+quite know what--for she grew sadly perplexed as she listened.
+
+Her sympathy, in fact, split into three inconveniently distinct and
+separate streams. Of these Theresa's woes still claimed the widest and
+deepest, since with Theresa she was in immediate and intimate contact.
+Yet the other two began to show a quite respectable volume and current,
+as she pictured Damaris marooned on the Bar and Sir Charles ravished away
+from the seasonable obligation of partridge shooting to take his place at
+his daughter's bedside.
+
+"But this young Captain Faircloth, of whom you speak," she presently
+said, her mind taking one of its many inconsequent skippits--"who so
+providentially came to the dearest child's assistance--could he, I
+wonder, be the same really very interesting-looking young man I met in
+the drive, just now, when I came here?"
+
+And Miss Verity described him, while a pretty stain of colour illuminated
+her cheek once more.
+
+"You think quite possibly yes?--How I wish I had known that at the time.
+I would certainly have stopped and expressed my gratitude to him. Such a
+mercy he was at hand!--Poor dearest Damaris! I hope his good offices
+have already been acknowledged. Do you know if my brother has seen and
+thanked him?"
+
+The expression of Theresa's round little face, still puffy and blotched
+from her last night's weeping, held a world of reproachful remindings.
+
+"Ah! no," the other cried conscience-stricken--"no, of course not. How
+thoughtless of me to ask you. And"--another mental skippit--"and that you
+should be forbidden the sick-room too, not permitted to nurse Damaris! My
+poor friend, indeed I do feel for you. I so well understand that must
+have caused you more pain than anything."
+
+A remark her hearer found it not altogether easy to counter with
+advantage to her own cause, so wisely let it pass in silence.
+
+"I know--I know, you can hardly trust yourself to speak of it. I am so
+grieved--so very grieved. But one must be practical. I think you are wise
+to yield without further protest. I will sound my brother--just find out
+if he shows any signs of relenting. Of course, you can understand, I
+ought to hear his view of the matter too--not, that I question your
+account, dear friend, for one instant. Meanwhile make all your
+arrangements."
+
+"The village!"--Theresa put in, with a note of despair this time
+perfectly genuine.
+
+"Ah, yes--the village. But if I take you away, in my fly I mean, that
+will give you a position, a standing. It will go far to prevent
+unpleasant gossip!"
+
+Miss Verity's soul looked out of her candid eyes with a positive
+effulgence of charity.
+
+"Oh! I can enter so fully into your shrinking from all that. We will
+treat your going as temporary, merely temporary--in speaking of it both
+here and at Paulton Lacy. Of course, you might stay with your friends,
+the good Miss Minetts; but I can't honestly counsel your doing so. I am
+afraid Sir Charles might not quite like your remaining in Deadham
+directly after leaving his house. It might be awkward, and give rise to
+tiresome enquiries and comment. One has to consider those things.--No--I
+think it would be a far better plan that you should spend a week at
+Stourmouth. That would give us time to see our way more clearly. I know
+of some quite nice rooms kept by a former maid of Lady Bulparc's. You
+would be quite comfortable there--and, as dinner at Paulton Lacy isn't
+till eight, I could quite well go into Stourmouth with you myself this
+afternoon. And, my dear friend, you will, won't you, forgive my speaking
+of this"--
+
+Miss Verity--whose income, be it added, was anything but princely--gave
+an engagingly apologetic little laugh.
+
+"Pray don't worry yourself on the score of expense. The week in
+Stourmouth must cost you nothing. As I recommend the rooms I naturally am
+responsible--you go to them as my guest, of course.--Still I'll sound my
+brother at luncheon, and just see how the land lies. But don't build too
+much on any change of front. I don't expect it--not yet. Later, who knows
+Meanwhile courage--do try not to fret."
+
+And Miss Verity descended the backstairs again.
+
+"Poor creature--now her mind will be more at rest, I do trust. I am
+afraid Charles has been rather severe. I never think he does quite
+understand women. But how should he after only being married for
+three--or four years, was it?--Such a very limited experience!--It is a
+pity he didn't marry again, while Damaris was still quite small--some
+really nice woman who one knows about. But I suppose Charles has never
+cared about that side of things. His public work has absorbed him. I
+doubt if he has ever really been in love"--Miss Verity sighed.--"Yes,
+Hordle, thanks I'll wait in the long sitting-room. Please let Sir Charles
+know I am there, that I came over to enquire for Miss Damaris. He is
+getting up?--Yes--I shall be here to luncheon, thanks."
+
+But, during the course of luncheon, that afore-mentioned split in Miss
+Verity's sympathies was fated to declare itself with ever growing
+distinctness. The stream consecrated to Theresa's woes--Theresa herself
+being no longer materially present--declined in volume and in force,
+while that commanded by Felicia's affection for her brother soon rushed
+down in spate. Perhaps, as she told herself, it was partly owing to the
+light--which, if pensive upstairs in the white-walled schoolroom, might,
+without exaggeration, be called quite dismally gloomy in the
+low-ceilinged dining-room looking out on the black mass of the ilex
+trees over a havoc of storm-beaten flower-beds--but Sir Charles struck
+her as so worn, so aged, so singularly and pathetically sad. He was
+still so evidently oppressed by anxiety concerning Damaris that, to hint
+at harsh action on his part, or plead Theresa's cause with convincing
+earnestness and warmth, became out of the question. Miss Verity hadn't
+the heart for it.
+
+"Be true to your profession of good Samaritan, my dear Felicia," he
+begged her with a certain rueful humour, "and take the poor foolish
+woman off my hands. Plant her where you like, so long as it is well out
+of my neighbourhood. She has made an egregious fiasco of her position
+here. As you love me, just remove her from my sight--let this land have
+rest and enjoy its Sabbaths in respect of her at least. I'll give you a
+cheque for her salary, something in excess of the actual amount if you
+like; for, heaven forbid, you should be out of pocket yourself as a
+consequence of your good offices.--Now let us, please, talk of some less
+unprofitable subject."
+
+Brightly, sweetly eager, Miss Verity hastened to obey, as she believed,
+his concluding request.
+
+"Ah! yes," she said, "that reminds me of something about which I do so
+want you to enlighten me.--This young Captain Faircloth, who so
+opportunely appeared on the scene and rescued darling Damaris, I believe
+I met him this morning, as I walked up from the front gate. I wondered
+who he was. His appearance interested me, so did his voice. It struck me
+as being so quaintly like some voice I know quite well--and I stupidly
+cannot remember whose."
+
+The coffee-cups chattered upon the silver tray as Hordle handed it to
+Miss Verity.
+
+"You spoke to him then?" Sir Charles presently said.
+
+"Oh! just in passing, you know, about the weather--which was phenomenally
+bad, raining and blowing too wildly at the moment. I supposed you had
+seen him. He seemed to be coming away from the house."
+
+Charles Verity turned sideways to the table, bending down a little over
+the tray as he helped him. The coffee splashed over into the saucer; yet
+it was not the hand holding the coffee-pot, but those holding the tray
+that shook. Whereupon Charles Verity glanced up into the manservant's
+face, calmly arrogant.
+
+"Pray be careful, Hordle," he said. And then--"Is Miss Verity right in
+supposing Captain Faircloth called here this morning?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir Charles. Yes, Sir Charles, he did."
+
+"What did he want?"
+
+"He came to enquire after Miss Damaris, Sir Charles. I understood him to
+say he was going away to sea shortly."
+
+"Did he ask for me?"
+
+"No, Sir Charles," rather hurriedly; and later, with visible effort to
+recapture the perfection of well-trained nullity.--"He only asked after
+Miss Damaris."
+
+"When he calls again, let me know. Miss Damaris wishes to see him if she
+is sufficiently well to do so."
+
+"Very good, Sir Charles."
+
+And during this conversation, Felicia felt keenly distressed and
+perplexed. It made her miserable to think evil of anyone--particularly an
+old and trusted servant. But from the moment of her arrival Hordle's
+manner had seemed so very strange. Of course it was horrid even to
+suspect such a thing; but was it possible that he over-indulged
+sometimes, that he, in plain English, drank? Poor dear Charles--if he
+knew it, what an additional worry! It really was too deplorable.--Anyway
+she could alleviate his worries to a certain extent by carrying Theresa
+off. She would do so at once.--Was there an evening train from
+Stourmouth, which stopped at Paulton Halt? Well--if there wasn't she must
+get out at Marychurch, and drive from there. She only trusted she would
+be in time to dress for dinner. Harriet was such a stickler for
+etiquette.
+
+From all which it may be deduced that the confessions, made to Miss
+Verity to-day, had this in common with those habitually heard by
+her--that the point of the story had been rather carefully left out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+IN WHICH DAMARIS RECEIVES INFORMATION OF THE LOST SHOES AND
+STOCKINGS--ASSUMPTION OF THE GOD-HEAD
+
+
+As Darcy Faircloth prophesied, the wild weather lasted throughout that
+week. Then, the rain having rained itself out, the wind backed and the
+skies cleared. But all to a different mode and rhythm. A cold white sun
+shone out of a cold blue sky, diapered, to the north above the indigo and
+umber moorland and forest, with perspectives of tenuous silken-white
+cloud. Land and sky were alike washed clean, to a starkness and nakedness
+calling for warm clothing out of doors, and well-stoked fires within.
+
+At the beginning of the next week, invited by that thin glinting
+sunshine--beneath which the sea still ran high, in long, hollow-backed
+waves, brokenly foam-capped and swirling--Damaris came forth from her
+retreat, sufficiently convalescent to take up the ordinary routine of
+life again. But this, also, to a changed mode and rhythm, having its
+source in causes more recondite and subtle than any matter of fair or
+foul weather.
+
+To begin with she had, in the past week, crossed a certain bridge there
+is no going back over for whoso, of her sex, is handicapped or
+favoured--in mid-nineteenth century the handicap rather than the favour
+counted even more heavily than it does to-day, though even to-day, as
+some of us know to our cost, it still counts not a little!--by possession
+of rarer intelligence, more lively moral and spiritual perceptions, than
+those possessed by the great average of her countrymen or countrywomen.
+Damaris' crossing of that bridge--to carry on the figure--affected her
+thought of, and relation to everyone and everything with which she now
+came in contact. She had crossed other bridges on her eighteen years'
+journey from infancy upwards; but, compared with this last, they had been
+but airy fantastic structures, fashioned of hardly more substantial stuff
+than dreams are made of.--Thus, anyhow, it appeared to her as she lay
+resting in her pink-and-white curtained bed, watching the loose
+rose-sprays tremble against the rain-spattered window-panes.--For this
+last bridge was built of the living stones of fact, of deeds actually
+done; and, just because it was so built, for one of her perceptions and
+temperament, no recrossing of it could be possible.
+
+So much to begin with.--To go on with, even before Dr. McCabe granted her
+permission to emerge from retirement, all manner of practical matters
+claimed her attention; and that not unwholesomely, as it proved in the
+sequel. For with the incontinent vanishing of Theresa Bilson into space,
+or,--more accurately--into the very comfortable lodgings provided for her
+by Miss Verity in Stourmouth, the mantle of the ex-governess-companion's
+domestic responsibilities automatically descended upon her ex-pupil. The
+said vanishing was reported to Damaris by Mary, on the day subsequent to
+its occurrence, not without signs of hardly repressed jubilation. For
+"Egypt," in this case represented by the Deadham Hard servants' hall, was
+unfeignedly "glad at her departing."
+
+"A good riddance, I call it--and we all know the rest of that saying,"
+Mrs. Cooper remarked to an audience of Hordle and Mary Fisher, reinforced
+by the Napoleonic Patch and his wife--who happened to have looked in from
+the stables after supper--some freedom of speech being permissible,
+thanks to the under-servants' relegation to the kitchen.
+
+"I never could see she was any class myself. But the airs and graces
+she'd give herself! You'll never persuade me she wasn't sweet on the
+master. That was at the back of all her dressings up, and flouncings and
+fidgetings. The impidence of it!--You may well say so, Mrs. Patch. But
+the conceit of some people passes understanding. To be Lady Verity, if
+you please, that was what she was after. To my dying day I shall believe
+it. Don't tell me!"
+
+Mary's announcement of the event was couched in sober terms, shorn of
+such fine flowers of suggestion and comment. Yet it breathed an
+unmistakable satisfaction, which, to Damaris' contrition, found instant
+echo in her own heart. She ought, she knew, to feel distressed at poor
+Theresa's vanishing--only she didn't and couldn't. As an inherent
+consequence of the afore-chronicled bridge-crossing, Theresa was more
+than ever out of the picture. To listen to her chatterings, to evade her
+questionings would, under existing circumstances, amount to a daily trial
+from which the young girl felt thankful to escape. For Damaris
+entertained a conviction the circumstances in question would call for
+fortitude and resource of an order unknown, alike in their sternness and
+their liberality of idea, to Theresa's narrowly High Anglican and
+academic standards of thought and conduct. She therefore ascertained from
+her informant that Miss Verity had been as actively instrumental in the
+vanishing--had, to be explicit, taken "Miss Bilson, and all her luggage
+(such a collection!) except two disgraceful old tin boxes which were to
+be forwarded by the carrier, away with her in her own Marychurch
+fly."--And at this Damaris left the business willingly enough, secure
+that if tender-hearted Aunt Felicia was party to the removal, it would
+very surely be effected with due regard to appearances and as slight
+damage to "feelings" as could well be.
+
+Later Sir Charles referred briefly to the subject, adding:
+
+"When you require another lady-in-waiting we will choose her ourselves, I
+think, rather than accept a nominee of my sister Felicia's. She is
+certain to have some more or less unsuitable and incapable person on
+hand, upon whom she ardently desires to confer benefits."
+
+"But must I have another lady-in-waiting?" Damaris meaningly and
+pleadingly asked.
+
+Charles Verity drew his hand down slowly over his flowing moustache, and
+smiled at her in tender amusement, as she sat up in a much lace and
+ribbon befrilled jacket, her hair hanging down in a heavy plait on
+either side the white column of her warmly white throat. Her face was
+refined to a transparency of colouring, even as it seemed of texture,
+from confinement to the house and from lassitude following upon fever,
+which, while he recognized its loveliness, caused him a pretty sharp
+pang. Still she looked content, as he told himself. Her glance was frank
+and calm, without suggestion of lurking anxiety.
+
+Nor was she unoccupied and brooding--witness the counterpane strewn with
+books, with balls of wool, a sock in leisurely process of knitting, and,
+in a hollow of it, Mustapha, the brindled cat, luxuriously sleeping
+curled round against her feet.
+
+"Heaven knows I've no special craving your lady-in-waiting should find a
+speedy successor," he said. "But to do without one altogether might
+appear a rather daring experiment. Your aunts would be loud in protest."
+
+"What matters isn't the aunts, is it, but ourselves?" Damaris quite gaily
+took him up.
+
+"But wouldn't you be lonely, my dear, and would you not find it
+burdensome to run the house yourself?"
+
+"No--no," she cried. "Not one bit. Anyway let me try, Commissioner
+Sahib. Let us be by ourselves together--beautifully by ourselves, for a
+time at least."
+
+"So be it then," Charles Verity said.
+
+And perhaps, although hardly acknowledged, in the mind of each the same
+consideration operated. For there remained a thing still to be done
+before the new order could be reckoned as fully initiated, still more
+fully established,--a thing which, as each knew, could be best done
+without witnesses; a thing which both intended should very surely be
+done, yet concerning which neither proposed to speak until the hour of
+accomplishment actually struck.
+
+That hour, in point of fact, struck sooner than Damaris anticipated, the
+sound and sight of it reaching her without prelude or opportunity of
+preparation. For early in the afternoon of the second day she spent
+downstairs, as, sitting at the writing table in the long drawing-room,
+she raised her eyes from contemplation of the house-keeping books spread
+out before her, she saw her father walking slowly up from the sea-wall
+across the lawn. And seeing him, for the moment, her mind carried back to
+that miracle of interchangeable personalities so distressingly haunting
+her at the beginning of her illness, when James Colthurst's charcoal
+sketch of her father played cruel juggler's tricks upon her. For beside
+him now walked a man so strangely resembling him in height, in bearing
+and in build that, but for the difference of clothing and the bearded
+face, it might be himself had the clock of his life been set back by
+thirty years.
+
+Damaris' first instinct was of flight. Just as when, out on the Bar with
+her cousin, Tom Verity, now nearly a month ago, overcome by a foreboding
+of far-reaching danger she had--to the subsequent bitter wounding of her
+self-respect and pride--shown the white feather, ignominiously turned
+tail and run away, was she tempted to run away now.
+
+For it seemed too much. It came too close, laying rough hands not only
+upon the deepest of her love and reverence for her father, but upon that
+still mysterious depth of her own nature, namely her apprehension of
+passion and of sex. A sacred shame, an awe as at the commission of some
+covert act of impiety, overcame her as she looked at the two men walking,
+side by side, across the moist vividly green carpet of turf in the chill
+white sunshine, the plain of an uneasy grey sea behind them. She wanted
+to hide herself, to close eyes and ears against further knowledge.
+Yes--it came too close; and at the same time made her feel, as never
+before, isolated and desolate--as though a great gulf yawned between her
+and what she had always counted pre-eminently her own, most securely her
+property because most beloved.
+
+She had spoken valiantly on Faircloth's behalf, had generously acted as
+his advocate; yet now, beholding him thus in open converse with her
+father, the wings of love were scorched by the flame of jealousy--not so
+much of the young man himself, as of a past which he stood for and in
+which she had no part. Therefore to run--yes, run and hide from further
+knowledge, further experience and revelation, to claim the privileges,
+since she was called on to endure the smart, of isolation.--Yet to run,
+as she almost directly began to reason, was not only cowardly but
+useless. Fact remains fact, and if she refused to accept it, range
+herself in line with it to-day, she in nowise negatived but merely
+postponed the event. If not to-day, then to-morrow she was bound to empty
+the cup. And she laughed at the specious half-truth which had appeared so
+splendid and exhilarating a discovery--the half-truth that nothing is
+really inevitable unless you yourself will it to be so. For this was
+inevitable, sooner or later unescapable, fight against it, fly from it as
+she might.
+
+Therefore she must stay, whether she liked it or not--stay, because to do
+otherwise was purposeless, because she couldn't help herself, because
+there was nowhere to run to, in short--
+
+She heard footsteps upon the flags outside the garden door, speech, calm
+and restrained, of which she could not distinguish the import.
+Mechanically Damaris gathered the scattered house-keeping books lying
+before her upon the table--baker's, butcher's, grocer's, corn-chandler's,
+coal-merchant's--into a tight little heap; and, folding her hands on the
+top of them, prayed simply, almost wordlessly, for courage to hold the
+balance even, to seek not her own good but the good of those two others,
+to do right. Then she waited.
+
+The door opened, closed, and, after a minute's pause, one of the two
+men--Damaris did not know which, she could not bring herself to
+look--coming from between the stumpy pillars walked towards her down the
+half-length of the room; and bent over her, resting one hand on the back
+of her chair, the other on the leather inlay of the writing-table just
+beside the little pile of house-books.
+
+The hand was young, sunburnt, well-shaped, the finger nails well kept.
+Across the back of it a small-bodied, wide-winged sea-bird, in apparent
+act of flight, and the letters D.V.F. were tattooed in blue and crimson.
+A gold bangle, the surface of it dented in places and engraved with
+Japanese characters, encircled the fine lean wrist. These Damaris saw,
+and they worked upon her strangely, awakening an emotion of almost
+painful tenderness, as at sight of decorations pathetically fond,
+playfully child-like and ingenuous. While, as he bent over her, she also
+became aware of a freshness, a salt sweetness as of the ocean and the
+great vacant spaces where all the winds of the world blow keen and free.
+
+"Sir Charles wrote to me," Faircloth said a little huskily. "He told me I
+might come and see you again and talk to you, and bid you good-bye before
+I go to sea. And I should have been here sooner, but that I was away at
+Southampton Docks, and the letter only reached me this morning. I
+telegraphed and started on at once. And he--Sir Charles--walked out over
+the warren to meet me, and brought me up here right to the door. And on
+the way we talked a little,--if he chose he could make the very stones
+speak, I think--and he said one or two things for which--I--well--I thank
+first Almighty God, and next to God, you--Damaris"--
+
+This last imperatively.
+
+"You did ask for me? You did wish to have me come to you?"
+
+"Yes, I did wish it," she answered. "But I never knew how much until now,
+when he has brought you. For that is the right, the beautiful, safe way
+of having you come to me and to this house."
+
+Yet, as she spoke, she lightly laid her hand over the tattooed image of
+the flying sea-bird, concealing it, for it moved her to the point of
+active suffering in its quaint prettiness fixed thus indelibly up in the
+warm live flesh.
+
+At the touch of her hand Faircloth drew in his breath sharply, seeming to
+wince. Then, at last, Damaris looked up at him, her eyes full of
+questioning and startled concern.
+
+"I didn't hurt you?" she asked, a vague idea of suffering, attached to
+that fanciful stigmata, troubling her.
+
+"Hurt me--good Lord, how could you, of all people, hurt me?" he gently
+laughed at her. "Unless you turned me down, gave me to understand that,
+on second thoughts, you didn't find me up to your requirements or some
+mean class devilry of that kind--of which, by the way, had I judged you
+capable, you may be sure I should have been uncommonly careful never to
+come near you again.--No, it isn't that you hurt me; but that you delight
+me a little overmuch, so that it isn't easy to keep quite level-headed.
+There's so much to hear and to tell, and such scanty time to hear or tell
+it in, worse luck."
+
+"You are obliged to go so soon?"
+
+The flames of jealousy had effectually, it may be noted, died down
+in Damaris.
+
+"Yes--we're taking on cargo for all we're worth. We are booked to sail
+by noon the day after to-morrow. I stretched a point in leaving at all,
+which won't put me in the best odour with my officers and crew,
+or--supposing they come to hear of it--with my owners either. I am
+giving my plain duty the slip; but, in this singular ease, it seemed to
+me, a greater duty stood back of and outweighed the plain obvious
+one--since it mounted to a reconstruction, a peace-making, ridding the
+souls of four persons of an ugly burden. I wanted the affair all
+settled up and straightened out before this, my maiden voyage, in
+command of a ship of my own. For me it is a great event, a great step
+forward. And, perhaps I'm over-superstitious--most men of my trade are
+supposed to be touched that way--but I admit I rather cling to the
+notion of this private peace-making, this straightening out of an
+ancient crookedness, as a thing of good augury, a favourable omen. As
+such--let alone other reasons"--and he looked down at Damaris with a
+fine and delicate admiration--"I desired it and, out of my heart, I
+prize it.--Do you see?"
+
+"Yes--indeed a thing of good augury"--she affirmed.
+
+Yet in speaking her lips shook. For, in truth, poor child, she was
+hard-pressed. This intimate intercourse, alike in its simple directness
+and its novelty, began to wear on her to the point of physical distress.
+She felt tremulous and faint. Not that Faircloth jarred upon or was
+distasteful to her. Far from that. His youth and health, the unspoiled
+vigour and force of him, captivated her imagination. Even the dash of
+roughness, the lapses from conventional forms of speech and manner she
+now and again observed in him, caught her fancy, heightening his
+attraction for her. Nor was she any longer tormented by a sense of
+isolation. For, as she recognized, he stole nothing away which heretofore
+belonged to her. Rather did he add his own by no means inconsiderable
+self to the sum of her possessions.--And in that last fact she probably
+touched the real crux, the real strain, of the present, to her
+disintegrating, situation. For in him, and in his relation to her, a
+wonderful and very precious gift was bestowed upon her, namely another
+human life to love and live for.--Bestowed on her, moreover, without
+asking or choice of her own, arbitrarily, through the claim of his and
+her common ancestry and the profound moral and spiritual obligations, the
+mysterious affinities, which a common ancestry creates.
+
+Had she possessed this gift from childhood, had it taken its natural
+place in her experience through the linked and orderly progress of the
+years, it would have been wholly welcome, wholly profitable and sweet.
+But it was sprung upon her from the outside, quite astoundingly
+ready-made. It bore down on her, and at a double, foot, horse, and siege
+guns complete. Small discredit to her if she staggered under its onset,
+trembled and turned faint! For as she now perceived, it was exactly this
+relation of brother and sister of which she had some prescience, some dim
+intuition, from her first sight of Faircloth as he stood among the
+skeleton lobster-pots on board Timothy Proud's old boat. It was this call
+of a common blood which begot in her unreasoning panic, which she had run
+from and so wildly tried to escape. And yet it remained a gift of great
+price, a crown of gold; but oh! so very heavy--just at this moment
+anyhow--for her poor proud young head.
+
+Lifting her hand off Faircloth's, she made a motion to rise. Change of
+attitude and place might bring her relief, serve to steady her nerves and
+restore her endangered composure! Brooding over the whole singular matter
+in the peace and security of her room upstairs, her course had appeared a
+comparatively easy one, granted reasonable courage and address. But the
+young man's bodily presence, as now close beside her, exercised an
+emotional influence quite unforeseen and unreckoned with. Under it her
+will wavered. She ceased to see her way clearly, to be sure of herself.
+She grew timid, bewildered, unready both of purpose and of speech.
+
+Faircloth, meanwhile, being closely observant of her, was quick to
+detect her agitation. He drew aside her chair, and backed away, leaving
+her free to pass.
+
+"I am afraid we have talked too long," he said. "You're tired. I ought to
+have been more careful of you, remembered how ill you have been--and that
+partly through my doing too. So now, I had better bid you good-bye, I
+think, and leave you to rest."
+
+But Damaris, contriving to smile tremulous lips notwithstanding, shook
+her head. For, in lifting her hand from his, she caught sight of the
+tattooed blue-and-crimson sea-bird and the initials below it. And again
+her heart contracted with a spasm of tenderness; while those three
+letters, more fully arresting her attention, aroused in her a fascinated,
+half-shrinking curiosity. What did they mean? What could they stand for?
+She longed intensely to know--sure they were in some sort a symbol, a
+token, not without special significance for herself. But shyness and a
+quaint disposition, dating from her childhood, to pause and hover on the
+threshold of discovery, thus prolonging a period of entrancing,
+distracting suspense, withheld her. She dared not ask--in any case dared
+not ask just yet; and therefore took up his words in their literal
+application.
+
+"Indeed, you haven't talked too long," she assured him, as she went over
+to the tiger skin before the fire-place, and standing there looked down
+into the core of the burning logs. "We have only just begun to talk, so
+it isn't that which has tried me. But--if you won't misunderstand--pray
+don't--the thought of--of you, and of all that which lies between us, is
+still very new to me. I haven't quite found you, or myself in my relation
+to you, yet. Give me time, and indeed, I won't disappoint you."
+
+Faircloth, who had followed her, put his elbows on the mantelshelf, and
+sinking his head somewhat between his shoulders, stared down at the
+burning logs too.
+
+"Ah! when you take that tone, I'm a little scared lest I should turn out
+to be the disappointment, the failure, in this high adventure of ours,"
+he said under his breath.
+
+"So stay, please," the young girl went on, touched by, yet ignoring, his
+interjected comment. "Let me get as accustomed as I can now, so that I
+may feel settled. That is the way to prevent my being tired--the way to
+rest me, because it will help to get all my thinkings about you into
+place.--Yes, please stay.--That is," she added with a pretty touch of
+ceremony--"if you have time, and don't yourself wish to go."
+
+"I wish it! What, in heaven's name, could well be further from any wish
+of mine?" Faircloth broke out almost roughly, without raising his eyes.
+"Do you suppose when a man's gone thirsty many days, he is in haste to
+forego the first draught of pure water offered to him--and that after
+just putting his lips to the dear comfort of it?"
+
+"Ah! you care too much," Damaris cried, smitten by swift shrinking
+and dread.
+
+Faircloth lifted his head and looked at her, his face keen, brilliant
+with a far from ignoble emotion.
+
+"It is not, and never will be possible--so I fancy"--he said, "to care
+too much about you."
+
+And he fell into contemplation of the glowing logs again.
+
+But Damaris, seeing his transfigured countenance, hearing his rejoinder,
+penetrated, moreover, by the conviction of his entire sincerity, felt the
+weight of a certain golden crown more than ever heavy upon her devoted
+young head. She stepped aside, groping with outstretched hands behind her
+until she found and held on to the arm of the big sofa stationed at
+right angles to the hearth. And she waited, morally taking breath, to
+slip presently on to the wide low seat of it and lean thankfully against
+its solidly cushioned back for support.
+
+"Neither for you, or for my ship"--Faircloth went on, speaking, as it
+seemed, more to himself than to his now pale companion. "I dare couple
+you and her together, though she is no longer in the dew of her youth.
+Oh! I can't defend her looks, poor dear. She has seen service. Is only a
+battered, travel-weary old couple-of-thousand-ton cargo boat, which has
+hugged and nuzzled the foul-smelling quays of half the seaports of
+southern Europe and Asia. All the same--next to you--she's the best and
+finest thing life, up to now, has brought me, and I love her.--My
+affection for her, though," he went on, "is safe to be transitory. She is
+safe to have rivals and successors in plenty--unless, of course, by some
+ugly turn of luck, she and I go to the bottom in company."
+
+Faircloth broke off. A little sound, a little gesture of protest and
+distress, making him straighten himself up and turn quickly, his eyes
+alight with enquiry and laughter.
+
+"May I take that to mean I'm not quite alone in my caring," he asked;
+"but that you, Damaris, care, perhaps, just a trifling amount too?"
+
+He went across to the sofa, sat down sideways, laying his right arm along
+the back of it, and placing his left hand--inscribed with the fanciful
+device--over the girl's two hands clasped in her lap. The strong, lean
+fingers exercised a quiet, steady pressure, for a minute. After which he
+leaned back, no longer attempting to touch her, studiously indeed keeping
+his distance, while he said:
+
+"The other affection is stable for ever--safe from all rivals or
+successors. That is another reason why I jumped at the chance Sir
+Charles's letter gave me of coming here to-day, and seeing you, with this
+room--as I hoped--in which so much of your time must be spent, for
+background. I wanted to stamp a picture of you upon my memory, burn it
+right into the very tissue of my brain, so that I shall always have it
+with me, wherever I go, and however rarely we meet.--Because, as I see
+it, we shall rarely meet. We ought to be clear on that point--leave no
+frayed edges. There is a bar between us, which for the sake of others, as
+well as for your sake, it is only right and decent I should respect, a
+wall of partition through which I shouldn't attempt to break."
+
+"I know--but it troubles me," Damaris murmured. "It is sad."
+
+"Yes, of course, it is sad. But it's just the penalty that is bound to be
+paid, and which it is useless to ignore or lie to ourselves about.--So I
+shall never come, unless he--Sir Charles--sends for me as he did to-day,
+or unless you send. Only remember your picture will never leave me. I
+have it safe and sound"--Faircloth smiled at her.--"It will be with me
+just as actually and ineffaceably as this is with me."
+
+He patted the back of his left hand.
+
+"Nothing, short of death, can rub either out. I have pretty thoroughly
+banked against that, you see. So you've only to send when, and if, you
+want me. I shall turn up--oh! never fear, I shall turn up."
+
+"And I shall send--we shall both send," Damaris answered gravely, even a
+little brokenly.
+
+The crown might be heavy; but she had strangely ceased to desire to be
+rid of it, beginning, indeed, to find its weight oddly satisfying, even,
+it may be asserted, trenching on the exquisite. And, with this altered
+attitude, a freedom of spirit, greater than she had enjoyed since the
+commencement of the whole astonishing episode, since before her cousin
+Tom Verity's visit in fact, came upon her. It lightened her heart. It
+dispelled her fatigue--which throughout the afternoon had been, probably,
+more of the moral than bodily sort. Her soul no longer beat its wings
+against iron bars, fluttered in the meshes of a net; but looked forth shy
+yet serene, accepting the position in which it found itself. For
+Faircloth inspired her with deepening faith. He needed no guiding, as she
+told herself; but was strong enough, as his words convincingly testified,
+clear-sighted and quick-witted enough, to play his part in the
+complicated drama without prompting. Hadn't he done just what she
+asked?--Stayed until, by operation of some quality in himself or--could
+it be?--simply through the mysterious draw of his and her brother and
+sisterhood, she had already grown accustomed, settled in her thought of
+him, untormented by the closeness of his presence and unabashed.
+
+And having reached this vantage-point, discovering the weight of the
+crown dear now rather than irksome, Damaris permitted herself a closer
+observation of her companion than ever before. Impressions of his
+appearance she had received in plenty--but received them in flashes,
+confusing from their very vividness. Confusing, also, because each one of
+them was doubled by a haunting consciousness of his likeness to her
+father. The traits common to both men, rather than those individually
+characteristic of the younger, had been in evidence. And, in her present
+happier mood, Damaris also desired a picture to set in the storehouse of
+memory. But it must represent this brother of hers in and by himself,
+divorced, as far as might be, from that pursuing, and, to her, singularly
+agitating likeness.
+
+Her design and her scrutiny were easier of prosecution that, during the
+last few minutes, Faircloth had retired into silence, and an attitude of
+abstraction. Sitting rather forward upon the sofa, his legs crossed,
+nursing one blue serge trousered knee with locked hands, his glance
+travelled thoughtfully over the quiet, low-toned room and its varied
+contents. Later, sought the window opposite, and ranged across the garden
+and terrace walk, with its incident of small ancient cannon, to the long
+ridge of the Bar--rising, bleached, wind-swept, and notably deserted
+under the colourless sunshine, beyond the dark waters of the tide river
+which raced tumultuously seaward in flood.
+
+Seen thus in repose--and repose is a terrible tell-tale,--the lines of
+the young man's face and figure remained firm, gracefully angular and
+definite. No hint of slackness or sloppiness marred their effect. The
+same might be said of his clothes, which though of ordinary regulation
+colour and cut--plus neat black tie and stiff-fronted white shirt,
+collar, and wristbands--possessed style, and that farthest from the cheap
+or flashy. Only the gold bangle challenged Damaris' taste as touching on
+florid; but its existence she condoned in face of its wearer's hazardous
+and inherently romantic calling. For the sailor may, surely, be here and
+there permitted a turn and a flourish, justly denied to the safe
+entrenched landsman.
+
+If outward aspects were thus calculated to engage her approval and
+agreeably fill in her projected picture, that which glimmered through
+them--divined by her rather than stated, all being necessarily more an
+affair of intuition than of knowledge--gave her pleasure of richer
+quality. High-tempered she unquestionably read him, arrogant and on
+occasion not inconceivably remorseless; but neither mean nor ungenerous,
+his energy unwasted, his mind untainted by self-indulgence. If he were
+capable of cruelty to others, he was at least equally capable of turning
+the knife on himself, cutting off or plucking out an offending member.
+This appealed to the heroic in her. While over her vision, as she thus
+considered him, hung the glamour of youth which, to youth, displays such
+royal enchantments--untrodden fields of hope and promise inviting the
+tread of eager feet, the rush of glorious goings forward towards
+conquests, towards wonders, well assured, yet to be. The personality of
+this man clearly admitted no denial, as little bragged as it apologized,
+since his candour matched his force of will.
+
+Taking stock of him thus, from the corner of the sofa, imagination,
+intelligence, affections alike actively in play, Damaris' colour rose,
+her pulse quickened, and her great eyes grew wide, finely and softly gay.
+
+Faircloth moved. Turned his head. Met her eyes, and looking into them his
+face blanched perceptibly under its _couche_ of sunburn.
+
+"Damaris," he said, "Damaris, what has happened?--Stop though, you
+needn't tell me. I know. We've found one another--haven't we?--Found one
+another more in the silence than in the talking.--Queer, things should
+work that way! But it puts a seal on fact. For they couldn't so work
+unless the same stuff, the same inclination, were embedded right in the
+very innermost substance of both of us. You look rested. You look
+glad--bless you.--Isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes," she simply told him.
+
+Faircloth set his elbows on his knees, his chin on his two hands, wrist
+against wrist, and his glance ranged out over the garden again, to the
+pale strip of the Bar spread between river and sea.
+
+"Then I can go," he said, "but not because I've tired you."
+
+"I shall never be tired any more from--from being with you."
+
+"I don't fancy you will. All the same I must go, because my time's up. My
+train leaves Marychurch at six, and I have to call at the Inn, to bid my
+mother good-bye, on my way to the station."
+
+Was the perfect harmony, the perfect adjustment of spirit to spirit a wee
+bit jarred, did a mist come up over the heavenly bright sky, Faircloth
+asked himself? And answered doggedly that, if it were so, he could not
+help it. For since, by all ruling of loyalty and dignity, the wall of
+partition was ordained to stand, wasn't it safer to remind both himself
+and Damaris, at times, of its presence? He must keep his feet on the
+floor, good God--keep them very squarely on the floor--for otherwise,
+wasn't it possible to conceive of their skirting the edge of unnamable
+abysses? In furtherance of that so necessary soberness of outlook he now
+went on speaking.
+
+"But before I go, I want to hark back to a matter of quite ancient
+history--your lost shoes and stockings--for thereby hangs a tale."
+
+And he proceeded to tell her how, about a week ago, being caught by a
+wild flurry of rain in an outlying part of the island, behind the black
+cottages and Inn, he took shelter in a disused ruinous boat-house opening
+on the great reed-beds which here rim the shore. A melancholy, forsaken
+place, from which, at low tide, you can walk across the mud-flats to
+Lampit, with a pleasing chance of being sucked under by quicksands. Abram
+Sclanders' unhappy half-witted son haunted this boat-house, it seemed,
+storing his shrimping nets there, any other things as well, a venerable
+magpie's hoard of scraps and lumber; using it as a run-hole, too, when
+the other lads hunted and tormented him according to their healthy,
+brutal youthful way.
+
+--A regular joss-house, he'd made of it. And set up in one corner, white
+and ghostly--making you stare a minute when you first came inside--a
+ship's figure-head, a three-foot odd Britannia, pudding-basin bosomed and
+eagle-featured, with castellated headgear, clasping a trident in her
+hand. She, as presiding deity and--
+
+"In front of her," Faircloth said, his chin still in his hands and eyes
+gazing away to the Bar--"earth and pebbles banked up into a flat-topped
+mound, upon which stood your shoes filled with sprays of hedge fruit and
+yellow button-chrysanthemums--stolen too, I suppose, from one of the
+gardens at Lampit. They grow freely there. Your silk stockings hung round
+her neck, a posy of flowers twisted into them.--When I came on this
+exhibition, I can't quite tell you how I felt. It raised Cain in me to
+think of that degraded, misbegotten creature pawing over and playing
+about with anything which had belonged to you. I was for making
+Sclanders, his father, bring him over and give him the thrashing of his
+life, right there before the proofs of his sins."
+
+"But you didn't," Damaris cried. "You didn't. What do my shoes and
+stockings matter? I oughtn't to have left them on the shore. It was
+putting temptation in his way."
+
+Faircloth looked at her smiling.
+
+"No I didn't, and for two reasons. One that I knew--even then--you would
+find excuses, plead for mercy, as you have just now. Another, those
+flowers. If I had found--well--what I might have found, oh! he should
+have had the stick or the dog-whip without stint. But one doesn't
+practise devil-worship with flowers. It seemed to me some craving after
+beauty was there, as if the poor germ of a soul groped out of the
+darkness towards what is fair and sweet. I dared not hound it back into
+the darkness, close down any dim aspiration after God it might have. So I
+left its pitiful joss-house inviolate, the moan of the wind and sighing
+of the great reed-beds making music for such strange rites of worship as
+have been, or may be, practised within. Any god is better than
+none--that's my creed, at least. And to defile any man's god--however
+trumpery--unless you're amazingly sure you've a better one to offer him
+in place of it is to sin against the Holy Ghost."
+
+Faircloth rose to his feet.
+
+"Time's up"--he said. "I must go. Here is farewell to the most beautiful
+day of my life.--But see, Damaris"--
+
+And he knelt down, in front of her.
+
+"Leave your shoes and stockings cast away on the Bar and thereby open the
+door--for some people--on to the kingdom of heaven, if you like. But
+don't, don't, if you've the smallest mercy for my peace of mind ever
+wander about there again alone. I've a superstition against it. Something
+unhappy will come of it. It isn't right. It isn't safe. When--when I
+called you and you answered me through the mist, I had a horrible fear I
+was too late. You see I care--and the caring, after to-day, very
+certainly will not grow less. Take somebody, one of your women, always,
+with you. Promise me never to be out by yourself."
+
+Wondering, inexpressibly touched, Damaris put her hands on his shoulders.
+His hands sprang to cover them.
+
+"Of course, I promise," she said.
+
+And, closing her eyes, put up her lips to be kissed.
+
+Then the rattle of the glass door on to the garden as it shut. In the
+room a listening stillness, a great all-invading emptiness. Finally
+Hordle, with the tea-tray, and--
+
+"Mrs. Cooper, if it isn't troubling you, Miss, would be glad to have the
+house-books to pay, as she's walking up the village after tea."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CONCERNING A SERMON WHICH NEVER WAS PREACHED AND OTHER MATTERS OF
+LOCAL INTEREST
+
+
+Before passing on to more dignified matters, that period of nine days
+demands to be noted during which the inhabitants of Deadham, all very
+much agog, celebrated the wonder of Miss Bilson's indisputable
+disappearance and Damaris Verity's reported adventure.
+
+Concerning the former, Dr. Horniblow, good man, took himself seriously to
+task, deploring his past action and debating his present duty.
+
+"It is no use, Jane," he lamented to his wife. The two had retired for
+the night, darkness and the bedclothes covering them. "I am very much
+worried about my share in the matter."
+
+"But, my dear James, you really are overscrupulous. What share had you?"
+
+The clerical wife does not always see eye to eye with her spouse in
+respect of his female parishioners, more particularly, perhaps, the
+unmarried ones. Mrs. Horniblow loved, honoured, and--within reasonable
+limits--obeyed her James; but this neither prevented her being shrewd,
+nor knowing her James, after all, to be human. Remembrance of Theresa,
+heading the Deadham procession during the inspection of Harchester
+Cathedral, sandwiched in between him and the Dean, still rankled in her
+wifely bosom.
+
+"I overpersuaded Miss Bilson to accompany us on the choir treat. I forgot
+she must not be regarded as an entirely free agent. She has shown
+interest in parish work and really proved very useful and obliging. Her
+acquaintance with architecture--the technical terms, too--is unusually
+accurate for a member of your sex."
+
+"Her business is teaching," said the lady.
+
+"And I can't but fear I have been instrumental in her loss of an
+excellent position."
+
+"If her learning is as remarkable as you consider it, she will doubtless
+soon secure another."
+
+"Ah! you're prejudiced, my love. One cannot but be struck, at times, by
+the harshness with which even women of high principle, like yourself,
+judge other women."
+
+"Possibly the highness of my principles may be accountable for my
+judgments--in some cases."
+
+"Argument is very unrestful," the vicar remarked, turning over on his
+side.
+
+"But there would be an end of conversation if I always agreed with you."
+
+"Tut--tut," he murmured. Then with renewed plaintiveness--"I cannot make
+up my mind whether it is not my duty, my chivalrous duty, to seek an
+interview with Sir Charles Verity and explain--put the aspects of the
+case to him as I see them."
+
+"Call on him by all means. I'll go with you. We ought, in common
+civility, to enquire for Damaris after this illness of hers. But don't
+explain or attempt to enlarge on the case from your own point of view.
+Sir Charles will consider it an impertinence. It won't advantage Miss
+Bilson and will embroil you with the most important of your parishioners.
+The wisdom of the serpent is permitted, on occasion even recommended."
+
+"A most dangerous doctrine, Jane, most dangerous, save under authority."
+
+"What authority can be superior to that under which the recommendation
+was originally given?"
+
+"My love, you become slightly profane.--I implore you don't argue--and at
+this hour! When a woman touches on exegesis, on theology "--
+
+"All I know upon those subjects you, dear, have taught me."
+
+"Ah! well--ah! well"--the good man returned, at once mollified and
+suspicious. For might not the compliment be regarded as something of a
+back-hander? "We can defer our decision till to-morrow. Perhaps we had
+better, as you propose, call together. I need not go straight to the
+point, but watch my opportunity and slip in a word edgeways."
+
+He audibly yawned--the hint, like the yawn, a broad one. The lady did
+not take it, however. So far she had held her own; more--had nicely
+secured her ends. But further communications trembled upon her tongue.
+The word is just--literally trembled, for they might cause anger, and
+James' anger--it happened rarely--she held in quite, to herself,
+uncomfortable respect.
+
+"I fear there is a good deal of objectionable gossip going about the
+village just now," she tentatively commenced.
+
+"Then pray don't repeat it to me, my love"--another yawn and an irritable
+one. "Gossip as you know is abhorrent to me."
+
+"And to me--but one needs to be forearmed with the truth if one is to
+rebut it conclusively. Only upon such grounds should I think of
+mentioning this to you."
+
+She made a dash.
+
+"James, have you by chance ever heard peculiar rumours about young Darcy
+Faircloth's parentage?"
+
+"In mercy, Jane--what a question!--and from you! I am
+inexpressibly shocked."
+
+"So was I, when--I won't mention names--when such rumours were hinted to
+me. I assured the person with whom I was talking that I had never heard a
+word on the subject. But she said, 'One can't help having eyes.'"
+
+"Or, some of you, noses for carrion."
+
+Here he gave her the advantage. She was not slow to make play with it.
+
+"Now it is my turn to be shocked," she said--"and not, I think, James,
+without good cause."
+
+"Yes, I apologize," the excellent man answered immediately. "I apologize;
+but to have so foul a suggestion of parochial scandal let loose on me
+suddenly, flung in my teeth, as I may say--and by you! I was taken off
+my guard and expressed myself coarsely. Yes, Jane, I apologize."
+
+"Then I have you authority for contradicting these rumours?"
+
+The Vicar of Deadham groaned in the darkness, and rustled under the
+bedclothes. His perplexity was great on being thus confronted by the
+time-honoured question as to how far, in the interests of public
+morality, it is justifiable for the private individual roundly to lie.
+Finally he banked on compromise, that permanently presiding genius of the
+Church of England 'as by law established.'
+
+"You have me on the hip, my love," he told his wife quite meekly.
+
+But, as she began rather eagerly to speak, he stopped her.
+
+"Let be, my dear Jane," he bade her, "let be. I neither deny or confirm
+the rumours to which I imagine you allude. Silence is most becoming for
+us both. Continue to assure any persons, ill-advised and evil-minded
+enough to approach you--I trust they may prove but few--that you have
+never heard a word of this subject. You will never--I can confidently
+promise you--hear one from me.--I shall make it my duty to preach on the
+iniquity of back-biting, tale-bearing, scandal-mongering next Sunday,
+and put some to the blush, as I trust. St. Paul will furnish me with
+more than one text eminently apposite.--Let me think--let me
+see--hum--ah! yes."
+
+And he fell to quoting from the Pauline epistles in Greek--to the lively
+annoyance of his auditor, whose education, though solid did not include a
+knowledge of those languages vulgarly known as "dead." She naturally
+sought means to round on him.
+
+"Might you not compromise yourself rather by such a sermon, James?" she
+presently said.
+
+"Compromise myself? Certainly not.--Pray, Jane, how?"
+
+"By laying yourself open to the suspicion of a larger acquaintance with
+the origin of those rumours than you are willing to admit."
+
+The shaft went home.
+
+"This is a mere attempt to draw me. You are disingenuous."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," the lady declared. "My one object is to protect
+you from criticism. And preaching upon gossip must invite rather than
+allay interest, thus giving this particular gossip a new lease of
+life. The application would be too obvious. Clearly, James, it would
+be wiser to wait."
+
+"The serpent, again the serpent--and one I've warmed in my bosom,
+too"--Then aloud--"I will think it over, my love. Possibly your view
+may be the right one. It is worth consideration.--That must be
+sufficient. And now, Jane, I do implore you give over discussion and
+let us say good night."
+
+It may be registered as among the consequences of these nocturnal
+exercises, that Dr. Horniblow abstained from tickling the ears of his
+congregation, on the following Sunday, with a homily founded upon the sin
+tale-bearing; and that he duly called, next day, at The Hard accompanied
+by his wife.
+
+The visit--not inconceivably to his inward thanksgiving--proved
+unfruitful of opportunity for excusing Miss Bilson, to her former
+employer, by accusing himself, Sir Charles Verity's courtesy being of an
+order calculated to discourage any approach to personal topics.
+Unfruitful, also, of enlightenment to Mrs. Horniblow respecting matters
+which--as the good lady ashamedly confessed to herself--although
+forbidden by her lord, still intrigued her while, of course, they most
+suitably shocked. For the life of her she could not help looking out for
+signs of disturbance and upheaval. But found none, unless--and that
+presented a conundrum difficult of solution--Damaris' pretty social
+readiness and grace in the reception of her guests might be, in some way,
+referable to lately reported events. That, and the fact the young girl
+was--as the saying is--"all eyes"--eyes calm, fathomless, reflective,
+which yet, when you happened to enter their sphere of vision, covered
+you with a new-born gentleness. Mrs. Horniblow caught herself growing
+lyrical--thinking of stars, of twin mountain lakes, the blue-purple of
+ocean. A girl in love is blessed with just such eyes--sometimes.
+Whereupon, remembering her own two girls, May and Doris--good as gold,
+bless them, yet, her shrewdness pronounced, when compared with Damaris,
+but homely pieces--the excellent woman sighed.
+
+What did it all then amount to? Mrs. Horniblow's logic failed. "All
+eyes"--and very lovely ones at that--Damaris might be; yet her
+tranquillity and serenity appeared beyond question. Must thrilling
+mystery be voted no more than a mare's-nest?--Only, did not the fact
+remain that James had refused to commit himself either way, thereby
+naturally landing himself in affirmation up to the neck? She gave it up.
+
+But, even in the giving up, could not resist probing just a little. The
+two gentlemen were out of earshot, standing near the glass door.--How
+James' black, bow-windowed figure and the fixed red in his clean-shaven,
+slightly pendulous cheeks, did show up to be sure, in the
+light!--Unprofitable gift of observation, for possession of which she so
+frequently had cause to reproach herself.--
+
+"You still look a little run down and pale, my dear," she said. "It isn't
+for me to advise, but wouldn't a change of air and scene be good, don't
+you think?"
+
+Damaris assured her not--in any case not yet. Later, after Christmas, she
+and her father might very likely go abroad. But till then they had a full
+programme of guests.
+
+"Colonel Carteret comes to us next week; and my aunt Felicia always likes
+to be here in November. She enjoys that month at the seaside, finding it,
+she says, so poetic."
+
+Damaris smiled, her eyes at once, and more than ever, eloquent and
+unfathomable.
+
+"And I learned only this morning an old Anglo-Indian friend of ours, Mrs.
+Mackinder, whom I should be quite dreadfully sorry to miss, is spending
+the autumn at Stourmouth."
+
+Mrs. Horniblow permitted herself a dash.
+
+"At Stourmouth--yes?" she ventured. "That reminds me. I hear--how far the
+information is correct I cannot pretend to say--that kind little person,
+Miss Bilson, has been there with Miss Verity this last week. I observed
+we had not met her in the village just lately. I hope you have good news
+of her. When is she expected back?"
+
+Without hesitation or agitation came the counter-stroke.
+
+"I don't know," Damaris answered. "Her plans, I believe, are uncertain at
+present. You and Dr. Horniblow will stay to tea with us, won't
+you?"--this charmingly. "It will be here in a very few minutes--I can
+ring for it at once."
+
+And the lady laughed to herself, good-temperedly accepting the rebuff.
+For it was neatly delivered, and she could admire clever fencing even
+though she herself were pinked.--As to tea, she protested positive shame
+at prolonging her visit--for didn't it already amount rather to a
+"visitation?"--yet retained her seat with every appearance of
+satisfaction.--If the truth must be told, Mrs. Cooper's cakes were
+renowned throughout society at Deadham, as of the richest, the most
+melting in the mouth; and James--hence not improbably the tendency to
+abdominal protuberance--possessed an inordinate fondness for cakes. He
+had shown himself so docile in respect of projected inflammatory sermons,
+and of morning calls personally conducted by his wife, that the latter
+could not find it in her heart to ravish him away from these approaching
+very toothsome delights. Nay--let him stay and eat--for was not such
+staying good policy, she further reflected, advertising the fact she bore
+no shadow of malice towards her youthful hostess for that neatly
+delivered rebuff.
+
+After this sort, therefore, was gossip, for the time being at all events,
+scotched if not actually killed. Parochial excitement flagged the sooner,
+no doubt, because, of the four persons chiefly responsible for its
+creation, two were invisible and the remaining two apparently quite
+unconscious of its ever having existed.--Mrs. Lesbia Faircloth, at the
+Inn, the Vicar's wife left out of the count.--If Sir Charles Verity and
+Damaris had hurried away, gossip would have run after them with liveliest
+yelpings. But this practise of masterly inactivity routed criticism. How
+far was it studied, cynical on the part of the father, or innocent upon
+that of the daughter, she could not tell one bit; but that practically it
+carried success along with it, she saw to be indubitable. "Face the music
+and the band stops playing"--so she put it to herself, as she walked down
+the drive to the front gate, her James--was he just a trifle crestfallen,
+good man?--strolling, umbrella in hand, beside her.
+
+All subsequent outbreaks of gossip may be described as merely sporadic.
+They did not spread. As when, for instance, peppery little Dr.
+Cripps--still smarting under Dr. McCabe's introduction into preserves he
+had reckoned exclusively his own--advised himself to throw off a nasty
+word or so on the subject to Commander Battye and Captain Taylor, over
+strong waters and cigars in his surgery--tea, the ladies, and the
+card-table left to their own devices in the drawing-room meanwhile--one
+evening after a rubber of whist.
+
+"Damn bad taste, I call it, in a newcomer like Cripps," the sailor had
+remarked later to the soldier. "But if a man isn't a gentleman what can
+you expect?"--And with that, as among local persons of quality, the
+matter finally dropped.
+
+Mrs. Doubleday and Butcher Cleave, to give an example from a lower social
+level, agreed, across the former's counter in the village shop, that--
+
+"It is the duty of every true Christian to let bygones be bygones--and a
+downright flying in the face of Providence, as you may say, to do
+otherwise, when good customers, whose money you're sure of, are so
+scarce. For without The Hard and--to give everyone their due--without the
+Island also, where would trade have been in Deadham these ten years and
+more past? Mum's the word, take it from me,"--and each did take it from
+the other, with rich conviction of successfully making the best of both
+worlds, securing eternal treasure in Heaven while cornering excellent
+profits on earth.
+
+William Jennifer had many comments to make in the matter, and with
+praiseworthy reticence concluded to make them mainly to himself. The
+majority of them, it is to be feared, were humorous to the point of being
+unsuited to print, but the refrain may pass--
+
+"And to think if I hadn't happened to choose that particular day to take
+the little dorgs and the ferrets ratting, the 'ole bleesed howd'ye do
+might never have come to pass! Tidy sum, young master Darcy's in my debt,
+Lord succour him, for the rest of his nat'ral life!"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+THE WORLD BEYOND THE FOREST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AN EPISODE IN THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
+
+
+Thus far, for the surer basing of our argument, it has appeared advisable
+to proceed step by step. But the foundations being now well and truly
+laid, the pace of our narrative may, with advantage, quicken; a twelve
+month be rounded up in a page, a decade, should convenience so dictate,
+in a chapter.
+
+To the furthering of which advance, let it be stated that the close of
+the year still in question marked the date, for Damaris, of two matters
+of cardinal importance. For it was then Sir Charles Verity commenced
+writing his history of the reign of Shere Ali, covering the eleven years
+following the latter's accession to the very turbulent throne of
+Afghanistan in 1863.--Colonel Carteret may be held mainly responsible for
+the inception of this literary enterprise, now generally acclaimed a
+classic. Had not Sir William Napier, so he argued, made the soldier, as
+historian, for ever famous? And why should not Charles Verity, with his
+unique knowledge of court intrigues, of the people and the country, do
+for the campaigns of the semi-barbarous Eastern ruler, that which Sir
+William had done for Wellington's campaign in the Spanish Peninsular?
+
+Carteret prophesied--and truly as the event richly proved--a finely
+fascinating book would eventually come of it. Meanwhile--though this
+argument, in favour of the scheme, he kept to himself--the preparation of
+the said book would supply occupation and interest of which his old
+friend appeared to him to stand rather gravely in need. For that
+something was, just now, amiss with Charles Verity, Carteret could not
+disguise from himself. He was changed, in a way a little broken--so at
+least the younger man's kindly, keenly observant, blue eyes regretfully
+judged him. He fell into long silences, seeming to sink away into some
+abyss of cheerless thought; while his speech had, too often, a bitter
+edge to it. Carteret mourned these indications of an unhappy frame of
+mind. Did more--sought by all means in his power to conjure them away.
+
+"We must make your father fight his battles over again, dear witch," he
+told Damaris, pacing the terrace walk topping the sea-wall beside her,
+one evening in the early November dusk. "His record is a very brilliant
+one and he ought to get more comfort out of the remembrance of it. Let's
+conspire, you and I, to make him sun himself in the achievements and
+activities of those earlier years. What do you say?"
+
+"Oh! do it, do it," she answered fervently. "He is sad--and I am so
+afraid that it is partly my fault."
+
+"Your fault? Why what wicked practises have you been up to since I was
+here last?" he asked, teasing her.
+
+A question evoking, in Damaris, sharp inward debate. For her father's
+melancholy humour weighed on her, causing her perplexity and a measure of
+self-reproach. She would have given immensely much to unburden herself to
+this wise and faithful counsellor; and confide to him the--to
+her--strangely moving fact of Darcy Faircloth's existence. Yet,
+notwithstanding her conviction of Colonel Carteret's absolute loyalty,
+she hesitated; restrained in part by modesty, in part by the fear of
+being treacherous. Would it be altogether honourable to give away the
+secret places of Charles Verity's life--of any man's life if it came to
+that--even to so honourable and trusted a friend? She felt handicapped by
+her own ignorance moreover, having neither standards nor precedents for
+guidance. She had no idea--how should she?--in what way most men regard
+such affairs, how far they accept and condone, how far condemn them. She
+could not tell whether she was dealing with a case original and
+extraordinary, or one of pretty frequent occurrence in the experience of
+those who, as the phrase has it, know their world. These considerations
+kept her timid and tongue-tied; though old habit, combined with
+Carteret's delightful personality and the soothing influence of the dusky
+evening quiet, inclined her to confidences.
+
+"It's not anything I've done," she presently took him up gravely. "But,
+quite by chance, I learned something which I think the Commissioner Sahib
+would rather not have had me hear. I had to be quite truthful with him
+about it; but I was bewildered and ill. I blurted things out rather I'm
+afraid, and hurt him more than I need have done. I was so taken by
+surprise, you see."
+
+"Yes, I see," Carteret said, regardless of strict veracity. For he didn't
+see, though he believed himself on the road to seeing and that some
+matter of singular moment.
+
+"He was beautiful to me--beautiful about everything--everybody," she
+asserted. "And we love one another not less, but more, he and I--of that
+I am sure. Only it's different--different. We can't either of us quite go
+back to the time before--and that has helped to make him sad."
+
+Carteret listened in increasing interest aware that he sounded
+unlooked-for depths, apprehensive lest those depths should harbour
+disastrous occurrences. He walked the length of the terrace before again
+speaking. Then, no longer teasing but gently and seriously, he asked her:
+
+"Do you feel free to tell me openly about this, and let me try to help
+you--if it's a case for help?"
+
+Damaris shook her head, looking up at him through the soft enclosing
+murk, and smiling rather ruefully.
+
+"I wish I knew--I do so wish I knew," she said. "But I don't--not yet,
+anyway. Help me without my telling you, please. The book is a splendid
+idea. And then do you think you could persuade him to let us go away
+abroad, for a time? Everything here must remind him--as it does me--of
+what happened. It was quite right," she went on judicially--"for
+everyone's sake, we should stay here just the same at first. People,"
+with a scornful lift of the head Carteret noted and admired--"might have
+mistaken our reason for going away. They had to be made to understand we
+were perfectly indifferent.--I knew all that, though we never discussed
+it. One does things, sometimes, just because it's right they should be
+done, without any sort of planning--just by instinct. Still I know we
+can't be quite natural here. What happened comes between us. We're each
+anxious about the other and feel a constraint, though we never speak of
+it. That can't be avoided, I suppose, for we both suffered a good deal at
+the time--but he most, much the most because"--
+
+Damaris paused.
+
+"Because why?"
+
+"I suppose because I'm young; and then, once I got accustomed to the
+idea, I saw it meant what was very wonderful in some ways--a
+wonderfulness which, for me, would go on and on--a whole new country for
+me to explore and travel in, quite my own--and--and--which I couldn't
+help loving."
+
+"Heigh ho! heigh ho!" Carteret put in softly. "This becomes exciting,
+dear witch, you know."
+
+"I don't want to be tantalizing," she answered him, still pacing in the
+growing dimness of land and sea.
+
+The dead black mass of the great ilex trees looked to touch the low
+hanging sky. A grey gleam, here and there, lit the surface of the
+swirling tide-river. The boom of the slow plunging waves came from the
+back of the Bar, and now and again wild-fowl cried, faint and distant,
+out on the mud-flats of the Haven.
+
+"Listen," Damaris said. "It is mournful here. It tells you the same
+things over and over again. It sort of insists on them. The place seems
+so peaceful, but it never lets you alone, really. And now, after what
+happened, it never leaves him--the Commissioner Sahib--alone. It repeats
+the same story to him over and over again. It wears him as dropping water
+wears away stone. And there is no longer the same reason for staying
+there was at first. Persuade him to go away, to take me abroad. And come
+with us--couldn't you?--for a little while at least. Is it selfish to ask
+you to leave your hunting and shooting so early in the season? I don't
+want to be selfish. But he isn't well. Whether he isn't well in his body
+or only in his thinkings, I can't tell. But it troubles me. He sleeps
+badly, I am afraid. The nights must be very long and lonely when one
+can't sleep.--If you would come, it would be so lovely. I should feel so
+safe about him. You and the book should cure him between you. I'm
+perfectly sure of that. To have you would make us both so happy"--
+
+And, in her innocent importunity, Damaris slipped her hand within Colonel
+Carteret's arm sweetly coaxing him.
+
+He started slightly. Threw back his head, standing, straight and tall, in
+the mysterious twilight beside her. Raised his deerstalker cap, for a
+moment, letting the moist chill of the November evening dwell on his hair
+and forehead.
+
+Though very popular with women, Carteret had never married, making a home
+for his elder sister, Mrs. Dreydel--widow of a friend and fellow officer
+in the then famous "Guides"--and her four sturdy, good-looking boys at
+the Norfolk manor-house, which had witnessed his own birth and those of a
+long line of his ancestors. To bring up a family of his own, in addition
+to his sister's, would have been too costly, and debt he abhorred.
+Therefore, such devoirs as he paid the great goddess Aphrodite, were but
+few and fugitive--he being by nature and temperament an idealist and a
+notably clean liver. By his abstention, however, sentiment was
+fine-trained rather than extinguished. His heart remained young, capable
+of being thrilled in instant response to any appeal of high and delicate
+quality. It thrilled very sensibly, now, in response to the appeal of
+Damaris' hand, emphasizing her tender pleading regarding her father. She
+touched, she charmed him to an extent which obliged him rather sharply to
+call his senses to order. Hadn't he known her ever since she was a babe
+a span long? Wasn't she, according to all reason, a babe still, in as far
+as any decently minded male being of his mature age could be concerned?
+He told himself, at once humorously and sternly, he ought to feel so,
+think so--whether he did or not. And ought, in his case, was a word not
+to be played fast and loose with. Once uttered it must be obeyed.
+
+Wherefore, thus conclusively self-admonished, he put his cap on his head
+again and, bending a little over Damaris, patted her hand affectionately
+as it rested upon his arm.
+
+"Very good--I'll hold myself and my future at your disposition," he gaily
+said to her. "As much hunting and shooting as I care for will very well
+keep. Don't bother your pretty head about them. During the Christmas
+holidays, my nephews will be ready enough, in all conscience, to let fly
+with my guns and ride my horses, so neither will be wasted. I'll go along
+with you gladly, for no man living is dearer to me than your father, and
+no business could be more to my taste than scotching and killing the
+demons which plague him. They plague all of us, in some form or other, at
+times, as life goes on."
+
+Very gently he disengaged his arm from her hand.
+
+"Take me indoors," he said, "and give me my tea--over which we'll further
+discuss plots for kidnapping Verity and carrying him off south. The
+French Riviera for preference?--Hullo--what the deuce is that?"
+
+For, as he spoke, the two cats appearing with miraculous suddenness out
+of nowhere--as is the custom of their priceless tribe--rushed wildly
+past. Fierce, sinuous, infinitely graceful shapes, leaping high in air,
+making strange noises, chirrupings and squeakings, thudding of quick
+little paws, as they chased one another round the antiquated,
+seaward-trained cannon and pyramid of ball.
+
+For a minute or so Damaris watched them, softly laughing. Then, in the
+content bred of Carteret's promise and the joy of coming travel,
+something of their frisky spirit caught her too--a spirit which, for all
+young creatures, magically haunts the dusk. And, as they presently fled
+away up the lawn, Damaris fled after them, circling over the moist
+grass, darting hither and thither, alternately pursuing and pursued.
+
+Colonel Carteret, following soberly, revolving many thoughts, did not
+overtake her until the garden door was reached. There, upon the
+threshold, the light from within covering and revealing her, she awaited
+him. Her bosom rose and fell, her breathing being a little hurried, her
+face a little flushed. Her grave eyes sparkled and danced.
+
+"Oh! you've made me so glad, so dreadfully glad," she said. "And I never
+properly thanked you. Forgive me. I never can resist them--I went mad
+with the cats."
+
+Her young beauty appeared to Carteret very notable; and, yes--although
+she might disport herself in this childishly frolic fashion--it was
+idle to call her, or pretend her any longer a babe. For cause to him
+unknown, through force of some experience of which he remained
+ignorant, she had undeniably come into the charm and mystery of her
+womanhood--a very fair and noble blossoming before which reverently, if
+wistfully, he bowed his head.
+
+"It's good to have you declare yourself glad, dear witch, in that case
+I'm glad too," he answered her. "But as to forgiveness, I'm inclined to
+hold it over until you leave off being tantalizing--and, upon my word, I
+find you uncommonly far from leaving off just now!"
+
+"You mean until I tell you what happened?"
+
+Carteret nodded, searching her face with wise, fearless, smiling eyes.
+
+"Ah! yes," he said, "we can put it that way if you please." Damaris
+hesitated detecting some undercurrent of meaning which puzzled her.
+
+"I may never have to tell you. My father may speak of it--or you may just
+see for yourself. Only then, then"--she with a moving earnestness prayed
+him--"be kind, be lenient. Don't judge harshly--promise me you won't."
+
+And as she spoke her expression softened to a great and unconscious
+tenderness; for she beheld, in thought, a wide-winged sea-bird, above
+certain letters, tattooed in indigo and crimson upon the back of a lean
+shapely brown hand.
+
+"I promise you," Carteret said, and passed in at the door marvelling
+somewhat sadly.
+
+"Is it that?" he asked himself. "If so, it comes early. Has she gone the
+way of all flesh and fallen in love?"
+
+And this conversation, as shall presently be set forth, ushered in that
+second matter of cardinal importance, already referred to, which for
+Damaris marked the close of this eventful year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+TELLING HOW DAMARIS RENEWED HER ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BELOVED LADY OF
+HER INFANCY
+
+
+The windows of the sitting-room--upon the first floor of the long,
+three-storied, yellow-painted hotel--commanded a vast and glittering
+panorama of indented coast-line and purple sea. Here and there, in the
+middle distance, little towns, pale-walled and glistering, climbed upward
+amid gardens and olive yards from the rocky shore. Heathlands and pine
+groves covered the intervening headlands and steep valleys, save where
+meadows marked the course of some descending stream. To the north-east,
+above dark wooded foot-hills, the flushed whiteness of snow-summits cut
+delicately into the solid blue of the sky.
+
+Stretched upon the sun-faded, once scarlet cushions of the window-seat,
+Damaris absorbed her fill of light, and warmth, and colour. Pleading
+imperative feminine mendings, she stayed at home this afternoon. She felt
+disposed to rest--here in the middle of her pasture, so to say--and
+resting, both count her blessings and dream, offering hospitality to all
+and any pleasant visions which might elect to visit her. And, indeed,
+those blessings appeared a goodly company, worthy of congratulation and
+of gratitude. She let the black silk stocking, the toe of which she
+affected to darn, slip neglected on to the floor while she added up the
+pleasant column of them.
+
+The journey might be counted as a success--that to start with. For her
+father was certainly better, readier of speech and of interest in outside
+things. Oh! the dear "man with the blue eyes" had a marvellous hand on
+him--tactful, able, devoted, always serene, often even gay. Never could
+there be another so perfect, because so sane and comfortable, a friend.
+Her debt to him was of old standing and still for ever grew. How she
+could ever pay it she didn't know! Which consideration, for an instant,
+clouded her content. Not that she felt the obligation irksome; but, that
+out of pure affection, she wanted to make him some return, some
+acknowledgment; wanted to give, since to her he had so lavishly given.
+
+Then the book--of all Carteret's clever manipulations the cleverest! For
+hadn't it begun to grip her father, and that quite divertingly much? He
+was occupied with it to the point of really being a tiny bit
+self-conscious and shy. Keen on it, transparently eager--though
+contemptuous, in high mighty sort, of course, of his own eagerness when
+he remembered. Only, more than half the time he so deliciously failed to
+remember.--And with that Damaris' thought took another turn, a more
+private and personal one.
+
+For in truth the book gripped her, too, in most intimate and novel
+fashion, revealing to her the enchantments of an art in process of being
+actively realized in living, constructive effort. Herein she found, not
+the amazement of a new thing, but of a thing so natural that it appeared
+just a part of her very self, though, until now, an undiscovered one. To
+read other people's books is a joyous employment, as she well knew; but
+to make a book all one's own self, to watch and compel its growth into
+coherent form and purpose is--so she began to suspect--among the rarest
+delights granted to mortal man.
+
+Her own share of such making, in the present case, was of the humblest
+it is true, mere spade labour and hod-bearing--namely, writing from
+Charles Verity's dictation, verifying names and dates, checking
+references and quotations. Still each arresting phrase, each felicitous
+expression, the dramatic ring of some virile word, the broad onward
+sweep of stately prose in narrative or sustained description, not only
+charmed her ear but challenged her creative faculty. She put herself to
+school in respect of it all, learning day by day a lesson.--This was the
+way it should be done. Ambition prodded her on.--For mightn't she
+aspire to do it too, some day? Mightn't, granted patience and
+application, the writing of books prove to be her business, her
+vocation? The idea floated before her, vague as yet, though infinitely
+beguiling. Whereupon the whole world took on a new significance and
+splendour, as it needs must when nascent talent claims its own, asserts
+its dawning right to dominion and to freedom.
+
+And there the pathos of her father's position touched her nearly. For
+wasn't it a little cruel this remarkable gift of his should so long have
+lain dormant, unsuspected by his friends, unknown to the reading public,
+only to disclose itself, and that by the merest hazard, as a last
+resource?--It did not seem fair that he had not earlier found and enjoyed
+his literary birthright.
+
+Damaris propounded this view to Colonel Carteret with some heat. But he
+smilingly discounted her fondly indignant lament.
+
+"Better late than never anyhow, my dear witch," he said. "And just
+picture the satisfaction of this brilliant rally when, as we'd reason to
+believe, he himself reckoned the game was up! Oh! there are points about
+a tardy harvest such as this, by no means to be despised. Thrice blessed
+the man who, like your father, finding such a harvest, also finds it to
+be of a sort he can without scruple reap."
+
+Of which cryptic utterance Damaris, at the time, could--to quote her own
+phrase--"make no sense!"--Nor could she make sense of it, now, when
+counting her blessings, she rested, in happy idleness, upon the faded
+scarlet cushions of the window-seat.
+
+She remembered the occasion quite well on which Carteret thus expressed
+himself one afternoon, during their stay in Paris, on the southward
+journey. She had worn a new myrtle-green, black-braided, fur-trimmed
+cloth pelisse and hat to match, as she also remembered, bought the day
+before at a fascinating shop in the Rue Castiglione. Agreeably conscious
+her clothes were not only very much "the right thing" but decidedly
+becoming, she had gone, with him, to pay a visit of ceremony at the
+convent school--near the Church of St. Germain-les-Près--where, as a
+little girl of six, fresh from India and the high dignities of the
+Bhutpur Sultan-i-bagh, she had been deposited by her father's old friend,
+Mrs. John Pereira, who had brought her and Sarah Watson, her nurse, back
+to Europe.
+
+The sojourn at the convent--once the surprise of translation from East to
+West, from reigning princess to little scholar was surmounted--proved
+fertile in gentle memories. The visit of to-day, not only revived these
+memories, but added to their number. For it passed off charmingly.
+Carteret seemed by no means out of place among the nuns--well-bred and
+gracious women of hidden, consecrated lives. They, indeed, appeared
+instinctively drawn to him and fluttered round him in the sweetest
+fashion imaginable; he, meanwhile, bearing himself towards them with an
+exquisite and simple courtesy beyond all praise. Never had Damaris
+admired the "man with the blue eyes" more, never felt a more perfect
+trust in him, than when beholding him as _Mousquetaire au Couvent_ thus!
+
+As they emerged again into the clear atmosphere and resonance of the
+Paris streets, and made their way back by the Rue du Bac, the Pont Royal
+and the gardens of the Tuileries, to their hotel in the Rue de Rivoli,
+Carteret spoke reverently of the religious life, and the marvellous
+adaptability of the Catholic system to every need, every attitude of the
+human heart and conscience. He spoke further of the loss those inevitably
+sustain, who--from whatever cause--stand outside the creeds, unable to
+set their spiritual God-ward hopes and aspirations within a definite
+external framework of doctrine and practice hallowed by tradition.
+
+"I could almost wish those dear holy women had gathered your little soul
+into the fold, when they had you in their keeping and made a good
+Catholic of you, dearest witch," he told her. "It would have been a
+rather flagrant case of cradle-snatching, I own, but I can't help
+thinking it would have simplified many difficulties for you."
+
+"And raised a good many, too," Damaris gaily answered him. "For Aunt
+Harriet Cowden would have been furious, and Aunt Felicia distressed and
+distracted; and poor Nannie--though she really got quite tame with the
+Sisters, and came to respect them in the end--would have broken her heart
+at my being taught to worship images, and have believed hell yawned to
+devour me. Oh! I think it was more fair to wait.--All the same I loved
+their religion--I love it still."
+
+"Go on loving it," he bade her.--And at once turned the conversation to
+other themes--that of her father, Charles Verity among them, and the book
+on Afghanistan, the fair copy of the opening chapters of which was just
+completed.
+
+Then, the stimulating, insistent vivacity of Paris going a little to
+Damaris' head--since urging, as always, to fullness of enterprise,
+fullness of endeavour, giving, as always, immense joy and value to the
+very fact of living--she lamented the late development of her father's
+literary genius. A lament which called forth Carteret's consolatory
+rejoinder, along with this--to her--cryptic assertion as to the thrice
+blessed state of the man whose harvest, when tardy, is of a description
+he need not scruple to reap.
+
+"Why," she asked herself, "should he have said that unless with
+reference to himself. Reference to some private harvest which he himself
+scrupled to reap?"
+
+Damaris slipped her feet from the cushioned window-seat to the floor, and
+stooping down recovered her fallen black silk stocking. She felt
+disturbed, slightly conscience-stricken. For it had never occurred to
+her, strong, able, serene of humour and of countenance as he was, that
+the "man with the blue eyes" could have personal worries, things--as she
+put it--he wanted yet doubted whether he ought to have. Surely his
+unfailing helpfulness and sympathy gave him the right, in fee-simple, to
+anything and everything he might happen to covet. That he should covet
+what was wrong, what was selfish, detrimental to others, seemed
+incredible. And the generous pity of her youthful tenderness, her
+impatience of all privation, all disappointment or denial for those she
+held in affection, overflowed in her. She longed to do whatever would
+greatly please him, to procure for him whatever he wanted. Wouldn't it be
+delicious to do that--if she could only find out!
+
+But this last brought her up against a disquieting lesson lately
+learned.--Namely, against recognition of how very far the lives of
+men--even those we know most dearly and closely--and the lives of us
+women are really apart. She thought of her father and Darcy Faircloth and
+their entirely unsuspected relation. This dulled the edge of her
+enthusiasm. For wasn't it only too probably the same with them all?
+Loyalty compelled the question. Had not every man a secret, or secrets,
+only penetrable, both for his peace of mind and for your own, at
+considerable risk?
+
+Damaris planted her elbows on the window-sill, her chin in the hollow of
+her hands. Her eyes were solemn, her face grave with thought.--Verily the
+increase of knowledge is the increase of perplexity, if not of actual
+sorrow. Even the apparently safest and straightest paths are beset with
+"pitfall and with gin" for whoso studies to pursue truth and refuse
+subscription to illusion. Your charity should be wide as the world
+towards others. Towards yourself narrow as a hair, lest you condone your
+own weakness, greed, or error. Of temptation to any save very venial sins
+Damaris had, in her own person, little conception as yet.--Still to a
+maiden of eighteen, though she may have a generous proportion of health
+and beauty, sufficient fortune and by no means contemptible intelligence,
+noble instincts, complications and distresses, both of the practical and
+theoretic order, may, and do, at times occur. Damaris suffered the shock
+of such now; and into what further jungles of cheerless speculation she
+might have been projected it is impossible to say, had not persons and
+events close at hand claimed her attention.
+
+The Grand Hotel at St. Augustin is situated upon a long narrow
+promontory, which juts out into the sea at right angles to the main trend
+of the coast-line. It faces east, turning its back upon the little
+town--built on the site of a Roman colonial city, originally named in
+honour of the pagan Emperor rather than the Christian Confessor and
+ascetic. Mediaeval piety bestowed on it the saintly prefix, along with a
+round-arched cathedral church, of no great size, but massive proportions
+and somewhat gloomy aspect.
+
+From the terrace garden and carriage drive, immediately in front of the
+hotel, the ground drops sharply, beneath scattered pines with undergrowth
+of heather, wild lavender, gum-cistus, juniper, mastic and myrtle, to the
+narrow white beach a hundred feet below. Little paths traverse the rough
+descent. And up one of these, halting to rest now and then on a
+conveniently placed bench in the shade of some spreading umbrella pine,
+to discourse to the company of gentlemen following in her wake, or
+contemplate the view, came a notably graceful and telling figure.
+
+As the lady advanced with leisurely composure, Damaris, gazing down from
+her point of vantage in the first floor window, received the impression
+of a person almost extravagantly finished and feminine, in which all
+irregularities and originalities of Nature had suffered obliteration by
+the action of art. Not art of the grosser sort, dependent on dyes, paint
+and cosmetics. The obliteration was not superficial merely, and must have
+been achieved by processes at once subtle and profound. The result
+obtained, however, showed unquestionably charming--if in a line slightly
+finical and exotic--as she picked her way through the fragrant
+undergrowth of the pine wood, slanting sunshine playing on her dark blue
+raiment, wide-brimmed white hat, and floating veil.
+
+Coming completely into view at last, when stepping from the path on to
+the level carriage drive, a gold chain she wore, from which dangled a
+little bunch of trinkets and a long-handled lorgnette, glinted, catching
+the light. Damaris gave an exclamation of sudden and rapturous
+recognition. So far she had had eyes for the lady only; but now she took
+a rapid scrutiny of the latter's attendants. With two of them she was
+unacquainted. The other two were her father and Carteret.
+
+Whereupon rapture gave place to a pang of jealous alarm and resentment.
+For they belonged to her, those dear two; and to see them even thus
+temporarily appropriated by someone else caused her surprising agitation.
+They had been so good, so apparently content, alone with her upon this
+journey. It would be too trying, too really intolerable to have outsiders
+interfere and break up their delightful solitude _à trois_, their
+delightful intercourse! Yet, almost immediately, the girl flushed, going
+hot all over with shame, scolding herself for even passing entertainment
+of such unworthy and selfish emotions.
+
+"For it is Henrietta Pereira," she said half aloud. "My own darling,
+long-ago Henrietta, who used to be so beautifully kind to me and give me
+presents I loved above everything."
+
+And, after a pause, the note of alarm sounding again though modified to
+wistfulness--
+
+"Will she care for me still, and shall I still care for her--but I must
+care--I must--now I'm grown up?"
+
+To set which disturbing questions finally at rest, being a valiant young
+creature, Damaris permitted herself no second thoughts, no vacillation or
+delay; but went straight downstairs and crossing the strip of terrace
+garden, bare-headed as she was, waited at the head of the steps leading up
+from the carriage drive to greet the idol of her guileless infancy.
+
+To Colonel Carteret who, bringing up the rear of the little procession
+was the first to notice her advent, she made a touching and gallant
+picture. Her face had gone very pale and he saw, or fancied he saw, her
+lips tremble. But her solemn eyes shone with a steady light, and,
+whatever the excitement affecting her, she held it bravely in check.
+Noting all which he could not but speculate as to whether she had any
+knowledge of a certain romantic attachment--culminating on the one hand
+in an act of virtuous treachery, on the other in an act of
+renunciation--which had overshadowed and wrenched from its natural
+sequence so large a portion of her father's life. He earnestly hoped she
+was ignorant of all that; although the act of renunciation, made for her,
+Damaris' sake, represented a magnificent gesture if an exaggerated and
+almost fanatical one, on Charles Verity's part. It gave the measure of
+the man's fortitude, the measure of his paternal devotion. Still
+knowledge of it might, only too readily, prove a heavy burden to a young
+girl's imaginative and tender conscience. Yes--he hoped she had been
+spared that knowledge.
+
+If she had escaped it thus far--as he reflected not without
+amusement--the other actor in that rather tragic drama, now so
+unexpectedly and arrestingly present in the flesh, could be trusted not
+to enlighten her. He knew Henrietta Pereira of old, bless her hard little
+heart. Not only did she detest tragedy, but positively revelled in any
+situation where clever avoidance of everything even remotely approaching
+it was open to her. She ruled the sublime and the ridiculous alike
+impartially out of the social relation; and that with so light though
+determined a touch, so convincing yet astute a tact and delicacy, you
+were constrained not only to submit to, but applaud her strategy.
+
+Had she not within the very last hour given a masterly example of her
+powers in this line? For when he, Carteret, and Charles Verity, strolling
+in all innocence along the shore path back from St. Augustin, had to
+their infinite astonishment met her and her attendant swains face to
+face, she hadn't turned a hair. Her nerve was invincible. After clasping
+the hand of each in turn with the prettiest enthusiasm, she had
+introduced--"My husband, General Frayling--Mr. Marshall Wace, his
+cousin," with the utmost composure. Thus making over to them any
+awkwardness which might be going and effectually ridding herself of it.
+
+Carteret felt his jaw drop for the moment.--He had heard of John
+Pereira's death two years ago, and welcomed the news on her account,
+since, if report said true, that dashing cavalry officer had taken to
+evil courses. Gambling and liquor made him a nuisance, not to say
+disgrace to his regiment, and how much greater a one to his wife. Poor
+thing, she must have had a lot to endure and that of the most sordid! It
+wasn't nice to think about. Clearly Pereira's removal afforded matter for
+thankfulness.
+
+But of this speedy reconstruction on her part, in the shape of a third
+matrimonial venture, he had heard never a word. How would Verity take
+it?--Apparently with a composure as complete as her own.--And then the
+inherent humour of the position, and her immense skill and coolness in
+the treatment of it, came uppermost. Carteret felt bound to support her
+and help her out by accepting her little old General--lean-shanked and
+livery, with pompously outstanding chest, aggressive white moustache and
+mild appealing eye--as a matter of course. Bound to buck him up, and
+encourage him in the belief he struck a stranger as the terrible fellow
+he would so like to be, and so very much feared that he wasn't.
+Carteret's large charity came into play in respect of the superannuated
+warrior; who presented a pathetically inadequate effect, specially when
+seen, as now, alongside Charles Verity. Surely the contrast must hit the
+fair Henrietta rather hard? Carteret expended himself in kindly
+civilities, therefore, going so far as to say "sir" once or twice in
+addressing Frayling. Whereat the latter's timorous step grew almost
+jaunty and his chest more than ever inflated.
+
+If Henrietta carried things off to admiration in the first amazement of
+impact, she carried them off equally to admiration in her meeting with
+Damaris. It was the prettiest little scene in the world.
+
+For reaching up and placing her hands on the girl's shoulders her
+chiselled face--distinct yet fragile in outline as some rare
+cameo--suffused for once with transparent, shell-like pink, she kissed
+Damaris on either cheek.
+
+"Ah! precious child, most precious child," she fondly murmured. "What an
+enchanting surprise! How little I imagined such a joy was in store for me
+when I came out this afternoon!"
+
+And louder, for the benefit of the assistants.
+
+"Yes--here are my husband, General Frayling, and Mr. Wace his cousin--he
+shall sing to you some day--that by the way--who is travelling with us.
+But they must talk to you later. I can't spare you to them now. I am
+greedy after our long separation and want to have you all to myself."
+
+And, including the four gentlemen in a gesture of friendly farewell, she
+put her arm round Damaris' waist, gently compelling her in the direction
+of a group of buff-painted iron chairs, placed in a semicircle in the
+shade of ilex and pine trees at the end of the terrace.
+
+"I have so much to hear," she said, "so many dropped threads to pick up,
+and it is impossible to talk comfortably and confidentially in a crowd.
+Our men must really contrive to play about by themselves for a little
+while and leave me to enjoy you in peace."
+
+"But won't they mind?" Damaris asked, upon whom the spell of the elder
+woman's personality began sensibly to work.
+
+"Let them mind, let them mind," she threw off airily in answer. "So much
+the better. It will do them good. It is excellent discipline for men to
+find they can't always have exactly their own way."
+
+Which assertion served to dissipate any last remnant of jealous alarm
+Damaris' mind may have unconsciously harboured. In its place shy
+curiosity blossomed, and quick intimate pleasure in so perfectly
+fashioned and furnished a creature. For wasn't her childish adoration
+fully justified? Wasn't her darling Henrietta a being altogether
+captivating and unique? Damaris loved the feeling of that arm and hand
+lightly clasping her waist. Loved the faint fragrance--hadn't it
+intoxicated her baby senses?--pervading Henrietta's hair, her clothes,
+her whole pretty person. Loved the tinkle of the bunch of trinkets
+dangling from the long chain which reached below her waist. She had
+feared disappointment. That, as she now perceived, was altogether
+superfluous. Henrietta enthralled her eyes, enthralled her affection. She
+longed to protect, to serve her, to stand between her and every rough
+wind which blew, because she was so pretty, so extraordinarily and
+completely civilized from head to foot.
+
+No doubt in the generosity of her youthful inexperience Damaris
+exaggerated the lady's personal charm. Yet the dozen years
+intervening--since their last meeting--had, in truth, dealt mercifully
+with the latter's good looks. A trifle pinched, a trifle faded she might
+be, as compared with the Henrietta of twelve years ago; but immediately
+such damage, such wear and tear of the fleshly garment, showed at its
+least conspicuous. She negotiated the double encounter, as Carteret had
+noted, with admirable sang-froid; but not, as to the first one in any
+case, without considerably greater inward commotion than he gave her
+credit for. She was in fact keyed up by it, excited, taken out of herself
+to an unprecedented extent, her native optimism and egoism in singular
+disarray. Yet thereby, through that very excitement, she recaptured for
+the time being the physical loveliness of an earlier period. Beauty is
+very much a matter of circulation; and the blood cantered, not to say
+galloped, through Henrietta's veins.
+
+The sight of Charles Verity did indeed put back the clock for her in
+most astounding sort. Henrietta was no victim of impulse. Each of her
+three marriages had been dictated by convenience, carefully thought out
+and calculated. Over neither husband had she, for ever so brief a
+period, lost her head. But over Charles Verity she had come perilously
+near losing it--once. That, it is not too much to say, constituted the
+greatest sensation, the greatest emotion of her experience. As a rule
+the most trying and embarrassing part of encountering a former lover is
+that you wonder what, under Heaven, induced you to like him so well?
+Here the position was reversed, so that Henrietta wondered--with a
+sickening little contraction of the heart--what, under Heaven, had
+prevented her liking him much more, why, under Heaven, she ever let him
+go? Of course, as things turned out, it was all for the best, since her
+insensibility made for righteousness, or anyhow for respectability--in
+the opinion of the world the same, if not an even superior article. She
+ought to congratulate herself, ought to feel thankful. Only just now she
+didn't. On the contrary she was shaken--consciously and most
+uncomfortably shaken to the very deepest of such depths as her shallow
+soul could boast--sitting here, on a buff-painted chair in the shade of
+the pines and ilex trees, in company with Damaris, holding the girl's
+hand in both her own with a clinging, slightly insistent, pressure as it
+rested upon her lap.
+
+"Dearest child, I believe, though you have grown so tall, I should have
+recognized you anywhere," she said.
+
+"And I you," Damaris echoed. "I did, I did, after just the first
+little minute."
+
+"Ah! you've a memory for faces too?"
+
+Her glance wandered to the group of men gathered before the hotel
+portico--Sir Charles and General Frayling side by side, engaged in civil
+if not particularly animated conversation. The two voices reached her
+with a singular difference of timbre and of tone. Carteret spoke,
+apparently making some proposition, some invitation, in response to which
+the four passed into the house.
+
+Henrietta settled herself in her chair with a movement of sensible
+relief. While they remained there she must look, and it was not quite
+healthy to look.--Her good, little, old General, who only asked
+respectfully to adore and follow in her wake--a man of few demands and
+quite tidy fortune--and after poor, besotted, blustering, gambling,
+squashily sentimental and tearful Johnnie Pereira wasn't he a haven of
+rest--oh, positively a haven of rest? All the same she preferred his
+not standing there in juxtaposition to Charles Verity. She much
+preferred their all going indoors--Carteret along with the rest, if it
+came to that.
+
+She turned and smiled upon Damaris.
+
+"However good your memory for faces may be, I find it very sweet you
+should have recognized mine after 'just the first little minute,'" she
+said, with a coaxing touch of mimicry. "You haven't quite parted company
+with the baby I remember so well, even yet. I used to call you my downy
+owl, with solemn saucer eyes and fierce little beak. You were
+extraordinarily, really perplexingly like your father then. A miniature
+edition, but so faithful to the original it used, sometimes, to give me
+the quaintest jump."
+
+Henrietta mused, raising one hand and fingering the lace at her throat
+as seeking to loosen it. Damaris watched fascinated, in a way
+troubled, by her extreme prettiness. Every point, every detail was so
+engagingly complete.
+
+"You are like Sir Charles still; but I see something which is not
+him--the personal equation, I suppose, developing in you, the element
+which is individual, exclusively your own and yourself. I should enjoy
+exploring that."
+
+She looked at Damaris very brightly for an instant, then looked down.
+
+"I want to hear more about Sir Charles," she said. "Of all the
+distinguished men I have been fortunate enough to know, who--who have let
+me be their friend, no one has ever interested me more than he. We have
+known one another ever since I was a girl and his career meant so much to
+me. I followed it closely, rejoiced in his promotion, his successes; felt
+indignant--and said so--when he met with adverse criticism. I am speaking
+of his Indian career. When he accepted that Afghan command, it made a
+break. We lost touch, which I regretted immensely. From that time onward
+I only knew what any and everybody might know from the newspapers--except
+occasionally when I happened to meet Colonel Carteret."
+
+The explanation was lengthy, laboured, not altogether spontaneous.
+Damaris vaguely mystified by it made no comment. Henrietta raised her
+head, glancing round from under lowered eyelids.
+
+"You appreciate the ever-faithful Carteret?" she asked, an edge of
+eagerness in her voice.
+
+"The dear 'man with the blue eyes?' Of course I love him, we both love
+him almost better than anybody in the world," Damaris warmly declared.
+
+"And he manifestly returns your affection. But, dearest child, why
+'almost.' Is that reservation intentional or merely accidental?"
+
+Then seeing the girl's colour rise.
+
+"Perhaps it's hardly a fair question. Forgive me. I forgot how long it
+is since we met, forgot I'm not, after all, talking to the precious
+little downy owl, who had no more serious secrets than such as might
+concern her large family of dolls."
+
+"I am not sure the 'almost' was quite true." Damaris put in hastily, her
+cheeks more than ever aflame.
+
+"Yes it was, most delicious child--I protest it was. And I'm not sure I'm
+altogether sorry."
+
+Slightly, daintily, she kissed the flaming cheek.
+
+"But I do love Colonel Carteret," Damaris repeated, with much wide-eyed
+earnestness. "I trust him and depend on him as I do on nobody else."
+
+"'Almost' nobody else?"
+
+Damaris shook her head. She felt a wee bit disappointed in Henrietta.
+This persistence displeased her as trivial, as lacking in perfection of
+breeding and taste.
+
+"Quite nobody," she said. And without permitting time for rejoinder
+launched forth into the subject of the book on the campaigns of Shere
+Ali, which, as she explained, had been undertaken at Carteret's
+suggestion and with such encouraging result. She waxed eloquent regarding
+the progress of the volume and its high literary worth.
+
+"But I was a little nervous lest my father should lose his interest and
+grow slack when we were alone, and he'd only me to talk things over with
+and to consult, so I begged Colonel Carteret to come abroad with us."
+
+"Ah! I see--quite so," Henrietta murmured. "It was at your request."
+
+"Yes. He was beautifully kind, as he always is. He agreed at once, gave
+up all his own plans and came."
+
+"And stays"--Henrietta said.
+
+"Yes, for the present. But to tell the truth I'm worried about his
+staying."
+
+"Why?"--again with a just perceptible edge of eagerness.
+
+"Because, of course, I have no right to trade on his kindness, even for
+my father's sake or the sake of the book."
+
+"And that is your only reason?"
+
+"Isn't it more than reason enough? There must be other people who want
+him and things of his own he wants to do. It would be odiously selfish of
+me to interfere by keeping him tied here. I have wondered lately whether
+I oughtn't to speak to him about it and urge his going home. I was
+worrying rather over that when you arrived this afternoon, and then the
+gladness of seeing you put it out of my head. But how I wish you would
+advise me, Henrietta, if it's not troubling you too much. You and they
+have been friends so long and you must know so much better than I can
+what's right. Tell me what is my duty--about his staying, I mean--to, to
+them both, do you think?"
+
+Henrietta Frayling did not answer at once. Her delicate features
+perceptibly sharpened and hardened, her lips becoming thin as a thread.
+
+"You're not vexed with me? I haven't been tiresome and asked you
+something I shouldn't?" Damaris softly exclaimed, smitten with alarm of
+unintended and unconscious offence.
+
+"No--no--but you put a difficult question, since I have only impressions
+and those of the most, fugitive to guide me. Personally, I am always
+inclined to leave well alone."
+
+"But is this well?--There's just the point."
+
+"You are very anxious"--
+
+"Yes, I am very anxious. You see I care dreadfully much."
+
+Henrietta bent down, giving her attention to an inch of kilted
+silk petticoat, showing where it should not, beneath the hem of
+her blue skirt.
+
+"I hesitate to give you advice; but I can give you my impressions--for
+what they may be worth. Seeing Colonel Carteret this afternoon he struck
+me as being in excellent case--enviably young for his years and content."
+
+"You thought so? Yet that's just what has worried me. Once or twice
+lately I have not been sure he was quite content."
+
+"Oh! you put it too high!" Henrietta threw off. "Can one ever be sure
+anyone--even one's own poor self--is quite content?"
+
+And she looked round, bringing the whole artillery of her still great, if
+waning, loveliness suddenly to bear upon Damaris, dazzling, charming,
+confusing her, as she said:
+
+"My precious child, has it never occurred to you Colonel Carteret may
+stay on, not against has will, but very much with it? Or occurred to you,
+further, not only that the pleasures of your father's society are by no
+means to be despised; but that you yourself are a rather remarkable
+product--as quaintly engagingly clever, as you are--well--shall we
+say--handsome, Damaris?"
+
+"I am deputed to enquire whether you propose to take tea indoors, Miss
+Verity, or have it brought to you here; and, in the latter case, whether
+we have leave to join you?"
+
+The speaker, Marshall Wace--a young man of about thirty years of age--may
+be described as soft in make, in colouring slightly hectic, in manner a
+subtle cross between the theatrical and the parsonic. Which, let it be
+added, is by no means to condemn him wholesale, laugh him off the stage
+or out of the pulpit. In certain circles, indeed, these traits, this
+blend, won for him unstinted sympathy and approval. He possessed talents
+in plenty, and these of an order peculiarly attractive to the amateur
+because tentative rather than commanding. Among his intimates he was seen
+and spoken of as one cloaked with the pathos of thwarted aspirations.
+Better health, less meagre private means and a backing of influence, what
+might he not have done? His star might have flamed to the zenith!
+Meanwhile it was a privilege to help him, to such extent as his extreme
+delicacy of feeling permitted. That it really permitted a good deal, one
+way or another, displaying considerable docility under the infliction of
+benefits, would have been coarse to perceive and unpardonably brutal to
+mention.--Such, anyhow, was the opinion held by his cousin, General
+Frayling, at whose expense he now enjoyed a recuperative sojourn upon the
+French Riviera. Some people, in short, have a gift of imposing
+themselves, and Marshall Wace may be counted among that conveniently
+endowed band.
+
+He imposed himself now upon one at least of his hearers. For, though the
+address might seem studied, the voice delivering it was agreeable,
+causing Damaris, for the first time, consciously to notice this member of
+Mrs. Frayling's retinue. She felt amiably disposed towards him since his
+intrusion closed a conversation causing her no little disturbance of
+mind. Henrietta's last speech, in particular, set her nerves tingling
+with most conflicting emotions. If Henrietta so praised her that praise
+must be deserved, for who could be better qualified to give judgment on
+such a subject than the perfectly equipped Henrietta? Yet she shrank in
+distaste, touched in her maiden modesty and pride, from so frank an
+exposition of her own charms. It made her feel unclothed, stripped in the
+market-place--so to speak--and shamed. Secretly she had always hoped she
+was pretty rather than plain. She loved beauty and therefore naturally
+desired to possess it. But to have the fact of that possession thus
+baldly stated was another matter. It made her feel unnatural, as though
+joined to a creature with whom she was insufficiently acquainted, whose
+ways might not be her ways or its thoughts her thoughts. Therefore the
+young man, Marshall Wace, coming as a seasonable diversion from these
+extremely personal piercings and probings, found greater favour in her
+eyes than he otherwise might. And this with results, for Damaris'
+gratitude, once engaged, disdained to criticize, invariably tending to
+err on the super-generous side.
+
+Yes, they would all have tea out here, if Henrietta was willing. And, if
+Henrietta would for the moment excuse her, she would go and order
+Hordle--her father's man--to see to the preparation of it himself.
+Foreign waiters, whatever their ability in other departments, have no
+natural understanding of a tea-pot and are liable to the weirdest ideas of
+cutting bread and butter.
+
+With which, conscious she was guilty of somewhat incoherent chatter,
+Damaris sprang up and swung away along the terrace, through the clear
+tonic radiance, buoyant as a caged bird set free.
+
+"Go with her, Marshall, go with her," Mrs. Frayling imperatively bade
+him.
+
+"And leave you, Cousin Henrietta?"
+
+She rose with a petulant gesture.
+
+"Yes, go at once or you won't overtake her. I am tired, really wretchedly
+tired--and am best left alone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHICH CONCERNS ITSELF, INCIDENTALLY, WITH THE GRIEF OF A VICTIM OF
+CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE RECEPTION OF A BELATED CHRISTMAS GREETING
+
+
+Henrietta Frayling left the Grand Hotel, that afternoon, in a chastened
+frame of mind. Misgivings oppressed her. She doubted--and even more than
+doubted--whether she had risen to the full height of her own reputation,
+whether she had not allowed opportunity to elude her, whether she had not
+lost ground difficult to regain. The affair was so astonishingly sprung
+upon her. The initial impact she withstood unbroken--and from this she
+derived a measure of consolation. But afterwards she weakened. She had
+felt too much--and that proved her undoing. It is foolish, because
+disabling, to feel.
+
+Her treatment of Damaris she condemned as mistaken, admitting a point of
+temper. It is hard to forgive the younger generation their youth, the
+infinite attraction of their ingenuous freshness, the fact that they have
+the ball at their feet. Hence she avoided the society of the young of her
+own sex--as a rule. Girls are trying when pretty and intelligent, hardly
+less trying--though for other reasons--when the reverse. Boys she
+tolerated. In the eyes of young men she sunned herself taking her ease,
+since these are slow to criticize, swift to believe--between eighteen and
+eight-and-twenty, that is.--We speak of the mid-Victorian era and then
+obtaining masculine strain.
+
+Misgivings continued to pursue her during the ensuing evening and even
+interfered with her slumbers during the night. This--most unusual
+occurrence--rendered her fretful. She reproached her tractable and
+distressed little General with having encouraged her to walk much too
+far. In future he swore to insist on the carriage, however confidently
+she might assert the need of active exertion. She pointed out the fallacy
+of rushing to extremes; which rather cruelly floored him, since
+"rushing," in any shape or form, had conspicuously passed out of his
+programme some considerable time ago.
+
+"My wife is not at all herself," he told Marshall Wace, at breakfast next
+morning--"quite overdone, I am sorry to say, and upset. I blame myself.
+I must keep a tight hand on her and forbid over exertion."
+
+With a small spoon, savagely, daringly he beat in the top of his
+boiled egg.
+
+"I must be more watchful," he added. "Her nervous energy is deceptive. I
+must refuse to let it override my better judgment and take me in."
+
+By luncheon time, however, Henrietta was altogether herself, save for a
+pretty pensiveness, and emerged with all her accustomed amiability from
+this temporary eclipse.
+
+The Fraylings occupied a small detached villa, built in the grounds of
+the Hôtel de la Plage--a rival and venerably senior establishment to the
+Grand Hotel--situate just within the confines of St. Augustin, where the
+town curves along the glistering shore to the western horn of the little
+bay. At the back of it runs the historic high road from Marseilles to the
+Italian frontier, passing through Cannes and Nice. Behind it, too, runs
+the railway with its many tunnels, following the same, though a somewhat
+less serpentine, course along the gracious coast.
+
+To the ex-Anglo-Indian woman, society is as imperative a necessity as
+water to a fish. She must foregather or life loses all its savour; must
+entertain, be entertained, rub shoulders generally or she is lost.
+Henrietta Frayling suffered the accustomed fate, though to speak of
+rubbing shoulders in connection with her is to express oneself
+incorrectly to the verge of grossness. Her shoulders were of an order far
+too refined to rub or be rubbed. Nevertheless, after the shortest
+interval consistent with self-respect, such society as St. Augustin and
+its neighbourhood afforded found itself enmeshed in her dainty net. Mrs.
+Frayling's villa became a centre, where all English-speaking persons
+met. There she queened it, with her General as loyal henchman, and
+Marshall Wace as a professor of drawing-room talents of most varied sort.
+
+Discovery of the party at the Grand Hotel, took the gilt off the
+gingerbread of such queenings, to a marked extent, making them look
+make-shifty, lamentably second-rate and cheap. Hence Henrietta's
+fretfulness in part. For with the exception of Lady Hermione
+Twells--widow of a once Colonial Governor--and the Honourable Mrs.
+Callowgas _née_ de Brett, relict of a former Bishop of Harchester, they
+were but scratch pack these local guests of hers. Soon, however, a scheme
+of putting that discovery to use broke in on her musings. The old
+friendship must, she feared, be counted dead. General Frayling's
+existence, in the capacity of husband, rendered any resurrection of it
+impracticable. She recognized that. Yet exhibition of its tombstone, were
+such exhibition compassable, could not fail to bring her honour and
+respect. She would shine by a reflected light, her glory all the greater
+that the witnesses of it were themselves obscure--Lady Hermione and Mrs.
+Callowgas excepted of course. Carteret's good-nature could be counted on
+to bring him to the villa. And Damaris must be annexed. Assuming the rôle
+and attitude of a vicarious motherhood, Henrietta herself could hardly
+fail to gain distinction. It was a touching part--specially when played
+by a childless woman only a little--yes, really only quite a little--past
+her prime.
+
+Here, indeed, was a great idea, as she came to grasp the possibilities
+and scope of it. As chaperon to Damaris how many desirable doors would be
+open to her! Delicately Henrietta hugged herself perceiving that, other
+things being equal, her own career was by no means ended yet. Through
+Damaris might she not very well enter upon a fresh and effective phase of
+it? How often and how ruefully had she revolved the problem of advancing
+age, questioning how gracefully to confront that dreaded enemy, and
+endure its rather terrible imposition of hands without too glaring a loss
+of prestige and popularity! Might not Damaris' childish infatuation
+offer a solution of that haunting problem, always supposing the
+infatuation could be revived, be recreated?
+
+Ah! what a double-dyed idiot she had been yesterday, in permitting
+feeling to outrun judgment!--With the liveliest satisfaction Henrietta
+could have boxed her own pretty ears in punishment of her passing
+weakness.--Yet surely time still remained wherein to retrieve her error
+and restore her ascendency. Damaris might be unusually clever; but she
+was also finely inexperienced, malleable, open to influence as yet. Let
+Henrietta then see to it, and that without delay or hesitation, bringing
+to bear every ingenious social art, and--if necessary--artifice, in which
+long practice had made her proficient.
+
+To begin with she would humble herself by writing a sweet little letter
+to Damaris. In it she would both accuse and excuse her maladroitness of
+yesterday, pleading the shock of so unlooked-for a coming together and
+the host of memories evoked by it.--Would urge how deeply it affected
+her, overcame her in fact, rendering her incapable of saying half the
+affectionate things it was in her heart to say. She might touch on the
+subject of Damaris' personal appearance again; which, by literally taking
+her breath away, had contributed to her general undoing.--On second
+thoughts, however, she decided it would be politic to avoid that
+particular topic, since Damaris was evidently a little shy in respect of
+her own beauty.--Henrietta smiled to herself.--That is a form of shyness
+exceedingly juvenile, short-lived enough!
+
+Marshall should act as her messenger, she being--as she could truthfully
+aver--eager her missive might reach its destination with all possible
+despatch. A letter, moreover, delivered by hand takes on an importance,
+makes a claim on the attention, greater than that of one received by
+post. There is a personal gesture in the former mode of transmission by
+no means to be despised in delicate operations such as the present--"I
+want to set myself right with you _at once_, dearest child, in case, as I
+fear, you may have a little misunderstood, me yesterday. Accident having
+so strangely restored us to one another, I long to hold you closely if
+you will let me do so."--Yes, it should run thus, the theme embroidered
+with high-flashing colour of Eastern reminiscence--the great subtropic
+garden of the Sultan-i-bagh, for example, its palms, orange grove and
+lotus tank, the call of the green parrots, chant of the well-coollie and
+creak of the primitive wooden gearing, as the yoke of cream white oxen
+trotted down and laboriously backed up the walled slope to the well-head.
+
+Mrs. Frayling set herself to produce a very pretty piece of sentiment,
+nicely turned, decorated, worded, and succeeded to her own
+satisfaction. Might not she too, at this rate, claim possession of the
+literary gift--under stress of circumstance? The idea was a new one. It
+amused her.
+
+And what if Damaris elected to show this precious effusion to
+her father, Sir Charles? Well, if the girl did, she did. It might
+just conceivably work on him also, to the restoration of
+past--infatuation?--Henrietta left the exact term in doubt. But her hope
+of such result was of the smallest. Exhibition of a tombstone was the
+most she could count upon.--More probably he would regard it critically,
+cynically, putting his finger through her specious phrases. She doubted
+his forgiveness of a certain act of virtuous treachery even yet;
+although he had, in a measure, condoned her commission of it by making
+use of her on one occasion since, namely, that of her bringing Damaris
+back twelve years ago to Europe. But whether his attitude were cynical
+or not, he would hold his peace. Such cogent reasons existed for silence
+on his part that if he did slightly distrust her, hold her a little
+cheap, he would hardly venture to say as much, least of all to
+Damaris.--Venture or condescend?--Again Mrs. Frayling left the term in
+doubt and went forward with her schemes, which did, unquestionably just
+now, add a pleasing zest to life.
+
+The innocent subject of these machinations received both the note and its
+bearer in a friendly spirit, though she was already, as it happened, rich
+in letters to-day. The bi-weekly packet from Deadham--addressed in Mary
+Fisher's careful copy-book hand--arrived at luncheon time, and
+contained, among much of apparently lesser interest, a diverting
+chronicle of Tom Verity's impressions and experiences during the first
+six weeks of his Indian sojourn. The young man's gaily self-confident
+humour had survived his transplantation. He wrote in high feather, quite
+unabashed by the novelty of his surroundings, yet not forgetting to pay
+honour where honour was due.
+
+"It has been 'roses, roses all the way' thanks to Sir Charles's
+introductions, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful," he told
+her. "They have procured me no end of delightful hospitality from the
+great ones of the local earth, and really priceless opportunities of
+getting into touch with questions of ruling importance over here. I am
+letting my people at home know how very much I owe, and always shall owe,
+to his kindness in using his influence on my behalf at the start."
+
+Damaris glowed responsive to this fine flourish of a tone, and passed the
+letter across the small round dinner table to her father. Opened a fat
+packet, enclosed in an envelope of exaggerated tenuity, from Miss
+Felicia, only to put it aside in favour of another letter bearing an
+Italian stamp and directed in a, to her, unfamiliar hand.
+
+This was modest in bulk as compared with Miss Felicia's; but while
+examining it, while touching it even, Damaris became aware of an inward
+excitement, of a movement of tenderness not to be ignored or denied.
+
+Startled by her own prescience, and the agitation accompanying it, she
+looked up quickly to find Carteret watching her; whereupon, mutely,
+instinctively, her eyes besought him to ask no questions, make no
+comment. For an appreciable space he kept her in suspense, his glance
+holding and challenging hers in close observation. Then as though,
+not without a measure of struggle, granting her request, he smiled
+at her, and, turning his attention to the contents of his plate,
+quietly went on with the business of luncheon. Damaris meanwhile,
+conscience-stricken--she couldn't tell why--by this silent interchange
+of intelligence, this silent demand on his forbearance, on his
+connivance in her secrecy, laid the letter face downwards on the white
+table-cloth, unopened.
+
+Later, Sir Charles Verity being busy with his English correspondence and
+Carteret having disappeared--gone for a solitary walk, as she divined,
+being, as she feared, not quite pleased with her--she read it in the
+security of her bedroom, seated, for greater ease, upon the polished
+parquet floor just inside an open, southward-facing French window, where
+the breeze coming up off the sea gently fanned her face.
+
+The letter began without preamble:
+
+"We made this port--Genoa--last night. All day we have been discharging
+cargo. Half my crew has gone ashore, set on liquoring and wenching after
+the manner of unregenerate sailor-men all the world over. The other half
+follows their bad example to-morrow, as we shall be lying idle in honour
+of the Christmas festival. On board discipline is as strict as I know how
+to make it, but ashore my hand is lifted off them. So long as they turn
+up on time they are free to follow their fancy, even though it lead them
+to smutty places. My own fancies don't happen to lie that way, for which
+I in nowise praise myself. It is an affair of absence of inclination
+rather than overmuch active virtue. I am really no better than they,
+seeing I yield to the only temptation which takes me--the temptation to
+write to you. I have resisted it times out of number since I bade you
+good-bye at The Hard. But Christmas-night turns one a bit soft and
+craving for sight and touch of those who belong to one. So much I dare
+say, though I go back on nothing I said to you then about the keeping up
+of decent barriers. Only being Christmas-night-soft I give myself the
+licence of a holiday--for once. The night is clear as glass and the city
+rises in a great semicircle, pierced by and outlined in twinkling lights,
+right up to the ring of forts crowning the hills, where the sky begins--a
+sky smothered in stars. I have been out, on deck, looking at it all, at
+the black masts and funnels of the ships ranging to right and left
+against the glare of the town, and at the oily, black water, thick with
+floating filth and garbage and with wandering reflections like jewels and
+precious metals on the surface of it--the rummiest mixture of fair and
+foul. And then, all that faded out somehow--and I saw black water again,
+but clean this time and with no reflections, under a close-drawn veil of
+falling rain; and I felt to lift you out of the boat and carry you in
+across the lawn and up to your room. And then I could not hold out
+against temptation any longer, but came here into my cabin and sat down
+to write to you. The picture of you, wet and limp and helpless in my
+arms, is always with me, stamped on the very substance of my brain, as is
+the other picture of you in the drawing-room lined with book-cases, where
+we found one another for the second time. Found one another in spirit, I
+mean; an almost terribly greater finding than the first one, because it
+can go on for ever as it belongs to the part of us which does not die.
+That is my faith anyhow. To-morrow morning I will go ashore and into one
+of those big, tawdry Genoa churches, and listen to the music, standing in
+some quiet corner, and think about you and renew my vows to you. It won't
+be half bad to keep Christmas that way.
+
+"I don't pretend to be a great letter-writer, so if this one has
+funny fashions to it you must forgive both them and me. I write as I
+feel and must leave it so. The voyage has been good, and my poor old
+tub has behaved herself, kept afloat and done her best, bravely if a
+bit wheezingly, in some rather nasty seas. When we are through here I
+take her across to Tripoli and back along the African coast to
+Algiers, then across to Marseilles. I reckon to reach there in six
+weeks or two months from now. You might perhaps be willing to write a
+line to me there--to the care of my owners, Messrs. Denniver, Holland
+& Co. Their office is in the Cannebière. I don't ask you to do this,
+but only tell you I should value it more than you can quite
+know.--Now my holiday is over and I will close down till next
+Christmas-night--unless miracles happen meanwhile--so good-bye.--Here
+is a boatload of my lads coining alongside, roaring with song and as
+drunk as lords.--God bless you. In spirit I once again kiss your dear
+feet. Your brother till death and after.
+
+"DARCY FAIRCLOTH."
+
+Dazed, enchanted, held captive by the secular magic pertaining to those
+who "go down to the sea in ships" and ply their calling in the great
+waters, held captive, too, by the mysterious prenatal sympathies which
+unite those who come of the same blood, Damaris stayed very still,
+sitting child-like upon the bare polished floor, while the wind murmured
+through the spreading pines, shading the terrace below, and gently fanned
+her throat and temples.
+
+For Faircloth's letter seemed to her very wonderful, alike in its vigour,
+its simplicity and--her lips quivered--its revelation of loving.--How he
+cared--and how he went on caring!--There were coarse words in it, the
+meaning of which she neither knew nor sought to know; but she did not
+resent them. The letter indeed would have lost some of its living force,
+its convincing reality, had they been omitted. They rang true, to her
+ear. And just because they rang true the rest rang blessedly true as
+well. She gloried in the whole therefore, breathing through it a larger
+air of faith and hope, and confident fortitude. The kindred qualities of
+her own heart and intelligence, the flush of her fine enthusiasm, sprang
+to meet and join with the fineness of it, its richness of promise and of
+good omen.
+
+For a time mind and emotion remained thus in stable and exalted
+equilibrium. Then, as enchantment reached its necessary term and her
+apprehensions and thought began to work more normally, she badly wanted
+someone to speak to. She wanted to bear witness, to testify, to pour
+forth both the moving tale and her own sensations, into the ear of some
+indulgent and friendly listener. She--she--wanted to tell Colonel
+Carteret about it, to enlist his interest, to read him, in part at least,
+Darcy Faircloth's letter, and hear his confirmation of the noble spirit
+she discerned in it, its poetry, its charm. For the dear man with the
+blue eyes would understand, of that she felt confident, understand
+fully--and it would set her right with him, if, as she suspected, he was
+not somehow quite pleased with her. She caressed the idea, while, so
+doing, silence and concealment grew increasingly irksome to her. Oh! she
+wanted to speak--and to her father she could not speak.
+
+With that both Damaris' attitude and expression changed, the glory
+abruptly departing. She got up off the floor, left the window, and sat
+down very soberly, in a red-velvet covered arm-chair, placed before the
+flat stone hearth piled with wood ashes.
+
+There truly was the fly in the ointment, the abiding smirch on the
+otherwise radiant surface--as she now hailed it--of this strangely moving
+fraternal relation. The fact of it did come, and, as she feared, would
+inevitably continue to come between her and her father, marring to an
+appreciable degree their mutual confidence and sympathy. At Deadham he
+had braced himself to deal with the subject in a spirit of rather
+magnificent self-abnegation. But the effort had cost him more than she
+quite cared to estimate, in lowered pride and moral suffering. It had
+told on not only his mental but his physical health. Now that he was in
+great measure restored, his humour no longer saturnine, he no longer
+remote, sunk in himself and inaccessible, it would be not only
+injudicious, but selfish, to the verge of active cruelty, to press the
+subject again upon his notice, to propose further concessions, or further
+recognition of its existence. She couldn't ask that of him--ten thousand
+times no, she couldn't ask it--though not to ask it was to let the breach
+in sympathy and confidence widen silently and grow.
+
+So much was sadly clear to her. She unfolded Faircloth's letter and read
+it through a second time, in vain hope of discovering some middle way,
+some leading. Read it, feeling the first enchantment but all
+cross-hatched now and seamed with perplexity and regret. For decent
+barriers must stand, he declared, which meant concealment indefinitely
+prolonged, the love of brother and sister wasted, starved to the mean
+proportions of an occasional furtive letter; sacrificed, with all its
+possibilities of present joy and future comfort, to hide the passage of
+long-ago wrongdoing in which it had its source.
+
+Her hesitation went a step behind this presently, arguing as to how that
+could be sin which produced so gracious a result. It wasn't logical an
+evil tree should bear such conspicuously good fruit. Yet conscience and
+instinct assured her the tree was indeed evil--a thing of license, of
+unruly passion upon which she might not look. Had it not been her first
+thought--when Faircloth told her, drifting down the tide-river in the
+chill and dark--that he must feel sad, feel angry having been wronged by
+the manner of his birth? He had answered "yes," thereby admitting the
+inherent evil of the tree of which his existence was the fruit--adding,
+"but not often and not for long," since he esteemed the gift of life too
+highly to be overnice as to the exact method by which he became possessed
+of it. He palliated, therefore, he excused, but he did not deny.
+
+By this time Damaris' mind wheeled in a vicious circle, perpetually
+swinging round to the original starting-point. The moral puzzle proved
+too complicated for her, the practical one equally hard of solution. She
+stood between them, her father and her brother. Their interests
+conflicted, as did the duty she owed each; and her heart, her judgment,
+her piety were torn two ways at once. Would it always be thus--or would
+the pull of one prove conclusively the stronger? Would she be compelled
+finally to choose between them? Not that either openly did or ever would
+strive to coerce her. Both were honourable, both magnanimous. And, out of
+her heart, she desired to serve both justly and equally--only--only--upon
+youth the pull of youth is very great.
+
+She put her hands over her eyes, shrinking, frightened. Was it possible
+she loved Darcy Faircloth best?
+
+A knocking. Damaris slipped the letter into the pocket of her dress, and
+rising crossed the room and opened the door.
+
+Hordle stood in the pale spacious corridor without. He presented Marshall
+Wace's card. The gentleman, he said rather huffily, had called, bringing
+a message from Mrs. Frayling as Hordle understood, which he requested to
+deliver to Miss Damaris in person. He begged her to believe he was in no
+hurry. If she was engaged he could perfectly well wait.--He would do so
+in the hotel drawing-room, until it was convenient to her to allow him a
+few minutes' conversation.
+
+So, for the second time, this young man's intrusion proved by no means
+unwelcome, as offering Damaris timely escape. She went down willingly
+to receive him. Yesterday he struck her as a pleasant and agreeable
+person--and of a type with which she was unacquainted. It would be
+interesting to talk to him.--She felt anxious, moreover, to learn what
+Henrietta, lovely if not entirely satisfactory Henrietta, could
+possibly want.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BLOWING OF ONE'S OWN TRUMPET PRACTISED AS A FINE ART
+
+
+The slender little Corsican horses, red-chestnut in colour and active as
+cats, trotted, with a tinkle of bells, through the barred sunshine and
+shadow of the fragrant pine and cork woods. The road, turning inland,
+climbed steadily, the air growing lighter and fresher as the elevation
+increased--a nip in it testifying that January was barely yet out. And
+that nip justified the wearing of certain afore-mentioned myrtle-green,
+fur-trimmed pelisse, upon which Damaris' minor affections were, at this
+period, much set. Though agreeably warm and thick, it moulded her bosom,
+neatly shaped her waist, and that without any defacing wrinkle. The broad
+fur band at the throat compelled her to carry her chin high, with a not
+unbecoming effect. Her cheeks bloomed, her eyes shone bright, as she sat
+beside Mrs. Frayling in the open victoria, relishing the fine air, the
+varying prospect, her own good clothes, her companion's extreme
+prettiness and lively talk.
+
+This drive, the prelude to Henrietta's campaign, presented that lady at
+her best. The advantage of being--as Henrietta--essentially artificial,
+is that you can never, save by forgetful lapse into sincerity, be untrue
+to yourself. Hence what a saving of scruples, of self-accusation, of
+self-torment! Her plans once fixed she proceeded to carry them out with
+unswerving ease and spontaneity. She refused to hurry, her only
+criterion of personal conduct being success; and success, so she
+believed, if sound, being a plant of gradual growth. Therefore she gave
+both herself and others time. Once fairly in the saddle, she never
+strained, never fussed.
+
+Her cue to-day was to offer information rather than to require it.
+Curious about many things she might be; but gratification of her
+curiosity must wait. Damaris, on her part, listened eagerly, asking
+nothing better than to be kept amused, kept busy, helped to forget.--Not
+Faircloth's letter--very, very far from that!--but the inward conflict of
+opposing loves, opposing duties, which meditation upon his letter so
+distractingly produced. Relatively all, outside that conflict and the
+dear cause of it, was of small moment--mere play stuff at best. But her
+brain and conscience were tired. She would be so glad, for a time, only
+to think about play stuff.
+
+"I want you to go on being kind to Marshall Wace," Henrietta in the
+course of conversation presently said. "He told me how charmingly you
+received him yesterday, when he called with my note. He was so pleased.
+He is exaggeratedly sensitive owing to unfortunate family complications
+in the past."
+
+Damaris pricked up her ears, family complications having latterly
+acquired a rather painful interest for her.
+
+"Poor man--I'm sorry," she said.
+
+"His mother, a favourite cousin of my husband, General Frayling, married
+an impossible person--eloped with him, to tell the truth. Her people, not
+without reason, were dreadfully put out. The children were brought up
+rather anyhow. Marshall did not go to a public school, which he imagines
+places him at a disadvantage with other men. Perhaps it does. Men always
+strike me as being quaintly narrow-minded on that subject. Later he was
+sent to Cambridge with the idea of his taking Orders and going into the
+Church. My husband's elder brother, Leonard Frayling, is patron of
+several livings. He would have presented Marshall to the first which fell
+vacant, and thus his future would have been secured. But just as he was
+going up for deacon's orders, Marshall, rather I can't help feeling like
+a goose, developed theological difficulties. They were perfectly genuine,
+I don't doubt; but they were also singularly ill-timed--a little earlier,
+a little later, or not at all would have been infinitely more convenient.
+So there he was, poor fellow, thrown on the world at three-and-twenty
+with no profession and no prospects; for my brother-in-law washed his
+hands of him when the theological difficulties were announced. Marshall
+tried bear-leading; but people are not particularly anxious to entrust
+their boys to a non-public school man afflicted by religious doubts. He
+thought of making use of his really exquisite voice and becoming a public
+singer; but the training is fearfully expensive, and so somehow that plan
+also fell through. For a time I am afraid he was really reduced to great
+straits, with the consequence that he broke down in health. Through
+friends, my husband got to hear of Marshall's miserable
+circumstances--shortly after our marriage it was--and felt it incumbent
+upon him to go to the rescue."
+
+Henrietta paused, thereby giving extra point to what was to follow, and
+pulled the fur rug up absently about her waist.
+
+"For the last eighteen months," she said, "Marshall has practically
+made his home with us. The arrangement has its drawbacks, of course.
+For one thing the General and I are never alone, and that is a trial to
+us both. Two's company and three's none. When a husband and wife are
+really devoted they don't want always to have a third wheel to the
+domestic cart."
+
+Then, as if checking further and very natural inclination to repining,
+she looked round at Damaris, smiling from behind her thick white net veil
+with most disarming sweetness.
+
+"No--no--I'm not naughty. I don't mean to complain about it," she
+prettily protested. "For I do so strongly feel if one sets out to do good
+it shouldn't be by driblets, with your name, in full, printed in
+subscription lists against every small donation. You should plump for
+your _protégé_, and that with the least ostentation possible. The General
+and I are careful not to let people know Marshall stays with us as a
+guest. It is rather a slip speaking of it even to you; but I can trust
+you not to repeat what I say. I am sure of that."
+
+Damaris laid a hand fondly, impulsively upon the elder woman's knee.
+
+"For certain you can trust me. For certain anything you say to me is just
+between our two selves. I should never dream of repeating it."
+
+"There speaks the precious downy owl of long ago," Mrs. Frayling brightly
+cried, "bustling up in defence of its own loyalty and honour. Ah!
+Damaris, how very delicious it is to have you with me!"
+
+For, her main point having been made, she now adroitly discarded pathos.
+Another word regarding her philanthropic harbourage of the young man,
+Marshall Wace, remained to be spoken--but not yet. Let it come in later,
+naturally and without hint of insistence.
+
+"We must be together as much as possible during the next few weeks," she
+went on--"as often as Sir Charles can be persuaded to spare you to me.
+Whether the General and I shall ever make up our minds to settle down in
+a home of our own, where I could ask you to stay with us, I don't know.
+I'm afraid we are hopelessly nomadic. Therefore I am extra anxious to
+make the most of the happy accident which has thrown us together, anxious
+to get every ounce possible of intercourse out of it.--We quite
+understand you have luncheon with me on Thursday, don't we?--and that you
+stay and help me through the afternoon. I am always at home on Thursdays
+to the neighbours. They aren't all of them conspicuously well-bred or
+exciting; but I have learnt to take the rough with the smooth, the boring
+along with the gifted and brilliant. India is a good school in which to
+learn hospitality. The practise of that virtue becomes a habit. And I for
+one quite refuse to excuse myself from further exercise of it on coming
+back to Europe. The General feels with me; and we have laid ourselves out
+to be civil to our compatriots here at St. Augustin this winter. A few
+people were vexatiously stiff and starched at first; but each one of them
+has given in, in turn. They really do, I believe, appreciate our little
+social efforts."
+
+"Who wouldn't give in to you Henrietta?" Damaris murmured.
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Frayling delicately beamed on her; and, agreeable
+unanimity of sentiment being thus established, conversation between the
+two ladies for a while fell silent.
+
+The little chestnut horses, meantime, encouraged with "Oh hè-s" and "Oh
+là-s" by their driver, trotted and climbed, climbed and trotted, until
+the woodland lay below and the Signal de la Palu was reached. A wide
+level space on a crest of the foot-hills--with flag staff bearing the
+valorous tricolor, and rustic log-built restaurant offering
+refreshment--opening upon the full splendour of the Maritime Alps.
+
+Damaris stepped out of the carriage, and, patting the near horse on the
+neck in passing, went forward across the sparse turf, starred with tiny
+clear coloured flowers, to the edge of the platform.
+
+The Provençal coachman, from his perch on the box-seat of the victoria,
+his rough-caste crumpled countenance sun-baked to the solid ruddy brown
+of the soil of his own vineyard, followed her movements with approving
+glances.--For she was fresh as an opening rose the young English _Mees_,
+and though most elegant, how agile, how evidently strong!
+
+Innocent of the admiration she excited, Damaris stood absorbed, awed
+even, by the grandeur of the scene. Many hundred feet below, the rent
+chasm down which it took its course steeped in violet gloom, the
+milk-white waters of an ice-fed river impetuously journeyed to the
+fertile lowlands and the sea. Opposite, across the gorge, amazingly
+distinct in the pellucid atmosphere, rose the high mountains, the
+undefiled, untrodden and eternal snows. Azure shadow, transparent,
+ethereal, haunted them, bringing into evidence enormous rounded shoulder,
+cirque, crinkled glacier, knife-edge of underlying rock.
+
+They belonged to the deepest the most superb of life, this rent gorge,
+these mountains--like Faircloth's letter. Would beautiful and noble
+sights, such as these, always in future give her an ache of longing for
+the writer of that letter, for the romance, the poetry, of the
+unacknowledged relation he bore to her? Tears smarted hot in Damaris'
+eyes, and resolutely, if rather piteously, she essayed to wink them away.
+For to her it just now seemed, the deepest, the most superb of life was
+also in great measure the forbidden. The ache must be endured, then, the
+longing go unsatisfied, since she could only stay the pain of them by
+doing violence to plain and heretofore fondly cherished, duties.
+
+But her tears defied the primitive process of winking. Not so
+cheaply could she rid herself of their smart and the blurred
+distorted vision they occasioned. She pulled out her handkerchief
+petulantly and wiped them. Then schooled herself to a colder, more
+moderate and reasonable temper.
+
+And, so doing, her thought turned gratefully to Mrs. Frayling. For
+mercifully Henrietta was here to help fill the void; to, in a manner,
+break her fall. Henrietta didn't belong to the depths or the heights,
+that she regretfully admitted. With the eternal snows she possessed
+little or nothing in common. But, at a lower, more everyday level, had
+not she a vast amount to offer, what with her personal loveliness, her
+social cleverness, her knowledge of the world and its ways? She might not
+amount to the phoenix of Damaris' childhood's adoration; but she was very
+friendly, very diverting, delightfully kind. Damaris honestly believed
+all these excellent things of her.--She had been stupidly fastidious
+three days ago, and failed to do Henrietta justice. What she had
+learned--by chance--this afternoon, of Henrietta's unselfishness and
+generous treatment of Marshall Wace bore effectively convincing witness
+to the sweetness of her disposition and kindness of her heart. Damaris
+felt bound to make amends for that unspoken injustice, of which she now
+repented. How better could she do so than by giving herself warmly,
+without reserve or restraint, in response to the interest and attention
+Henrietta lavished upon her?--At eighteen, to be wooed by so finished and
+popular a person was no mean compliment.--She wouldn't hold back,
+suspicious and grudging; but enjoy all Henrietta so delightfully offered
+to the uttermost.
+
+And there, as though clenching the conclusion thus arrived at, Mrs.
+Frayling's voice gaily hailed her, calling:
+
+"Damaris, Damaris, here is our tea--or rather our coffee. Come, darling
+child, and partake before it gets cold."
+
+So after a brief pause, spent in determined looking, the girl bowed her
+head in mute farewell; and turned her back perhaps courageously, perhaps
+unwisely and somewhat faithlessly, upon the mountains, and the rare
+mysteries of their untrodden snows. She went across the sparse turf,
+starred with tiny clear, coloured flowers, her face stern, for all its
+youthful bloom and softness, her eyes meditative and profound.
+
+The owner of the log-built restaurant, a thick-set, grizzled veteran of
+the Franco-Prussian war, the breast of his rusty velveteen jacket proudly
+bearing a row of medals, stood talking to Mrs. Frayling, hat in hand. His
+right foot had suffered amputation some inches above the ankle, and he
+walked with the ungainly support of a crutch-topped peg-leg strapped to
+the flexed knee.
+
+As Damaris approached the carriage, he swept back the fur rug in
+gallantly respectful invitation; and, so soon as she ensconced herself on
+the seat beside Henrietta, bending down he firmly and comfortably tucked
+it round her. He declared, further, as she thanked him, it an honour in
+any capacity to serve her, since had not Madame, but this moment, so
+gracefully informed him of the commanding military career of the
+Mademoiselle's father, possessor of that unique distinction the Victoria
+Cross--a person animated, moreover, as Madame reported, by sincere
+sympathy for the tragic sorrows of well-beloved and so now cruelly
+dismembered France.
+
+Damaris heard, in this singing of her father's praises, a grateful
+reconciling strain. She found it profitable, just now, to recall the
+heroic deeds, the notable achievements which marked his record. Her
+coffee tasted the more fragrant for it, the butter the fresher, the
+honey the sweeter wherewith she spread the clean coarse home-baked bread.
+She ate, indeed, with a capital appetite, the long drive and stimulating
+air, making her hungry. Possibly even her recent emotion contributed to
+that result; for in youth heartache by no means connotes a disposition
+towards fasting, rather does diet, generous in quantity, materially
+assist to soothe its anguish.
+
+This meal, in fact, partaken of in the open, alone with Henrietta,
+object of her childhood's idolatry--the first they had shared since
+those remote and guileless years--assumed to Damaris a sacramental
+character, though of the earthly and mundane rather than transcendental
+kind. Its communion was one of good fellowship, of agreement in
+cultivation of the lighter social side; which, upon our maiden's part,
+implied tacit consent to conform to easier standards than those until
+now regulating her thought and action, implied tacit acceptance of
+Henrietta as example and as guide.
+
+Whether the latter would have found cause for self-congratulation, could
+she have fathomed the precise cause of this apparently speedy conquest
+and speedy surrender, is doubtful; since it, in fact, took its rise less
+in the fascination of devotion given, than in that of devotion denied.
+She happened to be here on the spot at a critical juncture, and thus to
+catch the young girl's heart on the rebound. That was all--that, joined
+with Damaris' instinctive necessity to play fair and pay in honest coin
+for every benefit received.
+
+So much must be said in extenuation of our nymph-like damsel's apparent
+subjection to levity--a declension which, in the sequel and in certain
+quarters, went neither unnoticed nor undeplored. But to labour this point
+is to forestall history. Immediately her change of attitude announced its
+existence innocently enough. For the sacramental meal once consumed, and
+courteous parting words bestowed upon the valiant soldier broken in his
+country's wars, the coachman mounted the box, and gathering up the reins,
+with "Ho hè's" and "ho là's," swung his horses half round the level and
+plunged them over the hill-side, along a steep woodland track, leading by
+serpentine twists and curves down to join the Corniche Road--a blonde
+ribbon rimming the indentations of the five-mile distant coast.
+
+Damaris steadied herself well back on the seat of the carriage as it
+swayed and bumped over ruts and tree-roots to the lively menace of its
+springs. She studiously kept her face turned towards her companion, a
+myrtle-green shoulder as studiously turned towards the view. For she
+found it wiser not even to glance in that direction, lest rebellious
+regrets and longings should leap on her across the violet-blotted abyss
+from out those shining Alpine citadels. While to strengthen herself in
+allegiance to Mrs. Frayling and to, what may be called, the lighter side,
+she pushed one hand into that lady's muff and coaxed the slender
+pointed-fingers hiding in the comfortable pussy-warmth within.
+
+"Tell me stories, Henrietta, please," she entreated, "about all the
+people whom you've asked to your party on Thursday. Dress them up for me
+and put them through their paces, so that I may know who they all are
+when I see them and make no mistakes, but behave to them just as you
+would wish me to."
+
+"Gradate your attentions and not pet the wrong ones?"
+
+Mrs. Frayling gave gentle squeeze for squeeze in the pussy-warmth,
+laughing a trifle impishly.
+
+"You sinful child," she said--"Gracious, what jolts--my spine will soon
+be driven through the top of my skull at this rate!--Yes, sinful in
+tempting me to gibbet my acquaintances for your amusement."
+
+"But why gibbet them? Aren't they nice, don't you care for them?"
+
+"Prodigiously, of course. Yet would you find it in the least interesting
+or illuminating if I indexed their modest virtues only?"
+
+"I think the old soldier found it both interesting and illuminating when
+you indexed my father's virtues just now."
+
+"Sir Charles's virtues hardly come under the head of modest ones," Mrs.
+Frayling threw off almost sharply. "Give me someone as well worth
+acclaiming and I'll shout with the best! But you scarcely quote your
+father as among the average, do you?--The people whom you'll meet on
+Thursday compared to him, I'm afraid, are as molehills to the mountains
+yonder. If I described them by their amiable qualities alone they'd be as
+indistinguishable and as insipid as a row of dolls. Only through their
+aberrations, their unconscious perfidies, iniquities, do they develop
+definiteness of outline and begin to live. Oh! nothing could be unkinder
+than to whitewash them. Take Mrs. Callowgas, for instance, with one eye
+on the Church, the other on the world. The permanent inconsistency of her
+attitude, as I may say her permanent squint, gives her a certain _cachet_
+without which she'd be a positive blank.--She is most anxious to meet
+you, by the way, and Sir Charles--always supposing he is self-sacrificing
+enough to come--because she knows connections of his and yours at
+Harchester, a genial pillar of the Church in the form of an Archdeacon,
+in whom, as I gather, her dear dead Lord Bishop very much put his trust."
+
+"Tom Verity's father, I suppose," Damaris murmured, her colour rising,
+the hint of a cloud too upon her brow.
+
+"And who may Tom Verity be?" Mrs. Frayling, noting both colour and cloud,
+alertly asked.
+
+"A distant cousin. He stayed with us in the autumn just before he went
+out to India. He passed into the Indian Civil Service from Oxford at the
+top of the list."
+
+"Praiseworthy young man."
+
+"Oh! but you would like him, Henrietta," the girl declared. "He is very
+clever and very entertaining too when"--
+
+"When?"
+
+"Well, when he doesn't tease too much. He has an immense amount to talk
+about, and very good manners."
+
+"Also, when he does not tease too much?--And you like him?"
+
+"I don't quite know," Damaris slowly said. "He did not stay with us
+long enough for me to make up my mind. And then other things happened
+which rather put him out of my head. He was a little conceited, perhaps,
+I thought."
+
+"Not unnaturally, being at the top of the pass list. But though other
+things put him out of your head, he writes to you?"
+
+In the pussy-warmth within her muff, Mrs. Frayling became sensible
+that Damaris' hand grew unresponsive, at once curiously stiff and
+curiously limp.
+
+"He has written twice. Once on the voyage out, and again soon after he
+arrived. The--the second letter reached me this week."
+
+Notwithstanding sunshine, the eager air, and lively bumping of the
+descent, Henrietta observed the flush fade, leaving the girl white as
+milk. Her eyes looked positively enormous set in the pallor of her face.
+They were veiled, telling nothing, and thereby--to Mrs. Frayling's
+thinking--betraying much. She scented a situation--some girlish
+attachment, budding affair of the heart.
+
+"My father gave Tom Verity letters of introduction, and he wanted us to
+know how kindly he had been received in consequence."
+
+"Most proper on his part," Mrs. Frayling said.
+
+She debated discreet questioning, probing--the establishment of herself
+in the character of sympathetic confidante. But decided against that. It
+might be impolitic, dangerous even, to press the pace. Moreover the young
+man, whatever his attractions, might be held a negligible quantity in as
+far as any little schemes of her own were concerned at present, long
+leave and reappearance upon the home scene being almost certainly years
+distant.--And, just there, the hand within the muff became responsive
+once more, even urgent in its seeking and pressure, as though appealing
+for attention and tenderness.
+
+"Henrietta, I don't want to be selfish, but won't you go on telling me
+stories about your Thursday party people?--I interrupted you--but it's
+all new, you see, and it interests me so much," Damaris rather
+plaintively said.
+
+Mrs. Frayling needed no further inducement to exercise her really
+considerable powers of verbal delineation. Charging her palette with
+lively colours, she sprang to the task--and that with a sprightly
+composure and deftness of touch which went far to cloak malice and rob
+flippancy of offence.
+
+Listening, Damaris brightened--as the adroit performer intended she
+should--under the gay cascade of talk. Laughed at length, letting finer
+instincts of charity go by the wall, in her enjoyment of neatly turned
+mockeries and the sense of personal superiority they provoked. For
+Henrietta's dissection of the weaknesses of absent friends, inevitably
+amounted to indirect flattery of the friend for whose diversion that
+process of dissection was carried out.
+
+She passed the whole troop in review.--To begin with Miss Maud Callowgas,
+in permanent waiting upon her ex-semi-episcopal widowed mother--in age a
+real thirty-five though nominal twenty-eight, her muddy complexion,
+prominent teeth and all too long back.--Her designs, real or imagined,
+upon Marshall Wace. Designs foredoomed to failure, since whatever his
+intentions--Henrietta smiled wisely--they certainly did not include Maud
+Callowgas's matrimonial future in their purview.
+
+Herbert Binning followed next--the chaplain who served the rather staring
+little Anglican church at Le Vandou, a suburb of St. Augustin much
+patronized by the English in the winter season, and a chapel somewhere in
+the Bernese Oberland during the summer months. Energetic, athletic, a
+great talker and squire of dames--in all honesty and correctness, this
+last, well understood, for there wasn't a word to be breathed against the
+good cleric's morals. But just a wee bit impressionable and flirtatious,
+as who might not very well be with such a whiney-piney wife as Mrs.
+Binning, always ailing; what mind she might (by stretch of charity) be
+supposed to possess exclusively fixed upon the chronic irregularities of
+her internal organs? Recumbency was a mania with her and she had a
+disconcerting habit of wanting to lie down on the most inconveniently
+unsuitable occasions.--To mitigate his over-flowing energies, which cried
+aloud for work, Mr. Binning took pupils. He had two exceptionably nice
+boys with him this winter, in the interval between leaving Eton and going
+up to Oxford, namely, Peregrine Ditton, Lord Pamber's younger son, and
+Harry Ellice, a nephew of Lady Hermione Twells. They were very well-bred.
+Their high spirits were highly infectious. They played tennis to
+perfection and Harry Ellice danced quite tidily into the
+bargain.--Damaris must make friends with them. They were her
+contemporaries, and delightfully fresh and ingenuous.
+
+Lady Hermione herself--here Henrietta's tone conveyed restraint, even
+comparative reverence--who never for an instant forgot she once had
+reigned over some microscopic court out in the far Colonial
+wilderness, nor allowed you to forget it either. Her glance half
+demanded your curtsy. Still she was the "real thing" and, in that,
+eminently satisfactory--genuine _grande dame_ by right both of birth
+and of training.
+
+"She won't condescend to tell me so, being resolved to keep me very much
+in my proper place," Henrietta continued; "but I learned yesterday from
+Mary Ellice--Harry's sister, who lives with her--that she is intensely
+desirous to meet Sir Charles. She wants to talk to him about Afghanistan
+and North-west Frontier policy. A brother of hers it appears was at one
+time in the Guides; and she is under the impression your father and
+Colonel Carteret would have known him.--By the way, dearest child, they
+do mean to honour me, those two, don't they, with their presence on
+Thursday?"
+
+"Of course they will, since you asked them. Why, they love to come
+and see you."
+
+"Do they?" Mrs. Frayling said--"Anyhow, let us hope so. I can trust
+Carteret's general benevolence, but I am afraid your father will be
+unutterably bored with my rubbishing little assembly."
+
+"But, of course, he'll be nice to everybody too--as tame and gentle as
+possible with them all to please you, don't you see, Henrietta."
+
+"Ah! no doubt, all to please me!" she repeated. And fell to musing,
+while the carriage, quitting at last the rough forest track, rattled out
+on to the metalled high road, white in dust.
+
+Here the late afternoon sun still lay hot. The booming plunge of the
+tideless sea, breaking upon the rocks below, quivered in the quiet air.
+Henrietta Frayling withdrew her hands from her muff, unfastened the
+collar of her sable cape. The change from the shadowed woods to this
+glaring sheltered stretch of road was oppressive. She felt strangely
+tired and spent. She trusted Damaris would not perceive her uncomfortable
+state and proffer sympathy. And Damaris, in fact, did nothing of the
+sort, being very fully occupied with her own concerns at present.
+
+Half a mile ahead, pastel-tinted, green-shuttered houses--a village of a
+single straggling street--detached themselves in broken perspective from
+the purple of pine-crowned cliff and headland beyond. Behind them the
+western sky began to grow golden with the approach of sunset. The road
+lead straight towards that softly golden light--to St. Augustin. It led
+further, deeper into the gold, deeper, as one might fancy, into the heart
+of the coming sunset, namely to the world-famous seaport of Marseilles.
+
+Damaris sought to stifle remembrance of this alluring fact, as soon as it
+occurred to her. She must not dally with it--no she mustn't. To in
+anywise encourage or dwell on it, was weak and unworthy, she having
+accepted the claims of clearly apprehended duty. She could not go back on
+her decision, her choice, since, in face of the everlasting hills, she
+had pledged herself.
+
+So she let her eyes no longer rest on the high-road, but looked out to
+sea--where, as tormenting chance would have it, the black hull of a big
+cargo boat, steaming slowly westward, cut into the vast expanse of blue,
+long pennons of rusty grey smoke trailing away from its twin rusty-red
+painted funnels.
+
+Hard-pressed, the girl turned to her companion, asking abruptly,
+inconsequently--"Is that every one whom you expect on Thursday,
+Henrietta?"
+
+For some seconds Mrs. Frayling regarded her with a curious lack of
+intelligent interest or comprehension. Her thoughts, also, had run
+forward into the gold of the approaching sunset; and she had some
+difficulty in overtaking, or restraining them, although they went no
+further than the Grand Hotel; and--so to speak--sat down there all of a
+piece, on a buff-coloured iron chair, which commanded an uninterrupted
+view of four gentlemen standing talking before the front door.
+
+"On Thursday?" she repeated--"Why Thursday?"--and her usually
+skilful hands fumbled with the fastening of her sable cape. Their
+helpless ineffectual movements served to bring her to her senses,
+bring her to herself.
+
+"Really you possess an insatiable thirst for information regarding my
+probable guests, precious child," she exclaimed. "All--of course not. I
+have only portrayed the heads of tribes as yet for your delectation. We
+shall number many others--male and female--of the usual self-expatriated
+British rank and file.--Derelicts mostly."
+
+Lightly and coldly, Henrietta laughed.
+
+"Like, for example, the General and myself. Wanderers possessed of a
+singularly barren species of freedom, without ties, without any
+sheet-anchor of family or of profession to embarrass our movements,
+without call to live in one place rather than another. All along this
+sun-blessed Riviera you will find them swarming, thick as flies,
+displaying the trumpery spites and rivalries through which, as I started
+by pointing out to you, they can alone maintain a degree of individuality
+and persuade themselves and others they still are actually alive."
+
+Shocked at this sudden bitterness, touched to the quick by generous pity,
+regardless of possible onlookers--here in the village street, where the
+hoof-beats of the trotting horses echoed loud from the house-walls on
+either side--Damaris put her arms round Henrietta Frayling, clasping,
+kissing her.
+
+"Ah! don't, Henrietta," she cried. "Don't dare to say such ugly,
+lying things about your dear self. They aren't true. They're absurdly,
+scandalously untrue.--You who are so brilliant, so greatly admired,
+who have everyone at your feet! You who are so kind too,--think of all
+the pleasure you have given me to-day, for instance--and then think
+how beautifully good you've been, and all the time are being, to poor
+Mr. Wace"--
+
+Whether Mrs. Frayling's surprising lapse into sincerity and bald
+self-criticism were intentional, calculated, or not, she was undoubtedly
+quick to see and profit by the opening which Damaris' concluding words
+afforded her.
+
+"How sweet you are, darling child! How very dear of you to scold me
+thus!" she murmured, gently disengaging herself and preening her
+feathers, somewhat disarranged by the said darling child's
+impetuous onset.
+
+"I know it is wrong to grumble. Yet sometimes--as one grows older--one
+gets a dreadful sense that the delights of life are past; and that
+perhaps one has been overscrupulous, over-timid and so missed the
+best.--That is one reason why I find it so infinitely pleasing to have
+you with me--yet pathetic too perhaps.--Why? Well, I don't know that I am
+quite at liberty to explain exactly why."
+
+Henrietta smiled at her long, wistfully and oh! so sagely.
+
+"And, indirectly, that reminds me I am most anxious you should not
+exaggerate, or run off with any mistaken ideas about my dealings with
+poor Marshall Wace. I don't deny I did find his constantly being with us
+a trial at first. But I am reconciled to it. A trifle of discipline,
+though screamingly disagreeable, is no doubt sometimes useful--good for
+one's character, I mean. And I really have grown quite attached to him.
+He has charming qualities. His want of self-confidence is really his
+worst fault--and what a trivial one if you've had experience of the
+horrid things men can do, gamble, for example, and drink."
+
+Henrietta paused, sighed. The yellow facade of the Grand Hotel came into
+sight, a pale spot amid dark trees in the distance.
+
+"And Marshall, poor fellow," she continued, "is more grateful to me,
+that I know, than words can say. So do like him and encourage him a
+little--it would be such a help and happiness to me as well as to him,
+dearest Damaris."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+IN WHICH HENRIETTA PULLS THE STRINGS
+
+
+Mrs. Frayling's afternoon party passed off to admiration. But this by no
+means exhausted her social activities. Rather did it stimulate them; so
+that, with Damaris' amusement as their ostensible object and excuse, they
+multiplied exceedingly. Henrietta was in her native element. Not for
+years had she enjoyed herself so much. This chaperonage, this vicarious
+motherhood, was rich in opportunity. She flung wide her nets, even to the
+enmeshing of recruits from other larger centres, Cannes, Antibes and
+Nice. This more ambitious phase developed later. Immediately our
+chronicle may address itself to the initial Thursday, which, for our
+nymph-like maiden, saw the birth of certain illusions destined to all too
+lengthy a span of life.
+
+Luncheon at the villa--or as Henrietta preferred it called, The
+Pavilion--set in the grounds of the Hôtel de la Plage and dependent for
+service upon that house--was served at mid-day. This left a considerable
+interval before the advent of the expected guests. Mrs. Frayling refused
+to dedicate it to continuous conversation, as unduly tiring both for
+Damaris and for herself. They must reserve their energies, must keep
+fresh. Marshall Wace was, therefore, bidden to provide peaceful
+entertainment, read aloud--presently, perhaps, sing to them at such time
+as digestion--bad for the voice when in process--might be supposed
+complete. The young man obeyed, armed with Tennyson's _Maud_ and a volume
+of selected lyrics.
+
+His performance fairly started General Frayling furtively vanished in
+search of a mild _siesta_. It inflated his uxorious breast with pride to
+have his Henrietta shine in hospitality thus. But his lean shanks
+wearied, keeping time to the giddy music. Wistfully he feared he must be
+going downhill, wasn't altogether the man he used to be, since he found
+the business of pleasure so exhaustingly strenuous. And that was beastly
+unfair to his lovely wife--wouldn't do, would not do at all, by Gad!
+Therefore did he vanish into a diminutive and rather stuffy smoking-room,
+under the stairs, unfasten his nankeen waistcoat, unfasten his
+collar-stud, doze and finally, a little anxiously, sleep.
+
+Whatever Marshall Wace's diffidence in ordinary intercourse, it
+effectually disappeared so soon as he began to declaim or to recite. The
+histrionic in him declared itself, rising dominant. Given a character to
+impersonate, big swelling words to say, fine sentiments to enunciate, he
+changed to the required colour chameleon-like. You forgot--at least the
+feminine portion of his audience, almost without exception, forgot--that
+his round light-brown eyes stared uncomfortably much; that his nose, thin
+at the root and starting with handsome aquiline promise, ended in a
+foolish button-tip. Forgot that his lips were straight and compressed,
+wanting in generous curves and in tenderness--an actor's mouth,
+constructed merely for speech. Forgot the harsh quality of the triangular
+redness on either cheek, fixed and feverish. Ceased to remark how the
+angle of the jaw stood away from and beyond the sinewy, meagre neck, or
+note the rise and fall of Adam's apple so prominent in his throat.--No
+longer were annoyed by the effeminate character of the hands, their
+retracted nails and pink, upturned finger-tips, offering so queer a
+contrast to the rather inordinate size of his feet.
+
+For the voice rarely failed to influence its hearers, to carry you indeed
+a little out of yourself by its variety of intonation, its fire and
+fervour, its languishing modulations, broken pauses, yearning melancholy
+of effect. The part of the neurotic hero of the--then--Laureate's poem,
+that somewhat pinch-beck Victorian Hamlet, suited our young friend,
+moreover, down to the ground. It offered sympathetic expression to his
+own nature and temperament; so that he wooed, scoffed, blasphemed,
+orated, drowned in salt seas of envy and self-pity, with a simulation of
+sincerity as convincing to others as consolatory to himself.
+
+And Damaris, being unlearned in the curious arts of the theatre, listened
+wide-eyed, spellbound, until flicked by the swishing skirts of fictitious
+emotion into genuine, yet covert, excitement. As the reading progressed
+Henrietta Frayling's presence increasingly sank into unimportance. More
+and more did the poem assume a personal character, of which, if the
+reader were hero, she--Damaris--became heroine. Marshall Wace seemed to
+read not to, but definitely at her; so that during more than one ardent
+passage, she felt herself go hot all over, as though alone with him, an
+acknowledged object of his adoring, despairing declarations. This she
+shrank from, yet--it must be owned--found stirring, strangely and not
+altogether unpleasantly agitating. For was not this _protégé_ of
+Henrietta's--whom the latter implored her to encourage and treat
+kindly--something of a genius? Capable of sudden and amazing
+transformation, talking to you with a modesty and deference agreeably
+greater than that of most young men of his age; then, on an instant,
+changing at will, and extraordinarily voicing the accumulated wrongs,
+joys and sorrows of universal humanity? Could Henrietta, who usually
+spoke of him in tones of commiseration, not to say of patronage, be aware
+how remarkable he really was? Damaris wondered; regarding him, meanwhile,
+with innocent respect and admiration. For how tremendously much he must
+have experienced, how greatly he must have suffered to be able to portray
+drama, express profound emotion thus! That the actor's art is but
+glorified make-believe, the actor himself too often hollow as a drum,
+though loud sounding as one, never for an instant occurred to her. How
+should it?
+
+Therefore when Mrs. Frayling--recollecting certain mysteries of the
+toilet which required attention before the arrival of her expected
+guests--brought the performance to an abrupt termination, Damaris felt a
+little taken aback, a little put about, as though someone should be
+guilty of talking millinery in church.
+
+For--"Splendid, my dear Marshall, splendid," the lady softly yet
+emphatically interrupted him. "To-day you really surpass yourself. I
+never heard you read better, and I hate to be compelled to call a halt.
+But time has flown--look."
+
+And she pointed to the blue and gold Sévres clock upon the mantelpiece.
+
+"Miss Verity is an inspiring auditor," he said, none best pleased at
+being thus arbitrarily arrested in midcourse. "For whatever merit my
+reading may have possessed, your thanks are due to her rather than to me,
+Cousin Henrietta."
+
+He spoke to the elder woman. He looked at the younger. With a nervous yet
+ponderous movement--it was Marshall Wace's misfortune always to take up
+more room than by rights belonged to his height and bulk--he got on to
+his feet. Inattentively let drop the volume of poems upon a neighbouring
+table, to the lively danger of two empty coffee cups.
+
+The cups rattled. "Pray be careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with
+some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention
+had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had
+been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She,
+therefore, hit out--to regret her indiscretion the next moment.
+
+"Nothing--nothing," she prettily added. "I beg your pardon, Marshall, but
+I quite thought those cups would fall off the table--So stupid of me."
+
+The fixed red widened, painfully inundating the young man's countenance.
+He was infuriated by his own awkwardness. Humiliated by Mrs. Frayling's
+warning, of which her subsequent apology failed to mitigate the disgrace.
+And that this should occur just in the hour of satisfied vanity, of
+agreeable success--and before Damaris! In her eyes he must be miserably
+disqualified henceforth.
+
+But his misfortunes worked to quite other ends than he anticipated. For
+Damaris came nearer, her expression gravely earnest as appealing to him
+not to mind, not to let these things vex him.
+
+"I have never heard anyone read so beautifully," she told him. "You make
+the words come alive so that one sees the whole story happening. It is
+wonderful. I shall always remember this afternoon because of your
+reading--and shall long to hear you again--often, I know, long for that."
+
+Wace bowed. This innocent enthusiasm was extremely assuaging to his
+wounded self-esteem.
+
+"You have but to ask me, Miss Verity. I shall be only too honoured,
+too happy to read to you whenever you have leisure and inclination
+to listen."
+
+But here Mrs. Frayling put her arm round Damaris' waist, affectionately,
+laughingly, and drew her towards the door.
+
+"Come, come, darling child--don't be too complimentary or Marshall will
+grow unbearably conceited.--You'll put on flannels, by the way, Marshall,
+won't you?" she added as an after-thought.
+
+"I shall not play tennis this afternoon," he answered, his nose in the
+air. "There will be plenty for a change of setts without me. I am not
+good enough for Binning and his two young aristocrats, and I don't choose
+to make sport for the Philistines by an exhibition of my ineptitude. I
+have no pretentious to being an athlete."
+
+"Nonsense, Marshall, nonsense," she took him up quickly, conscious his
+reply was not in the best taste. "You wilfully underrate yourself."
+
+Then later, as, still entwined, she conducted Damaris upstairs to her
+bed-chamber.
+
+"There you have the position in a nutshell," she said. "Still am I not
+right? For hasn't he charm, poor dear fellow, so very much cleverness--so
+really gifted isn't he?"
+
+And as the girl warmly agreed:
+
+"Ah! I am so very glad you appreciate him.--And you have yet to hear
+him sing! That takes one by storm, I confess--Unhappy Maud
+Callowgas!--But you see how frightfully on edge he is--how he turns off
+for no valid reason, imagines himself a failure, imagines himself out
+of it? In point of fact he plays a quite passable game of tennis--and
+you heard what he said? These fits of depression and self-depreciation
+amount to being tragic. One requires endless tact to manage him and
+save him from himself."
+
+Henrietta paused, sighed, sitting on the stool before her toilette table,
+neatly placing tortoiseshell hairpins, patting and adjusting her bright
+brown hair.
+
+"I could have bitten my tongue out for making that wretched slip about
+the coffee cups; but I was off my guard for once. And like all artistic
+people Marshall is a little absent-minded--absorbed to the point of not
+seeing exactly what he is doing.--Poor young man, I sometimes tremble for
+his future. Such a highly strung, sensitive nature amounts almost to a
+curse. If he got into wrong hands what mightn't the end be?--Catastrophe,
+for he is capable of fatal desperation. And I must own men--with the
+exception of my husband who is simply an angel to him--do not always
+understand and are not quite kind to him. He needs a wise loving woman to
+develop the best in him--there is so very much which is good--and to
+guide him."
+
+"Well," Damaris said, and that without suspicion of irony, "dearest
+Henrietta, hasn't he you?"
+
+Mrs. Frayling took up the ivory hand-glass, and sitting sideways on the
+dressing-stool, turned her graceful head hither and thither, to obtain
+the fuller view of her back hair.
+
+"Me? But you forget, I have other claims to satisfy. I can't look after
+him for ever. I must find him a wife I suppose; though I really shall be
+rather loath to give him up. His gratitude and loneliness touch me so
+much," she said, looking up and smiling, with a little twist in her
+mouth, as of playful and unwilling resignation, captivating to see.
+
+By which cajoleries and expression of praiseworthy sentiment, Henrietta
+raised herself notably in Damaris' estimation--as she fully intended to
+do. Our maiden kissed her with silent favour; and, mysteries of the
+toilette completed, more closely united than ever before--that is, since
+the date of the elder's second advent--the two ladies, presenting the
+prettiest picture imaginable, went downstairs again, gaily, hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CARNIVAL--AND AFTER
+
+
+Tall and slim, in the black and white of his evening clothes, Colonel
+Carteret leaned his shoulder against an iron pillar of the verandah of
+the Hôtel de la Plage, and smoked, looking meditatively down into the
+moonlit garden. Through the range of brightly lighted open windows
+behind him came the sound of a piano and stringed instruments, a subdued
+babble of voices, the whisper of women's skirts, and the sliding rush of
+valsing feet.
+
+To-night marked the culmination and apex of Henrietta Frayling's social
+effort. It was mid-March, mid-Lent--which last fact she made an
+excuse--after taking ecclesiastical opinion on the subject, namely, that
+of Herbert Binning, the Anglican chaplain--for issuing invitations to a
+Cinderella dance. Damaris Verity, it appeared, had never really, properly
+and ceremoniously "come out"--a neglect which Henrietta protested should
+be repaired. Positively, but very charmingly, she told Sir Charles it
+must. She only wished the affair could be on a larger, more worthy scale.
+This was, after all, but a makeshift--the modest best she could arrange
+under the circumstances. But he--Sir Charles--must not refuse. It would
+give her such intense pleasure to have the darling child make her
+official _début_ under her, Henrietta's, auspices. The hours would of
+necessity be early, to avoid disturbance of the non-dancing residents in
+the hotel. But, if the entertainment were bound to end at midnight, it
+could begin at a proportionately unfashionable hour. For once _table
+d'hôte_ might surely be timed for six o'clock; and the dining-room--since
+it offered larger space than any other apartment--be cleared, aired, and
+ready for dancing by a quarter-past eight.--Henrietta unquestionably had
+a way with her; proprietors, managers, servants alike hastening obedient
+to her cajoling nod.--Thanks to importations by road and rail, from other
+coast resorts, she reckoned to muster sixteen to twenty couples.--A
+rubbishing apology at best, in the matter of a "coming out" ball, for a
+girl of Damaris' position and deserts--no one could know that better than
+she, Henrietta, herself did!
+
+"A poor thing but mine own," she quoted, when enlarging upon the scheme
+to Charles Verity. "But as at Easter we are fated to scatter, I suppose,
+and go our several roads with small promise of reunion, you must really
+be gracious, dear friend, and, for old sake's sake, give in to my
+desires. It's my last chance, for heaven knows how long--not impossibly
+for ever."
+
+Carteret happened to be present during the above conversation. Had he
+not, it may be doubted whether it would ever have taken place--with this
+dash of affecting reminiscence in any case. Allusions to a common past
+were barred for excellent reasons, as between these two persons, save
+strictly in public. Even so it struck him as a humorous piece of audacity
+on the lady's part. Her effrontery touched on the colossal! But it
+succeeded, always had done so.--In his judgment of Henrietta, Carteret
+never failed to remember, being compact of chivalry and of truthfulness,
+that he had once on a time been a good half in love with her
+himself.--All the same he was not sure her close association with Damaris
+met with his approval.
+
+That association had grown, Jonah's gourd-like, during the last six
+weeks, until, as he rather uneasily noted, the two were hardly ever
+apart. Luncheons, teas, picnics, excursions, succeeded one another.
+Afternoons of tennis in the hotel grounds, the athletic gregarious
+Binning and his two pupils, Peregrine Ditton and Harry Ellice in
+attendance. Sometimes the latter's sister, Mary Ellice, joined the
+company--when Lady Hermione condescended to spare her--or the long-backed
+Miss Maud Callowgas. Afternoons of reading and song, too, supplied by
+Marshall Wace.--Carteret felt self-reproachful, yet knew his charity
+too often threatened to stop short of the young man Wace--though the
+beggar had a voice to draw tears from a stone, plague him!--At intervals,
+all-day expeditions were undertaken to Monte Carlo, or shopping raids
+upon Cannes or Nice.
+
+Yes, verily--as he reflected--Henrietta Frayling did keep the ball
+rolling with truly Anglo-Indian frivolity and persistence, here in the
+heart of Europe! And was that altogether wholesome for Damaris? He
+delighted to have the beautiful young creature enjoy herself, spread her
+wings, take her place among the courted and acclaimed. But he prized her
+too highly not to be ambitious for her; and would have preferred her
+social education to be conducted on more dignified and authorized lines,
+in the great world of London, namely, or Paris. When all came to all,
+this was hardly good enough.
+
+No one, he honestly admitted, trumpeted that last truth more loudly than
+Henrietta--at times. Nevertheless she went on and on, making the business
+of this rather second-rate pleasure-seeking daily of greater importance.
+How could Damaris be expected to discriminate, to retain her sense of
+relative values, in the perpetual scrimmage, the unceasing rush? Instinct
+and nobility of nature go an immensely long way as preservatives--thank
+God for that--still, where you have unsophistication, inexperience, a
+holy ignorance, to deal with, it is unwise to trust exclusively to their
+saving grace. Even the finest character is the safer--so he supposed--for
+some moulding and direction in its first contact with the world, if it is
+to come through the ordeal unscathed and unbesmirched. And to ask such
+moulding and direction of Henrietta Frayling was about as useful as
+asking a humming-bird to draw a water-cart.
+
+He was still fond of Henrietta and derived much silent entertainment from
+witnessing her manoeuvres. But he was under no delusion regarding her. He
+considered her quite the most selfish woman of his acquaintance, though
+also one of the most superficially attractive. Hers was a cold, not a
+hot selfishness, refined to a sort of exquisiteness and never for an
+instant fleshly or gross. But that selfishness, in its singleness of
+purpose, made her curiously powerful, curiously capable of influencing
+persons of larger and finer spirit than herself--witness her ascendency
+over Charles Verity during a long period of years, and that without ever
+giving, or even seriously compromising, herself.
+
+Into whoever she fixed her dainty little claws, she did it with an eye to
+some personal advantage. And here Carteret owned himself puzzled--for
+what advantage could she gain from this close association with Damaris?
+The girl's freshness went, rather mercilessly, to show up her fading.
+
+At times, it is true, watching her pretty alacrity of manner, hearing her
+caressing speech, he inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt,
+believe her self-forgetful, her affection genuine, guiltless of design or
+after-thought. If so, so very much the better! He was far from grudging
+her redemption, specially at the hands of Damaris.--Only were things, in
+point of fact, working to this commendable issue? With the best will in
+the world to think so, he failed to rid himself of some prickings of
+anxiety and distrust.
+
+And from such prickings he sensibly suffered to-night, as he leaned his
+shoulder against the iron pillar of the verandah at the Hôtel de la
+Plage, and looked down into the _claire obscure_ of the moonlit gardens,
+while over the polished floor of the big room at his back, the rhythmical
+tread of the dancers' feet kept time to the music of piano and sweet
+wailing strings.--For that a change showed increasingly evident in
+Damaris he could not disguise from himself. In precisely what that change
+consisted it was not easy to say. He discovered it more in an attitude of
+mind and atmosphere than in outward action or even in words said. But she
+was not quite the same as the grave and steadfast young creature who had
+asked his help for her father, and indirectly for herself, in the moist
+chill of the November twilight at The Hard--and who, receiving promise
+of such help, had darted away over the drenched lawn in company with the
+wildly gambolling cats alternately pursuing and pursued. Nor was she
+quite the same as when he had walked with her, through the resounding
+Paris streets, to pay her devoirs to her former guardians and teachers at
+the convent school; and, later returning, had spoken to her of the safety
+of religion, the high worth of the doctrine and practice of a definite
+historic creed.
+
+Her relation to her father appeared--and this pained Carteret--to lack
+its old intimacy, its intensity of consideration and tenderness. Her
+interest in the child of his brain, his belated literary experiment, was
+less sustained and spontaneous. How could it flourish in its former
+proportions when she was so much away, so often absent from morning till
+night?--Not without leave though, for she scrupulously asked permission
+before answering Henrietta's gay call and taking part in that lady's
+junketings and jaunts. Sir Charles never refused the requested
+permission; but, while granting it, did he not tend to retreat into his
+former sardonic humour, fall into long silences, become inaccessible
+again and remote? The book went forward; yet, more than once recently,
+Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly
+delivered of the admirable volume were not he--Carteret--permanently at
+hand to act midwife. An unpleasant idea pursued him that Sir Charles
+went, in some strange fashion, in fear of Damaris, of her criticism, her
+judgment. Yet fear seemed a hatefully strong and ugly word to employ as
+between a father and daughter so straitly, heretofore, bound to one
+another in love.
+
+And then--there lay the heart of the worry, proving him only too likely a
+graceless jealous middle-age curmudgeon, a senile sentimentalist, thus
+did he upbraidingly mock himself--were there not signs of Damaris
+developing into a rather thorough paced coquette? She accepted the homage
+offered her with avidity, with many small airs and graces--_à la_
+Henrietta--of a quite novel sort. Old General Frayling--poor pathetic old
+warrior--was her slave. Peregrine Ditton, Harry Ellice, even the cleric
+Binning--let alone the permanently self-conscious, attitudinizing
+Wace--with other newer acquaintances, English and foreign, ran at her
+heels. And she let them run, bless her, even encouraged their running by
+turns of naughty disdain and waywardness. She was fatal to boys--that was
+in the natural course of things. And fatal to those considerably older
+than boys--perhaps--
+
+The music flew faster and faster--stopped with a shriek and a crash.
+Laughing, talking, the dancers streamed out of the hot brightly lighted
+room into the soft peace, the delicate phantasy of the colourless
+moonlight.
+
+Carteret drew back, flattening himself against the iron pillar in the
+shadow, as they passed down the steps into the garden below; the women's
+pale airy forms and the men's dark ones, pacing the shining paths in
+groups and couples, between the flower-beds, under the flat-headed pines,
+the shaggy-stemmed palms and towering eucalyptus, in and out massed banks
+of blossoming shrubs and dwarf hedges of monthly roses.
+
+Midway in the light-hearted procession came Damaris, Peregrine Ditton on
+one side of her, Harry Ellice on the other. Leaving the main alley, the
+trio turned along a path, running parallel to the verandah, which opened
+into a circle surrounding the stone basin of a tinkling fountain,
+immediately below Colonel Carteret's post of solitary observation.
+
+Damaris carried the demi-train of her white satin gown over her arm,
+thereby revealing a wealth of lace frilled petticoat, from beneath
+which the toes of her high-heeled, white satin shoes stepped with a
+pretty measured tread. The two boys, leaning a little towards one
+another, talked across her, their voices slightly raised in argument,
+not to say dispute.
+
+"I call it rotten mean to bag my dance like that, I tell you.--Go
+away?--No I swear I won't go away, won't budge one blessed inch unless
+Miss Verity actually orders me to. If my dance was stolen, all the more
+reason I should have her to talk to now as a sort of make-up. So you
+just clear out, if you please, my good chap, and leave the field to your
+elders and betters. Remove your superfluous carcass till further
+notice.--Vamoose, my son, do you hear?"
+
+This excitedly from Peregrine Ditton. They reached the fountain. Damaris
+stayed her measured walk, and stood gazing at the jet of water in its
+uprush and myriad sparkling fall. Ellice answered chaffingly yet with an
+underlying growl; and the dispute threatened to wax warm. But the girl
+heeded neither disputant, her attention rapt in watching the play of the
+falling water.
+
+Throughout the evening she had easily been chief centre of attraction,
+besieged by partners. And those not only her present rival attendants or
+Marshall Wace; but by Mrs. Frayling's various importations, plus Mr.
+Alban Titherage--a fat, smart and very forthcoming young London
+stock-broker, lately established, in company of a pretty, silly,
+phthisis-stricken wife, at the Grand Hotel. Very much mistress of
+herself, Damaris had danced straight through the programme with an air of
+almost defiant vivacity. Now, as it seemed, her mood had changed and
+sobered. For presently Colonel Carteret saw her bosom heave, while she
+fetched a long sigh and, raising her head, glanced upwards, her great
+eyes searching the shadowed space of the verandah.
+
+The cool lunar brightness flooded her upturned face, her bare neck and
+arms, the glittering folds of her satin gown. She was exceedingly fair to
+look upon just now. For an appreciable length of time her glance met
+Carteret's and held it; giving him--though the least neurotic of men,
+calm of body and of mind--a strange sensation as of contact with an
+electric current which tingled through every nerve and vein. And this,
+although he perceived that, dazzled by the moonlight, she either did not
+see or quite failed to recognize him. An expression of disappointment,
+akin, so he read it, to hope defeated, crossed her face. She lowered her
+eyes, and moved slowly forward along the path, the boys on either side
+her. Again Peregrine Ditton took up his tale--in softened accents though
+still as one sorely injured and whose temper consequently inclines not
+unjustly to the volcanic.
+
+"Upon my honour, I think you might have given me just a minute's law,
+Miss Verity," he protested. "It was no fault of mine being late. Maud
+Callowgas kept me toddling to the most unconscionable extent. First she
+wanted an ice, and then a tumbler of lemon squash; and then she lost her
+fan, or pretended she did, and expected me to hunt for the beastly thing.
+I give you my word I was as rude as sin, in hope of shaking her off; but
+she didn't, or wouldn't, see what I was driving at. There was no getting
+away from her. I tell you she sticks like a burr, that girl, once she
+lays hold of you. Octopuses aren't in it. Her power of adhesion is
+something utterly frantic "--
+
+Here Ellice cut in with a doubtless scathing though, to Carteret,
+inaudible remark, at which Damaris laughed outright; and the fresh young
+voices trailed away in the distance alternately mocking and remonstrant.
+
+As he listened, still conscious of contact with that surprising electric
+current, Carteret found himself taking stock of his own forty-nine years
+with swift and lively repugnance. To accept the sum of them, and the
+limitations and restrictions that sum is currently supposed to entail,
+proved just now astonishingly difficult. Damaris, as beheld in the
+fantastic loveliness of the moonlight, her searching, unseeing eyes
+meeting and dwelling upon his own, the look of disappointment and defeat
+crossing her sweetly serious countenance, wrought upon him begetting a
+dangerous madness in his blood. That it was dangerous and a madness, and
+therefore promptly to be mastered and ejected, he would not permit
+himself an instant's doubt. Yet it very shrewdly plagued him, daring even
+to advance specious arguments upon its own behalf.
+
+For, when he came to consider matters, was he not in perfect health, more
+sound and fit than many a man but half his age? And were not his
+fortunes just now at a specially happy turn, his sister, Mrs. Dreydel,
+having lately been blessed with a windfall, in the shape of yearly
+income, which--did he so choose--relieved him of much expenditure on her
+account. Her eldest son had received his commission. The three younger
+boys had done well as to scholarships thereby materially reducing the
+cost of their education. Never had he, Carteret, been so free to consult
+his private desires; and never, as he knew too profoundly well, had his
+desires taken so definite and delicious a form. Nevertheless it remained
+a madness to be mastered, to be ejected.--His last thought, as his first,
+pronounced it that.
+
+Unconsciously, pushed by this stress of rather turbulent sensations,
+Carteret walked the length of the verandah and drew up in the full glare
+of the moonlight. From here he could see the curve of the shore; and,
+beyond the quay and esplanade and last scattered houses of the little
+town, the lighthouse marking the tip of the western horn of the bay. He
+could hear the soft stealthy plunge and following rush of the sea up the
+white shelving beach. Could hear also--less soothing sound--through the
+open windows of the drawing-room of the Pavilion, just across the garden,
+Marshall Wace singing, with all the impassioned fervour of his rich and
+well-trained baritone, a ballad, then much in vogue, entitled "The Lost
+Chord." The words, to Carteret's thinking, were futile, meaning anything,
+everything, or nothing, according to your private interpretation of them.
+But as to the fine quality and emotional appeal of the voice there could
+not be two opinions, as it palpitated thus in the mild night air. Was
+Damaris Verity a member of the singer's devout audience? Were her hands
+among those which now enthusiastically applauded the conclusion of the
+song? Under his breath, slowly, gently but most comprehensively, Carteret
+swore. And felt all the better for that impious exercise, even amused at
+this primitive expression of his moral and sentimental disturbance, and
+so on the high-road, as he fondly imagined, to capture his habitual
+attitude of charity and tolerance once again. But heaven had further
+trial of his fortitude and magnanimity, not to say his good honest horse
+sense, in store to-night.
+
+For, as the clapping of hands died down, the whisper of a woman's dress,
+upon the asphalt of the verandah just behind him, caught his ear, and
+Damaris came rapidly towards him.
+
+"So you are here after all, dear Colonel Sahib," she cried. "I felt you
+were when I was down there looking at the fountain. It sort of pulled at
+me with remindings of you ages and ages ago, in the gardens of the club
+at Bhutpur--when you brought me a present--a darling little green jade
+elephant in a sandalwood box, as a birthday gift from Henrietta. Later
+there was a terrible tragedy. An odious little boy broke my elephant, on
+purpose, and broke my heart along with it."
+
+Carteret made a determined effort over himself, taking her up lightly.
+
+"But not altogether past mending, dear witch--judging by existing
+appearances."
+
+"Ah! I'm none so sure of that," Damaris answered him back with a pretty
+quickness--"if it hadn't been for you. For I was very ill, when you came
+again to the Sultan-i-bagh--don't you remember?--the night of the riots
+and great fires in the Civil Lines and Cantonments, just at the breaking
+of the monsoon."
+
+"Yes, I remember," he said.
+
+And wondered to himself--thereby gaining ease and a measure of
+tranquillity, inasmuch as he thought of another man's plight rather than
+of his own--whether Damaris had knowledge of other occurrences, not
+unallied to tragedy, which had marked that same night of threatened
+mutiny and massacre and of bellowing tempest, not least among them a vow
+made by her father, Charles Verity, and made for her sake.
+
+"The whole story comes back in pictures," she went on, "whenever I look
+at fountains playing, because of the water-jets in the canal in the
+Bhutpur club garden where you gave me Henrietta's present. You see it all
+dates from then. And it came back to me specially clearly just now,
+partly because I felt lonely--"
+
+"Lonely?--How lonely," he smilingly interjected, "with a goodly youth as
+a protector on either hand?"
+
+"Yes--lonely," Damaris repeated, ignoring the allusion to her devoted if
+irascible escort. "Dance music always makes one rather sad--don't you
+think so? It seems to ache with everything one wants and hasn't got; and
+the ache goes on.--I turned homesick for--for India, and for my green
+jade elephant I used to love so dreadfully much.--I've all that is left
+of him, still wrapped in the same rice paper in the same sandalwood box
+you brought him in, put away with my best treasures in my own room at
+The Hard."
+
+She came nearer, stood beside him, bending down a little as she rested
+her hands on the top of the iron balustrade of the verandah, while her
+eyes followed the curve of the bay to where the lighthouse rose, a
+black column with flashing headpiece, above the soft glitter of the
+moonlit sea.
+
+"And homesick, Colonel Sahib, for you," she said.
+
+"For me?" he exclaimed almost involuntarily, roughly startled out of his
+partially recovered tranquillity and ease.
+
+"Yes"--she said, looking up at him. "Isn't that quite natural, since
+you have stepped in so often to help me when things have gone rather
+wrong?--I knew you must be somewhere quite close by. I sort of felt
+you were there. And you were there--weren't you? Why did you hide
+yourself away?"
+
+Carteret could not bring himself immediately to answer. He was perplexed,
+infinitely charmed, distrustful, all at once--distrustful, though for
+very different reasons, both of himself and of her.
+
+"Are things, then, going rather wrong now?" he asked presently.
+
+For he judged it wise to accept her enigmatic speech according to its
+most simple and obvious interpretation. By so doing he stood, moreover,
+to gain time; and time in his existing perplexity appeared to him of
+cardinal importance.
+
+"That's just what I'm not sure about." Damaris spoke slowly, gravely, her
+glance again fixed upon the beacon light set for the safety of passing
+ships on the further horn of the bay. "If I could be sure, I should know
+what to do--know whether it is right to keep on as--as I am. Do you see?"
+
+But what, at this juncture, Carteret did, in point of fact, most
+consciously see was the return of Henrietta Frayling's scattered guests,
+from the Pavilion and other less fully illuminated quarters, towards the
+main building of the hotel. From the improvised ball-room within chords
+struck on the piano and answering tuning of strings invited to the
+renewal of united and active festivity. In the face of consequently
+impending interruption he hazarded a trifle of admonition.
+
+"Dearest witch, you elect to speak in riddles," he gently told her. "I am
+in the dark as to your meaning; so, if I am guilty of uttering
+foolishness, you must pardon me. But I own I could wish--just a
+bit--that, in some particulars, you wouldn't keep on--I quote your own
+words--as you are, or rather have been just lately."
+
+"Why?" she asked, without moving.
+
+"Because, to be quite honest with you, I am not altogether satisfied
+about your father. I am afraid he is getting back into the habit of mind
+we set out to cure him of, you and I, last November."
+
+Damaris sprang to attention.
+
+"And I haven't noticed it. I Wouldn't stop to notice it. I have been too
+busy about my own concerns and have neglected him."
+
+Arrayed in her spotless virgin finery, her head carried proudly, though
+her eyes were sombre with self-reproach, self-accusation, and her lips
+quivered, she confronted Carteret. And his clean loyal soul went out to
+her in a poignant, an exquisite, agony of tenderness and of desire. He
+would have given his right hand to save her pain. Given his life gladly,
+just then, to secure her welfare and happiness; yet he had struck
+her--for her own good possibly--possibly just blindly, instinctively, in
+self-defence. He tried to shut down the emotion which threatened to
+betray him and steady on to the playfully affectionate tone of their
+customary intercourse; but it is to be feared the effort lacked
+convincingness of quality.
+
+"No--no," he said, "you take it altogether too hard. You exaggerate, dear
+witch, to the point of extravagance. You have been less constantly with
+your father than usual--you're the delight of his life after all, as you
+must very well know--and inevitably he has missed you. Nothing worse than
+that. The damage, such as it is, can easily be repaired."
+
+"Ah! but the damage, as you call it, starts behind all that in something
+else--something older, much deeper down, of which I doubt whether any
+lasting reparation is possible. I did try to repair it. All my going out
+with Henrietta, and this rushing about lately, began in that
+trying--truly it did, Colonel Sahib. And then I suppose I got above
+myself--as poor Nannie used to say--and came to care for the rushing
+about just for its own sake"--
+
+"My dance, I believe, Miss Verity."
+
+The speaker, Mr. Alban Titherage--well-groomed, rosy and
+self-complacent--pulled down the fronts of his white waistcoat. He
+inclined to distinct rotundity of person, and the garment in question,
+though admirable in cut, showed, what with the exertions of dancing, a
+damnable tendency, as he expressed it, to "ride up."
+
+"And my dance next afterwards, Miss Verity"--this from Peregrine Ditton,
+his youthful, well-bred, if somewhat choleric, countenance presenting
+itself over the top of the stock-broker's smooth and not conspicuously
+intelligent head.
+
+Damaris looked from one to the other of these claimants for her favour,
+with instant and very becoming composure.
+
+"I'm dreadfully sorry," she told them collectively, "but surely there is
+some mistake. Both those next dances--they are the last, I'm afraid, too,
+aren't they?--belong to Colonel Carteret."
+
+"The deuce they do!" Ditton exploded, turning scarlet. With a cocked eye
+and a jaunty movement of the head Mr. Titherage shot out his right shirt
+cuff, and pointed a stout forefinger at certain hieroglyphics inscribed
+on its glossy surface.
+
+"Your name, Miss Verity, and written with an indelible pencil, to the
+permanent embellishment of my best party-going linen and witness to your
+infidelity."
+
+"I can only repeat I am dreadfully sorry," Damaris said, with a becoming
+air of concern, "if the confusion has arisen through my fault. But"--
+
+She appealed to Carteret.
+
+"They always were your dances, weren't they?"
+
+"Without doubt," he affirmed.
+
+Amusedly and very kindly he smiled upon the angry boy and portly young
+man, although the beat of his pulse was accelerated and his throat felt
+queerly dry.
+
+"I am sure you understand how impossible it is for me to release Miss
+Verity from her promise," he said courteously. "Would you willingly do so
+yourselves, were the positions reversed and either of you happy enough to
+stand in my shoes at this moment?"
+
+Titherage gave a fat good-tempered laugh.
+
+"By George, you have me there, Colonel. Under such A1 circumstances catch
+me making way for a stranger! Not if I know it."
+
+With which he attempted jovially to put his arm through that of his
+companion in misfortune and lead Ditton away. But the latter flung off
+from him with a petulant, half-smothered oath; and, his back very
+straight, his walk very deliberate, pushed through the cheerfully
+discoursing throng into the ball-room.
+
+Damaris turned about, resting her hands on the top of the iron balustrade
+again and gazed out to sea. Her breath came with a catch in it.
+
+"Colonel Sahib," she said, proudly if just a trifle brokenly, "are
+you angry?"
+
+"Angry?--good Lord!"
+
+Then recovering control of senses and of sense--"But, dear witch," he
+asked her--"since when, if I may venture to enquire, have you become an
+adept in the fine art of--well--lying?"
+
+Damaris looked around, her face irradiated by laughter.
+
+"And you played up, oh! so beautifully quick! I was a teeny bit afraid
+you might fail me. For the idea came all of a minute, there wasn't time
+to warn you. And that was fortunate perhaps--for me. You might have had
+scruples. And I was obliged to do it. After talking about the things
+which really matter, I couldn't dance with that vulgar little man
+again--or with those jealous boys. They had an idiotic quarrel, actual
+quarrel, down in the garden. It displeased me. I told them so, and left
+them, and came here to find you--because of the fountain and the sort of
+home-sickness it gave me."
+
+Between laughing and crying, Damaris held out her hands, the white
+moonlight covering her.
+
+"Oh! I am tired of rushing about," she said. "Come and dance with
+me--it's nonsense to tell me you can't dance, and that you've forgotten
+how, because you have danced once this evening already--with Henrietta. I
+watched you and you dance better than anybody."
+
+"With Henrietta--that's rather a different matter!"
+
+"I should hope it was," Damaris took him up naughtily. "But dance with
+me, and then, then please take me home. Yes," as he tried to speak. "I
+know I had arranged to stay the night at the Pavilion. But I'll find some
+excuse to make to Henrietta--Haven't you just told me I'm proficient in
+lying?--You were going to walk back? Why shouldn't I walk with you? I
+won't be five minutes changing into my day clothes. It would be so
+fascinating down on the shore road at night. And I should get quiet all
+inside of me. I am tired of rushing about, Colonel Sahib, it hasn't been
+a success."
+
+She stopped breathless, her hands pressed over her lace and satin
+swathed bosom.
+
+"Now come and dance,--oh! so beautifully, please, come and dance."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TELLING HOW DAMARIS DISCOVERED THE TRUE NATURE OF A CERTAIN SECRET TO THE
+DEAR MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
+
+
+The beat of a tideless sea, upon the shore, is at once unrestful and
+monotonous; in this only too closely resembling the beat of the human
+heart, when the glory of youth has departed. The splendid energy of the
+flow and grateful easing of the ebb alike are denied it. Foul or fair,
+shine or storm, it pounds and pounds--as a thing chained--without
+relief of advance or of recession, always at the same level, always in
+the same place.
+
+Suspicion of this cheerless truth was borne in upon Carteret
+as--bare-headed, his overcoat upon his arm, the night being singularly
+mild and clement--he walked with Damaris through the streets of the
+silent town. The dwellers in St. Augustin, both virtuous or otherwise,
+had very effectually retired to their beds behind drawn curtains, closed
+shutters, locked doors, and gave no sign. Vacancy reigned, bringing in
+its train an effect of suspense and eeriness, causing both our friends
+involuntarily to listen, with slightly strained hearing, for sounds which
+did not come. Once a cat, nimble and thin, streaked out of a cavernous
+side-alley across the pallor of the pavement and cobbled roadway, to be
+swallowed up in a black split--knife narrow, as it seemed--between the
+blank house fronts opposite. And once, as they turned into the open space
+of the Grand Place--unreal and stark with its spidery framework of
+stalls, set up ready for to-morrow's market, under the budding plane
+trees--they encountered a tired gendarme making his round, picturesque of
+aspect in _képi_ and flowing cloak. His footsteps brisked up, as he met
+and treated them to a discreetly sympathetic and intelligent
+observation, only to lag again wearily as soon as they had passed.
+
+These were the sole creatures in St. Augustin, save themselves, visibly
+alive and awake. Yet whether other beings, other presences, unmaterial,
+imponderable, intangible, did not walk the streets along with them, is
+open to doubt. More than once Damaris shrank close to Carteret, startled
+by and apprehensive of she knew not what. For who dare say in such a
+place what leavings-over there may not be from times pre-Christian and
+remote, when mighty Rome ruled, and the ancient gods bore sway over that
+radiant coast? On the outskirts of St. Augustin you may visit a fine
+amphitheatre, still perfect save for some ruin along the upper tier of
+seats; and in the centre of the town, within a stone's throw of the
+somewhat gloomy cathedral church, may trace the airy columns and portions
+of the sculptured architrave of a reputed temple of Venus, worked into
+the facade of the municipal buildings.
+
+Turning out of the Grande Place by an avenue on the right, Damaris and
+Carteret gained the esplanade following the curve of the bay. Here a
+freshness of the sea pleasantly accosted them along with that unrestful,
+monotonous trample of waves upon the beach.
+
+Not until they reached this stage of the homeward journey, and, setting
+their faces eastward, paced the pale level asphalt of this wide
+promenade, did any sustained effort of conversation arise. Thus far they
+had proffered fugitive remarks only, lapsing speedily into somewhat
+constrained silence. For a coldness, or shyness, might appear to have
+sprung up between them, oddly holding them asunder in thought and moral
+attitude after the close association of the dance--a reaction from its
+contact so surprisingly more intimate than any they had yet experienced,
+from that harmonious rhythmic unity of purpose and of movement which, in
+dancing, alike excites emotion quasi-physical, and so alluringly serves
+to soothe and allay the emotion it excites.
+
+These aspects of their association affected Damaris but dimly, since
+speaking a language of which she barely knew the alphabet. Carteret they
+took in a different measure. He read their direction and potency with
+clear understanding, the insidious provocations and satisfactions of them
+printed in large type. With a rush, his youth returned and troubled him.
+Or was it the phantom of youth merely? His heart-beats but the beat of a
+tideless sea. He feared as much.--Oh, these tardy harvests, these tardy
+harvests--are they not to most men a plague rather than a benison, since,
+in honour and fine feeling, so abominably perilous to reap!
+
+For the greater promotion of calm and of sanity he welcomed the young
+girl's change of dress. The powder-blue walking suit, with belted jacket
+and kilted skirt, brought her more within the terms of their ordinary
+intercourse. But the impression of the fair young body, lately so close
+against his own, clothed in bride-like raiment, fresh as an opening
+flower and vaguely fragrant, could not easily be dispelled. Strive as he
+might to put it from him, the impression remained recurrent. Therefore it
+must not be held to Carteret's discredit if his senses took part with his
+nobler affections just now, against his considered judgment; or that he
+fared badly at the hands of the sea-born goddess--worshipped hero in her
+temple in ancient days, with music, with dance and with nameless rites of
+sex, when the moon rode high heaven at the full, even as to-night.
+
+Her influence was still abroad, and in his flesh Carteret shrewdly
+suffered it; yet neither basely nor bestially, being clean of life and of
+spirit. He whipped himself even, with rather sorry humour, seeing, in
+Damaris' willingness to entrust herself thus to his sole care in the
+midnight loneliness, a handsomer compliment to his morals than to his
+manhood. How little, bless her, she knew what stuff men are made
+of!--therein underrating her acquaintance with fact, as her conversation
+presently and surprisingly proved to him.
+
+The revelation began in all apparent innocence--for:
+
+"I'm not ungrateful to Henrietta," Damaris said, breaking silence softly
+yet abruptly, as speaking to herself rather than addressing him, in
+apology and argument. "And I'm dreadfully sorry to have vexed her--for
+she was vexed with me for not staying at the Pavilion to-night, as I
+promised. She was really quite cross."
+
+"She will get over that--never fear," Carteret answered off the surface.
+
+"Still it troubles me to have vexed her. I must have seemed so
+unreasonable, making silly sounding excuses--because I could not explain
+to her why I really wanted so much to go home."
+
+"You find a limit to the dear lady's powers of comprehension or of
+sympathy?" he asked, again off the surface.
+
+"I suppose I must do so, because there are things it never occurs to one
+to speak of to Henrietta."
+
+"Whole cartloads of them," Carteret comprehensively agreed.
+
+"And yet I don't know why."
+
+"Don't you? Well, I think I do perhaps know why; and knowing, I must
+confess to being not altogether sorry your confidences are restricted,
+dear witch, in that particular direction."
+
+The use of the pet name, though involuntary--possibly on that very
+account--eased his fever. Clearly he must get back to their former
+relation. Rejoice in her beauty, in her sweet faith and dependence, love
+her--yes--he admitted the word,--but for God's sake keep the physical
+side out of the business. Damaris' easily-aroused loyalty, meanwhile,
+caught alight.
+
+"Oh, but we've just been Henrietta's guests," she said, with a pretty
+mingling of appeal and rebuke--"and it seems hardly kind, does it, to
+find faults in her. She has been beautifully good to me all this time,
+ending up with this dance which she gave on purpose to please me."
+
+"And herself also," Carteret returned.
+
+--Yes decidedly he felt better, steadier, to the point of now trusting
+himself to look at his companion, notwithstanding the strange influences
+abroad in the magical moonlight, with his accustomed smiling,
+half-amused indulgence. The unremitting trample of the waves, there on
+the right, made for level-headedness actually if a little
+mercilessly--so he thought.
+
+"I don't wish to be guilty of taking Mrs. Frayling's name in vain a
+second time," he went on--"you've pulled me up, and quite rightly, for
+doing so once already--but depend upon it, she enjoyed her ball every
+morsel as much as you did. In respect of the minor delights of existence,
+she slumbers not nor sleeps, our perenially charming and skilful
+Henrietta."
+
+"You think she enjoyed it too? I am glad."
+
+Then after an interval of silence, her whole figure alert, her
+speech eager:
+
+"See there--see there, Colonel Sahib--yes, far, far out to sea--aren't
+those the lights of a ship?"
+
+"Yes," he answered--"creeping westward--bound for Toulon, most likely, or
+possibly for Marseilles."
+
+And he would have moved forward. But Damaris unaccountably lingered.
+Carteret waited a good three to four minutes to suit her convenience; but
+the delay told on him. The night and hour down here by the shore, on the
+confines of the silent town, were too full of poetry, too full of
+suggestion, of the fine-drawn excitement of things which had been and
+might not impossibly again be. It was dangerous to loiter, and in such
+company, though waves might beat out a constant reminder with merciless
+pertinacity upon the beach.
+
+"Come, dear witch, come," he at last urged her. "We still have more than
+a mile to go and a pretty stiff hill to climb. It grows late, you will be
+abominably tired to-morrow. Why this fascination for a passing steamer,
+probably some unromantic, villainously dirty old tramp too, you would not
+condescend to look at by daylight."
+
+"Because,"--Damaris began. She came nearer to him, her expression
+strangely agitated.--"Oh! Colonel Sahib, if I could only be sure it
+wasn't treacherous to tell you!"
+
+"Tell me what? One of the many things it would never occur to you to
+confide to Mrs. Frayling?" he said, trying to treat her evident emotion
+lightly, to laugh it off.
+
+"To Henrietta? Of course not. It would be unpardonable, hateful to tell
+Henrietta."
+
+She flushed, her face looking, for the moment, dark from excess of
+colour.
+
+"You are the only person I could possibly tell."
+
+Carteret moved aside a few steps. He too felt strangely agitated. Wild
+ideas, ideas of unholy aspect, presented themselves to him--ideas, again,
+beyond words entrancing and sweet. He fought with both alike, honestly,
+manfully. Returned and took Damaris' hand quietly, gently in both his.
+
+"Look here, dear witch," he said, "all this evening a--to me--unknown
+spirit has possessed you. You haven't been like yourself. You have made
+me a little anxious, a little alarmed on your account."
+
+"Oh! it isn't only this evening," she caught him up. "It has been going
+on for weeks."
+
+"So I have seen--and that is not good for you, isn't for your happiness.
+So, if I am--as you say--the only person you care to acquaint with this
+matter, had not you better tell me here and now? Better worry yourself no
+more with mysteries about it, but let us, once and for all, have the
+thing out?"
+
+"I should be thankful," Damaris said simply, looking him in the eyes--"if
+I could be sure I wasn't sacrificing some one else--their pride I
+mean--their--their honour."
+
+For a few seconds Carteret paused, meeting her grave and luminous
+glance. Then:
+
+"I think you may risk it," he said. "I promise you this some-one-else's
+honour shall be sacred to me as my own. Without your direct request no
+word of what you choose to tell me will ever pass my lips."
+
+"Ah! I'm very sure of that,"--Her smile, her voice bore transparent
+testimony to a faith which went, somewhat giddily, not only to her
+hearer's heart but to his head. "It isn't a question of your repeating
+anything; but of your thinking differently of some one you care for very
+much--and who is almost as dependent on you, Colonel Sahib, as I am
+myself. At least I fear you might.--Oh! I am so perplexed, I'm in such
+a maze," she said. "I've nothing to go on in all this, and I turn it
+over and over in my mind to no purpose till my head aches. You see I
+can't make out whether this--the thing which began it all and happened
+oh! long ago--is extraordinary--one which you--and most people like
+you--in your position, I mean--would consider very wrong and
+disgraceful; or whether it often happens and is just accepted, taken for
+granted, only not talked about."
+
+Carteret felt cold all down his spine. For what, in God's name, could
+this supremely dear and--as he watched her grave and sweetly troubled
+countenance--supremely lovely child, be driving at?
+
+"And I care so dreadfully much," she went on. "It is the story of the
+darling little green jade elephant over again--like its being broken and
+spoilt. Only now I'm grown up I don't give in and let it make me ill.
+There was a time even of that--of illness, I mean--at first just before
+you came to The Hard last autumn. But I wouldn't suffer it, I would not
+let the illness go on. I got over that. But then a second crisis occurred
+soon after we came here; and I thought Henrietta's kindness opened a way
+out. So I rushed about whenever and wherever she invited me to rush. But
+as I told you this evening--just before we had our two dances, you
+remember."
+
+"Am I likely to forget!" Carteret murmured under his breath.
+
+"The rushing about has not proved a success. I thought it would help to
+stifle certain longings and keep me nearer to my father--more at one with
+him. But it didn't, it made me neglect him. You see--you see"--the words
+were dragged from her, as by active suffering and distress of mind--"I
+had to choose between him and another person. One cannot serve two
+masters. I choose him. His claim was the strongest in duty. And I love to
+see him satisfied and peaceful. He always ranked first in everything I
+felt and did ever since I can remember; and I so want him to stay first.
+But I have been pulled two ways, and seem to have got all astray somehow
+lately. I haven't been really true to myself any more than to him--only
+frivolous and busy about silly pleasures."
+
+"Don't let the frivolity burden your precious conscience," Carteret
+comfortably told her, touched by the pathos of her self-reproach. For her
+sincerity was surely, just now, unimpeachable and she a rare creature
+indeed! Love, he could less than ever banish; but surely he might utterly
+banish distrust and fear?--"As frivolity goes, dear witch, and greed of
+pleasure, yours have been innocent enough both in amount and in quality,
+heaven knows!"
+
+"I should like to believe so--but all that's relative, isn't it? The real
+wrongness of what you do, depends upon the level of rightness you start
+from, I mean."
+
+"Insatiable casuist!" Carteret tenderly laughed at her.
+
+And with that, by common though unspoken consent, they walked
+onward again.
+
+Even while so doing, however, both were sensible that this resumption of
+their homeward journey marked a period in, rather than the conclusion of,
+their conversation. Some outside compelling force--so in any case it
+appeared to Carteret--encompassed them. It was useless to turn and
+double, indulge in gently playful digression. That force would inevitably
+make them face the innermost of their own thought, their own emotion, in
+the end. In obedience to which unwelcome conviction, Carteret presently
+brought himself to ask her:
+
+"And about this other person--for we have wandered a bit from the point
+at issue, haven't we?--whose interests as I gather clash, for some
+reason, with those of your father, and whose pride and honour you are so
+jealously anxious to safeguard."
+
+"His pride, yes," Damaris said quickly, her head high, a warmth in her
+tone. "His honour is perfectly secure, in my opinion."
+
+"Whose honour is in danger then?--Dear witch, forgive me, but don't you
+see the implication?"
+
+Damaris looked around at him with unfathomable eyes. Her lips parted, yet
+she made no answer.
+
+After a pause Carteret spoke again, and, to his own hearing, his voice
+sounded hoarse as that of the tideless sea upon the beach yonder.
+
+"Do you mean me to understand that the conflict between your father's
+interests and those of this other person--this other man's--arise from
+the fact that you love him?"
+
+"Yes," Damaris calmly declared.
+
+"Love him,"--having gone thus far Carteret refused to spare himself. He
+turned the knife in the wound--"Love him to the point of marriage?"
+
+There, the word was said. Almost unconsciously he walked onward without
+giving time for her reply.--He moistened his lips, weren't they dry as a
+cinder? He measured the height to which hope had borne him, to-night, by
+the shock, the positive agony of his existing fall. At the young girl,
+_svelte_ and graceful, beside him, he could not look; but kept his eyes
+fixed on the mass of the wooded promontory, dark and solid against the
+more luminous tones of water and of sky, some half-mile distant. Set high
+upon the further slope of it, from here invisible, the Grand Hotel
+fronted--as he knew--the eastward trending coast. Carteret wished the
+distance less, since he craved the shelter of that friendly yellow-washed
+caravanserai. He would be mortally thankful to find himself back there,
+and alone, the door of his bachelor quarters shut--away from the beat of
+the waves, away from the subtle glory of this Venus-ridden moon now
+drawing down to her setting. Away, above all, from Damaris--delivered
+from the enchantments and perturbations, both physical and moral, her
+delicious neighbourhood provoked.
+
+But from that fond neighbourhood, as he suddenly became aware, he was in
+some sort delivered already. For she stopped dead, with a strange choking
+cry; and stood solitary, as it even seemed forsaken, upon the wide grey
+whiteness of the asphalt of the esplanade. Behind her a line of
+lamps--pale burning under the moonlight--curved, in perspective, with the
+curving of the bay right away to the lighthouse. On her left the crowded
+houses of the sleeping town, slashed here and there with sharp edged
+shadows, receded, growing indistinct among gardens and groves. The
+scene, as setting to this single figure, affected him profoundly, taken
+in conjunction with that singular cry. He retraced the few steps dividing
+him from her.
+
+"Marriage?" she almost wailed, putting out her hands as though to prevent
+his approach. "No--no--never in life, Colonel Sahib. You quite dreadfully
+misunderstand."
+
+"Do I?" Carteret said, greatly taken aback, while, whether he would
+or no, unholy ideas again flitted through his mind maliciously
+assailing him.
+
+"It has nothing to do with that sort of loving. It belongs to something
+much more beautifully part of oneself--something of one's very, very own,
+right from the very beginning."
+
+"Indeed!" he said, sullenly, even roughly, his habitual mansuetude giving
+way before this--for so he could not but take it--contemptuous flinging
+of his immense tenderness, his patient, unswerving devotion, back in his
+face. "Then very certainly I must plead guilty to not understanding, or
+if you prefer it--for we needn't add to our other discomforts by
+quarrelling about the extra syllable--of misunderstanding. In my
+ignorance, I confess I imagined the love, which finds its crown and seal
+of sanctity in marriage, can be--and sometimes quite magnificently
+is--the most beautiful thing a man has to give or a woman to receive."
+
+Damaris stared at him, her face blank with wonder.
+
+Set at regular intervals between the tall blue-grey painted lamp
+standards, for the greater enjoyment of visitors and natives, stone
+benches, of a fine antique pattern, adorn St. Augustin's esplanade. Our
+much-perplexed maiden turned away wearily and sat down upon the nearest
+of these. She held up her head, bravely essaying to maintain an air of
+composure and dignity; but her shoulders soon not imperceptibly quivered,
+while, try hard as she might, setting her teeth and holding her breath,
+small plaintive noises threatened betrayal of her tearful state.
+
+Carteret, quite irrespective of the prescience common to all true lovers
+where the beloved object's welfare is concerned, possessed unusually
+quick and observant hearing. Those small plaintive noises speedily
+reached him and pierced him as he stood staring gloomily out to sea.
+Whereupon he bottled up his pain, shut down his natural and admirably
+infrequent anger, and came over to the stone bench.
+
+"You're not crying, dearest witch, are you?" he asked her.
+
+"Yes, I am," Damaris said. "What else is there left for me to
+do?--Everyone I care for I seem to make unhappy. Everything I do goes
+wrong. Everything I touch gets broken and spoilt somehow."
+
+"Endless tragedies of little green jade elephants?" he gently
+bantered her.
+
+"Yes--endless. For now I have hurt you. You are trying to be good and
+like your usual self to me; but that doesn't take me in. I know all
+through me I have hurt you--quite dreadfully badly--though I never, never
+meant to, and haven't an idea how or why."
+
+This was hardly comforting news to Carteret. He attempted no disclaimer;
+while she, after fumbling rather helplessly at the breast-pocket of her
+jacket, at last produced a folded letter and held it out to him.
+
+"Whether it's treacherous or not, I am obliged to tell you," she said,
+with pathetic desperation. "For I can't bear any more. I can't but try my
+best to keep you, Colonel Sahib. And now you are hurt, I can only keep
+you by making you understand--just everything. You may still think me
+wrong; but anyhow my wrongness will be towards somebody else, not towards
+you.--So please read this, and don't skip, because every word helps to
+explain. Read it right through before you ask me any questions--that's
+more fair all round.--If you go across there--under the lamp, I
+mean--there still is light enough, I think, for you to be able to see."
+
+And Carteret, thus admonished--partly to pacify her, partly to satisfy a
+very vital curiosity which stirred in him to compass the length, breadth,
+and height of this queer business, learn the truth and so set certain
+vague and agitating fears at rest--did as Damaris bade him. Standing in
+the conflicting gaslight and moonlight, the haunted quiet of the small
+hours broken only by the trample and wash of the sea, he read Darcy
+Faircloth's letter from its unconventional opening, to its equally
+unconventional closing paragraph.
+
+"Now my holiday is over and I will close down till next Christmas
+night--unless miracles happen meanwhile--so good-bye--Here is a boatload
+of my lads coming alongside, roaring with song and as drunk as
+lords.--God bless you. In spirit I once again kiss your dear feet"--
+
+Carteret straightened himself up with a jerk. Looked at Damaris sitting
+very still, a little sunk together, as in weariness or dejection upon the
+stone bench. His eyes blazed fierce, for once, with questions he burned
+yet dreaded to ask. But on second thoughts--they arrived to him
+swiftly--he restrained his impatience and his tongue. Mastering his heat
+he looked down at the sheet of note-paper again. He would obey Damaris,
+absorb the contents of this extraordinary document, the facts it conveyed
+both explicitly and implicitly, to the last word before he spoke.
+
+Happily the remaining words were few. "Your brother," he read, "till
+death and after"--followed by a name and date.
+
+At the name he stared fairly confounded. It meant nothing whatever to
+him.--That is, at first. Then, rising as a vision from out some
+subconscious drift of memory, he saw the cold, low-toned colouring of
+wide, smooth and lonely waters, of salt-marsh, of mud-flat and reed-bed
+in the lowering light of a late autumn afternoon--a grey, stone-built
+tavern, moreover, above the open door of which, painted upon a board,
+that same name of Faircloth figured above information concerning divers
+liquors obtainable within. Yes--remembrance grew more precise and stable.
+He recalled the circumstances quite clearly now. He had seen it on his
+way back from a solitary afternoon's wild fowl shooting on Marychurch
+Haven; during his last visit to Deadham Hard.
+
+So much was certain. But the name in its present connection? Carteret's
+imagination shied. For, to have the existence of an illegitimate son of
+your oldest and dearest friend thus suddenly thrust upon you, and that by
+a young lady of the dearest friend's family, is, to say the least of it,
+a considerable poser for any man. It may be noted as characteristic of
+Carteret that, without hesitation, he recognized the sincerity and fine
+spirit of Faircloth's letter. Characteristic, also, that having seized
+the main bearings of it, his feeling was neither of cynical acquiescence,
+or of covert and cynical amusement; but of vicarious humiliation, of
+apology and noble pitying shame.
+
+He came over and sat down upon the stone bench beside Damaris.
+
+"Dear witch," he said slowly, "this, if I apprehend it aright, is a
+little staggering. Forgive me--I did altogether, and I am afraid rather
+crassly, misunderstand. But that I could hardly help, since no remotest
+hint of this matter has ever reached me until now."
+
+Damaris let her hand drop, palm upwards, upon the cool, slightly rough,
+surface of the seat. Carteret placed the folded letter in it, and so
+doing, let his hand quietly close down over hers--not in any sense as a
+caress, but as assurance of a sympathy it was forbidden him, in decency
+and loyalty, to speak. For a while they both remained silent. Damaris
+was first to move. She put the letter back into the breast-pocket of
+her jacket.
+
+"I am glad you know, Colonel Sahib," she gravely said. "You see how
+difficult it has all been."
+
+"I see--yes"--
+
+After a pause, the girl spoke again.
+
+"I only came to know it myself at the end of last summer, quite by
+accident. I was frightened and tried not to believe. But there was no way
+of not believing. I had lost my way in the mist out on the Bar. I mistook
+the one for the other--my brother, I mean, for"--
+
+Damaris broke off, her voice failing her.
+
+"Yes," Carteret put in gently, supportingly.
+
+He leaned back, his arms crossed upon his breast, his head carried
+slightly forward, slightly bent, as he watched the softly sparkling line
+of surf, marking the edge of the plunging waves upon the sloping shore.
+Vicarious shame claimed him still. He weighed man's knowledge, man's
+freedom of action, man's standards of the permissible and unpermissible
+as against those of this maiden, whose heart was at once so much and so
+little awake.
+
+"For my father," she presently went on. "But still I wanted to deny the
+truth. I was frightened at it. For if that was true so much else--things
+I had never dreamed of until then--might also be true. I wanted to get
+away, somehow. But later, after I had been ill, and my father let him
+come and say good-bye to me before he went to sea, I saw it all
+differently, and far from wanting to get away I only longed that we
+might always be together as other brothers and sisters are. But I knew
+that wasn't possible. I was quite happy, especially after you came with
+us, Colonel Sahib, out here. Then I had this letter and the longing grew
+worse than ever. I did try to school myself into not wanting, not
+longing--did silly things--frivolous things, as I told you. But I can't
+stop wanting. It all came to a head, somehow to-night, with the dancing
+and music, and those foolish boys quarrelling over me--and then your
+showing me that--instead of being faithful to my father, I have
+neglected him."
+
+"Ah, you poor sweet dear!" Carteret said, greatly moved and
+turning to her.
+
+In response she leaned towards him, her face wan in the expiring
+moonlight, yet very lovely in its pleading and guileless affection.
+
+"And my brother is beautiful, Colonel Sahib," she declared, "not only to
+look at but in his ideas. You would like him and be friends with him,
+though he doesn't belong to the same world as you--indeed you would. And
+he is not afraid--you know what I mean?--not afraid of being alive and
+having adventures. He means to do big things--not that he has talked
+boastfully to me, or been showy. Please don't imagine that. He knows
+where he comes in, and doesn't pretend to be anybody or anything beyond
+what he is. Only it seems to me there is a streak of something original
+in him--almost of genius. He makes me feel sure he will never bungle any
+chance which comes in his way. And he has time to do so much, if chances
+do come"--this with a note of exultation. "His life is all before him,
+you see. He is so beautifully young yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FIDUS ACHATES
+
+
+In which final pronouncement of Damaris' fond tirade, Carteret heard the
+death knell of his own fairest hopes. He could not mistake the set of the
+girl's mind. Not only did brother call to sister, but youth called to
+youth. Whereat the goad of his forty-nine years pricked him shrewdly.
+
+He must accept the disabilities of the three decades, plus one year,
+which divided him in age from Damaris, as final; and range himself with
+the elder generation--her father's generation, in short. How, after
+all, could he in decency go to his old friend and say: "Give me your
+daughter." The thing, viewed thus, became outrageous, offensive not
+only to his sense of fitness, but of the finer and more delicate
+moralities. For cradle-snatching is not, it must be conceded, a
+graceful occupation; nor is a middle-aged man with a wife still in her
+teens a graceful spectacle. Sentimentalists may maunder over it in
+pinkly blushing perversity; but the naughty world thinks otherwise,
+putting, if not openly its finger to its nose, at least secretly its
+tongue in its cheek. And rightly, as he acknowledged. The implication
+may be coarse, libidinous; but the instinct producing it is a sound
+one, both healthy and just.
+
+Therefore he had best sit no longer upon stone benches by the sounding
+shore, in this thrice delicious proximity and thrice provocative magic of
+the serene southern night. All the more had best not do so, because
+Damaris proved even more rare in spirit, exquisite in moral and
+imaginative quality--so he perhaps over-fondly put it--than ever before.
+Carteret got on his feet and walked away a few paces, continuing to
+heckle himself with merciless honesty and rather unprintable
+humour--invoking even the historic name of Abishag, virgin and martyr,
+and generally letting himself "have it hot."
+
+A self-chastisement which may be accounted salutary, since, as he
+administered it, his thought again turned to a case other than his own,
+namely, that of Charles Verity. To pronounce judgment on his friend's
+past relations with women, whether virtuous or otherwise, was no business
+of his. Whatever irregularities of conduct that friend's earlier career
+may have counted, had brought their own punishment--were indeed actually
+bringing it still, witness current events. It wasn't for him, Carteret,
+by the smallest fraction to add to that punishment; but rather, surely,
+to do all in his power to lighten the weight of it. Here he found safe
+foothold. Let him invite long-standing friendship, with the father, to
+help him endure the smart of unrequited love for the daughter. To pretend
+these two emotions moved on the same plane and could counter-balance one
+another, was manifestly absurd; but that did not affect the essence of
+the question. Ignoring desire, which to-night so sensibly and
+disconcertingly gnawed at his vitals, let him work to restore the former
+harmony and sweet strength of their relation. If in the process he could
+obtain for Damaris--without unseemly revelation or invidious
+comment--that on which her innocent soul was set he would have his
+reward.--A reward a bit chilly and meagre, it is true, as compared
+with--Comparisons be damned!--Carteret left his pacing and came back to
+the stone bench.
+
+"Well, I have formed my own conclusions in respect of the whole matter.
+Now tell me what you actually want me to do, and I will see how far it
+can be compassed, dear witch." he said.
+
+Damaris had risen too, but she was troubled.
+
+"Ah! I still spoil things," she wailed. "I was so happy telling
+you about--about Faircloth. And yet somehow I've hurt you again. I
+know I have."
+
+Carteret took her by the elbow lightly, gently, carrying her onward
+beside him over the wide pallor of the asphalt.
+
+"Hurt me, you vanitatious creature? Against babes of your tender age,
+I long ago became hurt-proof"--he gaily lied to her. "What do you take
+me for?--A fledgling like the Ditton boy, or poor Harry Ellice, with
+whose adolescent affections you so heartlessly played chuck-farthing at
+our incomparable Henrietta's party to-night?--No, no--but joking apart,
+what exactly is it you want me to do for you? Take you to Marseilles
+for the day, perhaps, to meet this remarkable young sea-captain and go
+over his ship?"
+
+"He is remarkable," Damaris chimed in, repeating the epithet with eager
+and happier emphasis.
+
+"Unquestionably--if I'm to judge both by your account of him and by the
+tenor of his letter."
+
+"And you would take me? Oh! dear Colonel Sahib, how beautifully good you
+are to me."
+
+"Of course, I'll take you--if"--
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If Sir Charles gives his consent."
+
+He slipped Damaris' hand within his arm, still bearing her onward. The
+last of the long line of gas-lamps upon the esplanade, marking the curve
+of the bay, was now left behind. A little further and the road
+forked--the main one followed the shore. The other--a footpath--mounted
+to the left through the delicate gloom and semi-darkness of the wood
+clothing the promontory. Carteret did not regret that impending
+obscurity, apprehending it would be less embarrassing, under cover of it,
+to embark on certain themes which must be embarked upon were he to bring
+his purpose to full circle.
+
+"Listen, my dear," he told her, "while I expound. Certain laws of
+friendship exist, between men, which are imperative. They must be
+respected. To evade them, still worse, wilfully break them is to be
+guilty of unpardonably bad taste and bad feeling--to put it no higher.
+Had your father chosen to speak to me of this matter, well and good. I
+should have felt honoured by his confidence, have welcomed it--for he is
+dearer to me than any man living and always must be.--But the initiative
+has to come from him. Till he speaks I am dumb. For me to approach the
+subject first is not possible."
+
+"Then the whole beautiful plan falls through," she said brokenly.
+
+"No, not at all, very far from that," he comforted her. "I gather you
+have already discussed it with your father. You must lay hold of your
+courage and discuss it again. I know that won't be easy; but you owe it
+to him to be straightforward, owe it to his peculiar devotion to you.
+Some day, perhaps, when you are older and more ripe in experience, I may
+tell you, in plain language of a vow he once made for your sake--when he
+was in his prime, too, his life strong in him, his powers at their
+height. Some persons might consider his action exaggerated and fanatical.
+But such accusations can be brought against most actions really heroic.
+And that this action, specially in a man of his temperament, may claim to
+be heroic there can be, in my opinion, no manner of doubt."
+
+The path climbed steeply through the pine wood. Damaris' hand grew
+heavy on Carteret's arm. Once she stumbled, and clung to him in
+recovering her footing, thereby sending an electric current tingling
+through his nerves again.
+
+"He did what was painful, you mean, and for my sake?"
+
+"Say rather gave up something very much the reverse of painful,"
+Carteret answered, his voice not altogether under control, so that it
+struck away, loud and jarring, between the still ranks of the
+tree-trunks to right and left.
+
+"Which is harder?"
+
+"Which is much harder--immeasurably, incalculably harder, dearest witch."
+
+After a space of silence, wherein the pines, lightly stirred by some
+fugitive up-draught off the sea, murmured dusky secrets in the vault of
+interlacing branches overhead, Carteret spoke again. He had his voice
+under control now. Yet, to Damaris' hearing, his utterance was permeated
+by an urgency and gravity almost awe-inspiring, here in the loneliness
+and obscurity of the wood. She went in sudden questioning,
+incomprehensible fear of the dear man with the blue eyes. His arm was
+steady beneath her hand, supporting her. His care and protection sensibly
+encircled her, yet he seemed to her thousands of miles away, speaking
+from out some depth of knowledge and of reality which hopelessly
+transcended her experience. She felt strangely diffident, strangely
+ignorant. Felt, though she had no name for it, the mystical empire,
+mystical terror of sex as sex.
+
+"The night of the breaking of the monsoon, of those riotings and fires at
+Bhutpur, your father bartered his birthright, in a certain particular,
+against your restoration to health. The exact nature of that renunciation
+I cannot explain to you. The whole transaction lies beyond the range of
+ordinary endeavour; and savours of the transcendental--or the
+superstitious, if you please to take it that way. But call it by what
+name you will, his extravagant gamble with the Lords of Life and Death
+worked, apparently. For you got well; and you have stayed well, dear
+witch--thanks to those same Lords of Life and Death, whose favour your
+father attempted to buy with this act of personal sacrifice. He was
+willing to pay a price most men would consider prohibitive to secure your
+recovery. And, with an unswerving sense of honour, he has gone on paying,
+until that which, at the start, must have amounted to pretty severe
+discipline has crystallized into habit. What you tell me of this young
+man, Darcy Faircloth's history, goes, indirectly, to strengthen my
+admiration for your father's self-denying ordinance, both in proposing
+and in maintaining this strange payment."
+
+There--it was finished, his special pleading. Carteret felt unfeignedly
+glad. He was unaccustomed to put forth such elaborate expositions, more
+particularly of a delicate nature and therefore offering much to avoid as
+well as much to state.
+
+"So you are bound to play a straight game with him--dear child. Believe
+me he deserves it, is finely worthy of it. Be open with him. Show him
+your letter. Ask his permission--if you have sufficient courage. Your
+courage is the measure of the sincerity of your desire in this business.
+Do you follow me?"
+
+"Yes--but I shall distress him," Damaris mournfully argued.
+
+She was bewildered, and in her bewilderment held to the immediate
+and obvious.
+
+"Less than by shutting him out from your confidence, by keeping him at
+arm's length."
+
+"Neglecting him?"
+
+"Ah! so that rankles still, does it? Yes, neglecting him just a
+trifle, perhaps."
+
+"But the neglect is over--indeed, it is over and utterly done with."
+
+And in the ardour of her disclaimer, Damaris pressed against Carteret,
+her face upturned and, since she too was tall, very close to his.
+
+"Just because it is over and done with I begged you to bring me back
+with you to-night. I wanted to make a clean break with all the
+frivolities, while everything was quite clear to me. I wanted, while I
+still belonged to you, Colonel Sahib, through our so beautifully dancing
+together twice"--
+
+"God in Heaven!" Carteret said under his breath. For what a past-master
+in the art of the torturer is your white souled maiden at moments!
+
+"To go right away from all that rushing about worldliness--I don't blame
+Henrietta--she has been sweet to me--but it is worldliness, rather, isn't
+it?--and to be true to him again and true to myself. I wanted to return
+to my allegiance. You believe me, don't you? You made me see, Colonel
+Sahib, you brought my foolishness home to me--Oh! yes, I owe you endless
+gratitude and thanks. But I was uneasy already. I needed a wholesome
+shove, and you gave it. And now you deliver a much-needed supplementary
+shove--one to my courage. I obey you, Colonel Sahib, without question or
+reservation--not on the chance of getting what I long for; but because
+you have convinced me of what is right. I will tell him--tell my
+father--all about everything--to-morrow."
+
+"It is now to-morrow--and, with the night, many dreams have packed up
+their traps and fled."
+
+"But we needn't be sorry for that," Damaris declared, in prettily rising
+confidence. "The truth is going to be better than the dreams, isn't it?"
+
+"For you, yes--with all my heart, I hope."
+
+"But for you--why not for you?" she cried, smitten by anxiety regarding
+him and by swift tenderness.
+
+They had reached the end of the upward climbing path, and stepped from
+the semi-darkness of the wood into the greater clarity of the gravel
+terrace in front of the hotel. Far below unseen waves again beat upon the
+beach. The sound reached them faintly. The dome of the sky, thick sown
+with stars, appeared prodigious in expanse and in height. It dwarfed the
+block of hotel buildings upon the right. Dwarfed all visible things, the
+whole earth, indeed, which it so sensibly enclosed. Dwarfed also, and
+that to the point of desolation, the purposes and activities of
+individual human lives. How could these count, what could they matter in
+presence of the countless worlds swinging, there, through the illimitable
+fields of space?
+
+To Carteret this thought, or rather this sensation, of human
+insignificance brought a measure of stoic consolation. He lifted Damaris'
+hand off his arm, and held it, while he said, smiling at her:
+
+"For me--yes, of course. Why not? For me too, dearest witch, truth is
+assuredly the most profitable bedfellow."
+
+Then, as she shrank, drawing away a little, startled by the crudeness of
+the expression:
+
+"I enjoyed our two dances," he told her, "and I shall enjoy taking you to
+Marseilles and making Faircloth's acquaintance, if our little scheme
+works out successfully--if it is sanctioned, permitted. After that--other
+things being equal--I think I ought to break camp and journey back to
+England, to look after my property and my sister's affairs. I have gadded
+long enough. It is time to get into harness--such harness as claims me in
+these all too easy-going days. And now you must really go indoors without
+further delay, and go to bed. May the four angels of pious tradition
+stand at the four corners of it, to keep you safe in body, soul and
+spirit. Sleep the sleep of innocence and wake radiant and refreshed."
+
+"Ah! but you're sad--you are sad," Damaris cried, her lips quivering.
+"Can't I do anything?--I would do so much, would love so much--beyond
+anything--to make you unsad."
+
+The man with the blue eyes shook his head.
+
+"Impossible, alas! Your intervention, in this case, is finally ruled out,
+my sweet lamb," he affectionately, but conclusively said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WHICH FEATURES VARIOUS PERSONS WITH WHOM THE READER IS ALREADY ACQUAINTED
+
+
+Some are born great, some attain greatness, and some have it thrust upon
+them to the lively embarrassment of their humble and retiring little
+souls. To his own notable surprise, General Frayling, on the morning
+following his wife's Cinderella dance, awoke to find himself the centre
+of interest in the life of the pretty pavilion situated in the grounds of
+the Hôtel de la Plage. He owed this unaccustomed ascendency to physical
+rather than moral or intellectual causes, being possessed of a
+temperature, the complexion of the proverbial guinea, and violent pains
+in his loins and his back.
+
+These anxious symptoms developed--one cannot but feel rather unjustly--as
+the consequence of his own politeness, his amenity of manner, and the
+patient attentions he paid on the previous evening to one of his wife's
+guests. He had sat altogether too long for personal comfort in a draughty
+corner of the hotel garden, with Mrs. Callowgas. Affected by the poetic
+influences of moon, stars, and sea, affected also conceivably by pagan
+amorous influences, naughtily emanating from the neighbouring Venus
+Temple--whose elegant tapering columns adorn the façade of the local
+Mairie--Mrs. Callowgas became extensively reminiscent of her dear dead
+Lord Bishop. Protracted anecdotes of visitations and confirmation tours,
+excerpts from his sermons, speeches and charges, arch revelations of his
+diurnal and nocturnal conversation and habits--the latter tedious to the
+point of tears when not slightly immodest--poured from her widowed lips.
+The good lady overflowed. She frankly babbled. General Frayling listened,
+outwardly interested and civil, inwardly deploring that he had omitted
+to put on a waistcoat back-lined with flannel--waxing momentarily more
+conscious, also, that the iron--of the hard cold slats composing the seat
+of his garden chair--if not entering into his soul, was actively entering
+a less august and more material portion of his being through the slack of
+his thin evening trousers. He endured both tedium and bodily suffering
+with the fortitude of a saint and martyr; but next morning revealed him
+victim of a violent chill demanding medical aid.
+
+The native local practitioner was reported mono-lingual, and of small
+scientific reputation; while our General though fluent in vituperative
+Hindustani, and fairly articulate in Arabic, could lay no claim to
+proficiency in the French language. Hence probable deadlock between
+doctor and patient. Henrietta acted promptly, foreseeing danger of
+jaundice or worse; and bade Marshall Wace telegraph to Cannes for an
+English physician. As a nurse she was capable if somewhat
+unsympathetic--illness and death being foreign to her personal programme.
+She attended upon her small sick warrior assiduously; thereby earning the
+admiration of the outsiders, and abject apologies for "being such a
+confounded nuisance to you, my love," from himself. Her maid, a
+Eurasian--by name Serafina Lousada, whom she had brought with her from
+Bombay a couple of years earlier, prematurely-wrinkled of skin and
+shrunken of figure, yet whose lustrous black eyes still held the embers
+of licentious fires--would readily have shared her labours. But Henrietta
+was at some trouble to eliminate Serafina from the sick-chamber, holding
+her tendencies suspect as insidiously and quite superfluously
+sentimental, where any male creature might be concerned.
+
+Carteret and Sir Charles Verity, on the other hand, she encouraged with
+the sweetest dignity imaginable, to take turns at the bedside--and to
+look in upon her drawing-room, also, on their way back and forth thither.
+A common object and that a philanthropic one, gives unimpeachable
+occasions of intimacy. These Henrietta did not neglect, though touching
+them with a disarming pensiveness of demeanour. The invalid was, "the
+thing "--the thought of him wholly paramount with her. Her anxiety might
+be lightened, perhaps, but by no means deleted, by the attentions of
+these friends of former years.--A pretty enough play throughout, as the
+two gentlemen silently noted, the one with kindly, the other with
+sardonic, humour.
+
+Her henchman, Marshall Wace, meanwhile, Henrietta kept on the run until
+the triangular patch of colour, straining either prominent cheek-bone,
+was more than ever accentuated. There was method, we may however take it,
+in the direction of these apparently mad runnings, since they so
+incessantly landed the runner in the _salon_ of the Grand Hotel crowning
+the wooded headland. Damaris she refused to have with her. No--she
+couldn't consent to any clouding of the darling child's bright spirit by
+her private worries. Trouble, heaven knows, is bound to overtake each one
+of us more than soon enough! She--Henrietta--could endure her allotted
+portion of universal tribulation best in the absence of youthful
+witnesses.
+
+But let Marshall carry Damaris news daily--twice daily, if needs be. Let
+him read with her, sing to her; so that she, charming child, should miss
+her poor Henrietta, and their happy meetings at the little pavilion, the
+less. Especially let him seek the young girl, and strive to entertain
+her, when Sir Charles and Colonel Carteret were engaged on their good
+Samaritan visits to General Frayling.
+
+"This break in our cherished intercourse," Henrietta wrote, in one of
+those many Wace-borne bulletins, "grieves me more than I can express.
+Permit Marshall to do all in his power to make up for this hospital
+incarceration of mine. Poor dear fellow, it is such a boon to him. I
+really crave to procure him any pleasure I can--above all the pleasure of
+being with you, which he values so very highly. All his best qualities
+show in this time of trial. He is only too faithful and wears himself to
+positive fiddle-strings in my service and that of the General. I send him
+to you, darling child, for a little change and recreation--relaxation
+from the strain of my husband's illness. Marshall is so sympathetic and
+feels for others so deeply. His is indeed a rare nature; but one which
+does not, alas! always quite do itself justice. I attribute this to an
+unfortunate upbringing rather than to any real fault in himself. So be
+good to him, Damaris. In being good to him--as I have said all along--you
+are being good to your fondly loving and, just now, sorely tried
+Henrietta Frayling."
+
+All which sounded a note designed to find an echo in Damaris' generous
+heart. Which it did--this the more readily because, still penitent for
+her recent trifle of wild-oats sowing, our beloved maiden was
+particularly emulous of good works, the missionary spirit all agog in
+her. She was out to comfort, to sympathize and to sustain. Hence she
+doubly welcomed that high-coloured hybrid, Wace--actor, cleric, vocalist
+in one. Guilelessly she indulged and mothered him, overlooking his
+egoism, his touchiness and peevishness, his occasional defects of
+breeding and of taste. She permitted him, moreover, to talk without
+restraint upon his favourite subject--that of himself. To retail the
+despairs of an ailing and unhappy childhood; the thwarted aspirations of
+a romantic and sensitive boyhood; the doubts and disappointments of a
+young manhood conspicuously rich in promise, had the fates and his fellow
+creatures but shown themselves more intelligently sensible of his merits
+and his needs.
+
+For this was the burden of his recurrent lament. Throughout life he had
+been misunderstood.
+
+"But you, Miss Verity, do understand me," he almost passionately
+declared, waving white effeminate hands. "Ah! a pure influence such
+as yours"--
+
+Here, rather to Damaris' thankfulness, words appeared to fail him. He
+moved to the piano and exhaled his remaining emotion in song.
+
+Affairs had reached the above point about ten days after Henrietta's
+party and Damaris' midnight walk with Colonel Carteret by the shore of
+the sounding sea. General Frayling, though mending, was still possessed
+of a golden complexion and a temperature slightly above the normal, while
+his dutiful wife, still self-immured, was in close attendance, when an
+event occurred which occasioned her considerable speculation and
+perplexity.
+
+It came about thus. At her request Marshall Wace walked up to the
+station early that morning, to secure the English papers on their arrival
+by the mail train from Paris. After a quite unnecessarily long interval,
+in Henrietta's opinion, he returned with an irritable expression and
+flustered manner. Such, at least, was the impression she received on his
+joining her in the wide airy corridor outside the General's sick-chamber.
+
+"I thought you were never coming back," she greeted him. "What has
+detained you?"
+
+"The Paris train was late," he returned. "And--wait an instant, Cousin
+Henrietta. I want to speak to you. Yes, I am hot and tired, and I am put
+out--I don't deny it."
+
+"Why?" Henrietta asked him indifferently.
+
+Her own temper was not at its brightest and best. The office of
+ministering angel had begun most woefully to pall on her. What if this
+illness betokened a break up of health on the part of General Frayling?
+Bath chairs, hot bottles, air-cushions, pap-like meals and such kindred
+unlovelinesses loomed large ahead! That was the worst of marrying an old,
+or anyhow an oldish, man. You never could tell how soon the natural order
+of things might be reversed, and you obliged to wait hand and foot on
+him, instead of his waiting hand and foot on you. Henrietta felt fretful.
+Her looking-glass presented a depressing reflection of fine lines and
+sharpened features. If she should wilt under this prolonged obligation of
+nursing, her years openly advertise their number, and she grow faded,
+_passée_, a woman who visibly has outlived her prime? She could have
+shaken the insufficiently dying General in his bed! Yes, insufficiently
+dying--for, in heaven's name, let him make up his mind and that
+speedily--get well and make himself useful, or veritably and finally
+depart before, for the preservation of her good looks, it was too late.
+
+"I met Sir Charles Verity at the station," Wace went on. "He was coming
+out of the first class _salle d'attente_. He stopped and spoke to me,
+enquired for cousin Fred; but his manner was peculiar, autocratic to a
+degree. He made me feel in the way, feel that he was annoyed at my being
+there and wanted to get rid of me."
+
+"Imagination, my dear Marshall. In all probability he wasn't thinking
+about you one way or the other, but merely about his own affairs, his
+own--as Carteret reports--remarkably clever book.--But why, I wonder, was
+he at the station so early?"
+
+Henrietta stood turning the folded newspaper about and idly scanning the
+head-lines, while the wind, entering by the open casements at the end of
+the corridor, lifted and fluttered the light blue gauze scarf she wore
+round her shoulders over her white frilled morning gown.
+
+"He didn't tell me," the large, soft, very hot young man said. "You may
+call it imagination, Cousin Henrietta; but I can't. I am positive his
+manner was intentional. He meant to snub me, by intimating of how slight
+account I am in his estimation. It was exceedingly galling. I do not want
+to employ a vulgar expression--but he looked down his nose at me as if I
+was beneath contempt. You know that insolent, arrogant way of his?"
+
+"Oh, la-la!" Henrietta cried. "Don't be so childish!"--Though she did in
+point of fact know the said way perfectly well and admired it. Once upon
+a time hadn't Sir Charles, indeed, rather superbly practised it in
+her--Henrietta's--defence?
+
+She sighed; while her temper took a nasty turn towards her yellow-faced,
+apologetic little General, waiting patiently for sight of the English
+newspapers, under the veil of mosquito netting in his little bed. Even in
+his roaring forties--had his forties ever roared though?--she doubted
+it--not to save his life could he ever have looked down his nose at an
+offending fellow-man like that.--Ah! Charles Verity--Charles Verity!--Her
+heart misgave her that she had been too precipitate in this third
+marriage. If she had waited?--
+
+"Of course, with my wretchedly short sight, I may have been mistaken,"
+Wace continued, pointedly ignoring her interruption, "but I am almost
+convinced I recognized Colonel Carteret and Miss Verity--Damaris--through
+the open door, on the other side of the _salle d'attente,_ in the crowd
+on the platform about to take their places in the train from Cannes,
+which had just come in."
+
+Henrietta ceased to scan the head-lines or deplore her matrimonial
+precipitation.
+
+"Carteret and Damaris alone and together?" she exclaimed with
+raised eyebrows.
+
+"Yes, and it occurred to me that I there touched upon the explanation, in
+part at least, of Sir Charles Verity's offensive manner. He had been to
+see them off and was, for some reason, unwilling that we--you and I,
+cousin Henrietta--should know of their journey."
+
+Even in private life, at the very head-waters and source of her intrigues
+and her scheming, Henrietta cleverly maintained an effect of secrecy. She
+showed herself an adept in the fine art of outflanking incautious
+intruders. Never did she wholly reveal herself or her purposes; but
+reserved for her own use convenient run-holes, down which she could
+escape from even the most intimate of her co-adjutors and employees. If
+masterly in advance, she showed even more masterly in retreat; and that
+too often at the expense of her fellow intriguers. Without scruple she
+deserted them, when personal safety or personal reputation suggested the
+wisdom of so doing. Though herself perplexed and suspicious, she now
+rounded on Wace, taking a high tone with him.
+
+"But why, my dear Marshall, why?" she enquired, "should Sir Charles
+object to our--as you put it--_knowing_? That seems to me an entirely
+gratuitous assumption on your part. In all probability Mary Ellice and
+the boys were on the platform too, only you didn't happen to catch sight
+of them. And, in any case, our friends at the Grand Hotel are not
+accountable to us for their comings and goings. They are free agents, and
+it does really strike me as just a little gossipy to keep such a very
+sharp eye upon their movements.--Don't be furious with me"--
+
+Henrietta permitted herself to reach up and pat the young man on the
+shoulder, playfully, restrainingly. An extraordinarily familiar
+proceeding on her part, marking the strength of her determination to
+avoid any approach to a quarrel, since she openly denounced and detested
+all those demonstrations, as between friends and relations, which come
+under the generic title of "pawing."
+
+"No, pray don't be furious with me," she repeated. "I quite appreciate
+how sensitive you naturally must be upon the subject of Damaris."
+
+"You have given me encouragement, cousin Henrietta"--this resentfully.
+
+"And why not? Don't be disingenuous, my dear Marshall. I have given you
+something much more solid than mere encouragement, namely active help,
+opportunity. In the right direction, to the right person, I have
+repeatedly praised you. But the prize, in this case, is to him who has
+address and perseverance to win it. You possess signal advantages through
+your artistic tastes, your music, your reciting. But I have never
+disguised from you--now honestly, have I?--there were obstacles and even
+prejudices to be overcome."
+
+"Sir Charles despises me."
+
+"But his daughter gives ample proof that she does not. And--you don't
+propose to marry Sir Charles, do you?"
+
+Henrietta laughed a trifle shrilly. The tone of that laugh pierced her
+hearer's armour of egoism. He stared at her in interrogative
+surprise--observing which she hastened to retreat down a run-hole.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "it is really a little too bad to tease you, Marshall.
+But one can't but be tempted to do so at moments. You take everything so
+terribly _au grand sérieux_, my young friend."
+
+"You mean to convey that I am ponderous?"
+
+"Well--perhaps--just a shade," she archly agreed. "And of ponderosity you
+must make an effort to cure yourself.--Mind, though a fault, I consider
+it one on the right side--in the connection, that is, which we have just
+now been discussing. When a girl has as much intelligence as--we needn't
+name names, need we?--she resents perpetual chaff and piffle. They bore
+her--seem to her a flagrant waste of time. Her mind tends to scorn
+delights and live laborious days--a tendency which rectifies itself
+later as a rule. All the same in avoiding frivolity, one must not rush to
+the other extreme and be heavy in hand. A happy mien in this as in all
+things, my dear Marshall."
+
+"I cannot so far degrade myself as to be an opportunist," he returned
+sententiously.
+
+"Yet the opportunist arrives; and to arrive is the main thing, after
+all--at least I imagine so.--Now I really cannot stay here any longer
+giving you priceless advice; but must take the General his
+newspapers.--By the way, did Sir Charles say anything about coming to see
+him this afternoon?"
+
+As she asked the question Henrietta ran her eye down over the
+announcements in the Court Circular. Marshall replied in the negative.
+She made no comment, hardly appearing to notice his answer. But, as
+she stepped lightly and delicately away down the airy corridor to the
+door of the sick-room, over her blue gauze draped shoulder she flung
+back at him--
+
+"This confinement to the house is getting quite on my nerves. I must
+really allow myself a little holiday.--Take a drive to-morrow if Frederic
+is no worse. I will call at the Grand Hotel, I think, and see darling
+Damaris, just for a few minutes, myself."
+
+Information which went far to restore her hearer's equanimity. His
+affairs, as he recognized, were in actively astute safe-keeping.
+
+Marshall Wace spent the rest of the morning in the drawing-room of the
+villa, at the piano, composing a by no means despicable setting of
+Shelley's two marvellous stanzas, which commence:
+
+"Rarely, rarely comest thou,
+  Spirit of Delight!
+Wherefore hast thou left me now
+  Many a day and night?"
+
+The rich baritone voice, vibrant with apparent passion, swept out
+through the open windows, across the glittering garden. Miss Maud
+Callowgas, walking along that portion of the esplanade immediately in
+front of the hotel, paused in the grilling sunshine to listen. Heaven
+upon earth seemed to open before her pale, white-lashed eyes. If she
+could only ascertain what fortune she might eventually count on
+possessing--but Mama was so dreadfully close about everything to do with
+money! The Harchester bishopric was a fat one, worth from ten to fifteen
+thousand a year. That she knew from the odious, impudent questions asked
+about it by some horrible nonconformist member, in the House of Commons,
+just after her father's death. Surely Mama must have saved a
+considerable amount out of so princely an income? She had always kept
+down expenses at the Palace. The servants left so often because they
+declared they had not enough to eat.
+
+Then through the open window of the villa embowered in roses, there amid
+the palms and pines--and in a falling cadence too:
+
+"How shall ever one like me
+  Win thee back again?"
+
+But Maud Callowgas needed no winning, being very effectually won already,
+so it was superfluous thus movingly to ask the question. The mid-day sun
+striking through her black-and-white parasol made her feel dizzy and
+faint.--If only she could learn the amount of her fortune, she could let
+Mrs. Frayling learn the amount of it too--just casually, in the course of
+conversation, and then--Everyone said Mrs. Frayling was doing her best to
+"place" her cousin-by-marriage, to secure him a well-endowed wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+WHICH IT IS TO BE FEARED SMELLS SOMEWHAT POWERFULLY OF BILGE WATER
+
+
+Warm wind, hot sun, the confused sound and movement of a great southern
+port, all the traffic and trade of it, man and beast sweating in the
+splendid glare. Rattle of cranes, scream of winches, grind of wheels, and
+the bellowing of a big steamer, working her way cautiously through the
+packed shipping of the basin, to the blue freedom of the open sea.--Such
+was the scene which the boatswain and white-jacketed steward, leaning
+their folded arms on the bulwarks and smoking, lazily watched.
+
+The _Forest Queen_ rode high at the quayside, having discharged much, and
+taken on but a moderate amount of cargo for her homeward voyage. This was
+already stowed. She had coaled and was bound to clear by dawn. Now she
+rested in idleness, most of her crew taking their pleasure ashore, a
+Sabbath calm pervading her amid the strident activities going forward on
+every hand. The ship's dog, a curly-haired black retriever, lay on the
+clean deck in the sunshine stretched on his side, all four legs limp,
+save when, pestered beyond endurance, he whisked into a sitting position
+to snap at the all too numerous flies.
+
+The boatswain--a heavily built East Anglian, born within sight of Boston
+Stump five-and-forty years ago, his face seamed and pitted by smallpox
+almost to the extinction of expression and altogether to that of
+eyebrows, eyelashes and continuity of beard--spat deliberately and
+voluminously into the oily, refuse-stained water, lapping against the
+ship's side over twenty feet below, and resumed a desultory conversation
+which for the moment had fallen dead.
+
+"So that's the reason of his giving us hell's delight, like he has all
+day, cleaning up?--Got a lady coming aboard to tea has he? If she's too
+fine to take us as we are, a deal better let 'er stay ashore, in my
+opinion. Stuff a' nonsense all this set out, dressing up and dressing
+down. Vanity at the bottom of it--and who's it to take in?--For a tramp's
+a tramp, and a liner's a liner; and all the water in God's ocean, and all
+the rubbing and scrubbing on man's earth, won't convert the one into the
+other, bless you."
+
+He pointed away, with his pipestem, to the violet-shadowed mouth of one
+of the narrow lanes opening between the slop-shops, wine-shops, and cheap
+eating-houses--their gaudy striped, flounced awnings bellying and
+straining in the fervid southerly breeze--which lined the further side of
+the crowded quay.
+
+"As well try to wash some gutter-bred, French trollop, off the streets in
+behind there, into a white-souled, white-robed heavenly angel," he
+grumbled on. "All this purifying of the darned old hulk's so much labour
+lost. Gets the men's monkey up too, putting all this extray work on 'em."
+
+He leaned down again, folding his arms along the top of the bulwarks.
+
+"And, angel or trollop, I find no use for her, nor any other style of
+woman either, on board this 'ere blasted rusty iron coffin," he said.
+
+Whereat the stewart, a pert-eyed, dapper little cockney--amateur of the
+violin and noted impersonator of popular music-hall comedians--took him
+up in tones of amiable argument.
+
+"Your stomach's so turned on the subject of females you can't do 'em
+justice. Gone sour, regularly sour, it is. And I don't hold with you
+there, Partington, never shall and never do. I'm one as can always find a
+cosy corner in me manly bosom for the lidies--blame me if I can't, the
+pore 'elpless little lovey-doveys. After all's said and done Gawd made
+'em just as much as 'e made you, Partington, that 'e did."
+
+"And called you in, sonny, to lend 'im an 'and at the job, didn't 'e?
+All I can say is you'd both have been better employed putting in your
+time and talents somewhere else."
+
+After which sally the two smoked in silence, while the ship's dog
+alternately stretched himself on the hot boards, and started up with a
+yelp to snap at the cloud of buzzing flies again.
+
+The steward merely bided his time, however, and enquired presently with a
+nice air of nonchalance:
+
+"Never been married, Partington, 'ave you? I've often known that put a
+fellow sadly off the sex."
+
+"Never," the other replied, "though I came precious near it once, when I
+was a youngster and greener--greener even than you with your little
+lovey-doveys and your manly bosom, William, which is allowing a lot. But
+my wife as was to 'ave been--met her down Bristol way, gone blind silly
+on 'er I was--got took with the smallpox the week before the ceremony was
+pulled off, and give me all she had to spare of the disease with her
+dying breath. Soft chap as I was then, I held it as a sort of a
+compliment. Afterwards, when the crape had worn a bit brown, I saw it was
+jealousy of any other female I might come to cast my eye over as made her
+act like that."
+
+"A private sore!" William commented. "To tell you gospel truth,
+Partington, I guessed as much. But you should learn to tike the larger
+view. Blimey, you should rise above that. To be marked like you are is a
+misfortune, I don't pretend to the contrary, looking at it along the
+level so to speak. But beauty's so much dust and ashes, if yer can just
+boost yerself up to tike the larger view. Think of all that pore dying
+woman mayn't 'ave saved you from by making yer outward fascinations less
+staring to the sex? Regular honey-pot to every passing petticoat you
+might 'ave been."
+
+He broke off, springing erect and shading his eyes with one hand to
+obtain a better view.
+
+"My Sammy--whoever's the skipper a bringing 'ome 'ere with him? Dooks and
+duchesses and all the blamed airistorkracy?--English too, or I'm a
+blooming nigger.--Tea for a lidy?--I should rather think it.--Partington,
+I'm off to put meself inside of a clean jacket and make sure the
+cockroaches ain't holding a family sing-song on my best white
+table-cloth.--Say, that young ole man of ours don't stop 'arf way up the
+ladder, once 'e starts climbing. Gets to the top rung 'e does stright
+orf, s'elp me. And tikes 'is ease there, seemingly, as to the manner
+born. Looks like he does any'ow, the way 'e's behaving of hisself
+now.--So long, bo'sun," he added jauntily. "I'm called from yer side to
+descend the companion _ong route_ for higher spheres. Sounds like a
+contradiction that, but ain't so.--See you again when the docks 'as
+quitted this fond old floating 'earse of ours and took themselves back to
+their 'ereditary marble 'alls to roost."
+
+On the other side of the quay, meanwhile, in the brave dancing breeze and
+the sunshine, Darcy Faircloth stepped down on to the uneven paving just
+opposite to where the _Forest Queen_ lay. Colonel Carteret followed and
+stood aside, leaving him to hand Damaris out of the open carriage.
+
+For this was the younger man's day; and, as the elder ungrudgingly
+acknowledged, he played the part of host with a nice sense of taste, his
+hospitality erring neither in the direction of vulgar lavishness, nor of
+over-modesty and economy. Breeding tells, is fertile in social
+intuitions, as Carteret reflected, even when deformed by an ugly bar
+sinister. During the past hours he had been observant--even above his
+wont--jealous both for his friend Charles Verity and his dear charge,
+Damaris, in this peculiar association. The position was a far from easy
+one, so many slips of sorts possible; but the young merchant sea-captain
+had carried it off with an excellent simplicity and unconscious
+grace.--In respect of a conveyance, to begin with, he eschewed hiring a
+hack, and met his arriving guests, at the station, with the best which
+the stables of the _Hôtel du Louvre et de la Paix_ could produce. Had
+offered a quiet well-served luncheon at that same stately hostelry
+moreover, in preference to the more flashy and popular restaurants of the
+town. Afterwards he had driven them, in the early hours of the
+afternoon, up to the church of _Notre Dame de la Garde_, which, perched
+aloft on its eminence, godspeeds the outward bound and welcomes the
+homecoming voyager, while commanding so noble a prospect of port and
+city, of islands sacred to world-famous romance, and wide horizons of
+rich country and historic sea.
+
+And now, before parting, Faircloth brought them to his ship. To this
+private kingdom of his and all it implied--and denied too--of social
+privilege, social distinction. Implied, further, of administrative and
+personal power--all it set forth of the somewhat rugged facts of his
+profession and daily environment. Of this small world he was undisputed
+autocrat, Grand Cham of this miniature Tartary--of this iron-walled
+two-thousand-ton empire, the great white Czar.
+
+So far Carteret had lent himself to the extensive day's "outing" in a
+spirit of very sweet-tempered philosophy. He had been delightful,
+unfailing in courtesy and tactful address. Now, having analysed his
+host's character to his own satisfaction, he felt justified in giving
+himself a holiday from the office of chaperon and watch-dog. He had
+fulfilled his promise, royally done his duty by Damaris in that
+quasi-avuncular relation which he had assumed in place of a closer
+and--how profoundly more--coveted one; thereby earning temporary release
+from her somewhat over-moving neighbourhood. Not but what he had been
+keenly, almost painfully, interested in watching this drama of brother
+and sister, and gauging the impulses, the currents of action and of
+emotion which lay behind it. Gauging too the difficulties, even dangers,
+inherent in it, the glamour and the clouding of shame--whether
+conventional or real he did not pretend exactly to determine--which so
+strangely wrapped it about. To use Damaris' favourite word, they were
+very "beautiful" both in themselves and in their almost mystic affection,
+these two young creatures. And just on that very account he would be glad
+to get away from them, to be no longer onlooker, or--to put it
+vulgarly--gooseberry, fifth wheel to the cart.
+
+He went with them as far as the shoreward end of the up-sloping
+gangway.--A tall grey-clad figure, with an equally tall blue-clad figure
+on the other side of the young girl's, also tall, biscuit-coloured
+one,--a dash of pink showing in her burnt-straw hat, pink too at her
+throat and waist seen between the open fronts of her dust-coat.--But at
+the gangway he stopped.
+
+"Dear witch," he said, "I have some telegrams I should be glad to send
+off, and another small matter of business to transact in the town, so
+here, I will leave you, if you permit, in our friend's safe-keeping"--he
+smiled upon Faircloth. "At the station, at five-thirty, we meet. _Au
+revoir_, then."
+
+And, without waiting for any reply, he sauntered away along the
+sun-flooded quay between piled up bales of merchandize, wine barrels,
+heaps of sand, heaps too of evilly smelling hides, towering cases and
+crates. His shadow--clear violet upon the grey of the granite--from his
+feet onwards, travelled before him as he walked. And this leading by,
+this following of, his own shadow, casual accident of light and of
+direction though in all common sense he must account it, troubled the
+peace of the man with the blue eyes, making him feel wistful, feel past
+the zenith of his allotted earthly achievement, queerly out of the
+running, aged and consequently depressed.
+
+Upon Damaris the suddenness of his exit reacted in a sensation of
+constraint. Carteret had been very exquisite to her throughout this
+delicate adventure, throughout these hours of restrained yet exalted
+emotion. Left thus to her own resources she grew anxious, consciously
+diffident. The, in a sense, abnormal element in her relation to Faircloth
+darted down on her, so that she could not but remember how slight, after
+all, was her actual acquaintance with him, how seldom--only thrice in
+point of fact--had he and she had speech of one another.
+
+Upon Faircloth, Carteret's withdrawal also reacted, though with different
+effect. For an instant he watched the tall retreating form of this, as he
+perceived, very perfect gentleman. Then he turned to Damaris, looking her
+over from head to heel, in keen somewhat possessive fashion. And as,
+meeting his eyes, bravely if shyly, her colour deepened.
+
+"You are happy?" he affirmed rather than asked.
+
+"As the day is long," she answered him steadily.
+
+"But the day's not been overlong, by chance, has it?"
+
+"Not half long enough."
+
+"All's well, then, still." He pressed her--"You aren't weary of me yet?"
+
+Damaris reassuringly shook her head.
+
+Nevertheless she was very sensible of change in the tenor of their
+intercourse, sensible of a just perceptible hardness in his bearing and
+aspect. For some cause, the nature of which she failed to divine though
+she registered the fact of its existence, he no longer had complete faith
+in her, was no longer wholly at one with her in sympathy and in belief.
+He needed wooing, handling. And had she the knowledge and the art
+successfully to handle this sun-browned, golden-bearded, rather
+magnificent young master mariner--out here in the open too, the shout of
+the great port in her ears, the dazzle of the water and the push of the
+warm wind upon her face?
+
+"Ah, why waste precious time in putting questions to which you surely
+already know the answer?" with a touch of reproach she took him up. "Show
+me rather where you live--where you eat and sleep, where you walk up and
+down, walk quarter-deck, when you are far away there out at sea."
+
+"Does all that really interest you?"
+
+Damaris' lips quivered the least bit.
+
+"Why have you turned perverse and doubting? Isn't it because they
+interest me, above and beyond anything, beautifully interest me, that I
+am here?--It would have been very easy to stay away, if I hadn't
+wanted--as I do want--to be able to fancy you from morning until night,
+to know where you sit, know just what you first see when in the grey of
+the morning you first wake."
+
+Faircloth continued to look at her; but his expression softened, gaining
+a certain spirituality.
+
+"I have questioned more than once to-day whether I had not been foolhardy
+in letting you come here--whether distance wasn't safest, and the hunger
+of absence sweeter than the full meal of your presence for--for both of
+us, things being between us as they actually are. What if the bubble
+burst?--I have had scares--hideous scares--lest you should be
+disappointed in me."
+
+"Or you in me?" Damaris said.
+
+"No. Only your being disappointed in me could disappoint me in you--and
+hardly that, because you'd have prejudice, facts even, natural and
+obvious enough ones, upon your side. Faircloth's Inn on Marychurch Haven
+and your Indian palace, as basis to two children's memories and outlook,
+are too widely divergent, when one comes to think of it. When listening
+to you and Colonel Carteret talking at luncheon I caught very plain sight
+of that. Not that he talked of set purpose to read me a wholesome lesson
+in humility--never in life. He's not that sort. But the lesson went home
+all the more directly for that very reason.--Patience one little minute,"
+he quickly admonished her as she essayed to speak--"patience. You ask,
+with those dear wonderful eyes of yours, what I'm driving at.--This,
+beloved one--you see the waiting carriage over there. Hadn't we best get
+into it, turn the horses' heads citywards again, and drink our tea, you
+and I, on the way up to the station somewhere very much else than on
+board this rough-and-tumble rather foul-breathed cargo boat?--I'm so
+beastly afraid you may be disgusted and shocked by the interval between
+what you're accustomed to and what I am. To let you down"--
+
+Faircloth's handsome face worked. Whereat Damaris' diffidence took to
+itself wings and flew away. Her heart grew light.
+
+"Let me down?" she said. "You can't let me down. Oh! really, really
+you're a little slow of comprehension. We are in this--in everything that
+has happened since I first knew who you are, and everything which is
+going to happen from now onwards--in it together. What joins us goes
+miles, miles deeper and wider than any petty surface things. Must I tell
+you how much I care? Can't you feel it for yourself?"
+
+And she stepped before him on to the upward sloping gangway plank.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+WHEREIN DAMARIS MEETS HERSELF UNDER A NOVEL ASPECT
+
+
+Damaris threw back the bedclothes, her eyes still dim with slumber, and
+gathered herself into a sitting position, clasping her knees with both
+hands. She had a vague impression that something very pleasant awaited
+her attention; but, in the soft confusion of first awakening, could not
+remember exactly what it was.
+
+To induce clearer consciousness she instinctively parted the mosquito
+curtains, slipped her feet down over the side of the bed; and, a little
+crouched together and fumbly--baby-fashion--being still under the
+comfortable empire of sleep, crossed the room and set back the inward
+opening casements of the south window. Thereupon the outdoor freshness,
+fluttering her hair and the lace and nain-sook of her nightdress,
+brought her, on the instant, into full possession of her wandering wits.
+She remembered the nature of that charmingly pleasant something; yet
+paused, before yielding it attention, held captive by the spectacle of
+returning day.
+
+It was early. The disc of the sun still below the horizon. But shafts of
+light, striking up from it, patterned the underside of a vast dapple of
+fleecy cloud--heliotrope upon the back-cloth of blue ether--with fringes
+and bosses of scarlet flame. Against this, occupying the foreground, the
+pine trees, which sheltered the terrace, showed up a deep greenish purple
+bordering upon black.
+
+Leaning out over the polished wooden bar--which topped the ironwork of
+the window-guard--Damaris sought and gained sight of the sea. This,
+darker even than the tufted foliation of the pines--since still untouched
+by sunlight--spread dense and compact as molten metal, with here and
+there a sheen, like that of the raven's wing, upon its corrugated
+surface. To Damaris it appeared curiously forbidding. Seeing it thus she
+felt, indeed, to have taken Nature unawares, surprised her without
+disguise; so that for once she displayed her veritable face--a face not
+yet made up and camouflaged to conceal the fact of its in-dwelling terror
+from puny and defenceless man.
+
+With that the girl's thoughts flew, in longing and solicitude, to
+Faircloth, whose business so perpetually brought him into contact with
+Nature thus naked and untamed.--By now, and over as sinister a sea--since
+westward the dawn would barely yet have broke--the _Forest Queen_ must be
+steaming along the Andalusian coast, making for Gibraltar and the Straits
+upon her homeward voyage. And by some psychic alchemy, an influence more
+potent and tangible than that of ordinary thought, her apprehension fled
+out, annihilating distance, bridging intervening space. For, just as
+certainly as Damaris' fair body leaned from the open window, so certainly
+did her fair soul or--to try a closer and more scientific definition--her
+living consciousness, stand in the captain's cabin of the ocean-bound
+tramp, making Darcy Faircloth turn smiling in his sleep, he having vision
+and glad sense of her--which stayed by him, tempering his humour to a
+peculiar serenity throughout the ensuing day.
+
+That their correspondence was no fictitious one, a freak of disordered
+nerves or imagination, but sane and actual, both brother and sister could
+convincingly have affirmed. And this although time--as time is usually
+figured--had neither lot nor part in it. Such projections of personality
+are best comparable, in this respect, to the dreams which seize us in the
+very act of waking--vivid, coherent and complete, yet ended by the
+selfsame sound or touch by which they are evoked.
+
+In Damaris' case, before the scarlet, dyeing the cloud dapple, warmed to
+rose, or the dense metallic sea caught reflections of the sunrise,
+broadening incandescence, her errant consciousness was again cognizant
+of, subjected to, her immediate surroundings. She was aware, moreover,
+that the morning sharpness began to take a too unwarrantable liberty
+with her thinly clad person for comfort. She hastily locked the casements
+together; and then waited, somewhat dazed by the breathless pace of her
+strange and tender excursion, looking about her in happy amazement.
+
+And, so doing, her eyes lighted upon a certain oblong parcel lying on her
+dressing-table. There was the charmingly pleasant something which awaited
+her attention! A present, and the most costly, the most enchanting one
+(save possibly the green jade elephant of her childish adoration) she had
+ever received!
+
+She picked up, not only the precious parcel, but a hand-mirror lying near
+it; and, thus armed, bestowed herself, once more, in her still warm bed.
+
+The last forty-eight hours had been fertile in experiences and in events,
+among which the arrival of this gift could by no means be accounted the
+least exciting.--Hordle had brought the packet here to her, last night,
+about an hour after she and her father--standing under the portico--waved
+reluctant farewells to Colonel Carteret, as the hotel omnibus bore him
+and his baggage away to the station to catch the mail train through to
+Paris. This parting, when it actually came about, proved more distressing
+than she had by any means prefigured. She had no notion beforehand what a
+really dreadful business she would find it, after these months of close
+association, to say good-bye to the man with the blue eyes.
+
+"We shall miss you at every turn, dear, dear Colonel Sahib," she almost
+tearfully assured him. "How we are going ever to live without you I
+don't know."
+
+And impulsively, driven by the excess of her emotion to the point of
+forgetting accustomed habits and restraints, she put up her lips for a
+kiss. Which, thus invited, kiss Carteret, taking her face in both hands
+for the minute, bestowed upon her forehead rather than upon those
+proffered lips. Then his glance met Charles Verity's, held it in silent
+interchange of friendship needing no words to declare its quality or
+depth; and he turned away abruptly, making for the inside of the waiting
+omnibus--cavernous in the semi-darkness--distributing largesse to all and
+sundry as he went.
+
+Damaris was aware of her father's arm passed through hers, holding her
+against his side with a steadying pressure, as they went together across
+the hall on their way to the first floor sitting-room. Aware of poor,
+pretty, coughing little Mrs. Titherage's raised eyebrows and enquiring
+stare, as they passed her with her coffee, cigarette, and fat, florid
+stock-broker husband--who, by the way, had the grace to keep his eyes
+glued to the patience cards, ranged upon the small table before him,
+until father and daughter were a good half-way up the flight of stairs.
+Later, when outwardly mistress of herself, the inclination to tears
+successfully conquered and her normal half-playful gravity regained, she
+went to her bedroom, Hordle had brought her this beguiling packet.
+
+Inside the silver paper wrappings she found a red leather jewel case, and
+a note in Carteret's singularly definite hand, character rather than
+script, the severe yet decorative quality of Arabic about it.
+
+"To the dear witch," it read, "in memory of our incomparable Henrietta's
+dance, and of the midnight walk which followed it, and of our hours of
+pleasant sightseeing at Marseilles."
+
+No signature followed, only the date.
+
+Now, sitting up in bed, while the day came into full and joyous being,
+Nature's face duly decked and painted by the greatly reconciling sun,
+Damaris read the exquisitely written note again. The writing in itself
+moved her with a certain home-sickness for the East, which it seemed in
+some sort to embody and from which to hail. Then meanings she detected,
+behind the apparently light-hearted words, filled her with gratitude.
+They reminded her gently of duties accepted, promises made. They gathered
+in Faircloth, too, by implication; thus assuring her of sympathy and
+approval where she needed them most.
+
+She opened the case and, taking out the string of pearls it contained,
+turned them about and about, examining, counting, admiring their lustre
+and ethereal loveliness. They were graduated from the size of a
+hemp-seed, so she illustrated it, on either side the diamond clasp, to
+that of a marrow-fat pea. Not all of them--and this charmed her fancy as
+giving them individuality and separate life--were faultlessly perfect;
+but had minute irregularities of shape, tiny dimples in which a special
+radiance hovered. She clasped the necklace round her throat, and, holding
+up the hand-mirror, turned her head from side to side--with pardonable
+vanity--to judge and enjoy the effect.
+
+Damaris was unlearned in the commercial value of such treasures; nor did
+money seem exactly a graceful or pretty thing--in some respects our
+maiden was possessed of a very unworldly innocence--to think of in
+connection with a present. Still she found it impossible not to regard
+these jewels with a certain awe. What the dear Colonel Sahib must have
+spent on them! A small fortune she feared. In the buying of this
+all-too-costly-gift, then, consisted that business transaction he had
+made the excuse for leaving her alone with Faircloth, upon the quay
+alongside which lay the _Forest Queen_.
+
+Oh! he surpassed himself! Was too indulgent, too munificent to her!--As
+on a former occasion, she totted up the sum of his good deeds. Hadn't he
+given up his winter's sport for her sake? Didn't she--and wouldn't an
+admiring English reading public presently--owe to his suggestion her
+father's noble book? When she had run wild for a space, and sold herself
+to unworthy frivolities, hadn't he led her back into the right road, and
+that with the lightest, courtliest, hand imaginable, making all
+harmonious and sweetly perfect, once more, between her father and
+herself? Lastly, hadn't he procured her her heart's desire in the meeting
+with Darcy Faircloth--and, incidentally, given her the relief of free
+speech, now and whenever she might desire to claim it, concerning the
+strange and secret relationship which dominated her imagination and so
+enriched the hidden places of her daily life and thought?
+
+Damaris held up the hand-mirror contemplating his gift, this necklace of
+pearls; and, from that, by unconscious transition fell to contemplating
+her own face. It interested her. She looked at it critically, as at some
+face other than her own, some portrait, appraising and studying it. It
+was young and fresh, surely, as the morn--in its softness of contour and
+fine clear bloom; yet grave to the verge of austerity, owing partly to
+the brown hair which, parted in the middle and drawn down in a plain
+full sweep over the ears, hung thence in thick loose plait on either
+side to below her waist. She looked long and curiously into her own
+eyes, "dear wonderful eyes," as Faircloth, her brother, so deliciously
+called them. And with that her mouth curved into a smile, sight of which
+brought recognition, new and very moving, of her own by no means
+inconsiderable beauty.
+
+She went red, and then white almost as her white nightdress and the white
+pillows behind her. Laid the mirror hastily down, and held her face in
+both hands as--as Carteret had held it last night, at the moment of
+parting, when he had kissed not her lips but her forehead. Yet very
+differently, since she now held it with strained, clinging fingers, which
+hurt, making marks upon the flesh.--For could it be that--the other kind
+of love, such as men bear the woman of their choice, which dictated
+Carteret's unfailing goodness to her--the love that he had bitterly and
+almost roughly defended when she praised the love of brother and sister
+as dearest, purest, and therefore above all best?
+
+Was it conceivable this hero of a hundred almost fabulous adventures, of
+hair-breath escapes, and cunningly defied dangers in Oriental,
+semi-barbarous, wholly gorgeous, camps, Courts and cities, this
+philosopher of gently humorous equanimity, who appeared to weigh all
+things in an equal balance and whom she had regarded as belonging to an
+age and order superior to her own, had set his affections upon her
+singling her out from among all possible others? That he wanted her for
+his own, wanted her exclusively and as his inseparable companion, the
+object of--
+
+A sentence from the English marriage service flashed across her
+mind.--"With my body I thee worship," it ran, "and with all my worldly
+goods I thee endow."
+
+"With my body I thee worship"--He, her father's elect and beloved friend,
+in whom she had always so beautifully trusted, who had never failed her,
+the dear man with the blue eyes--and she, Damaris? Her womanhood,
+revealed to itself, at once shrank back bewildered, panic-stricken, and,
+passion-stricken, called to her aloud.
+
+For here Carteret's grace of bearing and of person, his clean health,
+physical distinction and charm, arose and confronted her. The visible,
+tangible attributes of the man--as man--presented themselves in fine
+relief, delighting her, stirring her heretofore dormant senses, begetting
+in her needs and desires undreamed of until now, and, even now, in
+substance incomprehensible. She was enchanted, fevered, triumphant; and
+then--also incomprehensibly--ashamed.
+
+As the minutes passed, though the triumph continued to subsist, the shame
+subsisted also, so that the two jostled one another striving for the
+mastery. Damaris took her hands from her face, again clasped them about
+her drawn-up knees, and sat, looking straight in front of her with
+sombre, meditative eyes. To use a phrase of her childhood, she was busy
+with her "thinkings"; her will consciously hailing emotion to the
+judgment-seat of intelligence for examination and for sentence.
+
+If this was what people commonly understand when they speak of love, if
+this was the love concerning which novelists write and poets sing--this
+riot of the blood and heady rapture, this conflict of shame and triumph
+in which the animal part of one has so loud a word to say--she didn't
+like it. It was upsetting, to the confines of what she supposed
+drunkenness must be. It spoilt things heretofore exquisite, by giving
+them too high a colour, too violent a flavour. No--she didn't like it.
+Neither did she like herself in relation to it--like this unknown,
+storm-swept Damaris. Nor--for he, alas! couldn't escape inclusion--this
+new, unfamiliar presentment of the man with the blue eyes. Yet--and here
+was a puzzle difficult of solution--even while this new presentment of
+him, and conception of his sentiment towards her, pulled him down from
+his accustomed pedestal in her regard, it erected for him another
+pedestal, more richly sculptured and of more costly material--since had
+not his manifold achievements, the whole fine legend as well as the whole
+physical perfection of him, manifested themselves to, and worked upon her
+as never before?--Did this thing, love, then, as between man and woman,
+spring from the power of beauty while soiling and lowering beauty--bestow
+on it an hour of extravagant effulgence, of royal blossoming, only to
+degrade it in the end?--The puzzle is old as humanity, old, one may say,
+as sex. Little wonder if Damaris, sitting up in her maidenly bedchamber,
+in the unsullied brightness of the early morning hour, failed to find any
+satisfactory answer to it.
+
+Her thoughts ranged out to the other members of her little local
+court--to Peregrine Ditton and Harry Ellice, to Marshall Wace. Had they
+personal experience of this disquieting matter? Was it conceivable the
+boys' silly rivalries and jealousies concerning her took their rise in
+this? Did it inspire the fervour of Marshall Wace's singing, his
+flattering dependence on her sympathy?--Suspicion widened. Everywhere she
+seemed to find hint and suggestion of this--no, she wouldn't too
+distinctly define it. Let it remain nameless.--Everywhere, except in
+respect of her father and of her brother. There she could spend her heart
+in peace. She sighed with a sweetness of relief, unclasping her hands,
+raising her fixed, bowed head.
+
+The hotel, meanwhile, was sensibly in act of coming awake. Doors opened,
+voices called. From the other side of the corridor sounded poor little
+Mrs. Titherage's hacking cough, increasing to a convulsive struggle
+before, the fit at last passing off, it sunk into temporary quiescence.
+André, the stout, middle-aged _valet de chambre_, hummed snatches of gay
+melody as he rubbed and polished the parquet flooring without. These
+noises, whether cheerful or the contrary, were at least ordinary enough.
+By degrees they gained Damaris' ear, drawing her mind from speculation
+regarding the nature, origin, prevalence and ethics of love. Soon
+Pauline, the chamber-maid, would bring her breakfast-tray, coffee and
+rolls, those pale wafer-like pats of butter which taste so good, and thin
+squares of beetroot sugar which are never half as sweet as one would
+like. Would bring hot water and her bath, too, and pay her some nicely
+turned little compliment as to the becoming effect of her night's
+sleep.--Everything would pick itself up, in short, and go on, naturally
+and comfortably just as before.
+
+Before what?
+
+Damaris straightened the hem of the sheet over the billowing edge of
+flowered down quilt; and, while so doing, her hand came in contact both
+with the mirror and the open jewel-case. She looked at this last with an
+expression bordering on reproach, unfastened the pearls from her throat,
+and laid them on the wadded, cream-coloured velvet lining. She delighted
+to possess them and deplored possessing them in the same breath. They
+spoke to her too freely and conclusively, told her too much. She would
+rather not have acquired this knowledge either of Carteret or of
+herself.--If it really were knowledge?--Again she repeated the question,
+arising from the increasing normality of surrounding things--Before what?
+
+For when all was said and done, the dear man with the blue eyes had
+veritably and very really departed. Throughout the night his train had
+been rushing north-north-westward to Paris, to England, to that Norfolk
+manor-house of his, where his sister, his nephews, all his home
+interests and occupations awaited him. What proof had she that more
+intimate and romantic affairs did not await him there, or thereabouts,
+also? Had not she, once and for all, learned the lesson that a man's
+ways are different and contain many unadvertised occupations and
+interests? If he had wished to say something, anything, special to her,
+before going away, how easily--thus she saw the business--how easily he
+might have said it! But he hadn't spoken, rather conspicuously, indeed,
+had avoided speaking. Perhaps it was all a silly, conceited mistake of
+her own--a delusion and one not particularly creditable either to her
+intelligence or her modesty.
+
+Damaris shut up the jewel-case. The pearls were entrancing; but somehow
+she did not seem to think she cared to look at them any more--just now.
+
+When her breakfast arrived she ate it in a pensive frame of mind. In a
+like frame of mind she went through the routine of her toilette. She felt
+oddly tired; oddly shy, moreover, of her looking-glass.
+
+Miss Felicia Verity had made a tentative proposal, about a week before,
+of joining her niece and her brother upon the Riviera. She reported much
+discomfort from rheumatism during the past winter. Her doctor advised a
+change of climate. Damaris, while brushing and doing up her hair,
+discovered in herself a warm desire for Miss Felicia's company. She
+craved for a woman--not to confide in, but to somehow shelter behind. And
+Aunt Felicia was so perfect in that way. She took what you gave in a
+spirit of gratitude almost pathetic; and never asked for what you didn't
+give, never seemed even to, for an instant, imagine there was anything
+you withheld from her. It would be a rest--a really tremendous rest, to
+have Aunt Felicia. She--Damaris--would propound the plan to her father as
+soon as she went downstairs.
+
+After luncheon and a walk with Sir Charles, her courage being higher, she
+repented in respect of the pearl necklace. Put it on--and with results.
+For that afternoon Henrietta Frayling--hungry for activity, hungry for
+prey, after her prolonged abstention from society--very effectively
+floated into the forefront of the local scene.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CONCERNING ITSELF WITH A GATHERING UP OP FRAGMENTS
+
+
+An unheralded invasion on the part of the physician from Cannes had
+delayed, by a day, Henrietta's promised descent upon, or rather ascent
+to, the Grand Hotel.
+
+That gentleman, whose avaricious pale grey eye belied the extreme
+silkiness of his manner--having been called to minister to Lady Hermione
+Twells in respect of some minor ailment--elected to put in the overtime,
+between two trains, in a visit to General Frayling. For the date drew
+near of his yearly removal from the Riviera to Cotteret-les-Bains, in the
+Ardennes, where, during the summer season, he exploited the physical
+infelicities and mental credulities of his more wealthy fellow-creatures.
+The _établissement_ at Cotteret was run by a syndicate, in which Dr.
+Stewart-Walker held--in the name of an obliging friend and solicitor--a
+preponderating number of shares. At this period of the spring he always
+became anxious to clear up, not to say clear out, his southern clienètle
+lest any left-over members of it should fall into the clutches of one of
+his numerous local rivals. And, in this connection, it may be noted as
+remarkable to how many of the said clientèle a "cure" at
+Cotteret-les-Bains offered assurance of permanent restoration to health.
+
+Among that happy band, as it now appeared, General Frayling might
+be counted. The dry, exciting climate of St. Augustin, and its
+near neighbourhood to the sea, were calculated to aggravate the
+gastric complications from which that polite little warrior so
+distressingly suffered.
+
+"This, I fear we must recognize, my dear madam, is a critical period with
+your husband; and treatment, for the next six months or so, is of
+cardinal importance; I consider high inland air, if possible forest air,
+indispensable. What I should _like_ you to do is to take our patient
+north by slow stages; and I earnestly counsel a course of waters before
+the return to England is attempted."
+
+Thereupon, agreeable visions of festive toilettes and festive casinos
+flitting through Henrietta's mind, she named Homburg and other German
+spas of world-wide popularity. But at such ultra-fashionable resorts, as
+Dr. Stewart-Walker, with a suitable air of regret, reminded her, the
+season did not open until too late to meet existing requirements.
+
+"Let me think, let me think," he repeated, head sagely bent and
+forefinger on lip.
+
+He ran through a number of Latin terms, to her in the main
+incomprehensible; then looked up, relieved and encouraging.
+
+"Yes, we might, I believe, safely try it. The medical properties of the
+springs--particularly those of La Nonnette--meet our patient's case
+excellently. And I should not lose sight of him--a point, I own, with me,
+for your husband's condition presents features of peculiar interest.
+Cotteret-les-Bains, my dear madam--in his case I can confidently
+recommend it. Lady Hermione talks of taking the cure at Cotteret this
+spring. But about that we shall see--we shall see. The question demands
+consideration. As you know, Lady Hermione is charmingly outspoken,
+emphatic; but I should be false to my professional honour, were I to
+allow her wishes to colour my judgment.--Meanwhile I have reason to know
+that other agreeable people are going to Cotteret shortly. Not the rank
+and file. For such the place does not pretend to cater. There the
+lucrative stock-broker, or lucrative Jew, is still a _rara avis_. Long
+may he continue to be so, and Cotteret continue to pride itself on its
+exclusiveness!--In that particular it will admirably suit you, Mrs.
+Frayling."
+
+To a compliment so nicely turned Henrietta could not remain insensible.
+Before the destined train bore Dr. Stewart-Walker back to his more
+legitimate zone of practise, she saw herself committed to an early
+striking of camp, with this obscure, if select, _ville d'eaux_ as her
+destination.
+
+In some respects the prospect did not smile on her. Yet as, next day,
+emancipated at length from monotonies of the sick-chamber, she drove
+behind the free-moving little chestnut horses through the streets of the
+town--sleepy in the hot afternoon quiet--and along the white glaring
+esplanade, Henrietta admitted the existence of compensations. In the
+brilliant setting of some world-famous German spa, though she--as she
+believed--would have been perfectly at her ease, what about her
+companions? For in such scenes of high fashion, her own good clothes are
+not sufficient lifebelt to keep a pretty woman quite complacently afloat.
+Your male associates must render you support, be capable of looking the
+part and playing up generally, if your enjoyment is to be complete. And
+for all _that_ Marshall Wace, frankly, couldn't be depended on. Not only
+was he too unmistakably English and of the middle-class; but the clerical
+profession, although he had so unfortunately failed it, or it so unkindly
+rejected him, still seemed to soak through, somehow, when you saw him in
+public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his
+trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and
+that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the
+footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or
+sample of "neck-wear." To head a domestic procession, in eminently
+cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very palpable invalid
+and a probable curate in mufti, demanded an order of courage to which
+Henrietta felt herself entirely unequal. Preferable the obscurity of
+Cotteret-les-Bains--gracious heaven, ten thousand times preferable!
+
+Did not Dr. Stewart-Walker, moreover, hold out hopes that, by following
+his advice, the General's strength might be renewed, if not precisely
+like that of the eagle, yet in the more modest likeness of some good,
+biddable, burden-bearing animal--the patient ass, if one might so put it
+without too obvious irony? As handyman, aide-de-camp, and, on occasion,
+her groom of the chambers, the General had deserved very well of
+Henrietta. He had earned her sincere commendation. To restore him to that
+level of convenient activity was, naturally, her main object; and if a
+sojourn at some rather dull spot in the Ardennes, promised to secure this
+desired end, let it be accepted without hesitation. For the proverbial
+creaking, yet long-hanging, gate--here Henrietta had the delicacy to take
+refuge in hyperbole--she had no liking whatever. She could not remember
+the time when Darby and Joan had struck her as an otherwise than
+preposterous couple, offspring of a positively degraded sentimentality.
+
+But there, since it threatened depressing conclusions, Henrietta agreed
+with herself to pursue the line of reflection no further.--"Sufficient
+unto the day"--to look beyond is, the thirties once passed, to raise
+superfluous spectres. And this day, in itself supplied food for
+reflections of a quite other character; ones which set both her curiosity
+and partiality for intrigue quite legitimately afire.
+
+The morning post had brought her a missive from Colonel Carteret
+announcing his "recall" to England, and deploring the imposed haste of
+it as preventing him from making his adieux to her in person. The
+letter contained a number of flattering tributes to her own charms and
+to old times in India, the pleasures of which--unforgettable by him--he
+had had the happiness of sharing with her. Yet--to her reading of
+it--this friendly communication remained enigmatic, its kindly
+sentences punctuated by more than one interjectional enquiry. Namely,
+what was the cause of this sudden "recall"? And what was his reason for
+not coming to say good-bye to her? Haste, she held an excuse of almost
+childish transparency. It went deeper than that. Simply he had wanted
+not to see her.
+
+Since the night of the dance no opportunity had occurred for observing
+Carteret and Damaris when together.--Really, how General Frayling's
+tiresome illness shipwrecked her private plans!--And, from the beginning,
+she had entertained an uneasy suspicion regarding Carteret's attitude.
+Men can be so extraordinarily feeble-minded where young girls are
+concerned! Had anything happened during her withdrawal from society? In
+the light, or rather the obscurity, of Carteret's letter, a visit to
+Damaris became more than ever imperative.
+
+Her own competence to extract the truth from that guileless maiden,
+Henrietta in nowise questioned. "The child," she complacently told
+herself, when preparing to set forth on her mission, "is like wax in
+my hands."
+
+The above conviction she repeated now, as the horses swept the victoria
+along the shore road, while from beneath her white umbrella she
+absently watched the alternate lift and plunge of the dazzling
+ultramarine and Tyrian purple sea upon the polished rocks and pebbles
+of the shelving beach.
+
+To Henrietta Nature, save as decoration to the human drama, meant
+nothing. But the day was hot, for the time of year royally so, and this
+rejoiced her. She basked in the sunshine with a cat-like luxury of
+content. Her hands never grew moist in the heat, nor her hair untidy, her
+skin unbecomingly red, nor her general appearance in the least degree
+blousy. She remained enchantingly intact, unaffected, except for an added
+glint, an added refinement. To-day's temperature justified the adoption
+of summer attire, of those thin, clear-coloured silk and muslin fabrics
+so deliciously to her taste. She wore a lavender dress. It was new, every
+pleat and frill inviolate, at their crispest and most uncrumpled. In this
+she found a fund of permanent satisfaction steeling her to intrepid
+enterprise.
+
+Hence she scorned all ceremonies of introduction. She dared to pounce.
+Having ascertained the number of Sir Charles Verity's sitting-room she
+refused obsequious escort, tripped straight upstairs unattended, rapped
+lightly, opened the door and--with swift reconnoitering of the scene
+within--announced her advent thus:
+
+"Damaris, are you there? Ah! yes. Darling child. At last!"
+
+During that reconnoitering she inventoried impressions of the room and
+its contents.--Cool, first--blue walls, blue carpet, blue upholstering of
+sofa and of chairs. Not worn or shabby, but so graciously faded by sun
+and air, that this--decoratively speaking--most perilous of colours
+became innocuous, in a way studious, in keeping with a large
+writing-table occupying the centre of the picture, laden with manuscripts
+and with books. The wooden outside shutters of two of the three windows
+were closed, which enhanced the prevailing coolness and studiousness of
+effect. Red cushions, also agreeably faded, upon the window-seats, alone
+echoed, in some degree, the hot radiance obtaining out of doors--these,
+and a red enamelled vase holding sprays of yellow and orange-copper
+roses, placed upon a smaller table before which Damaris sat, her back
+towards the invader.
+
+At the sound of the latter's voice, the girl started, raised her head
+and, in the act of looking round, swept together some scattered sheets of
+note-paper and shut her blotting-book.
+
+"Henrietta!" she cried, and thereupon sprang up; the lady, meanwhile,
+advancing towards her with outstretched arms, which enclosed her in a
+fragrant embrace.
+
+"Yes--nothing less than Henrietta"--imprinting light kisses on either
+cheek. "But I see you are busy writing letters, dearest child. I am in
+the way--I interrupt you?"
+
+And, as Damaris hastily denied that such was the case:
+
+"Ah! but I do," she repeated. "I have no right to dart in on you thus _à
+l'improviste_. It is hardly treating such an impressive young
+person--absolutely I believe you have grown since I saw you last!--yes,
+you are taller, darling child--handsomer than ever, and a tiny bit
+alarming too--what have you been doing with, or to, or by
+yourself?--Treating her--the impressive young person, I mean--with proper
+respect. But it was such a chance. I learnt that you were alone"--A fib,
+alas! on Henrietta's part.--"And I couldn't resist coming. I so longed to
+have you, like this, all to myself. What an eternity since we met!--For
+me a wearing, ageing eternity. The duties of a sick-room are so horribly
+anxious, yet so deadening in their repetition of ignoble details. I could
+not go through with them, honestly I could not--though I realize it is a
+damning admission for a woman to make--if it wasn't that I am rather
+absurdly attached to what good Dr. Stewart-Walker persists in calling
+'our patient.' Is not that enough in itself?--To fall from all normal
+titles and dignities and become merely a patient? No, joking apart, only
+affection makes nursing in any degree endurable to me. Without its saving
+grace the whole business would be too unpardonably sordid."
+
+She pursed up her lips, and shivered her graceful shoulders with the
+neatest exposition of delicate distaste.
+
+"And too gross. But one must face and accept the pathetic risk of being
+eventually converted in _garde malade_ thus, if one chooses to marry a
+man considerably older than oneself. It is a mistake. I say so though I
+committed it with my eyes open. I was betrayed by my affection."
+
+As she finished speaking Henrietta stepped across to the sofa and sat
+down. The airy perfection of her appearance lent point to the plaintive
+character of this concluding sentence. The hot day, the summer
+costume--possibly the shaded room also--combined to strip away a good ten
+years from her record. Any hardness, any faint sense of annoyance, which
+Damaris experienced at the abruptness of her guest's intrusion melted.
+Henrietta in her existing aspect, her existing mood proved irresistible.
+Our tender-hearted maiden was charmed by her and coerced.
+
+"But General Frayling is better, isn't he?" she asked, also taking her
+place upon the sofa. "You are not any longer in any serious anxiety about
+him, darling Henrietta? All danger is past?"
+
+"Oh, yes--he is better of course, or how could I be here? But I have
+received a shock that makes me dread the future."
+
+Which was true, though in a sense other than that in which her hearer
+comprehended it. For the studious atmosphere of the room reacted upon
+Henrietta, as did its many silent testimonies to Sir Charles Verity's
+constant habitation. This was his workshop. She felt acutely conscious
+of him here, nearer to him in idea and in sentiment than for many years
+past. The fact that he did still work, sought new fields to conquer,
+excited both her admiration and her regrets. He disdained to be laid on
+the shelf, got calmly and forcefully down off the shelf and spent his
+energies in fresh undertakings. Once upon a time she posed as his
+Egeria, fancying herself vastly in the part. During the Egerian period
+she lived at a higher intellectual and emotional level than ever before
+or since, exerting every particle of brain she possessed to maintain
+that level. The petty interests of her present existence, still more,
+perhaps, the poor odd and end of a yellow little General in his
+infinitely futile sick-bed, shrank to a desolating insufficiency. Surely
+she was worthy--had, anyway, once been worthy--of better things than
+that? The lavender dress, notwithstanding its still radiantly uncrumpled
+condition, came near losing its spell. No longer did she trust in it as
+in shining armour. Her humour soured. She instinctively inclined to
+revenge herself upon the nearest sentient object available--namely to
+stick pins into Damaris.
+
+"Sweetest child," she said, "you can't imagine how much this room means
+to me through its association with your father's wonderful book.--Oh!
+yes, I know a lot about the book. Colonel Carteret has not failed to
+advertise his acquaintance with it. But, what have I said?"
+
+For at mention of that gentleman's name Damaris, so she fancied, changed
+colour, the bloom fading upon her cheeks, while her glance became
+reserved, at once proud and slightly anxious.
+
+"Is it forbidden to mention the wonderful book at this stage of its
+development? Though even if it were," she added, with a rather impish
+laugh, looking down at and fingering the little bunch of trinkets,
+attached to a long gold chain, which rested in her lap--"Carteret would
+hardly succeed in holding his peace. Speak of everything, sooner or
+later, he must."
+
+She felt rather than saw Damaris' figure grow rigid.
+
+"Have you ever detected that small weakness in him? But probably not. He
+keeps overflowings for the elder members of his acquaintance, and in the
+case of the younger ones does exercise some caution. Ah! yes, I've no
+doubt he seems to you a model of discretion. Yet, in point of fact, when
+you've known him as long as I, you will have discovered he is a more than
+sufficiently extensive sieve."
+
+Then, fearing she had gone rather far, since Damaris remained rigid
+and silent:
+
+"Not a malicious sieve," the lady hastened to add, raising her eyes. "I
+don't imply that for a single instant. On the contrary I incline to
+believe that his attitude of universal benevolence is to blame for this
+inclination to gossip. It is so great, so all-enclosing, that I can't
+help feeling it blunts his sense of right and wrong to some extent. He is
+the least censorious of men and therefore--though it may sound cynical to
+say so--I don't entirely trust his judgment. He is too ready to make
+excuses for everyone.--But, my precious child, what's the matter? What
+makes you look so terrifically solemn and severe?"
+
+And playfully she put her hand under the girl's chin, drawing the grave
+face towards her, smilingly studying, then lightly and daintily kissing
+it. In the course of this affectionate interlude, the string of pearls
+round Damaris' throat, until now hidden by the V-shaped collar of her
+soft lawn shirt, caught Henrietta's eye. Their size, lustre and worth
+came near extracting a veritable shriek of enquiry and jealous admiration
+from her. But with praiseworthy promptitude she stifled her astonishment
+and now really rampant curiosity. Damaris but half yielded to her
+blandishments. She must cajole more successfully before venturing to
+request explanation. Therefore she cried, soothingly, coaxfully:
+
+"There--there--descend from those imposing heights of solemnity, or upon
+my word you will make me think my poor little visit displeases and bores
+you. That would be peculiarly grievous to me, since it is, in all
+probability, my last."
+
+"Your last?" Damaris exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, darling child, the fiat, alas! has gone forth. We are ordered away
+and start for Cotteret-les-Bains in a day or two. Dr. Stewart-Walker
+considers the move imperative on account of General Frayling's health.
+This was only settled yesterday. Marshall would have rushed here to tell
+you; but I forbade him. I felt I must tell you myself. I confess it is a
+blow to me. Our tenancy of the Pavilion expires at the end of the month;
+but I proposed asking for an extension, and, if that failed, taking up
+our abode at the hotel for a while. To me Dr. Stewart-Walker's orders
+come as a bitter disappointment, for I counted on remaining until
+Easter--remaining just as long as you and Sir Charles and Carteret
+remained, in fact."
+
+Here the bloom, far from further extinction, warmed to a lovely blush.
+Henrietta's curiosity craned its naughty neck standing on tiptoe. But,
+the blush notwithstanding, Damaris looked at her with such sincerity of
+quickening affection and of sympathy that she again postponed
+cross-examination.
+
+For over this piece of news our maiden could--in its superficial aspects
+at all events--lament in perfect good faith. She proceeded to do so,
+eagerly embracing the opportunity to offer thanks and praise. All
+Henrietta's merits sprang into convincing evidence. Had not her
+hospitality been unstinted--the whole English colony had cause to mourn.
+
+"But for you they'd still be staring at one another, bristling like so
+many strange dogs," Damaris said. "And you smoothed them all down so
+divertingly. Oh! you were beautifully clever in that. It was a lesson in
+the art of the complete hostess. While, as for me, Henrietta, you've
+simply spoiled me. I can never thank you enough. Think of the amusements
+past counting you planned for me, the excursions you've let me share with
+you--our delicious drives, and above all my coming-out dance."
+
+Whereat Mrs. Frayling disclaimingly shook her very pretty head.
+
+"In pleasing you I have merely pleased myself, dearest, so in that
+there's no merit.--Though I do plead guilty to but languid enthusiasm
+for girls of your age as a rule. Their conversation and opinions are
+liable to set my teeth a good deal on edge. I have small patience, I'm
+afraid, at the disposal of feminine beings at once so omniscient and so
+alarmingly unripe.--But you see, a certain downy owl, with saucer eyes
+and fierce little beak, won my heart by its beguiling ways a dozen
+years ago."
+
+"Darling Henrietta!" Damaris softly murmured; and, transported by
+sentiment to that earlier date when the said darling Henrietta
+commanded her unqualified adoration, began playing with the
+well-remembered bunch of trinkets depending from the long gold chain
+the lady wore about her neck.
+
+Watching her, Mrs. Frayling sighed.
+
+"Ah, my child, the thought of you is inextricably joined to other
+thoughts upon which I should be far wiser not to dwell--far wiser to put
+from me and forget--only they are stronger than I am--and I can't."
+
+There was a ring of honest human feeling in Henrietta Frayling's
+voice for once.
+
+"No, no--I am more justly an object of commiseration than anyone I leave
+behind me at St. Augustin."
+
+And again she laughed, not impishly, but with a hardness altogether
+astonishing to her auditor.
+
+"Think," she cried, "of my sorry fate!--Not only a wretchedly ailing
+husband on my hands, needing attention day and night, but a wretchedly
+disconsolate young lover as well. For poor Marshall will be
+inconsolable--only too clearly do I foresee that.--Picture what a pair
+for one's portion week in and week out!--Whereas you, enviable being, are
+sure of the most inspiring society. Everything in this quiet room"--
+
+She indicated the laden writing-table with a quick, flitting gesture.
+
+"So refreshingly removed from the ordinary banal hotel _salon_--is
+eloquent of the absorbing, far-reaching pursuits and interests amongst
+which you live. Who could ask a higher privilege than to share your
+father's work, to be his companion and amanuensis?"--She paused, as
+emphasising the point, and then mockingly threw off--"Plus the smart
+_beau sabreur_ Carteret, as devoted bodyguard and escort, whenever you
+are not on duty. To few women of your age, or indeed of any age, is
+Fortune so indulgent a fairy godmother as that!"
+
+Astonished and slightly resentful at the sharpness of her guest's
+unprovoked onslaught, Damaris had dropped the little bunch of trinkets
+and backed into her corner of the sofa.
+
+"Colonel Carteret has gone," she said coldly, rather irrelevantly, the
+statement drawn from her by a vague instinct of self-defence.
+
+"Gone!" Henrietta echoed, with equal irrelevance. For she was singularly
+discomposed.
+
+"Yes, he started for England last night. But you must know that already,
+Henrietta. He wrote to you--he told me so himself."
+
+But having once committed herself by use of a word implying ignorance,
+Mrs. Frayling could hardly do otherwise than continue the deception.
+Explanation would be too awkward a business. The chances of detection,
+moreover, were infinitesimal. There were things she meant to say which
+would sound far more unstudied and obvious could she keep up the fiction
+of ignorance. This, quickly realizing, she again and more flagrantly
+fibbed. The voluntary lie acts as a tonic giving you--for the moment at
+least--most comforting conceit of your own courage and perspicacity. And
+Henrietta just now stood in need of a tonic. She had been strangely
+overcome by the force of her own emotion--an accident which rarely
+happened to her and which she very cordially detested when it did.
+
+"Someone must have omitted to post the letter, then," she said, with a
+suitable air of annoyance. "How exceedingly careless--unless it has not
+been sent over from the hotel to the Pavilion. I have been obliged, more
+than once, to complain of the hall porter's very casual delivery of my
+letters. I will make enquiries directly, if I don't find it on my return.
+But this is all by the way. Tell me, dearest child, what is the reason of
+Colonel Carteret's leaving so suddenly? Is it not surprisingly
+unexpected?"
+
+"He was wanted at home on business of some sort," Damaris replied, as she
+felt a little lamely. She was displeased, worried by Henrietta. It was
+difficult to choose her words. "He has been away for a long time, you
+see. I think he has been beautifully unselfish in giving up so much of
+his time to us."
+
+"Do you?" Henrietta enquired with meaning. "If I remember right we
+discussed that point once before. I can repeat now what I then told you,
+with even firmer assurance, namely, that he struck me as remarkably well
+pleased with himself and his surroundings and generally content."
+
+"Of course he loves being with my father," Damaris hastened to put in,
+having no wish to enlarge on the topic suggested by the above speech.
+
+"Of course. Who doesn't, or rather who wouldn't were they sufficiently
+fortunate to have the chance. But come--to be honest--_je me demande_, is
+it exclusively Sir Charles whom Carteret loves to be with?"
+
+And as she spoke, Henrietta bent forward from the waist, her dainty
+lavender skirts spread out on the faded blue of the sofa mattress, the
+contours of her dainty lavender bodice in fine relief against the faded
+blue cushions, her whole person, in the subdued light, bright and
+apparently fragile as some delicate toy of spun glass. She put out her
+hand, and lightly, mischievously, touched the string of pearls encircling
+the girl's throat.
+
+"And what is the meaning of these, then," she asked, "you sweetly
+deceiving little puss!"
+
+It was cleverly done, she flattered herself. She asserted nothing,
+implied much, putting the onus of admission or denial upon Damaris. The
+answer came with grave and unhesitating directness.
+
+"Colonel Carteret gave them to me."
+
+"So I imagined. They are the exquisite fruit, aren't they, of the little
+expedition by train of two days ago?"
+
+Damaris' temper rose, but so did her protective instinct. For that
+journey to Marseilles, connected as it was with the dear secret of Darcy
+Faircloth, did not admit of investigation by Henrietta.
+
+"About where and when Colonel Carteret may have got them for me, I know
+nothing," she returned. "He left them to be given to me last night
+after he went."
+
+She unclasped the necklace.
+
+"They are very lovely pearls, aren't they? Pray look at them if you care
+to, Henrietta," she said.
+
+Thus at once invited and repulsed--for that it amounted to a repulse she
+could not but acknowledge--Mrs. Frayling advised herself a temporary
+retreat might be advisable. She therefore discoursed brightly concerning
+pearls and suchlike costly frivolities. Inwardly covetousness consumed
+her, since she possessed no personal ornament of even approximate value.
+
+The conversation drifted. She learned the fact of Miss Felicia's
+projected arrival, and deplored her own approaching exile the less. Only
+once, long ago, had she encountered Miss Verity. The memory afforded her
+no satisfaction, for that lady's peculiar brand of good breeding and--as
+she qualified it--imbecility, did not appeal to her in the least. There
+was matter of thankfulness, therefore, she had not elected to join Sir
+Charles and Damaris sooner. She would undoubtedly have proved a most
+tiresome and impeding element. Unless--here Henrietta's mind
+darted--unless she happened to take a fancy to Marshall. Blameless
+spinsters, of her uncertain age and of many enthusiasms, did not
+infrequently very warmly take to him--in plain English, fell over head
+and ears in love with him, poor things, though without knowing it, their
+critical faculty being conspicuous by its absence where their own hearts
+were concerned.--By the way that was an idea!--Swiftly Henrietta reviewed
+the possibilities it suggested.--As an ally, an auxiliary, Miss Felicia
+might be well worth cultivation. Would it not be diplomatic to let
+Marshall stay on at the Hôtel de la Plage by himself for a week or so?
+The conquest of Miss Felicia might facilitate another conquest on which
+her--Henrietta's--mind was set. For such mature enamoured virgins,
+as she reflected, are almost ludicrously selfless. To ensure the
+happiness of the beloved object they will even donate to him their
+rival.--Yes--distinctly an idea! But before attempting to reduce it to
+practice, she must make more sure of her ground in another direction.
+
+During the above meditation, Henrietta continued to talk off the
+surface, her mind working on two distinct planes. Damaris, off the
+surface, continued to answer her.
+
+Our maiden felt tired both in body and in spirit. She felt all "rubbed
+up the wrong way"--disturbed, confused. The many moral turns and twists
+of Henrietta's conversation had been difficult to follow. But from
+amid the curious maze of them, one thing stood out, arrestingly
+conspicuous--Henrietta believed it then also. Believed Carteret cared for
+her "in _that_ way"--thus, with a turning aside of the eyes and
+shrinking, she phrased it. It wasn't any mistaken, conceited imagination
+of her own since Henrietta so evidently shared it. And Henrietta must be
+reckoned an expert in that line, having a triad of husbands to her
+credit--a liberality of allowance in matrimony which had always appeared
+to Damaris as slightly excessive. She had avoided dwelling upon this so
+outstanding feature of her friend's career; but that it gave assurance of
+the latter's ability to pronounce upon "caring in _that_ way" was she now
+admitted incontestable.
+
+Whether she really felt glad or sorry Henrietta's expert opinion
+confirmed her own suspicions, Damaris could not tell. It certainly tended
+to complicate the future; and for that she was sorry. She would have
+liked to see the road clear before her--anyhow for a time--complications
+having been over numerous lately. They were worrying. They made her feel
+unsettled, unnatural. In any case she trusted she shouldn't suffer again
+from those odious yet alluring feelings which put her to such shame this
+morning.--But--unpleasant thought--weren't they, perhaps, an integral
+part of the whole agitating business of "caring in _that_ way?"
+
+Her eyes rested in wide meditative enquiry upon Henrietta, Henrietta
+sitting up in all her finished elegance upon the faded blue sofa and so
+diligently making company conversation. Somehow, thus viewing her, it
+was extremely difficult to suppose Henrietta had ever experienced
+excited feelings. Yet--the wonder of it!--she'd actually been married
+three times.
+
+Then, wearily, Damaris made a return upon herself. Yes--she was glad,
+although it might seem ungrateful, disloyal, the man with the blue eyes
+had gone away. For his going put off the necessity of knowing her own
+mind, excused her from making out exactly how she regarded him, thus
+relegating the day of fateful decision to a dim distance. Henrietta
+accused him of being a sieve.--Damaris grew heated in strenuous denial.
+That was a calumny which she didn't and wouldn't credit. Still you could
+never be quite sure about men--so she went back on the old, sad,
+disquieting lesson. Their way of looking at things, their angle of
+admitted obligation is so bewilderingly different!--Oh! how thankful she
+was Aunt Felicia would soon be here. Everything would grow simpler,
+easier to understand and to manage, more as it used to be, with dear Aunt
+Felicia here on the spot.
+
+At this point she realized that Mrs. Frayling was finishing a sentence to
+the beginning of which she had not paid the smallest attention. That was
+disgracefully rude.
+
+"So I am to go home then, dearest child, and break it to Marshall that he
+stands no chance--my poor Marshall, who has no delightful presents with
+which to plead his cause!"
+
+"Mr. Wace?--Plead his cause? What cause? I am so sorry,
+Henrietta--forgive me. It's too dreadful, but I am afraid I wasn't quite
+listening"--this with most engaging confusion.
+
+"Yes--his cause. I should have supposed his state of mind had been
+transparently evident for many a long day."
+
+"But indeed--Henrietta, you must be mistaken. I don't know what you
+mean"--the other interposed smitten by the liveliest distress and alarm.
+
+The elder lady waved aside her outcry with admirable playfulness and
+determination.
+
+"Oh! I quite realize how crazy it must appear on his part, poor dear
+fellow, seeing he has so little to offer from the worldly and commercial
+standpoint. As he himself says--'the desire of the moth for the star, of
+the night for the morrow.' Still money and position are not everything
+in life, are they? Talent is an asset and so, I humbly believe, is the
+pure devotion of a good man's heart. These count for something, or used
+to do so when I was your age. But then the women of my generation were
+educated in a less sophisticated school. You modern young persons are
+wiser than we were no doubt, in that you are less romantic, less easily
+touched.--I have not ventured to give Marshall much encouragement. It
+would have been on my conscience to foster hopes which might be dashed.
+And yet I own, darling child, your manner not once nor twice, during our
+happy meetings at the Pavilion, when he read aloud to us or sang, gave me
+the impression you were not entirely indifferent. He, I know, has thought
+so too--for I have not been able to resist letting him pour out his hopes
+and fears to me now and then. I could not refuse either him or myself
+that indulgence, because"--
+
+Mrs. Frayling rose, and, bending over our much tried and now positively
+flabbergasted damsel, brushed her hair with a butterfly kiss.
+
+"Because my own hopes were also not a little engaged," she said. "Your
+manner to my poor Marshall, your willingness to let him so often be with
+you made me--perhaps foolishly--believe not only that his sad life might
+be crowned by a signal blessing, but you might be given to me some day as
+a daughter of whom I could be intensely proud. I have grown to look upon
+Marshall in the light of a son, and his wife would"--
+
+Damaris had risen also. She stood at bay, white, strained, her lips
+quivering.
+
+"Do--do you mean that I have behaved badly to Mr. Wace, Henrietta? That I
+have flirted with him?"
+
+Mrs. Frayling drew her mouth into a naughty little knot. There were
+awkward corners to be negotiated in these questions. She avoided them by
+boldly striking for the open.
+
+"Oh! it is natural, perfectly natural at your rather thoughtless time of
+life. Only Marshall's admiration for you is very deep. He has the poetic
+temperament which makes for suffering, for despair as well as for
+rapture. And his disillusionments, poor boy, have been so grievously
+many.--But Colonel Carteret--yes--dearest child, I do quite follow.--It's
+an old story. He has always had _des bonnes fortunes_."
+
+Since her return to Europe, Mrs. Frayling had become much addicted to
+embellishing her conversation with such foreign tags, not invariably, it
+may be added, quite correctly applied or quoted.
+
+"Women could never resist him in former days in India. They went down
+before his charms like a row of ninepins before a ball. I don't deny a
+passing _tendresse_ for him myself, though I was married and very happily
+married. So I can well comprehend how he may take a girl's fancy by
+storm. _Sans peur et sans reproche_, he must seem to her.--And so in the
+main, I dare say, he is. At worst a little easy-going, owing to his
+cultivation of the universally benevolent attitude. Charity has a habit
+of beginning at home, you know; and a man usually views his own
+delinquencies at least as leniently as he views those of others. But that
+leniency is part of his charm--which I admit is great.--Heaven forbid, I
+should undermine your faith in it, if there is anything settled between
+you and him."
+
+"But there isn't, there isn't," Damaris broke in, distressed beyond all
+calmness of demeanour. "You go too fast, Henrietta. You assume too
+much. Nothing is settled of--of that sort. Nothing of that sort has
+ever been said."
+
+Mrs. Frayling raised her eyebrows, cast down her eyes, and fingered the
+bunch of trinkets hanging from her gold chain in silence for a few
+seconds. The ring of sincerity was unquestionable--only where did that
+land her? Had not she, in point of fact, very really gone too fast? In
+defeat Henrietta became unscrupulous.
+
+"Merely another flirtation, Damaris?" she said. "Darling child, I am just
+a wee bit disappointed in you."
+
+Which, among her many fibs, may rank amongst her most impudent and
+full-fed, though by no means her last.
+
+Here, the door opened behind her. Henrietta turned alertly, hailing any
+interruption which--her bolt being shot--might facilitate her retreat
+from a now most embarrassing situation. After all she had planted more
+than one seed, which might fruitfully grow, so at that she could leave
+matters.--The interruption, however, took a form for which she was
+unprepared. To her intense disgust her nerves played her false. She gave
+the oddest little stifled squeak as she met Charles Verity's glance,
+fixed upon her in cool, slightly ironic scrutiny.
+
+Some persons very sensibly bring their mental atmosphere along with them.
+You are compelled to breathe it whether you like or not. The atmosphere
+Charles Verity brought with him, at this juncture, was too masculine,
+intellectually too abstract yet too keenly critical, for comfortable
+absorption by Henrietta's lungs. Her self-complacency shrivelled in it.
+She felt but a mean and pitiful creature, especially in her recent
+treatment of Damaris. It was a nasty moment, the more difficult to
+surmount because of that wretchedly betraying squeak. Fury against
+herself gingered her up to action. She must be the first to speak.
+
+"Ah! how delightful to see you," she said, a little over-playing the
+part--"though only for an instant. I was in the act of bidding Damaris
+farewell. As it is I have scandalously outstayed my leave; but we had a
+thousand and one things, hadn't we, to say to one another."
+
+She smiled upon both father and daughter with graceful deprecation.
+
+"_Au, revoir_, darling child--we must manage to meet somehow, just once
+more before I take my family north"--
+
+And still talking, new lavender dress, trinkets, faint fragrance and all,
+she passed out on to the corridor accompanied by Sir Charles Verity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WHICH RECOUNTS A TAKING OF SANCTUARY
+
+
+Left alone Damaris sat down on the window-seat, within the shelter of the
+wooden shutters which interposed a green barred coolness between her and
+the brilliant world without. That those two, her father and Henrietta
+Frayling, should thus step off together, the small, softly crisp,
+feminine figure beside the tall, fine-drawn and--in a way--magnificent
+masculine one, troubled her. Yet she made no attempt to accompany or to
+follow them. Her head ached. Her mind and soul ached too. She felt spent
+and giddy, as from chasing round and round in an ever-shifting circle
+some tormenting, cleverly lovely thing which perpetually eluded her.
+Which thing, finally, floated out of the door there, drawing a
+personage unmeasurably its superior, away with it, and leaving
+her--Damaris--deserted.
+
+Leaving, moreover, every subject on which its nimble tongue had lighted,
+damaged by that contact--at loose ends, frayed and ravelled, its inwove
+pattern just slightly discoloured and defaced. The patterned fabric of
+Damaris' thought and inner life had not been spared, but suffered
+disfigurement along with the rest. She felt humiliated, felt unworthy.
+The ingenious torments of a false conscience gnawed her. Her better
+judgment pronounced that conscience veritably false; or would, as she
+believed, so pronounce later when she had time to get a true perspective.
+But, just now, she could only lamentably, childishly, cry out against
+injustice. For wasn't Henrietta mainly responsible for the character of
+her intercourse with Marshall Wace? Hadn't Henrietta repeatedly entreated
+her to see much of him, be kind to him?--Wishing, even in her present
+rebellion to be quite fair, she acknowledged that she had enjoyed his
+singing and reading; that she had felt pleased at his eagerness to
+confide his troubles to her and talk confidentially about himself. She
+not unwillingly accepted a mission towards him, stimulated thereto by
+Henrietta's plaudits and thanks.
+
+And--and Colonel Carteret? For now somehow she no longer, even in
+thought, could call him by her old name for him, "the dear man with the
+blue eyes."--Could it be true, as Henrietta intimated, that he went
+through life throwing the handkerchief first to one woman and then to
+another? That there was no real constancy or security in his affections,
+but all was lightly come and lightly go with him?
+
+How her poor head ached! She held it in both hands and closed her
+eyes.--She would not think any more about Colonel Carteret. To do so made
+her temples throb and raised the lump, which is a precursor of tears, in
+her throat.
+
+No--she couldn't follow Henrietta's statements and arguments either way.
+They were self-contradictory. Still, whose ever the fault, that the young
+man Wace should be unhappy on her account, should think she--Damaris--had
+behaved heartlessly to him, was quite dreadful. Humiliating too--false
+conscience again gnawing. Had she really contracted a debt towards him,
+which she--in his opinion and Henrietta's--tried to repudiate? She seemed
+to hear it, the rich impassioned voice, and hear it with a new
+comprehension. Was "caring in _that_ way" what it had striven to tell
+her; and had she, incomparably dense in missing its meaning, appeared to
+sanction the message and to draw him on? Other people understood--so at
+least Henrietta implied; while she, remaining deaf, had rather cruelly
+misled him. Ought she not to do something to make up? Yet what could she
+do?--It had never occurred to her that--that--
+
+She held her head tight. Held it on, as with piteous humour she told
+herself, since she seemed in high danger of altogether losing it.--Must
+she believe herself inordinately stupid, or was she made differently to
+everybody else? For, as she now suspected, most people are constantly
+occupied, are quite immensely busy about "caring in _that_ way." And she
+shrank from it; actively and angrily disliked it. She felt smirched, felt
+all dealings as between men and women made suspect, rendered ugly, almost
+degraded by the fact--if fact it was--of that kind of caring and excited
+feelings it induces, lurking just below the surface, ready to dart
+out.--And this not quite honestly either. The whole matter savoured of
+hypocrisy, since the feelings disguised themselves in beautiful sounds,
+beautiful words, clothing their unseemliness with the noble panoply of
+poetry and art, masquerading in wholesome garments of innocent
+good-comradeship.
+
+--A grind of wheels on the gravel below. Henrietta's neat limpid accents
+and Charles Verity's grave ones. The flourish and crack of a whip and
+scrambling start of the little chestnut horses. The rhythmical beat of
+their quick even trot and thin tinkle of their collar bells receding into
+the distance.
+
+These sounds to our sorrowfully perplexed maiden opened fresh fields of
+uneasy speculation. For those diverse accents--the speakers being
+unseen--heard thus in conjunction, seized on and laboured her
+imagination. Throughout the past months of frequent meeting, Damaris had
+never quite understood her father's attitude towards Henrietta Frayling.
+It was marked by reserve; yet a reserve based, as she somehow divined,
+upon an uncommon degree of former intimacy. Judging from remarks let drop
+now and again by Henrietta, they knew, or rather had known, one another
+very well indeed. This bore out Damaris' own childhood's recollections;
+though in these last she was aware of lacunae, of gaps, of spaces
+unbridged by any coherent sequence of remembered events. A dazzling and
+delicious image, the idol of her baby adoration--thus did memory paint
+that earlier Henrietta. Surrounding circumstances remained shadowy. She
+could not recall them even in respect of herself, still less in respect
+of her father. So that question, as to the past, ruled the present. What
+had parted them, and how did they to-day envisage one another? She could
+not make out. Had never, indeed, attempted seriously to make out, shying
+from such investigation as disloyal and, in a way, irreverent. Now
+investigation was forced on her. Her mind worked independent of her will,
+so that she could neither prevent or arrest it. Sir Charles showed
+himself scrupulously attentive and courteous to General Frayling. He
+offered no spoken objection to her association with Henrietta. Yet an
+unexplained element did remain. Subtlely, but perceptibly, it permeated
+both her father's and Henrietta's speech and bearing. She, Damaris, was
+always conscious of a certain constraint beneath their calm and
+apparently easy talk. Was their relation one of friendship or of covert
+enmity?--Or did these, just perceptible, peculiarities of it betoken
+something deeper and closer still?
+
+Suspicion once kindled spreads like a conflagration.--Damaris' hands
+dropped, a dead weight, into her lap. She sat, strained yet inert, as
+though listening to catch the inner significance of her own unformulated
+question, her eyes wide and troubled, her lips apart. For might it not be
+that they had once--long ago--in the princely, Eastern pleasure palace of
+her childhood--cared in _that_ way?
+
+Then the tears which, what with tiredness and the labour pains of her
+many conflicting emotions, had threatened more than once to-day, came
+into their own. She wept quietly, noiselessly, the tears running down her
+cheeks unchecked and unheeded. For there was no escape. Turn where she
+would, join hands with whom she would in all good faith and innocence,
+this thing reared its head and, evilly alluring looked at her. Now it set
+its claim upon her well-beloved Sultan-i-bagh--and what scene could in
+truth be more sympathetic to its display? She felt the breath of high
+romance. Imagination played strange tricks with her. She could feel, she
+could picture, a drama of rare quality with those two figures as
+protagonists. It dazzled while wounding her. She remembered Faircloth's
+words, spoken on that evening of fateful disclosure when knowledge of
+things as they are first raped her happy ignorance, while the boat
+drifted through the shrouding darkness of rain upon the inky waters of
+the tide-river.--"They were young," he had said, "and mayn't we allow
+they were beautiful? They met and, God help them, they loved."
+
+The statement covered this case, also, to a nicety. It explained
+everything. But what an explanation, leaving her, Damaris, doubly
+orphaned and desolate! For the first case, that of which Faircloth
+actually had spoken, brought her royal, if secret compensation in the
+brotherhood and sisterhood it made known. But this second case brought
+nothing, save a sense of being tricked and defrauded, the victim of a
+conspiracy of silence. For nothing, as it now appeared, was really her
+own, nor had really belonged to her. "Some one," so she phrased it in the
+incoherence of her pain, "had always been there before her." What she
+supposed her exclusive property was only second-hand, had been already
+owned by others. They let her play at being first in the field, original
+and sole proprietress, because it saved them trouble by keeping her quiet
+and amused. But all the while they knew better and must have smiled at
+her possessive antics once her silly back was turned. And here Damaris
+lost sight of reasonable proportion and measure, exaggerating wildly, her
+pride and self-respect cut to the quick.
+
+It was thus, in the full flood of mystification and resentment, Charles
+Verity found her when presently he returned. Sensible of something very
+much amiss, since she stayed within the shadow of the closed shutters,
+silent and motionless, he crossed the room and stood before her looking
+down searchingly into her upturned face. Stubborn in her misery, she met
+his glance with mutinous, and hard, if misty, eyes.
+
+"Weeping, my dear? Is the occasion worth it? Has Mrs. Frayling then
+taken so profound a hold?" he asked, his tone mocking, chiding her yet
+very gently.
+
+Damaris hedged. To expose the root of her trouble became impossible under
+the coercion of that gently bantering tone.
+
+"It's not Henrietta's going; but that I no longer mind her going."
+
+"A lost illusion--yes?" he said.
+
+"I can't trust her. She--she isn't kind."
+
+"Eh?" he said. "So you too have made that illuminating little discovery.
+I supposed it would be only a matter of time. But you read character, my
+dear, more quickly than I do. What it has taken you months to discover,
+took me years."
+
+His frankness, the unqualified directness of his response, though
+startling, stimulated her daring.
+
+"Then--then you don't really like Henrietta?" she found audacity
+enough to say.
+
+"Ah! there you rush too headlong to conclusions," he reasoned, still with
+that same frankness of tone. "She is an ingenious, unique creature,
+towards whom one's sentiments are ingenious and unique in their turn. I
+admire her, although--for you are right there--she is neither invariably
+trustworthy nor invariably kind. Admire her ungrudgingly, now I no longer
+ask of her what she hasn't it in her to give. Limit your demand and you
+limit the risks of disappointment--a piece of wisdom easier to enunciate
+than to apply."
+
+Lean, graceful, commanding under the cloak of his present gentle humour,
+Charles Verity sat down on the faded red cushion beside Damaris, and laid
+one arm along the window-ledge behind her. He did not touch her; being
+careful in the matter of caresses, reverent of her person, chary of
+claiming parental privileges unasked.
+
+"In the making of Henrietta Frayling," he went on, "by some accident soul
+was left out. She hasn't any. She does not know it. Let us hope she never
+will know it, for it is too late now for the omission to be rectified."
+
+"Are you laughing at me?" Damaris asked, still stubborn, though his
+presence enclosed her with an at once assuaging and authoritative charm.
+
+"Not in the least. I speak that which I soberly believe. Just as some
+ill-starred human creatures are born physically or mentally
+defective--deformed or idiots--so may they be born spiritually
+defective. Why not? My reason offers no scientific or moral objection to
+such a belief. In other respects she is conspicuously perfect. But,
+verily, she has no soul; and the qualities which--for happiness or
+misery--draw their life from the soul, she does not possess. Therefore
+she sparkles, lovely and chill as frost. Is as astute as she is cold at
+heart; and can, when it suits her purpose, be both false and cruel
+without any subsequent prickings of remorse. But this very coldness and
+astuteness save her from misdeeds of the coarser kind. Treacherous she
+has been, and, for aught I know, may on occasions still be. But, though
+temptation has pretty freely crossed her path, she has never been other
+than virtuous. She is a good woman--in the accepted, the popular sense of
+the word."
+
+Silence stole down upon the room. Damaris remained motionless, leaning
+forward gathered close into herself, her hands still heavy in her lap.
+Could she accept this statement as comfort, or must she bow under it
+as rebuke?
+
+"Why," she asked at last huskily--the tears were no longer upon her
+cheeks but queerly in her throat, impeding utterance, "do you tell me
+these things?"
+
+"To prevent you beholding lying visions, my dear, or dreaming lying
+dreams of what might very well have been but--God be thanked--never has
+been--never was.--Think a minute--remember--look."
+
+And once more Damaris felt the breath of high romance and touched drama
+of rare quality, with those same two figures as protagonists, and that
+same Indian pleasure palace as their stage; but this time with a notable
+difference of sentiment and of result.
+
+For she visualized another going of Henrietta, a flight before the dawn.
+Saw, through a thick scent-drenched atmosphere, between the expiring
+lamp-light and broadening day, a deserted child beating its little hands,
+in the extremity of its impotent anguish, upon the pillows of a
+disordered unmade bed. Saw a man, too, worn and travel-stained from long
+riding throughout the night, lost to all decent dignities of
+self-control, savage with the animalism of frustrated passion, rage to
+and fro amidst the litter of a smart woman's hurried packing, a trail of
+pale blue ribbon plucking at and tripping him entangled in the rowels of
+his spurs.
+
+All this she saw; and knew that her father--sitting on the cushioned
+window-seat beside her, his legs crossed, his chin sunk on his
+breast--saw it also. That he, indeed, voluntarily and of set purpose made
+her see, transferring the living picture from his consciousness to her
+own. And, as she watched, each detail growing in poignancy and
+significance she--not all at once, but gropingly, rebelliously and only
+by degrees--comprehended that purpose, and the abounding love, both of
+herself and of justice, which dictated it. Divining the root of her
+trouble and the nature of her suspicion he took this strange means to
+dissipate them. Setting aside his natural pride, he caused her to look
+upon his hour of defeat and debasement, careless of himself if thereby he
+might mend her hurt and win her peace of mind.
+
+Damaris was conquered. Her stubbornness went down before his sacrifice.
+All the generosity in her leapt forth to meet and to acclaim the signal
+generosity in him--a generosity extended not only towards herself but to
+Henrietta Frayling as well. This last Damaris recognized as superb.--He
+bade her remember. And, seeing in part through her own eyes, in part
+through his, she penetrated more deeply into his mind, into the rich
+diversity and, now mastered, violence of his character, than could
+otherwise have been possible. She learnt him from within as well as from
+without. He had been terrible--so she remembered--yet beautiful in his
+fallen god-head. She had greatly feared him under that aspect. Later, she
+more than ever loved him; and that with a provenant, protective and, baby
+though she was, a mothering love. He was beautiful now; but no longer
+terrible, no longer fallen--if not the god-head, yet the fine flower of
+his manhood royally and very sweetly disclosed. Her whole being yearned
+towards him; but humbly, a note of lowliness in her appreciation, as
+towards something exalted, far above her in experience, in
+self-knowledge and self-discipline.
+
+She was, indeed, somewhat overwhelmed, both by realization of his
+distinction and of her own presumption in judging him, to the point of
+being unable as yet to look him in the face. So she silently laid hold of
+his hand, drew it down from the window-ledge and round her waist.
+Slipping along the cushioned seat until she rested against him, she laid
+her head back upon his shoulder. Testimony in words seemed superfluous
+after that shared consciousness, seemed impertinent even, an anti-climax
+from which both taste and insight recoiled.
+
+For a while Charles Verity let the silent communion continue. Then, lest
+it should grow enervating, to either or to both, he spoke of ordinary
+subjects--of poor little General Frayling's illness, of Miss Felicia's
+plans, of his own book. It was wiser for her, better also for himself, to
+step back into the normal thus quietly closing the door upon their dual
+act of retrospective clairvoyance.
+
+Damaris, catching his intention, responded; and if rather languidly yet
+loyally played up. But, before the spell was wholly broken and frankness
+gave place to their habitual reserve, there was one further question she
+must ask if the gnawings of that false conscience, begotten in her by
+Henrietta's strictures, were wholly to cease.
+
+"Do you mind if we go back just a little minute," she said.
+
+"Still unsatisfied, my dear?"
+
+"Not unsatisfied--never again that as between us two, Commissioner Sahib.
+You have made everything beautifully, everlastingly smooth and clear."
+
+"Then why tempt Providence, or rather human incertitude, by going back?"
+
+"Because--can I say it quite plainly?"
+
+"As plainly as you will."
+
+"Because Henrietta tells me I have--have flirted--have played fast and
+loose with--with more than one person."
+
+A pause, and the question came from above her--her head still lying
+against his breast--with a trace of severity, or was it anxiety?
+
+"And have you?"
+
+"Not intentionally--not knowingly," Damaris said.
+
+"If that is so, is it not sufficient?"
+
+"No--because she implies that I have raised false hopes, and so entangled
+myself--and that I ought to go further, that, as I understand her, I
+ought to be ready to marry--that it is not quite honourable to withdraw."
+
+Charles Verity moved slightly, yet held her close. She felt the rise and
+fall of his ribs as he breathed slow and deep.
+
+"Do you want to marry?" he at last asked her.
+
+"No," she said, simply. "I'd much rather not, if I can keep out of it
+without acting unfairly by anyone--if you don't agree with Henrietta, and
+don't think I need. You don't want me to marry do you?"
+
+"God in heaven, no," Charles Verity answered. He put her from him, rose
+and moved about the room.
+
+"To me, the thought of giving you in marriage to any man is little short
+of abhorrent," he said hoarsely.
+
+For fear clutched him by the throat. The gift of pearls, the little scene
+of last night, and Damaris' emotion in bidding Carteret farewell,
+confronted him. The idea had never occurred to him before. Now it glared
+at him, or rather he glared at it. It would be torment to say "yes"; and
+yet very difficult to say his best friend "nay." Anger kindled against
+Henrietta Frayling. Must this be regarded as her handiwork? Yet he could
+hardly credit it. Or had she some other candidate--Peregrine Ditton,
+young Harry Ellice?--But they were mere boys.--Of Marshall Wace he never
+thought, the young man being altogether outside his field of vision in
+this connection.
+
+Long habit of personal chastity made Charles Verity turn, with a greater
+stabbing and rending of repulsion, from the thought of marriage for
+Damaris. She asserted she had no wish to marry, that she--bless her sweet
+simplicity!--would rather not. But this bare broaching of the subject
+threw him into so strange a tumult that, only too evidently, he was no
+competent observer, he laboured under too violent a prejudice. He had no
+right to demand from others the abstinence he chose himself to practise.
+Carteret, in desiring her, was within his rights. Damaris within hers,
+were she moved by his suit. Marriage is natural, wholesome, the
+God-ordained law and sanction of human increase since man first drew
+breath here upon earth. To condemn obedience to that law, by placing any
+parental embargo upon Damaris' marriage, would be both a defiance of
+nature and act of grossest selfishness.
+
+He sat down on the window-seat again; and forced himself to put his arm
+around that fair maiden body, destined to be the prize, one day, of some
+man's love; the prey--for he disdained to mince matters, turning the
+knife in the wound rather--the prey of some man's lust. He schooled
+himself, while Damaris' heart beat a little tempestuously under his hand,
+to invite a conclusion which through every nerve and fibre he loathed.
+
+"My dear," he said, "I spoke unadvisedly with my lips just now, letting
+crude male jealousy get the mastery of reason and common sense. Put my
+words out of your mind. They were unjustifiable, spoken in foolish heat.
+If you are in love with anyone"--
+
+Damaris nestled against him.
+
+"Only with you, dearest, I think," she said.
+
+Charles Verity hesitated, unable to speak through the exquisite blow she
+delivered and his swift thankfulness.
+
+"Let us put the question differently then--translating it into the
+language of ordinary social convention. Tell me, has anyone
+proposed to you?"
+
+Damaris, still nestling, shook her head.
+
+"No--no one. And I hope now, no one will. I escaped that, partly thanks
+to my own denseness.--It is not an easy thing, Commissioner Sahib, to
+explain or talk about. But I have come rather close to it lately,
+and"--with a hint of vehemence--"I don't like it. There is something in
+it which pulls at me but not at the best part of me. So that I am divided
+against myself. Though it does pull, I still want to push it all away
+with both hands. I don't understand myself and I don't understand it, I
+would rather be without it--forget it--if you think I am free to do so,
+if you are satisfied that I haven't intentionally hurt anyone or
+contracted a--a kind of debt of honour?"
+
+"I am altogether satisfied," he said. "Until the strange and ancient
+malady attacks you in a very much more virulent form, you are free to
+cast Henrietta Frayling's insinuations to the winds, to ignore them and
+their existence."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+THROUGH SHADOWS TOWARDS THE DAWN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WHICH CARRIES OVER A TALE OF YEARS, AND CARRIES ON
+
+
+The last sentence was written. His work finished. And, looking upon his
+completed creation, Charles Verity saw that it was good. Yet, as he put
+the pen back in the pen-tray and, laying the last page of manuscript face
+downwards upon the blotting-paper passed his hand over it, he was less
+sensible of exultation than of a pathetic emptiness. The book had come to
+be so much part of him that he felt a nasty wrench when he thus finally
+rid himself of it.
+
+He had kept the personal pronoun out of it, strictly and austerely,
+desiring neither self-glorification nor self-advertisement. Yet his mind
+and attitude towards life seasoned and tempered the whole, giving it
+vitality and force. This was neither a "drum-and-trumpet history"
+designed to tickle the vulgar ear, nor a blank four-wall depository of
+dry facts, names, dates, statistics, such as pedants mustily adore; but a
+living thing, seen and felt. Not his subconscious, but that much finer
+and--as one trusts--more permanent element in our human constitution, his
+super-conscious self found expression in its pages and travelled freely,
+fruitfully, through them amid luminous and masterful ideas. At times the
+intellectual sweep threatened to be overdaring and overwide; so that, in
+the interests of symmetry and balance of construction, he had been forced
+to clip the wings of thought, lest they should bear him to regions too
+remotely high and rare. Race, religion, customs and the modifications of
+these, both by climate and physical conformation of the land on the face
+of which they operate, went to swell the interest and suggestion of his
+theme. In handling such varied and coloured material the intellectual
+exercise had been to him delicious, as he fashioned and put a fine edge
+to passages of admirable prose, coined the just yet startling epithet,
+perfected the flow of some graceful period, and ransacked the English
+language for fearless words in which to portray the mingled splendour and
+vileness of a barbaric oriental Court, the naked terrors of tribal feuds
+and internecine war.
+
+The occupation had, indeed, proved at once so refreshing and so absorbing
+that he went leisurely, lengthening out the process of production until
+it came nearer covering the thirty months of elephantine gestation than
+the normal human nine.
+
+With but two brief sojourns to England, for the consultation of certain
+authorities and of his publishers, the said near on thirty months were
+passed in wandering through Southern France, Central Italy, and, taking
+ship from Naples to Malaga, finally through Eastern and Northern Spain.
+Charles Verity was too practised a campaigner for his power of
+concentration to depend on the stability or familiarity of his
+surroundings. He could detach himself, go out into and be alone with his
+work, at will. But the last chapter, like the first, he elected to write
+in the study at The Hard. A pious offering of incense, this, to the
+pleasant memory of that excellent scholar and devoted amateur of letters,
+his great-uncle, Thomas Clarkson Verity, whose society and conversation
+awakened the literary sense in him as a schoolboy, on holiday from
+Harchester, now nearly five decades ago. He judged it a matter of good
+omen, moreover,--toying for the moment with kindly superstition--that the
+book should issue from a house redeemed by his kinsman from base and
+brutal uses and dedicated to the worship of knowledge and of the printed
+word. That fat, soft-bodied, mercurial-minded little gentleman--to whom
+no record of human endeavour, of human speculation, mental or moral
+experiment, came amiss--would surely relish the compliment, if his
+curious and genial ghost still, in any sort, had cognizance of this, his
+former, dwelling-place.
+
+The Hard, just now, showed a remarkably engaging countenance, the year
+standing on the threshold of May.--Mild softly bright weather made amends
+for a wet and windy April, with sunshine and high forget-me-not blue
+skies shading to silver along the sea-line. The flower-beds, before the
+garden house-front, were crowded with early tulips, scarlet, golden, and
+shell-pink. Shrubberies glowed with rhododendrons, flamed with azaleas.
+At the corner of the battery and sea-wall, misty grey-green plumes of
+tamarisk veiled the tender background of grey-blue water and yellow-grey
+sand. Birds peopled the scene. Gulls, in strong fierce flight, laughed
+overhead. Swallows darted back and forth, ceaselessly twittering, as they
+built their cup-shaped mud nests beneath the eaves. Upon the lawn
+companies of starlings ran, flapping glossy wings, squealing, whistling;
+to the annoyance of a song thrush, in spotted waistcoat and neatly
+fitting brown _surtout_, who, now tall, now flattened to the level of the
+turf, its head turned sideways, peered and listened, locating the
+presence of the victim worm.--Three or four vigorous pecks--the starlings
+running elsewhere--to loosen the surrounding soil, and the moist pink
+living string was steadily, mercilessly, drawn upward into the
+uncompromising light of day, to be devoured wriggling, bit by bit, with
+most unlovely gusto.--The chaff-chaff sharpened his tiny saw tipping
+about the branches of the fir trees in the Wilderness, along with the
+linnets, tits, and gold-finches.
+
+Such, out of doors, was the home world which received Damaris after those
+many months of continental travel, on the eve of her twenty-first
+birthday. To pass from the dynamic to the static mode must be always
+something of an embarrassment and trial, especially to the young with
+whom sensation is almost disconcertingly direct and lively. Damaris
+suffered the change of conditions not without a measure or doubt and
+wonder. For they made demands to which she had become unaccustomed, and
+to which she found it difficult to submit quite naturally and simply. A
+whole social and domestic order, bristling with petty obligations, closed
+down upon her, within the bounds of which she felt to move awkwardly, at
+first, conscious of constraint.
+
+Sympathetic Mrs. Cooper, comely and comfortable Mary, and the Napoleonic
+Patch, still reigned in house and stable. Laura had returned to her
+former allegiance on the announcement of "the family's" arrival, and
+other underlings had been engaged by the upper servants in conclave. To
+these latter entered that Ulysses, Mr. Hordle, so rendering the
+establishment once again complete.
+
+The neighbours duly called--Dr. and Mrs. Horniblow, conscious of notable
+preferment, since high ecclesiastical powers had seen fit to present the
+former to a vacant canonry at Harchester. For three months yearly he
+would in future be resident in the cathedral city. This would necessitate
+the employment of a curate at Deadham, for the spiritual life of its
+inhabitants must by no means suffer through its vicar's promotion. At the
+moment of Sir Charles and Damaris' return the curate excitement was at
+its height. It swept through the spinster-ranks of the congregation like
+an epidemic. They thrilled with unacknowledgeable hopes. The Miss
+Minetts, though mature, grew pink and quivered, confessing themselves not
+averse to offering board and lodging to a suitable, a well-connected,
+well-conducted paying guest. To outpourings on the enthralling subject of
+the curate, Damaris found herself condemned to listen from every feminine
+visitor in turn. It held the floor, to the exclusion of all other topics.
+Her own long absence, long journeys, let alone the affairs of the world
+at large, were of no moment to these very local souls. So our young lady
+retired within herself, deploring the existence of curates in general,
+and the projected, individual, Deadham curate in particular, with a
+heartiness she was destined later to remember. Had it been
+prophetic?--Not impossibly so, granted the somewhat strange prescience by
+which she was, at times, possessed.
+
+For the psychic quality that, from a child, now and again had manifested
+itself in her--though happily unattended by morbid or hysteric
+tendencies, thanks to her radiant health--grew with her growth. To her,
+in certain moods and under certain conditions, the barrier between things
+seen and unseen, material and transcendental, was pervious. It yielded
+before the push of her apprehension, sense of what it guards, what it
+withholds within an ace of breaking through.
+
+Affairs of the heart would, so far, seem to have begun and ended with the
+winter spent at St. Augustin. Now and again Damaris met an Englishman, or
+foreigner, who stirred her slightly. But if one accident of travel
+brought them together, another accident of travel speedily swept them
+apart. The impression was fugitive, superficial, fading out and causing
+but momentary regret. Colonel Carteret she only saw in London, during
+those two brief visits to England. He had been captivating, treating her
+with playful indulgence, teasing a little; but far away, somehow--so she
+felt him--though infinitely kind. And the dear man with the blue
+eyes--for she could use her old name for him again now, though she
+couldn't quite tell why--looked older. The sentimental passage at St.
+Augustin assumed improbability--a fact over which she should, in all
+reason, have rejoiced, yet over which she, in point of fact when safe
+from observation, just a little wept.
+
+From Henrietta some few letters reached her. One of them contained the
+news that Marshall Wace, surmounting his religious doubts and
+scruples--by precisely what process remained undeclared--had at last
+taken Holy Orders. Concerning this joyful consummation Henrietta waxed
+positively unctuous. "He had gone through so much"--the old cry!--to
+which now was added conviction that his own trials fitted him to minister
+the more successfully to his brethren among the sorely tried.
+
+"His preaching will, I feel certain, be quite extraordinarily original
+and sympathetic--full of poetry. And I need hardly tell you what an
+immense relief it is both to the General and to myself to feel he is
+settled in life, and that his future is provided for--though not,
+alas! in the way I fondly hoped, and which--for his happiness' sake
+and my own--I should have chosen," she insidiously and even rather
+cynically wrote.
+
+But, if in respect of the affections our maiden, during these two years,
+made no special progress and gained no further experimental knowledge of
+the perilous workings of sex, her advance in other departments was ample.
+
+For faith now called to her with no uncertain note. The great spiritual
+forces laid hold of her intelligence and imagination, drawing, moulding,
+enlightening her. In the library of a somewhat grim hotel at Avila, in
+old Castile, she lighted upon an English translation of the life of St.
+Theresa--that woman of countless practical activities, seer and sybil,
+mystic and wit. The amazing biography set her within the magic circle of
+Christian feminine beatitude; and opened before her gaze mighty
+perspectives of spiritual increase, leading upward through unnumbered
+ranks of prophets, martyrs, saints, angelic powers, to the feet of the
+Virgin Mother, with the Divine Child on her arm.--He, this last, as
+gateway, intermediary, between the human soul and the mystery of God
+Almighty, by whom, and in whom, all things visible and invisible subsist.
+For the first time some dim and halting perception, some faintest hint
+and echo, reached Damaris of the awful majesty, the awful beauty of the
+fount of Universal Being; and, caught with a great trembling, she
+worshipped.
+
+This culminating perception, in terms of time, amounted to no more than a
+single flash, the fraction of an instant's contact. An hour or so later,
+being very young and very human, the things of everyday resumed their
+sway. A new dress engaged her fancy, a railway journey through--to
+her--untrodden country excited her, a picturesque street scene held her
+delighted interest. Nevertheless that had taken place within her--call it
+conversion, evocation, the spiritual receiving of sight, as you
+please--upon which, for those who have once experienced it, there is no
+going back while life and reason last. Obscured, overlaid, buried beneath
+the dust of the trivial and immediate, the mark of revelation upon the
+forehead and the heart can never be obliterated quite. Its resurrection
+is not only possible but certain, if not on the near side, then surely on
+the farther side of death.
+
+And not only did faith thus call her, at this period, but art, in its
+many forms, called her likewise. The two, indeed, according to her
+present understanding of them, moved--though at different levels--side by
+side, singularly conjoined, art translating faith into terms of sound,
+form and colour, faith consecrating and supplementing art. All of which,
+as she pondered, appeared to her only fitting and reasonable--the object
+of art being to capture beauty and touch reality, the substance of faith
+being nothing less than beauty and reality absolute.
+
+With Sir Charles sometimes, but more often with her aunt, Miss
+Felicia--most enthusiastic, diligent and ingenuous of sightseers--she
+visited buildings of historic interest, galleries of statuary and of
+pictures. For here, too, in architecture, in marble god or hero, upon
+painted panel or canvas, she caught, at moments, some flickering shadow
+of the everlasting light, touched at moments both by its abiding terror
+and the ecstasy of its everlasting youth. But this appreciation of the
+height and grandeur of man's endeavour was new in her. To Nature she had
+from childhood, been curiously near. She sought expression and
+confirmation of it with silent ardour, her mind aflame with the joy of
+recognition. And, as daily, hourly background to these her many
+experiments and excursions, was the stable interest of her father's book.
+For in the pages of that, too, she caught sight of beauty and reality of
+no mean order, held nobly to ransom through the medium of words.
+
+And while this high humour still possessed her, alive at every point,
+her thoughts--often by day, still oftener in dreams or wakeful
+intervals by night--rapt away beyond the stars, she was called upon, as
+already noted, to pass abruptly from the dynamic to the static mode.
+Called on to embrace domestic duties, and meet local social
+obligations, including polite endurance of long-drawn disquisitions
+regarding Canon Horniblow's impending curate. The drop proved
+disconcerting, or would have eminently done so had not another
+element--disquieting yet very dear--come into play.
+
+Meantime the change from the stimulating continental atmosphere to the
+particularly soft and humid, not to say stagnant, English one, acted as a
+drop too. She drooped during the process of acclimatization. The fetid
+sweet reek off the mud-flats of the Haven oppressed and strangely pursued
+her, so that she asked for the horses to take her to the freshness of the
+high lying inland moors, for a boat to carry her across the tide-river to
+the less confined air and outlook of the Bar. Sight and sense of the
+black wooden houses, upon the forbidden island, hanging like disreputable
+boon companions about the grey stone-built inn, oppressed and strangely
+pursued her too. She could see them from her bedroom between the red
+trunks of the bird-haunted Scotch firs in the Wilderness. First thing, on
+clear mornings, the sunlight glittered on the glass of their small
+windows. Last thing, at night, the dim glow of lamp-light showed through
+open doorway, or flimsy curtain from within. They stood alone, but
+curiously united and self-sufficing, upon the treeless inhospitable piece
+of land, ringed by the rivers, the great whispering reed-beds and the
+tide. Their life was strangely apart from, defiant of, that of the
+mainland and the village. It yielded obedience to traditions and customs
+of an earlier, wilder age; and in so much was sinister, a little
+frightening. Yet out of precisely this rather primitive and archaic
+environment came Darcy Faircloth, her half-brother, the human being
+closest to her by every tie of blood and sentiment in the world save
+one--the father of them both. The situation was startling, alike in its
+incongruities and in its claims.
+
+During those two years of continental wandering--following upon her
+meeting with him at Marseilles--the whole sweet and perplexing matter of
+Faircloth had fallen more or less into line, taking on a measure of
+simplicity and of ease. She thought of him with freedom, wrote to him
+when he could advise her of his next port of call.--To him at Deadham, by
+his request, he being very careful for her, she never wrote.--And
+therefore, all the more perhaps, being here at Deadham, his home and all
+the suggestive accessories of it so constantly before her eyes, did her
+relation to him suffer a painful transformation. In remembrance she had
+come to picture him on board his ship, governing his little floating
+kingdom with no feeble or hesitating sway. But here every impeding fact
+of class and education, every worldly obstacle to his and her
+intercourse, above all the hidden scandal of his birth sprang into high
+relief. All the dividing, alienating influences of his antecedents, his
+social position and her own, swung in upon her with aggravated intensity
+and pathos.
+
+Away, she felt sweetly secure of him. Sure his and her bond remained
+inviolate. Sure his affection never wavered or paled, but stood always at
+the flood, a constant quantity upon which she could draw at need; or--to
+change the metaphor--a steady foundation upon which her heart could
+safely build. He would not, could not, ever fail her. This had been
+sufficient to stay her longing for sight and speech of him, her longing
+for his bodily presence. But now, in face of the very concrete facts of
+the island, the inn, which bore his name and where his mother lived and
+ruled, of the property he owned, the place and people to which--by half
+at least of his nature and much more than half his memory--he belonged,
+the comfort of this spiritual esoteric relation became but a meagre
+evasive thing. It was too unsubstantial. Doubts and fears encircled it.
+She grew heart-sick for some fresh testimony, some clear immediate
+assurance that time and absence had not staled or undermined the romance.
+
+If only she could speak of it! But that was forbidden by every obligation
+of filial piety. Never had her relation to her father been more tender,
+more happy; yet only through sudden pressure of outward circumstance
+could she speak to him of Faircloth. To do so, without serious necessity,
+would be, as she saw it, a wanton endangering of his peace.--If only the
+dear man with the blue eyes hadn't removed himself! She had counted upon
+his permanent support and counsel, on his smoothing away difficulties
+from the path of her dealings with Faircloth; but he appeared to have
+given her altogether the go-by, to have passed altogether out of her
+orbit. And meditating, in the softly bright May weather beneath those
+high forget-me-not blue skies, upon his defection, our maiden felt quite
+desperately experienced and grown up, thrown back upon her own resources,
+thrown in upon her rather solitary life.
+
+Throughout the summer visitors came and went; but never those two desired
+figures, Faircloth or Carteret. Dr. McCabe, vociferous in welcome,
+affectionate, whimsical and choleric, trundled over from Stourmouth on a
+bicycle of phenomenal height.
+
+"On the horse without wheels I'm proficient enough," he declared. "Know
+the anatomy of the darlin' beast as well as I do my own, inside and out.
+But, be dashed, if the wheels without the horse aren't beyond me quite.
+Lord love you, but the skittish animal's given me some ugly knocks, cast
+me away, it has, in the wayside ditch, covering me soul with burning
+shame, and me jacket with malodorous mud."
+
+At intervals Aunt Harriet Cowden and Uncle Augustus drove over in state
+the twelve miles from Paulton Lacy--the lady faithful to garments dyed,
+according to young Tom Verity, in the horrid hues of violet ink. She
+expressed her opinions with ruthless frankness, criticized, domineered,
+put all and sundry in--what she deemed--"their place"; and departed for
+the big house on the confines of Arnewood Forest again, to, had she but
+known it, a chorus of sighings of relief from those she left behind her
+and on whose emotional and intellectual tastes and toes she so
+mercilessly trod.
+
+Garden parties, tennis tournaments, the Napworth cricket week, claimed
+Damaris' attendance in turn, along with agreeable display of her foreign
+spoils in the matter of Paris hats and frocks. Proofs arrived in big
+envelopes perpetually by post; first in the long, wide-margined galley
+form, later in the more dignified one of quire and numbered page. The
+crude, sour smell of damp paper and fresh printer's ink, for the first
+time assailed our maiden's nostrils. It wasn't nice; yet she sniffed it
+with a quaint sense of pleasure. For was it not part of the whole
+wonderful, beautiful business of the making of books? To the artist the
+meanest materials of his art have a sacredness not to be denied or
+ignored. They go to forward the birth of the precious whole, and hence
+are redeemed, for him, from all charge of common or uncleanness.
+
+Finally Miss Felicia, arriving in mid-June, paid an unending visit, of
+which Damaris felt no impatience. Miss Felicia during the last two years
+had, indeed, become a habit. The major affairs of life it might be both
+useless and unwise to submit to her judgment. She lost her way in them,
+fluttering ineffectual, gently hurried and bird-like. But, in life's
+minor affairs, her innocent enthusiasm was invaluable as an encouraging
+asset. It lent point and interest to happenings and occupations otherwise
+trivial or monotonous. If silly at times, she never was
+stupid--distinction of meaning and moment.--A blameless creature,
+incapable of thinking, still more of speaking, evil of the worst or
+weakest, her inherent goodness washed about you like sun-warmed water, if
+sterile yet translucently pure.
+
+And so the months accumulated. The clear colours of spring ripened to the
+hotter gamut of mid-summer, to an August splendour of ripening harvest in
+field, orchard and hedgerow, and thence to the purple, russet and gold of
+autumn. The birds, their nesting finished, ceased from song, as the
+active care of hungry fledglings grew on them. The swallows had gathered
+for their southern flight, and the water-fowl returned from their
+northern immigration to the waters and reed-beds of the Haven, Sir
+Charles Verity's book, in two handsome quarto volumes, had been duly
+reviewed and found a place of honour in every library, worth the name, in
+the United Kingdom, before anything of serious importance occurred
+directly affecting our maiden. Throughout spring, summer and the first
+weeks of autumn, she marked time merely. Her activities and emotions--in
+as far, that is, as outward expression of these last went--were
+vicarious, those of others. She glowed over and gloried in the triumph of
+her father's book, it is true, but it was his adventure, after all,
+rather than her own.
+
+Then suddenly, as is the way with life, events crowded on one
+another, the drama thickened, sensation was tuned to a higher pitch.
+And it all began, not unludicrously, through the praiseworthy, if
+rather ill-timed moral indignation of Canon Horniblow's newly
+installed curate, Reginald Sawyer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+RECALLING, IN SOME PARTICULARS, THE EASIEST RECORDED THEFT IN
+HUMAN HISTORY
+
+
+He was short, neat, spectacled, in manner prompt and perky, in age under
+thirty, a townsman by birth and education, hailing from Midlandshire.
+Further, a strong advocate of organization, and imbued with the deepest
+respect for the obligations and prerogatives of his profession upon the
+ethical side. He took himself very seriously; and so took, also, the
+decalogue as delivered to mankind amid the thunders of Sinai. Keep the
+Ten Commandments, according to the letter, and you may confidently expect
+all things, spiritual and temporal, to be added unto you--such was the
+basis of his teaching and of his private creed.
+
+He came to Deadham ardent for the reformation of that remote, benighted
+spot, so disgracefully, as he feared--and rather hoped--behind the times.
+He suspected its canon-vicar of being very much too easy-going; and its
+population, in respect of moral conduct, of being lamentably lax. In
+neither of which suppositions, it must be admitted, was he altogether
+incorrect. But he intended to alter all that!--Regarding himself thus, in
+the light of a providentially selected new broom, he applied himself
+diligently to sweep. A high-minded and earnest, if not conspicuously
+well-bred young man, he might in a suburban parish have done excellent
+work. But upon Deadham, with its enervating, amorous climate and queer
+inheritance of forest and seafaring--in other words poaching and
+smuggling--blood, he was wasted, out of his element and out of touch. The
+slow moving South Saxon cocked a shrewd sceptical eye at him, sized him
+up and down and sucked in its cheek refusing to be impressed. While by
+untoward accident, his misfortune rather than his fault, the earliest of
+his moral sweepings brought him into collision with the most reactionary
+element in the community, namely the inhabitants of the black cottages
+upon the Island.
+
+The event fell out thus. The days shortened, the evenings lengthened
+growing misty and secret as October advanced. The roads became plashy and
+rutted, the sides of them silent with fallen leaves under foot. An odd
+sense of excitement flickers through such autumn twilights. Boys herded
+in little troops on wickedness intent. Whooping and whistling to disarm
+their elders' suspicion until the evil deed should be fairly within
+reach, then mum as mice, stealthily vanishing, becoming part and parcel
+of the earth, the hedge, the harsh dusky grasses of the sand-hills, the
+foreshore lumber on the beach.
+
+Late one afternoon, the hour of a hidden sunset, Reginald Sawyer called
+at The Hard; and to his eminent satisfaction--for social aspirations were
+by no means foreign to him--was invited to remain to tea. The
+ladies--Damaris and Miss Felicia--were kind, the cakes and cream
+superlative. He left in high feather; and, at Damaris' suggestion, took a
+short cut through the Wilderness and by a path crossing the warren to the
+lane, leading up from the causeway, which joins the high-road just
+opposite the post office and Mrs. Doubleday's shop. By following this
+route he would save quite half a mile on his homeward journey; since the
+Grey House, where he enjoyed the Miss Minetts' assiduous and genteel
+hospitality, is situate at the extreme end of Deadham village on the road
+to Lampit.
+
+Out on the warren, notwithstanding the hour and the mist, it was still
+fairly light, the zigzagging sandy path plainly visible between the
+heath, furze brakes, stunted firs and thorn bushes. The young clergyman,
+although more familiar with crowded pavements and flare of gas-lamps than
+open moorland in the deepening dusk, pursued his way without difficulty.
+What a wild region it was though! He thought of the sober luxury of the
+library at The Hard, the warmth, the shaded lights, the wealth of books;
+of the grace of Damaris' clothing and her person, and wondered how
+people of position and education could be content to live in so out of
+the way and savage a spot. It was melancholy to a degree, in his
+opinion.--Oh! well, he must do his best to wake it up, infuse a spirit of
+progress into it more in keeping with nineteenth-century ideas. Everyone
+would be grateful to him--
+
+A little questioning pause--assurance in momentary eclipse. Then with
+renewed cheerfulness--Of course they would--the upper classes, that is.
+For they must feel the disadvantages of living in such a back-water. He
+gave them credit for the wish to advance could they but find the way.
+All they needed was leadership, which Canon Horniblow--evidently past
+his work--was powerless to supply. He, Sawyer, came as a pioneer. Once
+they grasped that fact they would rally to him. The good Miss Minetts
+were rallying hard, so to speak, already. Oh! there was excellent
+material in Deadham among the gentlefolk. It merely needed working,
+needed bringing out.
+
+From the lower, the wage-earning class, sunk as it was in ignorance, he
+must, he supposed, expect but a poor response, opposition not impossibly.
+Opposition would not daunt him. You must be prepared to do people good,
+if not with, then against their will. He was here to make them rebel
+against and shake off the remnants of the Dark Ages amid which they so
+extraordinarily appeared still to live. He had no conception so low a
+state of civilization could exist within little over a hundred miles of
+the metropolis!--It was a man's work, anyhow, and he must put his back
+into it. Must organize--word of power--organize night classes, lectures
+with lantern slides, social evenings, a lads' club. Above all was there
+room and necessity for this last. The Deadham lads were very rowdy, very
+unruly. They gathered at corners in an objectionable manner; hung about
+the public-house. He must undersell the public-house by offering counter
+attractions. Amongst the men he suspected a sad amount of drinking. Their
+speech, too, was so reprehensibly coarse. He had heard horrible language
+in the village street. He reproved the offenders openly, as was his duty,
+and his admonitions were greeted with a laugh, an insolent, offensive,
+jeering laugh.
+
+Sawyer cut at the dark straggling furzes bordering the path with his
+walking-stick. Recollection of that laugh made him go red about the ears;
+made his skin tingle and his eyes smart. It represented an insult not
+only to himself but to his cloth. Yet he'd not lost control of himself,
+he was glad to remember, though the provocation was rank--
+
+He cut at the furze again, being by nature combative. And--stopped short,
+with a start, a tremor running through him. Something rustled, scuttled
+away amongst the bushes, and something flapped upward behind him into the
+thick lowering sky above. A wailing cry--whether human, or of bird or
+beast, he was uncomfortably ignorant--came out of the mist ahead, to be
+answered by a like and nearer cry from a spot which he failed, in his
+agitation, to locate.
+
+Under ordinary conditions the young cleric was neither troubled by
+imagination nor lacking in pluck. His habitual outlook was sensible,
+literal and direct. But, it must be owned, this wide indistinct
+landscape, over which pale vapours trailed and brooded, the immense
+loneliness of the felt rather than seen, expanse of water, marsh and
+mud-flat of the Haven--the tide being low--along with the goblin
+whispering chuckle of the river speeding seaward away there on his left,
+made him oddly jumpy and nervous. No human being was in sight, neither
+did any human dwelling show signs of habitation. He wished he had gone
+round by the road and through the length of the village. He registered a
+vow against short cuts--save in broad daylight--for his present
+surroundings inspired him with the liveliest distrust. They were to him
+positively nightmarish. He suffered the nastiest little fears of what
+might follow him, what might, even now, peer and lurk. Heretofore he had
+considered the earth as so much dead matter, to be usefully and
+profitably exploited by all-dominant man--specially by men of his own
+creed and race. But now the power of the earth laid hands on him. She
+lived, and mankind dwindled to the proportions of parasitic insects, at
+most irritating some small portions of her skin, her vast indifferent
+surface. Such ideas had never occurred to him before. He resented
+them--essayed to put them from him as trenching on blasphemy.
+
+Starting on again, angry alike with himself for entertaining, and with
+the unknown for engendering, such subversive notions, his pace
+unconsciously quickened to a run. But the line of some half-dozen ragged
+Scotch firs, which here topped the low cliff bordering the river, to his
+disordered vision seemed most uncomfortably to run alongside him,
+stretching gaunt arms through the encircling mist to arrest his flight.
+
+He regarded them with an emotion of the liveliest antipathy; consciously
+longing, meanwhile, for the humming thoroughfares of his native
+industrial town, for the rattle and grind of the horse-trams, the
+brightly lighted shop-fronts, the push all about him of human labour, of
+booming trade and vociferous politics. Even the glare of a gin palace,
+flooding out across the crowded pavement at some street corner, would
+have, just now, been fraught with solace, convinced prohibitionist though
+he was. For he would, at least, have been in no doubt how to feel towards
+that stronghold of Satan--righteously thanking God he was not as those
+reprehensible others, who passed in and out of its ever-swinging doors.
+While towards this earth dominance, this dwarfing of human life by the
+life of things he had hitherto called inanimate, he did not know how to
+feel at all. It attacked some unarmoured, unprotected part of him.
+Against its assault he was defenceless.
+
+With a sense of escape from actual danger, whether physical or moral he
+did not stay to enquire, he stumbled, a few minutes later, through a gap
+in the earth-bank into the wet side lane. Arrived, he gave himself a
+moment's breathing space. It was darker here than out upon the warren;
+but, anyhow, this was a lane. It had direction and meaning. Men had
+constructed it for the linking up of house with house, hamlet with
+hamlet. Like all roads, it represented the initial instinct of communal
+life, the basis of a reasoned social order, of civilization in short.
+He walked forward over the soft couch of fallen, water-soaked leaves,
+his boots squelching at times into inches of sucking mud, and his
+spirits rose. He began to enter into normal relations both with himself
+and with things in general. A hundred yards or so and the village green
+would be reached.
+
+Then on his left, behind an ill-kept quick-set hedge that guarded a strip
+of garden and orchard, he became aware of movement. Among the apple trees
+three small figures shuffled about some dark recumbent object. For the
+most part they went on all fours, but at moments reared up on their hind
+legs. Their action was at once silent, stealthy and purposeful. Our young
+clergyman's shortness of sight rendered their appearance the more
+peculiar. His normal attitude was not so completely restored, moreover,
+but that they caused him another nervous tremor. Then he grasped the
+truth; while the detective, latent in every moralist, sprang to
+attention. Here were criminals to be brought to justice, criminals caught
+red-handed. Reginald Sawyer, having been rather badly scared himself,
+lusted--though honestly ignorant of any personal touch in the matter--to
+very badly scare others.
+
+Standing back beside the half-open gate, screened by the hedge, here high
+and straggling, he awaited the psychological moment, ready to pounce. To
+enter the orchard and confront these sinners with their crime, if their
+activities did by chance happen to be legitimate, was to put himself
+altogether in the wrong. He would bide his time, would let them conclude
+their--in his belief--nefarious business and challenge them as they
+passed out.
+
+Nor had he long to wait. The two smaller boys, breathing hard, hoisted
+the bulging, half-filled sack on to the back of their bigger
+companion; who, bowed beneath its weight, grunting with exertion,
+advanced towards the exit.
+
+Sawyer laid aside his walking-stick, and, as the leader of the procession
+came abreast of him, pounced. But missed his aim. Upon which the boy cast
+down the sack, from the mouth of which apples, beets, turnips rolled into
+the road; and, with a yelp, bolted down the lane towards the causeway,
+leaving his accomplices to their fate. These, thrown into confusion by
+the suddenness of his desertion, hesitated and were lost. For, pouncing
+again, and that the more warily for his recent failure, Sawyer collared
+one with either hand.
+
+They were maladorous children; and the young clergyman, grasping woollen
+jersey-neck and shirt-band, the backs of his hands in contact with the
+backs of their moist, warm, dirty little necks, suffered disgust, yet
+held them the more firmly.
+
+"I am convinced you have no right to that fruit or to those vegetables.
+You are stealing. Give an account of yourselves at once."
+
+And he shook them slightly to emphasize his command. One hung on his
+hand, limp as a rag. The other showed fight, kicking our friend liberally
+about the shins, with hobnailed boots which did, most confoundly, hurt.
+
+"You lem' me go," he cried. "Lem' me go, or I'll tell father, and first
+time you come along by our place 'e'll set the ratting dawgs on to you.
+Our ole bitch 'as got 'er teeth yet. She'll bite. Ketch the fleshy part
+of your leg, she will, and just tear and bite."
+
+This carrying of war into the enemy's country proved as disconcerting as
+unexpected, while to mention the sex of an animal was, in Reginald
+Sawyer's opinion, to be guilty of unpardonable coarseness. The atmosphere
+of a Protestant middle-class home clung to him yet, begetting in him a
+squeamishness, not to say prudery, almost worthy of his hostesses, the
+Miss Minetts. He shook the culprits again, with a will. He also blushed.
+
+"If you were honest you would be anxious to give an account of
+yourselves," he asserted, ignoring the unpleasant matter of the dogs. "I
+am afraid you are very wicked boys. You have stolen these vegetables and
+fruits. Thieves are tried by the magistrates, you know, and sent to
+prison. I shall take you to the police-station. There the constable will
+find means to make you confess."
+
+Beyond provoking a fresh paroxysm of kicking, these adjurations were
+without result. His captives appeared equally impervious to shame,
+contrition or alarm. They remained obstinately mute. Whereupon it began
+to dawn upon their captor that his position risked becoming not a little
+invidious, since the practical difficulty of carrying his threats into
+execution was so great. How could he haul two sturdy, active children,
+plus a sack still containing a goodly quantity of garden produce, some
+quarter of a mile without help? To let them go, on the other hand, was
+to have them incontinently vanish into those trailing whitish vapours
+creeping over the face of the landscape. And, once vanished, they were
+lost to him, since he knew neither their names nor dwelling place; and
+could, with no certainty, identify them, having seen them only in the
+act of struggle and in this uncertain evening light. He felt himself
+very nastily planted on the horns of a dilemma, when on a sudden there
+arrived help.
+
+A vehicle of some description turned out of the main road and headed
+down the lane.
+
+Laocoön-like, flanked on either hand by a writhing youthful figure,
+Reginald Sawyer called aloud:
+
+"Hi!--Stop, there--pray, stop."
+
+Darcy Faircloth lighted down out of a ramshackle Marychurch station fly,
+and advanced towards the rather incomprehensible group.
+
+"What's happened? What's the matter?" he said. "What on earth do you want
+with those two youngsters?"
+
+"I want to convey them to the proper authorities," Sawyer answered, with
+all the self-importance he could muster. He found his interlocutor's
+somewhat abrupt and lordly manner at once annoying and impressive, as
+were his commanding height and rather ruffling gait. "These boys have
+been engaged in robbing a garden. I caught them in the act, and it is my
+duty to see that they pay the penalty of their breach of the law. I count
+on your assistance in taking them to the police-station."
+
+"You want to give them in charge?"
+
+"What else?--The moral tone of this parish is, I grieve to say,
+very low."
+
+Sawyer talked loud and fast in the effort to assert himself.
+
+"Low and coarse," he repeated. "Both as a warning to others, and in
+the interests of their own future, an example must be made of these
+two lads."
+
+"Must it?" Faircloth said, towering above him in the pale
+bewildering mist.
+
+The little boys, who had remained curiously and rather dangerously still
+since the advent of this stranger, now strained together, signalling,
+whispering. Sawyer shook them impatiently apart.
+
+"Steady there, please," Faircloth put in sharply. "It strikes me you take
+a good deal upon yourself. May I ask who you are?"
+
+"I am the assistant priest," Reginald began. But his explanation was cut
+short by piping voices.
+
+"It's Cap'en Darcy, that's who it is. We never meant no 'arm, Cap'en.
+That we didn't. The apples was rotting on the ground, s'h'lp me if they
+wasn't. Grannie Staples was took to the Union last Wednesday fortnight,
+and anyone's got the run of her garden since. Don't you let the new
+parson get us put away, Cap'en. We belongs to the Island--I'm William
+Jennifer's Tommy, please Cap'en, and 'e's Bobby Sclanders 'e is."
+
+And being cunning, alike by nature and stress of circumstance, they
+pathetically drooped, blubbering in chorus:
+
+"We never didn't mean no 'arm, Cap'en. Strike me dead if we did."
+
+At which last implied profanity Reginald Sawyer shuddered, loosening
+his grasp.
+
+Of what followed he could subsequently give no definite account. The
+dignities of his sacred profession and his self-respect alike reeled
+ignominiously into chaos. He believed he heard the person, addressed as
+Captain Darcy, say quietly:
+
+"Cut it, youngsters. Now's your chance."
+
+He felt that both the children violently struggled, and that the round
+hard head of one of them butted him in the stomach. He divined that
+sounds of ribald laughter, in the distance, proceeded from the driver
+of the Marychurch station fly. He knew two small figures raced whooping
+down the lane attended by squelchings of mud and clatter of heavy
+soled boots.
+
+Knew, further, that Captain Darcy, after nonchalantly picking up the
+sack, dropping it within the garden hedge and closing the rickety gate,
+stood opposite him and quite civilly said:
+
+"I am sorry I could not give you the sort of assistance, sir, which you
+asked. But the plan would not have worked."
+
+Sawyer boiled over.
+
+"You have compounded a felony and done all that lay in your power to
+undermine my authority with my parishioners. Fortunately I retain the
+boys' names and can make further enquiries. This, however, by no means
+relieves you of the charge of having behaved with reprehensible levity
+both towards my office and myself."
+
+"No--no," Faircloth returned, goodnaturedly. "Sleep upon it, and you will
+take an easier view of the transaction. I have saved you from putting
+unmerited disgrace upon two decent families and getting yourself into hot
+water up to the neck. I know these Deadham folk better than you do. I'm
+one of them, you see, myself. They've uncommonly long memories where
+they're offended, though it may suit them to speak you soft. Take it from
+me, you'll never hound them into righteousness. They turn as stubborn as
+so many mules under the whip."
+
+He hailed the waiting flyman.
+
+"Good evening to you, sir," he said. And followed by the carriage, piled
+with sea-chest and miscellaneous baggage, departed into the
+mysteriousness of deepening dusk.
+
+Had the young clergyman been willing to leave it at that, all might yet
+have been well, his ministry at Deadham a prolonged and fruitful one,
+since his intentions, at least, were excellent. But, as ill-luck would
+have it, while still heated and sore, every feather on end, his natural
+combativeness almost passionately on top, turning out in the high-road he
+encountered Dr. Cripps, faring westward like himself on the way to visit
+a patient at Lampit. The two joined company, falling into a conversation
+the more confidential that the increasing darkness gave them a sense of
+isolation and consequent intimacy.
+
+Of all his neighbours, the doctor--a peppery disappointed man, struggling
+with a wide-strewn country practice mainly prolific of bad debts,
+conscious of his own inefficiency and perpetually smarting under imagined
+injuries and slights--was the very last person to exercise a mollifying
+influence upon Sawyer in his existing angry humour. The latter recounted
+and enlarged upon the insults he had just now suffered. His hearer fanned
+the flame of indignation with comment and innuendo--recognized Faircloth
+from the description, and proceeded to wash his hands in scandalous
+insinuation at the young sea-captain's expense.
+
+For example, had not an eye to business dictated the sheltering from
+justice of those infant, apple-stealing reprobates? Their respective
+fathers were good customers! The islanders all had the reputation of hard
+drinkers--and an innkeeper hardly invites occasion to lower his receipts.
+The inn stood in old Mrs. Faircloth's name, it is true; but the son
+profited, at all events vicariously, by its prosperity. A swaggering
+fellow, with an inordinate opinion of his own ability and merits; but in
+that he shared a family failing. For arrogance and assumption the whole
+clan was difficult to beat.
+
+"You have heard whose son this young Faircloth is, of course?"
+
+Startled by the question, and its peculiar implication, Reginald Sawyer
+hesitatingly admitted his ignorance.
+
+The Grey House stands flush with the road, and the two gentlemen finished
+their conversation upon the doorstep. Above them a welcoming glow shone
+through the fanlight; otherwise its windows were shuttered and blank.
+
+"This is a matter of common knowledge," Dr. Cripps said; "but one about
+which, for reasons of policy, or, more truly, of snobbery, it is the
+fashion to keep silent. So, for goodness' sake, don't give me as your
+authority if you should ever have occasion to speak of it"--
+
+And lowering his voice he mentioned a name.
+
+"As like as two peas," he added, "when you see them side by side--which,
+in point of fact, you never do. Oh! I promise you the whole dirty
+business has been remarkably well engineered--hush-money, I suppose.
+Sometimes I am tempted to think poverty is the only punishable sin in
+this world. For those who have a good balance at their bankers there is
+always a safe way out of even the most disgraceful imbroglios of this
+sort. But I must be moving on, Mr. Sawyer. I sympathize with your
+annoyance. You have been very offensively treated. Good night."
+
+The young clergyman remained planted on the doorstep, incapable of
+ringing the bell and presenting himself to his assiduously attentive
+hostesses, the Miss Minetts, for the moment.
+
+He was, in truth, indescribably shocked. Deadham presented itself to
+his mind as a place accursed, a veritable sink of iniquity. High and
+low alike, its inhabitants were under condemnation.--And he had so
+enjoyed his tea with the ladies at The Hard. Had been so flattered by
+their civility, spreading himself in the handsome room, agreeably
+sensible of its books, pictures, ornaments, and air of cultured
+leisure.--While behind all that, as he now learned, was this glaring
+moral delinquency! Never had he been more cruelly deceived. He felt
+sick with disgust. What callousness, what hypocrisy!--He recalled his
+disquieting sensations in crossing the warren. Was the very soil of
+this place tainted, exhaling evil?
+
+He made a return upon himself. For what, after all, was he here for save
+to let in light and combat evil, to bring home the sense of sin to the
+inhabitants of this place, convincing them of the hatefulness of the
+moral slough in which they so revoltingly wallowed. He must slay and
+spare not. He saw himself as David, squaring up to Goliath, as Christian
+fighting single-handed against the emissaries of Satan who essayed to
+defeat his pilgrimage. Yes, he would smite these lawbreakers hip and
+thigh, whatever their superficial claims to his respect, whatever their
+worldly position. He would read them all a lesson--that King Log, Canon
+Horniblow, included.
+
+He at once pitied and admired himself, not being a close critic of
+his own motives; telling himself he did well to be angry, while
+ignoring the element of personal pique which gave point and
+satisfaction to that anger.
+
+He was silent and reserved with the Miss Minetts at supper; and retired
+early to his own room to prepare a sermon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BROTHER AND SISTER
+
+
+Upon the Sunday morning following, Damaris went to the eleven o'clock
+service alone. Miss Felicia Verity attended church at an earlier hour
+to-day, partly in the interests of private devotion, partly in those of a
+person she had warmly befriended in the past, and wanted to befriend in
+the present--but with delicacy, with tact and due consideration for the
+susceptibilities of others. She wished earnestly to effect a
+reconciliation; but not to force it. To force it was to endanger its
+sincerity and permanence. It should seem to come about lightly,
+naturally. Therefore did she go out early to perfect her plans--of which
+more hereafter--as well as to perform her religious duties. Sir Charles
+Verity was from home, staying with Colonel Carteret for partridge
+shooting, over the Norfolk stubble-fields. The habit of this annual visit
+had, for the last two seasons, been in abeyance; but now, with his return
+to The Hard, was pleasantly revived, although this autumn, owing to
+business connected with the publication of his book, the visit took place
+a few weeks later than usual.
+
+Hence did Damaris--arrayed in a russet-red serge gown, black velvet
+collar and cuffs to its jacket of somewhat manly cut, and a russet-red
+upstanding plume in her close-fitting black velvet hat--set forth alone
+to church. This, after redirecting such letters as had arrived for her
+father by the morning post. One of them bore the embossed arms of the
+India Office, and signature of the, then, Secretary of State for that
+department in the corner of the envelope. She looked at it with a measure
+of respect and curiosity, wondering as to the purport of its contents.
+She studied the envelope, turning it about in the hope of gleaning
+enlightenment from its external aspect. Still wondering, slightly
+oppressed even by a persuasion--of which she could not rid herself--that
+it held matters of no common moment closely affecting her father, she
+went out of the house, down the sheltered drive, and through the entrance
+gates. Here, as she turned inland, the verve of the clear autumn morning
+rushed on her, along with a wild flurry of falling leaves dancing to the
+breath of the crisp northerly breeze.
+
+A couple of fine days, with a hint of frost in the valley by night, after
+a spell of soft mists and wet, sent the leaves down in fluttering
+multitudes, so that now all trees, save the oaks only, were bare.
+These--by which the road is, just here, overhung--still solidly clothed
+in copper, amber and--matching our maiden's gown--in russet-red, offered
+sturdy defiance to the weather. The sound of them, a dry crowded
+rustling, had a certain note of courage and faithfulness in it which
+caused Damaris to wait awhile and listen; yet a wistfulness also, since
+to her hearing a shudder stirred beneath its bravery, preluding the
+coming rigours of winter.
+
+And that wistfulness rather strangely enlarged its meaning and area, as
+the reiterated ting, tang, tong of Deadham's church bells recalled the
+object of her walk. For English church services, of the parochial variety
+such as awaited her, had but little, she feared, to give. Little, that
+is, towards the re-living of those instants of exalted spiritual
+perception which had been granted to her at distant Avila.
+
+In overstrained and puritanic dread of idolatory, the English Church has
+gone lamentably far to forfeit its sacramental birthright. It savours too
+strongly of the school and class-room, basing its appeal upon words, upon
+spoken expositions, instructive no doubt, but cold, academic. It offers
+no tangible object of worship to sight or sense. Its so-called altars are
+empty. Upon them no sacrifice is offered, no presence abidingly dwells.
+In its teaching the communion of saints and forgiveness of sins are
+phrases rather than living agencies. Its atmosphere is self-conscious,
+its would-be solemnity forced.--This, in any case, was how Damaris saw
+the whole matter--though, let us hasten to add, she was modest enough to
+question whether the fault might not very well be in herself rather than
+in our national variant of the Christian Faith. Many sweet, good
+persons--dear Aunt Felicia among them--appeared to find Anglican
+ministrations altogether sufficient for their religious needs. But to
+Damaris those ministrations failed to bring any moment of vision, of
+complete detachment. She must be to blame, she supposed--which was
+discouraging, a little outcasting and consequently sad.
+
+In a somewhat pensive spirit she therefore, pursued her way, until, where
+the prospect widened as she reached the village green, a larger sky
+disclosed itself flaked with light cirrus cloud. This glory of space, and
+the daring northerly breeze blowing out from it, sent her fancy flying.
+It beckoned to journeyings, to far coasts and unknown seas--an offshore
+wind, filling the sails of convoys outward bound. And, with the thought
+of ships upon the sea, came the thought of Darcy Faircloth, and that with
+sharp revolt against the many existing hindrances to his and her
+intercourse. Freedom seemed abroad this morning. Even the leaves declared
+for liberty, courting individual adventure upon the wings of that daring
+wind. And this sense of surrounding activity worked upon Damaris, making
+her doubly impatient of denials and arbitrary restraints. She sent her
+soul after Darcy Faircloth across the waste of waters, fondly, almost
+fiercely seeking him. But her soul refused to travel, curiously turning
+homeward again, as though aware not the prodigious fields of ocean, nor
+any loud-voiced foreign port of call, held knowledge of him, but rather
+the immediate scene, the silver-glinting levels of the Haven and lonely
+stone-built inn.
+
+Deadham church, originally a chapelry of Marychurch Abbey, crowns a green
+monticule in the centre of Deadham village, backed by a row of big
+elms.--A wide, low-roofed structure, patched throughout the course of
+centuries beyond all unity and precision of design; yet still showing
+traces of Norman work in the arch of the belfry and in the pillars
+supporting the rafters of the middle aisle. At the instance of a former
+vicar, the whole interior received a thick coat of whitewash, alike over
+plaster and stone. This, at the time in question, had been in places
+scraped off, bringing to light some mural paintings of considerable
+interest and antiquity.
+
+In the chancel, upon the gospel side, is a finely-carved tomb, with
+recumbent figures of an armoured knight and richly-robed lady, whose
+slippered feet push against the effigy of a particularly alert,
+sharp-muzzled little hound. The two front pews, in the body of the
+church, at the foot of the said tomb, are allotted to the owner and
+household at The Hard. The slender, lively little hound and the two
+sculptured figures lying, peaceful in death, for ever side by side,
+touched and captivated Damaris from the first time she set eyes on them.
+She reverenced and loved them, weaving endless stories about them when,
+in the tedium of prayer or over-lengthy sermon, her attention, all too
+often, strayed.
+
+This morning the three bells jangled altogether as she reached the
+churchyard gate. Then the smallest tolled alone, hurrying stragglers. She
+was indeed late, the bulk of the congregation already seated, the Canon
+at the reading-desk and Mrs. Horniblow wheezing forth a voluntary upon
+the harmonium, when she walked up the aisle.
+
+But, during her brief passage, Damaris could not but observe the
+largeness of the assembly. An uncommon wave of piety must have swept over
+the parish this morning! The Battyes and Taylors were present in force.
+Farmers and tradespeople mustered in impressive array. Even Dr.
+Cripps--by no means a frequent churchgoer--and his forlorn-looking,
+red-eyed little wife were there. The Miss Minetts had a lady with them--a
+plump, short little person, dressed with attempted fashion, whose back
+struck Damaris as quaintly familiar, she catching a glimpse of it in
+passing. Most surprising of all, William Jennifer headed a contingent
+from the Island, crowding the men's free seats to right and left of the
+west door. An expectancy, moreover, seemed to animate the throng. Then
+she remembered, the new curate, Reginald Sawyer, had informed her and
+Miss Felicia two evenings ago when he had called and been bidden to stay
+to tea, that he would preach for the first time at the eleven o'clock
+service. So far he had only occupied the pulpit on Sunday afternoons,
+when a country congregation is liable to be both scanty and somnolent.
+To-day he would prove himself before the heads of tribes, before the
+notables. And Damaris wished him well, esteeming him a worthy young man,
+if somewhat provincial and superfluously pompous.
+
+In the servants' pew directly behind, Mary and Mrs. Cooper were duly
+ensconced, supported by Mr. Patch, two small male Patches, white-collared
+and shining with excess of cleanliness, wedged in between him and his
+stable sub-ordinate Conyers, the groom. The Hard thus made a commendably
+respectable show, as Damaris reflected with satisfaction.
+
+She stood, she knelt, her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the
+tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog
+serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and
+droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The
+choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch.
+And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting
+excursions right and left. For half-way through the litany some belated
+worshipper arrived, causing movement in the men's free seats. This oddly
+disturbed her. Her mind flew again to Faircloth, and the strange
+impression of her own soul's return declaring this and no other to be his
+actual neighbourhood. And if it indeed were so?--Damaris thrust back the
+emotions begotten of that question, as unpermissibly stormy at this time
+and in this place.
+
+She tried to fix her thoughts wholly upon the office. But, all too soon
+they sprang aside again, now circling about the enigmatic back beheld in
+the Miss Minetts' pew. Of whom did that round, dressy little form remind
+her? Why--why--of Theresa, of course. Not Theresa, genius and saint of
+Spanish Avila; but Theresa Bilson, her sometime governess-companion of
+doubtfully amiable memory. She longed to satisfy herself, but could only
+do so by turning round and looking squarely--a manoeuvre impossible
+during the prayers, but which might be accomplished later, when the
+congregation rose to sing the hymn before the sermon.
+
+She must wait. And during that waiting light, rather divertingly, broke
+in on her. For supposing her belief as to the lady's identity correct,
+must not dear Aunt Felicia be party to this resurrection? Had not she
+known, and stolen forth this morning to perfect some innocent plot of
+peace-making? In furtherance of which she now cunningly remained at home,
+thus leaving Damaris free to offer renewal of favour or withhold it as
+she pleased. Was not that deliciously characteristic of Aunt Felicia and
+her permanent effort to serve two masters--to make everybody happy, and,
+regardless of conflicting interests, everybody else too?--Well, Damaris
+was ready to fulfil her wishes. She bore Theresa no ill-will. An
+inclination to grudge or resentment seemed to her unworthy. Whatever
+Theresa's tiresomenesses, they were over and done with, surely, quite
+immensely long ago.
+
+The hymn given out and the tune of it played through, the assembly
+scraped and rustled to its feet. Damaris standing, in height overtopping
+her neighbours, discreetly turned her head. Let her eyes rest an instant,
+smiling, upon the upturned polished countenances of the two small
+Patches--shyly watching her--and then seek a more distant goal. Yes,
+veritably Theresa Bilson in the flesh--very much in the flesh, full of
+face and plump of bosom, gold-rimmed glasses gleaming, her mouth opened
+wide in song. It was a little astonishing to see her so unchanged. For
+how much had happened since the day of that choir-treat, at Harchester,
+which marked her deposition, the day of Damaris' sleep in the sunshine
+and awakening in the driving wet out on the Bar.--The day wherein so much
+began, and so much ended, slashed across and across with an extravagance
+of lasting joy and lasting pain!--In the sense of it all Damaris lost
+herself a little, becoming forgetful of her existing situation. She
+looked past, over Theresa and beyond.
+
+At the extreme end of the church, in the last of the free seats where
+the light from the west door streamed inward, a man's figure detached
+itself with singular distinctness from the background of whitewashed
+wall. He, too, overtopped his fellows, and that by several inches. And
+from the full length of the building, across the well-filled benches, his
+glance sought and met that of Damaris, and held it in fearless, high
+security of affection not to be gainsaid.
+
+The nice, clean-shining little Patches, still watching shyly out of their
+brown, glossy, mouse-like eyes, to their extreme mystification saw the
+colour flood Damaris' face, saw her lips tremble and part as in prelude
+to happy speech. Then saw her grow very pale, and, turning away, clutch
+at the head of the alert little hound. Mrs. Cooper delivered herself of a
+quite audible whisper to the effect--"that Miss Damaris was took
+faint-like, as she feared." And Mary leaned forward over the front of the
+pew in quick anxiety. But our maiden's weakness was but passing. She
+straightened herself, stood tall and proudly again, looking at the knight
+and his lady lying so peacefully side by side upon their marble couch.
+She gathered them into her gladness--they somehow sympathized, she felt,
+in her present sweet and poignant joy. Her soul had known best, had been
+right in its homing--since Faircloth was here--was here.
+
+That sweet, poignant joy flooded her, so that she wordlessly gave thanks
+and praise. He was in life--more, was within sight of her, hearing the
+same sounds, breathing the same air. Across the short dividing space,
+spirit had embraced spirit. He claimed her.--Had not his will, indeed,
+far more than any curiosity regarding the identity of poor, plump little
+Theresa, compelled her to look around?
+
+She demanded nothing further, letting herself dwell in a perfection of
+content--without before or after--possible only to the pure in heart and
+to the young.
+
+The hymn concluded, Damaris knelt, while Reginald Sawyer, having mounted
+into the pulpit, read the invocation; mechanically rose from her knees
+with the rest, and disposed herself in the inner corner of the pew,
+sitting sideways so that her left hand might rest upon the carven marble
+margin of the tomb. She liked touch of it still, in the quietude of her
+great content, cherishing a pretty fancy of the knight and his lady's
+sympathy and that also of their sprightly little footstool dog.
+
+Otherwise she was deaf to outward things, deliciously oblivious, wrapped
+away sweetly within herself. Hence she quite failed to notice how
+awkwardly Sawyer stumbled, treading on the fronts of his long surplice
+when going up the pulpit stairs. How he fumbled with his manuscript as
+he flattened it out on the cushioned desk. Or how husky was his voice,
+to the point of the opening sentences being almost inaudible. The young
+clergyman suffered, indeed, so it appeared, from a painfully excessive
+fit of nervousness. All this she missed, not awakening from her state of
+blissful trance until the sermon had been under way some good five to
+ten minutes.
+
+Her awakening even then was gradual. It was also unpleasant. It began in
+vague and uneasy suspicion of something unusual and agitating toward. In
+consciousness of a hushed and strained attention, very foreign to the
+customary placid, not to say bovine, indifference of the ordinary country
+congregation. The preacher's voice was audible enough now, in good truth,
+though still under insufficient control. It roared, cracked upward,
+approaching a scream. Sentences trod on one another's heels, so rapid was
+his delivery; or bumped and jolted so overlaid was it with emphasis. He,
+dealt in ugly words, too--"lies, drunkenness, theft, profanity;" and
+worse still, "uncleanness, adultery, carnal debauchery." For not venial
+sins only, but mortal sins likewise were rife in Deadham, as he averred,
+matters of common knowledge and everyday occurrence--tolerated if not
+openly encouraged, callously winked at. The public conscience could
+hardly be said to exist, so indurated was it, so moribund through lack of
+stimulation and through neglect. Yet such wickedness, sooner or later,
+must call down the vengeance of an offended God. It would be taken upon
+these lawbreakers. Here or hereafter these evil-livers would receive the
+chastisement their deeds invited and deserved. Let no man deceive
+himself. God is just. He is also very terrible in judgment. Hell yawns
+for the impenitent.
+
+Breathless, he paused; and a subdued sigh, an instinctive shuffling of
+feet ran through the assembly.--Yet these were but generalities after
+all, often heard before, when you came to think, though seldom so
+forcibly put. Every man made liberal gift of such denunciations to his
+neighbours, rather than applied their lesson to himself. But Reginald
+Sawyer was merely gathering energy, gathering courage for more detailed
+assault. He felt nervous to the verge of collapse--a new and really
+horrible experience. His head was hot, his feet cold. The temptation
+simply and crudely to give in, bundle down the pulpit stairs and bolt,
+was contemptibly great. His eyesight played tricks on him. Below there,
+in the body of the church, the rows of faces ran together into irregular
+pink blots spread meaninglessly above the brown of the oaken pews, the
+brown, drab, and black, too, of their owners' Sunday best. Here and
+there a child's light frock or white hat intruded upon the prevailing
+neutral tints; as did, in a startling manner, Damaris Verity's
+russet-red plume and suit.
+
+Time and again, since he began his sermon, had that dash of rich colour
+drawn his reluctant attention. He recoiled from, oddly dreaded it--now
+more than ever, since to him it rather mercilessly focussed the subject
+and impending climax of his denunciatory address.
+
+The pause began to affect the waiting congregation, which stirred
+uneasily. Some one coughed. And Sawyer was a sufficiently practised
+speaker to know that, once you lose touch with an audience, it is next to
+impossible successfully to regain your ascendency over it. Unless he was
+prepared to accept ignominious defeat he must brace himself, or it would
+be too late. He abominated defeat. Therefore, summoning all his native
+combativeness, he took his own fear by the throat, straightened his
+manuscript upon the desk, and vehemently broke forth into speech.
+
+--Did his hearers deny or doubt the truth of his assertions, suppose that
+he spoke at random, or without realization of the heavy responsibility
+he incurred in advancing such accusations? They were in error, so he told
+them. He advanced no accusations which he could not justify by examples
+chosen from among themselves, from among residents in this parish. He
+would be false to his duty both to them--his present audience--and to his
+and their Creator, were he to abstain from giving those examples out of
+respect of persons. Other occupants of this pulpit might have--he feared
+had--allowed worldly considerations to influence and silence them.
+
+A nasty cut this, at the poor vicar-canon, increasingly a prey to
+distracted fidgets, sitting helpless in the chancel.
+
+But of such pusillanimity, such time-serving, he--Reginald
+Sawyer--scorned to be guilty. The higher placed the sinner, the more
+heinous the sin.--He would deal faithfully with all, since not only was
+the salvation of each one in jeopardy, but his own salvation was in peril
+likewise, inasmuch as, at the dread Last Assize, he would be required to
+give account of his stewardship in respect of this sinful place.
+
+Thus far Damaris had listened in deepening distaste. Surely the young man
+very much magnified his office, was in manner exaggerated, in matter
+aggressive and verbose? Notwithstanding its attempted solemnity and heat,
+his sermon seemed to be conventional, just a "way of talking," and a
+conceited one at that. But, as he proceeded to set forth his promised
+examples of local ill-living, distaste passed into bewilderment and
+finally into a sense of outrage, blank and absolute. He named no names,
+and wrapped his statements up in Biblical language. Yet they remained
+suggestive and significant enough. He spoke, surely, of those whose
+honour was dearest to her, whom she boundlessly loved. Under plea of
+rebuking vice, he laid bare the secrets, violated the sanctities of their
+private lives. Yet was not that incredible? All decencies of custom and
+usage forbade it, stamped such disclosure as unpermissible, fantastic. He
+must be mad, or she herself mad, mishearing, misconceiving him.
+
+"Adulterous father, bastard son--publican sheltering youthful offenders
+from healthy punishment in the interests of personal gain."--Of that last
+she made nothing, failed to follow it. But the rest?--
+
+It was true, too. But not as he represented it, all its tragic beauty,
+all the nobleness which tempered and, in a measure at least, discounted
+the great wrong of it, stripped away--leaving it naked, torn from its
+setting, without context and so without perspective. Against this not
+only her tenderness, but sense of justice, passionately fought. He made
+it monstrous and, in that far, untrue, as caricature is untrue, crying
+aloud for explanation and analysis. Yet who could explain? Circumstances
+of time and place rendered all protest impossible. Nothing could be done,
+nothing said. Thus her beloved persons were exposed, judged, condemned
+unheard, without opportunity of defence.
+
+And realizing this, realizing redress hopelessly barred, she cowered
+down, her head bowed, almost to the level of the marble couch whereon the
+figures of knight and lady reposed in the high serenity of love and
+death. Happier they than she, poor child, for her pride trailed in the
+dust, her darling romance of brother and sister and all the rare pieties
+of her heart, defiled by a shameful publicity, exposed for every Tom,
+Dick and Harry to paw over and sneer at!
+
+Horror of a crowd, which watches the infliction of some signal disgrace,
+tormented her imagination, moreover, to the temporary breaking of her
+spirit. Whether that crowd was, in the main, hostile or sympathetic
+mattered nothing. The fact that it silently sat there, silently observed,
+made every member of it, for the time, her enemy. Even the trusted
+servants just behind, comfortable comely Mary, soft Mrs. Cooper, the
+devoted Patch, were hateful to her as the rest. Their very loyalty--which
+she for no instant doubted--went only to fill the cup of her humiliation
+to the brim.
+
+Reginald Sawyer's voice continued; but what he said now she neither heard
+nor cared. Her martyrdom could hardly suffer augmentation, the whole
+world seemed against her, she set apart, pilloried.--But not alone.
+Faircloth was set apart, pilloried, also. And remembering this, her
+courage revived. The horror of the crowd lifted. For herself she could
+not fight; but for him she could fight, with strength and conviction, out
+of the greatness of her love for him, out of her recognition that the
+ignominy inflicted upon him was more bitter, more cruel, than any
+inflicted upon her. For those who dare, in a moment the worst can turn
+best.--She would make play with the freedom which this breach of
+convention, of social reticence, of moral discretion, conferred upon her.
+The preacher had gone far in demolition. She would go as far, and
+further, in construction, in restitution. Would openly acknowledge the
+bond which joined Faircloth to her and to her people, by openly claiming
+his protection now, in this hour of her disgrace and supreme dismay. She
+would offer no excuse, no apology. Only there should be no more attempted
+concealment or evasion of the truth on her part, no furtiveness in his
+and her relation. Once and for all she would make her declaration, cry it
+from the house-top in fearless yet tender pride.
+
+Damaris stood up, conspicuous in her red dress amid that rather drab
+assembly as a leaping flame. She turned about, fronting the perplexed and
+agitated congregation, her head carried high, her face austere for all
+its youthful softness, an heroic quality, something, indeed, superlative
+and grandiose in her bearing and expression, causing a shrinking in those
+who saw her and a certain sense of awe.
+
+Her eyes sought Faircloth again. Found him, and unfalteringly spoke with
+him, bidding him claim her as she, claimed him, bidding him come. Which
+bidding he obeyed; and that at the same rather splendid level of
+sentiment, worthily sustaining her abounding faith in him. For a touch of
+the heroic and superlative was present in his bearing and expression,
+also, as he came up the church between the well-filled pews--these
+tenanted, to left and right, by some who figured in his daily life,
+figured in his earliest recollections, by others, newcomers, to him, even
+by sight, barely known; yet each and all, irrespective of age, rank, and
+position, affecting his outlook and mental atmosphere in some particular,
+as every human personality does and must, with whom one's life, ever so
+transiently, is thrown. Had he had time to consider them, this cloud of
+witnesses might have proved disturbing even to his masterful will and
+steady nerve. But he had not time. There was for him--so perfectly--the
+single object, the one searching yet lovely call to answer, the one act
+to be performed.
+
+Reaching the front pew upon the gospel side, Darcy Faircloth took
+Damaris' outstretched hand. He looked her in the eyes, his own
+worshipful, ablaze at once with a great joy and a great anger; and then
+led her back, down the length of the aisle, through the west door into
+the liberty of the sunshine and the crisp northerly wind outside.
+
+Standing here, the houses and trees of the village lay below them. The
+whole glinting expanse of the Haven was visible right up to the town of
+Marychurch gathered about its long-backed Abbey, whose tower, tall and in
+effect almost spectral, showed against the purple ridges of forest and
+moorland beyond. Over the salt marsh in the valley, a flock of plovers
+dipped and wheeled, their backs and wide flapping wings black, till, in
+turning, their breasts and undersides flashed into snow and pearl.
+
+And because brother and sister, notwithstanding diversities of upbringing
+and of station, were alike children of the open rather than of cities,
+born to experiment, to travel and to seafaring round this ever-spinning
+globe, they instinctively took note of the extensive, keen though
+sun-gilded prospect--before breaking silence and giving voice to the
+emotion which possessed them--and, in so doing, found refreshment and a
+brave cleansing to their souls.
+
+Still holding Faircloth's hand, and still silent, her shoulder touching
+his now and again in walking, Damaris went down the sloping path, hoary
+lichen-stained head-and-foot stones set in the vivid churchyard grass--as
+yet unbleached by the cold of winter--on either side. The sense of his
+strength, of the fine unblemished vigour of his young manhood, here
+close beside her--so strangely her possession and portion of her natural
+inalienable heritage--filled her with confident security and with a
+restful, wondering calm. So that the shame publicly put on her to shed
+its bitterness, her horror of the watching crowd departed, fading out
+into unreality. Though still shaken, still quivering inwardly from the
+ordeal of the past hour, she already viewed that shame and horror as but
+accidents to be lived down and disregarded, by no means as essential
+elements in the adventurous and precious whole. Presently they would
+altogether lose their power to wound and to distress her, while this
+freedom and the closer union, gained by means of them, continued
+immutable and fixed.
+
+It followed that, when in opening the churchyard gate and holding it back
+for her to pass, Faircloth perforce let go her hand and, the spell of
+contact severed, found himself constrained to speak at last, saying:
+
+"You know you have done a mighty splendid, dangerous thing--no less than
+burned your boats--and that in the heat of generous impulse, blind,
+perhaps--I can't but fear so--to the heavy cost."
+
+Damaris could interrupt him, with quick, sweet defiance:
+
+"But there is no cost!"
+
+And, to drive home the sincerity of her disclaimer, and further reassure
+him, she took his hand again and held it for an instant close against her
+bosom, tears and laughter together present in her eyes.
+
+"Ah! you beautiful dear, you beautiful dear," Faircloth cried, brokenly,
+as in pain, somewhat indeed beside himself. "Before God, I come near
+blessing that blatant young fool and pharisee of a parson since he has
+brought me to this."
+
+Then he put her a little way from him, penetrated by fear lest the white
+love which--in all honour and reverence--he was bound to hold her in,
+should flush ever so faintly, red.
+
+"For, after all, it is up to me," he said, more to himself than to her,
+"to make very sure there isn't, and never--by God's mercy--shall be,
+any cost."
+
+And with that--for the avoidance of the congregation, now streaming
+rather tumultuously out of church--they went on across the village green,
+hissed at by slow waddling, hard-eyed, most conceited geese, to the lane
+which leads down to the causeway and warren skirting the river-bank.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WHEREIN MISS FELICIA VERITY CONCLUSIVELY SHOWS WHAT SPIRIT SHE IS OF
+
+
+Her attraction consisted in her transparency, in the eager simplicity
+with which she cast her home-made nets and set her innocuous springes.
+To-day Miss Felicia was out to wing the Angel of Peace, and crowd that
+celestial messenger into the arms of Damaris and Theresa Bilson
+collectively and severally. Such was the major interest of the hour. But,
+for Miss Felicia the oncoming of middle-age by no means condemned the
+lesser pleasures of life to nullity. Hence the minor interest of the hour
+centred in debate as to whether or not the thermometer justified her
+wearing a coat of dark blue silk and cloth, heavily trimmed with ruchings
+and passementerie, reaching to her feet. A somewhat sumptuous garment
+this, given her by Sir Charles and Damaris last winter in Madrid. She
+fancied herself in it greatly, both for the sake of the dear donors, and
+because the cut of it was clever, disguising the over-narrowness of her
+maypole-like figure and giving her a becoming breadth and fulness.
+
+She decided in favour of the coveted splendour; and at about a
+quarter-past twelve strolled along the carriage-drive on her way to the
+goose green and the village street. There, or thereabouts, unless her
+plot lamentably miscarried, she expected to meet her niece and that
+niece's ex-governess-companion, herded in amicable converse by the
+pinioned Angel of Peace. Her devious and discursive mind fluttered to and
+fro, meanwhile, over a number of but loosely connected subjects.
+
+Of precisely what, upon a certain memorable occasion, had taken place
+between her brother, Sir Charles, and poor Theresa--causing the latter
+to send up urgent signals of distress to which she, Miss Felicia,
+instantly responded--she still was ignorant. Theresa had, she feared,
+been just a wee bit flighty, leaving Damaris unattended while herself
+mildly gadding. But such dereliction of duty was insufficient to account
+for the arbitrary fashion in which she had been sent about her business,
+literally--the word wasn't pretty--chucked out! Miss Felicia always
+suspected there must be _something_, she would say _worse_--it sounded
+harsh--but something _more_ than merely that. Her interpretations of
+peculiar conduct were liable to run in terms of the heart. Had Theresa,
+poor thing, by chance formed a hopeless attachment?--Hopeless, of course,
+almost ludicrously so; yet what more natural, more comprehensible,
+Charles being who and what he was? Not that he would, in the faintest
+degree, lend himself to such misplaced affection. Of that he was
+incapable. The bare idea was grotesque. He, of course, was guiltless.
+But, assuming there _was_ a feeling on Theresa's side, wasn't she equally
+guiltless? She could not help being fascinated.--Thus Miss Felicia was
+bound to acquit both. Alike they left the court without a stain on their
+respective characters.
+
+Not for worlds would she ever dream of worrying Charles by attempting to
+reintroduce poor Theresa to his notice. But with Damaris it was
+different. The idea that any persons of her acquaintance were at sixes
+and sevens, on bad terms, when, with a little good will on their part
+and tactful effort upon hers, they might be on pleasant ones was to her
+actively afflicting. To drop an old friend, or even one not
+conspicuously friendly if bound to you by associations and habit,
+appeared to her an offence against corporate humanity, an actual however
+fractional lowering of the temperature of universal charity. The loss to
+one was a loss to all--in some sort. Therefore did she run to adjust, to
+smooth, to palliate.
+
+Charles was away--it so neatly happened--and Theresa Bilson here, not, it
+must be owned, altogether without Miss Felicia's connivance. If darling
+Damaris still was possessed of a hatchet she must clearly be given, this
+opportunity to bury it. To have that weapon safe underground would be,
+from every point of view, so very much nicer.
+
+At this point in her meditations beneath the trees bordering the carriage
+drive, their bare tops swaying in the breeze and bright sunshine, Miss
+Felicia fell to contrasting the present exhilarating morning with that
+dismally rainy one, just over three years ago, when--regardless of her
+sister, Mrs. Cowden's remonstrances--she had come here from Paulton Lacy
+in response to Theresa's signals of distress. Just at the elbow of the
+drive, so she remembered, she had met a quite astonishingly good-looking
+young man, brown-gold bearded, his sou'wester and oilskins shining with
+wet. She vaguely recalled some talk about him with her brother, Sir
+Charles, afterwards during luncheon.--What was it?--Oh! yes, of course,
+it was he who had rescued Damaris when she was lost out on the Bar, and
+brought her home down the tide-river by boat. She had often wanted to
+know more about him, for he struck her at the time as quite out of the
+common, quite remarkably attractive. But on the only occasion since when
+she had mentioned the subject, Damaris drew in her horns and became
+curiously uncommunicative. It was all connected, of course, with the dear
+girl's illness and the disagreeable episode of Theresa's dismissal.--How
+all the more satisfactory, then, that the Theresa business, in any case,
+was at this very hour in process of being set right! Miss Felicia had
+advised Theresa how to act--to speak to Damaris quite naturally and
+affectionately, taking her good-will for granted. Damaris would be
+charming to her, she felt convinced.
+
+Felicia Verity held the fronts of her long blue coat together, since the
+wind sported with them rather roughly, and went forward with her quick,
+wavering gait.
+
+It was a pity Damaris did not marry she sometimes felt. Of course,
+Charles would miss her quite terribly. Their love for one another was so
+delightful, so really unique. On his account she was glad.--And yet--with
+a sigh, while the colour in her thin cheeks heightened a little--lacking
+marriage a woman's life is rather incomplete. Not that she herself had
+reason for complaint, with all the affection showered upon her! The last
+two years, in particular, had been abundantly blessed thanks to Charles
+and Damaris. She admired them, dear people, with all her warm heart and
+felt very grateful to them.
+
+Here it should be registered, in passing, that the resilience of Felicia
+Verity's inherent good-breeding saved her gratitude from any charge of
+grovelling, as it saved her many enthusiasms from any charge of
+sloppiness. Both, if exaggerated, still stood squarely, even gallantly
+upon their feet.
+
+Her mind switched back to the ever fertile question of the married and
+the single state. She often wondered why Charles never espoused a second
+wife. He would have liked a son surely? But then, were it possible to
+find a fault in him, it would be that of a little coldness, a little
+loftiness in his attitude towards women. He was too far above them in
+intellect and experience, she supposed, and through all the remarkable
+military commands he had held, administrative posts he had occupied,
+quite to come down to their level. In some ways Damaris was very like
+him--clever, lofty too at moments. Possibly this accounted for her
+apparent indifference to affairs of the heart and to lovers. Anyhow, she
+had ample time before her still in relation to all that.
+
+Miss Felicia passed into the road. About fifty yards distant she saw the
+servants--Mary, Mrs. Cooper and Patch--standing close together in a
+quaint, solemn, little bunch. The two small Patches circled round the
+said bunch, patiently expectant, not being admitted evidently to whatever
+deliberations their elders and betters had in hand.
+
+Felicia Verity's relations with the servants were invariably excellent.
+Yet, finding them in mufti, outside the boundaries of her brother's
+demesne thus, she was conscious of a certain modesty, hesitating alike to
+intrude upon their confabulations and to pass onward without a trifle
+amiable of talk. She advanced, smiling, nodded to the two women, then--
+
+"A delicious day, isn't it, Patch?" she said, adding, for lack of a more
+pertinent remark--"What kind of sermon did the new curate, Mr. Sawyer,
+give you?--A good one, I hope?"
+
+A pause followed this guileless question, during which Mary looked on the
+ground, Mrs. Cooper murmured: "Oh! dear, oh, dear!" under her breath, and
+Patch swallowed visibly before finding voice to reply:
+
+"One, I regret to say, ma'am, he never ought to have preached."
+
+"Poor young man!" she laughed it off. "You're a terribly severe critic,
+I'm afraid, Patch. Probably he was nervous."
+
+"And reason enough. You might think Satan himself stood at his elbow, the
+wicked things he said."
+
+This statement, coming from the mild and cow-like Mrs. Cooper, caused
+Felicia Verity the liveliest surprise. She glanced enquiringly from one
+to the other of the little group, reading constraint and hardly repressed
+excitement in the countenance of each. Their aspect and behaviour struck
+her, in fact, as singular to the point of alarm.
+
+"Mary," she asked, a trifle breathlessly, "has anything happened? Where
+is Miss Damaris?"
+
+"Hadn't she got back to The Hard, ma'am, before you came out?"
+
+"No--why should she? You and the other servants always reach home first."
+
+"Miss Damaris went out before the rest," Mrs. Cooper broke forth in
+dolorous widowed accents. "And no wonder, pore dear young lady, was it,
+Mr. Patch? My heart bled for her, ma'am, that it did."
+
+Miss Felicia, gentle and eager, so pathetically resembling yet not
+resembling her famous brother, grew autocratic, stern as him
+almost, for once.
+
+"And you allowed Miss Damaris to leave church alone--she felt unwell,
+I suppose--none of you accompanied her? I don't understand it at
+all," she said.
+
+"Young Captain Faircloth went out with Miss Damaris. She wished it,
+ma'am," Mary declared, heated and resentful at the unmerited rebuke. "She
+as good as called to him to come and take her out of church. It wasn't
+for us to interfere, so we held back."
+
+"Captain Faircloth? But this becomes more and more extraordinary! Who is
+Captain Faircloth?"
+
+"Ah! there you touch it, you must excuse my saying, ma'am." Mrs.
+Cooper gasped.
+
+But at this juncture, Patch, rising to the height of masculine
+responsibility, flung himself gallantly--and how unwillingly--into the
+breach. He was wounded in his respect and respectability alike, wounded
+for the honour of the family whom he had so long and faithfully served.
+He was fairly cut to the quick--while these three females merely darkened
+judgment by talking all at cross purposes and all at once. Never had the
+solid, honest coachman found himself in a tighter or, for that matter, in
+anything like so tight a place. But, looking in the direction of the
+village, black of clothing, heavy of walk and figure, he espied, as he
+trusted, approaching help.
+
+"If you please, ma'am," he said, touching his black bowler as he
+spoke, "I see Canon Horniblow coming along the road. I think it would
+be more suitable for him to give you an account of what has passed.
+He'll know how to put it with--with the least unpleasantness to all
+parties. It isn't our place--Mrs. Cooper's, Mary's, or mine--if you'll
+pardon my making so free with my opinion, to mention any more of
+what's took place."
+
+Felicia Verity, now thoroughly frightened, darted forward. The fronts of
+her blue coat again flew apart, and that rich garment stood out in a
+prodigious frill around and behind her from the waist, as she leaned on
+the wind, almost running in her agitation and haste.
+
+"My dear Canon," she cried, "I am in such anxiety. I learn something has
+happened to my niece, who I had come to meet. Our good servants are so
+distractingly mysterious. They refer me to you. Pray relieve my
+uncertainty and suspense."
+
+But, even while she spoke, Miss Felicia's anxiety deepened, for the
+kindly, easy-going clergyman appeared to suffer, like the servants, from
+some uncommon shock. His large fleshy nose and somewhat pendulous
+cheeks were a mottled, purplish red. Anger and deprecation struggled in
+his glance.
+
+"I was on my way to The Hard," he began, "to express my regrets--offer my
+apologies would hardly be too strong a phrase--to your niece, Miss
+Verity, and to yourself. For I felt compelled, without any delay, to
+dissociate myself from the intemperate procedure of my colleague--of my
+curate. He has used, or rather misused, his official position, has
+grievously misused the privileges of the pulpit--the pulpit of our parish
+church--to attack the reputation of private individuals and resuscitate
+long-buried scandals."
+
+The speaker was, unquestionably, greatly distressed. Miss Felicia,
+though more than ever bewildered, felt for him warmly. It pained her
+excessively to observe how his large hands clasped and unclasped, how
+his loose lips worked.
+
+"Let me assure you," he went on, "though I trust that is superfluous--"
+
+"I am certain it is, dear Dr. Horniblow," she feelingly declared.
+
+"Thanks," he replied. "You are most kind, most indulgent to me, Miss
+Verity.--Superfluous, I would say, to assure you that my colleague
+adopted this deplorable course without my knowledge or sanction. He
+sprang it on me like a bomb-shell. As a Christian my conscience, as a
+gentleman my sense of fair play, condemns his action."
+
+"Yes--yes--I sympathize.--I am convinced you are incapable of any
+indiscretion, any unkindness, in the pulpit or out of it. But why, my
+dear Canon, apologize to us? How can this unfortunate sermon affect me or
+my niece? How can the scandal you hint at in any respect concern us?"
+
+"Because," he began, that mottling of purple increasingly deforming his
+amiable face.--And there words failed him, incontinently he stuck. He
+detested strong language, but--heavens and earth--how could he put it to
+her, as she gazed at him with startled, candid eyes, innocent of guile as
+those of a babe? Only too certainly no word had reached her of the
+truth. The good man groaned in spirit for, like Patch, he found himself
+in a place of quite unexampled tightness, and with no hope of shunting
+the immense discomfort of it on to alien shoulders such as had been
+granted the happier Patch.
+
+"Because," he began again, only to suffer renewed agony of wordlessness.
+In desperation he shifted his ground.
+
+"You have heard, perhaps, that your niece, Miss Damaris, left the church
+before the conclusion of the sermon? I do not blame her"--
+
+He waved a fatherly hand. Miss Verity acquiesced.
+
+"Or rather was led out by--by Captain Faircloth--a young officer in the
+mercantile marine, whose abilities and successful advance in his
+profession this village has every reason to respect."
+
+He broke off.
+
+"Let us walk on towards The Hard. Pray let us walk on.--Has no rumour
+ever reached you, Miss Verity, regarding this young man?"
+
+The wildest ideas flitted through Miss Felicia's brain.
+
+--The figure in shiny oilskins--yet preposterous, surely?--After all, an
+affair of the heart--misplaced affection--Damaris?--Did this account for
+the apparent indifference?
+
+--How intensely interesting; yet how unwise.--How--but she must keep her
+own counsel. The wind, now at her back, glued the blue coat
+inconveniently against and even between her legs, unceremoniously
+whisking her forward.
+
+"Rumours--oh, none," she protested.
+
+"None?" he echoed despairingly. "Pray let us walk on."
+
+A foolish urgency on his part this, she felt, since she was already
+almost on the run.
+
+"None that, by birth, Captain Faircloth is somewhat nearly related to
+your family--to your--your brother, Sir Charles, in fact?"
+
+There, the incubus was off his straining chest at last! He felt easier,
+capable of manipulating the situation to some extent, smoothing down its
+rather terrible ascerbities.
+
+"Such connections do," he hastened to add, "as we must regretfully
+admit, exist even in the highest, the most exalted circles.
+Irregularities of youth, doubtlessly deeply repented of. I repeat sins
+of youth, at which only the sinless--and they, alas! to the shame of my
+sex are lamentably few--can be qualified to cast a stone.--You, you
+follow me?"
+
+"You mean me to understand"--
+
+"Yes, yes--exactly so--to understand that this young man is
+reputed to be"--
+
+"Thank you, my dear Canon--thank you," Felicia Verity here interposed
+quickly, yet with much simple dignity, for on a sudden she became
+singularly unflurried and composed.
+
+"I do, I believe, follow you," she continued.--"You have discharged your
+difficult mission with a delicacy and consideration for which I am
+grateful; but I am unequal to discussing the subject in further detail
+just now.--To me, you know, my brother is above criticism. Whatever
+incidents may--may belong to former years, I accept without cavil or
+question, in silence--dear Dr. Horniblow--in silence. His wishes upon
+this matter--should he care to confide them to me--and those of my
+niece, will dictate my conduct to--towards my nephew, Captain
+Faircloth.--Believe me, in all sincerity, I thank you. I am very much
+indebted to you for the information you have communicated to me. It
+simplifies my position. And now," she gave him her hand, "will you pardon
+my asking you to leave me?"
+
+Walking slowly--for he felt played out, pretty thoroughly done for, as he
+put it, and beat--back to the vicarage and his belated Sunday dinner:--
+
+"And of such are the Kingdom of Heaven," James Horniblow said to
+himself--perhaps truly.
+
+He also said other things, distinctly other things, in which occurred the
+name of Reginald Sawyer whose days as curate of Deadham were numbered. If
+he did not resign voluntarily, well then, pressure must, very certainly,
+be employed to make him resign.
+
+Meanwhile that blue-coated, virginal member of the Kingdom of Heaven
+sped homeward at the top of her speed. She was conscious of immense
+upheaval. Never had she felt so alive, so on the spot. The portals of
+highest drama swung wide before her. She hastened to enter and pour forth
+the abounding treasures of her sympathy at the feet of the actors in this
+most marvellous piece. That her own part in it must be insignificant,
+probably not even a speaking one, troubled her not the least. She was out
+for them, not for herself. It was, also, characteristic of Miss Felicia
+that she felt in nowise shocked. Not the ethical, still less the social
+aspects of the drama affected her, but only its human ones. These dear
+people had suffered, and she hadn't known it. They suffered still. She
+enclosed them in arms of compassion.--If to the pure all things are pure,
+Felicia Verity's purity at this juncture radiantly stood the test. And
+that, not through puritanical shutting of the eyes or juggling with fact.
+As she declared to Canon Horniblow, she accepted the incident without
+question or cavil--for her brother. For herself, any possibility of
+stepping off the narrow path of virtue, and exploring the alluring,
+fragrant thickets disposed to left of it and to right, had never, ever so
+distantly, occurred to her.
+
+She arrived at The Hard with a bright colour and beating heart. Crossed
+the hall and waited at the drawing-room door. A man's voice was audible
+within, low-toned and grave, but very pleasant. It reminded her curiously
+of Charles--Charles long ago on leave from India, lightening the heavy
+conventionalities of Canton Magna with his brilliant, enigmatic, and--to
+her--all too fugitive presence. Harriet had never really appreciated
+Charles--though she was dazzled by his fame at intervals--didn't really
+appreciate him to this day. Well, the loss was hers and the gain
+indubitably Felicia's, since the elder sister's obtuseness had left the
+younger sister a free field.--At thought of which Felicia softly laughed.
+
+Again she listened to the man's voice--her brother Charles's delightful
+young voice. It brought back the glamour of her girlhood, of other
+voices which had mingled with his, of dances, picnics, cricket matches,
+days with the hounds. She felt strangely moved, transported; also
+strangely shy--so that she debated retirement. Did not, of course,
+retire, but went into the drawing-room with a gentle rush, a dart
+between the stumpy pillars.
+
+"I hoped that I should find you both," she said. "Yes," to Damaris'
+solemn and enquiring eyes--"I happened to meet our good, kind Canon and
+have a little conversation with him. I hope"--to Faircloth--"you and I
+may come to know one another better, know one another as friends. You are
+not going?--No, indeed, you must stay to luncheon. It would grieve
+me--and I think would grieve my brother Charles also, if you refused to
+break bread in this house."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DEALING WITH EMBLEMS, OMENS AND DEMONSTRATIONS
+
+
+Deadham resembled most country parishes in this, that, while revelling in
+internal dissensions, when attacked from without its inhabitants promptly
+scrapped every vendetta and, for the time being, stood back to back
+against the world.
+
+As one consequence of such parochial solidarity, the village gentry set
+in a steady stream towards The Hard on the Monday afternoon following
+the historic Sunday already chronicled. Commander and Mrs. Battye
+called. Captain and Mrs. Taylor called, bringing with them their
+daughter Louisa, a tight-lipped, well instructed High School mistress,
+of whom her parents stood--one couldn't but notice it--most wholesomely
+in awe. As is the youthful cuckoo in the nest of the hedge sparrow, so
+was Louisa Taylor to the authors of her being.--Mrs. Horniblow called
+also, flanked by her two girls, May and Doris--plain, thick-set,
+energetic, well-meaning young persons, whom their shrewd mother loved,
+sheltered, rallied, and cherished, while perfectly aware of their
+limitations as to beauty and to brains. Immediately behind her slipped
+in Mrs. Cripps. The doctor abstained, conscious of having put a match to
+the fuse which had exploded yesterday's astounding homiletic torpedo.
+The whole affair irritated him to the point of detestable ill-temper.
+Still, if only to throw dust in the public eye, the house of Cripps must
+be represented. He therefore deputed the job--like so many another
+ungrateful one--to his forlorn-looking and red-eyed spouse. This vote of
+confidence, if somewhat crudely proposed and seconded, was still so
+evidently sincere and kindly meant that Damaris and Miss Felicia felt
+constrained to accept it in good part.
+
+Conversation ran upon the weather, the crops, the migratory wild fowl
+now peopling the Haven, the Royal Family--invariably a favourite topic
+this, in genteel circles furthest removed from the throne--in anecdotes
+of servants and of pets interspersed with protests against the rise in
+butcher Cleave's prices, the dullness of the newspapers and the
+surprising scarcity of eggs.--Ran on any and every subject, in short,
+save that of sermons preached by curates enamoured of the Decalogue.
+
+Alone--saving and excepting Dr. Cripps--did the Miss Minetts fail to put
+in an appearance. This of necessity, since had not they, figuratively
+speaking, warmed the viper in their bosoms, cradled the assassin upon
+their hearth? They were further handicapped, in respect of any
+demonstration, by the fact of Theresa Bilson's presence in their midst.
+Owing to the general combustion, Miss Felicia and the Peace Angel's joint
+mission had gone by the wall. Theresa was still an exile from The Hard,
+and doomed to remain so as the event proved. With that remarkable
+power--not uncommon in her sex--of transmuting fact, granted the healing
+hand of time, from defeat to personal advantage, she had converted her
+repulse by Sir Charles Verity into a legend of quite flattering quality.
+She had left The Hard because--But--
+
+"She must not be asked to give chapter and verse. The position had been
+_extremely_ delicate. Even now she could barely speak of it--she had gone
+through too much. To be more explicit"--she bridled--"would trench upon
+the immodest, almost. But just _this_ she _could_ say--she withdrew from
+The Hard three years ago, because she saw withdrawal would be best for
+_others_. Their peace of mind had been her object."
+
+The above guarded confidences the Miss Minetts, hanging upon her lips,
+received with devout admiration and fully believed. And, the best of it
+was, Theresa had come by now, thanks to frequent rehearsal, fully to
+believe this version herself. At the present juncture it had its
+convenience, since she could declare her allegiance to her former
+employer unimpaired. Thereby was she at liberty to join in the local
+condemnation of Reginald Sawyer and his sermon. She did so with an
+assumption of elegant, if slightly hysterical, omniscience. This was not
+without its practical side. She regretted her inability to meet him at
+meals. In consequence the Miss Minetts proposed he should be served in
+his own sitting-room, until such time as it suited him to find another
+place of residence than the Grey House. For their allegiance went on all
+fours with Theresa's. It was also unimpaired. Propriety had been outraged
+on every hand; matters, heretofore deemed unmentionable, rushed into the
+forefront of knowledge and conversation; yet never had they actually
+enjoyed themselves so greatly. The sense of being a storm
+centre--inasmuch as they harboured the viper assassin--produced in
+them an unexampled militancy. Latent sex-antagonism revealed itself.
+The man, by common consent was down; and, being down, the Miss Minetts
+jumped on him, pounded him, if terms so vulgar are permissible in
+respect for ladies so refined. For every sin of omission, committed
+against their womanhood by the members of his sex, they made him
+scapegoat--unconsciously it is true, but effectively none the less. From
+being his slaves they became his tormentors. Never was young fellow more
+taken aback. Such revulsions of human feeling are instructive--deplorable
+or diverting according as you view it.
+
+Meanwhile that portion of the local gentry aforesaid, whom awkward
+personal predicament--as in the case of Dr. Cripps and the Miss
+Minetts--did not preclude from visiting The Hard, having called early on
+Monday afternoon also left early, being anxious to prove their civility
+of purest water, untainted by self-seeking, by ulterior greed of tea and
+cakes. It followed that Damaris found herself relieved of their somewhat
+embarrassed, though kindly and well-intentioned, presence before sunset.
+And of this she was glad, since the afternoon had been fruitful of
+interests far more intimate and vital in character.
+
+While Captain and Mrs. Taylor, with their highly superior offspring
+Louisa, still held the floor, Damaris received a telegram from her
+father announcing a change of plans involving his immediate return.
+
+"Send to meet the seven-thirty at Marychurch," so the pink paper
+instructed her. "Carteret comes with me. When we arrive will explain."
+
+On reception of the above, her first thought was of the letter forwarded
+yesterday from the India Office, bearing the signature of the Secretary
+of State. And close on the heels of that thought, looking over its
+shoulder, indeed, in the effort--which she resisted--to claim priority,
+was the thought of the dear man with the blue eyes about to be a guest,
+once again, under this roof. This gave her a little thrill, a little
+gasp, wrapping her away to the borders of sad inattention to Louisa
+Taylor's somewhat academic discourse.--The girl's English was altogether
+too grammatical for entire good-breeding. In that how very far away from
+Carteret's!--Damaris tried to range herself with present company. But the
+man with the blue eyes indubitably held the centre of the stage. She wore
+the pearls to-day he gave her at St. Augustin. In what spirit did he
+come?--She hoped in the earlier one, that of the time when she so
+completely trusted him. For his counsel, dared she claim it in that
+earlier spirit, would be of inestimable value just now. She so badly
+needed someone in authority to advise with as to the events of yesterday,
+both in their malign and their beneficent aspects. Aunt Felicia had risen
+to the height of her capacity--dear thing, had been exquisite; but she
+would obey orders rather than issue them. Her office was not to lead, but
+rather to be led. And that the events of yesterday opened a new phase of
+her own and Faircloth's relation to one another appeared beyond dispute.
+Where exactly did the curve of duty towards her father touch that
+relation, run parallel with or intersect it? She felt perplexed.
+
+After tea, Miss Felicia having vanished on some affair of her
+own--Damaris asked no question, but supposed it not unconnected with the
+now, since Sir Charles was about to return, permanently exiled
+Theresa--our maiden went upstairs, in the tender evening light, on
+domestic cares intent. She wished to assure herself that the chintz
+bedroom, opening off the main landing and overlooking the lawn and front
+garden, had been duly made ready for Colonel Carteret. She took a
+somewhat wistful pleasure in silently ministering to his possible small
+needs in the matter of sufficient wealth of towels, candles and soap. She
+lengthened out the process. Lingered, rearranged the ornaments upon the
+mantelpiece, the bunch of sweet-leafed geranium--as yet unshrivelled by
+frost--and belated roses, placed in a vase upon the toilet-table.
+
+In so doing she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror, and paused,
+studying it. Her looks were not at their best. She was wan.--That might,
+in part, be owing to the waning light. Around her eyes were dark circles,
+making them appear unnaturally large and solemn. So yesterday's emotions
+had left their mark! The nervous strain had been considerable and she
+showed it. One cannot drink the cup of shame, however undeserved, with
+physical any more than with mental impunity. She still felt a little
+shattered, but hoped neither her father nor Carteret would remark her
+plight. If the whole affair of yesterday could, in its objectionable
+aspects, be kept from Sir Charles's knowledge she would be infinitely
+glad. And why shouldn't it be? Without permission, Aunt Felicia certainly
+would not tell. Neither would the servants. The parish had given
+testimony, this afternoon, both of its good faith and its discretion.
+
+So much for the objectionable side of the matter. But there was another
+side, far from objectionable, beautiful in sentiment and in promise. And,
+still viewing her reflection in the glass, she saw her eyes lose their
+solemnity, lighten with a smile her lips repeated. This was where
+Carteret's advice would be of so great value. How much ought she to tell
+her father of all that?
+
+For, from amidst the shame, the anger, the strain and effort, Faircloth
+showed, to her thinking, triumphant, satisfying alike to her affection
+and her taste. In no respect would she have asked him other than he was.
+
+She moved across to the window, and sat down there, looking out over the
+garden and battery, with its little cannons, to the Bar, and sea beyond
+which melted into the dim primrose and silver of the horizon. Such colour
+as existed was soft, soothing, the colour of a world of dreams, of
+subdued and voiceless fancies. It was harmonious, restful as an
+accompaniment to vision.--Damaris let it lap against her consciousness,
+encircling, supporting this, as water laps, also encircling and
+supporting--while caressing, mysteriously whispering against a boat's
+side--a boat lying at its moorings, swinging gently upon an even
+keel.--And her vision was of Faircloth, exclusively of him, just now.
+
+For he had stayed to luncheon yesterday. A meal, to him in a sense
+sacred, as being the first eaten by him in his father's house. So
+graciously invited, how, indeed, could he do otherwise than stay? And,
+the initial strangeness, the inherent wonder of that sacred character
+wearing off, he found voice and talked not without eloquence. Talked of
+his proper element, the sea, gaining ease and self-possession from the
+magnitude and manifold enchantments of his theme.
+
+To him, as to all true-born sailor-men--so Damaris divined--the world is
+made of water, with but accident of land. Impeding, inconvenient accident
+at that, too often blocking the passage across or through, and
+constraining you to steer a foolishly, really quite inordinately
+divergent course. Under this obstructive head the two Americas offend
+direfully, sprawling their united strength wellnigh from pole to pole.
+The piercing of their central isthmus promised some mitigation of this
+impertinence of emergent matter; though whether in his, the speaker's
+lifetime, remained--so he took it--open to doubt. The "roaring forties,"
+and grim blizzard-ridden Fuegian Straits would long continue, as he
+feared, to bar the way to the Pacific. Not that his personal fancy
+favoured West so much as East. Not into the sunset but into the sunrising
+did he love to sail some goodly black-hulled ship.--And as he talked,
+more especially at his mention of this eastward voyaging, those manifold
+enchantments of his calling stirred Damaris' imagination, making her
+eyes bright as the fabled eyes of danger, and fathomless as well.
+
+But the best came later. For, Mary having served coffee, Miss Felicia,
+making an excuse of letters to be written, with pretty tact left them to
+themselves. And Faircloth, returning after closing the door behind her
+fluttering, gently eager figure, paused behind Damaris' chair.--Jacobean,
+cane-panelled, with high-carved back and arms to it. Thomas Clarkson
+Verity had unquestionably a nice taste in furniture.--The young
+sea-captain rested his right hand on the dark terminal scroll-work, and
+bending down, laid his left hand upon Damaris' hand, covering it as it
+lay on the white damask table-cloth.
+
+"Have I done what I should, and left undone what I shouldn't do, my dear
+and lovely sister?" he asked her, half-laughing and half-abashed. "It's a
+tricky business being here, you know--to put it no higher than that. And
+it might, with truth, be put far higher. I get so horribly fearful of
+letting you down in any way--however trivial--before other people. I
+balance on a knife-edge all the while."
+
+"Have no silly fears of that sort," Damaris said quickly, a trifle
+distressed.
+
+For it plucked at her sisterly pride in him that he should, even by
+implication, debase himself, noting inequality of station between himself
+and her. She held the worldly aspects of the matter in contempt. They
+angered her, so that she impulsively banished reserve. Leaning forward,
+she bent her head, putting her lips to the image of the flying
+sea-bird--which so intrigued her loving curiosity--and those three
+letters tattooed in blue and crimson upon the back of his hand.
+
+"There--there"--she murmured, as soothing a child--"does this
+convince you?"
+
+But here broke off, her heart contracting with a spasm of wondering
+tenderness. For under that pressure of her lips she felt his flesh quiver
+and start. She looked up at the handsome bearded face, so close above
+her, in swift enquiry, the potion--as once before--troubling her that, in
+touching this quaint stigmata, she inflicted bodily suffering. And, as
+on that earlier occasion, asked the question:
+
+"Ah! but have I hurt you?"
+
+Faircloth shook his head, smiling. Words failed him just then and he went
+pale beneath the overlay of clear brown sunburn.
+
+"Then tell me what this stands for?" she said, being herself strangely
+moved, and desirous to lower the temperature of her own emotion--possibly
+of his as well. "Tell me what it means."
+
+"Just a boy's fear and a boy's superstition--a bit morbid, both of them,
+perhaps--that is as I see things now. For I hold one should leave one's
+body as it pleased the Almighty to make it, unblemished by semi-savage
+decorations which won't wash off."
+
+Faircloth moved away, drew his chair up nearer the head of the table,
+the corner between them, so that his hand could if desire prompted again
+find hers.
+
+"By the way, I'm so glad you don't wear ear-rings, Damaris," he said.
+"They belong to the semi-savage order of decoration. I hate them. You
+never will wear them? Promise me that."
+
+And she had promised, somewhat diverted by his tone of authority and of
+insistence.
+
+"But about this?" she asked him, indicating the blue and crimson symbol.
+
+"As I say, fruit of fear and superstition--a pretty pair in which to put
+one's faith! All the same, they went far to save my life, I fancy--for
+which I thank them mightily being here, with you, to-day."
+
+And he told her--softening the uglier details, as unfit for a
+gently-nurtured woman's hearing--a brutal story of the sea. Of a sailing
+ship becalmed in tropic waters, waiting, through long blistering days and
+breathless sweltering nights, for the breeze which wouldn't come--a
+floating hell, between glaring skies and glaring ocean--and of bullyings,
+indignities and torments devised by a brain diseased by drink.
+
+"But was there no one to interfere, no one to protect you?" Damaris
+cried, aghast.
+
+"A man's master in his own ship," Faircloth answered. "And short of
+mutiny there's no redress. Neither officers nor men had a stomach for
+mutiny. They were a poor, cowed lot. Till this drunken madness came on
+him he had been easy going enough. They supposed, when it passed, he'd
+be so again. And then as he reserved his special attentions for me,
+they were willing to grin and bear it--or rather let me bear it, just
+stupidly letting things go. It was my first long voyage. I'd been lucky
+in my skippers so far, and was a bit soft still. A bit conceited, I
+don't doubt, as well. He swore he'd break my spirit--for my own good,
+of course--and he came near succeeding.--But Damaris, Damaris, dear,
+don't take it to heart so. What does it matter? It did me no lasting
+harm, and was all over and done with--would have been forgotten too,
+but for the rather silly sign of it--years and years ago. Let us talk
+no more about it."
+
+"Oh, no!--go on--please, go on," she brokenly prayed him.
+
+So he told her, further, how at Singapore, the outward voyage at last
+ended, he was tempted to desert; or, better still, put an end, once and
+for all, to the whole black business of living. And how, meditating on
+the methods of such drastic deliverance--sitting in the palm-shaded
+verandah of a fly-blown little eating-house, kept by a monkey-faced,
+squint-eyed Japanese--he happened to pick up a Calcutta newspaper. He
+read its columns mechanically, without interest or understanding, his
+mind still working on methods of death, when a name leapt at him weighted
+with personal meaning.
+
+"It hit me," Faircloth said, "full between the eyes, knocking the
+cry-baby stuff out of me, and knocking stuff of very different order in.
+For I wanted something stronger than mother-love--precious though that
+is--to brace me up and put some spunk into me just then.--Sir Charles was
+campaigning in Afghanistan, and this Calcutta paper sang his praises to a
+rousing tune. Lamented the loss of him to the Indian Government, and the
+lack of appreciation and support of him at home which induced him to take
+foreign service. Can't you imagine how all this about a great soldier,
+whose blood after all ran in my veins, pulled me clean up out of the
+slime, where suicide tempted the soft side of me, into another world?--A
+sane world, in which a man can make good, if only he's pluck to hold
+on.--Yes, he saved me; or at all events roused the spirit in me which
+makes for salvation, and which that drunken brute had almost killed. But,
+because I was only a boy as yet, with a boy's queer instincts and
+extravagancies, I made the monkey-faced, Japanese eating-house
+keeper--who added artistic tattooing to other and less reputable ways of
+piling up a fortune--fix the sea-bird, for faith in my profession--and
+those three initials of my own name and a name not altogether my own,
+right here.--Fix them for remembrance and for a warning of which I could
+never get free. Always I should be forced to see it. And others must see
+it too. Through it my identity--short of mutilation--was indestructibly
+established. From that identity, henceforward, there wasn't any possible
+running away."
+
+Faircloth had ended on a note of exultation, calmly sounded yet profound.
+
+And upon that final note Damaris dwelt now, sitting on the chintz-covered
+window-seat of the room which Carteret would to-night inhabit. She went
+through the cruel story again, while the transparent twilight drew its
+elfin veil over all things, outdoor and in.
+
+The crescent moon, a slender, upright wisp of a thing, climbed the
+southern sky. And Damaris' soul was strangely satisfied, for the story,
+if cruel, was one of restitution and the healing of a wrong. To her
+father--his father--the boy had turned in that bad hour, which very
+perfectly made for peace between them. The curve of her duty to the one,
+as she now apprehended, in nowise cut across or deflected the curve of
+her duty towards the other. The two were the same, were one. And this,
+somehow, some day, when time and sentiment offered opportunity for such
+disclosure, she must let her father know. She must repeat to him the
+story of the eating-house and its monkey-faced proprietor--of
+questionable reputation--away in tropic Singapore. It could hardly fail
+to appeal to him if rightly told. About the events and vulgar publicity
+of yesterday nothing need be said. About this, within careful limits,
+much; and that, with, as she believed, happiest result. She had succeeded
+in bringing father and son together in the first instance. Now, with this
+pathetic story as lever, might she not hope to bring them into closer,
+more permanent union? Why should not Faircloth, in future, come and go,
+if not as an acknowledged son, yet as acknowledged and welcome friend, of
+the house? A consummation this, to her, delightful and reasonable as
+just. For had not the young man passed muster, and that triumphantly--she
+again told herself--in small things as well as great, in things of social
+usage and habit, those "little foxes" which, as between class and class,
+do so deplorably and disastrously "spoil the grapes?"
+
+Therefore she began to invent ingenious speeches to Carteret and to her
+father. Hatch ingenious schemes and pretty plots--in the style of dear
+Aunt Felicia almost!--Was that lady's peace-making passion infectious, by
+chance? And supposing it were, hadn't it very charming and praiseworthy
+turns to it--witness Felicia's rather noble gathering in and acceptance
+of Faircloth yesterday.
+
+Arriving at which engaging conclusion, Damaris felt minded to commune for
+a space with the restful loveliness of the twilight, before going
+downstairs again and seeking more definite employment of books or
+needlework. She raised the window-sash and, kneeling on the
+chintz-covered cushioned window-seat, leaned out.
+
+The gardeners to-day had rooted up the geraniums and dug over the empty
+flower beds, just below, preparatory to planting them with bulbs for
+spring blossoming. The keen, pungent scent of the newly-turned earth
+hung in the humid air, as, mingling with it--a less agreeable
+incense--did the reek of the mud-flats. On the right the twin ilex trees
+formed a mass of soft imponderable gloom. Above and behind them the sky
+was like smoked crystal. The lawn lay open and vacant. Upon it nothing
+hopped or crept. The garden birds had eaten their suppers long since,
+and sought snug bosky perching places for the night. Even the unsleeping
+sea was silent, the tide low and waveless, no more than a languid ripple
+far out upon the shelving sands. All dwelt in calm, in a brooding
+tranquillity which might be felt.
+
+Damaris listened to the silence, until her ears began to suspect its
+sincerity. Sounds were there in plenty, she believed, were her hearing
+sharp enough to detect them. They naughtily played hide-and-seek with
+her, striking a chord too deep or too thinly acute for human sense.
+Sights were there too, had her eyes but a cat's or an owl's keener
+faculty of seeing. Behind the tranquillity she apprehended movement and
+action employing a medium, obeying impulses, to us unknown. Restfulness
+fled away, but, in place of it, interest grew. If she concentrated her
+attention and listened more carefully, she should hear; looked more
+steadily, she should see.
+
+Just because she was tired, a little shattered still and spent, did this
+predominance of outward nature draw her, imposing itself. It beckoned
+her; and, through passing deficiency of will, she followed its beckoning,
+making no serious effort to resist. With the consequence she presently
+did hear sounds, but sounds surely real and recognizable enough.
+
+Coming from the shore eastwards, below the sea-wall along the river
+frontage, ponies walked, or rather floundered, fetlock deep in blown
+sand--a whole drove of them to judge by the confused and muffled
+trampling of their many hoofs. The drop from the top of the sea-wall to
+the beach was too great, and the space between the foot of the wall and
+the river-bank and breakwater too confined, for her to see the animals,
+even had not oncoming darkness rendered all objects increasingly
+ill-defined.
+
+But the confused trampling instead of keeping along the foreshore, as in
+all reason it should, now came up and over the sea-wall, on to the
+battery, into the garden, heading towards the house, Damaris strained her
+eyes through the tranquil obscurity, seeking visible cause of this
+advancing commotion, but without effect. Yet all the while, as her
+hearing clearly testified, the unseen ponies hustled one another,
+plunging, shying away from the swish and crack of a long-thonged whip.
+One stumbled and rolled over in the sand.--For although the mob was
+half-way up the lawn by now, the shuffling, sliding sand stayed always
+with them.--After a nasty struggle it got on to its feet, tottering
+forward under savage blows, dead lame. Another, a laggard, fell into its
+tracks, and lay there foundered, rattling in the throat.
+
+By this time the foremost of the drove came abreast the house front,
+where Sir Charles Verity's three ground-floor rooms, with the corridor
+behind them, ranged out from the main building. The many-paned
+semicircular windows of these rooms dimly glistened, below their
+fan-shaped, slated roofs. The crowding scurry of scared, over-driven
+animals was so indisputable that Damaris expected a universal smashing of
+glass. But the sound of many hoofs, still muted by sliding sand, passed
+straight on into and through the house as though no obstacle intervened
+barring progress.
+
+The many-paned windows remained intact, undemolished, dimly glistening
+beneath their slated roofs. The garden stretched vacant, as before, right
+away to the battery, in the elusive twilight, a sky of smoked
+crystal--through which stars began to show faintly, points of cold
+blurred light--above the gloom of the ilex trees to the west, and in the
+south, above the indistinguishable sea, the slender moon hanging upright,
+silver and sickle-shaped.
+
+Thus far Damaris' entire consciousness had resided in and been limited to
+her auditory sense; concentration being too absorbed and intense to allow
+room for reasoning, still less for scepticism or even astonishment. She
+had watched with her ears--as the blind watch--desperate to interpret,
+instant by instant, inch by inch, this reconstructed tragedy of long-dead
+man and long-dead beast. There had been no thinking round the central
+interest, no attempted reading of its bearing upon normal events. Mind
+and imagination were fascinated by it to the exclusion of all else. It
+acted as an extravagant dream acts, abrogating all known laws of cause
+and effect, giving logic and science the lie, negativing probability,
+making the untrue true, the impossible convincingly manifest.
+
+Not, indeed, until she beheld Mary Fisher, deep-bosomed and comely, in
+black gown, white apron and cap, moving within those rooms
+downstairs--still echoing, as they surely must, to that tumultuous and
+rather ghastly equine transit--did the extraordinary character of the
+occurrence flash into fullness of relief.
+
+Mary, meanwhile, set down her flat candlestick upon the big writing-table
+in Sir Charles's study, lighted lamps and drew blinds and curtains. Went
+into the bedroom next door and dressing-room beyond, methodically
+performing the evening ritual of "shutting up." Her shadow marched with
+her, as though mockingly assisting in her operations, now crouching, now
+leaping ahead, blotting a ceiling, extending itself upon a wall space.
+Other shadows, thrown by the furniture, came forth and leapt also,
+pranced, skipping back into hiding as the candle-light shifted and
+passed. But save this indirect admission of the immaterial and grotesque,
+everything showed reassuringly ordinary, the woman herself unconcerned,
+ignorant of disturbance.
+
+Damaris rose from her kneeling posture upon the window-seat and,
+standing, lowered the sash. Once was enough. It was no longer incumbent
+upon her to listen or to look. If these ghostly phenomena were repeated
+they could convey nothing more to her, nothing fresh. They had delivered
+their message--one addressed wholly and solely to herself, so she judged,
+since Mary had so conspicuously no suspicion of it.
+
+Our maiden's lips were dry. Her heart beat in her ears. Yet she was in no
+degree unnerved. Seldom indeed had she been more mistress of her powers,
+self-realized and vigilant. Nor did she feel tired any more, infirm of
+will and spent. Rather was she consciously resolute to encounter and
+withstand events--of what order she did not know as yet but events of
+moment and far-reaching result, already on the road, journeying toward
+her hotfoot. They were designed to test and try her. Would do their
+utmost to overwhelm, to submerge her, were she weak. But she didn't
+intend them to submerge her. She bade weakness quit, all her young
+courage rising in arms.
+
+The marvellous things she just now heard, so nearly saw--for it had come
+very near to seeing, hadn't?--were _avant couriers_ of these same
+journeying events, their appointed prelude. She could explain neither how
+nor why--but, very certainly, somehow. Nor could she explain the
+relation--if any--coupling together the said marvels heard and the
+events. Nevertheless, she knew the former rode ahead, whether in
+malignity or mercy, to forewarn her. This place, The Hard, in virtue of
+its numerous vicissitudes of office and of ownership, of the memories and
+traditions which it harboured, both sinister, amiable, erudite,
+passionate, was singularly sentient, replete with influences. In times of
+strain and stress the normal wears thin, and such lurking influences are
+released. They break bounds, shouting--to such as have the psychic
+genius--convincing testimony of their existence.
+
+All this Damaris perceived, standing in the middle of the room while the
+silver crescent moon looked in at her. The stillness once again was
+absolute. The dusk, save where the windows made pale squares upon the
+carpet, thick. The four-post bed, gay enough by day with hangings and
+valences patterned in roses on a yellow ground, looked cavernous.
+Carteret would lie under its black canopy to-night if--
+
+"If all goes well."
+
+Damaris said the words aloud, her thought becoming personal and
+articulate.
+
+Once before she had heard the smugglers' ponies, waiting in this same
+room. Waiting at the open window to catch the first rumble of the wheels
+of a returning carriage. Her poor dear Nannie, Sarah Watson, was
+returning home after a summer holiday spent with her own people in the
+north. And Damaris, younger then by nearly five years, had listened
+impatiently, ready to skirmish down into the front hall--directly the
+carriage turned the elbow of the drive--and enclose her faithful nurse
+and foster-mother in arms of child-like love. But destiny ruled otherwise.
+In vain she waited. Sarah Watson returned no more, death having elected
+to take her rather horribly to himself some hours previously amid the
+flaming wreckage of a derailed express.
+
+What did this second hearing presage? A like vain waiting and disclosure
+of death-dealing accident? Notwithstanding her attitude of high
+resolution, the question challenged Damaris in sardonic fashion from
+beneath the black canopy of the great bed. Her hand went up to the string
+of pearls which, on a sudden, grew heavy about her throat.
+
+"But not--not--pray God, the dear man with the blue eyes," she cried.
+
+She was glad to be alone, in the encompassing semi-dark, for a warm wave
+of emotion swept over her, an ardour hardly of the spiritual sort. Had
+she deceived herself? Was she, in truth, desirous Carteret should
+approach her solely according to that earlier manner, in which she so
+simply trusted him? Did she hail his coming as that of a wise counsellor
+merely--or--
+
+But here Mary--still pursuing the time-honoured ritual of shutting
+up--entered candle in hand, the landing showing brightly lit behind her.
+
+"Dear heart alive!" she exclaimed, "whoever's that? You, Miss Damaris?
+Alone here in the dark. You did make me jump. But there," she added,
+repentant of her unceremonious exclamation, "I don't know what possesses
+us all to-night. The least thing seems to make you jump. Mrs. Cooper's
+all of a twitter, and Laura--silly girl--is almost as bad. I suppose it's
+the weather being so quiet after yesterday's gale. For my own part I
+always do like a wind about. It seems company, particularly these long
+evenings if you're called on to go round the house by yourself."
+
+All of which amounted to an admission, as Damaris was not slow to detect.
+She was still under the empire of emotion. The abrupt intrusion affected
+her. She, too, needed to carry off the situation.
+
+"Poor Mary," she said, "you have been frightened--by what? Did you hear
+anything you could not account for when you were down in the library
+just now?"
+
+The answer came after a pause, as though the speaker were suspicious,
+slightly unwilling to commit herself.
+
+"No, Miss Damaris, not in Sir Charles's rooms or in the west wing either.
+Whatever unaccountable noises there ever is belong to this old part of
+the house."
+
+She set her candlestick on the dressing-table, and went to each window in
+turn, drawing blinds down and curtains across. So doing she continued to
+talk, moving to and fro meanwhile with a firm, light tread.
+
+"Not that I pay much attention to such things myself. I don't hold it's
+right. It's my opinion there's no sort of nonsense you can't drive
+yourself into believing once you let ideas get a root in you. I've seen
+too much of Mrs. Cooper giving away like that. The two winters you and
+Sir Charles was abroad I'd a proper upset with her--though we are good
+friends--more than once. After sundown she was enough to terrify you out
+of your life--wouldn't go here and wouldn't go there for fear of she
+didn't know what. Tempting Providence, I call it, and spoke to her quite
+sharp. If ever I wanted to go over to spend an hour or two with father
+and mother in Marychurch, I was bound to ask Mrs. Patch and the children
+to come in and keep her company. There's no sense in putting yourself
+into such a state. It makes you a trouble to yourself and everybody else.
+And in the end, a thousand to one if anything comes of all the turmoil
+and fuss--Mrs. Cooper, to be only fair to her, when she's in a reasonable
+humour, allows as much."
+
+Mary stepped across to the bed and doubled back the quilt, preparatory to
+turning down the fine linen sheet. She felt she had extracted herself
+from a somewhat invidious position with flying colours; and, in the
+process, had administered timely advice. For it wasn't suitable Miss
+Damaris should be moping alone upstairs at odd times like this. It all
+came of yesterday's upset.--Her righteous anger blazed against the
+clerical culprit. In that connection there was other matter of which she
+craved to deliver herself--refreshing items of local gossip, sweet as
+honey to the mouth did she but dare retail them. She balanced the
+question this way and that. Would satisfaction outweigh offence, or
+offence satisfaction, on the part of Miss Damaris? You could not be sure
+how she'd take things--quite. And yet she ought to know, for the affair
+certainly placed Captain Faircloth in a pleasant light. Only one who was
+every inch a gentleman would behave so handsomely as he had.
+
+She stretched across the bed to smooth the slightly wrinkled surface of
+the sheet. This gymnastic feat necessitated the averting of her face and
+turning of her back.
+
+"There's a fine tale going round of how the Island lads--wild young
+fellows ready for any pranks--served Mr. Sawyer, the curate," she began.
+"They say William Jennifer put them up to it, having a grudge against him
+for trying to get his youngest boy taken up for stealing apples last
+week. They planned to give him a ducking in the pool just above the
+ferry, where the water's so deep under the bank. And if Captain Faircloth
+hadn't happened to come along, for certain they'd have made Mr. Sawyer
+swim for it. Mr. Patch hears they handled him ever so rough, tore his
+coat, and were on the very tick of pitching him in. But Captain Faircloth
+would not suffer it. He took a very high line with them, it is said. And
+not content with getting Mr. Sawyer away, walked with him as far as the
+Grey House to protect him from any further interference."
+
+She gave the pillows sundry judicious strokings and pats.
+
+"I hope Mr. Sawyer's properly thankful, for it isn't many that would have
+shown him so much leniency as that."
+
+She would have enjoyed labouring the point. But comment appeared to her,
+under the circumstances, to trench on impertinence. Facts spoke for
+themselves. She restrained herself, fetched her candlestick from the
+dressing-table, and stood by the open door, thereby enjoining her young
+lady's exit.
+
+Thus far Damaris maintained silence, but in passing out on to the
+landing, she said--"Thank you. I am glad to know what has happened."
+
+Encouraged by which acknowledgment, the excellent woman ventured
+further advice.
+
+"And now, miss, you must please just lie down on the schoolroom sofa and
+get a little sleep before the gentlemen and Mr. Hordle arrive back. There
+is a good two hours to wait yet, and I'll call you in plenty of time for
+you to dress. You don't look altogether yourself, miss. Too much talking
+with all that host of callers. You are properly fagged out. I'll get Mrs.
+Cooper to beat up an egg for you in a tumbler of hot milk, with a
+tablespoonful of sherry and just a pinch of sugar in it. That will get
+your circulation right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHOWING HOW SIR CHARLES VERITY WAS JUSTIFIED OF HIS LABOURS
+
+
+Which homely programme being duly executed, worked restorative wonders.
+Matter, in the sublimated form of egg-flip, acted upon mind beneficially
+through the functions of a healthy, if weary, young body. Our maiden
+slept, to dream not of ghostly ponies or other uncomfortably discarnate
+creatures; but of Darcy Faircloth in his pretty piece of Quixotism,
+rescuing a minister of the Church of England "as by law established" from
+heretical baptismal rites of total immersion. The picture had a rough
+side to it, and also a merry one; but, beyond these, generous dealing
+wholly delightful to her feeling. She awoke soothed and restored, ready
+to confront the oncoming of events--whatever their character--in a spirit
+of high confidence as well as of resolution.
+
+With the purpose of advertising this brave humour she dressed herself in
+her best. I do not deny a love of fine clothes in Damaris. Yet in her own
+home, and for delectation of the men belonging to her, a woman is surely
+free to deck herself as handsomely as her purse allows. "Beauty
+unadorned" ceased to be practicable, in self-respecting circles, with the
+expulsion of our first parents from the paradisaic state; while beauty
+merely dowdy, is a pouring of contempt on one of God's best gifts to the
+human race. Therefore I find no fault with Damaris, upon this rather
+fateful evening, in that she clothed herself in a maize-coloured silk
+gown flowered in faint amber and faint pink. Cut in the piece from
+shoulder to hem, according to a then prevailing fashion, it moulded
+bosom, waist and haunches, spreading away into a demi-train behind. The
+high Medici collar of old lace, at the back of the square décolletage,
+conferred dignity; the hanging lace of the elbow sleeves a lightness. Her
+hair, in two wide plaits, bound her head smoothly, save where soft
+disobedient little curls, refusing restriction, shaded her forehead and
+the nape of her neck.
+
+After a few seconds of silent debate she clasped Carteret's pearls about
+her throat again; and so fared away, a creature of radiant aspect, amid
+sombre setting of low ceilings and dark carpeted floors, to await the
+advent of the travellers.
+
+These arrived some little while before their time, so that the girl, in
+her gleaming dress, had gone but half-way down the staircase when they
+came side by side into the hall.--Two very proper gentlemen, the moist
+freshness of the night attending them, a certain nobility in their
+bearing which moved her to enthusiasm, momentarily even bringing a mist
+before her eyes. For they were safe and well both of them, so she
+joyously registered, serene of countenance, moreover, as bearers of glad
+tidings are. Whatever the ghostly ponies foretold could be no evil
+shadowing them--for which she gave God thanks.
+
+Meanwhile, there without, the light of the carriage lamps pierced the
+enclosing gloom, played on the silver plating of harness, on the shining
+coats of the horses, whose nostrils sent out jets of pale steam. Played
+over the faces of the servants, too, Mary and Laura just within the open
+door, Hordle and Conyers outside loading down the baggage from the back
+of the mail-phaeton, and on Patch, exalted high above them on the
+driving-seat.
+
+As Damaris paused, irradiated by the joy of welcome and of forebodings
+falsified, upon the lowest step of the staircase, Sir Charles turned
+aside and tenderly kissed her.
+
+"My darling," he said.
+
+And Carteret, following him an instant later, took her by both hands and,
+from arm's length, surveyed her in smiling admiration he made no effort
+to repress.
+
+"Dear witch, this is unexpected good fortune. I had little thought of
+seeing you so soon--resplendent being that you are, veritably clothed
+with sunshine."
+
+"And with your pearls," she gaily said.
+
+"Ah! my poor pearls," he took her up lightly. "I am pleased they still
+find favour in your sight. But aren't you curious to learn what has made
+us desert our partridge shooting at an hour's notice, granting the pretty
+little beggars unlooked-for length of life?"
+
+His blue eyes laughed into hers. There was a delightful atmosphere about
+him. Something had happened to him surely--for wasn't he, after all, a
+young man even yet?
+
+"Yes--what--what has brought you, Colonel Sahib?" Damaris laughed back at
+him, bubbling over with happy excitement.
+
+"Miracles," he answered. "A purblind Government at last admits the error
+of its ways and proposes to make reparation for its neglect of a notable
+public-servant."
+
+"You?" she cried.
+
+Carteret shook his head, still surveying her but with a soberer glance.
+
+"No--no--not me. In any case there isn't any indebtedness to
+acknowledge--no arrears to pay off. I have my deserts.--To a man
+immensely my superior. Look nearer home, dear witch."
+
+He made a gesture in the direction of his host.
+
+"My Commissioner Sahib?"
+
+"Yes--your Commissioner Sahib, who comes post haste to request your dear
+little permission, before accepting this tardy recognition of his
+services to the British Empire."
+
+"Ah! but that's too much!" the girl said softly, glancing from one to the
+other, enchanted and abashed by the greatness of their loyalty to and
+prominent thought of her.
+
+"Has this made him happy?" she asked Carteret, under her breath. "He
+looks so, I think. How good that this has come in time--that it hasn't
+come too late."
+
+For, in the midst of her joyful excitement, a shadow crossed Damaris'
+mind oddly obscuring the light. She suffered a perception things might so
+easily have turned out otherwise; a suspicion that, had the reparation of
+which Carteret spoke been delayed, even by a little, its beloved
+recipient would no longer have found use for or profit in it. Damaris
+fought the black thought, as ungrateful and faithless. To fear disaster
+is too often to invite it.
+
+Just at this juncture Miss Felicia made hurried and gently eager
+irruption into the hall; and with that irruption the tone of prevailing
+sentiment declined upon the somewhat trivial, even though warmly
+affectionate. For she fluttered round Sir Charles, as Mary Fisher helped
+divest him of his overcoat, in sympathetic overflowings of the simplest
+sort.--"She had been reading and failed to hear the carriage, hence her
+tardy appearance. Let him come into the drawing-room at once, out of
+these draughts. There was a delightful wood fire and he must be chilled.
+The drive down the valley was always so cold at night--particularly where
+the road runs through the marsh lands by Lampit."
+
+In her zeal of welcome Miss Verity was voluble to the point of
+inconsequence, not to say incoherence. Questions poured from her. She
+appeared agitated, quaintly self-conscious, so at least it occurred to
+Damaris. Finally she addressed Carteret.
+
+"And you too must be frozen," she declared. "How long it is since we met!
+I have always been so unlucky in just missing you here! Really I believe
+I have only seen you once since you and Charles stayed with us at Canton
+Magna.--You were both on leave from India. I dare not think how many
+years ago that is--before this child"--her candid eyes appealingly sought
+those of Damaris--"before this child existed. And you are so wonderfully
+unaltered."
+
+Colour dyed her thin face and rather scraggy neck. Only the young should
+blush. After forty such involuntary exhibitions of emotion are
+unattractive, questionably even pathetic.
+
+"Really time has stood still with you--it seems to me, Colonel Carteret."
+
+"Time has done better than stand still," Damaris broke in, with a rather
+surprising imperiousness. "It has beautifully run backwards--lately."
+
+And our maiden, in her whispering gleaming dress, swept down from the
+step, swept past the sadly taken aback Miss Felicia, and joined her
+father. She put her hand within his arm.
+
+"Come and warm yourself--come, dearest," she said, gently drawing him
+onward into the long room, where from above the range of dark
+bookshelves, goggle-eyed, pearl-grey Chinese goblins and monsters, and
+oblique-eyed Chinese philosophers and saints looked mysteriously down
+through the warm mellow light.
+
+Damaris was conscious of a singular inward turmoil. For Miss Felicia's
+speeches found small favour in her ears. She resented this open claiming
+of Carteret as a member of the elder generation. Still more resented her
+own relegation to the nullity of the prenatal state. Reminiscences, in
+which she had neither lot nor part, left her cold. Or, to be accurate,
+bred in her an intemperate heat, putting a match to jealousies which,
+till this instant, she had no knowledge of. Touched by that match they
+flared to the confusion of charity and reverence. Hence, impulsively,
+unscrupulously, yet with ingenious unkindness, she struck--her tongue a
+sword--to the wounding of poor Miss Felicia. And she felt no necessity
+for apology. She liked to be unkind. She liked to strike. Aunt Felicia
+should not have been so self-assertive, so tactless. She had brought
+chastisement upon herself. It wasn't like her to behave thus. Her
+enthusiasms abounded; but she possessed a delicate appreciation of
+relative positions. She never poached. This came perilously near
+poaching.--And everything had danced to so inspiring a tune, the movement
+of it so delicious! Now the evening was spoilt. The first fine alacrity
+of it could not be recaptured--which was all Aunt Felicia's fault.--No,
+for her unkindness Damaris felt no regret.
+
+It may be remarked that our angry maiden's mind dwelt rather upon the
+snub she had inflicted on Miss Verity, than upon the extensive compliment
+she had paid, and the challenge she had delivered, to Carteret. Hearing
+her flattering declaration, his mind not unnaturally dwelt more upon the
+latter. It took him like a blow, so that from bending courteously over
+the elder lady's hand, he straightened himself with a jerk. His eyes
+followed the imperious, sun-clad young figure, questioning and keenly
+alert. To-day he had liberally enjoyed the pleasures of friendship, for
+Charles Verity had been largely and generously elate. But Damaris'
+outburst switched feeling and sentiment onto other lines. They became
+personal. Were her words thrown off in mere lightness of heart, or had
+she spoken deliberately, with intention? It were wiser, perhaps, not to
+ask. He steadied his attention on to Miss Felicia once more, but not
+without effort.
+
+"You always said kind and charming things, I remember," so he told her.
+"You are good enough to say them still."
+
+Damaris stood by her father, upon the tiger skin before the hearth.
+
+"Tell me, dearest?" she prayed him.
+
+Charles Verity put his hand under her chin, turned up her face and looked
+searchingly at her. Her beauty to-night was conspicuous and of noble
+quality. It satisfied his pride. Public life invited him, offering him
+place and power. Ranklings of disappointment, of detraction and slight,
+were extinguished. His soul was delivered from the haunting vexations of
+them. He was in the saddle again, and this radiant woman-child, whom he
+so profoundly loved, should ride forth with him for all the world to
+see--if she pleased. That she would please he had no doubt. Pomp and
+circumstance would suit her well. She was, moreover, no slight or frothy
+piece of femininity; but could be trusted, amid the glamour of new and
+brilliant conditions, to use her judgment and to keep her head.
+Increasingly he respected her character as well as her intelligence. He
+found in her unswerving sense of right and wrong, sense of honour
+likewise. Impetuous she might be, swift to feel and to revolt; but of
+tender conscience and, on occasion, royally compassionate. Now he could
+give her fuller opportunity. Could place her in circumstances admittedly
+enviable and prominent. From a comparative back-water, she should gain
+the full stream--and that stream, in a sense, at the flood.
+
+Rarely, if ever, had Charles Verity experienced purer pleasure, touched a
+finer level of purpose and of hope than to-day, when thinking of and now
+when looking upon Damaris. He thankfully appraised her worth, and in
+spirit bowed before it, not doatingly or weakly but with reasoned
+conviction. Weighed in the balances she would not be found wanting, such
+was his firm belief. For himself he accepted this recall to active
+participation in affairs, active service to the State, with a lofty
+content. But that his daughter, in the flower of her young womanhood,
+would profit by this larger and more distinguished way of life, gave the
+said recall its deeper values and its zest.
+
+Still he put her off awhile as to the exact announcement, smiling upon
+her in fond, yet stately approval.
+
+"Let the telling keep until after dinner, my dear," he bade her. "Pacify
+the cravings of the natural man for food and drink. The day has been
+fertile in demands--strenuous indeed to the point of fatigue. So let us
+comfort ourselves inwardly and materially before we affront weighty
+decisions."
+
+He kissed her cheek.
+
+"By the way, though, does it ever occur to you to think of the Bhutpur
+Sultan-i-bagh and wish to go East again?"
+
+And Damaris, with still uplifted chin, surveyed him gravely and with a
+certain wistfulness, Miss Felicia's attempted poaching forgotten and an
+impression of Faircloth vividly overtaking her. For they were so
+intimately, disturbingly alike, the father and the son, in voice as well
+as in build and feature.
+
+"Go East?" she said, Faircloth's declared preference for sailing into the
+sunrise present to her. "Why, I go East in my dreams nearly every night.
+I love it--love it more rather than less as I grow older. Of course I
+wish to go--some day. But that's by the way, Commissioner Sahib. All that
+I really want, now, at once, is to go wherever you go, stay wherever you
+stay. You won't ask me to agree to any plan which parts us, will
+you?--which takes you away from me?"
+
+"Ruth to a strange Naomi, my dear," he answered. "But so be it. I desire
+nothing better than to have you always with me.--But I will not keep you
+on tenter-hooks as to your and my projected destination. Let them bring
+in dinner in half an hour. Carteret and I shall be ready. Meanwhile, read
+this--agreeing to relegate discussion of it to a less hungry season."
+
+And taking the letter she had forwarded to him yesterday, bearing the
+imprint of the Indian Office, from the breast pocket of his shooting
+coat, he put it into her hand.
+
+The appointment--namely, that of Lieutenant-Governor of an Indian
+presidency famous in modern history, a cradle of great reputations and
+great men, of English names to conjure with while our Eastern Empire
+endures--was offered, in terms complimentary above those common to
+official communications. Sir Charles Verity's expert knowledge, not only
+of the said mighty province but of the turbulent kingdom lying beyond its
+frontiers, marked him as peculiarly fitted for the post. A campaign
+against that same turbulent kingdom had but recently been brought to a
+victorious conclusion. His influence, it was felt, might be of supreme
+value at this juncture in the maintenance of good relations, and
+consolidation of permanent peace.
+
+Damaris' heart glowed within her as she read the courteous praiseful
+sentences. Even more than through the well-merited success of his book,
+did her father thus obtain and come into the fullness of his own at last.
+Her imagination glowed, too, calling up pictures of the half-remembered,
+half-fabulous oriental scene. The romance of English rule in India, the
+romance of India itself, its variety, its complexity, the multitude of
+its gods, the multitude of its peoples, hung before her as a mirage,
+prodigal in marvels, reaching back and linking up through the centuries
+with the hidden wisdom, the hidden terror of the Ancient of Days.
+
+To this land of alien faiths and secular wonders, she found herself
+summoned, not as casual sightseer or tourist, but as among the handful of
+elect persons who count in its social, political and administrative life.
+In virtue of her father's position, her own would be both conspicuous and
+assured. An intoxicating prospect this for a girl of one-and-twenty!
+Intoxicating, yet, as she envisaged it, disquieting likewise. She
+balanced on the thought of all it demanded as well as all it offered, of
+all it required from her--dazed by the largeness of the purview, volition
+in suspense.
+
+Carteret was the first to reappear, habited in the prescribed black and
+white of evening male attire. In the last six months he had, perhaps, put
+on flesh; but this without detriment to the admirable proportions of his
+figure. It retained its effect of perfect response to the will within,
+and all its natural grace. His fair hair and moustache were still almost
+untouched with grey. His physical attraction, in short, remained
+unimpaired. And of this Damaris was actually, if unconsciously, sensible
+as he closed the door and, passing between the stumpy pillars, walked up
+the long narrow room and stood, his hands behind him, his back to the
+pleasantly hissing and crackling fire of driftwood.
+
+"Alone, dear witch?" he said, and, seeing the open letter in her
+hand--"Well, what do you make of this proposition?" And yet again, as she
+raised serious pondering eyes--"You find it an extensive order?"
+
+"I find it magnificent for him--beautifully as it should be, adequate
+and right."
+
+"And for yourself?" Carteret asked, aware of a carefulness in her
+language and intrigued by it.
+
+"Magnificent for me, too--though it takes away my breath."
+
+"You must learn to breathe deeper, that's all," he returned, gently
+teasing her.
+
+"And who is to teach me to breathe deeper, dear Colonel Sahib," she
+quickly, and rather embarrassingly, asked. "Not my father. He'll have
+innumerable big things to do and to do them without waste of energy he
+must be saved at every point. He must not fritter away strength in
+coaching me in my odds and ends of duties, still less in covering up my
+silly mistakes."
+
+"Oh! you exaggerate difficulties," he said, looking not at her but at the
+fierce yellow and black striped tiger skin at his feet.--Bless the lovely
+child, what was she driving at?
+
+Carteret started for Deadham under the impression he had himself
+thoroughly in hand, and that all danger of certain inconvenient emotions
+was passed. He had lived them down, cast them out. For over two years now
+he had given himself to the superintendence of his estate, to county
+business, to the regulation of his sister's--happily more
+prosperous--affairs, to the shepherding of his two elder nephews in their
+respective professions and securing the two younger ones royally good
+times during their holidays at home. Throughout the hunting season,
+moreover, he rode to hounds on an average of three days a week. Such
+healthy sport helps notably to deliver a man from vain desires, by
+sending his body cleanly weary to bed and to sleep o' nights.
+
+By such varied activities had Carteret systematically essayed to rid
+himself of his somewhat exquisite distemper, and, when coming to Deadham,
+honestly believed himself immune, sane and safe. He was proportionately
+disturbed by finding the cure of this autumn love-madness less complete
+than, fool-like, he had supposed. For it showed disquieting signs of
+resurrection even when Damaris, arrayed in the sheen of silken sunlight,
+greeted him at the staircase foot, and an alarming disposition finally to
+fling away head-cloth and winding-sheet when she petulantly broke in upon
+Miss Verity's faded memories of Canton Magna with the flattering
+assertion that time had run backward with him of late.
+
+Now alone with her, confident, moreover, of her maidenly doubts
+and pretty self-distrust, he felt at a decided disadvantage. The
+detached, affectionately friendly, the avuncular--not to say
+grandfatherly--attitude escaped him. He could not play that part.
+
+"Oh! you exaggerate difficulties," he therefore told her, with a
+singular absence of his habitual mansuetude, his tone trenching on
+impatience. "Instinct and common sense will teach you-mother-wit, too-of
+which, you may take it from me, you have enough and to spare.-Let alone
+that there will be a host of people emulous of guiding your steps aright,
+if your steps should stand in need of guidance which I venture to doubt.
+Don't underrate your own cleverness." Hearing him, sensible of his
+apparent impatience and misconceiving the cause of it, Damaris' temper
+stirred. She felt vexed. She also felt injured.
+
+ "What has happened to you, Colonel Sahib?" she asked him squarely. "I
+ see nothing foolish in what I have said. You wouldn't have me so
+ conceited that I rushed into this immense business without a qualm,
+ without any thought whether I can carry it out creditably--with credit
+ to him, I mean?"
+
+ Thus astonishingly attacked, Carteret hedged.
+
+ "Miss Verity, of course, will be"--he began.
+
+ Damaris cut him short.
+
+ "Aunt Felicia is an angel, a darling," she declared, "but--but"--
+
+ And there stopped, pricked by a guilty conscience. For to expose Miss
+ Felicia's inadequacies and enlarge on her ineligibility for the position
+ of feminine Chief of the Staff, struck her as unworthy, a meanness to
+ which, under existing circumstances, she could not condescend to stoop.
+
+ Carteret looked up, to be entranced not only by the fair spectacle of
+ her youth but by her delicious little air of shame and self-reproach.
+ Evidently she had caught herself out in some small naughtiness--was both
+ penitent and defiant, at once admitting her fault and pleading for
+ indulgence. He suspected some thought at the back of her mind which he
+ could neither exactly seize nor place. She baffled him with her changes
+ of mood and of direction--coming close and then slipping from under his
+ hand. This humour was surely new in her. She would not leave him alone,
+ would not let him rest. Had she developed, since last he had converse
+ with her, into a practised coquette?
+
+"Look here, dear witch," he said, making a return upon himself, and
+manfully withstanding the sweet provocation of her near neighbourhood.
+"We seem to be queerly at cross purposes. I can't pretend to follow the
+turnings and doublings of your ingenious mind. I gather there is
+something you want of me. To be plain, then, what is it?"
+
+"That--that you shouldn't desert me--desert us--in this crisis. You have
+never deserted me before--never since I can first remember."
+
+"I desert you--good Lord!" Carteret exclaimed, his hands dropping at his
+sides with an odd sort of helplessness.
+
+"Ah! that's asking too much, I suppose," she said. "I'm selfish even to
+think of it. Yet how can I do otherwise? Don't you understand how all
+difficulties would vanish, and how beautifully simple and easy everything
+would be if you coached me--if you, dear Colonel Sahib, went with us?"
+
+The man with the blue eyes looked down at the tiger skin again, his
+countenance strained and blanched.
+
+More than ever did he find her humour baffling. Not once nor twice had
+he, putting force upon himself, resisted the temptation to woo
+her--witness his retirement from St. Augustin and his determined
+abstinence from intercourse with her since. But now, so it might
+veritably appear, the positions were reversed and she wooed him. Though
+whether pushed to that length merely by wayward fancy, by some
+transient skittish influence or frolic in the blood, or by realized
+design he had no means of judging.--Well, he had bidden her be plain,
+and she, in some sort at least, obeyed him. It behooved him, therefore,
+to be plain in return, in as far as a straightforward reading of her
+meaning would carry.
+
+"So you think all would be simple and easy were I to go with you and your
+father?" he said, both speech and manner tempered to gentleness. "I am
+glad to have you think so--should be still more glad could I share your
+belief. But I know better, dearest witch--know that you are mistaken.
+This is no case of desertion--put that out of your precious mind once
+and for all--but of discretion. My being in attendance, far from
+simplifying, would embroil and distort your position. An elderly
+gentleman perpetually trotting"--
+
+"Don't," Damaris cried, holding up both hands in hot repudiation. "Don't
+say that. There's distortion if you like! It's ugly--I won't have it, for
+it is not true."
+
+In the obvious sincerity of which denunciation Carteret found balm; yet
+adhered to his purpose.
+
+"But it is true, alas; and I therefore repeat it both for your admonition
+and my own. For an elderly gentleman trotting at a young girl's heels is
+a most unedifying spectacle--giving occasion, and reasonably, to the
+enemy to blaspheme--bad for her in numberless ways; and, if he's any
+remnant of self-respect left in him, is anything better than a fatuous
+dotard, damnably bad for him as well. Do you understand?"
+
+Damaris presented a mutinous countenance. She would have had much ado to
+explain her own motives during this ten minutes' conference. If her
+mental--or were they not rather mainly emotional?--turnings and doublings
+proved baffling to her companion, they proved baffling to herself in an
+almost greater degree. Things in general seemed to have gone into the
+melting-pot. So many events had taken place, so many more been
+preshadowed, so many strains of feeling excited! And these were
+confusingly unrelated, or appeared to be so as yet. Amongst the confusion
+of them she found no sure foothold, still less any highway along which to
+travel in confidence and security. Her thought ran wild. Her intentions
+ran with it, changing their colour chameleon-like from minute to minute.
+Now she was tempted to make an equivocal rejoinder.
+
+"To understand," she said, "is not always, Colonel Sahib, necessarily
+to agree."
+
+"I am satisfied with understanding and don't press for agreement," he
+answered, and on an easier note--"since to me it is glaringly evident
+you should take this fine flight unhandicapped. My duty is to stand
+aside and leave you absolutely free--not because I enjoy standing aside,
+but"--he would allow sentiment such meagre indulgence--"just exactly
+because I do not."
+
+Here for the second time, at the crucial moment, Felicia Verity made
+irruption upon the scene. But though her entrance was hurried, it
+differed fundamentally from that earlier one; so that both the man and
+the girl, standing in the proximity of their intimate colloquy before the
+fire, were sensible of and arrested by it. She was self-forgetful,
+self-possessed, the exalted touch of a pure devotion upon her.
+
+"I have been with my brother Charles," she began, addressing them both.
+"I happened to see Hordle coming from the library--and I put off dinner.
+I thought, darling"--this to Damaris, with a becoming hint of
+deference--"I might do so. I gathered that Charles--that your
+father--wished it. He has not been feeling well."
+
+And as Damaris anxiously exclaimed--
+
+"Yes"--Miss Felicia went on--"not at all well. Hordle told me. That was
+why I went to the library. He hoped, if he waited and rested for a little
+while, the uncomfortable sensations might subside and it would be
+needless to mention them. He did not want any fuss made. We gave him
+restoratives, and he recovered from the faintness. But he won't be equal,
+he admits, to coming in to dinner. Colonel Carteret must be hungry--your
+father begs us to wait no longer, I assured him we would not. Hordle is
+with him. He should not be alone, I think, while any pain continues."
+
+"Pain--pain?" Damaris cried, her imagination rather horribly caught by
+the word. "But is he hurt, has he had some accident?"
+
+While Carteret asked tersely: "Pain--and where?"
+
+"Here," Felicia answered, laying her hand upon her left side over the
+heart. She looked earnestly at Carteret as she spoke, conveying to him an
+alarm she sought to spare Damaris.
+
+"He tries to make little of it, and assures me it was only the heat of
+the house which caused him discomfort after the cold air out of doors.
+It may be only that, but I think we ought to make sure."
+
+Again, and with that same becoming hint of deference, she turned to
+her niece.
+
+"So I sent orders that Patch should drive at once to Stourmouth and fetch
+Dr. McCabe. I did not stop to consult you because it seemed best he
+should take out the horses before they were washed down and stabled."
+
+"Yes--but I can go to him?" Damaris asked.
+
+"Darling--of course. But I would try to follow his lead, if I were
+you--treat it all lightly, since he so wishes. Your father knows best in
+most things--and may know best in this. Please God it is so."
+
+Left alone with Carteret.
+
+"I am anxious--most cruelly anxious about my brother," she said.
+
+While Damaris, sweeping across the hall and down the corridor in her
+sunshine silken dress, repeated:
+
+"The ponies--the smugglers' ponies," a sob in her throat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TELLING HOW CHARLES VERITY LOOKED ON THE MOTHER OF HIS SON
+
+
+"Which is equivalent to saying, 'Hear the conclusion of the whole
+matter,' isn't it, McCabe?"
+
+Dr. McCabe's square, hairy-backed hands fumbled with the stethoscope as
+he pushed it into his breast pocket, and, in replying, his advertised
+cheerfulness rang somewhat false.
+
+"Not so fast, Sir Charles--in the good Lord's name, not so fast. While
+there's life there's hope, it's me settled opinion. I'm never for signing
+a patient's death-warrant before the blessed soul of him's entirely
+parted company with its mortal tenement of clay. The normal human being
+takes a mighty lot of killing in my experience, where the will to live is
+still intact. Let alone that you can never be quite upsides with Nature.
+Ah! she's an astonishing box of tricks to draw on where final
+dissolution's concerned. She glories to turn round on your pathological
+and biological high science; and, while you're measuring a man for his
+coffin, to help him give death the slip."
+
+Charles Verity slightly shifted his position--and that with singular
+carefulness--against the pillows in the deep red-covered chair. His
+hands, inert and bluish about the finger-tips, lay along the padded arms
+of it. The jacket of his grey-and-white striped flannel sleeping-suit was
+unfastened at the throat, showing the irregular lift and fall of his
+chest with each laboured breath. His features were accentuated, his face
+drawn and of a surprising pallor.
+
+The chair, in which he sat, had been brought forward into the wide arc of
+the great window forming the front of the room. Two bays of this stood
+open down to the ground. Looking out, beyond the rich brown of the
+newly-turned earth in the flower-beds, the lawn stretched away--a dim
+greyish green, under the long shadows cast by the hollies masking the
+wall on the left, and glittering, powdered by myriads of scintillating
+dewdrops, where the early sunshine slanted down on it from between their
+stiff pinnacles and sharply serrated crests.
+
+In the shrubberies robins sang, shrilly sweet. A murmur of waves,
+breaking at the back of the Bar, hung in the chill, moist, windless air.
+Presently a handbarrow rumbled and creaked, as West--the head gardener,
+last surviving relic of Thomas Clarkson Verity's reign--wheeled it from
+beneath the ilex trees towards the battery, leaving dark smudgy tracks
+upon the spangled turf.
+
+Arrived at his objective, the old gardener, with most admired
+deliberation, loaded down long-handled birch-broom, rake and hoe; and
+applied himself to mysterious peckings and sweeping of the gravel around
+the wooden carriages of the little cannon and black pyramid of
+ball.--Man, tools, and barrow were outlined against the pensive
+brightness of autumn sea and autumn sky, which last, to southward, still
+carried remembrance of sunrise in a broad band of faint yellowish pink,
+fading upward into misty azure and barred with horizontal pencillings of
+tarnished silver cloud.
+
+Thus far Charles Verity had watched the progress of the bowed,
+slow-moving figure musingly. But now, as the iron of the hoe clinked
+against the gravel flints, he came back, so to say, to himself and back
+to the supreme question at issue. He looked up, his eyes and the
+soundless ironic laughter resident in them, meeting McCabe's twinkling,
+cunning yet faithful and merry little eyes, with a flash.
+
+"The work of the world is not arrested," he said. "See, that
+octogenarian, old West. He wheeled ill-oiled, squeaking barrows and
+hacked at the garden paths when I was a Harchester boy. He wheels the one
+and hacks at the other even yet--a fact nicely lowering to one's private
+egotism, when you come to consider it. Why, then, my good friend,
+perjure yourself or strive to mince matters? The work of the world will
+be done whether I'm here to direct the doing of it or not.--Granted I am
+tough and in personal knowledge of ill-health a neophyte. My luck
+throughout has been almost uncanny. Neither in soldiering nor in sport,
+from man or from beast, have I ever suffered so much as a scratch. I have
+borne a charmed life--established a record for invulnerability, which
+served me well in the East where the gods still walk in the semblance of
+man and miracle is still persistently prevalent. Accident has passed me
+by--save for being laid up once, nearly thirty years ago, with a broken
+ankle in the house of some friends at Poonah."
+
+He ceased speaking, checking, as it seemed, disposition to further
+disclosure; while the soundless laughter in his eyes found answering
+expression upon his lips, curving them, to a somewhat bitter smile
+beneath the flowing moustache.
+
+"In to-day's enforced idleness how persistently cancelled episodes and
+emotions rap, ghostly, on the door demanding and gaining entrance!" he
+presently said. "Must we take it, Doctor, that oblivion is a fiction,
+merciful forgetfulness an illusion; and that every action, every
+desire--whether fulfilled or not--is printed indelibly upon one's memory,
+merely waiting the hour of weakness and physical defeat to show up?"
+
+"The Lord only knows!" McCabe threw off, a little hopelessly. This was
+the first utterance approaching complaint; and he deplored it for his
+patient's sake. He didn't like that word defeat.
+
+Then, to his hearer's relief with a softened accent, Charles Verity took
+up his former theme.
+
+"Save for a trifling go of fever now and again, illness has given me the
+go-by equally with accident. But, for all my ignorance of such
+afflictions I know, beyond all shadow of doubt, that a few repetitions of
+the experience of last night must close any man's account. Experiment is
+more enlightening than argument. There is no shaking the knowledge you
+arrive at through it."
+
+McCabe, standing at ease by the open window, untidy, hirsute, unkempt,
+rammed his hands down into his gaping trouser pockets and nodded
+unwilling agreement.
+
+"The attack was bad," he said. "I'm not denying it was murderously bad.
+And all the harder on you because, but for the one defaulting organ, your
+heart, you're as sound as a bell. You're a well enough man to put up a
+good fight; and that, you see, cuts both ways, be danged to it."
+
+"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.--You know as well as I do
+the Indian appointment will never be gazetted."
+
+"There you have me, Sir Charles, loath though I am to admit as much. I'd
+be a liar if I denied it would not."
+
+"How long do you give me then? Months, or only weeks?"
+
+"That depends in the main on yourself, in as far as I can presume to
+pronounce. With care"--
+
+"Which means sitting still here"--
+
+"It does."
+
+Charles Verity raised his shoulders the least bit.
+
+"Not good enough, McCabe," he declared, "not good enough. There are rites
+to be duly performed, words to be said, which I refuse to neglect. Oh,
+no, don't misunderstand me. I don't need professional help to accomplish
+my dying. Were I a member of your communion it might be different, but I
+require no much-married parsonic intermediary to make my peace with God.
+I am but little troubled regarding that. Shall not the judge of all the
+earth do right?--Nevertheless, there remain rites to be decently
+performed. I must make my peace with man--and still more with
+woman--before I go hence and am no more seen. But, look here, I have no
+wish to commit myself too soon, and risk the bathos of an anti-climax by
+having to perform them twice, repeat them at a later date.--So how long
+do you give me--weeks? Too generous an estimate? A week, then
+or--well--less?"
+
+"You want it straight?"
+
+"I want it straight."
+
+"More likely days. God grant I am mistaken. With your fine constitution,
+as I tell you, you are booked to put up a good fight. All the same, to be
+honest, Sir Charles, it was touch and go more than once last night."
+
+In the room an interval of silence, and without song of the robins and
+murmur of the sea, nearer now and louder as the rising tide lapped up the
+sands at the back of the Bar. The faint yellow-pink after-thought of
+sunrise and pencillings of tarnished cloud alike had vanished into the
+all-obtaining misty blue of the upper sky. Heading for the French coast,
+a skein of wild geese passed in wedge-shaped formation with honking cries
+and the beat of strong-winged flight. The barrow creaked again, wheeled
+some few yards further along the battery walk.
+
+"Thanks--so I supposed," Sir Charles Verity calmly said.
+
+He stretched himself, falling into a less constrained and careful
+posture. Leaned his elbow on the chair-arm, his chin in the hollow of his
+hand, crossed the right leg over the left.
+
+"Twenty-four hours will give me time for all which is of vital
+importance. The rest must, and no doubt perfectly will, arrange
+itself.--Oh! I'll obey you within reasonable limits, McCabe. I have no
+craving to hurry the inevitable conclusion. These last hours possess
+considerable significance and charm--an impressiveness even, which it
+would be folly to thrust aside or waste."
+
+Once more he looked up, his tone and expression devoid now of all
+bitterness.
+
+"I propose to savour their pleasant qualities to the full. So make
+yourself easy, my good fellow," he continued with an admirable
+friendliness. "Go and get your breakfast. Heaven knows you've most
+thoroughly earned it, and a morning pipe of peace afterwards.--The bell
+upon the small table?--Yes--oh, yes--and Hordle within earshot. I've
+everything I require; and, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, shall be
+glad enough of a respite from this course of food and drink, potions and
+poultices--remedial to the delinquent flesh no doubt, but a notable
+weariness to the-spirit.--And, see here, report to the two ladies, my
+sister and--and Damaris, that you leave me in excellent case, free of
+discomfort, resting for a time before girding up my loins to meet the
+labours of the day."
+
+Charles Verity closed his eyes in intimation of dismissal, anxious to be
+alone the better to reckon with that deeper, final loneliness which
+confronted him just now in all its relentless logic.
+
+For, though his mind remained lucid, self-realized and observant, his
+control of its action and direction was incomplete owing to bodily
+fatigue. Hence it lay open to assault, at the mercy of a thousand and one
+crowding thoughts and perceptions. And over these he desired to gain
+ascendency--to drive, rather than be driven by them. The epic of his
+three-score years, from its dim, illusive start to this dramatic and
+inexorable finish--but instantly disclosed to him in the reluctant
+admissions of the good-hearted Irish doctor--flung by at a double, in
+coloured yet incoherent progression, so to speak, now marching to
+triumphant blare of trumpet, now to roll of muffled drum. Which
+incoherence came in great measure of the inalienable duality of his own
+nature--passion and austerity, arrogance and self-doubt, love--surpassing
+most men's capacity of loving--and a defacing strain of cruelty,
+delivering stroke and counter-stroke. From all such tumult he earnestly
+sought to be delivered; since not the thing accomplished--whether for
+fame, for praise or for remorse--not, in short, what has been, but what
+was, and still more what must soon be, did he need, at this juncture,
+dispassionately to contemplate.
+
+That sharp-toothed disappointment gnawed him, is undeniable, when he
+thought of the culminating gift of happy fortune, royally satisfying to
+ambition, as unexpectedly offered him as, through his own unlooked-for
+and tragic disability, it was unexpectedly withdrawn. But disappointment
+failed to vex him long. A more wonderful journey than any possible
+earthly one, a more majestic adventure than that of any oriental
+proconsulship, awaited him. For no less a person than Death issued the
+order--an order there is no disobeying. He must saddle up therefore, bid
+farewell, and ride away.
+
+Nor did he flinch from that ride with Death, the black captain, as
+escort, any more than, during the past night, he had flinched under the
+grip of mortal pain. For some persons the call to endurance brings actual
+pleasure--of a grim heroic kind. It did so to Charles Verity. And not
+only this conscious exercise of fortitude, this pride of bearing bodily
+anguish, but a strange curiosity worked to sustain him. The novelty of
+the experience, in both cases, excited and held his interest, continued
+to exercise it and to hold.
+
+Now, as in solitude his mental atmosphere acquired serenity and
+poise--the authority of the past declining--this matter of death
+increasingly engrossed him. For it trenches on paradox, surely, that the
+one absolutely certain event in every human career is also the most
+unexplored and practically incredible.--An everyday occurrence, a
+commonplace, concerning which there remains nothing new, nothing
+original, to be written, sung or said; yet a mystery still inviolate,
+aching with the alarm of the undiscovered, the unpenetrated, to each
+individual, summoned to accept its empire! He had sent others to their
+death. Now his own turn came and he found it, however calmly considered,
+a rather astounding business. An ending or a beginning?--Useless, after
+all, to speculate. The worst feature of it, not improbably, this same
+preliminary loneliness, this stripping naked, no smallest comfort left
+you of human companionship, or even of humble material keepsake from out
+the multitude of your familiar possessions here in the dear accustomed
+human scene.
+
+The gates of death open. You pass them. They close behind you. And what
+then?--The whole hierarchy of heaven, the whole company of your
+forerunners thither--beloved and honoured on earth--may be gathered to
+hail the homing soul within those amazing portals; or it may drop, as a
+stone into a well, down the blank nothingness of the abyss.--Of all
+gambles invented by God, man or devil--so he told himself--this daily,
+hourly gamble of individual dissolution is the biggest. Man's heart
+refuses the horror of extinction, while his intellect holds the question
+in suspense. We hope. We believe. From of old fair promises have been
+made us; and, granted the gift of faith, hope and belief neighbour upon
+assurance. But certainty is denied. No mortal, still clothed in flesh,
+has known, nor--the accumulated science of the ages notwithstanding--does
+know, actually and exactly, that which awaits it.
+
+Thus, anyhow, in the still, tender brightness of the autumn morning,
+while Nature and men alike pursued their normal activities and
+occupations, did this singular matter appear to Charles Verity--he,
+himself, arbitrarily cut off from all such activities and occupations
+in the very moment of high fruition. Had death been a less eminent
+affair, or less imminent, the sarcasm of his position might have seemed
+gross to the point of insult. But, the longer he envisaged it, the more
+did the enduring enigma and its accompanying uncertainty allure. Not as
+victim, but rather as conqueror of the final terror, did he begin to
+regard himself.
+
+Meanwhile, though reason continued to hold the balance even between
+things positively known and things imagined only and hoped for, the
+god-ward impulse strengthened in him. Not by conscious or convincing
+argument from within, but by all-powerful compulsion from without, was
+his thought borne onward and upward to increasing confidence. So that he
+asked himself--as so many another, still unwearied, still enamoured of
+attainment, has asked in like case--whether impending divorce of soul and
+body may not confer freedom of a wider range and nobler quality, powers
+more varied and august than the mind, circumscribed by conditions of time
+and sense, has yet conception of?
+
+To him such development seemed possible--certainly. Probable?--Ah, well,
+perhaps--perhaps. Which brought him back to his former contention, that
+its inherent loneliness constitutes the bitterest sting of death.
+Smiling, he quoted the ancient, divinely tender saying: "There is a child
+in each one of us which cries at the dark."
+
+While, in swift reaction, he yearned towards battle where amid the
+fierce and bloody glory of the fight, souls of heroes troop forth
+together, shouting, into everlasting day or--sceptical reason shaking a
+sadly sage head once again--into everlasting night.
+
+He stretched out his hand instinctively for the bell on the little table
+at his elbow. Hordle answered his summons, grey of countenance from
+alarm, anxiety, and broken rest.
+
+"Let Miss Damaris know I shall be glad to see her when she is free to
+come to me," he said.
+
+And here, although our damsel's reputation for courage and resource may,
+thereby, sustain some damage, I am constrained to state that while in the
+sick-room Miss Felicia shone, Damaris gave off but a vacillating and
+ineffective light.
+
+Imagination is by no means invariably beneficent. The very liveliness of
+the perceptions which it engenders may intimidate and incapacitate. Upon
+Damaris imagination practised this mischief. Becoming, for the time, that
+upon which she looked, sharing every pang and even embroidering the
+context, she weakened, in some sort, to the level of the actual sufferer,
+helpless almost as he through the drench of overwhelming sympathy. She
+had been taken, poor child, at so villainous a disadvantage. Without
+preparation or warning--save of the most casual and inadequate--her
+humour wayward, she a trifle piqued, fancying her pretty clothes, her
+pretty looks, excited, both by the brilliant prospect presented by the
+Indian appointment and by her delicate passage of arms with Carteret, she
+was compelled of a sudden to witness the bodily torment of a human being,
+not only by her beloved beyond all others, but reverenced also. The
+impression she received was of outrage, almost of blasphemy. The cruelty
+of life lay uncovered, naked and open to her appalled and revolted
+consciousness. She received a moral, in addition to a physical shock,
+utterly confounding in its crudity, its primitive violence.
+
+The ravage of pain can be, in great measure, surmounted and concealed;
+but that baser thing, functional disturbance--in this case present as
+heart spasm, threatening suffocation, with consequent agonized and
+uncontrollable struggle for breath--defies concealment. This
+manifestation horrified Damaris. The more so that, being unacquainted
+with the sorry spectacle of disease, her father, under the deforming
+stress of it, appeared to her as a stranger almost--inaccessible to
+affection, hideously removed from her and remote. His person and
+character, to her distracted observation, were altered beyond recognition
+except during intervals, poignant to the verge of heart-break, when
+passing ease restored his habitual dignity and grace.
+
+Thus, while Miss Felicia and Carteret--with Hordle and Mary Fisher as
+assistants--ministered to his needs in as far as ministration was
+possible, she stood aside, consumed by misery, voluntarily effacing
+herself. Backed away even against the wall, out of range of the
+lamp-light, stricken, shuddering, and mute. Upon Dr. McCabe's arrival and
+assumption of command, Carteret, finding himself at liberty to note her
+piteous state, led her out into the passage and then to the long
+drawing-room, with gentle authority. There for a half-hour or more--to
+him sadly and strangely sweet--he sat beside her, while the tears
+silently coursed down her cheeks, letting her poor proud head rest
+against his shoulder, his arm supporting her gracious young body still
+clothed in all the bravery of her flowered silken sunshine dress.
+
+Later, Mary bringing more favourable news of Sir Charles--pain and
+suffocation having yielded for the time being to McCabe's
+treatment--Carteret persuaded her to go upstairs and let the said Mary
+put her to bed. Once there she slept the sleep of exhaustion, fatigue and
+sorrow mercifully acting as a soporific, her capacity for further thought
+or feeling literally worn out.
+
+During that session in the drawing-room Damaris, to his thankfulness, had
+asked no questions of him. All she demanded child-like, in her extremity,
+had been the comfort and security of human contact. And this he gave her
+simply, ungrudgingly, with a high purity of understanding, guiltless of
+any shadow of embarrassment or any after-thought. Their lighter, somewhat
+enigmatic relation of the earlier evening was extinguished, swamped by
+the catastrophe of Charles Verity's illness. Exactly in how far she
+gauged the gravity of that illness and its only too likely result, or
+merely wept, unnerved by the distressing outward aspect of it, Carteret
+could not determine. But he divined, and rightly, that she was in process
+of ranging herself, at least subconsciously, with a new and terrible
+experience which, could she learn the lesson of it aright would temper
+her nature to worthy issues.
+
+Hence, with a peculiar and tender interest, he watched her when, coming
+down in the morning, he found her already in the dining-room, the
+pleasant amenities of a well-ordered, hospitable house and household
+abundantly evident.
+
+Whatever the tragic occurrences of the last twelve hours, domestic
+discipline was in no respect relaxed. The atmosphere of the room
+distilled a morning freshness. Furniture and flooring shone with polish,
+a log fire, tipped by dancing flames, burned in the low wide grate. Upon
+the side-table, between the westward facing windows, a row of silver
+chafing-dishes gave agreeable promise of varied meats; as did the tea and
+coffee service, arrayed before Damaris, of grateful beverage. While she
+herself looked trim, and finished in white silk shirt and russet-red
+suit, her toilet bearing no sign of indifference or of haste.
+
+That her complexion matched her shirt in colour--or rather in all absence
+of it--that her face was thin, its contours hardened, her eyebrows drawn
+into a little frown, her eyes enormous, sombre and clouded as with
+meditative thought, increased, in Carteret's estimation, assurance of her
+regained self-mastery and composure. Nor did a reticence in her manner
+displease him.
+
+"I have persuaded Aunt Felicia to breakfast upstairs," she told him. "Dr.
+McCabe sends me word he--my father--wishes to rest for the present, so I
+engaged Aunt Felicia to rest too. She was wonderful."
+
+Damaris' voice shook slightly, as did her hand lifting the coffee-pot.
+
+"She stayed up all night. So did you, I'm afraid, didn't you,
+Colonel Sahib?"
+
+"Oh, for me that was nothing. A bath, a change, and ten minutes out there
+on the battery watching the sun come up over the sea," Carteret said. "So
+don't waste compassion on me. I'm as fit as a fiddle and in no wise
+deserve it."
+
+"Ah! but you and Aunt Felicia did stay," she repeated, her hands still
+rather tremulously busy with coffee-pot and milk jug. "You were faithful
+and I no better than a shirker. I fell through, miserably lost myself,
+which was selfish, contemptible. I am ashamed. Only I was so startled. I
+never really knew before such--such things could be.--Forgive me, Colonel
+Sahib. I have been to Aunt Felicia and asked her forgiveness
+already.--And don't think too meanly of me, please. The shirking is over
+and done with for always. You may trust me it never will happen again--my
+losing myself as I did last night, I mean."
+
+In making this appeal for leniency, her eyes met Carteret's fairly for
+the first time; and he read in them, not without admiration and a twinge
+of pain, both the height of her new-born, determined valour and the depth
+of her established distress.
+
+"You needn't tell me that, you needn't tell me that, dear witch," he
+answered quickly. "I was sure of it all along. I knew it was just a phase
+which would have no second edition. So put any question of shame or need
+of forgiveness out of your precious head. You were rushed up against
+circumstances, against a revelation, calculated to stagger the most
+seasoned campaigner. You did not shirk; but it took you a little time to
+get your bearings. That was all. Don't vex your sweet soul with quite
+superfluous reproaches.--Sugar? Yes, and plenty of it I am afraid.--But
+you, too, must eat."
+
+And on her making some show of repugnance--
+
+"See here, we can't afford to despise the day of small things, of minor
+aids to efficiency, dearest witch," he wisely admonished her.
+
+Whereupon, emulous to please him, bending her will to his, Damaris
+humbled herself to consumption of a portion of the contents of the
+chafing-dishes aforesaid. To discover that, granted a healthy subject,
+sorrow queerly breeds hunger, the initial distaste for food--in the main
+a sentimental one--once surmounted.
+
+Later McCabe joined them. Recognized Damaris' attitude of valour, and
+inwardly applauded it, although himself in woeful state. For he was hard
+hit, badly upset. Conscious of waste of tissue, he set about to restore
+it without apology or hesitation, trouble putting an edge to appetite in
+his case also, and that of formidable keenness. Bitterly he grieved,
+since bearing the patient, he feared very certainly to lose, an uncommon
+affection. He loved Charles Verity; while, from the worldly standpoint,
+his dealings with The Hard meant very much to him--made for glory, a
+feather in his cap visible to all and envied by many. Minus the fine
+flourish of it his position sank to obscurity. As a whist-playing,
+golf-playing, club-haunting, Anglo-Indian ex-civil surgeon--and Irishman
+at that--living in lodgings at Stourmouth, he commanded meagre
+consideration. But as chosen medical-attendant and, in some sort,
+retainer of Sir Charles Verity he ranked. The county came within his
+purview. Thanks to this connection with The Hard he, on occasion, rubbed
+shoulders with the locally great. Hence genuine grief for his friend was
+black-bordered by the prospect of impending social and mundane loss. The
+future frowned on him, view it in what terms he might. To use his own
+unspoken phrase, he felt "in hellishly low water."
+
+One point in particular just now worried him. Thus, as fish, eggs,
+porridge, hot cakes, honey, and jam disappeared in succession, he opened
+himself to Damaris and Carteret. A difficult subject, namely that of a
+second opinion.--Let no thought of any wounding of his susceptibilities
+operate against the calling in of such. He was ready and willing to meet
+any fellow practitioner they might select--a Harley Street big-wig, or
+Dr. Maskall, of Harchester, whose advice in respect of cardiac trouble
+was wide sought.
+
+He had, however, but just launched the question when Hordle entered and,
+walking to the head of the table, addressed Damaris.
+
+"Sir Charles desires me to say he will be glad to see you, miss, when you
+are at liberty," he told her in muffled accents.
+
+She sprang up, to pause an instant, irresolute, glancing wide-eyed
+at Carteret.
+
+He had risen too. Coming round the corner of the table, he drew back her
+chair, put his hand under her elbow, went with her to the door.
+
+"There is nothing to dread, dearest witch," he gently and quietly said.
+"Have confidence in yourself. God keep you--and him.--Now you are quite
+ready? That's right.--Well, then go."
+
+Carteret waited, looking after her until, crossing the hall followed by
+Hordle, she passed along the corridor out of sight. Silent, preoccupied,
+he closed the door and took a turn the length of the room before resuming
+his place at the opposite side of the table to McCabe, facing the light.
+
+The doctor, who had ceased eating and half risen to his feet at the
+commencement of this little scene, watched it throughout; at first
+indifferent, a prey to his own worries, but soon in quickening interest,
+shrewd enquiry and finally in dawning comprehension.
+
+"Holy Mother of Mercy, so that's the lay of the land, is it?" and his
+loose lips shaped themselves to a whistle, yet emitted no sound. To
+obliterate all signs of which tendency to vulgar expression of
+enlightenment he rubbed moustache, mouth and chin with his napkin,
+studying Carteret closely meanwhile.
+
+"In the pink of condition, by Gad--good for a liberal twenty years yet,
+and more--bar accident. Indefinite postponement of the grand climacteric
+in this case.--All the same a leetle, lee-tie bit dangerous, I'm
+thinking, for both, if she tumbles to it."
+
+Then aloud--"Has the poor darling girl grasped the meaning of her
+father's illness do you make out, Colonel grasped the ugly
+eventualities of it?"
+
+Carteret slowly brought his glance to bear on the speaker.
+
+"I believe so, though she has not actually told me as much," he
+said--"And now about this question of a second opinion, McCabe?"
+
+The easily huffed Irishman accepted the reproof in the best spirit
+possible, as confirming his own perspicacity.
+
+"Quite so. Flicked him neatly on the raw, and he winced. All the same
+he's a white man, a real jewel of a fellow, worthy of good fortune if the
+ball's thrown his way. I wonder how long, by-the-by, this handsome game's
+been a-playing?"
+
+With which, as requested, he returned to the rival claims of Harley
+Street and Harchester in respect of a consulting physician.
+
+Carteret proved a faithful prophet, for in truth there was nothing to
+dread the beloved presence once entered, as Damaris thankfully
+registered.
+
+The sun by now topped the hollies and shone into the study, flinging a
+bright slanting pathway across the dim crimson, scarlet and blue of the
+Turkey carpet. Charles Verity stood, in an open bay of the great window,
+looking out over the garden. Seen thus, in the still sunlight, the tall
+grey-clad figure possessed all its accustomed, slightly arrogant repose.
+Damaris thrilled with exalted hope. For the young are slow to admit even
+the verdict of fact as final. His attitude was so natural, so unstrained
+and unstudied, that the message of ghostly warning yesterday evening was
+surely discounted; while the subsequent terror of the night, that hideous
+battle with pain and suffocation, became to her incredible, an evil dream
+from which, in grateful ecstasy, she now awoke.
+
+Her joy found expression.
+
+"Dearest, dearest, you sent for me.--Is it to let me see you are
+really better, more beautifully recovered than they told me or I
+ventured to suppose?"
+
+Her voice broke under a gladness midway between tears and laughter.
+
+"The envious blades of Atropos' scissors have not cut the mortal thread
+yet anyhow," he answered, smiling, permitting himself the classic conceit
+as a screen to possible emotion. "But we won't build too much on the
+clemency of Fate. How long she proposes to wait before closing her
+scissors it is idle to attempt to say."
+
+He laid his hands on Damaris' shoulders. Bent his head and kissed
+her upward pouted lips--thereby hushing the loving disclaimer which
+rose to them.
+
+"So we will keep on the safe side of the event, my wise child," he
+continued. "Make all our preparations and thus deny the enemy any
+satisfaction of taking us unawares.--Can you write a business
+letter for me?"
+
+"A dozen, dearest, if you wish," Damaris assented eagerly. Yet that
+image of the scissors stayed by her. Already her joy was sensibly
+upon the wane.
+
+"Oh! one will be sufficient, I think--quite sufficient for this morning."
+
+Charles Verity turned his head, looking seaward through the
+tranquil sunshine.
+
+"That Indian appointment has to be suitably thanked for and--declined."
+
+Damaris drew back a step so as to gain a clearer view of him. The
+hands resting on her shoulders were oddly inert, so she fancied,
+forceless and in temperature cold. Even through the thickness of cloth
+jacket and silk shirt she was aware of their lifelessness and chill.
+This roused rebellion in her. Her instinct was for fight. She made a
+return on McCabe's suggestion regarding further advice. She would
+demand a consultation, call in expert opinion. The dear man with the
+blue eyes--here her white face flushed rosy--would manage all that for
+her, and compel help in the form of the last word of medical science
+and skill.
+
+"Might not your letter be put off for just a few days?" she pleaded, "in
+case--until"--
+
+But Charles Verity broke in before she could finish her tender protest,
+a sadness, even hint of bitterness in his tone.
+
+"You covet this thing so much," he said. "Your heart is so set on it?"
+
+She made haste to reassure him.--No, no not that way, not for her. How
+could it signify, save on his account? She only cared because greedy of
+his advancement, greedy to have him exalted--placed where he belonged, on
+the summit, the apex, so that all must perceive and acknowledge his
+greatness. As to herself--and the flush deepened, making her in aspect
+deliciously youthful and ingenious--she confessed misgivings. Reported
+her talk with Carteret concerning the subject, and the scolding received
+from him thereupon.
+
+"One more reason for writing in the sense I propose, then," her father
+declared, "since it sets your over-modest doubts and qualms at rest, my
+dear. That is settled."
+
+His hands weighed on her shoulders as though he suddenly needed and
+sought support.
+
+"I will sit down," he said. "There are other matters to be discussed, and
+I can, perhaps, talk more easily so."
+
+He went the few steps across to the red chair. Sank into it. Leaned
+against the pillows, bending backward, his hand pressed to his left
+side. His features contracted, and his breath caught as of one spent
+with running. And Damaris, watching him, again received that desolating
+impression of change, of his being in spirit far removed, inaccessible
+to her sympathy, a stranger. He had gone away and rather terribly left
+her alone.
+
+"Are you in pain?" she asked, agonized.
+
+"Discomfort," he replied. "We will not dignify this by the name of pain.
+But I must wait for a time before dictating the letter. There's something
+I will ask you to do for me, my dear, meanwhile."
+
+"Yes"--He paused, shifted his position, closed his eyes.
+
+"Have you held any communication with--"
+
+He stopped, for the question irked him. Even at this pass it went against
+the grain with him to ask of his daughter news of his son.
+
+But in that pause our maiden's scattered wits very effectually
+returned to her.
+
+"With Darcy Faircloth?" she said. And as Charles Verity bowed his head in
+assent--"Yes, I should have told you already but--but for all which has
+happened. He was here the day before yesterday. He came home from church
+with me.--That was my doing, not his, to begin with. You mustn't think he
+put himself forward--took advantage, I mean, of your being away. If there
+is any blame it is mine."
+
+"Mine, rather--and of long standing. God forgive me!"
+
+But Damaris, fairly launched now upon a wholly welcome topic, would have
+none of this. To maintain her own courage, and, if it might be, combat
+that dreaded withdrawal of his spirit into regions where she could not
+follow, she braced herself to reason with him.
+
+"No--there indeed you are mistaken, dearest," she gently yet confidently
+asserted. "You take the whole business topsy-turvy fashion, quite wrong
+way round. I won't weary you with explanations of exactly what led to
+Darcy Faircloth coming here with me on Sunday. But you ought to know that
+he and Aunt Felicia met. I hadn't planned that. It just happened. And she
+was lovely to him--lovely to us both. She made him stay to
+luncheon--inviting him in your name."
+
+"I seem to possess a singular gift for saddling my relations with the
+payment of my bad debts," Charles Verity remarked.
+
+"But there isn't any bad debt--that's what I so dearly want you to
+believe, what I'm trying so hard, Commissioner Sahib, to tell you,"
+Damaris cried. "Afterwards, when he and I were alone by ourselves, the
+ice broke somehow, he gave himself away and said beautiful things--things
+about you which made me delightfully happy, and showed how he has felt
+towards you all along."
+
+Simply, without picking of her words, hesitation or artifice, Damaris
+repeated that somewhat sinister tale of the sea. Of a sailing ship,
+becalmed through burning days and stifling nights in tropic waters. Of
+the ill-doings of a brutal, drunken captain. Of a fly-blown eating-house
+in Singapore. Of the spiritual deliverance there achieved through sight
+of Charles Verity's name and successful record in the columns of a
+Calcutta newspaper; and the boy's resultant demand for the infliction of
+some outward and visible sign, some inalienable stigmata, which should
+bear perpetual witness to the fact of his parentage.
+
+"So you see"--
+
+Damaris kindled, standing before him, flamed indeed to a rare
+carelessness of convention, of enjoined pruderies and secrecies.--
+
+"You gave him the beautiful gift of life to begin with; and saved his
+life later when he was so miserably tempted to end it. As he loves life,
+where then is the debt?--Not on your side certainly, dearest."
+
+Listening to which fondly exalted sophistries--for sophistries from
+worldly and moral standpoint alike must he not surely pronounce
+them?--Charles Verity still received comfort to his soul. They ought to
+be reckoned mistaken, of course, transparently in error, yet neither son
+nor daughter condemned him. Neither did his sister, in the pathetic
+innocence and purity of her middle-age maidenhood.
+
+This moved him to thankfulness, none the less genuine because shot with
+self-mockery. For he was curious to observe how, as the last urgings of
+ambition and thirst of power fell away from him,--he riding under escort
+of Death, the black captain--all tributes of human tenderness and
+approval gained in value.--Not the approval of notable personages, of
+those high in office, nor even that of sympathetic critics and readers;
+but of persons in his own immediate voisinage, bound to him by
+friendship, by association, or the tie of blood.--Their good-will was
+precious to him as never before. He craved to be in perfect amity with
+every member of that restricted circle. Hence it vexed and fretted him to
+know the circle incomplete, through the exclusion of one rather
+flagrantly intimate example. Yet to draw the said member, the said
+example, within the circle, yielding it the place which it might
+rightfully aspire to occupy, amounted--after half a lifetime of
+abstention and avoidance--to a rather tremendous demonstration, one which
+might well be hailed as extravagant, as a courting of offence possible
+only to a sentimental egoist of most aggravated kind.
+
+And he was tired--had no smallest inclination towards demonstrations. For
+the threatening of heart spasm, to which he lately denied the title of
+pain, though of short duration, affected him adversely, sapping his
+strength. His mind, it is true, remained clear, even vividly receptive;
+but, just as earlier this morning, his will proved insufficient for its
+direction or control. He mused, his chin sunk on his breast, his left
+hand travelling down over the long soft moustache, his eyes half closed.
+Thought and vision followed their own impulse, wandering back and forth
+between the low-caste eating-house in the sweltering heat and perfumed
+stenches of the oriental, tropic seaport; and the stone-built English
+inn--here on Marychurch Haven--overlooking the desolate waste of
+sand-hills, the dark reed-beds and chill gleaming tides.
+
+For love of Damaris, his daughter, while still in the heat of his prime,
+he had foresworn all traffic with women. Yet now, along with the tacitly
+admitted claims of the son, arose the claim of the mistress, mother of
+that son--in no sensual sort, but with a certain wildness of bygone
+romance, wind and rain-swept, unsubstantial, dim and grey. Ever since
+conviction of the extreme gravity of his physical condition dawned on
+him, the idea of penetrating the courts of that deserted sanctuary had
+been recurrent. In the summing up of his human, his earthly, experience,
+romance deserved, surely, a word of farewell? Damaris' story served to
+give the idea a fuller appeal and consistency.
+
+But he was tired--tired. He longed simply to drift. It was infinitely
+distasteful to him definitely to plan, or to decide respecting anything.
+
+Meanwhile his continued silence and abstraction wore badly upon Damaris.
+She had steeled herself; had flamed, greatly daring. Now reaction set in.
+Her effort proved vain. She had failed. For once more she recognized that
+an unknown influence, a power dark and incalculably strong--so she
+figured it--regained ascendency over her father, working to the insidious
+changing of his nature, strangely winning him away. Waiting for some
+response, some speech or comment on his part, fear and the sense of
+helplessness assailed, and would have submerged her, had she not clung to
+Carteret's parting "God bless you" and avowed faith in her stability, as
+to a wonder-working charm. Nor did the charm fail in efficacy.--Oh!
+really he was a wonderful sheet-anchor, "the shadow of a great rock in a
+weary land," that dear man with the blue eyes! Consciously she blessed
+him.--And, thanks to remembrance of him, presently found voice and
+purpose once again.
+
+"You aren't displeased with me, dearest?" she asked.
+
+"Displeased?" Charles Verity repeated, at first absently. "Displeased, my
+dear, no--why?"
+
+"We didn't do wrong?"--labouring the point, the more fully to recall and
+retain him--"Didn't take too much upon ourselves--Aunt Felicia, I mean,
+and I--by persuading Darcy Faircloth to stay on Sunday, by entertaining
+him when you were away? Or--or have I been stupid, dearest, and
+thoughtlessly wearied you by talking too much and too long?"
+
+"Neither," he said. "On the contrary, all you have told me goes to lessen
+certain difficulties, make the crooked, in some degree, straight and
+rough places plain."
+
+For, if Faircloth had been here so recently, broken bread too in the
+house, so he argued, it became the easier to bid him return. And Charles
+Verity needed to see him, see him this morning--since purpose of
+farewells, to be spoken in those long-deserted courts of romance,
+stiffened, becoming a thing not merely to be turned hither and thither
+in thought, but to be plainly and directly done.--"Send for him in your
+own name," he said. "Explain to him how matters stand, and ask him to
+talk with me."
+
+And, as Damaris agreed, rejoiced by the success of her adventurous
+diplomacy, making to go at once and give the required instructions--
+
+"Stay--stay a moment," her father said, and drew her down to sit on the
+chair-arm, keeping her hand in his, and with his other hand stroking it
+wistfully. For though certain difficulties might be sensibly lessened,
+they were not altogether removed; and he smiled inwardly, aware that not
+even in the crack of doom are feminine rights over a man other than
+conflicting and uncommonly ticklish to adjust.
+
+"Before we commit ourselves to further enterprises, my darling, let us
+quite understand one another upon one or two practical points--bearing in
+mind the blades of Atropos' envious scissors. My affairs are in
+order"--Damaris shrank, piteously expostulated.
+
+"Oh! but must we, are we obliged to speak of those things? They grate on
+me--Commissioner Sahib, they are ugly. They hurt."
+
+"Yes--distinctly we are obliged to speak of them. To do so can neither
+hasten nor retard the event. All the more obliged to speak of them,
+because I have never greatly cared about money, except for what I could
+do with it.--As a means, of vast importance. As an end,
+uninteresting.--So it has been lightly come and lightly go, I am afraid.
+All the same I've not been culpably improvident. A portion of my income
+dies with me; but enough remains to secure you against any anxiety
+regarding ways and means, if not to make you a rich woman. I have left an
+annuity to your Aunt Felicia. Her means are slender, dear creature, and
+her benevolence outruns them, so that she balances a little anxiously, I
+gather, on the edge of debt. The capital sum will return to you
+eventually. Carteret and McCabe consented, some years ago, to act as my
+executors. Their probity and honour are above reproach.--Now as to this
+place--if you should ever wish to part with it, let Faircloth take it
+over. I have made arrangements to that effect, about which I will talk
+with him when he comes.--Have no fear lest I should say that which might
+wound him. I shall be as careful, my dear, of his proper pride as of my
+own.--Understand I have no desire to circumscribe either your or his
+liberty of action unduly. But this house, all it contains, the garden,
+the very trees I see from these windows, are so knitted into the fabric
+of my past life that I shrink--with a queer sense of homelessness--from
+any thought of their passing into the occupation of strangers.--Childish,
+pitifully weak-minded no doubt, and therefore the more natural that one
+should crave a voice, thus in the disposition of what one has learned
+through long usage so very falsely to call one's own!"
+
+"We will do exactly what you wish, even to the littlest particular, I
+promise you--both for Faircloth and for myself," Damaris answered,
+forcing herself to calmness and restraint of tears.
+
+He petted her hands silently until, as the minutes passed, she began once
+more to grow fearful of that dreadful unknown influence insidiously
+possessing him and winning him away. And he may have grown fearful of it
+too, for he made a sharp movement, raising his shoulders as though
+striving to throw off some weight, some encumbrance.
+
+"There is an end, then, of business," he said, "and of such worldly
+considerations. I need worry you with them no more. Only one thing
+remains, of which, before I speak to others, it is only seemly, my
+darling, I should speak to you."
+
+Charles Verity lifted his eyes to hers, and she perceived his spirit as
+now in nowise remote; but close, evident almost to the point of alarm. It
+looked out from the wasted face, at once--to her seeing--exquisite and
+austere, reaching forward, keenly curious of all death should reveal,
+unmoved, yet instinct with the brilliance, the mirthfulness even, of
+impending portentous adventure.
+
+"You know, Damaris, how greatly I love and have loved you--how dear you
+have been to me, dearer than the satisfaction of my own flesh?"
+
+Speech was beyond her. She looked back, dazzled and for the moment
+broken.
+
+"Therefore it goes hard with me to ask anything which might, ever so
+distantly, cause you offence or distress. Only time presses. We are
+within sight of the end."
+
+"Ah! no--no," she exclaimed, wrenching away her hands and beating them
+together, passion of affection, of revolt and sorrow no more to be
+controlled. "How can I bear it, how can I part with you? I will not, I
+will not have you die.--McCabe isn't infallible. We must call in other
+doctors. They may be cleverer, may suggest new treatment, new remedies.
+They must cure you--or if they can't cure, at least keep you alive for
+me. I won't have you die!"
+
+"Call in whom you like, as many as you like, my darling, the whole
+medical faculty if it serves to pacify or to content you," he said,
+smiling at her.
+
+Damaris repented. Took poor passion by the throat, stifling its
+useless cries.
+
+"I tire you. I waste your strength. I think only of myself, of my own
+grief, most beloved, my own consuming grief and desolation.--See--I will
+be good--I am good. What else is there you want to have me do?"
+
+"This--but recollect you are free to say me nay, without scruple or
+hesitation. I shall not require you to give your reasons, but shall bow,
+unreservedly, to your wishes. For you possess a touchstone in such
+questions as the one now troubling me, which, did I ever possess it, I
+lost, as do most men, rather lamentably early in my career. If you suffer
+me to do so, I will ask Darcy Faircloth to bring his mother here to me,
+this evening at dusk, when her coming will not challenge impertinent
+observation--so that I may be satisfied no bitterness colours her thought
+of me and that we part in peace, she and I."
+
+Damaris got up from her seat on the arm of the red-covered chair. She
+stood rigid, her expression reserved to blankness, but her head
+carried high.
+
+"Of course," she said, a little hoarsely, and waited. "Of course. How
+could I object? Wasn't it superfluous even to ask me? Your word,
+dearest, is law."
+
+"But in the present case hardly gospel?"
+
+"Yes--gospel too--since it is your word. Gospel, that is, for me. Let
+Darcy Faircloth bring his mother here by all means. Only I think,
+perhaps, this is all a little outside my province. It would be better you
+should make the--the appointment with him yourself. I will send to him
+directly. Patch can take a note over to the island. I would prefer to
+have Patch go as messenger than either of the other men."
+
+She walked towards the door. Stopped half-way and turned, hearing her
+father move. And as she turned--her eyes quick with enquiry as to his
+case, but inscrutable as to her own--Charles Verity rose too and held
+out his arms in supreme invitation. She came swiftly forward and kissed
+him, while with all the poor measure of force left him, he strained her
+to his breast.
+
+"Have I asked too much from you, Damaris, and, in the desire to make
+sure of peace elsewhere, endangered the perfection of my far dearer
+peace with you?"
+
+She leaned back from the waist, holding her head away from him and laid
+her hand on his lips.
+
+"Don't blaspheme, most beloved," she said, "I have no will but yours."
+
+Again she kissed him, disengaged herself very gently, and went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTH WHICH IS ALSO CHAPTER THE LAST
+
+
+At Lady's Oak--an ancient forest boundary--where the main road forks,
+Damaris swung the dog-cart to the left, across the single-arch stone
+bridge spanning the Arne; and on, up the long winding ascent from the
+valley-bottom to the moorlands patched with dark fir plantations, which
+range inland from behind Stourmouth. This constituted the goal of her
+journey; for, the high-lying plateau reached, leagues of open country are
+disclosed north and west, far as the eye carries, to the fine bare
+outline of the Wiltshire Downs. She asked for wide prospects, for air and
+ample space; but as floored by stable earth rather than by the eternal
+unrest and "fruitless, sonorous furrows" of the sea.
+
+Ever since the day of the funeral, now nearly a fortnight ago, Damaris
+had kept within the sheltering privacy of the house and grounds. That
+day, one of soft drizzling rain and clinging ground fog, had also been to
+her one of hardly endurable distraction. Beneath assumption of respectful
+silence, it jarred, boomed, took notes, debated, questioned. Beneath
+assumption of solemnity, it peeped and stared. Her flayed nerves and
+desolated heart plagued her with suspicions of insincerity.
+
+In as far as Colonel Carteret controlled proceedings all had been marked
+by reverent simplicity. But where the carcass is, the eagles,
+proverbially, gather. And unfeathered fowl, in their own estimation
+eminently representative of that regal species, flocked to Deadham church
+and to The Hard.
+
+If--to vary our metaphor--some, in the past, inclined to stone the living
+prophet, these now outvied one another in their alacrity to bedeck his
+tomb. Dr. Cripps, for example, hurried to offer himself as pall-bearer--a
+request the more readily disposed of that there was no pall. While
+Archdeacon Verity, to cite a second example and from a higher social
+level, supported by his elder son Pontifex--domestic chaplain to the
+Bishop of Harchester--insisted on sharing with Canon Horniblow the
+melancholy honour of reading the burial service.
+
+For the rest, the head, and lesser members of the family, from the big
+house at Canton Magna, were solidly, not to say rather aggressively in
+evidence. With them Mrs. Cowden and her husband-satellite, the Honourable
+Augustus joined forces on arriving from Paulton Lacy.--Lord Bulparc drove
+over from Napworth Castle. The country, indeed, showed up with
+commendable indifference to depressing atmospheric conditions. Marychurch
+sent a contingent. Stourmouth followed suit in the shape of General
+Frayling--attended by Marshall Wace in full clerical raiment--bearing a
+wreath of palm, violets, and myrtle wholly disproportionate in bulk and
+circumference to his own shrivelled and rather tottery form.--Of this
+unlooked for advent more hereafter.--Other distinguished soldiers came
+from Aldershot and down from town. A permanent Under Secretary, correct
+but visibly bored, represented the India Office.
+
+The parish, neglecting its accustomed industries and occupations,
+mustered in strength; incited thereto, not only by the draw of recently
+resurrected scandal, but by news of the appointment recently offered Sir
+Charles Verity, which had somehow got noised abroad. The irony of his
+illness and death occurring precisely when he was invited to mount
+nothing less--according to local report--than an oriental throne,
+sufficed to stir the most lethargic imagination. Moralists of the
+Reginald Sawyer school might read in this the direct judgment of an
+offended deity. Deadham, however, being reprehensibly clannish, viewed
+the incident otherwise; and questioned--thanks to an ingeniously inverted
+system of reasoning--whether the said Reginald Sawyer hadn't laid himself
+open to a charge of manslaughter or of an even graver breach of the
+Decalogue.
+
+Theresa Bilson--in whose hat artificial buttercups and daisies hastily
+made room for bows of crape--lurked in the humble obscurity of the free
+seats near the west door. To right and left she was flanked by a guardian
+Miss Minett; but these ladies to-day were but broken reeds on which to
+lean. They still laboured under a sense of having been compromised, and
+of resultant social ostracism. This, although their former parsonic
+lodger had vanished from the scene on the day following his threatened
+immersion--a half-hearted proposition on his part of "facing out the
+undeserved obloquy, living down the coarse persecution" meeting with as
+scant encouragement from his ecclesiastical superior, the vicar, as from
+themselves. Theresa--it really was hard on her--shared their eclipse.
+Hence the humble obscurity of the free seats, where she sniffed, dabbed
+her eyes and gurgled, unheeded and unseen.
+
+Finally young Tom Verity--home on his first long leave--having
+accompanied the family party from Canton Magna and feeling his sense of
+humour unequal to the continued strain of their sublime insularity,
+benevolently herded two stately, though shivering, turbanned native
+gentlemen, who reached Deadham during the early stages of the ceremony no
+one quite knew whence or when. In the intervals of his self-imposed
+duties, he found time to admire the rich unction of his father, the
+Archdeacon's manner and voice.
+
+"_Plus ça change, plus la même chose_," he quoted gleefully. "What a
+consummate fraud the dear old governor is; and how deliciously innocent
+of the fact, that he imposes upon no one half so successfully as he does
+upon himself!"
+
+Our young man also found time, from afar, to admire Damaris; but, let it
+be added, to a very different tune. Her beauty came as surprise to him
+as having much more than fulfilled its early promise. He found it
+impressive beyond that of any one of the many ladies, mature or callow,
+with whom it was his habit largely to flirt. So far he could
+congratulate himself on having successfully withstood the wiles of
+matrimony--but by how near a shave, at times by how narrow a squeak! If
+that fine parental fraud, the Archdeacon, had but known!--Tom,
+undeterred by the solemnity of the occasion, hunched up his shoulders
+like a naughty boy expecting his ears boxed.--But then--thank the
+powers, the Archdeacon so blessedly and refreshingly didn't, and, what
+was more, didn't in the very least want to know. He never asked for
+trouble; but, like the priest and Levite of sacred parable, carefully
+passed by on the other side when trouble was about.
+
+Our young friend looked again at Damaris. Yes--she had beauty and in the
+grand manner, standing there at the foot of the open brick-lined grave,
+calm, immobile, black-clad, white-faced, in the encircling melancholy of
+the drizzling mist. With the family grouped about her, large-boned,
+pompous, well-fed persons, impervious to general ideas as they were
+imperviously prosperous, he compared her to a strayed deer amongst a
+herd of store cattle. Really, with the exception of his cousin Felicia
+and--naturally--of himself, the Verity breed was almost indecently true
+to type. Prize animals, most of them, he granted, still cattle--for
+didn't he detect an underlying trace of obstinate bovine ferocity in
+their collective aspect?
+
+Damaris' calm and immobility exceeded theirs. But in quality and source
+how far removed, how sensitive and intelligent! Her mourning was in the
+grand manner, too, her grief sincere and absolute to the extent of a
+splendid self-forgetfulness. She didn't need to pose; for that forgotten
+self could be trusted--in another acceptation of the phrase--never to
+forget itself.
+
+And here Tom Verity's agreeable frivolity, the astute and witty
+shiftiness of mind and--in a degree--of practice, for which he so readily
+found excuses and forgave himself, made place for nobler apprehensions.
+Not merely Damaris', just now, rather tragic beauty moved and impressed
+him; but some quality inherent in her upon which he felt disposed to
+confer the title of genius. That was going far.--Mentally he pulled
+himself up short.--For wasn't it going altogether too far--absurdly so?
+What the dickens did this excessive admiration portend? Could he have
+received the _coup de foudre_?--He had to-day a fancy for French tags, in
+reaction from the family's over-powering Englishness.--That wouldn't suit
+his book in the very least. For in the matters of the affections he held
+it thriftless, to the confines of sheer lunacy, to put all your eggs into
+one basket. He, therefore, politicly abstained from further observation
+of Damaris; and, with engaging assiduity, reapplied himself to herding
+the two native gentlemen through the remainder of the ceremony and, at
+the conclusion of it, into the mildewed luxury of a Marychurch landau.
+
+Deadham parish went home to its tea that evening damp, not to say
+dripping, but well pleased with the figure it had cut in the public eye.
+For it had contributed its quota to contemporary history; and what parish
+can, after all, do more! Reporters pervaded it armed with note-books and
+pencils. They put questions, politely requested a naming of names. The
+information furnished in answer would reach the unassailable authority of
+print, giving Deadham opportunity to read the complimentary truth about
+itself. Still better, giving others opportunity to read the complimentary
+truth about Deadham. Hence trade and traffic of sorts, with much
+incidental replenishing of purses. Great are the uses of a dead prophet
+to the keepers of his tomb! Not within the memory of the oldest
+inhabitant had any funeral been so largely or honourably attended. Truly
+it spelled excellent advertisement--and this although two persons,
+calculated mightily to have heightened interest and brought up dramatic
+and emotional values, were absent from the scene.
+
+For Lesbia Faircloth, giving her barman and two women servants a holiday,
+closed the inn at noon. Alone within the empty house, she locked the
+outer doors. Drew the blinds, reducing the interior to uniform,
+shadow-peopled obscurity, with the exception of her own bed-chamber.
+There she left one small square window--set deep in the stone work of the
+wall--open and uncurtained.
+
+It faced the causeway and perspective of lane skirting the warren and
+leading to the high road and village. Looking out thence, in winter when
+the trees were bare, she could see Deadham church, crowning its
+monticule, part of the sloping graveyard and, below these in the middle
+distance, the roofs and gables of the village street.
+
+To-day the view was obliterated. For here, at the river level, mist and
+drizzle took the form of fog. Opaque, chill and dank, it drifted in
+continuous, just perceptible, undulations past and in at the open
+casement. Soon the air of the room grew thick and whitish, the dark oak
+furniture and the floor boards furred with moisture. Yet, her methodical
+closure of the house complete, Lesbia Faircloth elected to sit in full
+inward sweep of it, drawing a straight-backed chair, mounted on roughly
+carpentered rockers, close to the window.
+
+A handsome woman still, though in her late fifties, erect and of
+commanding presence, her figure well-proportioned if somewhat massive.
+Her dark hair showed no grey. Her rather brown skin was clear, smooth and
+soft in texture. Her eyes clear, too, watchful and reticent; on
+occasion--such as the driving of a business bargain say, or of a drunken
+client--hard as flint. Her mouth, a wholesome red, inclined to fullness;
+but had been governed to straightness of line--will dominant, not only in
+her every movement, but in repose as she now sat, the chair rockers at a
+backward tilt, her capable and well-shaped hands folded on her black
+apron in the hollow of her lap.
+
+Putting aside all work for once, and permitting herself a space of
+undisturbed leisure, she proceeded to cast up her account with love and
+life in as clear-headed, accurate a fashion as she would have cast up the
+columns of cash-book or ledger--and found the balance on the credit side.
+So finding it, she turned her head and looked across the room at the wide
+half-tester wooden bed, set against the inner wall--the white crochet
+counterpane of which, an affair of intricate fancy patterns and
+innumerable stitches, loomed up somewhat ghostly and pallid through the
+gloom. A flicker of retrospective victory passed across her face,
+attesting old scores as paid. For there, through sleepless nights,
+nursing the ardours and disgust of her young womanhood, she lay barren
+beside her apple-cheeked, piping-voiced spouse, his wife in name only.
+There later, times having, as by miracle, changed for her, she gave
+birth to her son.
+
+If somewhat pre-christian in instinct and in nature, the child of a more
+ancient and a simpler world, she was in no sort slow of intelligence or
+wanton. What had been, sufficed her. She cried out neither for further
+indulgence of passion, nor against barriers imposed by circumstance and
+class. That which she had done, she had done open-eyed, counting and
+accepting the cost. Since then wooers were not lacking; but she turned a
+deaf ear to all and each. A frank materialist in some ways, she proved an
+idealist in this. No subsequent love passage could rival, in wonder or
+beauty, that first one; since, compared with Charles Verity, the men who
+subsequently aspired to her favours--whether in wedlock or out--were, to
+her taste, at best dull, loutish fellows, at worst no more than human
+jackasses or human swine.
+
+And, through it all, she possessed the boy on whom to spend her heart, in
+whose interests to employ her foresight and singular capacity of
+money-making. For love's sake therefore, and for his sake also, she had
+lived without reproach, a woman chary even of friendship, chary, too, of
+laughter, chary above all of purposeless gaddings and of gossip.
+Business, and the boy's sea-going or returning, might take her as far as
+Southampton, Plymouth, Cardiff, more rarely London or some northern port.
+But Deadham village rarely beheld her, and never, it is to be feared, did
+the inside of Deadham church.
+
+Yet Deadham church bell plaintively, insistently tolling, the sound
+reaching her muted by the thickness of the fog, kept her attention on the
+stretch for the ensuing hour. Startling as it was poignant, Charles
+Verity's demand to see her, six days ago, brought the story of her love
+to full circle. Their meeting had been of the briefest, for he was
+exhausted by pain. But that he had sent, and she had gone, was unlocked
+for largesse on the part of fortune, sufficient to give her deep-seated
+and abiding sense of healing and of gain. And this stayed by her now,
+rather than any active call for mourning.
+
+She inhaled the dank chillness of the fog gratefully. It suited the
+occasion better far than sunshine and bright skies. For winter,
+darkness, sullen flowing waters and desolate crying winds furnished the
+accompaniment of those earlier meetings. Hearing the tolling bell she
+strove to relive them, and found she did so with singularly mounting
+wealth and precision of detail. Not only vision but sense pushed
+backward and inward, revitalizing what had been; until she ached with
+suspense and yearning, shrewdly evaded dangers, surmounted obstructions
+by action at once bold and wary and tasted the transfiguring rapture of
+the end attained.
+
+In the soberness of her middle years, occupied as she was with the rough,
+exacting business of the inn, and with the management of accumulating
+landed and other property--anxiety born of her son's perilous calling
+never absent from her thought--Lesbia Faircloth inclined to live
+exclusively in the present. Hence the colours of her solitary passion had
+somewhat faded, becoming clouded and dim. Recent events--led by the ugly
+publicity of Reginald Sawyer's sermon--served to revive those colours.
+To-day they glowed rich and splendid, a robing of sombre glory to her
+inward and backward searching sight.
+
+The bell tolled quicker, announcing the immediate approach of the dead.
+Lesbia listened, her head raised, her face, turned to open window, felt
+over by the clammy, impalpable fingers of the fog.
+
+Now they bore the coffin up the churchyard path, as she timed it. She
+wondered who the bearers might be, and whether they carried it shoulder
+high? The path was steep; and Charles Verity, though spare and lean,
+broad of chest and notably tall. Bone tells. They would feel the weight,
+would breathe hard, stagger a little even and sweat.
+
+And with this visualizing of grim particulars, love, bodily love and
+desire of that which rested stark and for ever cold within the narrow
+darkness of the coffin--shut away from all comfort of human contact and
+the dear joys of a woman's embrace--rushed on her like a storm, buffeted
+and shook her, so that she looked to right and to left as asking help,
+while her hands worked one upon the other in the hollow of her lap.
+
+Nor did Darcy Faircloth figure in Deadham's record funeral gathering.
+Upon the day preceding it, having watched by Charles Verity's corpse
+during the previous night, he judged it well to take his new command--a
+fine, five-thousand-ton steamer, carrying limited number of passengers
+as well as cargo, and trading from Tilbury to the far East and to Japan,
+via the Cape.
+
+In his withdrawal, at this particular date, Miss Felicia hailed a counsel
+of perfection which commanded, and continued to command, alike her
+enthusiastic approval and unfeigned regret. For that he should so
+seasonably efface himself, argued--in her opinion--so delightful a
+nature, such nice thought for others, such chivalrous instincts and
+excellent good taste!--All the more lamentable, then, effacement should
+be, from social, moral or other seasons, required.--Yet for the family to
+gain knowledge of certain facts without due preparation--how utterly
+disastrous! Think of her half-sister, Harriet Cowden, for instance, with
+a full-grown and, alas! wrong-way-about, step-nephew bounced on her out
+of a clear sky, and on such an occasion too.--The bare notion of what
+that formidable lady, not only might, but quite certainly would look and
+say turned Miss Felicia positively faint.--No--no, clearly it had to
+be--it had to be--or rather--she became incoherent--had not to be, if
+only for dearest Charles's sake. Yet what a ten thousand pities; for
+notwithstanding the plebeian origin on the mother's side, didn't
+Faircloth--these reflections came later--really surpass every male Verity
+present, young Tom included, though she confessed to a very soft spot in
+her heart for young Tom?--Surpass them, just as her brother Charles had
+always surpassed them in good looks and charm as in inches, above all in
+his air of singular good-breeding? And how extraordinarily he had
+transmitted this last to Faircloth, notwithstanding the--well, the
+drawback, the obstacle to--Miss Felicia did not finish the sentence,
+though in sentiment becoming sweetly abandoned. For how she would have
+revelled, other things being equal--which they so deplorably weren't--in
+shaking this singularly attractive nephew in the family's collective
+face, just to show them what dearest Charles--who they never had quite
+understood or appreciated--could do in the matter of sons, when he once
+set about it, even against admittedly heavy odds!
+
+As it was, she had to pacify her gentle extravagance by subjecting the
+said nephew's hand to a long tremulous pressure at parting.--He, worn,
+blanched, a little strange from the night's lonely and very searching
+vigil; she patchily pink as to complexion, fluttered, her candid eyes
+red-lidded.--Pacify herself by assuring him she could never express how
+deeply she had felt his unselfish devotion during this time of
+trouble--felt his--his perfect attitude towards her dearest brother--his
+father--or the consideration he had shown towards Damaris and herself.
+
+"You can count on my unswerving affection, my dear Darcy," she had
+said. Adding with, to him, very touching humility--"And any affection
+you have to give me in return I shall cherish most gratefully, be very
+sure of that."
+
+All which, as shall presently be shown, brings our narrative, though by
+devious courses, back to Damaris sweeping the dog-cart to the left across
+the bridge spanning the Arne, and on up the long winding ascent, from the
+woods and rich meadows in the valley to the wide prospects and keener air
+of the moorland above.
+
+Until now, as already chronicled, she had remained in house or garden,
+prey to an apathy which, while not amounting to definite ill-health,
+refused interest and exertion. She could not shake it off. To her all
+things were empty, blank, immensely purposeless. Religion failed to touch
+her state--religion, that is, in the only form accessible. The interior
+of some frowning Gothic church of old Castile, or, from another angle, of
+some mellow Latin basilica, might have found the required mystic word to
+say to her. But Protestantism, even in its mild Anglican form, shuts the
+door on its dead children with a heavy hand.--And she suffered this
+religious coldness, although any idea that death of the body implies
+extinction of the spirit, extinction of personality, never occurred to
+her. Damaris' sense of the unseen was too ingrained, her commerce with it
+too actual for that. No--the spirit lived on. He, her most beloved, lived
+on, himself, his very self; but far away from her. In just this consisted
+the emptiness, the unspeakable and blank bitterness--he was somewhere and
+she could not reach him. The dreadful going away of his spirit, against
+which she had fought during the thirty-six hours of his illness, had
+reached its ordained consummation--that was all.
+
+The body which had contained and by that beloved spirit been so nobly
+animated, in its present awful peace, its blind dumb majesty, meant
+scarcely more to her than some alabaster or waxen effigy of her dead. It
+was so like, yet so terrifyingly unlike Charles Verity in life!--She had
+visited it morning and evening, since to leave it in solitude appeared
+wanting in reverence. Throughout each night she thankfully knew that
+either Carteret, McCabe or Faircloth watched by it. Yet to her it hardly
+retained as much of her father's natural presence as the clothes he had
+worn, the books and papers littering his writing-table, the chair he
+preferred to sit in, his guns and swords upon the wall, or the collection
+of fishing-rods, walking-sticks and his spud stacked in a corner.
+
+After the strain and publicity of the funeral her apathy deepened,
+perplexing and saddening Carteret and bringing Miss Felicia near to
+veritable wailing. For while thanking them both she, in fact, put them
+both aside. This in no sour or irritable humour; but with a listlessness
+and apartness hopeless to overcome. She prayed them to give her time.
+Soon she would begin again; but not just yet. She "couldn't begin again
+to order--couldn't make herself begin again. They must not trouble, only
+be patient with her, please, a little longer--she wasn't, indeed she
+wasn't, pretending"--a statement which, in its simplicity, cut Carteret
+to the quick--for "she meant to begin again directly she could."
+
+To-day the weather took an encouraging turn for the better. Following
+the spell of fog and wet a northerly wind at last arose. It swept the sky
+clear of clouds, the land of melancholy vapours, begetting a brilliance
+of atmosphere which wooed our maiden to come forth and once more affront
+the open. She therefore ordered the dog-cart at two o'clock. Would
+herself drive; and, "if Aunt Felicia didn't mind and think her
+unsociable, would take Patch for sole company, because then"--renewed
+apologies--"she needn't talk and she felt disinclined to do so."
+
+During the first half mile or so, as must be confessed, each prick of
+the black horse's ears and change in his pace sent a quake through her,
+as did the sight of every vehicle upon the road she passed or met. Her
+nerve was nowhere, her self-confidence in tatters. But, since this
+parlous state was, in the main, physical, air and movement, along with
+the direct call on her attention, steadied the one and knit up the
+ravelled edges of the other. By the time the plateau was reached and the
+hill lay behind her, she could afford to walk the horse, tentatively
+invite her soul, and attempt to hold communion with Nature. Sorrow--as
+well as the Napoleonic Patch--still sat very squarely beside her; but
+the nightmare of mortality, with consequent blankness and emptiness, was
+no longer omnipresent. Interest again stirred in her, the healthy
+instinct of going on.
+
+Except in the foreground, where foxy browns of withered bracken and
+pink-shot browns of withered heather gave richness of tone, the colouring
+of the great view was somewhat cold. It dealt in thin, uncertain green,
+the buff of stubble, in sharp slate-like blues blended in places with
+indigo, the black purple of hawthorn hedges and grey-brown filigree of
+leafless trees.--This did her good, she asking to be strengthened and
+stimulated rather than merely soothed. To feel the harsh, untainted wind
+break against her, hear it shrill through the dry, shivering grasses of
+the roadside and sturdy spires of heath, to see it toss the dark crests
+and tufted branches of the outstanding firs at the edge of the
+plantation, brought up her morale. Brought her resignation, moreover--not
+of the self-indulgent order, of bowed head and languidly folded hands;
+but of the sort which acknowledges loss and sorrow as common to the sum
+of human experience, places it in its just relation to the rest, and,
+though more heavily weighted than before, takes up the onward march,
+sobered perhaps yet undismayed.
+
+Sins of omission began to prick her. The domestic establishment ran on
+wheels, even during the recent stress and agitation, though she had
+ceased to exercise control over it. Now it must be reorganized--and
+probably on a less liberal footing.--But these were minor questions,
+comparatively simple to cope with. Her life had been full, it must find
+fresh purpose, fresh interest and occupation, in a word, be refilled.
+
+Literature allured her. She dreamed of wonderful tellings, dreamed of the
+engrossing joys of the written word. But in what form--poetry, essay,
+history, novel?--The extreme limitation of her own knowledge, or rather
+the immensity of her own ignorance, confronted her. And that partly
+through her own fault, for she had been exclusive, fastidious, disposed
+to ignore both truths and people who offended her taste or failed to
+strike her fancy. Hitherto she had been led by fancy and feeling rather
+than by reasoned principle. She must at once simplify, broaden and
+democratize her outlook. Must force herself to remember that respect is,
+in some sort, due to everything--however unbeautiful, however even vile
+or repugnant--which is a constant quantity in human affairs and human
+character, due to everything in the realm of Nature also, however
+repellent, if it _is_ really so, actually exists.
+
+In this connection the mysterious and haunting question of sex obtruded
+itself. And, along with it, the thought of two eminently diverse persons,
+namely Lesbia Faircloth and the dear, the more than ever dear, man with
+the blue eyes. That, in his agony, her father should have desired the
+visit of the former, once his mistress, had been very bitter to bear,
+provoking in Damaris a profound though silent jealousy. This had even
+come in some degree between her and Faircloth. For, in proportion as
+that visit more effectually united father and son, it abolished her
+position as intermediary between the two.
+
+Recalling the incident jealousy moved her now, so that she gathered up
+the reins hastily and touched the horse with the whip. It sprang
+forward, danced and behaved, before settling down to the swinging trot
+which, in so handsome a fashion, ate up the blond road crossing the
+brown expanse of moor.
+
+Damaris was surprised and distressed by the vehemence of her own emotion.
+That her jealousy was retrospective, and belonged to a past now over and
+done with, she admitted. Yet, thinking of her father's demand to see
+Lesbia, how amazingly deep it went, how profound, and lasting is the
+empire of "feeling in _that_ way"--so she put it, falling back on her
+phrase of nearly three years ago, first coined at St. Augustin.
+
+And this was where Carteret came in.--For he alone, of all men, had made
+her, Damaris, ever consciously "feel in _that_ way."--A fact of immense
+significance surely, could she but grasp the full, the inner meaning of
+it--and one which entered vitally into the matter of "beginning again."
+Therefore, so she argued, the proposed simplifying, broadening,
+democratizing of her outlook must cover--amongst how much else!--the
+whole astonishing business of "feeling in _that_ way."
+
+She shrank from the conclusion as unwelcome. The question of sex was
+still distasteful to her. But she bade herself, sternly, not to shrink.
+For without some reasoned comprehension of it--as now dawned on her--the
+ways of human beings, of animals, of plants and, so some say, even of
+minerals, are unintelligible, arbitrary, and nonsensical. It is the push
+of life itself, essential, fundamental, which makes us "feel in _that_
+way"--the push of spirit yearning to be clothed upon with flesh, made
+visible and given its chance to enter the earthly arena, to play an
+individual part in the beautiful, terrible earthly scene. Therefore she
+must neglect it, reject it no longer. It had to be met and understood, if
+she would graduate in the school of reality; and in what other possible
+school is it worth while to graduate?
+
+Reaching which climax in her argument, the selfishness of her recent
+behaviour became humiliatingly patent to her. From the whole household,
+but especially from Carteret and Aunt Felicia, she had taken all and
+given nothing in return. She had added to their grief, their anxieties,
+by her silence, her apathy, her whimsies.
+
+"Patch," she asked suddenly, "which is the shortest way home, without
+going through Stourmouth and Marychurch? "--And, under his instructions,
+turned the dog-cart down a grassy side-track, heading south-east--her back
+now to the wind and inland country, her face to the larger horizon, the
+larger if more hazardous freedom of the sea.
+
+Conversation, started thus by her enquiry, flourished in friendly,
+desultory fashion until, about three-quarters of an hour later, the front
+gates of The Hard came in sight. By then afternoon merged itself in early
+evening. Lights twinkled in the windows of the black cottages, upon the
+Island, and in those of Faircloth's inn. The sky flamed orange and
+crimson behind the sand-hills and Stone Horse Head. The air carried the
+tang of coming frost. Upon the hard gravel of the drive, the wheels of
+the dog-cart grated and the horse's hoofs rang loud.
+
+Another Damaris came home to the Damaris who had set forth--a Damaris
+rested, refreshed, invigorated, no longer a passive but an active agent.
+Nevertheless, our poor maiden suffered some reaction on re-entering the
+house. For, so entering, her loss again confronted her as an actual
+entity. It sat throned in the lamp-lit hall. It demanded payment of
+tribute before permitting her to pass. Its attitude amounted, in her too
+fertile imagination, to a menace. Here, within the walls which had
+witnessed not only her own major acquaintance with sorrow, but so many
+events and episodes of strange and, sometimes, cruel import--super-normal
+manifestations, too, of which last she feared to think--she grew undone
+and weak, disposed to let tears flow, and yield once more to depression
+and apathy. The house was stronger than she. But--but--only stronger,
+surely, if she consented to turn craven and give way to it?--Whereupon
+she consciously, of set purpose, defied the house, denied its right to
+browbeat thus and enslave her. For had not she this afternoon, up on the
+moorland, found a finer manner of mourning than it imposed, a manner at
+once more noble and so more consonant with the temper and achievements of
+her beloved dead? She believed that she had.
+
+On the hall table lay a little flight of visiting cards. Her mind
+occupied in silent battle with the house, Damaris glanced at them
+absently and would have passed on. But something in the half-deciphered
+printed names caught her attention. She bent lower, doubting if she could
+have read aright.
+
+"Brig.-General and Mrs. Frayling."--Two smaller cards, also bearing the
+General's name, ranged with two others bearing that of "The Rev. Marshall
+Wace." A written inscription, in the corner of each, notified a leading
+hotel in Stourmouth as the habitat of their respective owners.
+
+This little discovery affected Damaris to a singular extent. She had
+small enough wish for Henrietta Frayling's society at this juncture;
+still less for that of her attendant singer-reciter-parson. Yet their
+names, and the train of recollections evoked by these, made for the
+normal, the average, and, in so far, had on her a wholesome effect. For
+Henrietta, of once adored and now somewhat tarnished memory--soulless,
+finished, and exquisitely artificial to her finger-tips, beguiling others
+yet never herself beguiled beyond the limits of a flawless
+respectability--was wonderfully at odds with high tragedies of
+dissolution. How had the house received such a guest? How put up with her
+intrusion? But wasn't the house, perhaps, itself at a disadvantage, its
+sting drawn in presence of such invincible materialism? For how impress a
+creature at once so light and so pachydermatous? The position lent itself
+to rather mordant comedy.
+
+In this sense, though not precisely in these phrases, did Damaris
+apprehend matters as, still holding Henrietta Frayling's visiting card
+in her hand, she crossed the hall and went into the drawing-room.
+
+There, from upon the sofa behind the tea-table, through the warm soft
+radiance of shaded lamps and glowing fire, Felicia Verity uplifted her
+voice in somewhat agitated greeting. She made no preliminary affectionate
+enquiries--such as might have been expected--regarding her niece's outing
+or general well-being, but darted, not to say exploded, into the
+declaration:
+
+"Darling, I am so exceedingly glad you weren't at home!--Mrs.
+Frayling's card?"
+
+This, as the girl sat down on the sofa beside her.
+
+"Then you know who's been here. I didn't intend to see anyone--unless
+poor little Theresa--But no, truly no one. Both Hordle and Mary were off
+duty--I ought not to have let them be away at the same time, perhaps, but
+I did feel they both needed a holiday, don't you know.--And either they
+had forgotten to give Laura my orders, or she lost her head, or was
+talked over. I daresay Mrs. Frayling insisted."
+
+"Henrietta is not easily turned from her purpose," Damaris said.
+
+"Exactly.--A very few minutes' conversation with her convinced me of
+that. And so I felt it would be unfair to blame Laura too severely. I
+should suppose Mrs. Frayling excessively clever in getting her own way.
+Poor Laura--even if she did know my orders, she hadn't a chance."
+
+"Not a chance," Damaris repeated.
+
+Once convalescence initiated, youth speedily regains its elasticity; and
+Aunt Felicia with her feathers ruffled, Aunt Felicia upon the warpath
+thus, presented a novel spectacle meriting observation. Evidently she and
+Henrietta had badly clashed!--A nice little demon of diversion stirred
+within Damaris. For the first time for many days she felt amused.
+
+"Excessively clever," Miss Felicia continued.
+
+--Without doubt the dear thing was finely worked up!--
+
+"And, though I hardly like to make such accusation, none too scrupulous
+in her methods. She leads you on with a number of irrelevant comments
+and questions, until you find she's extracted from you a whole host of
+things you never meant to say. She is far too inquisitive--too
+possessive."
+
+Miss Felicia ended on an almost violent note.
+
+"Yes, Henrietta has a tiresome little habit of having been there first,"
+Damaris said, a touch of weariness in her tone remembering past
+encounters.
+
+Miss Felicia, caught by that warning tone, patted her niece's rather
+undiscoverable knee--undiscoverable because still covered by a heavy
+fur-lined driving coat--lovingly, excitedly.
+
+"If you choose to believe her, darling," she cried, "which I, for one,
+emphatically don't."
+
+Following which ardent profession of faith, or rather of scepticism, Miss
+Felicia attempted to treat the subject broadly. She soared to
+mountain-tops of social and psychological astuteness; but only to make
+hasty return upon her gentler self, deny her strictures, and snatch at
+the skirts of vanishing Christian charity.
+
+"Men aren't so easily led away," she hopefully declared. "Nor can I think
+Mrs. Frayling so irresistible to each and all as she wishes one to
+imagine. She must magnify the number and, still more, the permanence of
+her conquests. No doubt she has been very much admired. I know she was
+lovely. I saw her once ages ago, at Tullingworth. Dearest Charles," the
+words came softly, as though her lips hesitated to pronounce them in so
+trivial a connection--"asked me to call on her as I was staying in the
+neighbourhood. She had a different surname then, by the way, I remember."
+
+"Henrietta has had four in all--counting in her maiden name, I mean."
+
+"Exactly," Miss Felicia argued, "and that, no doubt, does prejudice me a
+little against her. I suppose it is wrong, but when a woman marries so
+often one can't help feeling as if she ended by not being married at
+all--a mere change of partners, don't you know, which does seem rather
+shocking. It suggests such an absence of deep feeling.--Poor thing, I
+dare say that is just her nature; still it doesn't attract me. In fact
+it gives me a creep.--But I quite own she is pretty still, and
+extraordinarily well dressed--only too well dressed, don't you know, that
+is for the country.--More tea, darling. Yes, Mrs. Cooper's scones are
+particularly good this afternoon.--I wish I liked her better, Mrs.
+Frayling, I mean, because she evidently intends to be here a lot in
+future. She expressed the warmest affection for you. She was very
+possessive about you, more I felt than she'd any real right to be. That,
+I'm afraid, put my back up--that and one or two other things. She and
+General Frayling think of settling in Stourmouth for good, if Mr. Wace is
+appointed to the Deadham curacy."
+
+"The curacy here?" Damaris echoed, a rather lurid light breaking
+in on her.
+
+Miss Felicia's glance was of timid, slightly distressed, enquiry.
+
+"Yes," she said, "Mr. Wace has applied for the curacy. He and General
+Frayling were to have an interview with Canon Horniblow this afternoon.
+They dropped Mrs. Frayling here on their way to the vicarage, and sent
+the fly back for her. She talked a great deal about Mr. Wace and his
+immense wish to come here. She gave me to understand it was his one
+object to"--
+
+The speaker broke off, raised her thin, long-fingered hands to her
+forehead.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "but really I feel perhaps, darling, it is
+better to warn you. She implied--oh! she did it very cleverly, really, in
+a way charmingly--but she implied that things had gone very hard with Mr.
+Wace that winter at St. Augustin, and that all he went through has
+remarkably developed and strengthened his character--that it, in fact,
+was what determined him to take Holy Orders. His difficulties melted
+before his real need for the support of religion. It would have all been
+most touching if one had heard a story of such devotion from anyone
+but--but her, about anyone but him--under the circumstances, poor young
+man--because--darling--well, because of you."
+
+"Of me?" Damaris stiffened.
+
+"Yes--that is just the point. Mrs. Frayling left me in no doubt. She was
+determined to make me understand just what Mr. Wace's attitude had been
+towards you--and that it is still unchanged."
+
+Damaris got up. Pulled off her driving coat, gloves and hat. Threw them
+upon the seat of a chair. The act was symbolic. She felt suffocated,
+impelled to rid herself of every impediment. For wasn't she confronted
+with another battle--a worse one than that with the house, namely, a
+battle with her long-ago baby-love, and her father's love
+too--Henrietta.--Henrietta, so strangely powerful, so amazingly
+persistent--Henrietta who enclosed you in arms, apparently so soft but
+furnished with suckers, octopus arms adhering, never letting you go? She
+had played with the idea of this intrusion of Henrietta's and its effect
+upon Miss Felicia, at first as something amusing. It ceased to be
+amusing. It frightened her.
+
+"And my attitude is unchanged, too," she said presently, gravely proud.
+"I didn't want to marry Marshall Wace then. I was dreadfully sorry when
+Henrietta told me he cared for me. I don't want to marry him or have
+him care for me one bit more now. I think it very interfering of
+Henrietta to trouble you with this. It is not the moment. She might at
+least have waited."
+
+"So I felt," Miss Felicia put in. She watched her niece anxiously, as the
+latter went across to the fire-place and stood, her back to the room,
+looking down into the glowing logs.
+
+For she had--or rather ought she not to have?--another communication to
+make which involved the fighting of a battle on her own account, not
+against Henrietta Frayling, still less against Damaris, but against
+herself. It trembled on the tip of her tongue. She felt impelled, yet
+sorrowed to utter it. Hence her wishes and purposes jostled one another,
+being tenderly, bravely, heroically even, contradictory. In speaking she
+invited the shattering of a dream of personal election to happiness--a
+late blossoming happiness and hence the more entrancing, the more
+pathetic. That any hope of the dream's fulfilment was fragile as glass,
+lighter than gossamer, the veriest shadow of a shade, her natural
+diffidence and sane sense, alike, convinced her. For this very cause, the
+dream being of the sweetest and most intimate, how gladly would she have
+cherished the enchanting foolishness of it a trifle longer!--Her act of
+heroism would earn no applause, moreover, would pass practically
+unnoticed. No one would be aware of her sacrifice. She would only gain
+the satisfaction of knowing she had done the perfectly right and generous
+thing by two persons who would never share that knowledge.--She
+blushed.--Heaven forbid they ever should share it--and thank her.
+
+"Mrs. Frayling--I don't want"--
+
+Miss Felicia stopped.
+
+"What don't you want?"--This from Damaris over her shoulder, the pause
+being prolonged.
+
+"To set you against her, darling"--
+
+"I think," Damaris said, "I know all about Henrietta."
+
+"She insinuates so much," Miss Felicia lamented.--"Or seems to do so. One
+grows wretchedly suspicious of her meaning. Perhaps I exaggerate and
+misjudge her.--She is quite confusingly adroit; but I extremely disliked
+the way in which she spoke of Colonel Carteret."
+
+Damaris bent a little forward, holding her skirt back from the scorch of
+the fire, her eyes still downcast.
+
+"How did she speak of him?"
+
+"Oh! all she said was very indirect--but as though he had not played
+quite fair with her on some occasion. And--it's odious to repeat!--as if
+that was his habit with women, and with unmarried girls as well--as if he
+was liable to behave in a way which placed them in a rather invidious
+position while he just shuffled out of all responsibility himself. She
+hinted his staying on with us here was a case in point--that it might
+give people a wrong idea altogether. That, in short--at least thinking it
+over I feel sure this is the impression she meant to convey to me--that
+he is indulging his chronic love of philandering at your expense."
+
+"And thereby standing in the light of serious lovers such as
+Marshall Wace?"
+
+After a moment Damaris added:
+
+"Is that your idea of Colonel Carteret, Aunt Felicia?"
+
+"Ah! No, indeed no," the poor lady cried, with rather anguished
+sincerity. Then making a fine effort over herself:
+
+"Least of all where you are concerned, my darling."
+
+And she drifted hastily on to her feet. The curtains were still undrawn;
+and, through the window opposite, she caught sight of a tall figure
+coming up across the lawn in the frosty twilight.
+
+"Pardon me if I run away. I've forgotten a note I meant to send to poor
+little Theresa Bilson.--I must let Laura have it at once, or she mayn't
+catch the postman," she said with equal rapidity and apparent
+inconsequence.
+
+As Felicia Verity passed out into the hall, at one end of the avenue of
+stumpy pillars, Carteret came in at the other end through the garden
+door. He halted a moment, dazzled by the warmth and light within after
+the clair-obscure of the frosty dusk without, and looked round the room
+before recognizing the identity of its remaining occupant. Then:
+
+"Ah! you--dear witch," he said. "So you're home. And what of your drive?"
+
+Damaris turned round, all of a piece. Her hands, white against the black,
+the fingers slightly apart, still pressed back the skirt of her dress as
+though saving it from the fire scorch, in quaintly careful childish
+fashion. Her complexion was that of a child too, in its soft brightness.
+And the wonder of her great eyes fairly challenged Carteret's wits.
+
+"A babe of a thousand years," he quoted to himself. "Does that look grow
+out of a root of divine innocence, or of quite incalculable wisdom?"
+
+"I told you if you would be patient with me I should begin again. I have
+begun again, dear Colonel Sahib."
+
+"So I perceive," he answered her.
+
+"Is it written so large?" she asked curiously.
+
+"Very large," he said, falling in with her humour. "And where does the
+beginning lead to?"
+
+"I wish you'd tell me.--Henrietta has begun again too."
+
+"I know it," he said. "Our incomparable Henrietta overtook me on her way
+from here to the Vicarage, and bestowed her society on me for the better
+part of half an hour. She was in astonishing form."
+
+Carteret came forward and stood on the tiger skin beside Damaris. Mrs.
+Frayling's conversation had given him very furiously to think, and his
+thoughts had not proved by any means exhilarating.
+
+"Does this recrudescence of our Henrietta, her beginning again, affect
+the scope and direction of your own beginning again, dearest witch?" he
+presently enquired, in singularly restrained and colourless accents.
+
+"That depends a good deal upon you--doesn't it, Colonel Sahib?" our
+maiden gravely answered.
+
+Carteret felt as though she dealt him a blow. The pain was numbing. He
+could neither see, nor could he think clearly. But he traced Mrs.
+Frayling's hand in this, and could have cursed her elaborately--had it
+been worth while. But was anything worth while, just now? He inclined to
+believe not--so called himself a doating fool. And then, though
+tormented, shaken, turned his mind to making things easy for Damaris.
+
+"Oh! I see that," he told her. "And now you have got hold of your
+precious little self again and made a start, it's easy enough to manage
+your affairs--in as far as they need any management of mine--from a
+distance. This beginning again is triumphant. I congratulate you! You're
+your own best physician. You know how to treat your case to a marvel. So
+I abdicate."
+
+"But why? Why abdicate? Do you mean go away? Then Henrietta was right.
+What she said was true. I never believed her. I"--
+
+Damaris grew tall in her shame and anger. The solemn eyes blazed.
+
+"Yes--pray go," she said. "It's unwarrantable the way I kept you
+here--the way I've made use of you. But, indeed, indeed, I am very
+grateful, Colonel Sahib. I ought to have known better. But I didn't. I
+have been so accustomed all my life to your help that I took it all for
+granted. I never thought how much I taxed your forbearance or encroached
+on your time.--That isn't quite true though. I did have scruples; but
+little things you said and did put my scruples to sleep. I liked having
+them put to sleep.--Now you must not let me or my business interfere any
+more.--Oh! you've treated me, given to me, like a prince," she declared,
+rising superior to anger and to shame, her eyes shining--"like a king.
+Nobody can ever take your place or be to me what you've been. I shall
+always love to think of your goodness to--to him--my father--and to
+me--always--all my life."
+
+Damaris held out her hands.
+
+"And that's all.--Now let us say no more about this. It's difficult. It
+hurts us both, I fancy, a little."
+
+But Carteret did not take her proffered hands.
+
+"Dear witch," he said, "we've spoken so freely that I am afraid we must
+speak more freely still--even though it pains you a little perhaps, and
+myself, almost certainly very much more. I love you--not as a friend, not
+as an amiable elderly person should love a girl of your age.--This isn't
+an affair of yesterday or the day before yesterday. You crept into my
+heart on your sixth birthday--wasn't it?--when I brought you a certain
+little green jade elephant from our incomparable Henrietta, and found you
+asleep in a black marble chair, set on a blood-red sandstone platform,
+overlooking the gardens of the club at Bhutpur. And you have never crept
+out of it again--won't do so as long as body and mind hang together, or
+after. It has been a song of degrees.--For years you were to me a
+delicious plaything; but a plaything with a mysterious soul, after which
+I felt, every now and again, in worship and awe. The plaything stage came
+to an end when I was here with you before we went to Paris, four years
+ago. For I found then, beyond all question of doubt, that I loved you as
+a man only loves once, and as most men never love at all. I have tried
+to keep this from you because I have no right to burden your youth with
+my middle-age."
+
+Carteret smiled at her.
+
+"It has not been altogether easy to hold my peace, dearest witch," he
+said. "The seven devils of desire--of which you knew nothing, bless
+you"--"I'm not sure that I do know nothing," Damaris put in quietly.
+She looked him over from head to heel, and the wonder of her great
+eyes deepened.
+
+"It isn't wrong?" she said, brokenly, hoarsely. "I don't think it can
+be wrong?"
+
+Then, "You will be good to my brother, to Darcy Faircloth, and let me see
+him quite, quite often!"
+
+And lastly, her lips trembling:
+
+"It is beautiful, more beautiful than I ever knew about, to have you for
+quite my own, Colonel Sahib."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEADHAM HARD***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Deadham Hard, by Lucas Malet
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Deadham Hard
+
+Author: Lucas Malet
+
+Release Date: June 4, 2004  [eBook #12520]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEADHAM HARD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Charles Aldarondo, Project Gutenberg Beginners'
+Projects, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+DEADHAM HARD
+
+A Romance
+
+BY LUCAS MALET
+
+(MARY ST. LEGER HARRISON)
+
+Author of "Sir Richard Calmady," "The Wages of Sin," etc.
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"Youth has no boundaries, age has the grave."--BULGARIAN PROVERB
+
+
+
+
+TO MY DEAR FRIEND ACROSS THE OCEAN C. E. O. VEVEY 1899 LONDON 1919
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+BOOK I  THE HOUSE OF THE TAMARISKS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+       I. TELLING HOW, UNDER STRESS OF CIRCUMSTANCES, A HUMANIST TURNED
+          HERMIT
+
+      II. ENTER A YOUNG SCHOLAR AND GENTLEMAN OF A HAPPY DISPOSITION AND
+          GOOD PROSPECTS
+
+     III. THE DOUBTFULLY HARMONIOUS PARTS OF A WHOLE
+
+      IV. WATCHERS THROUGH THE SMALL HOURS
+
+       V. BETWEEN RIVER AND SEA
+
+      VI. IN WHICH THE PAST LAYS AN OMINOUS HAND ON THE PRESENT
+
+     VII. A CRITIC IN CORDUROY
+
+
+BOOK II  THE HARD SCHOOL OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
+
+       I. IN MAIDEN MEDITATION
+
+      II. WHICH CANTERS ROUND A PARISH PUMP
+
+     III. A SAMPLING OF FREEDOM
+
+      IV. OUT ON THE BAR
+
+       V. WHEREIN DAMARIS MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HIDDEN WAYS OF
+          MEN
+
+      VI. RECOUNTING AN ASTONISHING DEPOSITION
+
+     VII. A SOUL AT WAR WITH FACT
+
+    VIII. TELLING HOW TWO PERSONS, OF VERY DIFFERENT MORAL CALIBRE, WERE
+          COMPELLED TO WEAR THE FLOWER OF HUMILIATION IN THEIR RESPECTIVE
+          BUTTONHOLES
+
+      IX. AN EXPERIMENT IN BRIDGE-BUILDING OF WHICH TIME ALONE CAN FIX
+          THE VALUES
+
+       X. TELLING HOW MISS FELICIA VERITY UNSUCCESSFULLY ATTEMPTED A
+          RESCUE
+
+      XI. IN WHICH DAMARIS RECEIVES INFORMATION OF THE LOST SHOES AND
+          STOCKINGS--ASSUMPTION OF THE GOD-HEAD
+
+     XII. CONCERNING A SERMON WHICH NEVER WAS PREACHED AND OTHER MATTERS
+          OF LOCAL INTEREST
+
+
+BOOK III  THE WORLD BEYOND THE FOREST
+
+       I. AN EPISODE IN THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE MAN WITH THE BLUE
+          EYES
+
+      II. TELLING HOW DAMARIS RENEWED HER ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BELOVED
+          LADY OF HER INFANCY
+
+     III. WHICH CONCERNS ITSELF, INCIDENTALLY, WITH THE GRIEF OF A VICTIM
+          OF CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE RECEPTION OF A BELATED CHRISTMAS
+          GREETING
+
+      IV. BLOWING ONE'S OWN TRUMPET PRACTISED AS A FINE ART
+
+       V. IN WHICH HENRIETTA PULLS THE STRINGS
+
+      VI. CARNIVAL--AND AFTER
+
+     VII. TELLING HOW DAMARIS DISCOVERED THE TRUE NATURE OF A CERTAIN
+          SECRET TO THE DEAR MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
+
+    VIII. FIDUS ACHATES
+
+      IX. WHICH FEATURES VARIOUS PERSONS WITH WHOM THE READER IS ALREADY
+          ACQUAINTED
+
+       X. WHICH IT IS TO BE FEARED SMELLS SOMEWHAT POWERFULLY OF BILGE
+          WATER
+
+      XI. WHEREIN DAMARIS MEETS HERSELF UNDER A NOVEL ASPECT
+
+     XII. CONCERNING ITSELF WITH A GATHERING UP OF FRAGMENTS
+
+    XIII. WHICH RECOUNTS A TAKING OF SANCTUARY
+
+
+BOOK IV  THROUGH SHADOWS TOWARDS THE DAWN
+
+       I. WHICH CARRIES OVER A TALE OF YEARS, AND CARRIES ON
+
+      II. RECALLING, IN SOME PARTICULARS, THE EASIEST RECORDED THEFT IN
+          HUMAN HISTORY
+
+     III. BROTHER AND SISTER
+
+      IV. WHEREIN MISS FELICIA VERITY CONCLUSIVELY SHOWS WHAT SPIRIT SHE
+          IS OF
+
+       V. DEALING WITH EMBLEMS, OMENS AND DEMONSTRATIONS
+
+      VI. SHOWING HOW SIR CHARLES VERITY WAS JUSTIFIED OF HIS LABOURS
+
+     VII. TELLING HOW CHARLES VERITY LOOKED ON THE MOTHER OF HIS SON
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTH WHICH IS ALSO CHAPTER THE LAST
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+THE HOUSE OF THE TAMARISKS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+TELLING HOW, UNDER STRESS OF CIRCUMSTANCE, A HUMANIST TURNED HERMIT
+
+
+A peculiar magic resides in running water, as every student of earth-lore
+knows. There is high magic, too, in the marriage of rivers, so that the
+spot where two mingle their streams is sacred, endowed with strange
+properties of evocation and of purification. Such spots go to the making
+of history and ruling of individual lives; but whether their influence is
+not more often malign than beneficent may be, perhaps, open to doubt.
+
+Certain it is, however, that no doubts of this description troubled the
+mind of Thomas Clarkson Verity, when, in the closing decade of the
+eighteenth century, he purchased the house at Deadham Hard, known as
+Tandy's Castle, overlooking the deep and comparatively narrow channel by
+which the Rivers Arne and Wilner, after crossing the tide-flats and
+salt-marsh of Marychurch Haven, make their swift united exit into
+Marychurch Bay. Neither was he troubled by the fact that Tandy's
+Castle--or more briefly and familiarly Tandy's--for all its commonplace
+outward decency of aspect did not enjoy an unblemished moral or social
+reputation. The house--a whitewashed, featureless erection--was planted
+at right angles to the deep sandy lane leading up from the shore, through
+the scattered village of Deadham, to the three-mile distant market town
+of Marychurch.
+
+Standing on a piece of rough land--bare, save for a few stunted Weymouth
+pines, and a fringe of tamarisk along the broken sea-wall--Tandy's, at
+the date in question, boasted a couple of bowed sash-windows on either
+side the front and back doors; and a range of five other windows set flat
+in the wall on the first floor. There was no second storey. The slate
+roofs were mean, low-pitched, without any grace of overshadowing eaves.
+At either end, a tall chimney-stack rose like the long ears of some
+startled, vacant-faced small animal. Behind the house, a thick plantation
+of beech and sycamore served to make its square blank whiteness visible
+for a quite considerable distance out to sea. Built upon the site of some
+older and larger structure, it was blessed--or otherwise--with a system
+of vaults and cellars wholly disproportionate to its existing size. One
+of these, by means of a roughly ceiled and flagged passage, gave access
+to a heavy door in the sea-wall opening directly on to the river
+foreshore.
+
+Hence the unsavoury reputation of the place. For not only did it supply a
+convenient receiving house for smuggled goods, but a convenient
+rendezvous for the more lawless characters of the neighbourhood--a
+back-of-beyond and No Man's Land where the devil could, with impunity,
+have things very much his own way. In the intervals of more serious
+business, the vaults and cellars of Tandy's frequently resounded to the
+agonies and brutal hilarities of cock-fights, dog-fights, and other
+repulsive sports and pastimes common to the English--both gentle and
+simple--of that virile but singularly gross and callous age. Nevertheless
+to Thomas Clarkson Verity, man of peace and of ideas, Tandy's
+represented--and continued to represent through over half a
+century--rescue, security, an awakening in something little short of
+paradise from a long-drawn nightmare of hell. He paid an extortionate
+price for the property at the outset, and spent a small fortune on the
+enlargement of the house and improvement of the grounds, yet never
+regretted his bargain.
+
+For, in good truth, when, in the spring of 1794, the soft, nimble,
+round-bodied, very polite, learned and loquacious little gentleman first
+set eyes upon its mean roofs, prick ears and vacant whitewashed
+countenance, he had been horribly shocked, horribly scared--for all the
+inherited valour of his good breeding--and, above all, most horribly
+disappointed. History had played very dirty pranks with him, which he
+found it impossible as yet to forgive.
+
+Five years earlier, fired, like many another generous spirit, by
+extravagant hope of the coming regeneration of mankind, he hurried off to
+Paris after the opening of the National Assembly and fall of the
+Bastille. With the overture to the millennium in full blast, must he not
+be there to hear and see? Associating himself with the Girondist party he
+assisted, busily enthusiastic, at the march of tremendous events, until
+the evil hour in which friend began to denounce friend, and heads, quite
+other than aristocratic--those of men and women but yesterday the idols
+and chosen leaders of the people--went daily to the filling of _la veuve_
+Guillotine's unspeakable market-basket. The spectacle proved too
+upsetting both to Mr. Verity's amiable mind and rather queasy stomach.
+Faith failed; while even the millennium seemed hardly worth purchasing at
+so detestable a cost. He stood altogether too close to the terrible
+drama, in its later stages, to distinguish the true import or progression
+of it. Too close to understand that, however blood-stained its cradle,
+the goodly child Democracy was veritably, here and now, in the act of
+being born among men. Rather did he question whether his own fat little
+neck was not in lively danger of being severed; and his own head--so full
+of ingenious thoughts and lively curiosity--of being sent flying to join
+those of Brissot and Verginaud, of wayward explosive Camille and sweet
+Lucile Desmoulins, in that same unspeakable basket.
+
+And to what end? For could he suppose the human race would be nearer, by
+the veriest fraction of a millimetre, to universal liberty, equality, and
+prosperity, through his insignificant death? Modesty, and a natural
+instinct of self-preservation alike answered, "never a jot." Whereupon
+with pertinacious, if furtive, activity he sought means of escape. And,
+at length, after months of hiding and anxious flitting, found them in the
+shape of a doubtfully seaworthy, and undoubtedly filthy, fishing-smack
+bound from Le Havre to whatever port it could make on the English south
+coast. The two days' voyage was rough, the accommodation and company to
+match. Mr. Verity spent a disgusting and disgusted forty-eight hours, to
+be eventually put ashore, a woefully bedraggled and depleted figure, in
+the primrose, carmine, and dove-grey of a tender April morning on the wet
+sand just below the sea-wall of Tandy's Castle.
+
+Never was Briton more thankful to salute his native land, or feel the
+solid earth of it under his weary and very shaky feet. He, an epicure,
+ate such coarse food, washed down by such coarse ale, as Tandy's could
+offer with smiling relish. Later, mounted on a forest pony--an
+ill-favoured animal with a wall-eye, pink muzzle, bristly upper and
+hanging lower lip, more accustomed to carry a keg of smuggled spirits
+strapped beneath its belly than a cosmopolitan savant and social reformer
+on its back--he rode the three miles to Marychurch, proposing there to
+take the coach to Southampton and, after a measure of rest and refitting,
+a post-chaise to Canton Magna, his elder brother's fine place lying in a
+fold of the chalk hills which face the Sussex border.
+
+The pony moved slowly and sullenly; but its rider felt no impatience. His
+humour was of the kindliest. His heart, indeed, came near singing for
+joy, simply, spontaneously, even as the larks sang, climbing up and
+upward from salt marsh and meadow, on either side the rutted road, into
+the limpid purity of the spring sky. A light wind flapped the
+travel-stained, high-collared blue cloth cloak which he wore; and brought
+him both the haunting fetid-sweet reek of the mud flats--the tide being
+low--and the invigorating tang of the forest and moorland, uprolling
+there ahead, in purple and umber to the pale northern horizon. Against
+that sombre background, fair and stately in the tender sunlight as a
+church of vision or dream, Marychurch Abbey rose above the roofs and
+chimneys of the little town.
+
+During the latter half of the eighteenth century, not only were
+religious systems very much at a discount among persons of intelligence,
+but the Deity himself was relegated to the position of an exploded idea,
+becoming an object of vituperation, witty or obscene according to the
+humour of the individual critic. As one of the illuminated, Mr. Verity
+did not escape the prevailing infection, although an inborn amenity of
+disposition saved him from atheism in its more blatantly offensive forms.
+The existence of the Supreme Being might be, (probably was) so he feared,
+but "a fond thing vainly imagined". Yet such is the constitution of the
+human mind that age confers a certain prestige and authority even upon
+phantoms and suspected frauds. Hence it followed that Mr. Verity, in the
+plenitude of his courtesy, had continued to take off his hat--secretly
+and subjectively at all events--to this venerable theological delusion,
+so dear through unnumbered centuries to the aching heart and troubled
+conscience of humanity.
+
+But in the present glad hour of restored security--his head no longer in
+danger of plopping, hideously bodiless, into _la veuve's_ basket, his
+inner-man, moreover, so recently and rackingly evacuated by that
+abominable Channel passage, now comfortably relined with Tandy's meat and
+drink--he went further in the way of acknowledgment. A glow of very vital
+gratitude swept over him, so that looking at the majestic church--secular
+witness to the soul's faith in and need of Almighty God's protective
+mercy and goodness--he took off his hat, no longer metaphorically but
+actually, and bowed himself together over the pommel of the saddle with
+an irresistible movement of thanksgiving and of praise.
+
+Recovering himself after a minute or so--"Almost thou persuades! me
+to be a Christian," he said aloud, shaking his head remonstrantly at
+the distant church, while tears started to his busy, politely
+inquisitive eyes.
+
+Then, striving by speech to bring his spirits to their accustomed
+playfulness and poise, he soliloquized thus, still aloud:
+
+"For, to be candid, what convincing argument can I advance, in the light
+of recent experience, to prove that Rousseau, my friends the
+Encyclopeadists, or even the great M. de Voltaire, were really wiser in
+their generation, truer lovers of the people and safer guides, than St.
+Benedict--of blessed memory, since patron of learning and incidentally
+saviour of classic literature--whose pious sons raised this most
+delectable edifice to God's glory seven hundred years ago?--The tower is
+considerably later than the transepts and the nave--fifteenth century I
+take it,--Upon my soul, I am half tempted to renounce my allegiance and
+to doubt whether our modern standards of civilization surpass, in the
+intelligent application of means to ends, those of these mediaeval
+cenobites, and whether we are saner philanthropists, deeper philosophers,
+more genial humanists than they!"
+
+But here his discourse suffered mortifying interruption. He became aware
+the pony stood stock-still in the middle of the road; and, turning its
+head, so that he beheld its pink muzzle, bristly upper and hanging lower
+lip in disagreeable profile, regarded him with malevolent contempt out of
+its one sound eye, as who should say:
+
+"What's the silly fellow trumpeting like this about? Doesn't the veriest
+noodle contrive to keep a quiet tongue in his head out on the highway?"
+
+Sensible of a snub, Mr. Verity jerked at the reins and clapped his heels
+into the creature's sides, as smartly as fatigue and native civility
+permitted, sending it forward at a jog-trot. Nevertheless his
+soliloquy--a silent one now--continued, and that with notable
+consequences to others besides himself.
+
+For his thought still dallied with the subject of the monastic life, as
+lived by those same pious Benedictines here in England long ago. Its
+reasoned rejection of mundane agitations, its calm, its leisure, its
+profound and ardent scholarship were vastly to his taste,--A man touching
+middle-age might do worse, surely, than spend his days between worship
+and learning, thus?--He saw, and approved, its social office in offering
+sanctuary to the fugitive, alms to the poor, teaching to the ignorant,
+consolation to the sick and safe passage heavenward to the dying. Saw,
+not without sympathy, its more jovial moments--its good fellowship,
+shrewd and witty conversation, well salted stories--whereat a man laughs
+slyly in his sleeve--its good cheer, too, with feasts on holy-days and
+high-days, rich and succulent.--And in this last connection, as he
+reflected, much was to be said for the geographical position of
+Marychurch; since if river mists and white dullness of sea fog, drifting
+in from the Channel, were to hand, so, also, in their season, were fresh
+run salmon, snipe, wood-cock, flocks of wild duck, of plover and other
+savoury fowl.
+
+For in this thankfulness of awakening from the hellish nightmare of the
+Terror, Mr. Verity's facile imagination tended to run to another extreme.
+With all the seriousness of which he was capable he canvassed the notion
+of a definite retirement from the world. Public movements, political and
+social experiments ceased to attract him. His appetite for helping to
+make the wheels of history go round had been satisfied to the point of
+nausea. All he desired was tranquillity and repose. He was free of
+domestic obligations and close family ties. He proposed to remain
+so--philosophy his mistress, science his hand-maid, literature his
+pastime, books (remembering the bitter sorrows of the tumbril and
+scaffold in Paris) in future, his closest friends.
+
+But, unfortunately, though the great church in all its calm grave,
+beauty still held the heart the fair landscape, the monastery, which
+might have sheltered his renunciation, had been put to secular uses or
+fallen into ruin long years ago. If he proposed to retire from the
+world, he must himself provide suitable environment. Marychurch Abbey,
+at the end of the eighteenth century, had very certainly nothing to
+offer him under that head.
+
+And then, with a swiftness of conception and decision possible only to
+mercurial-minded persons, his thought darted back to Tandy's, that
+unkempt, morally malodorous back-of-beyond and No Man's Land. Its vacant
+whitewashed countenance and long-eared chimney-stacks had welcomed him,
+if roughly and grudgingly, to England and to peace. Was he not in some
+sort thereby in debt to Tandy's bound by gratitude to the place? Should
+he not buy it--his private fortune being considerable--and there plant
+his hermitage? Should he not renovate and transform it, redeeming it from
+questionable uses, by transporting thither, not himself only but his fine
+library, his famous herbarium, his cabinets of crystals, of coins, and of
+shells? The idea captivated him. He was weary of destruction, having seen
+it in full operation and practised on the gigantic scale. Henceforth he
+would devote all the energy he possessed to construction--on however
+modest and private a one--to a building up, as personal protest against
+much lately witnessed wanton and chaotic pulling-down.
+
+In prosecution of which purpose, hopeful once more and elate, bobbing
+merrily cork-like upon the surface of surrounding circumstance--although
+lamentably deficient, for the moment, in raiment befitting his position
+and his purse--Mr. Verity spent two days at the Stag's Head, in
+Marychurch High Street. He made enquiries of all and sundry regarding
+the coveted property; and learned, after much busy investigation that
+the village, and indeed the whole Hundred of Deadham, formed an outlying
+and somewhat neglected portion of his acquaintance, Lord Bulparc's
+Hampshire estate.
+
+Here was solid information to go upon. Greatly encouraged, he took the
+coach to Southampton, and thence up to town; where he interviewed first
+Lord Bulparc's lawyers and then that high-coloured, free-living
+nobleman himself.
+
+"Gad, sir," the latter assured him, "you're heartily welcome to the damn
+little hole, as far as I'm concerned, if you have the bad taste to fancy
+it. I suppose I ought to speak to my son Oxley about this just as a
+matter of form. Not that I apprehend Oxley will raise any difficulties as
+to entail--you need not fear that. We shall let you off easy enough--only
+too happy to oblige you. But I warn you, Verity, you may drop money
+buying the present tenant out. If half my agent tells me is true, the
+fellow must be a most confounded blackguard, up to the eyes in all
+manner of ungodly traffic. By rights we ought to have kicked him out
+years ago. But," his lordship chuckled--"I scruple to be hard on any man.
+We're none of us perfect, live and let live, you know. Only my dear
+fellow, I'm bound to put you on your guard; for he'll stick to the place
+like a leech and blood-suck you like a leech too, as long as there's a
+chance of getting an extra guinea out of you by fair means or foul."
+
+To which process of blood-sucking Mr. Verity was, in fact, rather
+scandalously subjected before Tandy's Castle passed into his possession.
+But pass into his possession it finally did, whereupon he fell joyously
+to the work of reconstructive redemption.
+
+First of all he ordered the entrance of the underground passage, leading
+to the river foreshore, to be securely walled up; and, with a fine
+disregard of possible unhealthy consequences in the shape of choke-damp,
+the doorways of certain ill-reputed vaults and cellars to be filled with
+solid masonry. Neither harborage of contraband, cruel laughter of man, or
+yell of tortured beast, should again defile the under-world of
+Tandy's!--Next he had the roof of the main building raised, and given a
+less mean and meagre angle. He added a wing on the left containing
+pleasant bed-chambers upstairs, and good offices below; and, as crowning
+act of redemption, caused three large ground-floor rooms, backed by a
+wide corridor, to be built on the right in which to house his library and
+collections. This lateral extension of the house, constructed according
+to his own plans, was, like its designer, somewhat eccentric in
+character. The three rooms were semicircular, all window on the southern
+garden front, veritable sun-traps, with a low sloped roofing of
+grey-green slate to them, set fan-wise.
+
+Such was the house at Deadham Hard when Mr. Verity's labours were
+completed. And such did it remain until a good eighty years later, when
+it was visited by a youthful namesake and great-great nephew, under
+circumstances not altogether unworthy of record.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ENTER A YOUNG SCHOLAR AND GENTLEMAN OF A HAPPY DISPOSITION AND
+GOOD PROSPECTS
+
+
+The four-twenty down train rumbled into Marychurch station, and Tom
+Verity stepped out of a rather frousty first-class carriage on to the
+platform. There hot still September sunshine, tempered by a freshness off
+the sea, met him. The effect was pleasurable, adding delicate zest to the
+enjoyment of living which already possessed him. Coming from inland, the
+near neighbourhood of the sea, the sea with its eternal invitation,
+stirred his blood.
+
+For was not he about to accept the said invitation in its fullest and
+most practical expression? Witness the fact that, earlier in the day, he
+had deposited his heavy baggage at that house of many partings, many
+meetings, Radley's Hotel, Southampton; and journeyed on to Marychurch
+with a solitary, eminently virgin, cowhide portmanteau, upon the
+yellow-brown surface of which the words--"Thomas Clarkson Verity,
+passenger Bombay, first cabin R.M.S. _Penang_"--were inscribed in the
+whitest of lettering. His name stood high in the list of successful
+candidates at the last Indian Civil Service examination. Now he reaped
+the reward of past endeavour. For with that deposition of heavy baggage
+at Radley's the last farewell to years of tutelage seemed to him to be
+spoken. Nursery discipline, the restraints and prohibitions--in their
+respective degrees--of preparatory school, of Harchester, of Oxford; and,
+above all and through all, the control and admonitions of his father, the
+Archdeacon, fell away from him into the limbo of things done with,
+outworn and outpaced.
+
+This moved him as pathetic, yet as satisfactory also, since it set him
+free to fix his mind, without lurking suspicion of indecorum, upon the
+large promise of the future. He could give rein to his eagerness, to his
+high sense of expectation, while remaining innocent of impiety towards
+persons and places holding, until now, first claim on his obedience and
+affection. All this fell in admirably with his natural bent.
+Self-reliant, agreeably egotistical, convinced of the excellence of his
+social and mental equipment, Tom was saved from excess of conceit by a
+lively desire to please, an even more lively sense of humour, and an
+intelligence to which at this period nothing came amiss in the way of new
+impressions or experiences.
+
+And, from henceforth, he was his own master, his thoughts, actions,
+purposes, belonging to himself and to himself alone. Really the position
+was a little intoxicating! Realizing it, as he sat in the somewhat stuffy
+first-class carriage, on that brief hour's journey from Southampton to
+Marychurch, he had laughed out loud, hunching up his shoulders saucily,
+in a sudden outburst of irrepressible and boyish glee.
+
+But as the line, clearing the purlieus of the great seaport, turns
+south-westward running through the noble oak and beech woods of Arnewood
+Forest, crossing its bleak moorlands--silver pink, at the present season,
+with fading heather--and cutting through its plantations of larch and
+Scotch fir, Tom Verity's mood sobered. He watched the country reeling
+away to right and left past the carriage windows, and felt its peculiarly
+English and sylvan charm. Yet he saw it all through a dazzle, as of
+mirage, in which floated phantom landscapes strangely different in
+sentiment and in suggestion.--Some extravagantly luxuriant, as setting to
+crowded painted cities, some desert, amazingly vacant and desolate; but,
+in either case, poetic, alluring, exciting, as scenes far removed in
+climate, faith and civilization from those heretofore familiar can hardly
+fail to be. India, and all which India stands for in English history,
+challenged his imagination, challenged his ambition, since in virtue of
+his nationality, young and inexperienced though he was, he went to her as
+a natural ruler, the son of a conquering race. And this last thought
+begot in him not only exultation but an unwonted seriousness. While, as
+he thus meditated, from out the dazzle as of mirage, a single figure grew
+into force and distinctness of outline, a figure which from his childhood
+had appealed to him with an attraction at once sinister and heroic--that,
+namely, of a certain soldier and ex-Indian official, his kinsman, to pay
+a politic tribute of respect to whom was the object of his present
+excursion.
+
+In Catholic countries the World gives its children to the Church. In
+Protestant countries the process is not infrequently reversed, the Church
+giving its children to the World, and that with an alacrity which argues
+remarkable faith and courage--of a sort! Archdeacon Verity had carefully
+planned this visit for his son, although it obliged the young man to
+leave home two days earlier than he need otherwise have done. It was
+illuminating to note how the father brought all the resources of a fine
+presence, an important manner and full-toned archidiaconal voice to bear
+upon proving the expediency of the young man visiting this particular
+relation, over whose career and reputation he had so often, in the past,
+pursed up his lips and shaken his head for the moral benefit of the
+domestic circle.
+
+For the Archdeacon, in common with the majority of the Verity family, was
+animated by that ineradicable distrust of anything approaching genius
+which distinguishes the English country, or rather county, mind. And that
+Sir Charles Verity had failed to conform to the family tradition of
+solid, unemotional, highly respectable, and usually very wealthy,
+mediocrity was beyond question. He had struck out a line for himself;
+and, as the event disclosed, an illustrious one. This the Archdeacon,
+being a good Conservative, disapproved. It worried him sadly, making him
+actually, if unconsciously, exceedingly jealous. And precisely on that
+account, by an ingenious inversion of reasoning, he felt he owed it to
+abstract justice--in other words to his much disgruntled self--to make
+all possible use of this offending, this renegade personage, when
+opportunity of so doing occurred. Now, learning on credible authority
+that Sir Charles's name was still one to conjure with in India, it
+clearly became his duty to bid his son seek out and secure whatever
+modicum of advantage--in the matter of advice and introductions--might be
+derivable from so irritating a source.
+
+All of which, while jumping with his own desires, caused Tom much sly
+mirth. For might it not be counted among the satisfactory results of his
+deposition of heavy baggage at Radley's that, for the first time in his
+life, he was at liberty to regard even his father, Thomas Pontifex
+Verity, Archdeacon of Harchester and Rector of Canton Magna, in a true
+perspective? And he laughed again, though this time softly, indulgently,
+able in the plenitude of youthful superiority to extend a kindly
+tolerance towards the foibles and ingenuous hypocrisies of poor
+middle-age.
+
+But here the train, emerging from the broken hilly country on the
+outskirts of the forest, roared along the embankment which carries the
+line across the rich converging valleys of the Wilner and the Arne. Tom
+ceased to think either of possible advantage accruing to his own
+fortunes, or these defects of the family humour which had combined to
+dictate his present excursion, his attention being absorbed by the beauty
+of the immediate outlook. For on the left Marychurch came into view.
+
+The great, grey, long-backed abbey stands on a heart-shaped peninsula of
+slightly rising ground. Its western tower, land-mark for the valleys and
+seamark for vessels making the Haven, overtops the avenue of age-old elms
+which shade the graveyard. Close about the church, the red brick and
+rough-cast houses of the little market-town--set in a wide margin of
+salt-marsh and meadow intersected by blue-brown waterways--gather, as a
+brood of chickens gathers about a mothering hen. Beyond lie the pale
+glinting levels of the estuary, guarded on the west by gently upward
+sloping cornlands and on the south by the dark furze and heath-clad mass
+of Stone Horse Head. Beyond again, to the low horizon, stretches the
+Channel sea.
+
+The very simplicity of the picture gives it singular dignity and repose.
+Classic in its clearness of outline and paucity of detail, mediaeval in
+sentiment, since the great Norman church dominates the whole, its appeal
+is at once wistful and severe. And, this afternoon, just as the nearness
+of the sea tempered the atmosphere lifting all oppressive weight from the
+brooding sunshine, so did it temper the colouring, lending it an ethereal
+quality, in which blue softened to silver, grey to lavender, while green
+seemed overspread by powdered gold. The effect was exquisite, reminding
+Tom of certain water-colour drawings, by Danvers and by Appleyard,
+hanging in the drawing-room of the big house at Canton Magna, and of
+certain of Shelley's lyrics--both of which, in their different medium,
+breathed the same enchantment of natural and spiritual loveliness, of
+nameless desire, nameless regret. And, his nerves being somewhat strained
+by the emotions of the day, that enchantment worked upon him strangely.
+The inherent pathos of it, indeed, took him, as squarely as unexpectedly,
+by the throat. He suffered a sharp recoil from the solicitation of the
+future, an immense tenderness towards the past.--A tenderness for those
+same years of tutelage and all they had brought him, not only in
+over-flowing animal spirits, happy intercourse and intellectual
+attainment; but in their limitation of private action, their security of
+obligation, of obedience to authority, which at the time had seemed
+irksome enough and upon release from which he had so recently
+congratulated himself.
+
+Love of home, of England, of his own people--of the Archdeacon, in even
+his most full-voiced and moralizing mood--love of things tested,
+accustomed and friendly, touched him to the quick. Suddenly he asked
+himself to what end was he leaving all these and going forth to encounter
+untried conditions, an unknown Nature, a moral and social order equally
+unknown? Looking at the peaceful, ethereally lovely landscape, set in
+such close proximity and notable contrast to the unrest of that historic
+highway of the nations, the Channel sea, he felt small and lonely,
+childishly diffident and weak. All the established safety and comfort of
+home, all the thoughtless irresponsible delights of vanished boyhood,
+pulled at his heart-strings. He wanted, wanted wildly, desperately, not
+to go forward but to go back.
+
+Mind and body being healthy, however, the phase was a passing one, and
+his emotion, though sincere and poignant, of brief duration. For young
+blood--happily for the human story, which otherwise would read altogether
+too sad--defies forebodings, gaily embraces risks; and, true soldier of
+fortune, marches out to meet whatever fate the battlefield of manhood may
+hold for it, a song in its mouth and a rose behind its ear.
+
+Tom Verity speedily came to a steadier mind, pouring honest contempt upon
+his momentary lapse from self-confidence. He was ashamed of it. It
+amounted to being silly, simply silly. He couldn't understand, couldn't
+account for it. What possessed him to get a regular scare like this? It
+was too absurd for words. Sentiment?--Yes, by all means a reasonable
+amount of it, well in hand and thus capable of translation--if the fancy
+took you--into nicely turned elegiac verse; but a scare, a scare pure and
+simple, wasn't to be tolerated! And he got up, standing astraddle to
+brace himself against the swinging of the train, while he stretched,
+settling himself in his clothes--pulled down the fronts of his waistcoat,
+buttoned the jacket of his light check suit; and, taking off his
+wide-awake, smoothed his soft, slightly curly russet-coloured hair with
+his hand. These adjustments, and the assurance they induced that his
+personal appearance was all which it should be, completed his moral
+restoration. He stepped down on to the platform, into the serene light
+and freshness, as engaging and hopeful a youth of three and twenty as any
+one need ask to see.
+
+"For The Hard? Very good, sir. Sir Charles's trap is outside in the
+station yard. One portmanteau in the van? Quite so. Don't trouble
+yourself about it, sir. I'll send a porter to bring it along."
+
+This from the station-master, with a degree of friendly deference far
+from displeasing to the recipient of it.
+
+Whatever the defects of the rank and file of the Verity family in
+respect of liberal ideas, it can safely be asserted of all its members,
+male and female, clerical and lay, alike, that they belonged to the
+equestrian order. Hence it added considerably to Tom's recovered
+self-complacency to find a smart two-wheel dog-cart awaiting him, drawn by
+a remarkably well-shaped and well-groomed black horse. The coachman was
+to match. Middle-aged, clean-shaven, his Napoleonic face set as a mask,
+his undress livery of pepper-and-salt mixture soberly immaculate. He
+touched his hat when our young gentleman appeared and mounted beside him;
+the horse, meanwhile, shivering a little and showing the red of its
+nostrils as the train, with strident whistlings, drew out of the station
+bound westward to Stourmouth and Barryport.
+
+Later the horse broke up the abiding inertia of Marychurch High Street,
+by dancing as it passed the engine of a slowly ambulant thrashing
+machine; and only settled fairly into its stride when the three-arched,
+twelfth century stone bridge over the Arne was passed, and the
+road--leaving the last scattered houses of the little town--turned south
+and seaward skirting the shining expanse of The Haven and threading the
+semi-amphibious hamlets of Horny Cross and Lampit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DOUBTFULLY HARMONIOUS PARTS OF A WHOLE
+
+
+A long, low, rectangular and rather narrow room, supported across the
+centre--where passage walls had been cut away--by an avenue of dumpy
+wooden pillars, four on either side, leading to a glass door opening on
+to the garden. A man's room rather than a woman's, and, judging by
+appearances, a bachelor's at that.--Eighteenth-century furniture, not
+ignoble in line, but heavy, wide-seated, designed for the comfort of
+bulky paunched figures arrayed in long napped waistcoats and full-skirted
+coats. Tabaret curtains and upholsterings, originally maroon, now dulled
+by sea damp and bleached by sun-glare to a uniform tone in which colour
+and pattern were alike obliterated. Handsome copperplate engravings of
+Pisa and of Rome, and pastel portraits in oval frames; the rest of the
+whity brown panelled wall space hidden by book-cases. These surmounted by
+softly shining, pearl-grey Chinese godlings, monsters, philosophers and
+saints, the shelves below packed with neatly ranged books.
+
+A dusky room, in spite of its rounded, outstanding sash-windows, two on
+either side the glass door; the air of it holding, in permanent solution,
+an odour of leather-bound volumes. A place, in short, which, though not
+inhospitable, imposed itself, its qualities and traditions, to an extent
+impossible for any save the most thick-skinned and thick-witted wholly to
+ignore or resist.
+
+Young Tom Verity, having no convenient armour-plating of stupidity,
+suffered its influence intimately as--looking about him with quick
+enquiring glances--he followed the man-servant across it between the
+dumpy pillars. He felt self-conscious and disquieted, as by a smile of
+silent amusement upon some watchful elderly face. So impressed, indeed,
+was he that, on reaching the door, he paused, letting the man pass on
+alone to announce him. He wanted time in which to get over this queer
+sensation of shyness, before presenting himself to the company assembled,
+there, in the garden outside.
+
+Yet he was well aware that the prospect out of doors--its amplitude of
+mellow sunlight and of space, its fair windless calm in which no leaf
+stirred--was far more attractive than the room in the doorway of which he
+thus elected to linger.
+
+For the glass-door gave directly on to an extensive lawn, set out,
+immediately before the house front, with scarlet and crimson geraniums in
+alternating square and lozenge-shaped beds. Away on the right a couple of
+grey-stemmed ilex trees--the largest in height and girth Tom had ever
+seen--cast finely vandyked and platted shadow upon the smooth turf.
+Beneath them, garden chairs were stationed and a tea-table spread, at
+which four ladies sat--one, the elder, dressed in crude purple, the other
+three, though of widely differing ages and aspect, in light coloured
+summer gowns.
+
+To the left of the lawn, a high plastered wall--masked by hollies, bay,
+yew, and at the far end by masses of airy, pink-plumed tamarisk--shut off
+the eastward view. But straight before him all lay open, "clean away to
+the curve of the world" as he told himself, not without a pull of emotion
+remembering his impending voyage. For, about sixty yards distant, the
+lawn ended abruptly in a hard straight line--the land cut off sheer, as
+it seemed, at the outer edge of a gravelled terrace, upon which two small
+antiquated cannon were mounted, their rusty muzzles trained over swirling
+blue-green tide river and yellow-grey, high-cambered sand-bar out to sea.
+
+Between these innocuous engines of destruction, little black cannon balls
+had been piled into a mimic pyramid, near to which three men stood
+engaged in desultory conversation. One of them, Tom observed as markedly
+taller, more commanding and distinguished in bearing, than his
+companions. Even from here, the whole length of the lawn intervening,
+his presence, once noted, became of arresting importance, focussing
+attention as the central interest, the one thing which vitally mattered
+in this gracious scene--his figure silhouetted, vertically, against those
+long horizontal lines of river, sand-bar, and far-away delicate junction
+of opal-tinted sea with opal-tinted sky.
+
+Whereupon Tom became convicted of the agreeable certainty that no
+disappointment awaited him. His expectations were about to receive
+generous fulfilment. This visit would prove well worth while. So
+absorbed, indeed, was he in watching the man whom he supposed--and
+rightly--to be his host, that he failed to notice one of the ladies rise
+from the tea-table and advance across the lawn, until her youthful
+white-clad form was close upon him, threading its way between the glowing
+geranium beds.
+
+Then--"You are my cousin, Thomas Verity?" the girl asked, with a grave
+air of ceremony.
+
+"Yes--and you--you are my cousin Damaris," he answered as he felt
+clumsily, being taken unaware in more respects than one, and, for all his
+ready adaptability, being unable to keep a note of surprise out of his
+voice and glance.
+
+He had known of the existence of this little cousin, having heard--on
+occasion--vaguely irritated family mention of her birth at a time when
+the flame of the Mutiny still burned fiercely in the Punjab and in Oudh.
+To be born under such very accentuated circumstances could, in the eyes
+of every normal Verity, hardly fail to argue a certain obtrusiveness and
+absence of good taste. He had heard, moreover, disapproving allusions to
+the extravagant affection Sir Charles Verity was said to lavish upon this
+fruit of a somewhat obscure marriage--his only surviving child. But the
+said family talk, in Tom's case, had gone in at one ear and out at the
+other--as the talk of the elder generation mostly does, and will, when
+the younger generation is solidly and wholesomely convinced of the
+overwhelming importance of its own personal affairs. Consequently, in
+coming to Deadham Hard, Tom had thought of this little cousin--in as far
+as it occurred to him to think of her at all--as a child in the
+schoolroom who, beyond a trifle of good-natured notice at odd moments,
+would not enter into the count or matter at all. Now, awakening to the
+fact of her proximity, he awoke to the further fact that, with one
+exception, she mattered more than anything or anybody else present.
+
+She was, in truth, young--he had been quite right there. Yet, like the
+room in the doorway of which he still lingered, like the man standing on
+the terrace walk--to whose tall figure the serene immensities of sea and
+sky acted as back-cloth and setting--she imposed herself. Whether she was
+pretty or plain, Tom was just now incapable of judging. He only knew
+that her eyes were wonderful. He never remembered to have seen such
+eyes--clear, dark blue-grey with fine shading of eyelash on the lower as
+well as the upper lid. Unquestionably they surpassed all ordinary
+standards of prettiness. Were glorious, yet curiously embarrassing; too
+in their seriousness, their intent impartial scrutiny--under which last,
+to his lively vexation, the young man felt himself redden.
+
+And this, considering his superiority in age, sex, and acquirements, was
+not only absurd but unfair somehow. For did not he, as a rule, get on
+charmingly well with women, gentle and simple, old and young, alike? Had
+he not an ingratiating, playfully flirtatious way with them in which he
+trusted? But flirtatiousness, even of the mildest description, would not
+do here. Instinctively he recognized that. It would not pay at all--in
+this stage of the acquaintance, at all events. He fell back on civil
+speeches; and these rather laboured ones, being himself rather
+discountenanced.
+
+"It is extremely kind of you and Sir Charles to take me on trust like
+this," he began. "Believe me I am very grateful. Under ordinary
+circumstances I should never have dreamed of proposing myself. But I am
+going out to India for the first time--sailing in the _Penang_ the day
+after to-morrow. And, as I should be so near here at Southampton, it was,
+I own, a great temptation to ask if I might come for a night. I felt--my
+father felt--what a privilege it would be for me, a really tremendous
+piece of luck, to meet Sir Charles before I started. Such a rare and
+memorable send off for me, you know!"
+
+"We were very glad you should propose yourself," Damaris answered, still
+with her grave air of ceremony.
+
+"Awfully good of you, I'm sure," the young man murmured.--No, she didn't
+stare. He could not honestly call it staring. It was too calm, too
+impersonal, too reserved for that. She looked, with a view to arriving
+at conclusions regarding him. And he didn't enjoy the process--not in
+the least.
+
+"My father is still interested in everything connected with India," she
+went on. "He will like to talk to you. We have people with us this
+afternoon whom he could not very well leave, or he would have driven into
+Marychurch himself to fetch you. Dr. McCabe, who we knew at Bhutpur long
+ago, came over unexpectedly from Stourmouth this morning; and my Aunt
+Harriet Cowden telegraphed that she and Uncle Augustus would bring Aunt
+Felicia, who is staying with them at Paulton Lacy, here to tea.--But, of
+course, you know them quite well--Uncle Augustus, I mean, and my aunts."
+
+"Do I not know them!" Tom replied with meaning; while, humour getting the
+upper hand thanks to certain memories, he smiled at her.
+
+And, even at this early period in his career, it must be conceded that
+Tom Verity's smile was an asset to be reckoned with. Mischievous to the
+verge of impudence; but confidential, too, most disarmingly friendly--a
+really vastly engaging smile, which, having once beheld, most persons
+found themselves more than ready to behold often again.
+
+Under its persuasive influence Damaris' gravity relaxed. She lowered her
+eyes, and the soft warm colour deepened in her cheeks.
+
+Her steady gaze removed, the young man breathed more freely. He
+congratulated himself. Intercourse was in act of becoming normal and
+easy. So far it had been quite absurdly hind-leggy--and for him, _him_,
+to be forced into being hind-leggy by a girl of barely eighteen! Now he
+prepared to trot gaily, comfortably, off on all fours, when she spoke,
+bringing him up to the perpendicular again with a start.
+
+"I love Aunt Felicia very dearly," she announced, as though in protest
+against some implied and subtle disloyalty.
+
+"But don't we all love Cousin Felicia?" he returned, promptly, eager to
+maintain his advantage. "Isn't she kindness incarnate, Christian
+charity personified? As for me, I simply dote on her; and with reason,
+for ever since those remote ages in which I wore scratchy pinafores and
+horrid little white socks, she has systematically and pertinaciously
+spoiled me whenever she stayed at Canton Magna.--Oh! she is an
+institution. No family should be without her. When I was small she gave
+me chocolates, tin soldiers, pop-guns warranted to endanger my
+brothers' and sisters' eyesight. And now, in a thousand ways, conscious
+and unconscious," he laughed quietly, naughtily, the words running over
+each other in the rapidity of his speech--"she gives me such a blessed
+good conceit of myself!"
+
+And Damaris Verity, caught by the wave of his light-heartedness and
+inherent desire to please, softened again, her serious eyes alight for
+the moment with answering laughter. Whereupon Tom crossed the threshold
+and stood close beside her upon the grass in the brooding sunshine, the
+beds of scarlet and crimson geraniums ranging away on glowing perspective
+to left and right. He glanced at the three ladies seated beneath the
+giant ilexes, and back at his companion. He felt absurdly keen further to
+excite her friendliness and dispel her gravity.
+
+"Only one must admit cousin Harriet is quite another story," he went on
+softly, saucily. "Any conceit our dear Felicia rubs in to you, Harriet
+most effectually rubs out. Isn't it so? I am as a worm, a positive worm
+before her--can only 'tremble and obey' like the historic lady in the
+glee. She flattens me. I haven't an ounce of kick left in me. And then
+why, oh why, tell me, Damaris, does she invariably and persistently
+clothe herself in violet ink?"
+
+"It is her colour," the girl said, her eyes still laughing, her lips
+discreetly set.
+
+"But why, in heaven's name, should she have a colour?" he demanded. "For
+identification, as I have a red and white stripe painted on my steamer
+baggage? Really that isn't necessary. Can you imagine losing cousin
+Harriet? Augustus Cowden mislaying her, for example; and only recovering
+her with joyful cries--we take those for granted in his case, of
+course--at sight of the violet ink? Not a bit of it. You know as well as
+I do identification marks can't ever be required to secure her return,
+because under no conceivable circumstances could she ever be lost. She is
+there, dear lady, lock, stock, and barrel, right there all the time. So
+her raiment of violet amounts to a purely gratuitous advertisement of a
+permanently self-evident fact.--And such a shade too, such a positively
+excruciating shade!"
+
+But here a movement upon the terrace served, indirectly, to put a term to
+his patter. For Sir Charles Verity, raising his voice slightly in passing
+emphasis, turned and moved slowly towards the little company gathered at
+the tea-table. His two companions followed, the shorter of them
+apparently making answer, the words echoing clearly in genial richness of
+affirmation across the intervening space--"And so it was, General, am I
+not recalling the incident myself? Indeed you're entirely right."
+
+"Come," Damaris said, with a certain brevity as of command.
+
+"And feel a worm?"
+
+"No--come and speak to my father."
+
+"Ah! I shall feel a worm there too," the young man returned, an engaging
+candour in his smiling countenance; "and with far better reason, unless I
+am greatly mistaken."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WATCHERS THROUGH THE SMALL HOURS
+
+
+Love, ill-health and debt being, as yet, unknown quantities to young Tom
+Verity, it followed that insomnia, with its thousand and one attendant
+miseries, was an unknown quantity likewise. Upon the eve of the stiffest
+competitive examination those, now outlived, years of tutelage had
+imposed on him, he could still tumble into bed secure of lapsing into
+unconsciousness as soon as his head fairly touched the pillow. Dreams
+might, and usually did, visit him; but as so much incidental music
+merely to the large content of slumber--tittering up and down, too
+airily light-footed and evanescent to leave any impress on mind or
+spirits when he woke.
+
+This night, at Deadham Hard, marked a new departure; sleep proving a less
+absolute break in continuity of sensation, a less absolute barrier
+between day and day.
+
+The Honourable Augustus and Mrs. Cowden, and Felicia Verity, not without
+last words, adjurations, commands and fussings, started on their
+twelve-mile drive home to Paulton Lacy about six o'clock. A little later
+Dr. McCabe conveyed himself, and his brogue, away in an ancient hired
+landau to catch the evening train from Marychurch to Stourmouth. Dinner
+followed, shortly after which Damaris vanished, along with her
+governess-companion, Miss Theresa Bilson--a plump, round-visaged,
+pink-nosed little person, permanently wearing gold eyeglasses, the
+outstanding distinction of whose artless existence consisted, as Tom
+gathered from her conversation, in a tour in Rhineland and residence of
+some months' duration at the university town of Bonn.
+
+Then, at last, came the harvest of the young man's excursion, in the
+shape of first-hand records of war and government--of intrigue and of
+sedition, followed by stern retributive chastisement--from that famous
+soldier, autocratic and practised administrator, his host.
+
+In the opinion of a good many persons Tom Verity's bump of reference
+showed very insufficient development. Dons, head-masters, the pedagogic
+and professorial tribe generally, he had long taken in his stride quite
+unabashed. Church dignitaries, too, left him saucily cool. For--so at
+least he argued--was not his elder brother, Pontifex, private chaplain to
+the Bishop of Harchester? And did not this fact--he knowing poor old
+Ponty as only brother can know brother--throw a rather lurid light upon
+the spiritual and intellectual limitations of the Bench? In respect of
+the British aristocracy, his social betters, he also kept an open mind.
+For had not Lord Bulparc's son and heir, little Oxley, acted as his fag,
+boot-black and bacon-frier, for the best part of a year at school?
+Notwithstanding which fact--Lord Oxley was of a mild, forgiving
+disposition--had not he, Tom, spent the cricket week several summers
+running at Napworth Castle; where, on one celebrated occasion, he bowled
+a distinguished Permanent Under-Secretary first ball, and, on another,
+chided a marquis and ex-Cabinet Minister for misquoting Catullus.
+
+Yet now, sitting smoking and listening to those records of eastern rule
+and eastern battle, in the quiet lamp-light of the long room--with its
+dark book-cases, faintly gleaming Chinese images, and dumpy pillars--his
+native cheekiness faded into most unwonted humility. For he was
+increasingly conscious of being, to put it vulgarly "up against something
+pretty big." Conscious of a personality altogether too secure of its own
+power to spread itself or, in the smallest degree, bluff or brag. Sir
+Charles Verity struck him, indeed, as calm to the confines of cynicism.
+He gave, but gave of his abundance, royally indifferent to the cost.
+There was plenty more where all this came from, of knowledge, of
+initiative and of thought. Only once or twice, during the course of their
+long talk, did the young man detect any sign of personal feeling. Then
+for an instant, some veil seemed to be lifted, some curtain drawn aside;
+while, with dazzling effect, he became cognizant of underlying
+bitterness, underlying romance--of secret dealings of man with man, of
+man with woman, and the dealing, arbitrary, immutable, final, of Death
+and a Greater than Death, with both.
+
+These revelations though of the briefest, over before he fairly grasped
+their import, gone like a breath, were still sufficient to discredit many
+preconceived ideas and enlarge his mental horizon to a somewhat anxious
+extent. They carried him very far from life as lived at Canton Magna
+Rectory; very far from all, indeed, in which the roots of his experience
+were set, thus producing an atmosphere of doubt, of haunting and
+insidious unrest.
+
+And of that atmosphere he was particularly sensible when, standing in
+the hall, flat candlestick in hand, he at last bade Sir Charles Verity
+good night.
+
+"It has been a wonderful evening, sir," he said, simply and modestly.
+"You have been awfully kind in sparing me so much of your time; but,
+indeed, it has not been time wasted. I begin to measure a little what
+India means, I hope. Certainly I begin to measure the depth of my own
+ignorance. I see I have nearly everything of essential importance still
+to learn. And that is a pretty large order--almost staggeringly large now
+that, thanks to you, I begin to realize the vastness of the amount."
+
+"The majority of men in your Service never realize it," Charles Verity
+returned. "They run in blinkers from first to last.--Not that I underrate
+their usefulness. They are honest, painstaking, thoroughly reliable,
+according to their lights. They do excellent journeyman work. But there
+lies the heart of the whole matter.--Are you content to do journeyman
+work only; or do you aspire to something greater?--If the former, then
+you had best forget me and all I have told you this evening as fast as
+possible. For it will prove a hindrance rather than a help, confusing the
+issues.--No--no--listen a moment, my dear boy"--
+
+This kindly, indulgently even, as Tom made a gesture of repudiation and
+began to speak.
+
+"If the latter--well, the door stands open upon achievement by no means
+contemptible, as the opportunities of modern life go; but, it is only
+fair to warn you, upon possibilities of trouble, even of disaster, by no
+means contemptible either. For, remember, the world is so constituted
+that if you elect to drive, rather than be driven, you must be prepared
+to take heavy risks, pay heavy penalties. Understand"--
+
+He laid his hand on the young man's shoulder.
+
+"I do not pose as a teacher, still less as a propagandist. I do not
+attempt to direct the jury. The choice rests exclusively with
+yourself.--And here rid your mind of any cant about moral obligations.
+Both ways have merit, both bring rewards--of sorts--are equally
+commendable, equally right. Only this--whether you choose blinkers, your
+barrel between the shafts and another man's whip tickling your loins, or
+the reins in your own hands and the open road ahead, be faithful to your
+choice. Stick to it, through evil report as well as through good."
+
+He lifted his hand off Tom's shoulder. And the latter, looking round at
+him was struck--in mingled admiration and repulsion--by his likeness to
+some shapely bird of prey, with fierce hooked beak and russet-grey eyes,
+luminous, cruel perhaps, yet very sad.
+
+"Above all be careful in the matter of your affections," Sir Charles went
+on, his voice deepening. "As you value your career, the pride of your
+intellect,--yes--and the pride of your manhood itself, let nothing
+feminine tempt you to be unfaithful to your choice. Tempt you to be of
+two minds, to turn aside, to turn back. For, so surely as you do, you
+will find the hell of disappointment, the hell of failure and regret,
+waiting wide-mouthed to swallow you, and whatever span of life may remain
+to you, bodily up."
+
+He checked himself, breaking off abruptly, the veil lowered again, the
+curtain drawn into place.
+
+"There," he said, "we have talked enough, perhaps more than enough. You
+have a long day before you to-morrow, so my dear boy, go to bed. My
+quarters are down here."
+
+He made a gesture towards the dark corridor opening off the far side
+of the hall.
+
+"You know your way? The room on the right of the landing."
+
+"Yes. I know my way, thanks, sir," Tom answered--
+
+And, thus dismissed, went on upstairs, carrying the silver flat
+candlestick, while his shadow, black on the panelled wall, mounted beside
+him grotesquely prancing step by step.
+
+The furnishing of his room was of a piece with all below, solid yet not
+uncomely. It included a four-post bed of generous proportions, hangings,
+curtains and covers of chintz, over which faded purple and crimson roses
+were flung broadcast on a honey-yellow ground. The colourings were
+discreetly cheerful, the atmosphere not unpleasantly warm, the quiet,
+save for the creaking of a board as he crossed the floor, unbroken.
+Outwardly all invited to peaceful slumber. And Tom felt more than ready
+to profit by that invitation this last night on shore, last night in
+England. His attention had been upon the stretch for a good many hours
+now, since that--after all rather upsetting--good-bye to home and family
+at Canton Magna, following an early and somewhat peripatetic breakfast.
+Notwithstanding his excellent health and youthful energy, mind and body
+alike were somewhat spent. He made short work of preparation, slipped in
+between the fine cool linen sheets, and laid his brown head upon the soft
+billowing pillows, impatient neither to think nor feel any more but
+simply to sleep.
+
+For some two hours or so he did sleep, though not without phantasmagoria
+queerly disturbing. The sweep of his visions was wide, ranging from that
+redoubtable county lady, Harriet Cowden _nee_ Verity--first cousin of his
+father, the Archdeacon, and half-sister to his host--in her violet-ink
+hued gown, to fury of internecine strife amid the mountain fastnesses of
+Afghanistan,--from the austere and wistful beauty of the grey,
+long-backed Norman Abbey rising above the roofs and chimneys of the
+little English market-town, to the fierce hectic splendour of Eastern
+cities blistering in the implacable sun-glare of the Indian plains. Days
+on the Harchester playing fields, days on the river at Oxford, and still
+earlier days in the Rectory nursery at home; bringing with them sense of
+small bitter sorrows, small glorious triumphs, of laughter and uproarious
+fun, of sentimental passages at balls, picnics, garden parties, too, with
+charmingly pretty maidens who, in all probability, he would never clap
+eyes on again--all these, and impressions even more illusive and
+fugitive, playing hide-and-seek among the mazelike convolutions of his
+all too active brain.
+
+Then, on a sudden, he started up in bed, aware of external noise and
+movement which brought him instantly, almost painfully, broad awake.
+
+For a quite appreciable length of time, while he sat upright in the warm
+darkness, Tom failed either to locate the noise which had thus roused
+him, or to interpret its meaning. It appeared to him to start at the
+river foreshore, pass across the garden, into and through the
+ground-floor suite of rooms and corridor which Sir Charles had indicated
+as reserved to his particular use.--What on earth could it be? What did
+it remind him of?--Why, surely--with a start of incredulous
+recognition--the sound of hoofs, though strangely confused and muffled,
+such as a mob of scared, over-driven horses might make, floundering
+fetlock deep in loose sand.
+
+Alive with curiosity he sprang out of bed, groped his way across to the
+window and, putting up the blind, leaned out.
+
+A coppery waning moon hung low in the south-east, and sent a pale rusty
+pathway across the sea to where, behind the sand-bar, rippling waves
+broke in soft flash and sparkle. Its light was not strong enough to
+quench that of the stars crowding the western and the upper sky. Tom
+could distinguish the black mass of the great ilex trees on the right.
+Could see the whole extent of the lawn, the two sentinel cannon and
+pyramid of ammunition set on the terrace along the top of the sea-wall.
+And nothing moved there, nothing whatever. The outstretch of turf was
+vacant, empty; bare--so Tom told himself--as the back of his own hand.
+The sounds seemed to have ceased now that sight denied them visible cause
+of existence; and he began to wonder whether his hearing had not played
+him false, whether the whole thing was not pure fancy, a delusion born of
+agitated dreams.
+
+He pushed the sash up as far as it would go and leaned further out of the
+window. The luscious scent of a late flowering species of lonercera,
+trained against the house wall, saluted his nostrils, along with a
+fetid-sweet reek off the mud-flats of the Haven. Away in the village a
+dog yelped, and out on the salt-marshes water-fowl gave faint whistling
+cries. Then all settled down into stillness, save for the just audible
+chuckle and suck of the river as the stream met the inflowing tide.
+
+The stillness pleased him. For so many nights to come there would be none
+of it; but ceaselessly the drumming of the engines, quiver of the screw,
+and wash of the water against the ship's side.--All the same he did not
+quite like the colour of the moon or that frayed flattened edge of it
+westward. Why is there always something a trifle menacing about a waning
+moon? He did not like the smell of the mud-flats either. It might not be
+actually unhealthy; but it suggested a certain foulness. He yawned, drew
+back into the room, and straightening himself up, stretched his hands
+above his head. He would get into bed again. He was dog-tired--yes, most
+distinctly bed!
+
+Then he stopped short, listening, hastily knelt down by the window and
+again leaned out. For once more he heard horses coming up from the shore,
+across the garden, into and through the house, hustling and trampling one
+another as they shied away from the whip.--There were laggards too--one
+stumbled, rolled over in the sand, got on its feet after a nasty
+struggle, and tottered onward dead lame. Another fell in its tracks and
+lay there foundered, rattling in the throat.
+
+The sounds were so descriptive, so explicit and the impression produced
+on Tom Verity's mind so vivid that, carried away by indignation, he found
+himself saying out loud:
+
+"Curse them, the brutes, the cowardly brutes, mishandling their cattle
+like that! They"--
+
+And he stopped confounded, as it came home to him that throughout the
+course of this cruel drama he had seen nothing, literally nothing, though
+he had heard so convincingly much. A shiver ran down his spine and he
+broke into a sweat, for he knew beyond question or doubt not so much as a
+shadow,--let alone anything material--had breasted the sea-wall, passed
+over the smooth level turf, or entered--how should it?--the house.
+
+The garden lay outspread before him, calm, uninvaded by any alien being,
+man or animal. The great ilex trees were immobile, fixed as the eternal
+stars overhead. And he shrank in swift protest, almost in terror, being
+called on thus to face things apparently super-normal, forces unexplored
+and uncharted, defying reason, giving the lie to ordinary experience and
+ordinary belief. Reality and hallucination, jostled one another in his
+thought, a giant note of interrogation written against each. For which
+was the true and which the false? Of necessity he distrusted the evidence
+of his own senses, finding sight and hearing in direct conflict thus.
+
+The two or three minutes that followed were among the most profoundly
+disagreeable Tom ever had spent. But at last, a door opened below,
+letting forth a shaft of mellow lamp-light. It touched the flower-beds on
+the left edging the lawn, giving the geraniums form and colour, laying
+down a delicate carpet of green, transmuting black into glowing scarlet.
+Tall and spare in his grey and white sleeping-suit, Sir Charles Verity
+sauntered out, and stood, smoking, looking out to sea.
+
+Earlier that night, downstairs in the sitting-room, he seemed a storm
+centre, generating much perplexity and disquiet. But now Tom welcomed his
+advent with a sense of almost absurd satisfaction. To see what was
+solidly, incontrovertibly, human could not but be, in itself, a mighty
+relief.--Things began to swing into their natural relation, man, living
+man, the centre, the dominant factor once more. He, Tom, could now shift
+all responsibility, moreover. If the master of the house was on guard,
+he might wash his hands of these hateful ghostly goings on--if ghostly
+they were--leaving the whole matter to one far stronger and more
+competent than himself.
+
+Whereupon he went back to bed; and slept profoundly, royally, until
+Hordle the man-servant, moving about the bright chintz bedecked room,
+preparing his bath and laying out his clothes, awoke him to the sweetness
+of another summer day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BETWEEN RIVER AND SEA
+
+
+"We had a grand talk last night--Sir Charles was in splendid form. I
+enjoyed it down to the ground."
+
+Tom Verity lay, at full length on the upward sloping, sun-warmed bank of
+sand and shingle. Only to youth is given enjoyment of perfect laziness
+joined with perfect physical vigour. Just because he felt equal to
+vaulting the moon or long-jumping an entire continent, should such
+prodigious feats be required of him, could he lie thus in glorious
+idleness letting the earth cradle and the sun soak into him. Doubts and
+disturbances of last night melted in daylight to an almost ludicrous
+nothingness and self-confidence reigned; so that he declared the world a
+super-excellent place, snapping his fingers at problems and mysteries. A
+spark of curiosity pricked him still, it is true, concerning the origin
+of certain undeniably queer aural phenomena. He meant to satisfy that
+curiosity presently; but the subject must be approached with tact. He
+must wait on opportunity.
+
+A few paces from and above him, Damaris sat on the crown of the ridge,
+where the light southerly wind, coming up now and again off the sea,
+fanned her. A white knitted jersey, pulled on over her linen dress,
+moulded the curve of her back, the round of her breasts and turn of her
+waist, showing each movement of her gracious young body to the hips, as
+she leaned forward, her knees drawn up and her feet planted among the
+red, orange, and cream-grey flints and pebbles.
+
+Looking up at her, Tom saw her face foreshortened in the shade of her
+broad brimmed garden hat, a soft clear flush on it born of health, fresh
+air and sunlight, her eyes shining, the blue of the open sea in their
+luminous depths. He received a new impression of her. She belonged to the
+morning, formed part of the gladness of universal Nature, an unfettered
+nymph-like being. To-day her mood was sprightly, bidding farewell to
+ceremony. Yet, he felt, she remained perplexing, because more detached
+than is the feminine habit, poised and complete in herself.
+
+And this detachment, this suppression of the sentimental or social
+note--he being admittedly a very personable fellow--piqued Tom's male
+vanity, so that he rallied her with:
+
+"But by the way, why did you vanish so early, why didn't you stay with us
+after dinner last night?"
+
+"I did not want to vanish," she answered. "Nothing is more delightful
+than hearing my father talk. But had I stayed Miss Bilson would have
+supposed herself free to stay too, and that would have spoiled the
+evening. My father doesn't choose to talk freely before Miss Bilson,
+because she gets into a foolish excited state and interrupts and asks
+questions. She overflows with admiration and that annoys and bores him."
+
+"'She brought him butter in a lordly dish,'" Tom quoted. "The ill-advised
+Bilson. Can't one just see her!"
+
+"And it is not her place to admire out loud," Damaris continued. "Over
+and over again I have tried to explain that to her. But in some ways, she
+is not at all clever. She can't or won't understand, and only tells Aunt
+Felicia I am wanting in sympathy and that I hurt her feelings. She has
+unreasonably many feelings, I think, and they are so easily hurt. I
+always know when the hurting takes place because she sniffs and then
+plays Mendelssohn's Songs without Words on the schoolroom piano."
+
+Tom chuckled. She had a caustic tongue on occasion, this
+nymph-like creature!
+
+"Alas, poor Bilson!" he said. "For, as Sir Charles walked across the
+garden with us down to the ferry, didn't I hear those same sugary
+melodies tinkling out of some upper open window?"
+
+"I am afraid you did. You see she had made up her mind to come with me."
+
+"And you were forced to intimate you found yourself quite equal to
+conducting the expedition unshepherded?"
+
+"I did not mean to be unkind, but she would have been so dreadfully in
+the way"--
+
+Damaris gathered up a handful of little pebbles, and let them dribble
+down slowly between her outspread fingers while, turning her head, she
+gazed away out to sea.
+
+"This is a day by itself," she said. "It looks like jewels, topazes,
+turquoise, and pearls; and it seems full of things which half tell
+themselves, and then hide from or pass you by.--I wanted to watch it all
+and think; and, she doesn't do it on purpose I know, but somehow Miss
+Bilson always interferes with my thinking."
+
+Both the tone and substance of this discourse proved slightly startling
+to its hearer. They carried the conversation into regions transcendental;
+and to his blissful laziness, the rarefied air of those regions was
+unwelcome. To breathe it demanded exertion. So he said, chaffingly:
+
+"Do I interfere with your thinking? I hope not. But if I offend that way,
+speak but a word and I disappear like a shot."
+
+"Oh! no," she answered. "How could you interfere? You are part of it. You
+started it, you see, because you are going to India."
+
+Whereat, failing to catch the sequence of ideas, male vanity plumed
+itself, tickled to the point of amusement. For was not she a child after
+all, transparently simple and candid, and very much a woman-child at
+that! Tom turning on his side raised himself on one elbow, smiling at her
+with easy good-nature.
+
+"How charming of you to adopt me as a special object of thought, and care
+so much about my going."
+
+But patronage proved short-lived. The girl's colour deepened, but her
+eyes dwelt on him coldly.
+
+"I have only been thinking how fortunate you are, and seeing pictures in
+my mind of what you will see which will be new to you--and--and
+remembering."
+
+"Oh! of course, I am lucky, tremendously lucky," he hastened to declare,
+laughing a little wryly. "Such a journey is a liberal education in
+itself, knocking the insularity out of a man--if he has any receptive
+faculty that is--and ridding him of all manner of stodgy prejudices. I
+don't the least undervalue my good fortune.--But you talk of remembering.
+That's stretching a point surely. You must have been a mere baby, my dear
+Damaris, when you left India."
+
+"No, I was six years old, and I remember quite well. All my caring for
+people, all my thinking, begins there, in the palace of the Sultan-i-bagh
+at Bhutpur and the great compound, when my father was Chief
+Commissioner."
+
+Her snub duly delivered, and she secure it had gone home, Damaris unbent,
+graciously communicative as never before.
+
+"It was all so beautiful and safe there inside the high walls, and yet a
+teeny bit frightening because you knew there were other things--as there
+are to-day--which you felt but couldn't quite see all about you.
+Sometimes they nearly pushed through--I was always expecting and I like
+to expect. It hurt me dreadfully to go away; but I had been very ill.
+They were afraid I should die and so Dr. McCabe--he was here when you
+arrived yesterday--insisted on my being sent to Europe. A lady--Mrs.
+Pereira--and my nurse Sarah Watson took me to Paris, to the convent
+school where I was to be educated. It was all very strange, but the nuns
+were kind. I liked their religion, and I got accustomed to the other
+little girls. I had rooms of my own; and French friends of my father's
+visited me and took me out on half-holidays. And Aunt Felicia came over
+to fetch me for the summer vacations and brought me here"--
+
+Damaris pointed across the tide-way to the river frontage, including with
+one sweeping gesture the whole demesne of The Hard from the deep lane on
+the one hand, opening funnel-like upon the shore, past sea-wall--topped
+at the corner by pink plumed tamarisk, the small twin cannons and pyramid
+of ball--the lawn and irregular white house overlooking it, backed and
+flanked by rich growth of trees, to a strip of sandy warren and pine
+scrub on the other, from out which a line of some half-dozen purple
+stemmed, red branched Scotch firs, along with the grey stone built Inn
+and tarred wooden cottages on the promontory beyond, showed through a
+dancing shimmer of heat haze, against the land-locked, blue and silver
+waters of Marychurch Haven.
+
+"I did not like being here at all at first," she told him. "I thought it
+a mean place only fit for quite poor people to live in. The house seemed
+so pinched and naked without any galleries or verandahs. And I was afraid
+because we had so few servants and neither door-keepers or soldiers. I
+could not believe that in England there is so little need for protection
+against disaffected persons and thieves. The sunshine was pale and thin,
+and the dusk made me sad. At Bhutpur the sun used to drop in flame behind
+the edge of the world and night leap on you. But here the day took so
+long dying. Aunt Felicia used to praise what she called 'the long sweet
+English twilight,' and try to make me stop out in the garden to enjoy it
+with her. But I could not bear it. The colours faded so slowly. It seemed
+like watching some helpless creature bleed to death silently, growing
+greyer minute by minute and feebler. I did not want to watch, but go
+indoors where the lamps were lighted and it was warm and cosy. I used to
+cry dreadfully, when I could get away by myself where Aunt Felicia and
+the maids could not see me, cry for my father--he resigned the
+Commissionership, you know, when I was sent home and took service in
+Afghanistan under the Ameer--and for my darling friend, Mrs. Pereira, and
+for the Sultan-i-bagh, where I knew strangers lived now. For the lotus
+tank and orange grove, and all my little tame animals and my pretty
+play-places I should never, never see any more"--
+
+Overcome by which intimate memories, Damaris' grave voice--which had
+taken on a chanting cadence, at once novel and singularly pleasing to the
+young man's ear--quavered and broke.
+
+"Poor little exiled princess!" he cried, all his facile kindness to the
+fore again. "Yes, it must have been cruelly hard on you. You must have
+suffered. No wonder you cried--cried buckets full."
+
+And drawn by pity for that desolate, tropic-bred little child, Tom got on
+to his feet and crunched up the loose shingle to the crest of the ridge,
+full of a lively desire to pacify and console. But here the soft breeze
+met and caressed him, and the whole plain of the tranquil sea came into
+view--turquoise shot with pearl, as Damaris recently figured it, and
+fringed with topaz where waves, a few inches high and clear as glass,
+broke on the yellow sand at the back of the Bar just below.
+
+"How wonderfully lovely!" he exclaimed, carried out of himself by the
+extreme fairness of the scene. And, his hands in his trouser pockets he
+stood staring, while once again the pull of home, of England, of
+tenderness for all that which he was about to leave, dimmed his eyes and
+raised a lump in his throat.
+
+"Upon my word, you must be difficult to please if this place doesn't
+please you or come up to your requirements, Damaris," he said, presently
+sitting down beside her. "No Arabian Nights palace in Asia, I grant you;
+yet in its own humbler and--dare I say?--less showy, manner not easy to
+beat. Breathe this enchanting air. See the heavenly tints with which our
+good dirty useful old Channel has adorned itself. Can you ask for more,
+you insatiable person, in the way of beauty?"
+
+Then, slightly ashamed of his outburst, Tom practised a delightful smile,
+at once sentimental and flirtatious.
+
+"No, on second thoughts, my dear princess, I keep my commiseration for my
+wretched self--every crumb of it. For I am the lonely exile--that is, I
+am just about to be--not you. Be advised, don't quarrel with the good
+gifts of the gods. Deadham Hard is frankly entrancing. How willingly
+would I put off taking ship for your vaunted India, and spend the
+unending cycles of eternity here--with you, well understood--in this most
+delectable spot instead."
+
+Whereupon Damaris, with mingled gravity and haste, her head bent, so
+that hat-crown and hat-brim were presented to the young man's observation
+rather than her face, proceeded to explain she had spoken not of the
+present but of the past. From the time Sir Charles returned to inhabit
+it, The Hard was transformed; his presence conferring interest and
+dignity upon it, rendering it a not unworthy dwelling-place
+indeed--should any such happen that way--for sages, conquerors, or even
+kings. He cared for the little property, a fact to her all sufficient.
+For him it held the charm of old associations. The pleasantest days of
+his boyhood were spent here with Thomas Clarkson Verity, his great
+uncle--who eventually left him the property--nor had he ever failed later
+to visit it when home on leave. In pious remembrance of that distant era
+and of his entertaining and affectionate, if somewhat eccentric, host and
+friend he forbade any alteration in the house or grounds. It continued
+to-day just as old Mr. Verity left it. There was no break, even in
+details of furnishing or arrangement, with the past. This, to Sir
+Charles, added to the natural restfulness of the place. Now after the
+great achievements and responsibilities of his Eastern career he found
+retirement congenial. The soft equable climate benefited his health.
+Rough shooting and good fishing could be had in plenty--stag-hunting,
+too, in Arnewood Forest, when he inclined to such sport. The Hard was
+sufficiently easy of access from town for friends to come and stay with
+him. Convenient for crossing to the Continent too, when he took his
+yearly cure at Aix or at Vichy, or went south for a couple of months, as
+last winter for instance, to Cette, Montpelier and across, by Pau, to the
+Atlantic seaboard at St. Sebastian, Biarritz, and Bayonne.
+
+"When my father travels I go with him," Damaris said, raising her head
+and looking at the young man with proud, deliberate eyes. "We both
+suffered too much, we must never be separated again. And when we go
+abroad, we go alone. There is no one to give advice or interfere. We take
+Hordle, to pack and look after the baggage. We are always together, and
+I am always happy. I wish we could live like that always, with no settled
+home. But after a while, my father grows tired of hotels. He begins to
+wish for the quiet of The Hard, and all the things he is accustomed to.
+And then, naturally, I begin to wish for it too."
+
+From which statement, made as he judged with intention, Tom apprehended
+an attachment of no common order existing between these two persons,
+father and child. If, as family gossip disapprovingly hinted, the
+affection given appeared to trench on exaggeration, the affection
+returned was of kindred quality, fervid, self-realized, absorbing, and
+absorbed. Comparing it with his own humorously tolerant filial attitude,
+Tom felt at once contrite and injured. The contrast was glaring. But
+then, as he hastened to add--though whether in extenuation of his own, or
+of his father's, shortcomings remained open to question--wasn't the
+contrast between the slightly pompous, slightly bow-windowed, provincial,
+Tory cleric and this spare, inscrutable soldier and ruler, glaring
+likewise? To demand that the one should either experience or inspire the
+same emotions as the other was palpably absurd! Hence (comfortable
+conclusion!) neither he, Tom, nor the Archdeacon was really to
+blame.--Only, as he further argued, once the absurdity of that same
+demand admitted, were you not free to talk of exaggeration, or of the
+"grand manner," as you chose? Were not the terms interchangeable, if you
+kept an open mind? His personal acquaintance with the "grand manner" in
+respect of the affections, with heroical love, amounted, save in
+literature, to practically nothing; yet instinctively he applied those
+high sounding phrases to the attachment existing between Damaris and her
+father. Both as discovery and, in some sort, as challenge to his own
+preconceived ideas and methods this gave him food for serious thought.
+
+He made no attempt at comment or answer; but sat silent beside the girl,
+bare-headed in the soft wind and sunlight, between the flowing river and
+tranquil sea.
+
+The "grand manner"--that was how, naturally, without posing or bombast,
+these two persons envisaged life for good or evil--for this last, too,
+might be possible!--shaped their purposes and conduct. Sir Charles, he
+knew, had played for big stakes. Damaris, he felt intuitively, young
+though she was, played and would play for them likewise. He looked at her
+with awakened speculation, awakened curiosity. What, he wondered, would
+come of it. Did it make her attractive or the reverse? Really he wasn't
+at all sure. Whereat he grew restive, the claims of inherent masculine
+superiority, let alone those of public school, university and an
+honourable profession, asserting themselves. He began to question whether
+this young lady did not take up an undue amount of room, thus cramping
+him and denying his powers of conversation suitable opportunity of
+display. Was not it about time gently to reduce her, relegate her to a
+more modest position? To achieve which laudable result--he acted, of
+course, for her good exclusively--he prepared to broach the subject of
+the unaccountable noises which disturbed his rest last night. He would
+cross-examine her as to their origin, thereby teasing and perhaps even
+discountenancing her somewhat.
+
+But before Tom could put his benevolent scheme into execution, his
+attention was unexpectedly diverted, a quite new element projecting
+itself upon the scene.
+
+For some little while an open boat, a hoary though still seaworthy tub of
+a thing, deep in draught and broad in the beam, loaded up with
+lobster-pots--the skeleton ribs of them black against the surrounding
+expanse of shining turquoise and pearl--had slowly neared the Bar from
+seaward. The bows, in which a small, withered old man bent double over
+the oars, cocked up on end. The stern, where a young man stood erect
+among the lobster-pots, was low in the water. Now, as the nose of the
+boat grounded, the young man clambered along the gunwale, and balancing
+for a minute, tall and straight, on the prow, took a flying leap across
+the wide intervening space of breaking wave and clear water, alighting on
+his feet, upon the firm sand beyond.
+
+"Good for him! Neatly done," Tom Verity murmured, appreciating the grace
+and vigour of the action.
+
+The young man, meanwhile, turning, called to the rower: "Thank you
+heartily for putting me ashore, Daddy Proud. I'll go across home by the
+ferry. But see here, can you manage her by yourself or shall I help shove
+her off for you?"
+
+"Lord love 'ee, I can manage her sure enough," the other called back
+shrilly and a trifle truculently. "I knows 'er ways and she knows her
+master--ought to by now the old strumpet, if years count for
+anythink. So don't 'ee go wetting yer dandy shoes for the likes of
+her and me, Cap'en."
+
+And keckling with thin wheezy laughter he straightened his back, and,
+planting one oar in the sand, set the boat afloat again skilfully.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+IN WHICH THE PAST LAYS AN OMINOUS HAND ON THE PRESENT
+
+
+Down here on the shore, in the serene morning atmosphere, voices carried
+with peculiar distinctness. Every word of the brief colloquy had reached
+Tom Verity; and one word at least possessed an Elizabethan flavour
+forbidden to ears Victorian, feminine and polite. Noting it Tom reddened
+and glanced uneasily at his companion, all inclination to tease giving
+place to a laudable desire to shield her from annoyance. But Damaris,
+judging by her demeanour, was unaware of any cause of offence; whence,
+with relief he concluded that either she had not heard, or that the rank
+expression conveyed nothing intelligible to her mind.
+
+Her open hand pressed down upon the rough surface of the pebbles, she
+leaned a little backward, her lithe body twisted sideways from the waist,
+while she scrutinized the man upon the sands below. And that the latter
+presented a gallant and even distinguished appearance, though arrayed in
+leather-peaked cap, blue serge reefer jacket and trousers which had
+evidently seen service, Tom could not but admit, as he stood just clear
+of the ripples of incoming tide staring idly after the receding boat with
+its cargo of black ribbed skeleton lobster-pots.--A spirited-looking,
+well-made fellow, no doubt; merchant captain or more probably mate--Tom
+took him to be about eight-and-twenty--but in an altogether different
+rank of life to themselves and therefore a quite unsuitable object for
+prolonged and earnest attention. His advent should be treated as an
+accident, not elevated thus to the importance of an event. It was not
+quite good taste on Damaris' part Tom felt; and he made a show of rising,
+saying as he did so, by way of excuse:
+
+"It is wonderfully charming out here. I am loath to break up our little
+_tete-a-tete;_ but time waits for no man, worse luck, and if I am to
+catch my train I must start directly after luncheon. Sir Charles was good
+enough to promise me various letters of introduction to persons in, high
+places. He told me to remind him about them. I don't want to be greedy
+but I should like those letters. Perhaps I ought to be getting back so as
+to see your father about them."
+
+But before Damaris had time to collect her thoughts and reply, the man in
+the peaked cap had further asserted his presence. Either becoming
+conscious of her observation, or caught by something in Tom Verity's
+speech, he wheeled round and looked up at the two in swift, almost
+haughty, enquiry. To Tom he vouchsafed little more than a glance, but
+upon Damaris his eyes fastened. For a good minute he stared at her, as
+though in some sort holding her to ransom. Then with an upward jerk of
+the head and an ejaculation, half smothered oath, half sharp laughter--as
+of one who registers eminently ironic conclusions--he began deliberately
+ascending the slope.
+
+Tom Verity, though possessed of plentiful cheekiness towards the majority
+of his elders and betters, was no fire-eater. He preferred diplomacy to
+war; and would adroitly evade rather than invite anything approaching a
+scene, specially in the presence of a woman. Yet under existing
+circumstances retreat had become, as he perceived, not only undignified
+but useless. So in his best Oxford manner--a manner ornate, at that
+period, and quite crushingly superior--he raised his shoulders, smiled
+faintly, resignedly, and disposed himself in an easier attitude, saying:
+
+"Better wait, perhaps, my dear Damaris. I would sooner risk losing those
+precious letters than acquire a possible escort for you--and for
+myself--down to the river and across the ferry."
+
+And he threw a meaning glance over his shoulder, indicating the
+obtrusive stranger.
+
+So doing he received a disturbing impression. For seen thus, at close
+quarters, not only was the said stranger notably, even astonishingly
+good-looking, but he bore an arresting likeness in build, in carriage, in
+expression to--
+
+Tom paused perplexed, racking his brains.--For who, the deuce, was it?
+Where had he seen, and that as he could have sworn quite recently, this
+same forceful countenance lit by russet-grey eyes at once dauntless and
+sad, deep-set, well apart, the lids of them smooth and delicately
+moulded? The man's skin was tanned, by exposure, to a tint but a few
+shades lighter than that of his gold-brown beard--a beard scrupulously
+groomed, trimmed to a nicety and by no means deforming the lower part of
+the face since the line of jaw and chin remained clearly discernible.
+
+Tom turned away and looked absently at The Hard in its broad reposeful
+frame of lawn and trees. The cool green foliage of a bank of
+hydrangeas--running from the great ilexes to the corner of the
+house--thick-set with discs of misty pink and blue blossom took his
+fancy, as contrast to the beds of scarlet and crimson geranium naming in
+the sun. But below any superficial sense of pleasure in outward things,
+thought of that likeness--and likeness, dash it all, to whom?--still
+vexed him as a riddle he failed to guess. Obligation to guess it, to find
+the right answer, obsessed him as of vital interest and importance,
+though, for the life of him, he could not tell why. His sense of
+proportion, his social sense, his self-complacency, grew restive under
+the pressure of it. He told himself it wasn't of the smallest
+consequence, didn't matter a fig, yet continued to cudgel his memory.
+And, all the while, the sound of deliberate footsteps crunching over the
+dry rattling shingle, nearer and nearer, contributed to increase his
+inward perturbation.
+
+The footsteps halted close behind him--while for a sensible length of
+time a shadow lay across him shutting off the genial warmth--and started
+again, passing to the left, as the intruder traversed the crown of the
+ridge a few paces from where Damaris was seated, and pursued his way down
+to the river-shore on the other side.
+
+"At last--I thank you!" Tom broke out impatiently.
+
+He felt incomprehensibly nervous; and angry with himself for so feeling.
+
+"Commend me to our friend for taking his time about things, and
+incidentally wasting ours--yours and mine, I mean! What on earth did he
+want? He certainly treated us to a sufficiently comprehensive inspection.
+Well, I hope he was satisfied. By the same token, have you any conception
+who the fellow is?"
+
+Damaris shook her head. She, too, appeared perturbed. Her eyebrows were
+drawn into a little frown and her expression was perplexed to the point
+of child-like distress.
+
+"Not any," she answered simply. "Some one staying at Faircloth's Inn
+possibly. People come there from Marychurch to spend the day during the
+summer. Old Timothy Proud, the lobster-catcher, who brought him round in
+his boat, lives at one of the cottages close to the Inn. No," she
+repeated, "I have no conception who he is, and yet his face seemed
+familiar. I had a feeling that I knew him quite well--had seen him often,
+oh! very often before."
+
+"Ah! then you were puzzled by some mysterious likeness,"--Tom began
+eagerly, smiling at her. And stopped short, open-mouthed, assailed by so
+apparently preposterous a recognition that for the minute it left him
+fairly speechless.
+
+But Damaris, busy with her own sensations, her glance still following the
+blue-clad figure along the shore and out on to the tumble-down wooden
+jetty, failed to remark his embarrassment and thus gave him time to
+recover his scattered wits.
+
+"Jennifer is bringing the ferry-boat across," she said presently, "so you
+won't have to wait much longer. Not that you need be at all anxious about
+those letters. It is not my father's habit to forget a promise. Most
+likely they were written last night before he went to bed. He sleeps
+badly, I am sorry to say, and is glad to cheat the wakeful hours by
+reading and doing his correspondence until late."
+
+As she spoke the young girl rose to her feet, pulling the close-fitting
+jersey down over her hips and, stooping, dusted particles of sand off the
+hem of her dress.
+
+"There--that's better. Now I am tidy. Shall we go home, cousin Tom?"
+she asked.
+
+Her eyes shone with inward excitement and she carried her head proudly,
+but her face was white. And he, sensible that she had suddenly hardened
+towards him and strove, he could not divine why, to keep him at arm's
+length, turned perversely teasing again. He would not await a more
+convenient season. Here and now he would satisfy his curiosity--and at
+her expense--regarding one at least of the queer riddles Deadham Hard had
+sprung on him.
+
+"I did not know your father suffered from sleeplessness," he said. "It
+must be horribly trying and depressing. I am glad, in a way, you have
+told me, because it may account for my seeing him go out into the garden
+from the study last night, or rather very early this morning. It would be
+about two o'clock. I put down his appearance to another cause, and"--
+
+He smiled at her, delightfully ingratiating, assaugingly apologetic.
+
+"Shall I own it?--one which, frankly, struck me as a little upsetting and
+the reverse of pleasant."
+
+"Weren't you comfortable? I am so sorry," Damaris exclaimed, instincts of
+hospitality instantly militant. "What was wrong? You should have called
+someone--rung for Hordle. What was it?"
+
+"No--no--my dear Damaris, don't vex yourself I entreat you. I was in
+clover, luxuriously comfortable. You've allotted me a fascinating room
+and perfect dream of a bed. I feel an ungrateful wretch for so much as
+mentioning this matter to you after the way in which you have indulged
+me. Only something rather extraordinary really did happen, of which I
+honestly confess I am still expiring to find a reasonable and not too
+humiliating explanation. For, though I blush to own it"--
+
+He laughed softly, humping up his shoulders after the manner of a naughty
+small boy dodging a well-merited box on the ear.--
+
+"Yes, I blush to own it, but I was frightened, downright frightened. I
+quailed and I quaked. The sight of Sir Charles stepping out of the study
+window filled me with abject rapture. Metaphorically speaking, my craven
+soul squirmed at his heels. He was to me as a strong tower and house of
+defence.--But look here, Damaris, joking apart, tell me weren't you
+disturbed, didn't you hear any strange noises last night?"
+
+"No, none." She hesitated, then with evident reluctance--"I sleep in the
+new wing of the house."
+
+"Which you imply, might make a difference?" Tom asked.
+
+"The older servants would tell you that it does."
+
+"And you agree with them?"
+
+Damaris had a moment of defective courage.
+
+"I would rather not discuss the subject, cousin Tom," she said and moved
+away down over the shifting shingle.
+
+At first her progress was sober, even stately. But soon, either from the
+steep, insecure nature of the ground or from less obvious and material
+cause, her pace quickened until it became a run. She ran neatly, deftly,
+all of a piece as a boy runs, no trace of disarray or feminine
+floundering in her action. More than ever, indeed, did she appear a fine
+nymph-like creature; so that, watching her flight Tom Verity was touched
+alike with self-reproach and admiration. For he had succeeded in
+asserting himself beyond his intention. Had overcome, had worsted her;
+yet, as it occurred to him, won a but barren victory. That she was
+alienated and resentful he could hardly doubt, while the riddle he had
+rather meanly used to procure her discomfiture remained unanswered as
+ever, dipped indeed only deeper in mystery. He was hoist with his own
+petard, in short; and stood there nonplussed, vexed alike at himself and
+at circumstance.
+
+A soft wind, meanwhile, caressed him, as hesitating, uncertain what to do
+next, he glanced out over the smiling sea and then back at the delicate
+shore line, the white house, the huge evergreen trees and brilliant
+flower garden. A glamour covered the scene. It was lovely, intimately,
+radiantly lovely as he had lately declared it. Yet just now he grew
+distrustful, as though its fair seeming cloaked some subtle trickery and
+deceit. He began to wish he had not undertaken this expedition to
+Deadham; but gone straight from the normal, solidly engrained
+philistinism of dear old Canton Magna to join his ship. In coming here he
+had, to put it vulgarly, bitten off more than he could chew. For the
+place and its inhabitants seemed to have a disintegrating effect on him.
+Never in all his life had he been such a prey to exterior influences,
+been twisted and turned to and fro, weather-cock fashion, thus. It was
+absurd, of course, to take things too seriously, yet he could not but
+fear the Archdeacon's well-intentioned bit of worldliness and his own
+disposition to court whatever family prejudice pronounced taboo, were in
+process of leading him a very questionable little dance.
+
+Reaction, however, set in before long, as with so lively, light-hearted a
+temperament, it was bound to do, the healthy scepticism, healthy optimism
+of untried three-and-twenty rising to the surface buoyant as a cork.
+
+Tom Verity shook himself, took off his hat, smoothed his hair, settled
+his tie, hitched up the waist of his trousers, stamping to get them into
+place, laughed a little, calling himself every sort of silly ass, and
+then swung away down the side of the long ridge in pursuit of Damaris.
+He acknowledged his treatment of her had been lacking in chivalry. He
+hadn't shown himself altogether considerate or even kind. But she
+challenged him--perhaps unconsciously--and once or twice had come near
+making him feel small.--Oh! there were excuses for his behaviour! Now
+however he would sail on another tack. Would placate, discreetly cherish
+her until she couldn't but be softened and consent to make it up. After
+all maidens of her still tender age are not precisely adamant--such at
+least was his experience--where a personable youth is concerned. It only
+needed a trifle of refined cajolery to make everything smooth and to
+bring her round.
+
+He overtook the fugitive as she reached the low wooden jetty crawling,
+like some giant but rather dilapidated black many-legged insect, out over
+the stream. Its rows of solidly driven piles were intact, but the staging
+they supported had suffered damage from the rush of river floods, let
+alone from neglect and age. Handrails were broken down, planks rotted and
+wrenched away leaving gaps through which the cloudy greenish blue water
+could be seen as it purred and chuckled beneath. Here, at the river
+level, it was hot to the point of sultriness, the air heavy, even
+stagnant, since the Bar shut off the southerly breeze.
+
+"Upon my word one requires to be in training to race you, my dear
+Damaris," the young man said gaily, ostentatiously mopping his forehead.
+"And I'm disgracefully soft just now, I know. You beat me utterly and
+ignominiously; but then you did have a good three minutes' start. In
+common honesty you can't deny that"--
+
+The girl made no response, but began mounting the few sand-strewn steps
+on to the jetty. He saw her face in profile, the delicate upward curve of
+her long dark eyelashes in the shade of her hat. Saw, too, that her soft
+lips quivered as with the effort to repress an outburst of tears. And
+this affected him as the wounding of some strong free creature might,
+stirring his blood in a fashion new to him and strange. For not only did
+he find it piteous; but unseemly, unpermissible somehow, yet marvellously
+sweet, startling him out of all preconceived light diplomatic plans,
+plucking shrewdly at his complacently unawakened heart.
+
+He came close to her, and putting his hand under her elbow gently held
+it.
+
+"Pray, pray be careful," he said. "I don't trust this crazy little pier
+of yours one atom. Any one of these boards looks capable of crumbling and
+letting one through.--And, Damaris, please don't be cross with me or I
+shall be quite miserable. Forgive my having asked you stupid questions. I
+was a blundering idiot. Of course, what I heard last night was just some
+echo, some trick of wind or of the river and tide. I was half asleep and
+imagined the whole thing most likely, magnified sounds as one does,
+don't you know, sometimes at night. Your father talked wonderfully, and I
+went to bed dazzled, such imagination as I possess all aflame"--
+
+But Damaris shook her head, while her elbow rested rigid upon the palm
+of his hand.
+
+"No--what you heard was real," she answered. "I heard once myself--and
+the people here know about it. They say the dead smugglers still drive
+their ponies up from the beach, across the lawn where the old road was,
+and, as it sounds, through the round rooms downstairs, in which my father
+lives, on their way up into the forest.--You cannot help seeing--although
+you see nothing--how the ponies are ill-used, hounded and flogged. The
+last of the drove are lame and utterly worn out. They stumble along
+anyhow and one falls. Oh! it is cruel, wicked. And it is--was, really
+true, cousin Tom. It must have happened scores of times before old Mr.
+Verity, your namesake, put a stop to the iniquity by buying The Hard--I
+have only heard the ponies driven once, about this time in September last
+year--just before something very sad, quite of my own, happened"--
+
+Damaris stopped, her lips quivering again and too much for speech.
+
+"Don't tell me any more. I can't bear you to be distressed. Pray, pray
+don't"--the young man urged incoherently while his grasp on her elbow
+tightened somewhat.
+
+For he felt curiously flurried and put about; near cursing himself
+moreover for having helped to break up her high serenity thus. The whole
+thing was manifestly impossible as he told himself, outside every
+recognized law of Nature and sound science. Even during the mistrustful
+phantasy-breeding watches of the night, when reason inclines to drag
+anchor setting mind and soul rather wildly adrift, he had refused
+credence to the apparent evidence of his own senses. Now in broad
+daylight, the generous sunshine flooding him, the smooth river purring
+and glittering at his feet, belief in grim and ghostly happenings became
+more than ever inadmissible, not to say quite arrantly grotesque. Yet
+Damaris' version of those same happenings tallied with his own in every
+point. And that her conviction of their reality was genuine, profound
+indeed to the point of pain, admitted neither of question nor of doubt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A CRITIC IN CORDUROY
+
+
+William Jennifer, who successfully combined in his single person the
+varied offices of ferryman, rat-catcher, jobbing gardener, amateur
+barber, mender of sails and of nets, brought the heavy, flat-bottomed
+boat alongside the jetty. Shipping the long sweeps, he coughed behind his
+hand with somewhat sepulchral politeness to give warning of his presence.
+
+"Sweethearting--lost to sight and hearing, espoused to forgetfulness," he
+murmured, peering up at the two cousins standing in such close proximity
+to one another upon the black staging above.
+
+For William Jennifer was a born lover of words and maker of phrases,
+addicted to the bandying of pleasantries, nicely seasoned to their
+respective age, sex and rank, with all he met; and, when denied an
+audience, rather than keep silence holding conversation with himself.
+
+The hot morning induced thirst, which, being allayed by a couple of pints
+at Faircloth's Inn, induced desire for a certain easiness of costume. His
+waistcoat hung open--he had laid aside his coat--displaying a broad
+stitched leather belt that covered the junction between buff corduroy
+trousers and blue-checked cotton shirt. On his head, a high
+thimble-crowned straw hat, the frayed brim of it pulled out into a poke
+in front for the better shelter of small, pale twinkling eyes set in a
+foxy face.
+
+The said face, however--for all its sharp-pointed nose, long upper lip,
+thin gossipy mouth, tucked in at the corners and opening, redly
+cavernous, without any showing of teeth, a stiff sandy fringe edging
+cheeks and chin from ear to ear--could on occasion become utterly blank
+of expression. It became so now, as Tom Verity, realizing the fact of its
+owner's neighbourhood, moved a step or two away from Damaris and,
+jumping on board himself, proceeded with rather studied courtesy to hand
+her down into the boat.
+
+"Looks as there might have been a bit of a tiff betwixt 'em"--Thus
+Jennifer inwardly. Then aloud--"Put you straight across the ferry, sir,
+or take you to the breakwater at The Hard? The tide's on the turn, so
+we'd slip down along easy and I'm thinking that 'ud spare Miss Verity the
+traipse over the shore path. Wonnerful parching in the sun it is for the
+latter end of September."
+
+"Oh! to the breakwater by all means," Tom answered with alacrity.
+
+For reaction had set in. Not only was the young man still slightly
+flustered, but vexed by the liveliness of his own emotions. Everything
+to-day savoured of exaggeration. The most ordinary incidents distended,
+inflated themselves in a really unaccountable manner. So that, frankly,
+he fought shy of finding himself alone with Damaris again. She seemed so
+constantly to betray him into ill-regulated feeling, ill-considered
+speech and action, which tended to endanger the completeness of his
+self-esteem. Therefore, although admitting his attitude to be scantily
+heroic, he welcomed the prospect of the ferryman's chaperonage until such
+time as her father or her discarded lady-in-waiting, the innocent and
+pink-nosed Bilson, should effect his final deliverance.
+
+"Yes, it is uncommonly hot," he repeated, while, with both arms extended,
+he worked to keep the side of the boat from bumping against the range of
+piles, backing it clear of the jetty into the fairway of the river. He
+found exertion pleasant, steadying.
+
+"Neither Miss Verity nor I shall be sorry to be saved the walk along
+that basting path. That is," he added, smiling with disarming
+good-temper, "if we're not blocking business and keeping you too long
+away from the ferry."
+
+But Jennifer, mightily pleased at his company and having, moreover,
+certain scandalous little fishes of his own to fry--or attempt to
+fry--waved the objection aside.
+
+The ferry could very well mind itself for a while, he said; and if
+anyone should come along they must just hold hands with patience till he
+got back, that was all. But passengers were few and far between this time
+of year and of day. The "season"--as was the new-fangled fashion to call
+it--being now over; trippers tripped home again to wheresoever their
+natural habitat might be. The activities of boys' schools, picnic
+parties, ambulant scientific societies and field-clubs--out in pursuit of
+weeds, of stone-cracking, and the desecration of those old heathen
+burying barrows on Stone Horse Head quieted off for the time being.
+Deadham, meanwhile, in act of repossessing its soul in peace and
+hibernating according to time-honoured habit until the vernal equinox.
+
+Not that he, Jennifer, as he explained, owned to any quarrel with the
+alien invasion. Good for trade they were, that tripper lot, though
+wonnerful simple, he must say, when they came to talk, blessed with an
+almighty wide swallow for any long-eared fairy tale you liked to put on
+them. Mortal full of senseless questions, too, fit to make anybody
+laugh!--Whereat overcome by joyous memories of human folly, he opened the
+red cavern of his apparently toothless mouth, barking up audible mirth,
+brief and husky, from the depth of a beer-slaked throat.
+
+He leaned forward while speaking, resting chest and elbows on the
+oars--only now and again dipping the blades in the water to steady the
+boat in its course as it moved smoothly onward borne by brimming stream
+and tide. From out the shadow of his thimble-crowned hat he looked up
+knowingly, with the freemasonry of assured good-temper at Tom, who stood
+before him hands in pockets, friendly and debonair, class distinctions
+for the moment quite forgot. For, let alone immediate convenience of
+chaperonage, the young man found unexpected entertainment in this typical
+South Saxon, relic, as it struck him, of a bygone age and social order.
+Might not that tough and somewhat clumsy body, that crafty, jovial, yet
+non-committal countenance, have transferred themselves straight from the
+pages of Geoffrey Chaucer into nineteenth-century life? Here, was a
+master of primitive knowledge and of arts not taught in modern Board (or
+any other) Schools; a merry fellow too, who could, as Tom divined, when
+company and circumstances allowed, be broadly, unprintably humorous.
+
+So, in this last connection perhaps, it was just as well that Damaris
+still appeared somewhat implacable. Coming on board she had passed
+Jennifer--who rowed amidships--and gone right forward, putting as wide a
+distance as conditions permitted between her cousin and herself. Now, as
+she sat on a pile of red-brown seine nets in the bow of the boat, she
+kept her face averted, looking away down the cool liquid highway, and
+presenting to his observation a graceful, white-clad but eminently
+discouraging back. Her attitude repelled rather than invited advances, so
+at least Tom, watching her, certainly thought. This justified his not
+following her but staying where he was, and leaving her to herself.
+Whereupon annoyance again beset him; for it was very little to his credit
+to have mismanaged his dealings with her and alienated her sympathies
+thus. With her, it was very evident, he had not been at all a success.
+And it pricked his young vanity very shrewdly not to be a success.
+
+From these unsatisfactory reflections William Jennifer's voice, prefaced
+by a warning cough, recalled him.
+
+"Making any long stay in these parts, sir?" he enquired.
+
+And when Tom explained that a few hours from now would witness the
+termination of his visit, and that, in all probability, many years of
+absence from England lay ahead--
+
+"Indeed, indeed, to be sure. Who'd have thought it for a young gentleman
+of the quality-like yourself! But, there, some are born under the
+traveller's star, sir--created with a roving spirit. And the Lord help
+'em, I say, for they're so made as to be powerless to help themselves
+seemingly. Rove they must and will, if they are to taste any
+contentment--an itch in their feet from the cradle nought but foreign
+lands'll serve to pacify. The sight of the ocean now, seems fairly
+tormenting to 'em till they can satisfy themselves of what's on the far
+side of it."
+
+But, here, the boat being unduly drawn aside by the suck of some local
+current, Jennifer was constrained to apply his mind to navigation. He
+dipped the long sweeps, and with a steady powerful pull straightened the
+course to midstream. Then raising the glistening blades, off which the
+water dripped white and pattering, he leaned forward again, resting
+elbows and chest on the butt-end of the oars, and once more addressed
+himself to polite conversation.
+
+"Not as I've been greatly troubled that way myself. Had my chance of
+going to sea and welcome many's the time when I was a youngster. But
+always a one for the land, I was. Never had any special fancy for salt
+water, though I do make my living of it now, as you may say, in a sense."
+
+During this biographical excursion Tom Verity's attention wandered. His
+eyes dwelt on Damaris. She had altered her position turning half round as
+she scanned the strip of sandy warren with its row of sentinel Scotch
+firs bordering the river. Seen thus, three-quarter face, Tom realized
+suddenly not only how really beautiful she was--or rather could at
+moments be--but how strangely she resembled Sir Charles her father. There
+was likeness not of features alone; but, for all her youthful freshness,
+a reflection of his strength, his inscrutability. Whereupon rather
+unworthy curiosity reawoke in Tom Verity, to satisfy which he was tempted
+to descend to methods not entirely loyal.
+
+Damaris, sitting to windward, must be out of earshot assuredly, yet he
+lowered his voice as he said:
+
+"By the way, talking of going to sea, can you tell me anything about the
+young sailor whom you took across the ferry just before fetching Miss
+Verity and me? I am pretty sure I have met him before and yet I can't
+place him somehow."
+
+Jennifer shot a sharply enquiring glance at the speaker; for here, at
+first sight, appeared rare opportunity of that same coveted and
+scandalous fish-frying! Yet he debated the wisdom of immediate indulgence
+in that merry pastime, inherent suspicion of class for class, suspicion
+too, of this young gentleman's conspicuously easy, good-natured manner,
+preaching caution. A show of friendliness supplies fine cover for the
+gaining of one's own ends.--Hadn't he, Jennifer, practised the friendly
+manoeuvre freely enough himself on occasion? And he did not in the least
+relish the chance of walking into a trap, instead of jovially baiting
+one. So he dipped the oars again, and answered slowly as though the
+question taxed his memory sorely, his face vacant of expression as an
+empty plate.
+
+"Brought him across before I started to fetch you and the young lady,
+sir, did I? To be sure, there, let me see. I've had several sea-going
+chaps of sorts back and forth this morning. Come and go most days, they
+do, come and go without my taking any particular account--the Lord
+forgive me, for it ain't over civil--unless strangers should hail me, or
+someone out of the common such as Miss Verity and yourself. A passing
+show, sir, half the time those I carry; no more to me, bless you, than so
+many sand-fleas a-hopping on the beach.--Mr. Blackmore--coast-guard
+officer he is--I fetched him across early, with one of his men coming
+round from the Head. And that poor lippity-lop, Abram Sclanders'
+eldest.--Pity he wasn't put away quiet-like at birth!--Terrible drag he
+is on Abram and always will be. Anybody with an ounce of gumption might
+have seen he'd be a short-wit from the first.--I took him over; but that
+'ud the opposite way about, as he wanted to go shrimping back of the Bar
+so he said."
+
+Jennifer paused as in earnest thought.
+
+"No, not a soul to merit your attention, to-day, sir, that I can call to
+mind. Unless"--with an upward look of returning intelligence--"but that
+ain't very likely either--unless it should be Darcy Faircloth. I'd clean
+forgot him, so I had. Cap'en Faircloth, as some is so busy calling 'im,
+now, in season and out of season till it's fairly fit to make you
+laugh.--Remarkable tall, Johnny-head-in-air young feller with a curly
+yaller beard to him."
+
+"That's the man!" Tom exclaimed.
+
+He had distrusted Jennifer's show of ignorance, believing he was being
+fenced with, played with, even royally lied to; but this merely served to
+heighten his curiosity and amusement. Something of moment must lie, he
+felt, behind so much wandering talk, something of value, purposely and
+cunningly withheld until time was ripe for telling disclosure.
+
+"Darcy Faircloth--Captain Faircloth?" he could not but repeat, and with
+such honest puzzlement and evident desire for further enlightening as to
+overcome his hearer's hesitation.
+
+"No--not a likely person for you to be in any wise acquainted with, sir,"
+Jennifer returned, wary still, though yielding--"even if you didn't
+happen to be a bit new to Deadham yourself, as I may put it. For been
+away mostly from his natural home here, young Faircloth has, ever since
+he was a little shaver. Mrs. Faircloth--owns the Inn there and all the
+appurtenances thereof, sheds, cottages, boats, and suchlike, she
+does--always had wonnerful high views for him. Quite the gentleman Darcy
+must be, with a boarding school into Southampton and then the best of the
+Merchant Service--no before the mast for him, bless you. There was a snug
+little business to count on, regular takings in the public, week in and
+week out--more particularly of late years in the summer--let alone the
+rest of the property--he being the only son of his mother, too, and she a
+widow woman free to follow any whimsies as took her about the lad."
+
+Jennifer gave some slow, strong strokes, driving the lumbering boat
+forward till the water fairly hissed against its sides. And Tom Verity
+still listened, strangely, alertly interested, convinced there was more,
+well worth hearing, to follow.
+
+"Oh! there's always bin a tidy lot of money behind young Darcy, and is
+yet I reckon, Mrs. Faircloth being the first-class business woman she is.
+Spend she may with one hand, but save, and make, she does and no mistake,
+Lord love you, with the other. Singular thing though," he added
+meditatively, his face growing wholly expressionless, "how little Darcy,
+now he's growed up, features old Lemuel his father. Squinny, red-cheeked
+little old party, he was; thin as a herring, and chilly, always chilly,
+sitting over the fire in the bar-parlour winter and summer too--small
+squeaky voice he had minding any one of a penny whistle. But a warm man
+and a close one--oh! very secret. Anybody must breakfast overnight and
+hurry at that--eat with their loins girded, as you may say, to get
+upsides with old Lemuel."
+
+He ceased speaking, and glanced round over his shoulder calculating
+the distance to the breakwater, for the boat drew level with the
+sea-wall of rough-hewn pinkish-grey granite along the river frontage
+of The Hard gardens.
+
+"There's some as 'ud tell you it was the surprise of old Lemuel's life to
+find himself a parent," he added, eyeing Tom slyly as he spoke, his mouth
+remaining open as in preparation for coming laughter.
+
+For those same scandalous little fishes were well into the frying-pan,
+now--sizzling, frizzling. And this was a vastly agreeable moment to
+William Jennifer, worth waiting for, worth scheming for. Unprintable
+humour looked out of his twinkling eyes while he watched to see how far
+Tom Verity caught his meaning. Then as the young man flushed, sudden
+distaste, even a measure of shame invading him, Jennifer, true artist in
+scandal, turned the conversation aside with an air of indulgent apology.
+
+"But, lor, there, you know how people'll talk in a little country place
+where there ain't much doing!--And it ain't for me to speak of what
+happened back in those times, being barely out of my teens then and away
+cow-keeping over Alton way for Farmer Whimsett. Regular chip of the old
+block, he was. Don't breed that sort nowadays. As hearty as you like, and
+swallered his three pints of home-brewed every morning with his breakfast
+he did, till he was took off quite sudden in his four-score-and-ten
+twelve months ago come Michaelmas."
+
+Upon the terrace, by the pyramid of ball and the two little cannons, Sir
+Charles Verity stood, holding a packet of newly written letters in his
+hand and smoking, while he watched the approaching boat. Damaris rose
+from the pile of red-brown fishing-nets and waved to him. Jennifer, too,
+glanced up, steadying both oars with one hand while he raised the other
+to the brim of his thimble-crowned hat. A couple of minutes more and he
+would part company with his passenger, and so judged it safe to indulge
+himself with a final fish-frying.
+
+"Mortal fine figure of a man, Sir Charles even yet," he said to Tom
+admiringly. "But anybody should have seen him as a young gentleman. When
+he used to visit here in old Mr. Verity's time, none in the country-side
+could hold a candle to him for looks, as you may say. Turned the females'
+heads he did. Might have had his pick of the lot, maids and wives alike
+for 'arf a word. Well, good-bye to you, sir"--and, as certain coin
+changed hands--"thank ye, sir, kindly. Wish you a pleasant voyage and a
+rare good picking up of honours and glories, and gold and silver
+likewise, there across the seas and oceans where you're a-going to."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+THE HARD SCHOOL OF THINGS AS THEY ARE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+IN MAIDEN MEDITATION
+
+
+It was afternoon, about five o'clock. The fine September weather, hot and
+cloudless, lasted still. The air was heavy with garden scents, the
+aromatic sweetness of sun-baked gorse and pine-scrub on the warren, and
+with the reek off the mud-flats of the Haven, the tide being low. Upon
+the sandy skirts of the Bar, across the river just opposite, three
+cormorants--glossy black against the yellow--postured in extravagant
+angular attitudes drying their wings. Above the rim of the silver-blue
+sea--patched with purple stains in the middle distance--webs of steamer
+smoke lay along the southern sky. Occasionally a sound of voices, the
+creak of a wooden windlass and grind of a boat's keel upon the pebbles as
+it was wound slowly up the foreshore, came from the direction of the
+ferry and of Faircloth's Inn. The effect was languorous, would have been
+enervating to the point of mental, as well as physical, inertia had not
+the posturing cormorants introduced a note of absurdity and the tainted
+breath of the mud-flats a wholesome reminder of original sin.
+
+Under these conditions, at once charming and insidious, Damaris Verity,
+resting in a wicker deck-chair in the shade of the great ilex trees,
+found herself alone, free to follow her own vagrant thoughts,
+perceptions, imaginations without human let or hindrance. Free to dream
+undisturbed and interrogate both Nature and her own much wondering soul.
+
+For Sir Charles was away, staying with an old friend and former
+brother-in-arms, Colonel Carteret, for a week's partridge shooting over
+the Norfolk stubble-fields. Sport promised to be good, and Damaris had
+great faith in Colonel Carteret. With him her father was always amused,
+contented, safe. Hordle was in attendance, too, so she knew his comfort
+in small material matters to be secure. She could think of him without
+any shadow of anxiety, her mind for once at rest. And this she enjoyed.
+For it is possible to miss a person badly, long for their return
+ardently, yet feel by no means averse to a holiday from more active
+expenditure of love on their account.
+
+And Theresa Bilson--pleasing thought!--was, for the moment, absent also,
+having gone to tea with the Miss Minetts. Two maiden ladies, these, of
+uncertain age, modest fortune and unimpeachable refinement, once like
+Theresa herself, members of the scholastic profession; but now, thanks to
+the timely death of a relative--with consequent annuities and life
+interest in a ten-roomed, stone-built house of rather mournful aspect in
+Deadham village--able to rest from their ineffectual labours, support the
+Church, patronize their poorer and adulate their richer neighbours to
+their guileless hearts' content.
+
+Gentility exuded from the Miss Minetts, and--if it is permissible
+slightly to labour the simile--their pores were permanently open. Owing
+both to her antecedent and existing situation, it may be added, Theresa
+Bilson was precious in their sight. For had she not in the past, like
+themselves, sounded the many mortifications of a governess' lot; and was
+she not now called up higher, promoted indeed to familiar, almost hourly,
+intercourse with the great? Miss Felicia Verity was known to treat her
+with affection. Mrs. Augustus Cowden, that true blue of county dames and
+local aristocrats, openly approved her. She sat daily at Sir Charles
+Verity's table and helped to order his household. What more genuine
+patents of gentility could be asked? So they listened with a pleasure,
+deep almost to agitation, to her performances upon the piano, her
+reminiscences of Bonn and the Rhine Provinces, and, above all, to her
+anecdotes of life at The Hard and of its distinguished owner's habits and
+speech. Thus, by operation of the fundamental irony resident in things,
+did Theresa Bilson, of all improbable and inadequate little people,
+become to the Miss Minetts as a messenger of the gods; exciting in them
+not only dim fluttering apprehensions of the glories of art and delights
+of foreign travel, but--though in their determined gentility they knew it
+not--of the primitive allurements and mysteries of sex.
+
+The moral effect of this friendship upon Theresa herself was not,
+however, of the happiest. Fired by their interest in her recitals she was
+tempted to spread herself. At first almost unconsciously, for by instinct
+she was truthful, she embroidered fact, magnifying her office not only in
+respect of her ex-pupil Damaris but of Damaris' father also. She
+represented herself as indispensable to both parent and child, until she
+more than half believed that flattering fiction. She began to reckon
+herself an essential element in the establishment at The Hard, the pivot
+indeed upon which it turned. Whereupon a rather morbid craving for the
+Miss Minetts' society developed in her. For, with those two credulous
+ladies as audience, she could fortify herself in delusion by recounting
+all manner of episodes and incidents not as they actually had, but as she
+so ardently desired they might have, taken place.--A pathetic form of
+lying this, though far from uncommon to feminine and--more
+especially--spinster practice and habit!
+
+Still Theresa was not so besotted but that lucid intervals now and again
+afflicted her. One seized her this afternoon, as she prepared to bid
+Damaris good-bye. Either conscience pricked with unusual sharpness, or
+the young girl's smiling and unruffled acquiescence in her departure
+aroused latent alarms. She began to excuse her action in leaving her
+charge thus solitary, to protest her devotion; becoming, it may be added,
+red and agitated in the process. Her thick, short little fingers worked
+nervously on the crook handle of her white cotton umbrella. Her round
+light-coloured eyes grew humid to the point of fogging the lenses of her
+gold-rimmed glasses.
+
+"But why should you worry so now, just as you are starting, Billy?"
+Damaris reasoned, with the rather cruel logic of cool eighteen in face of
+hot and flustered nine-and-thirty. "Only at luncheon you were telling me
+how much you always enjoy spending an afternoon at the Grey House. I
+thought you looked forward so much to going. What has happened to turn
+you all different, like this, at the last minute?"
+
+"Nothing has happened exactly; but I have scruples about visiting my
+own friends and letting you remain alone when Sir Charles is from home.
+It might appear a dereliction of duty--as though I took advantage of
+his absence."
+
+"Nobody would think anything so foolish," Damaris declared. "And then you
+knew he would be away this week when you made the engagement."
+
+Theresa gulped and prevaricated.
+
+"No, surely not--I must have mistaken the date."
+
+"But you were quite happy at luncheon, and you couldn't have mistaken the
+date then," Damaris persisted.
+
+Whereupon poor Theresa lost herself, the worthy and unworthy elements in
+her nature alike conspiring to her undoing. In her distraction she
+sniffed audibly. A tear ran down either side of her pink shiny nose and
+dropped on the folds of shepherd's-plaid silk veiling her plump bosom.
+For, with some obscure purpose of living up to her self-imposed
+indispensability, Miss Bilson was distinctly dressy at this period,
+wearing her best summer gown on every possible occasion and tucking a
+bunch of roses or carnations archly in her waist-belt.
+
+"Do you think it kind to insist so much on my passing forgetfulness?" she
+quavered. "The habit of criticizing and cavilling at whatever I say grows
+on you, Damaris, and it so increases the difficulties of my position. I
+know I am sensitive, but that is the result of my affection for you. I
+care so deeply, and you are not responsive. You chill me. As I have told
+dear Miss Felicia--for I must sometimes unburden myself"--
+
+This hastily, as Damaris' eyes darkened with displeasure.
+
+--"For the last year, ever since you have nominally been out of the
+schoolroom, I have seen my influence over you lessen, and especially
+since poor Mrs. Watson's death"--
+
+"We will not talk about Nannie, please," Damaris said quietly.
+
+"Yes, but--as I told your Aunt Felicia--since then I have tried more than
+ever to win your entire confidence, to make up to you for the loss of
+poor Watson and fill her place with you."
+
+"No one else can ever fill the place of the person one has loved,"
+Damaris returned indignantly. "It isn't possible. I should be ashamed to
+let it be possible. Nannie was Nannie--she had cared for me all my life
+and I had cared for her. She belongs to things about which you"--
+
+And there the girl checked herself, aware of something almost ludicrously
+pitiful in the smug tearful countenance and stumpy would-be fashionable
+figure. Hit a man your own size, or bigger, by all means if you are game
+to take the consequences. But to smite a creature conspicuously your
+inferior in fortune--past, present, and prospective--is unchivalrous, not
+to say downright mean-spirited. So Damaris, swiftly repentant, put her
+arm round the heaving shoulders, bent her handsome young head and kissed
+the uninvitingly dabby cheek--a caress surely counting to her for
+righteousness.
+
+"Don't find fault with me any more, Billy," she said. "Indeed I never
+hurt you on purpose. But there are such loads of things to think
+about, that I get absorbed in them and can't attend sometimes directly
+on the minute."
+
+"Absent-mindedness should be corrected rather than encouraged," Miss
+Bilson announced, sententious even amid her tears.
+
+"Oh! it amounts to more than absent-mindedness I'm afraid--a sort of
+absent-every-thingedness when it overtakes me. For the whole of me seems
+to go away and away, hand in hand and all together," Damaris said, her
+eyes alight with questions and with dreams. "But don't let us discuss
+that now," she added. "It would waste time, and it is you who must go
+away and away, Billy, if you are not to put the poor Miss Minetts into a
+frantic fuss by being late for tea. They will think some accident has
+happened to you. Don't beep them in suspense, it is simply
+barbarous.--Good-bye, and don't hurry back. I have heaps to amuse me.
+I'll not expect you till dinner-time."
+
+Thus did it come about that Damaris reposed in a deck chair, under the
+shade of the great ilex trees, gazing idly at the webs of steamer smoke
+hanging low in the southern sky, at the long yellow-grey ridge of the Bar
+between river and sea, and at the cormorants posturing in the hot
+afternoon sunshine upon the sand.
+
+Truly she was free to send forth her soul upon whatever far fantastic
+journey she pleased. But souls are perverse, not to be driven at will,
+choosing their own times and seasons for travel. And hers, just now,
+proved obstinately home-staying--had no wings wherewith to fly, but must
+needs crawl a-fourfoot, around all manner of inglorious personal matters.
+For that skirmish with her ex-governess, though she successfully bridled
+her tongue and conquered by kindness rather than by smiting, had clouded
+her inward serenity, not only by its inherent uselessness, but by
+reminding her indirectly of an occurrence which it was her earnest desire
+to forget.
+
+Indirectly, mention of her beloved nurse, Sarah Watson--who journeying
+back from a visit to her native Lancashire, just this time last year, had
+met death swift and hideous in a railway collision--recalled to Damaris
+the little scene, of a week ago, with Tom Verity when ho had asked her,
+in the noonday sunshine out on the Bar, for some explanation of his
+strange nocturnal experience. She went hot all over now, with exaggerated
+childish shame, thinking of it. For had not she, Damaris Verity, though
+nurtured in the creed that courage is the source and mother of all
+virtues, shown the white feather, incontinently turned tail and run away?
+Remembrance of that running scorched her, so that more than once,
+awakening suddenly in the night, her fair young body was dyed rose-red
+with the disgrace of it literally from head to heel. She was bitterly
+humiliated by her own poltroonery, ingenuously doubtful as to whether she
+could ever quite recover her self-respect; glad that every day put two
+hundred miles and more of sea between her and Tom Verity, since he had
+witnessed that contemptible fall from grace.
+
+Nevertheless, after her first consternation--in which, to avoid further
+speech with him she had sought refuge among the unsavoury seine nets in
+the fore-part of Jennifer's ferry-boat--Tom Verity's probable opinion of
+her undignified action troubled her far less than the cause of the said
+action itself. For exactly what, after all, had so upset her, begetting
+imperative necessity of escape? Not the apparent confirmation of that
+ugly legend concerning ghostly ponies driven up across The Hard garden
+from the shore. From childhood, owing both to temperament and local
+influences, her apprehension of things unseen and super-normal had been
+remarkably acute. From the dawn of conscious intelligence these had
+formed an integral element in the atmosphere of her life; and that
+without functional disturbance, moral or physical, of a neurotic sort.
+She felt no morbid curiosity about such matters, did not care to dwell
+upon or talk of them.--Few persons do who, being sane in mind and body,
+are yet endowed with the rather questionable blessing of the Seer's sixth
+sense.--For while, in never doubting their existence her reason
+acquiesced, her heart turned away, oppressed and disquieted, as from
+other mysterious actualities common enough to human observation, such as
+illness, disease, deformity, old age, the pains of birth and of death.
+Such matters might perplex and sadden, or arouse her indignant pity; but,
+being strong with the confidence of untouched youth and innocence, they
+were powerless, in and by themselves, to terrify her to the contemptible
+extremity of headlong flight.
+
+This she recognized, though less by reasoning than by instinct; and so
+found herself compelled to search deeper for the cause of her recent
+disgrace. Not that she willingly prosecuted that search; but that the
+subject pursued her, simply refusing to leave her alone. Continually it
+presented itself to her mind, and always with the same call for escape,
+the same foreboding of some danger against which she must provide.
+Always, too, it seemed to hinge upon Tom Verity's visit, and something in
+her relation to the young man himself which she could not define. She
+revolved the question now--Theresa being safely packed off to her
+tea-party--in shade of the ilex trees, with solemn eyes and finely
+serious face.
+
+There was not anything unusual in receiving visitors at The Hard. Men
+came often to see her father, and she took her share in entertaining all
+such comers as a matter of course. Some she "didn't much care about,"
+some she liked. But, with the exception of Colonel Carteret from
+childhood her trusted friend and confidant, their coming and going was
+just part of the accustomed routine, a survival from the life at the
+Indian summer palace of long ago, and made no difference. Yet, though she
+was still uncertain whether she did like Tom Verity or not, his coming
+and going had indisputably made a difference. It marked, indeed, a new
+departure in her attitude and thought. Her world, before his advent, was
+other than that in which she now dwelt.
+
+For one thing, Tom was much younger than the majority of her father's
+guests--a man not made but still early in the making, the glamour of
+promise rather than the stark light of finality upon him. This affected
+her; for at eighteen, a career, be it never so distinguished, which has
+reached its zenith, in other words reached the end of its tether, must
+needs have a touch of melancholy about it. With the heat of going on in
+your own veins, the sight of one who has no further go strikes chill to
+the heart. And so, while uncertain whether she quite trusted him or not,
+Damaris--until the unlucky running away episode--had taken increasing
+pleasure in this new cousin's company. It both interested and diverted
+her. She had not only felt ready to talk to him; but,--surprising
+inclination!--once the ice of her natural reserve broken, to talk to him
+about herself.
+
+Half-shyly she dwelt upon his personal appearance.--A fine head and
+clever face, the nose astute, slightly Jewish in type, so she thought.
+His eyes were disappointing, too thickly brown in colour, too opaque.
+They told you nothing, were indeed curiously meaningless; and, though
+well set under an ample brow, were wanting in depth and softness owing to
+scantiness of eyelash. But his chin satisfied her demands. It was square,
+forcible, slightly cleft; and his mouth, below the fly-away reddish
+moustache, was frankly delightful.--Damaris flushed, smiling to herself
+now as she recalled his smile. Whereupon the humiliation of that thrice
+wretched running away took a sharper edge. For she realized, poor child,
+how much--notwithstanding her proud little snubbing of him--she coveted
+his good opinion, wished him to admire and to like her; wanted, even
+while she disapproved his self-complacency and slightly doubted his
+truthfulness, to have him carry with him a happy impression of her--carry
+it with him to that enchanted far Eastern land in which all the poetry of
+her childhood had its root. For, if remembrance of her remained with him,
+and that agreeably, she herself also found "Passage to India" in a sense.
+And this idea, recondite though it was, touched and charmed her fancy--or
+would have done so but for the recollection of her deplorable
+flight.--Oh! what--what made her run away? From what had she thus run? If
+she could only find out! And find, moreover, the cause sufficient to
+palliate, to some extent at least, the woefulness of her cowardice.
+
+But at this point her meditation suffered interruption. The three
+cormorants, having finished their sun-bath, rose from the sand and
+flapped off, flying low and sullenly in single file over the sea parallel
+with the eastward-trending coast-line.
+
+With the departure of the great birds her surroundings seemed to lose
+their only element of active and conscious life. The brooding sunlit
+evening became oppressive, so that in the space of a moment Damaris
+passed from solitude, which is stimulating, to loneliness, which is only
+sad. Meanwhile the shadow cast by the ilex trees had grown sensibly
+longer, softer in outline, more transparent and finely intangible in
+tone, and the reek of the mud-flats more potent, according to its habit
+at sundown and low tide.
+
+It quenched the garden scents with a fetid sweetness, symbolic perhaps of
+the languorous sheltered character of the scene and of much which had or
+might yet happen there--the life breath of the _genius loci_, an at once
+seductive and, as Tom Verity had rightly divined, a doubtfully wholesome
+spirit! Over Damaris it exercised an unwilling fascination, as of some
+haunting refrain ending each verse of her personal experience. Even when,
+as a little girl of eight, fresh from the gentle restraints and rare
+religious and social amenities of an aristocratic convent school in
+Paris, she had first encountered it, it struck her as strangely
+familiar--a thing given back rather than newly discovered, making her
+mind and innocent body alike eager with absorbed yet half-shuddering
+recognition. A good ten years had elapsed since then, but her early
+impression still persisted, producing in her a certain spiritual and
+emotional unrest.
+
+And at that, by natural transition, her thought turned from Tom Verity to
+fix itself upon the one other possible witness of her ignominy--namely,
+the young master mariner who, coming ashore in Proud, the
+lobster-catcher's cranky boat, had walked up the shifting shingle to the
+crown of the ridge and stood watching her, in silence, for a quite
+measurable period, before passing on his way down to the ferry. For, from
+her first sight of him, had he not seemed to evoke that same sense of
+remembrance, to be, like the reek off the mud-flats, already well-known,
+something given back to her rather than newly discovered? She was still
+ignorant as to who ho was or where he came from, having been far too
+engrossed by mortification to pay any attention to the conversation
+between her cousin and Jennifer during their little voyage down the
+tide-river, and having disdained to make subsequent enquiries.--She had a
+rooted dislike to appear curious or ask questions.--But now, reviewing
+the whole episode, it broke in on her that the necessity for escape and
+foreboding of danger, which culminated in her flight, actually dated
+from the advent of this stranger rather than from Tom's request for
+enlightenment concerning unaccountable noises heard in the small hours.
+
+Damaris slipped her feet down off the leg-rest, and sat upright, tense
+with the effort to grasp and disentangle the bearings of this revelation.
+Was her search ended? Had she indeed detected the cause of her
+discomfiture; or only pushed her enquiry back a step further, thus
+widening rather than limiting the field of speculation? For what
+conceivable connection, as she reflected, could the old lobster-catcher's
+passenger have with any matter even remotely affecting herself!
+
+Then she started, suddenly sensible of a comfortable, though warmly
+protesting, human voice and presence at her elbow.
+
+"Yes, you may well look astonished, Miss Damaris. I know how late it is,
+and have been going on like anything to Lizzie over her carelessness.
+Mrs. Cooper's walked up the village with Laura about some extra meat
+that's wanted, and when I came through for your tea if that girl hadn't
+let the kitchen fire right out!--Amusing herself down in the stable-yard,
+I expect, Mrs. Cooper being gone.--And the business I've had to get a
+kettle to boil!"
+
+Verging on forty, tall, dark, deep-bosomed and comely, a rich flush on
+her cheeks under the clear brown skin thanks to a kitchen fire which
+didn't burn and righteous anger which did, Mary Fisher, the upper
+housemaid, set a tea-tray upon the garden table beside Damaris' chair.
+
+"That's what comes of taking servants out of trades-peoples' houses," she
+went on, as she marshalled silver tea-pot and cream-jug--embossed with
+flamboyant many-armed Hindu deities--hot cakes, ginger snaps and
+saffron-sprinkled buns. "You can't put any real dependence on them, doing
+their work as suits themselves just anyhow and anywhen. Mrs. Cooper and I
+knew how it would be well enough when Miss Bilson engaged Lizzie Trant
+and Mr. Hordle said the same. But it wasn't one atom of use for us to
+speak. The Miss Minetts recommended the girl--so there was the finish of
+it. And that's at the bottom of your being kept waiting the best part of
+a hour for your tea like this, Miss."
+
+Notwithstanding the exactions of a somewhat tyrannous brain and her
+conviction of high responsibilities, the child, which delights to be
+petted, told stories and made much of, was strong in Damaris still. This
+explosion of domestic wrath on her behalf proved eminently soothing. It
+directed her brooding thought into nice, amusing, everyday little
+channels; and assured her of protective solicitude, actively on the
+watch, by which exaggerated shames and alarms were withered and
+loneliness effectually dispersed. She felt smoothed, contented. Fell,
+indeed, into something of the humour which climbs on to a friendly lap
+and thrones it there blissfully careless of the thousand and one ills,
+known and unknown, which infant flesh is heir to. She engaged the comely
+comfortable woman to stay and minister further to her.
+
+"Pour out my tea for me, Mary, please," she said, "if you're not busy.
+But isn't this your afternoon off, by rights?"
+
+And Mary, while serving her, acknowledged that not only was it "by
+rights" her "afternoon off;" but that Mr. Patch, the coachman, had
+volunteered to drive her into Marychurch to see her parents when he
+exercised the carriage horses. But, while thanking him very kindly, she
+had refused. Was it likely, she said, she would leave the house with Sir
+Charles and Mr. Hordle away, and Miss Bilson taking herself off to visit
+friends, too?
+
+From which Damaris gathered that, in the opinion of the servants' hall,
+Theresa's offence was rank, it stank to heaven. She therefore, being
+covetous of continued contentment, turned the conversation to less
+controversial subjects; and, after passing notice of the fair weather,
+the brightness of the geraniums and kindred trivialities, successfully
+incited Mary to talk of Brockhurst, Sir Richard Calmady's famous place in
+the north of the county, where--prior to his retirement to his native
+town of Marychurch, upon a generous pension--her father, Lomas Fisher,
+had for many years occupied the post of second gardener. Here was
+material for story-telling to the child Damaris' heart's content! For
+Brockhurst is rich in strange records of wealth, calamity, heroism, and
+sport, the inherent romance of which Mary's artless narrative was
+calculated to enhance rather than dissipate.
+
+So young mistress listened and maid recounted, until, the former
+fortified by cakes and tea, the two sauntered, side by side--a tall
+stalwart black figure, white capped and aproned and an equally tall
+but slender pale pink one--down across the lawn to the battery where
+the small obsolete cannon so boldly defied danger of piracy or
+invasion by sea.
+
+The sun, a crimson disc, enormous in the earth-mist, sank slowly, south
+of west, behind the dark mass of Stone Horse Head. The upper branches of
+the line of Scotch firs in the warren and, beyond them, the upper windows
+of the cottages and Inn caught the fiery light. Presently a little wind,
+thin, perceptibly chill, drew up the river with the turning of the tide.
+It fluttered Mary Fisher's long white muslin apron strings and lifted her
+cap, so that she raised her hand to keep it in place upon her smooth
+black hair. The romance of Brockhurst failed upon her tongue. She grew
+sharply practical.
+
+"The dew's beginning to rise, Miss Damaris," she said, "and you've only
+got your house shoes on. You ought to go indoors at once."
+
+But--"Listen," Damaris replied, and lingered.
+
+The whistling of a tune, shrill, but true and sweet, and a rattle of
+loose shingle, while a young man climbed the seaward slope of the Bar.
+The whistling ceased as he stopped, on the crest of the ridge, and stood,
+bare-headed, contemplating the sunset. For a few seconds the fiery light
+stained his hands, his throat, his hair, his handsome bearded face; then
+swiftly faded, leaving him like a giant leaden image set up against a
+vast pallor of sea and sky.
+
+Mary Fisher choked down a hasty exclamation.
+
+"Come, do come, Miss Damaris, before the grass gets too wet," she said
+almost sharply. "It's going to be a drenching dew to-night."
+
+"Yes--directly--in a minute--but, Mary, tell me who that is?"
+
+The woman hesitated.
+
+"Out on the Bar, do you mean? No one I am acquainted with, Miss."
+
+"I did not intend to ask if he was a friend of yours," Damaris
+returned, with a touch of grandeur, "but merely whether you could tell
+me his name."
+
+"Oh! it's Mrs. Faircloth's son I suppose--the person who keeps the Inn. I
+heard he'd been home for a few days waiting for a ship"--and she turned
+resolutely towards the house. "It's quite time that silver was taken
+indoors and the library windows closed. But you must excuse me, Miss
+Damaris, I can't have you stay out here in that thin gown in the damp.
+You really must come with me, Miss."
+
+And the child in Damaris obeyed. Dutifully it went, though the soul of
+the eighteen-year-old Damaris was far away, started once more on an
+anxious quest.
+
+She heard the loose shingle shift and rattle under Faircloth's feet as he
+swung down the near slope to the jetty. The sound pursued her, and again
+she was overtaken--overwhelmed by foreboding and desire of flight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHICH CANTERS ROUND A PARISH PUMP
+
+
+Not until the second bell was about to cease ringing did Theresa
+Bilson--fussily consequential--reappear at The Hard.
+
+During the absence of the master of the house she would have much
+preferred high tea in the schoolroom, combined with a certain laxity as
+to hours and to dress; but Damaris, in whom the sense of style was
+innate, stood out for the regulation dignities of late dinner and evening
+gowns. To-night, however, thanks to her own unpunctuality, Miss Bilson
+found ample excuse for dispensing with ceremonial garments.
+
+"No--no--we will not wait," she said, addressing Mary and her attendant
+satellite, Laura, the under-housemaid, as--agreeably ignorant of the
+sentiment of a servants' hall which thirsted for her blood--she passed
+the two standing at attention by the open door of the dining-room. "I am
+not going to change. I will leave my hat and things down here--Laura can
+take them to my room later--and have dinner as I am."
+
+During the course of that meal she explained how she had really quite
+failed to observe the hour when she left the Grey House. Commander and
+Mrs. Battye were at tea there; and the vicar--Dr. Horniblow--looked in
+afterwards. There was quite a little meeting, in fact, to arrange the
+details of the day after to-morrow's choir treat. A number of upper-class
+parishioners, she found, were anxious to embrace this opportunity of
+visiting Harchester, and inspecting the Cathedral and other sights of
+that historic city, under learned escort. It promised to be a most
+interesting and instructive expedition, involving moreover but moderate
+cost.--And every one present--Theresa bridled over her salmon cutlet and
+oyster sauce--everyone seemed so anxious for her assistance and advice.
+The vicar deferred to her opinion in a quite pointed manner; and spoke,
+which was so nice of him, of her known gift of organization. "So we claim
+not only your sympathy, Miss Bilson, but your active co-operation," he
+had said. "We feel The Hard should be officially represented."
+
+Here the speaker became increasingly self-conscious and blushed.
+
+"What could I do, therefore, but remain even at the risk of being a
+trifle late for dinner?" she asked. "It would have been so extremely
+uncivil to the Miss Minetts to break up the gathering by leaving before
+full agreement as to the arrangements had been reached. I felt I must
+regard it as a public duty, under the circumstances. I really owed it to
+my position here, you know, Damaris, to stay to the last."
+
+It may be observed, in passing, that Miss Bilson was fond of food and
+made a good deal of noise in eating, particularly when, as on the present
+occasion, she combined that operation with continuous speech. This may
+account for Damaris bestowing greater attention on the manner than the
+matter of her ex-governess' communications. She was sensible that the
+latter showed to small advantage being rather foolishly excited and
+elate, and felt vexed the maids should hear and see her behaving thus. It
+could hardly fail to lower her in their estimation.
+
+As to the impending parochial invasion of Harchester--during the earlier
+stages of dinner Damaris hardly gave it a second thought, being still
+under the empire of impressions very far removed from anything in the
+nature of choir treats. She still beheld the fiery glare of an expiring
+sunset, and against the ensuing pallor of sea and sky a leaden-hued
+human, figure strangely, almost portentously evident. That it appeared
+noble in pose and in outline, even beautiful, she could not deny. But
+that somehow it frightened her, she could equally little deny. So it came
+about that once again, as Mary and her satellite Laura silently waited
+at table, and as Theresa very audibly gobbled food in and words out,
+Damaris shrank within herself seeming to hear a shrill sweet whistling
+and the shatter of loose pebbles and shifting shingle under Faircloth's
+pursuing feet.
+
+The young man's name aroused her interest, not to say her curiosity, the
+more deeply because of its association, with a locality exploration of
+which had always been denied her--a Naboth's vineyard of the imagination,
+near at hand, daily in sight, yet personal acquaintance with which she
+failed to possess even yet. The idea of an island, especially a quite
+little island, a miniature and separate world, shut off all by itself, is
+dreadfully enticing to the infant mind--at once a geographical entity and
+a cunning sort of toy. And Faircloth's Inn, with the tarred wooden houses
+adjacent, was situated upon what, to all intents and purposes, might pass
+as an island since accessible only by boat or by an ancient paved
+causeway daily submerged at high tide.
+
+Skirting the further edge of the warren, a wide rutted side lane leads
+down to the landward end of the said causeway from the village green,
+just opposite Deadham post office and Mrs. Doubleday's general shop.--A
+neglected somewhat desolate strip of road this, between broken earthbanks
+topped by ragged firs, yet very paintable and dear to the sketch-book of
+the amateur. In summer overgrown with grass and rushes, bordered by
+cow-parsley, meadowsweet, pink codlings-and-cream, and purple flowered
+peppermint, in winter a marsh of sodden brown and vivid green; but at all
+seasons a telling perspective, closed by the lonely black and grey island
+hamlet set in the gleaming tide.
+
+Small wonder the place stirred Damaris' spirit of enquiry and adventure!
+She wanted to go there, to examine, to learn how people lived cut off
+from the mainland for hours twice every day and night. But her early
+attempts at investigation met with prompt discouragement from both her
+nurse and her aunt, Felicia Verity. And Damaris was not of the
+disposition which plots, wheedles, and teases to obtain what it wants;
+still less screams for the desired object until for very weariness
+resistance yields. Either she submitted without murmuring or fearlessly
+defied authority. In the present case she relinquished hope and purpose
+obediently, while inwardly longing for exploration, of her "darling
+little island" all the more.
+
+But authority was not perhaps altogether unjustified of its decision, for
+the inhabitants of the spot so engaging to Damaris' imagination were a
+close corporation, a race of sailors and fishermen and, so said rumour,
+somewhat rough customers at that. They lived according to their own
+traditions and unwritten laws, entertained a lordly contempt for
+wage-earning labourers and landsmen, and, save when money was likely to
+pass, were grudging of hospitality even to persons of quality setting
+foot within their coasts.
+
+To their reprehensible tendencies in this last respect the Miss Minetts
+could bear painful witness, as--with hushed voices and entreaties the
+sorry tale might "go no further"--they more than once confided to Theresa
+Bilson. For one Saturday afternoon--unknown to the vicar--being zealous
+in the admonishing of recalcitrant church-goers and rounding up of
+possible Sunday-school recruits, they crossed to the island at low tide;
+and in their best district visitor manner--too often a sparkling blend of
+condescension and familiarity, warranted to irritate--severally demanded
+entrance to the first two of the black cottages.--The Inn they avoided.
+Refined gentlewomen can hardly be expected, even in the interests of
+religion, to risk pollution by visiting a common tavern, more
+particularly when a company of half-grown lads and blue jerseyed men--who
+may, of course, have been carousing within--hangs about its morally
+malodorous door.
+
+Of precisely what followed their attempted violation of the privacy of
+those two cottages, even the Miss Minetts themselves could subsequently
+give no very coherent account. They only knew that some half-hour later,
+with petticoats raised to a height gravely imperilling decency, they
+splashed landward across the causeway--now ankle-deep in water--while the
+lads congregated before the Inn laughed boisterously, the men turned away
+with a guffaw, dogs of disgracefully mixed parentage yelped, and the
+elder female members of the Proud and Sclanders families flung phrases
+lamentably subversive of gentility after their retreating figures from
+the foreshore.
+
+Modesty and mortification alike forbade the outraged ladies reporting the
+episode to Dr. Horniblow in extenso. But they succeeded in giving Miss
+Bilson a sufficiently lurid account of it to make "the darling little
+island," in as far as her charge, Damaris, was concerned, more than ever
+taboo. Their request that the story might "go no further" she interpreted
+with the elasticity usually accorded to such requests; and proceeded, at
+the first opportunity, to retail the whole shocking occurrence to her
+pupil as an example of the ingratitude and insubordination of the common
+people. For Theresa was nothing if not conservative and aristocratic.
+From such august anachronisms as the divine right of kings and the Stuart
+succession, down to humble bobbing of curtseys and pulling of forelocks
+in to-day's village street, she held a permanent brief for the classes as
+against the masses. Unluckily the Miss Minetts' hasty and watery
+withdrawal, with upgathered skirts, across the causeway had appealed to
+Damaris' sense of comedy rather than of tragedy.--She didn't want to be
+unkind, but you shouldn't interfere; and if you insisted on interfering
+you must accept whatever followed. The two ladies in question were richly
+addicted to interfering she had reason to think.--And then they must have
+looked so wonderfully funny scuttling thus!
+
+The picture remained by her as a thing of permanent mirth. So it was
+hardly surprising, in face of the dominant direction of her thoughts
+to-night, that, when the Miss Minetts' name punctuated Theresa's
+discourse recurrent as a cuckoo-cry, remembrance of their merrily
+inglorious retirement from the region of Faircloth's Inn should present
+itself. Whereupon Damaris' serious mood was lightened as by sudden
+sunshine, and she laughed.
+
+Hearing which infectiously gay but quite unexpected sound, Miss Bilson
+stopped dead in the middle both of a nectarine and a sentence.
+
+"What is the matter, Damaris?" she exclaimed. "I was explaining our
+difficulty in securing sufficient conveyances for some of our party to
+and from Marychurch station. I really do not see any cause for amusement
+in what I said."
+
+"There wasn't anything amusing, dear Billy, I'm sure there wasn't,"
+Damaris returned, the corners of her mouth still quivering and her eyes
+very bright. "I beg your pardon. I'm afraid I wasn't quite attending. I
+was thinking of something else. You were speaking about the carriage
+horses, weren't you? Yes."
+
+But Theresa turned sulky. She had been posing, planing in mid-air around
+the fair castles hope and ambition are reported to build there. Her fat
+little feet were well off the floor, and that outbreak of laughter let
+her down with a bump. She lost her head, lost her temper and her
+opportunity along with it, and fell into useless scolding.
+
+"You are extremely inconsequent and childish sometimes, Damaris," she
+said. "I find it most trying when I attempt to talk to you upon practical
+subjects, really pressing subjects, and you either cannot or will not
+concentrate. What can you expect in the future when you are thrown more
+on your own resources, and have not me--for instance--always to depend
+upon, if you moon through life like this? It must lead to great
+discomfort not only for yourself but for others. Pray be warned in time."
+
+Damaris turned in her chair at the head of the table. A station not
+unconnected, in Theresa's mind, with the internal ordering of those same
+air-built castles, and consistently if furtively coveted by her. To Sir
+Charles's chair at the bottom of the table, she dared not aspire, so
+during his absence reluctantly retained her accustomed place at the side.
+
+"You need not wait any longer, Mary," Damaris said, over her shoulder.
+
+"Why?" Theresa began fussily, as the two maids left the room.
+
+"Why?" Damaris took her up. "Because I prefer our being alone during
+the remainder of this conversation. I understand that you want to ask
+me about something to do with this excursion to Harchester. What is
+it, please?"
+
+"My dear Damaris," the other protested, startled and scenting unexpected
+danger, "really your manner"--
+
+"And yours.--Both perhaps would bear improvement. But that is by the way.
+What is it, please, you want?"
+
+"Really you assert yourself"--
+
+"And you forget yourself--before the servants, too, I do not like it at
+all. You should be more careful."
+
+"Damaris," she cried aghast, confounded to the verge of tears--"Damaris!"
+
+"Yes--I am giving you my full attention. Pray let us be practical," the
+young girl said, sitting up tall and straight in the shaded lamp-light,
+the white dinner-table spread with gleaming glass and silver, fine china,
+fruit and flowers before her, the soft gloom of the long low room behind,
+all tender hint of childhood banished from her countenance, and her eyes
+bright now not with laughter but with battle. "Pray let us finish with
+the subject of the choir treat. Then we shall be free to talk about more
+interesting things."
+
+Miss Bilson waved her hands hysterically.
+
+"No--no--I never wish to mention it again. I am too deeply hurt by your
+behaviour to me, Damaris--your sarcasm.--Of course," she added, "I see I
+must withdraw my offer. It will cause the greatest inconvenience and
+disappointment; but for that I cannot hold myself responsible, though it
+will be most painful and embarrassing to me after the kind appreciation I
+have received. Still I must withdraw it"--
+
+"Withdraw what offer?"
+
+"Why the offer I was explaining to you just now, when you ordered the
+maids out of the room. You really cannot deny that you heard what I said,
+Damaris, because you mentioned the carriage horses yourself."
+
+Theresa sipped some water. She was recovering if not her temper, yet her
+grasp on the main issue. She wanted, so desperately, to achieve her
+purpose and, incidentally, to continue to play, both for her own benefit
+and that of the parish, her self-elected role of Lady Bountiful, of
+"official representative of The Hard"--as Dr. Horniblow by a quite
+innocent if ill-timed flourish of speech had unfortunately put it.
+
+"The conveyances in the village are insufficient to take the whole party
+to the station," she continued. "An extra brake can be had at the Stag's
+Head in Mary church; but a pair of horses must be sent in to-morrow
+afternoon to bring it over here. I saw"--she hesitated a moment--"I
+really could see no objection to Patch taking our horses in to fetch the
+brake, and driving a contingent to the station in it next morning."
+
+"And meeting the train at night, I suppose?" Damaris said calmly.
+
+"Of course," Theresa answered, thus unconsciously declaring herself a
+rank outsider, and rushing blindly upon her fate.
+
+For what thoroughbred member of the equestrian order does not know that
+next--and even that not always--to the ladies of his family and,
+possibly, the key of his cellar, an Englishman's stable is sacrosanct?
+Dispose of anything he owns rather than his horses. To attempt touching
+them is, indeed, to stretch out your hand against the Ark of the Covenant
+and risk prompt withering of that impious limb. Yet poor Theresa
+blundered on.
+
+"I told the vicar that, Sir Charles being from home, I felt I might make
+the offer myself, seeing how much it would simplify the arrangements and
+how very little work Patch has when you and I are alone here. It is a
+pity there is not time to obtain Sir Charles's sanction. That would be
+more proper, of course, more satisfactory. But under the circumstances it
+need not, I think, be regarded as an insuperable objection. I told the
+Miss Minetts and the vicar"--
+
+Here Miss Bilson blushed, applying fork and spoon, in coy confusion, to
+the remains of the nectarine upon her plate.
+
+"I told them," she repeated, "knowing Sir Charles as well as I do, I felt
+I might safely assure them of that."
+
+In Damaris, meanwhile, anger gradually gave place to far more complex
+emotions. She sat well back in her chair, and clasped her hands firmly in
+her flowered Pompadour-muslin lap. Her eyes looked enormous as she kept
+them fixed gravely and steadily upon the speaker. For extraordinary ideas
+and perceptions concerning the said speaker crowded into her young head.
+She did not like them at all. She shrank from dwelling upon or following
+them put. They, indeed, made her hot and uncomfortable all over. Had
+Theresa Bilson taken leave of her senses, or was she, Damaris, herself in
+fault--a harbourer of nasty thoughts? Consciously she felt to grow older,
+to grow up. And she did not like that either; for the grown-up world, to
+which Theresa acted just now as doorkeeper, struck her as an ugly and
+vulgar-minded place. She saw her ex-governess from a new angle--a more
+illuminating than agreeable one, at which she no longer figured as
+pitiful, her little assumptions and sillinesses calling for the
+chivalrous forbearance of persons more happily placed; but as actively
+impertinent, an usurper of authority and privileges altogether outside
+her office and her scope. She was greedy--not a pretty word yet a true
+one, covering both her manner of eating and her speech. Registering which
+facts Damaris was sensible of almost physical repulsion, as from
+something obscurely gross. Hence it followed that Theresa must, somehow,
+be stopped, made to see her own present unpleasantness, saved from
+herself in short--to which end it became Damaris' duty to unfurl the flag
+of revolt.
+
+The young girl arrived at this conclusion in a spirit of rather pathetic
+seriousness. It is far from easy, at eighteen, to control tongue and
+temper to the extent of joining battle with your elders in calm and
+dignified sort. To lay about you in a rage is easy enough. But rage is
+tiresomely liable to defeat its own object and make you make a fool of
+yourself. Any unfurling of the flag would be useless, and worse than
+useless, unless it heralded victory sure and complete--Damaris realized
+this. So she kept a brave front, although her pulse quickened and she had
+a bad little empty feeling around her heart.
+
+Fortunately, however, for her side of the campaign, Theresa--emboldened
+by recapitulation of her late boastings at the Miss Minetts'
+tea-table--hastened to put a gilded dome to her own indiscretion and
+offence. For nothing would do but Damaris must accompany her on this
+choir treat! She declared herself really compelled to press the point. It
+offered such an excellent opportunity of acquiring archaeological
+knowledge--had not the Dean most kindly promised to conduct the party
+round the Cathedral himself and deliver a short lecture _en route_?--and
+of friendly social intercourse, both of which would be very advantageous
+to Damaris. As she was without any engagement for the day clearly neither
+should be missed. Of course, everyone understood how unsuitable it would
+be to ask Sir Charles to patronize parish excursions and events.--Here
+Miss Bilson became lyrical, speaking with gasping breath and glowing
+face, of "a call to exalted spheres of action, of great Proconsuls,
+Empire Builders, Pillars of the State."--Naturally you hesitated to
+intrude on the time and attention of such a distinguished person--that in
+point of fact was her main reason for disposing of the matter of the
+carriage horses herself. How could she trouble Sir Charles with such a
+homely detail?--But Damaris' case, needless to remark, was very
+different. At her age it was invidious to be too exclusive. Miss Felicia
+Verity felt--so she, Theresa, was certain--that it was a pity Damaris did
+not make more friends in the village now she was out of the schoolroom.
+May and Doris Horniblow were sweet girls and highly educated. They, of
+course, were going. And Captain Taylor, she understood would bring his
+daughter, Louisa--who was home for a few days before the opening of term
+at the Tillingworth High School where she was second mistress.
+
+"It is always well to realize the attainments of young people of your own
+age, even if they are not in quite the same social grade as yourself.
+Your going would give pleasure too. It will be taken as a compliment to
+the vicar and the Church--may really, in a sense, be called patriotic
+since an acknowledgment of the duty we owe, individually, to the local
+community of which we form part. And then," she added, naively giving
+herself away at the last, "of course, if you go over to the station in
+the brake Patch cannot make any difficulties about driving it."
+
+Here Theresa stayed the torrent of her eloquence and looked up, to find
+Damaris' eyes fixed upon her in incredulous wonder.
+
+"Have you nothing to say, dear, in answer to my proposition?" she
+enquired, with a suddenly anxious, edgy little laugh.
+
+"I am afraid I have a lot to say, some of which you won't like."
+
+"How so?" Theresa cried, still playfully. "You must see how natural and
+reasonable my suggestion is." Then becoming admonitory. "You should learn
+to think a little more of others.--It is a bad habit to offer opposition
+simply for opposition's sake."
+
+"I do not oppose you for the mere pleasure of opposing," Damaris began,
+determined her voice should not shake. "But I'm sorry to say, I can't
+agree to the horses being used to draw a loaded brake. I could not ask
+Patch. He would refuse and be quite right in refusing. It's not their
+work--nor his work either."
+
+She leaned forward, trying to speak civilly and gently.
+
+"There are some things you don't quite understand about the stables, or
+about the servants--the things which can't be done, which it's impossible
+to ask.--No,--wait, please--please let me finish"--
+
+For between astonishment, chagrin, and an inarticulate struggle to
+protest, Miss Bilson's complexion was becoming almost apoplectic and her
+poor fat little cheeks positively convulsed.
+
+"I dislike saying such disagreeable things to you, but it can't be
+avoided. It would be cowardly of me not to tell you the truth.--You shall
+have the brougham the day after to-morrow, and I'll write to Miss Minett
+in the morning, and tell her you will call for her and her sister, on
+your way to Marychurch, and that you will bring them back at night. I
+will give Patch his orders myself, so that there may be no confusion. And
+I will subscribe a pound to the expenses of the choir treat. That is all
+I can promise in the way of help."
+
+"But--but--Damaris, think of the position in which you place me! I cannot
+be thrust aside thus. I will not submit. It is so humiliating, so--so--I
+offered the horses. I told the vicar he might consider it settled about
+the extra brake"--
+
+"I know. That was a mistake. You had no right to make such an offer."
+
+For justice must take its course. Theresa must be saved from herself.
+Still her implacable young saviour, in proportion as victory appeared
+assured, began to feel sad. For it grew increasingly plain that Theresa
+was not of the stuff of which warriors, any more than saints, are made.
+Stand up to her and she collapsed like a pricked bubble.--So little was
+left, a scum of colourless soap suds, in which very certainly there is no
+fight. Again she showed a pitiful being, inviting chivalrous forbearance.
+
+"You are very hard," she lamented, "and you are always inclined to side
+with the servants against me. You seem to take pleasure in undermining
+my influence, while I am so ready and anxious to devote myself to you.
+You know there is nothing, nothing I would not do for you and--and for
+Sir Charles."
+
+Theresa choked, coughed, holding her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+"And what reward do I meet with?" she asked brokenly. "At every turn I am
+thwarted. But you must give way in this case, Damaris. Positively you
+must. I cannot allow myself to be publicly discredited through your
+self-will. I promised the horses for the extra brake. The offer was made
+and accepted--accepted, you understand, actually accepted. What will the
+vicar say if the arrangement is upset? What will every one think?"
+
+Damaris pushed her chair back from the table and rose to her
+feet.--Forbearance wore threadbare under accusation and complaint. No,
+Theresa was not only a little too abject, but a little too disingenuous,
+thereby putting herself beyond the pale of rightful sympathy. Even while
+she protested devotion, self looked out seeking personal advantage. And
+that devotion, in itself, shocked Damaris' sense of fitness where it
+involved her father. It wasn't Theresa's place to talk of devotion
+towards him!
+
+Moreover the young girl began to feel profoundly impatient of all this to
+do and bother. For wasn't the whole affair, very much of a storm in a
+teacup, petty, paltry, quite unworthy of prolonged discussion such as
+this? She certainly thought so, in her youthful fervour and inexperience;
+while--the push of awakening womanhood giving new colour and richness
+to her conception of life--nature cried out for a certain extravagance in
+heroism, in largeness of action of aspiration. She was athirst for noble
+horizons, in love with beauty, with the magnificence of things, seen and
+unseen alike. In love with superb objectives even if only to be reached
+through a measure of suffering, and--searching, arresting, though the
+thought was to her--possibly through peril of death.
+
+In such moods there is small room for a Bilson regime and outlook. A
+flavour of scorn marked her tone as she answered at last:
+
+"Oh, you can lay the blame on me--or rather tell the truth, which amounts
+to the same thing. Say that, my father being away, I refused my consent
+to the horses being taken out. Say you appealed to me but I was
+hopelessly obstinate. It is very simple."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A SAMPLING OF FREEDOM
+
+
+When two persons, living under the same roof, have the misfortune to fall
+out a hundred and one small ways are ready to hand for the infliction of
+moral torment. The weak, it may be added, are not only far more addicted
+to such inflictings than the strong, but far more resourceful in their
+execution. Theresa Bilson's conduct may furnish a pertinent example.
+
+From the moment of emerging from her bed-chamber, next morning, she
+adopted an attitude which she maintained until she regained the chaste
+seclusion of that apartment at night. During no instant of the
+intervening hours did she lapse from studied speechlessness unless
+directly addressed, nor depart from an air of virtuous resignation to
+injustice and injury--quite exquisitely provoking to the onlooker. Twice
+during the morning Damaris, upon entering the schoolroom, discovered her
+in tears, which she proceeded to wipe away, furtively, with the greatest
+ostentation.--Dramatic effect, on the second occasion was, however,
+marred by the fact that she was engaged in retrimming a white chip hat,
+encircled by a garland of artificial dog-roses, blue glass grapes and
+assorted foliage--an occupation somewhat ill-adapted to tragedy. In
+addition to making her ex-pupil--against whom they were mainly
+directed--first miserable and then naughtily defiant by these manoeuvres,
+she alienated any sympathy which her red-rimmed eyelids and dolorous
+aspect might otherwise have engendered in the younger and less critical
+members of the establishment, by sending Alfred, the hall-boy, up to the
+vicarage with a note and instructions to wait for an answer, at the very
+moment when every domestic ordinance demanded his absorption in the
+cleaning of knives and of boots. Being but human, Alfred naturally
+embraced the heaven-sent chance of dawdling, passing the time of day with
+various cronies, and rapturously assisting to hound a couple of wild,
+sweating and snorting steers along the dusty lane, behind the churchyard,
+to Butcher Cleave's slaughter-house: with the consequence that his menial
+duties devolved upon Laura and Lizzie, who, supported by the heads of
+their respective departments, combined to "give him the what for," in no
+measured terms upon his eventual and very tardy return.
+
+It is not too much to say that, by luncheon time Theresa--whether
+wilfully or not--had succeeded in setting the entire household by the
+ears; while any inclinations towards peace-making, with which Damaris
+might have begun the day, were effectively dissipated, leaving her
+strengthened and confirmed in revolt. Around the stables, and the
+proposed indignity put upon Patch and the horses, this wretched quarrel
+centred so--as at once a vote of confidence and declaration of
+independence--to the stables Damaris finally went and ordered the
+dog-cart at three o'clock. For she would drive, and drive, throughout the
+course of this gilded September afternoon. Drive far away from foolishly
+officious and disingenuous Theresa, far from Deadham, so tiresome just
+now in its irruption of tea-parties and treats. She would behold peaceful
+inland horizons, taste the freedom of spirit and the content which the
+long, smooth buff-coloured roads, leading to unknown towns and unvisited
+country-side, so deliciously give.
+
+She stood at the front door, in blue linen gown, white knitted jersey and
+white sailor hat, buttoning her tan doeskin driving-gloves, a gallant,
+gravely valiant young creature, beautifully unbroken as yet by any real
+assent to the manifold foulness of life--her faith in the nobility of
+human nature and human destiny still finely intact. And that was just
+where her revolt against poor Theresa Bilson came in. For Theresa broke
+the accepted law, being ignoble; and thereby spoiled the fair pattern,
+showed as a blot.--Not that she meant to trouble any more about Theresa
+just now. She was out simply to enjoy, to see and feel, rather than
+reason, analyse or think. So she settled herself on the sloping
+high-cushioned seat, bracing her feet against the driving iron, while
+Mary, reaching up, tucked the dust-rug neatly about her skirts.
+Patch--whose looks and figure unmistakably declared his
+calling--short-legged and stocky, inclining to corpulence yet nimble on
+his feet, clean shaven, Napoleonic of countenance, passed reins and whip
+into her hands as Tolling, the groom, let go the horse's head.
+
+The girl squared her shoulders a little, and the soft colour deepened in
+her cheeks, as she swung the dog-cart down the drive and out of the
+entrance gate into the road--here a green-roofed tunnel, branches meeting
+overhead, thickly carpeted with dry sand blown inward from the beach--and
+on past the whitewashed cottages, red brick and grey stone houses of
+Deadham village, their gardens pleasant with flowers, and with apple and
+pear trees weighted down by fruit. Past the vicarage and church, standing
+apart on a little grass-grown monticule, backed by a row of elms, which
+amid their dark foliage showed here and there a single bough of
+verdigris-green or lemon-yellow--first harbingers of autumn. Into the
+open now, small rough fields dotted with thorn bushes and bramble-brakes
+on the one side; and on the other the shining waters of the Haven.
+Through the hamlet of Lampit, the rear of whose dilapidated sheds and
+dwellings abut on reed-beds and stretches of unsightly slime and ooze. A
+desolate spot, bleak and wind-swept in winter, and even under blue skies,
+as to-day basking in sunshine, degraded by poverty and dirt.
+
+Some half-mile further is Horny Cross where, as the name indicates, four
+roads meet. That from Deadham to the edge of the forest runs north; the
+other, from Beaupres-on-Sea to Marychurch, Stourmouth and Barryport, due
+west. Damaris, having a fancy to keep the coast-line out of sight, chose
+the former, following the valley of the Arne, between great flat meadows
+where herds of dairy cows, of red Devons and black Welsh runts, feed in
+the rich deep grass. In one place a curve of the river brings it, for
+three hundred yards or more, close under the hanging woods, only the
+width of the roadway between the broad stream and living wall of trees.
+Here transparent bluish shadow haunted the undergrowth, and the air grew
+delicately chill, charged with the scent of fern, of moist earth, leaf
+mould, and moss.
+
+Such traffic as held the road was leisurely, native to the scene and
+therefore pleasing to the sight.--For the age of self-moving machines on
+land had barely dawned yet; while the sky was still wholly inviolate.--A
+white tilted miller's wagon, a brewer's dray, each drawn by well-favoured
+teams with jingling bells and brass-mounted harness, rumbling farm carts,
+a gypsy van painted in crude yellow, blue, and red and its accompanying
+rabble of children, donkeys and dogs, a farmer's high-hung, curtseying
+gig, were in turn met or passed. For the black horse, Damaris driving it,
+gave place to none, covering the mounting tale of miles handsomely at an
+even, swinging trot.
+
+At Lady's Oak, a noble tree marking some ancient forest boundary and
+consequently spared when the needs of the British Navy, during the French
+wars of the early years of the century, condemned so many of its fellows
+to the axe--the flattened burnished dome of which glinted back the
+sunlight above a maze of spreading branches and massive powder-grey
+trunk--the main road forks. Damaris turned to the left, across the
+single-arch stone bridge spanning the Arne, and drove on up the long
+winding ascent from the valley to the moorland and fir plantations which
+range inland behind Stourmouth. This constituted the goal of her journey,
+for once the high-lying plateau reached, leagues of country open out far
+as the eye carries to the fine, bare outline of the Wiltshire downs.
+
+She checked the horse, letting it walk, while she took stock of her
+surroundings.
+
+It may be asserted that there are two ways of holding converse with
+Nature. The one is egotistic and sentimental, an imposing of personal
+tastes and emotions which betrays the latent categoric belief that the
+existence of external things is limited to man's apprehension of them--a
+vilely conceited if not actually blasphemous doctrine! The other is that
+of the seeker and the seer, who, approaching in all reverence, asks no
+more than leave to listen to the voice of external things--recognizing
+their independent existence, knowing them to be as real as he is, as
+wonderful, in their own order as permanent, possibly as potent even for
+good and evil as himself. And it was, happily, according to this latter
+reading of the position, instinctively, by the natural bent of her mind,
+that Damaris attempted converse with the world without.
+
+The glory of the heather had passed, the bloom now showing only as
+silver-pink froth upon an ocean of warm brown. But the colouring was
+restful, the air here on the dry gravel soil light and eager, and the
+sense of height and space exhilarating. A fringe of harebells, of orange
+hawkweed and dwarf red sorrel bordered the road. Every small oasis of
+turf, amongst the heath and by the wayside, carried its pretty crop of
+centaury and wild thyme, of bed-straw, milkwort, and birdsfoot trefoil.
+Furzechats tipped about the gorse bushes, uttering a sharp, gay, warning
+note. A big flight of rooks, blue-black against the ethereal blue of the
+distance, winged their way slowly homeward to the long avenue of dark
+trees leading to a farm in the valley. The charm of the place was clear
+and sane, its beauty simple almost to austerity. This the young girl
+welcomed. It washed her imagination free of the curious questionings,
+involuntary doubts and suspicions, which the house and garden at The
+Hard, steeped in tradition, thick with past happenings, past passions,
+were prone to breed in her. No reek off the mud-flats, any more than over
+luscious garden scents, tainted the atmosphere. It was virgin as the soil
+of the moorland--a soil as yet untamed and unfertilized by the labour of
+man. And this effect of virginity, even though a trifle _farouche_,
+harsh, and barren in the perfection of its purity, appealed to Damaris'
+present mood. Her spirit leapt to meet it in proud fellowship. For it
+routed forebodings. Discounted introspective broodings. Discounted even
+the apparently inevitable--since nobody and nothing, so the young girl
+told herself with a rush of gladly resolute conviction, is really
+inevitable unless you permit or choose to have them so.--Gallant this,
+and the mother of brave doings; though--as Damaris was to discover later,
+to the increase both of wisdom and of sorrow--a half-truth only. For man
+is never actually master of people or of things; but master, at most, of
+his own attitude towards them. In this alone can he claim or exercise
+free-will.
+
+Then--because general ideas, however inspiriting, are rather heavy diet
+for the young, immature minds growing quickly tired in the efforts to
+digest them--Damaris, having reached this happy, if partially erroneous,
+climax of emancipation, ceased to philosophize either consciously or
+unconsciously. The russet moorland and spacious landscape shut the door
+on her, had no more to tell her, no more to say. Or, to be strictly
+accurate, was it not rather perhaps that her power of response, power to
+interpret their speech and assimilate their message had reached its term?
+All her life the maturity of her brain had inclined--rather
+fatiguingly--to outrun the maturity of her body, so that she failed "to
+continue in one stay" and trivial hours trod close on the heels of hours
+of exaltation and of insight.
+
+With a sigh and a sense of loss--as though noble companions had withdrawn
+themselves from her--she gathered up the reins and sent the horse
+forward. She fell into comfortable friendly conversation with the
+Napoleonic-countenanced Patch, moreover, consulting him as to the
+shortest way, through the purlieus of Stourmouth, into the Marychurch
+high road and so home to Deadham Hard. For, to tell the truth, she became
+aware she was hungry and very badly in want of her tea.
+
+Theresa Bilson, setting out the next morning in solitary state, contrived
+to maintain the adopted attitude until the front gates were safely
+passed. Then she relaxed and looked out of the brougham windows with a
+fussy brightness more consonant to the joys of impending union with the
+Miss Minetts and the day's impending trip. She made no further effort to
+secure Damaris' participation in the social and educational advantages
+which it promised. On the contrary she left the young lady severely alone
+and at home, as one administering well-merited punishment. Thus
+effectively demonstrating, as she wished to believe, her personal
+authority; and suiting, as she would have stoutly denied, her personal
+convenience. For Damaris on a string, plus the extra brake and carriage
+horses, was one story; Damaris on her own, minus those animals and
+much-debated vehicle, quite another. Unless the presence of her ex-pupil
+could be made to redound to her own glory, Theresa much preferred
+reserving representation of The Hard and its distinguished proprietor
+wholly and solely to herself. So in the spirit of pretence and of
+make-believe did she go forth; to find, on her return, that spirit prove
+but a lying and treacherous ally--and for more reasons than one.
+
+It happened thus. Supported by the two brindled tabby house cats,
+Geraldine and Mustapha--descendants of the numerous tribe honoured,
+during the last half-century of his long life, by Thomas Clarkson
+Verity's politely affectionate patronage--Damaris spent the greater part
+of the morning in the long writing room.
+
+She had judged and condemned Theresa pretty roundly it is true,
+nevertheless she felt a little hurt and sore at the latter's treatment
+of her. Theresa need not have kept up the quarrel till the very last so
+acridly. After all, as she was going out purely for own pleasure and
+amusement, she might have found something nice and civil to say at
+parting. And then the mere fact of being left behind, of being out of
+it, however limited the charms of a party, has a certain small stab to
+it somehow--as most persons, probing youthful experiences, can testify.
+It is never quite pleasant to be the one who doesn't go!--The house,
+moreover, when her father was absent, always reminded Damaris of an
+empty shrine, a place which had lost its meaning and purpose. To-day,
+though windows and doors were wide open letting in a wealth of sunshine,
+it appeared startlingly lifeless and void. The maids seemed unusually
+quiet. She heard no movement on the staircase or in the rooms above.
+Neither gardener nor garden-boy was visible. She would have hailed the
+whirr of the mowing machine or swish of a broom on the lawn.--Oh! if
+only her poor dear Nannie were still alive, safe upstairs, there in the
+old nursery!
+
+And at that the child Damaris felt a lump rise in her throat. But the
+girl, the soon-to-be woman, Damaris choked it down bravely. For nobody,
+nothing--so she assured herself, going back to the lesson learned
+yesterday upon the open moorland--is really inevitable unless you suffer
+or will it so to be. Wherefore she stiffened herself against recognition
+of loneliness, stiffened herself against inclination to mourning, refused
+to acquiesce in or be subjugated by either and, to the better forgetting
+of them, sought consolation among her great-great uncle's books.
+
+For at this period Damaris was an omnivorous reader, eager for every form
+of literature and every description of knowledge--whether clearly
+comprehended or not--which the beloved printed page has to give. An
+eagerness, it may be noted, not infrequently productive of collisions
+with Theresa, and at this particular juncture all the more agreeable to
+gratify on that very account. For Theresa would have had her walk only in
+the narrow, sheltered, neatly bordered paths of history and fiction
+designed, for the greater preservation of female innocence, by such
+authors as Miss Sewell, Miss Strickland, and Miss Yonge. Upon Damaris,
+however, perambulation of those paths palled too soon. Her intellect and
+heart alike demanded wider fields of drama, of religion and of science,
+above all wider and less conventional converse with average human nature,
+than this triumvirate of Victorian sibyls was willing or capable to
+supply. It is undeniable that, although words and phrases, whole episodes
+indeed, were obscure even unintelligible to her, she found the memoirs of
+Benvenuto Cellini and Saint Simon more interesting than the "Lives of the
+Queens of England; Vathek," more to her taste than "Amy Herbert"; and,
+if the truth must be told, "The Decameron," and "Tristram Shandy" more
+satisfying to her imagination than "The Heir of Redcliffe" or "The Daisy
+Chain." To Damaris it seemed, just now, that a book the meaning of which
+was quite clear to her and could be grasped at sight, hardly repaid the
+trouble of reading, since it afforded no sense of adventure, no
+excitement of challenge or of pursuit, no mirage of wonder, no delightful
+provocation of matters outside her experience and not understood. About
+these latter she abstained from asking questions, having much faith in
+the illuminating power of the future. Given patience, all in good time
+she would understand everything worth understanding.--That there are
+things in life best not understood, or understood only at your peril, she
+already in some sort divined.--Hence her reading although of the order
+obnoxious to pedants, as lacking in method and accurate scholarship, went
+to produce a mental atmosphere in which honest love of letters and of
+art, along with generous instincts of humanity quicken and thrive.
+
+On this particular morning Damaris elected to explore to the Near East,
+in the vehicle of Eoethen's virile and luminous prose. She sat in one of
+the solid wide seated arm-chairs at the fire-place end of a long room,
+near a rounded window, the lower sash, of which she raised to its full
+height. Outside the row of geranium beds glowed scarlet and crimson in
+the calm light. Beyond them the turf of the lawn was overspread by
+trailing gossamers, and delicate cart-wheel spider's webs upon which the
+dew still glittered. In the shrubberies robins sang; and above the river
+great companies of swallows swept to and fro, with sharp twitterings,
+restlessly gathering for their final southern flight.
+
+No sooner had Damaris fairly settled down with her book, than Mustapha
+jumped upon her knees; and after, preliminary buttings and tramplings,
+curled himself round in gross comfort, his soft lithe body growing warmer
+and heavier, on her lap, as his sleep deepened. Where a bar of sunshine
+crossed the leather inset of the writing-table, just beside her in the
+window, Geraldine--his counterpart as to markings and colouring, but
+finer made, more slender of barrel and of limb--fitted herself into the
+narrow space between a silver inkstand and a stack of folded newspapers,
+her fore-paws tucked neatly under her chest, furry elbows outward. Her
+muzzle showed black, as did the rims of her eyelids which enhanced the
+brightness and size of her clear, yellow-green eyes. Her alert, observant
+little head was raised, as, with gently lashing tail, she watched an
+imprisoned honey-bee buzzing angrily up and down between the
+window-sashes.
+
+An elfin creature, Geraldine,--repaying liberal study. Scornfully secure
+of the potency of her own charms where mankind, or Tomcat-kind, might be
+concerned, royally devoid of morals, past-mistress in all sprightly,
+graceful, feline devilries, she was yet a fond mother, solicitous to the
+point of actual selflessness regarding the safety and well-being of her
+successive and frequently recurrent litters. She suckled, washed, played
+with and educated those of her kittens who escaped the rigours of
+stable-bucket and broom, until such time as they were three to four
+months old. After which she sent them flying, amid cuffings and spittings
+extraordinary, whenever they attempted to approach her; and, oblivious of
+their orphaned and wistful existence, yielded herself with bewitching
+vivacity, to fresh intrigues and amours new.
+
+The long quiet morning indoors, with cats and books for company, at once
+soothed Damaris and made her restless. After luncheon she put on hat,
+gloves, and walking shoes, and went down across the lawn to the sea-wall.
+Waylaying her in the hall, Mary had essayed to learn her programme, and
+anchor her as to time and place by enquiring when and where tea should be
+served. But Damaris put the kindly woman off.--She couldn't say
+exactly--yet--would ring and let Mary know when she came in. If any one
+called, she was not at home.
+
+In truth her active young body asked for movement and exercise, while
+scenes and phrases from the pages of Eoethen still filled her mind. She
+longed for travel. Not via Marychurch to Harchester, well understood,
+shepherded by Theresa Bilson, the members of the Deadham Church choir and
+their supporters; but for travel upon the grand scale, with all its
+romance and enlargement of experience, its possible dangers and certain
+hardships, as the author of Eoethen had known it and her father, for that
+matter, had known it in earlier days too. She suffered the spell of the
+East--always haunting the chambers of her memory and ready to be stirred
+in active ascendency, as by her morning's reading to-day--suffered the
+spell not of its mysterious cities and civilizations alone, but of its
+vast solitudes and silences, desert winds and desert sands.
+
+And hence it came about that, as her mood of yesterday sent her inland to
+pacify her imagination by gazing at the peaceful English country-side, so
+her present mood sent her down to the shore to satisfy, or rather further
+stimulate, her nostalgia for the East by gazing out to sea.
+
+The cause in both cases was the same, namely, the inward tumult of her
+awakening womanhood, and still more, perhaps, the tumult of awakening
+talent which had not as yet found its appointed means of expression. She
+was driven hither and thither by the push of her individuality to
+disengage itself from adventitious surroundings and circumstances, and
+realize its independent existence.--A somewhat perilous crisis of
+development, fruitful of escapades and unruly impulses which may leave
+their mark, and that a disfiguring one, upon the whole of a woman's
+subsequent career.
+
+Immediately, however, Damaris' disposition to defy established convention
+and routine took the mildest and apparently most innocuous form--merely
+the making, by herself, of a little expedition which, accompanied by
+others, she had made a hundred times before. From the terrace she went
+down the flight of steps, built into the width of the sea-wall, whence a
+tall wrought-iron gate opens direct upon the foreshore. Closing it behind
+her, she followed the coastguard-path, at the base of the
+river-bank--here a miniature sand cliff capped with gravel, from eight
+to ten feet high--which leads to the warren and the ferry. For she would
+take ship, with foxy-faced William Jennifer as captain and as crew, cross
+to the broken-down wooden jetty and, landing there, climb the crown of
+the Bar and look south-east, over the Channel highway, towards far
+distant countries of the desert and the dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+OUT ON THE BAR
+
+
+All which was duly accomplished though with a difference. For on reaching
+the head of the shallow sandy gully opening on the tide, where the
+flat-bottomed ferry-boat lay, Damaris found not Jennifer but the withered
+and doubtfully clean old lobster-catcher, Timothy Proud, in possession.
+This disconcerted her somewhat. His appearance, indeed--as he stood
+amongst a miscellaneous assortment of sun-bleached and weather-stained
+foreshore lumber, leaning the ragged elbows of his blue jersey upon the
+top of an empty petroleum barrel and smoking a dirty clay pipe--was so
+far from inviting, that the young girl felt tempted to relinquish her
+enterprise and go back by the way she had come.
+
+But, as she hesitated, the old man catching sight of her and scenting
+custom, first spat and then called aloud.
+
+"Might 'e be wanting the Ferry, Miss?" Thus directly challenged, Damaris
+could not but answer in the affirmative.
+
+"Put 'e across to the Bar?" he took her up smartly. "Nat'rally I
+will--bean't I here for the very purpose?--Put 'e across I will and on
+the tick too."
+
+And, after further expectoration, relinquishing the support of the oil
+barrel, he joined her and shambled down the sandy track at her side,
+talking. Damaris hastened her step; but bent back and creaking breath
+notwithstanding, Proud kept pace with her, his speech and movements alike
+animated by a certain malicious glee.
+
+"William 'e give hisself an 'oliday," he explained, "to take the little
+dorgs and ferrets up to Butcher Cleave's ratting. Powerful sight of
+varmin there allers be round they sheds and places. Comes after the
+innards and trimmings they do, as bold as you please."
+
+"Oh, yes--no doubt. I understand," Damaris said, at once anxious to
+arrest the flow of his unsavoury eloquence yet to appear civil, since she
+was about to make use of his services.
+
+"'Normous great rats they be," he however continued, with evident relish.
+"'Normous and fierce as tigers, the rascals, what with feasting on flesh
+and fatness like so many lords. So 'mind the ferry for me, will you,
+Daddy,' William says, coming round where was I taking my morning pint
+over at the Inn. 'You're a wonderful valorous man of your years'--and so
+thank the powers, Miss, I be--'can handle the old scraw as clever as I
+can myself,' William says. 'There ain't much about water, salt or fresh,
+nor whatsoever moves on the face of it, nor down below in the belly of
+it, any man can teach you.' Which may seem putting it a bit high yet
+ain't no more than truth and justice, Miss, so you needn't fear to trust
+yourself across the ferry along of me."
+
+"I have no fear," Damaris answered curtly and loftily, holding herself
+very erect, her face slightly flushed, her eyes war-like.
+
+For he was a repulsive old man, and said repulsive things such as she had
+never heard put thus plainly into words before. She felt soiled by even
+this brief association with him. She wanted to hear no more of his ugly
+high-coloured talk, although of his skill as a waterman she entertained
+no doubt. Stepping lightly and quickly up on to the square stern of the
+ferry-boat, she went forward and kept her back resolutely turned upon the
+old fellow as he scrambled on board after her, shoved off and settled to
+the oars. The river was low, and sluggish from the long drought with
+consequently easy passage to the opposite bank. It took but a short five
+minutes to reach the jetty, crawling like some gigantic, damaged,
+many-legged insect out over the smooth gleaming water.
+
+Instead of the legal twopence, Damaris dropped a couple of shillings into
+Daddy Proud's eager hand--with a queenly little air; and, without
+waiting for his thanks, swung herself up on to the black planking and
+turned to go down the sand-strewn wooden steps.
+
+"Pleased to fetch 'e back, Miss, any hour you like to name," Proud called
+after her, standing up and fingering the shillings with one hand while
+with the other he steered the boat's side away from the slippery
+weed-grown piles.
+
+"Thank you, I don't quite know when I shall be back," she answered over
+her shoulder.
+
+For her main desire was to get quit of his unpleasant neighbourhood. She
+would go for a long walk by the coast-guard path across the sand-hills,
+right out to Stone Horse Head. Would stay out till sundown, in the hope
+that by then Jennifer might have seen fit to exchange the manly joys of
+ratting for his more prosaic duties at the ferry, and so save her from
+further association with his displeasing deputy.
+
+But, the ridge of the Bar reached, other thoughts and impulses took
+possession of her. For the sea this afternoon showed an infinitely
+beguiling countenance. Not as highway of the nations, still less as
+violent and incalculable, holding cruelties of storm and tempest in its
+heart, did it present itself to her view; but rather as some gentle,
+softly inviting and caressing creature decked forth in the changeful
+colours of a dove's neck and breast. Opaline haze veiled the horizon,
+shutting off all unrestful sense of distance. The tide was low and little
+waves, as of liquid crystal, chased one another over the gleaming sands.
+Out to where the haze met and covered it the smooth expanse of sea was
+unbroken by passing boat or ship; nor was any person within sight upon
+the long line of the beach. Damaris found herself alone--but deliciously
+alone, with this enchanted dream sea for companion in the sunshine, under
+the vault of tender blue sky.
+
+And, for the present at least, she asked nothing better, humanity being
+at a decided discount with her, thanks first to the extreme tiresomeness
+of Theresa Bilson and later the extreme unsavouriness of Timothy Proud.
+The element thus eliminated, nothing interfered, nothing jarred; so that
+she could yield herself to an ecstasy of contemplation, active rather
+than passive, in that imagination, breaking the bounds of personality,
+made her strangely one with all she looked on. Consciousness of self was
+merged in pure delight. Never could she remember to have felt so
+light-hearted, so happy with the spontaneous, unconditioned happiness
+which is sufficient to itself, unclouded by thought of what has been or
+what may be.
+
+Pushed by her own radiant emotion and an instinct, deriving from it, to
+draw even closer to that Everlasting Beauty of Things which is uncreated
+by and independent of the will and work of man, she ran down the slope,
+and sitting on the shingle slipped off her shoes and stockings. Took off
+her hat, too, and leaving the lot lying there, just above high-tide mark,
+gathered her skirts in one hand, and, bare-headed thus and bare-footed,
+danced out over the wet gleaming sands a graceful flying figure, until
+the little waves played and purred about her ankles. Her action was
+symbolic, born of the gay worship welling up within her, a giving of
+herself to the shining infinite of Nature as just now manifest--things
+divine and eternal glimmering through at her--in this fair hour of
+solitude and brooding peace.
+
+Till her mood softened, Damaris danced thus alone, unwitnessed on the
+shore. Then, as she sobered, happy still though the crisis of ecstasy had
+passed, smaller seeings began to charm her fancy and her eyes.--Pinkish
+yellow starfish, long ribbons of madder-red or emerald seaweed, their
+colours the more living and vivid for the clear water covering them.
+Presently a company of five birds--their mottled brown and olive bodies
+raised on stilt-like legs thin as a straw--claimed her notice. So
+bewitched was she by their quaint and pretty ways, that she could not but
+follow them as they chased one another in and out of the rippling waves,
+ran quickly and bowed catching something eatable floating upon the tide,
+scattered and then joined up into a joyous chorus of association with
+gentle twittering cries. Watching them, dreaming, standing now and again
+looking out over the sweet wonder of the placid sea, sometimes wading
+ankle deep, sometimes walking on the firm floor of uncovered sand,
+Damaris passed onward losing count of time.
+
+The birds led her eastward, up channel, to the half-mile distant nose of
+the Bar, round which the rivers, released at last from their narrow
+channel, sweep out into Marychurch Bay. Here, on a sudden, they took
+wing, and Damaris looking after them, bade them an unwilling farewell,
+for their innocent society had been sweet. And with that she became aware
+she was really quite tired and would be glad to rest awhile, the
+afternoon being young yet, before turning homeward. The longer she stayed
+the more hope there was of finding Jennifer at the ferry; and more than
+ever, the glamour of her wild hour of Nature worship still upon her, did
+she recoil from any sort of association with foul old Timothy Proud.
+
+Therefore she went up across the moist gleaming levels to the
+tide-line, and picking her way carefully among the black jumble of
+seaweed and sea-litter which marked it, sat down in a fan-shaped
+depression in the dry, clean, blown sand some few paces above. The
+sunshine covered it making it warm to her bare feet. The feel and blond
+colour of it brought to mind her reading of this morning--a passage in
+Eoethen telling of the striking of camp at dawn, the desert waiting to
+claim its own again and obliterate, with a single gesture, all sign or
+token of the passing sojourn of man. Clasping her hands behind her
+head, Damaris lay back, the warm sand all around her, giving beneath
+her weight, fitted itself into the curves of her body and limbs--only
+it visible and the soft blue of the sky above. For a little while she
+rested open-eyed in the bright silent stillness, and then, unknowing of
+the exact moment of surrender, she stretched with a fluttering sigh,
+turned on her side and dreamlessly slept.
+
+And, while she thus slept, two events took place eminently germane to the
+further unfolding of this history.--The weather changed, and the local
+degenerate, Abram Sclanders' half-idiot son--the poor "lippity-lop" who,
+according to Jennifer, had far better been "put away quiet-like at
+birth"--committed theft.
+
+Of the first event, Damaris gradually became sensible, before her actual
+awakening. She grew restless, her bed of sand seeming robbed of comfort,
+bleak and uneasy, so that she started up, presently, into a sitting
+position, rubbing her eyes with her fists baby-fashion, unable for the
+minute to imagine how or why she came to be lying like this out on the
+Bar, hatless, shoe and stockingless. Looking about her, still in
+questioning bewilderment, she observed that in the south-west a great
+bank of cloud had risen. It blotted out the sun, deadening all colour.
+The opaline haze, turned to a dull falling mist, closed down and in,
+covering the sand-hills and the dark mass of Stone Horse Head and even
+blurring the long straight lines of the sandbank and nearer shingle. The
+sea had risen, but noiselessly, creeping up and up towards her, no line
+of white marking the edge of its slothful oncoming.
+
+Damaris stood up, pulling her white jersey--the surface of it already
+furred with moisture--low over her hips. For she felt shivery, and the
+air was thick and chill to breathe causing a tightness in her throat.
+
+"The glory has departed, very much departed, so I had best make haste to
+depart also," she told herself; but told herself gallantly, smiling at
+her own strange plight in a spirit of adventure, discovering in it the
+excitement of novel experience.
+
+She picked her way over the shingle and black sea litter of high-water
+mark, and started to run along the narrow strip between it and the
+advancing tide. To run would circulate her blood, warm her through and
+keep her gallant humour up; still she had to own she found this heavy
+going, for her feet were numb and the sand seemed to pluck at and weigh
+them down. Her run slackened to a walk. Then she ventured a yard or two
+out into the shallow water, hoping there to meet with firmer foothold;
+but here it proved altogether too cold. She had the misfortune, moreover,
+to tread on the top end of a razor shell, buried upright, which cut the
+skin making her limp from pain and sharpness of smarting. So perforce,
+she took to the deep blown sand again above high-water mark, and ploughed
+along slowly enough in growing weariness and discomfort.
+
+Never, surely, was any half-mile so long as this between the place of her
+farewell to the mottled stilt-legged birds and subsequent sleeping, and
+the place where she left her hat and shoes and stockings! In the dimness
+and chill of the falling mist, it seemed to lengthen and lengthen to an
+altogether incomprehensible extent. Time and again she stopped and
+scanned the ground immediately before her, certain she should see there
+those so lightly discarded and now so earnestly desired items of
+clothing. Once in possession of them she would simply scurry home. For
+visions of warm, dry pretty garments, of Mary's, comely ministering
+presence, of tea, of lamp-light and--yes, she would allow herself that
+culminating luxury--of a fine log fire in the long sitting-room,
+presented themselves to her imagination in most alluring sequence--the
+spirit of adventure, meanwhile, as must be owned, beginning to sing small
+and hang a diminished head.
+
+But on a sudden, raising her eyes from their persistent search, Damaris
+realized she must have missed and already passed the spot. For she was
+close upon the tract of sand-hills--a picture of desolation in the sullen
+murk, the winding hollows between their pale formless elevations bearing
+a harsh growth of neutral tinted sword-like grasses.
+
+She had come too far by a quarter of a mile at least, so she judged, and
+must turn her face eastward again and laboriously plough her way back.
+But the return journey was crowned with no better success than the
+outward one. Carefully, methodically she quartered the beach; but simply
+her things weren't there, had vanished, leaving neither token or trace.
+
+She was confronted moreover by the unpleasant fact that it grew late.
+Soon the dusk would fall, its coming hastened by the mist, now settling
+into a steady drizzle of rain precursor of a dark and early night. To
+hunt any longer would be useless. She must give it up. Yet her maidenly
+pride, her sense of what is seemly and becoming, revolted from exposing
+herself to Timothy Proud's coarse leering glances or even--should he by
+luck be her waterman--to Jennifer's more respectful curiosity,
+dishevelled and but half-dressed as she was. And then the actual distance
+to be traversed appeared to her dishearteningly great. For she was
+weary--quite abominably weary now she came to think of it. Her feet were
+bruised and blistered. They ached. Her throat ached too, and she
+shivered. Cold, though it was, she must wait a minute or two and rest
+before attempting the ascent of the slope.
+
+Damaris sat down, pulling her skirts as low as they would come over her
+bare legs, and clasping her hands round her knees, bowed, huddled
+together to gain, if it might be, some sensation of warmth. For a little
+she thought of that only--warmth--her mind otherwise a blank. But soon
+the consuming sadness of the place in the waning light penetrated her
+imagination, penetrated, indeed, her whole being. Only a few hours ago
+she had danced here, in ecstasy born of the sunshine, the colour, the
+apparently inexhaustible beauty of things uncreated by, and independent
+of, the will and work of man. Contrast that scene, and the radiant
+emotion evoked by it, with this? Which was real, the enduring revelation?
+Was this truth; the other no more than mirage--an exquisite dissembling
+and lovely lie?
+
+Such thoughts are hardly wholesome at eighteen--hardly wholesome perhaps
+at any age, if life is to be lived sweetly, with honest profit to one's
+own soul and to the souls of others. Yet remembering back, down the dim
+avenues of childhood, Damaris knew she did not formulate the question,
+entertain the suspicion, for the first time. Only, until now, it had
+stayed in the vague, a shapeless nightmare horror, past which she could
+force herself to run with shut eyes. It didn't jump out of the vague,
+thank goodness, and bar her passage. But now no running or shutting of
+eyes availed. It had jumped out. She stared at it, and, in all its
+undermining power of discouragement, it stared back.--What if the deepest
+thing, the thing which alone lasted, the thing which, therefore, you
+were bound in the end to accept, to submit to, was just darkness, sorrow,
+loneliness of worn body and shrinking spirit, by the shore of a cold,
+dumb, and tenantless, limitless sea--what then?
+
+From which undesirable abyss of speculation she was aroused by the sound
+of her own name--"Damaris Verity, hey--Damaris Verity"--shouted, not
+roughly though in tones of urgent command, from above and behind her on
+the crest of the Bar. Along with it came the rattle of shifting shingle
+under a strong active tread.
+
+Hearing which the young girl's senses and faculties alike sprang to
+attention. She rose from her dejected attitude, stood up and faced round,
+forgetful of aches and weariness and of woeful ultimate questionings,
+while in glad surprise her heart went out to meet and welcome the--to
+her--best beloved being in this, no longer, sorry world.
+
+For even thus, at some fifty yards distant through the blur of falling
+rain, the figure presented to her gaze, in height, build, and fashion of
+moving, was delightfully familiar, as were the tones of the voice which
+had hailed her--if in not quite equal degree the manner of that hail.
+Some change in his plans must have taken place, or some letter miscarried
+advising her of her father's earlier return. Finding her out he had come
+to look for her.--This was perfectly as it should be. Had Colonel
+Carteret come home with him, she wondered. And then there flashed through
+her, with a singular vividness, recollection of another, long, long ago
+escapade--when as a still almost baby child she had stepped off alone, in
+daring experiment, and fallen asleep, in the open as to-day. But in
+surroundings how amazingly different!--A place of fountains, cypresses
+and palms, she curled up in a black marble chair, set throne fashion,
+upon a platform of blood red sandstone, an age-old Oriental garden
+outstretched below. Colonel Carteret--"the man with the blue eyes" as she
+always had called him--awakened her, bringing an adorable and, as it
+proved in the sequel, a tragic birthday gift.--Tragic because to it
+might, actually if indirectly, be traced the breaking up of her
+childhood's home in the stately Indian pleasure palace of the
+Sultan-i-bagh at Bhutpur, her separation from her father and exile--as
+she had counted it--to Europe.
+
+It is among the doubtful privileges of highly sensitized natures, such as
+Damaris', that, in hours of crisis, vision and pre-vision go hand in
+hand. As there flashed through her remembrance of that earlier sleep in
+the open, there flashed through her also conviction that history would
+still further repeat itself. Now, as then, the incident of sleep preluded
+the receipt of a gift, adorable perhaps, yet freighted with far-reaching
+consequences to herself and her future. Of just what that gift might
+consist she had no idea; but of its approach she felt as certain as of
+the approach of the man swinging down through the rain over the rattling
+pebbles. And her gladness of welcome declined somewhat. She could have
+cried off, begged for postponement. For she was very tired, after all.
+She didn't want anything now, anything which--however delightful in
+itself--demanded effort, demanded even the exertion of being very
+pleased. She shied away, in short. And then commendably rallied her
+forces, resolute not to be found unworthy or ungrateful.
+
+"Yes--come. I am here," she called in response to that lately heard
+calling of her name, desiring to make an act of faith whereby to assure
+herself she was indeed ready, and assure her hearer of her readiness to
+accept the impending gift.
+
+"I am here," she began again to affirm, but stopped abruptly, the words
+choking in her throat.
+
+For, as with decreasing distance the figure grew distinct, she saw, to
+her blank amazement, not Sir Charles Verity, her father, as she expected,
+but the blue reefer jacket, peaked cap, and handsome bearded face of
+Darcy Faircloth, the young merchant sea-captain, emerge from the blur of
+the wet. And the revulsion of feeling was so sharp, the shock at once so
+staggering and intimate--as summing up all the last ten days confused
+experience--that Damaris could not control herself. She turned away with
+a wail of distress, threw out her hands, and then, covering her eyes with
+them, bowed her head.
+
+The young man came forward and stood near her; but an appreciable time
+elapsed before he spoke. When he presently did so, his voice reached
+her as again singularly familiar in tone, though strange in diction and
+in accent.
+
+"I'm sorry if I startled you," he began, "but I hailed you just now, and
+you told me to come.--I concluded you meant what you said. Not, I'm
+afraid, that your giving your permission or withholding it would have
+made much difference in the upshot. Timothy Proud let on, in my hearing,
+that he set you across the river soon after two o'clock, and that there'd
+been no call for the ferry since. So I took one of my own boats and just
+came over to look for you--in case you might have met with some mishap or
+strayed among the sand-hills and couldn't find your"--
+
+Thus far he spoke with studied calm and restraint. But here, as though
+struck by a fresh and very objectionable idea, he broke out:
+
+"Nothing has happened has it? No cowardly brute has interfered with
+you or upset you? Dear God alive, don't tell me I'm too late, don't
+tell me that."
+
+Upon Damaris this sudden, though to her unaccountable, violence and heat
+acted as a cordial. She raised her head, pushing back the damp hair from
+her forehead, and displaying a proud if strained and weary face.
+
+"No," she said, "of course not. Who would venture to be rude to me? I
+have not seen anyone all the afternoon--until now, when you came. And,"
+she added by way of further explanation--she didn't want to be ungracious
+or unkind, but she did want, in justice to herself, to have this
+understood--"in the distance I didn't recognize you. I mistook you for
+someone else"--
+
+"Who else?" he took her up, and with a queer flicker--if of a smile, then
+one with a keenish edge to it--in his eyes and about his mouth.
+
+"For my father," Damaris answered. "It was a stupid mistake, because he
+is away staying in Norfolk for partridge shooting, and I have not any
+real reason to expect him home for several days yet."
+
+"But in this deceptive light," Faircloth took her up again, while--as she
+could not help observing--that flicker became more pronounced. It seemed
+silently to laugh and to mock.--"Oh! to be sure that accounts for your
+mistake as to my identity. One sees how it might very well come about."
+
+He took off his cap, and threw back his head looking up into the
+low wet sky.
+
+"At night all cats are grey, aren't they," he went on, "little ones as
+well as big? And it's close on night now, thanks to this dirty weather.
+So close on it, that--though personally I'm in no hurry--I ought to get
+you back to The Hard, or there'll be a regular hue and cry after
+you--rightly and probably too, if your servants and people have any
+notion of their duty."
+
+"I am quite ready," Damaris said.
+
+She strove to show a brave front, to keep up appearances; but she felt
+helpless and weak, curiously confused by and unequal to dealing with
+this masterful stranger--who yet, somehow did not seem like a stranger.
+Precisely in this was the root of her confusion, of her inability to
+deal with him.
+
+"But hardly as you are," he commented, on her announcement she was ready.
+"Let me help to put on your shoes and stockings for you first." And this
+he said so gently and courteously, that Damaris' lips began to quiver,
+very feminine and youthful shame at the indignity of her present plight
+laying hold on her.
+
+"I can't find them," she pitifully declared. "I have looked and looked,
+but I can't find them anywhere. I left my things just here. Can anyone
+have stolen them while I was out at the end of the Bar? It is so
+mysterious and so dreadfully tiresome. I should have gone home long ago,
+before the rain began, if I could have found them."
+
+And with that, the whole little story--childish or idyllic as you
+please--of sunshine and colour, of beguiling birds beguiling sea, of
+sleep, and uneasy awakening when the cloud-bank rising westward devoured
+the fair face of heaven, of mist and fruitless seeking, even some word of
+the fear which forever sits behind and peeps over the shoulder of all
+wonder and all beauty, got itself--not without eloquent passages--quickly
+yet gravely told. For the young man appeared to derive considerable
+pleasure from listening, from watching her and from questioning her
+too--still, gently and courteously though closely, as if each detail were
+of interest and of value.
+
+"And now you know all about it, Captain Faircloth," Damaris said in
+conclusion, essaying to laugh at her own discomfiture. "And I am very
+tired, so if you will be kind enough to row me across the ferry, I shall
+be grateful to you, and glad, please, to go home at once."
+
+"By all means," he answered. "Only, you know, I can't very well let you
+cut your feet to pieces on these cruel stones, so I am just going to
+carry you up over the Bar"--
+
+"No--no--I can perfectly well walk. I mean to walk--see," she cried.
+
+And started courageously up the rough ascent, only to slip, after a few
+paces, and to stagger. For as soon as she attempted to move, she felt
+herself not only weak, but oddly faint and giddy. She lurched forward,
+and to avoid falling instinctively clutched at her companion's
+outstretched hand. Exactly what passed between the young man and young
+girl in that hand-clasp--the first contact they had had of one
+another--it might seem far-reached and fantastic to affirm; yet that it
+steadied not only Damaris' trembling limbs, but her trembling and
+over-wrought spirit, is beyond question. For it was kind and more than
+kind--tender, and that with the tenderness of right and usage rather than
+of sentimental response to a passing sentimental appeal.
+
+"There, there," he said, "what's the use of working to keep up this
+little farce any longer? Just give in--you can't put off doing so in the
+end. Why not at once, then, accept defeat and spare both yourself and me
+pain? You are no more fit to walk, than you are fit to fly--to fly away
+from me!--That's what you want, isn't it? Ah! that flight will come, no
+doubt, all in good time.--But meanwhile, be sensible. Put your left arm
+round my neck--like this, yes. Then--just a little hoist, and, if you'll
+not worry but keep still, nothing's easier."
+
+As he spoke, Faircloth stooped, lightly and with no apparent exertion
+lifting her high, so that--she clasping his neck as instructed--the main
+weight of her body rested upon his shoulder. With his right arm he held
+her just above the waist, his left arm below her knees cradling her.
+
+"Now rest quiet," he said. "Know you are safe and think only of
+comfortable things--among them this one, if you care to, that for once in
+my life I am content."
+
+Yet over such yielding and treacherous ground, upward to the crown of the
+ridge and downward to the river, progress could not be otherwise than
+slow. Twilight, and that of the dreariest and least penetrable, overtook
+them before Faircloth, still carrying the white-clothed figure, reached
+the jetty. Here, at the bottom of the wooden steps he set Damaris down,
+led her up them and handed her into the boat--tied up to, and the tide
+being at the flood, now little below the level of the staging.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WHEREIN DAMARIS MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HIDDEN WAYS OF MEN
+
+
+Throughout their singular journey--save for briefest question and answer
+about her well-being at the commencement of it--the two had kept silence,
+as though conscious Faircloth's assertion of contentment struck a chord
+any resolution of which might imperil the simplicity of their relation.
+Thus far that relation showed a noble freedom from embarrassment. It
+might have continued to do so but for a hazardous assumption on his part.
+
+When first placing Damaris in the stern of the boat, the young man
+stripped off his jacket and, regardless of her vaguely expressed protest,
+wrapped it round her feet. It held the living warmth of his body; and,
+chilled, dazed, and spent, as Damaris was, that warmth curiously soothed
+her, until the ink-black boat floating upon the brimming, hardly less
+inky, water faded from her knowledge and sight. She drooped together,
+passing into a state more comparable to coma than to natural slumber, her
+will in abeyance, thought and imagination borne under by the immensity of
+her fatigue.
+
+As Faircloth, meanwhile, pulled clear of the outstanding piles of the
+jetty, he heard voices and saw lights moving down by the ferry on the
+opposite shore. But these, and any invitation they might imply, he
+ignored. If the hue and cry after Damaris, which he had prophesied, were
+already afoot, he intended to keep clear of it, studiously to give it the
+slip. To this end, once in the fairway of the river he headed the boat
+downstream, rowing strongly though cautiously for some minutes, careful
+to avoid all plunge of the oars, all swish of them or drip. Then, the
+lights now hidden by the higher level and scrub of the warren, he sat
+motionless letting the boat drift on the seaward setting current.
+
+The fine rain fell without sound. It shut out either bank creating a
+singular impression of solitude and isolation, and of endlessness too.
+There seemed no reason why it should ever cease. And this delusion of
+permanence, the enclosing soft-clinging darkness served to heighten. The
+passage of time itself seemed arrested--to-morrow becoming an
+abstraction, remote and improbable, which could, with impunity, be left
+out of the count. With this fantastic state of things, Faircloth had no
+quarrel. Though impatient of inaction, as a rule definite and autocratic
+enough, he really wasn't aware of having any particular use for
+to-morrow. Content still held sway. He was satisfied, profoundly, yet
+dreamingly, satisfied by an achievement long proposed, long waited for,
+the door upon which had opened to-day by the merest accident--if anything
+can justly be called accident, which he inclined to believe it could not.
+
+He had appointed, it should be added, a limit in respect of that
+achievement, which he forbade himself to pass; and it was his habit very
+rigidly to obey his own orders, however little disposed he might be to
+obey those of other people. He had received, as he owned, more than he
+could reasonably have expected, good measure pressed down and running
+over. The limit was now reached. He should practise restraint--leave the
+whole, affair where it stood. But the effect of this darkness, and of
+drifting, drifting, over the black water in the fine soundless rain, with
+its illusion of permanence, and of the extinction of to-morrow--and the
+retributions and adjustments in which to-morrow is so frequently and
+inconveniently fertile--enervated him, rendering him a comparatively easy
+prey to impulse, should impulse chance to be stirred by some adventitious
+circumstance. The Devil, it may be presumed, is very much on the watch
+for such weakenings of moral fibre, ready to pounce, at the very shortest
+notice, and make unholy play with them!
+
+To Faircloth's ruminative eyes, the paleness in the stern of the boat,
+indicating Damaris Verity's drooping figure, altered slightly in outline.
+Whereupon he shipped the oars skillfully and quietly, and going aft knelt
+down in front of her. Her feet were stretched out as, bowed together, she
+sat on the low seat. His jacket had slipped away exposing them to the
+weather, and the young man laying his hands on them felt them cold as in
+death. He held them, chafed them, trying to restore some degree of
+circulation. Finally, moved by a great upwelling of tenderness and of
+pity, and reckoning her, since she gave no sign, to be asleep, he bent
+down and put his lips to them.
+
+But immediately the girl's hands were upon his shoulders.
+
+"What are you doing, oh! what are you doing?" she cried.
+
+"Kissing your feet."
+
+Then the Devil, no doubt, flicking him, he let go restraint, disobeyed
+his own orders, raised his head, and looking at her as in the enfolding
+obscurity she leaned over him, said:
+
+"And, if it comes to that, who in all the round world has a better right
+than I, your brother, to kiss your feet?"
+
+For some, to him, intolerable and interminable seconds, Faircloth waited
+after he had shot his bolt. The water whispered and chuckled against the
+boat's sides in lazy undertones, as it floated down the sluggish stream.
+Beyond this there was neither sound nor movement. More than ever might
+time be figured to stand still. His companion's hands continued to rest
+upon his shoulders. Her ghostly, dimly discerned face was so near his own
+that he could feel, now and again, her breath upon his forehead; but she
+was silent. As yet he did not repent of his cruelty. The impulse which
+dictated it had not spent itself. Nevertheless this suspense tried him.
+He grew impatient.
+
+"Damaris," he said, at last, "speak to me."
+
+"How can I speak to you when I don't understand," she answered gravely.
+"Either you lie--which I should be sorry to accuse you of doing--or you
+tell me a very terrible thing, if, that is, I at all comprehend what you
+say.--Are you not the son of Mrs. Faircloth, who lives at the inn out by
+the black cottages?"
+
+"Yes, Lesbia Faircloth is my mother. And I ask for no better. She has
+squandered love upon me--squandered money, upon me too; but wisely and
+cleverly, with results. Still--" he paused--"well, it takes two,
+doesn't it, to make a man? One isn't one's mother's son only."
+
+"But Mrs. Faircloth is a widow," Damaris reasoned, in wondering
+directness. "I have heard people speak of her husband. She was married."
+
+"But not to my father. Do you ask for proofs--just think a minute. Whom
+did you mistake me for when I called you and came down over the Bar in
+the dusk?"
+
+"No--no--" she protested trembling exceedingly. "That is not possible.
+How could such a thing happen?"
+
+"As such things mostly do happen. It is not the first case, nor will it
+by a long way, I reckon, be the last. They were young, and--mayn't we
+allow--they were beautiful. That's often a good deal to do with these
+accidents. They met and, God help them, they loved."
+
+"No--no--" Damaris cried again.
+
+Yet she kept her hands on Faircloth's shoulders, clinging to him in the
+excessive travail of her innocent spirit--though he racked her--for
+sympathy and for help.
+
+"For whom, after all, did you take me?" he repeated. "If there wasn't
+considerable cause it would be incredible you should make such a mistake.
+Can you deny that I am hall-marked, that the fact of my parentage is
+written large in my flesh?"
+
+He felt her eyes fixed on him, painfully straining to see him through the
+rain and darkness; and, when she spoke again, he knew she knew that he
+did not lie.
+
+"But wasn't it wrong" she said.
+
+"I suppose so. Only as it gave me life and as I love life I'm hardly the
+person to deliver an unbiased opinion on that point."
+
+"Then you are not sad, you are not angry?" Damaris presently and rather
+unexpectedly asked.
+
+"Yes--at times both, but not often or for long together. As I tell you I
+love life--love it too well to torment myself much about the manner of my
+coming by it. It might show more refinement of feeling perhaps to hang my
+head and let a certain ugly word blast my prospects. But I don't happen
+to see the business that way. On the contrary I hope to get every ounce
+of advantage out of it I can--use it as a spur rather than a hobble. And
+I love my profession too. It gives you room and opportunity. I am waiting
+now for my first ship, my first command. That's a fine thing and a strong
+one. For your first ship is as a bride to you, and your first command
+makes you as a king among men. Oh! on a small scale I grant; but, as far
+as it reaches, your authority is absolute. On board your own ship you are
+master with a vengeance--if you like. And I do like."
+
+Faircloth said the last few words softly, but with a weight of meaning
+not to be misunderstood. He bent down, once more, chafed Damaris' feet
+and wrapped his jacket carefully round them.
+
+"And, while you and I are alone together, there is something--as we've
+spoken so freely--which I want to tell you, so that there may be no
+misconception about me or about what I want.--As men in my rank of life
+go, I am well off. Rich--again on a small scale; but with means
+sufficient to meet all my needs. I'm not a spend-thrift by nature,
+luckily. And I have amply enough not only to hold my own in my profession
+and win through, but to procure myself the pleasures and amusements I
+happen to fancy. I want you to remember that, please. Tell me is it quite
+clear to you?"
+
+"Yes," Damaris said, "you have made it quite clear."
+
+Yet for the first time he jarred on her, as with a more than superficial
+difference of breeding and of class. This mention of money offended her
+taste, seeming to lower the level upon which their extraordinary and--to
+her--terrible conversation had thus far moved. It hurt her with another
+kind of hurting--not magnificent, not absorbing, but just common. That in
+speaking of money he was protecting himself, proudly self-guarding his
+own honour and that of his mother, Lesbia Faircloth, never, in her
+innocence of what is mean and mercenary, occurred to Damaris.
+
+So she took her hands off his shoulders and clasped them in her lap.
+Clasped them with all her poor strength, striving even in this extreme,
+to maintain some measure of calm and of dignity. She must hold out, she
+told herself, just simply by force of will hold out, till she was away
+from him. After that, chaos--for thoughts, discoveries, apprehensions of
+possibilities in human intercourse hitherto undreamed of, were marshalled
+round her in close formation shoulder to shoulder. They only waited. An
+instant's yielding on her part, and they would be on to her, crushing
+down and in, making her brain reel, her mind stagger under their stifling
+crowded assault.
+
+"Go back and row," she said, at once imploring and imperious. "Row
+quickly. I am very tired. I am cold. I want to be at home--to be in my
+own place."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RECOUNTING AN ASTONISHING DEPOSITION
+
+
+Theresa Bilson bustled upstairs. Barring the absence of the extra brake,
+which had caused--and for this she could not be sorry since didn't it
+justify her "attitude" towards her recalcitrant ex-pupil?--some
+inconvenient overcrowding in transit to and from the station, and barring
+the rain, which set in between five and six o'clock, the expedition to
+Harchester passed off with considerable _eclat_. Such, in any case, was
+Theresa's opinion, she herself having figured conspicuously in the
+foreground. During the inspection of the Cathedral the Dean paid her
+quite marked attention; thanks, in part, to her historical and
+archaeological knowledge--of which she made the most, and to her
+connection with the Verity family--of which she made the most also. In
+precisely what that connection might consist, the learned and timid old
+gentleman, being very deaf and rather near-sighted, failed to gather. He
+determined, however, to be on the safe side.
+
+"Our genial Archdeacon," he said, "and his distinguished kinsman, Sir
+Charles? Ah! yes--yes--indeed--to be sure--with the greatest pleasure."
+
+And he motioned the blushing Theresa to fall into step with him, and with
+Dr. Horniblow, at the head of the Deadham procession.
+
+The afterglow of that triumphal progress irradiated her consciousness
+still, when--after depositing the Miss Minetts upon their own doorstep,
+with playful last words recalling the day's mild jokes and rallyings--she
+drove on to The Hard to find the household there in a state of sombre and
+most admired confusion.
+
+Thus to arrive home in possession of a fine bag of news, only to
+discover an opposition and far finer bag ready awaiting you may well
+prove trying to the most high-souled and amiable of temper. By this time,
+between success and fatigue, Theresa could not be justly described as
+either high-souled or sweet tempered. She was at once inflated and on
+edge, and consequently hotly indignant, as though the unfairest march
+possible had been stolen upon her.
+
+She bustled upstairs, and crossing the landing turned into the schoolroom
+passage--a long, lamp-lit vista, hung with old Chinese wall-paper, the
+running pattern of buds and flowers, large out of all proportion to the
+bridges, palms, pagodas and groups of little purple and blue-clad men and
+women disposed, in dwindling perspective, upon its once white surface.
+Half-way along the passage, their backs towards her, Mary and Mrs.
+Cooper, the cook--a fair, mild middle-aged, and cow-like person, of ample
+proportions--stood conversing in smothered tones.
+
+"And it's my belief he's been and told her, or anyhow that she guesses,
+pore dear young lady," the latter, with upraised hands, lamented.
+
+Theresa just caught these strange words. Caught too, Mary's hurried
+rejoinder--"For mercy's sake, Mrs. Cooper, not a hint of that to any
+living soul"--before the two women, sensible of the swish and patter of
+her self-important entry, turned and moved forward to meet, or--could it
+be?--to intercept her. Their faces bore a singular expression, in Mrs.
+Cooper's case of sloppy, in Mary's of stern yet vivid alarm. Deeply
+engaged though she was with her private grievance, Miss Bilson could not
+but observe this. It made her nervous.
+
+"What is the meaning," she began, her voice shrill with agitation, "of
+the extraordinary story about Miss Damaris which Laura reports to me?
+Someone is evidently very much in fault."
+
+"Please don't speak quite so loud, Miss," Mary firmly admonished her.
+"I've just got Miss Damaris quieted off to sleep, and if she's roused up
+again, I won't answer for what mayn't happen."
+
+"But what has happened? I insist upon knowing," Theresa declared, in
+growing offence and agitation.
+
+"Ah! that's just what we should be thankful enough to have you tell us,
+Miss," Mrs. Cooper chimed in with heavy and reproachful emphasis upon
+the pronouns.
+
+To even the mild and cow-like revenge is sweet. Though honestly
+distressed and scared, the speaker entertained a most consoling
+conviction she was at this moment getting even with Theresa Bilson and
+cleverly paying off old scores.
+
+"The pore dear young lady's caught her death as likely as not, out
+there across the river in the wet, let alone some sneaking rascal
+making off with her stockings and shoes. When I saw her little naked
+feet, all blue with the cold, it made my heart bleed, regularly bleed,
+it did. I could only give thanks her Nanna, pore Mrs. Watson, who
+worshipped the very ground Miss Damaris trod on, was spared living to
+see that afflicting sight."
+
+Then with a change of tone exasperating--as it was designed to be--to
+one, at least, of her hearers, she added:
+
+"I'll have that soup ready against Miss Damaris wakes, Mary, in case she
+should fancy it. Just touch the bell, will you, and I'll bring it up
+myself. It's not suitable to give either of the girls a chance for
+prying. They're a deal too curious as it is. And I'm only too pleased to
+watch with you, turn and turn about, as I told you, whenever you feel to
+require a rest. Lizzie will have to see to the cooking anyhow--except
+what's wanted for Miss Damaris. I couldn't put my mind into kitchen work
+to-night, not if you paid me ever so."
+
+And on large flat feet she moved away towards the back-staircase, leading
+down to the offices from the far end of the passage, leaving an odour of
+pastry behind her and of cloves.
+
+"To think of what to-morrow may bring, ah! dear me," she murmured
+as she went.
+
+During the ten minutes or so which immediately followed Theresa Bilson
+boxed the compass in respect of sensations, the needle, as may be noted,
+invariably quivering back to the same point--namely, righteous anger
+against Damaris. For was not that high-spirited maiden's imperviousness
+to influence and defiance of authority--her, Theresa's, influence and
+authority--the mainspring of all this disastrous complication? Theresa
+found it convenient to believe so, and whip herself up to almost frantic
+determination in that belief. It was so perfectly clear. All the more
+clear because her informant, Mary, evidently did not share her belief.
+Mary's account of to-day's most vexatious transactions betrayed
+partizanship and prejudice, such as might be expected from an uneducated
+person, offering--as Theresa assured herself--a pertinent example of the
+workings of "the servant mind." Nevertheless uneasy suspicion dogged her,
+a haunting though unformulated dread that other persons--one person above
+all others--might endorse Mary's prejudices rather than her own, so
+reasonably based, conviction.
+
+"If only Mr. Patch had been in there'd have been somebody to depend on,"
+the woman told her, recounting the anxious search after vanished Damaris.
+"But he'd driven into Marychurch of course, starting ever so early
+because of the parcels he had your orders to call for at the several
+shops, before meeting the train. And the gardeners had left work on
+account of the wet; so we'd nobody to send to make enquiries anywhere
+except Tolling, and that feather-head Alfred, who you can't trust half a
+minute out of your sight." Here she paused in her narrative and made a
+move, adroitly driving Theresa Bilson before her out on to the landing,
+thus putting a greater distance between that tormented spinster and the
+neighbourhood of Damaris' bed-chamber. Her handsome brown eyes held the
+light of battle and her colour was high. She straightened a chair,
+standing against the wall at the stair-head, with a neatly professional
+hand in passing.
+
+"Mrs. Cooper and I were fairly wild waiting down on the sea-wall with the
+lantern, thinking of drowning and--worse,--when"--she glanced sharply at
+her companion and, lowering her eyes altered the position of the chair by
+a couple of inches--"when Captain Faircloth's boat came up beside the
+breakwater and he carried Miss Damaris ashore and across the garden."
+
+"Stop"--Theresa broke in--"I do not follow you. Faircloth, Captain
+Faircloth? You are not, I earnestly hope, speaking of the owner of that
+low public-house on the island?"
+
+"Yes--him," Mary returned grimly, her eyes still lowered.
+
+"And do you mean me to understand that this young man carried Miss
+Damaris--actually carried her"--Miss Bilson choked and cleared her throat
+with a foolish little crowing sound--"carried her all the way into the
+house--in his arms?"
+
+"Yes, in his arms, Miss. How else would you have had him carry her?--And,
+as gentle and careful as any woman could, too--into the house and right
+upstairs here"--pointing along the passage as if veritably beholding the
+scene once more--"and into her own bedroom."
+
+"How shocking. How extremely improper!"
+
+Theresa beat her fat little hands hysterically together. She credited
+herself with emotions of the most praiseworthy and purest; ignorant that
+the picture conjured up before her provoked obscure physical jealousies,
+obscure stirrings of latent unsatisfied passion. More than ever, surely,
+did the needle quiver back to that fixed point of most righteous anger.
+
+"Such--such a proceeding cannot have been necessary. It ought not to have
+been permitted. Why did not Miss Damaris walk?"
+
+"Because she was in a dead faint, and we'd all the trouble in life to
+bring her round."
+
+"Indeed," she said, and that rather nastily. "I am sorry, but I cannot
+but believe Miss Damaris might have made an effort to walk--with your
+assistance and that of Cooper, had you offered it. As I remarked at
+first, someone is evidently very much to blame. The whole matter must be
+thoroughly sifted out, of course. I am disappointed, for I had great
+confidence in you and Cooper--two old servants who might really have been
+expected to possess some idea of the--the respect due to their master's
+daughter. What will Sir Charles say when he hears of this objectionable
+incident?"
+
+"That's just what Mrs. Cooper and I are wondering, Miss," Mary took her
+up with so much meaning that Miss Bilson inwardly quailed, sensible of
+having committed a rather egregious blunder. This she made efforts to
+repair by sheering off hurriedly on another tack.
+
+"Not that I shall trouble Sir Charles with the matter, unless
+circumstances arise which compel me to do so--as a duty. My great object,
+of course, is at all times to spare him any domestic annoyance."
+
+She began pulling off her gloves, a new pair and tight. Her hands were
+moist and the glove-fingers stuck, rendering their removal lengthy and
+difficult.
+
+"To-morrow I shall have a thorough explanation with Miss Damaris and
+decide what action it is my duty to take after hearing her version of the
+events of this afternoon. I should prefer speaking to her to-night--"
+
+"Miss Damaris isn't fit to talk about anything to-night."
+
+Theresa pulled at the right-hand glove--the kid gave with a little
+shriek, the thumb splitting out. She was in a state of acute indecision.
+Could she retire from this contest without endangering her authority,
+without loss of prestige, or must she insist? She had no real wish to
+hasten to her ex-pupil's bedside. She would be glad to put off doing so,
+glad to wait. She was conscious of resentment rather than affection. And
+she felt afraid, unformulated suspicion, unformulated dread, again
+dogging her. That Damaris was really ill, she did not believe for an
+instant. Damaris had excellent health. The maids exaggerated. They
+delighted in making mysteries. Uneducated persons are always absurdly
+greedy of disaster, lugubriously credulous.--Yes, on the whole she
+concluded to maintain her original attitude, the attitude of yesterday
+and this morning; concluded it would be more telling to keep up the
+fiction of disgrace--because--Theresa did not care to scrutinize her own
+motives or analyse her own thought too closely. She was afraid, and she
+was jealous--jealous of Damaris' beauty, of the great love borne her by
+her father, jealous of the fact that a young man--hadn't she, Theresa,
+seen the young sea-captain once or twice in the village recently and been
+fluttered by his notable good looks?--had rescued the girl, and carried
+her home, carried her up here across the landing and along the familiar
+schoolroom passage, with its patterned Chinese wall-paper, gently and
+carefully, in his arms.
+
+And these qualifying terms--gentle and careful--rankled to the point even
+of physical disturbance, so that Miss Bilson again became guilty of
+inelegantly choking, and clearing her throat for the second time with a
+foolish crowing sound.
+
+"I will postpone my interview with Miss Damaris until after breakfast
+to-morrow," she said, thus leaving Mary Fisher virtually, if not
+admittedly, master of the field.
+
+But long before breakfast time, in the grey and mournful autumn
+morning, Patch rattled the dog-cart the seven miles into Stourmouth, as
+fast as the black horse could travel, to fetch Damaris' old friend, the
+retired Indian Civil surgeon, Dr. McCabe. For, coming to herself, in
+the intervals of distracted fever dreams, she had asked for him, going
+back by instinct to the comfort of his care of her in childish
+illnesses long ago. Since she was ill enough, so Mary said, to need a
+doctor, let it be him.
+
+"Not Mr. Cripps out of the village, or Dr. Risdon from Marychurch. I
+won't see them. I will not see anyone from near here. Keep them away from
+me," she commanded. "I know Miss Bilson will try to send for one or the
+other. But I won't see either. Promise you'll keep them away."
+
+When, after his visit, Theresa Bilson, considerably flustered and
+offended, found McCabe breakfasting in the dining-room and offered
+profuse apologies for the inconvenience to which he must have been put by
+so early and unnecessary a call, the tender-hearted and garrulous, but
+choleric Irishman cut her uncommonly short.
+
+"And would you be supposing then, that if the dear blessed child should
+be desirous of consulting me I wouldn't have rejoiced to come to her a
+thousand times as early and from ten thousand times as far?" he enquired,
+between large mouthfuls of kidney and fried bacon. "The scheming little
+pudding-faced governess creature, with a cherry nose and an envious eye
+to her"--he commented to himself.
+
+"But you do not apprehend anything serious?" Theresa said
+stiffly--"Merely a slight chill?"
+
+"With a temperature dancing up and down like a mad thing between a
+hundred and one and a hundred and three? I'm dashed if I like the looks
+of her at all, at all, Miss Bilson; and I am well acquainted with her
+constitution and her temperament. She's as delicate a piece of feminine
+mechanism as it's ever been my fortune to handle, and has been so from a
+child. Mind and body so finely interwoven that you can't touch the one
+without affecting the other--that is where danger comes in.--And I am
+glad to find she has so competent a nurse as Mary Fisher--a wholesome
+woman and one to put faith in. I have given my full instructions to her."
+
+"But I"--Theresa began fussily, her face crimson.
+
+"Oh! I don't doubt you're devotion itself; only my first consideration is
+my patient, and so I make free to use my own judgment in the selection of
+my assistants. No disrespect to you, my dear lady. You are at home in
+more intellectual spheres than that of the sick-room. And now," he wiped
+his mouth with his napkin, twinkling at her over the top of it with small
+blue-grey eyes, at once merry, faithful, and cunning--"I'll be bidding
+you good-bye till the evening. I have told Mary Fisher I'll be glad to
+sleep here to-night. And I'll despatch a telegram to Sir Charles on my
+way through the village."
+
+"Sir Charles?" Theresa cried.
+
+"Yes," he answered her. "I find the darling girl's illness as
+serious as that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A SOUL AT WAR WITH FACT
+
+
+The deepest and most abiding demand of all sentient creatures, strong and
+weak alike, is for safety, or, that being unattainable, for a sense of
+safety, an illusion even of safety.
+
+This, so universal demand, dictated, in Damaris' case, her prayer for Dr.
+McCabe's attendance. He belonged to the safeties of her childhood, to the
+securely guarded, and semi-regal state--as, looking back, she recalled
+it--of the years when her father held the appointment of Chief
+Commissioner at Bhutpur. Dr. McCabe was conversant with all that; the
+sole person available, at this juncture, who had lot or part in it. And,
+as she had foreseen--when drifting down the tide-river in the rain and
+darkness--once the supporting tension of Faircloth's presence removed,
+chaos would close in on her. It only waited due opportunity. That
+granted, as a tempest-driven sea it would submerge her. In the welter of
+the present, she clutched at the high dignities and distinctions of the
+past as at a lifebelt. Not vulgarly, in a spirit of self-aggrandizement;
+but in the simple interests of self-preservation, as a means of keeping
+endangered sanity afloat. For the distinctions and dignities of that
+period were real too, just as uncontrovertible a contribution to her
+knowledge of men and of things, just as vital an element in her
+experience, as chaos let loose on her now. The one in no degree
+invalidated the truth or actuality of the other.
+
+But to keep this in mind, to remember it all the time, while imagination
+galloped with fever brought on by chill and exposure, and reason
+wandered, losing touch with plain commonsense through the moral shock she
+had sustained, was difficult to the point of impossibility. She needed a
+witness, visible and material, to the fact of those former happier
+conditions; and found it, quaintly enough, in the untidy person and
+humorous, quarrelsome, brick-dust coloured face--as much of the said
+face, that is, as was discoverable under the thick stiff growth of sandy
+hair surrounding and invading it--of the Irish doctor, as he sat by her
+bed, ministered to and soothed her with reverent and whimsical delicacy.
+
+As long as he was there, her room retained its normal, pleasant and
+dainty aspect. All Damaris' little personal effects and treasures
+adorning dressing and writing-tables, the photographs and ornaments upon
+the mantelshelf, her books, the prints and pictures upon the walls--even
+the white dimity curtains and covers, trellised with small faded pink and
+blue roses--seemed to smile upon her, kindly and confiding. They wanted
+to be nice, to console and encourage her--McCabe holding them in place
+and in active good-will towards her, somehow, with his large freckled,
+hairy-backed hands. But let him go from the room, let him leave her, and
+they turned wicked, behaving as they had behaved throughout the past
+rather dreadful night and adding to the general chaos by tormenting
+tricks and distortions of their own.
+
+The beloved photographs of her father, in particular, were cruel. They
+grew inordinately large, stepped out of their frames, and stalked to and
+fro in troops and companies. The charcoal drawing of him--done last year
+by that fine artist, James Colthurst, as a study for the portrait he was
+to paint--hanging between the two western windows, at right angles to her
+bed where she could always see it, proved the worst offender. It did not
+take the floor, it is true, but remained in its frame upon the wall. Yet
+it too came alive, and looked full at her, compelling her attention,
+dominating, commanding her; while, slowly, deliberately it changed, the
+features slightly losing their accentuation, growing youthful, softer in
+outline, the long drooping moustache giving place to a close-cut beard.
+The eyes alone stayed the same, steady, luminous, a living silence in
+them at once formidable and strangely sad. Finally--and this the poor
+child found indescribably agitating and even horrible--their silence was
+broken by a question. For they asked what she, Damaris, meant to say,
+meant to do, when he--her father, the all-powerful Commissioner Sahib of
+her babyhood's faith and devotion--came home here, came back?
+
+Yet whose eyes, after all, were they which thus asked? Was it not, rather
+the younger man, the bearded one, who claimed, and of right, an answer to
+that question? And upon Damaris it now dawned that these two, distinct
+yet interchangeable personalities--imprisoned, as by some evil magic in
+one picture--were in opposition, in violent and impious conflict, which
+conflict she was called upon, yet was powerless, to avert or to assuage.
+
+Not once but many times--since the transformation was persistently
+recurrent--the girl turned her face to the wall to gain relief from the
+sight of it and the demand it so fearfully embodied, pressing her dry
+lips together lest any word should escape them. For the whole matter, as
+she understood it was secret, sacred too as it was agonizing. No one must
+guess what lay at the root of her present suffering--not even comfortable
+devoted Mary, nor that invaluable lifebelt, Dr. McCabe. She held the
+honour of both those conflicting interchangeable personalities in her
+hands; and, whether she were strong enough to adjust their differences or
+not, she must in no wise betray either of them. The latent motherhood in
+her cried out to protect and to shield them both, to spare them both. For
+in this stage of the affair, while the hallucinations of deadly fever--in
+a sense mercifully--confused her, its grosser aspects did not present
+themselves to her mind. She wandered through mazes, painful enough to
+tread; but far removed from the ugliness of vulgar scandal. That her
+sacred secret, for instance, might be no more than a _secret de
+Polichinelle_ suspected by many, did not, so far, occur to her.
+
+Believing it to be her exclusive property, therefore, she, inspired by
+tender cunning, strove manfully to keep it so. To that end she made play
+with the purely physical miseries of her indisposition.--With shivering
+fits and scorching flushes, cold aching limbs and burning, aching head.
+With the manifold distractions of errant blood which, leaving her heart
+empty as a turned-down glass, drummed in her ears and throbbed behind her
+eyeballs. These discomforts were severely real enough, in all conscience,
+to excuse her for being self-occupied and a trifle selfish; to justify a
+blank refusal to receive Theresa Bilson, or attempt to retail and discuss
+the events of yesterday. All she craved was quiet, to be left alone, to
+lie silent in the quiet light of the covered grey day.
+
+In the earlier hours of it, silver rain showers travelled across the sea
+to spend themselves, tearfully, against the panes of her bedroom
+windows. But towards evening the cloud lifted, revealing a watery
+sunset, spread in timid reds and yellows behind Stone Horse Head and the
+curving coast-line beyond, away to Stourmouth and Barryport. The faint
+tentative colours struck in long glinting shafts between the trunks and
+branches of the stone pines and Scotch firs in the so-called
+Wilderness--a strip of uncultivated land within the confines of the
+grounds dividing the gardens from the open Warren to the West--and
+gleamed in at the windows, faintly dyeing the dimity hangings and
+embroidered linen counterpane of Damaris' bed.
+
+Throughout the afternoon she had been less restless. So that Mary Fisher,
+judging her to be fairly asleep, some five minutes earlier had folded her
+needlework together, and, leaving the chair where she sat sewing, went
+softly from the room.
+
+But that brightening of sunset disturbed Damaris, bringing her slowly
+awake. For a time she lay watching, though but half consciously the
+tinted radiance as--the trees now stirred by a little wind drawing out of
+the sunset--it shifted and flitted over the white surfaces. At first it
+pleased her idle fancy. But presently distressed her, as too thin, too
+chill, too restlessly unsubstantial, the veriest chippering ghost of
+colour and of light. It affected her with a desolating sadness as of
+failure; of great designs richly attempted but petering out into a
+pitiful nothingness; of love which aped and mimicked, being drained of
+all purpose and splendour of hot blood; of partings whose sorrow had lost
+its savour, yet which masqueraded in showy crape for a heart-break long
+grown stale and obsolete.
+
+Her temperature rushed up; and she threw off the bedclothes, raising
+herself on her elbow, while the shafts of thin brightness wavered
+fitfully. Through them she saw the photographs of her father step out of
+their frames again, and growing very tall and spare, stalk to and fro.
+Other figures joined them--those of women. Her poor dear Nannie, in the
+plain quaker-grey cotton gown and black silk apron she used to wear, even
+through the breathless hot-weather days, at the Sultan-i-bagh long ago.
+And Henrietta Pereira, too, composed and delicately sprightly, arrayed in
+full flounced muslins and fine laces with an exquisiteness of high
+feminine grace and refinement which had enthralled her baby soul and
+senses, and, which held her captive by their charm even yet. A handsome,
+high-coloured full-breasted, Eurasian girl, whom she but dimly
+recollected, was there as well. And with these another--carrying very
+certainly no hint of things oriental about her--an English woman and of
+the people, in dull homely clothing, grave of aspect and of bearing; yet
+behind whose statuesque and sternly patient beauty a great flame seemed
+to quiver, offering sharp enough contrast to the frail glintings of the
+rain-washed sunset amid which she, just now, moved.
+
+At sight of the last comer, Damaris started up, tense with wonder and
+excitement, since she knew--somehow--this final visitant belonged not to
+the past so much as to the present, that her power was unexhausted and
+would go forward to the shaping of the coming years. Which knowledge drew
+confirmation from what immediately followed. For, as by almost
+imperceptible degrees the brightness faded in the west, the figures, so
+mysteriously peopling the room, faded out also, until only the woman in
+homely garments was left. By her side stood the charcoal drawing of Sir
+Charles Verity from off the wall--or seemed to do so, for almost at
+once, Damaris saw that dreaded interchange of personality again take
+place. Saw the strongly marked features soften in outline, the face grow
+bearded yet younger by full thirty years.
+
+Both the woman and the young man looked searchingly at her; and in the
+eyes of both she read the same question--what did she mean to do, what to
+say, when her father, the object of her adoration, came home to her, came
+back to Deadham Hard?
+
+"I will do right," she cried out loud to them in answer, "Only trust me.
+I am so tired and it is all so difficult to believe and to understand.
+But I am trying to understand. I shall understand, if you will give me
+time and not hurry me. And, when I understand, indeed, indeed, you may
+trust me, whatever it costs, to do right."
+
+Just then Mary opened the door, entering quickly, and behind her came Dr.
+McCabe, to find Damaris talking, talking wildly, sitting up, parched and
+vivid with fever, in the disordered bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+TELLING HOW TWO PERSONS, OF VERY DIFFERENT MORAL CALIBRE, WERE COMPELLED
+TO WEAR THE FLOWER OF HUMILIATION IN THEIR RESPECTIVE BUTTONHOLES
+
+
+Cross-country connections by rail were not easy to make, with the
+consequence that Sir Charles Verity,--Hordle, gun-cases, bags and
+portmanteaux, in attendance--did not reach The Hard until close
+upon midnight.
+
+Hearing the brougham at last drive up, Theresa Bilson felt rapturously
+fluttered. Her course had been notably empty of situations and of
+adventure; drama, as in the case of so many ladies of her profession--the
+pages of fiction notwithstanding--conspicuously cold-shouldering and
+giving her the go-by. Now, drama, and that of richest quality might
+perhaps--for she admitted the existence of awkward conjunctions--be said
+to batter at her door. She thought of the Miss Minetts, her ever-willing
+audience. She thought also--as so frequently during the last, in some
+respects, extremely unsatisfactory twenty-four hours--of Mr. Rochester
+and of Jane Eyre. Not that she ranged herself with Jane socially or as to
+scholastic attainments. In both these, as in natural refinement,
+propriety and niceness of ideas, she reckoned herself easily to surpass
+that much canvassed heroine. The flavour of the evangelical
+charity-school adhered--incontestably it adhered, and that to Jane's
+disadvantage. No extravagance of Protestantism or of applied
+philanthropy, thank heaven, clouded Theresa's early record. The genius of
+Tractarianism had rocked her cradle, and subsequently ruled her studies
+with a narrowly complacent pedantry all its own. Nevertheless in moments
+of expansion, such as the present, she felt the parallel between her own
+case and that of Jane did, in certain directions, romantically hold.
+Fortified by thought of the Miss Minetts' agitated interest in all which
+might befall her, she indulged in imaginary conversations with that great
+proconsul, her employer--the theme of which, purged of lyrical
+redundancies, reduced itself to the somewhat crude announcement that
+"your daughter, yes, may, alas, not impossibly be taken from you; but I,
+Theresa, still remain."
+
+When, however, a summons to the presence of the said employer actually
+reached her, the bounce born of imaginary conversations, showed a
+tendency, as is its habit, basely to desert her and soak clean away. She
+had promised herself a little scene, full of respectful solicitude, of
+sympathy discreetly offered and graciously accepted, a drawing together
+through the workings of mutual anxiety leading on to closer intercourse,
+her own breast, to put it pictorially, that on which the stricken parent
+should eventually and gratefully lean. But in all this she was
+disappointed, for Sir Charles did not linger over preliminaries. He came
+straight and unceremoniously to the point; and that with so cold and
+lofty a manner that, although flutterings remained, they parted company
+with all and any emotions even remotely allied to rapture.
+
+Charles Verity stood motionless before the fire-place in the long
+sitting-room. He still wore a heavy frieze travelling coat, the fronts of
+it hanging open. His shoulders were a trifle humped up and his head bent,
+as he looked down at the black and buff of the tiger skin at his feet.
+When Theresa approached with her jerky consequential little walk--pinkly
+self-conscious behind her gold-rimmed glasses--he glanced at her,
+revealing a fiercely careworn countenance, but made no movement to shake
+hands with or otherwise greet her. This omission she hardly noticed,
+already growing abject before his magnificence--for thus did his
+appearance impress her--which, while claiming her enthusiastic
+admiration, enjoined humility rather than the sentimental expansions in
+which her imaginary conversations had so conspicuously abounded.
+
+"I have seen Dr. McCabe," he began. "His report of Damaris' condition is
+very far from reassuring. He tells me her illness presents peculiar
+symptoms, and is grave out of all proportion to its apparent cause. This
+makes me extremely uneasy. It is impossible to question her at present.
+She must be spared all exertion and agitation. I have not attempted to
+see her yet."
+
+He paused, while anger towards her ex-pupil waxed warm in Theresa once
+again. For the pause was eloquent, as his voice had been when speaking
+about his daughter, of a depth of underlying tenderness which filled his
+hearer with envy.
+
+"I must therefore ask you, Miss Bilson," he presently went on, "to give
+me a detailed account of all that took place yesterday. It is important I
+should know exactly what occurred."
+
+Whereat Theresa, perceiving pitfalls alike in statement and in
+suppression of fact, hesitated and gobbled to the near neighbourhood of
+positive incoherence, while admitting, and trying to avoid admitting, how
+inconveniently ignorant of precise details she herself was.
+
+"Perhaps I erred in not more firmly insisting upon an immediate enquiry,"
+she said. "But, at the time, alarm appeared so totally uncalled for. I
+assumed, from what was told me, and from my knowledge of the strength of
+Damaris' constitution, that a night's rest would fully restore her to her
+usual robust state of health, and so deferred my enquiry. The servants
+were excited and upset, so I felt their account might be misleading--all
+they said was so confused, so far from explicit. My position was most
+difficult, Sir Charles," she assured him and incidentally, also, assured
+herself. "I encountered most trying opposition, which made me feel it
+would be wiser to wait until this morning. By then, I hoped, the maids
+would have had time to recollect themselves and recollect what is
+becoming towards their superiors in the way of obedience and respect."
+
+Charles Verity threw back his head with a movement of impatience, and
+looked down at her from under his eyelids--in effect weary and a
+little insolent.
+
+"We seem to be at cross purposes, Miss Bilson," he said. "You do not, I
+think quite follow my question. I did not ask for the servants' account
+of the events of yesterday--whatever those events may have been--but for
+your own."
+
+"Ah! it is so unfortunate, so exceedingly unfortunate," Theresa broke
+out, literally wringing her hands, "but a contingency, an accident, which
+I could not possibly have foreseen--I cannot but blame Damaris, Sir
+Charles"--
+
+"Indeed?" he said.
+
+"No, truly I cannot but blame her for wilfulness. If she had
+consented--as I so affectionately urged--to join the choir treat to
+Harchester, this painful incident would have been spared us."
+
+"Am I to understand that you went to Harchester, leaving my daughter
+here alone?"
+
+"Her going would have given so much pleasure in the parish," Theresa
+pursued, dodging the question with the ingenuity of one who scents mortal
+danger. "Her refusal would, I knew, cause sincere disappointment. I could
+not bring myself to accentuate that disappointment. Not that I, of
+course, am of any importance save as coming from this house, as--as--in
+some degree your delegate, Sir Charles."
+
+"Indeed?" he said.
+
+"Yes, indeed," Theresa almost hysterically repeated.
+
+For here--if anywhere--was her chance, as she recognized. Never again
+might she be thus near to him, alone with him--the normal routine made it
+wholly improbable.--And at midnight too. For the unaccustomed lateness of
+the hour undoubtedly added to her ferment, provoking in her obscure and
+novel hopes and hungers. Hence she blindly and--her action viewed from a
+certain angle--quite heroically precipitated herself. Heroically, because
+the odds were hopelessly adverse, her equipment, whether of natural or
+artificial, being so conspicuously slender. Her attempt had no backing in
+play of feature, felicity of gesture, grace of diction. The commonest
+little actress that ever daubed her skin with grease-paint, would have
+the advantage of Theresa in the thousand and one arts by which, from
+everlasting, woman has limed twigs for the catching of man. Her very
+virtues--respectability, learning, all the proprieties of her narrowly
+virtuous little life--counted for so much against her in the present
+supreme moment of her self-invented romance.
+
+"You hardly, I dare say," she pursued--"how should you after the
+commanding positions you have occupied?--appreciate the feelings of the
+inhabitants of this quiet country parish towards you. But they have a
+lively sense, believe me, of the honour you confer upon them, all and
+severally--I am speaking of the educated classes in particular, of
+course--by residing among them. They admire and reverence you so much, so
+genuinely; and they have extended great kindness to me as a member of
+your household. How can I be indifferent to it? I am thankful, Sir
+Charles, I am grateful--the more so that I have the happiness of knowing
+I owe the consideration with which I am treated, in Deadham, entirely to
+you.--Yes, yes," she cried in rising exaltation, "I do not deny that I
+went to Harchester yesterday--went--Dr. Horniblow thus expressed it when
+inviting me--'as representing The Hard.' I was away when Damaris made
+this ill-judged excursion across the river to the Bar. Had she confided
+her intention to me, I should have used my authority and forbade her. But
+recently we have not been, I grieve to say, on altogether satisfactory
+terms, and our parting yesterday was constrained, I am afraid."
+
+Theresa blushed and swallowed. Fortunately her sense of humour was
+limited; but, even so, she could not but be aware of a dangerous decline.
+Not only of bathos, but of vulgar bathos, from which gentility revolted,
+must she be the exponent, thanks to Damaris' indiscretion!
+
+"You require me to give you the details, Sir Charles," she resumed, "and
+although it is both embarrassing and repugnant to me to do so, I obey. I
+fear Damaris so far forgot herself--forgot I mean what is due to her age
+and position--as to remove her shoes and stockings and paddle in the
+sea--a most unsuitable and childish occupation. While she was thus
+engaged her things--her shoes and stockings--appear to have been stolen.
+In any case she was unable to find them when tired of the amusement she
+came up on to the beach. Moreover she was caught in the rain. And I
+deeply regret to tell you--but I merely repeat what I learned from Mary
+Fisher and Mrs. Cooper when I returned--it was not till after dark, when
+the maids had become so alarmed that they despatched Tolling and Alfred
+to search for her, that Damaris landed from a boat at the breakwater,
+having been brought down the river--by--by"--
+
+Throughout the earlier portion of her recital Charles Verity stood in the
+same place and same attitude staring down at the tiger skin. Twice or
+thrice only he raised his eyes, looking at the speaker with a flash of
+arrogant interrogation.
+
+Upon one, even but moderately, versed in the secular arts of twig-liming,
+such flashes would have acted as an effective warning and deterrent. Not
+so upon Theresa. She barely noticed them, as blindly heroic, she pounded
+along leading her piteous forlorn hope. Her chance--her unique chance, in
+nowise to be missed--and, still more, those obscure hungers, fed by the
+excitement of this midnight _tete-a-tete,_ rushed her forward upon the
+abyss; while at every sputtering sentence, whether of adulation,
+misplaced prudery, or thinly veiled animosity towards Damaris, she became
+more tedious, more frankly intolerable and ridiculous to him whose favour
+she so desperately sought. Under less anxious circumstances Charles
+Verity might have been contemptuously amused at this exhibition of futile
+ardour. Now it exasperated him. Yet he waited, in rather cruel patience.
+Presently he would demolish her, if to do so appeared worth the trouble.
+Meanwhile she should have her say, since incidentally he might learn
+something from it bearing upon the cause of Damaris' illness.
+
+But now, when, at the climax of her narrative, Theresa--seized by a spasm
+of retrospective resentment and jealousy, the picture of the young man
+carrying the girl tenderly in his arms across the dusky lawns arising
+before her--choked and her voice cracked up into a bat-like squeaking,
+Charles Verity's self-imposed forbearance ran dry.
+
+"I must remind you that neither my time nor capacity of listening are
+inexhaustible, Miss Bilson," he said to her. "May I ask you to be so good
+as to come to the point. By whom was Damaris rescued and brought home
+last night?"
+
+"Ah! that is what I so deeply regret," Theresa quavered, still
+obstinately dense and struggling with the after convulsion of her choke.
+"I felt so shocked and annoyed on your account, Sir Charles, when the
+maids told me, knowing how you would disapprove such a--such an incident
+in connection with Damaris.--She was brought home, carried"--she
+paused--"carried indoors by the owner of that objectionable public-house
+on the island. He holds some position in the Mercantile Marine, I
+believe. I have seen him recently once or twice myself in the
+village--his name is Faircloth."
+
+Theresa pursed up her lips as she finished speaking. The glasses of her
+gold pince-nez seemed to gleam aggressively in the lamp-light. The backs
+of the leather-bound volumes in the many book-cases gleamed also, but
+unaggressively, with the mellow sheen--as might fancifully be figured--of
+the ripe and tolerant wisdom their pages enshrined. The pearl-grey
+porcelain company of Chinese monsters, saints and godlings, ranged above
+them placid, mysteriously smiling, gleamed as well.
+
+For a time, silence, along with these various gleamings, sensibly, even a
+little uncannily, held possession of the room. Then Charles Verity moved,
+stiffly, and for once awkwardly, all of a piece. Backed against the
+mantelshelf, throwing his right arm out along it sharply and
+heavily--careless of the safety of clock and of ornaments--as though
+overtaken by sudden weakness and seeking support.
+
+"Faircloth? Of course, his name is Faircloth." he repeated absently.
+"Yes, of course."
+
+But whatever the nature of the weakness assailing him, it soon,
+apparently, passed. He stood upright, his face, perhaps, a shade more
+colourless and lean, but in expression fully as arrogant and formidably
+calm as before.
+
+"Very well, Miss Bilson," he began. "You have now given me all the
+information I require, so I need detain you no longer--save to say
+this.--You will, if you please, consider your engagement as my daughter's
+companion terminated, concluded from to-night. You are free to make such
+arrangements as may suit you; and you will, I trust, pardon my adding
+that I shall be obliged by your making them without undue delay."
+
+"You do not mean," Theresa broke out, after an interval of speechless
+amazement--"Sir Charles, you cannot mean that you dismiss me--that I am
+to leave The Hard--to--to go away?"
+
+"I mean that I have no further occasion for your services."
+
+Theresa waved her arms as though playing some eccentric game of ball.
+
+"You forget the servants, the conduct of the house, Damaris' need of a
+chaperon, her still unfinished education--All are dependent upon me."
+
+"Hardly dependent," he answered. "These things, I have reason to think,
+can safely be trusted to other hands, or be equally safely be left to
+take care of themselves."
+
+"But why do you repudiate me?" she cried again, rushing upon her fate in
+the bitterness of her distraction. "What have I done to deserve such
+harshness and humiliation?"
+
+"I gave the most precious of my possessions--Damaris--into your keeping,
+and--and--well--we see the result. Is it not written large enough, in all
+conscience, for the most illiterate to read?--So you must depart, my dear
+Miss Bilson, and for everyone's sake, the sooner the better. There can be
+no further discussion of the matter. Pray accept the fact that our
+interview is closed."
+
+But Theresa, now sensible that her chance was in act of being finally
+ravished away from her, fell--or rose--perhaps more truly the
+latter--into an extraordinary sincerity and primitiveness of emotion.
+She cast aside nothing less than her whole personal legend, cast aside
+every tradition and influence hitherto so strictly governing her conduct
+and her thought. Unluckily the physical envelope could not so readily be
+got rid of. Matter retained its original mould, and that one neither
+seductive nor poetic.
+
+She went down upon her fat little knees, held her fat little hands aloft
+as in an impassioned spontaneity of worship.
+
+"Sir Charles," she prayed, while tears running down her full cheeks
+splashed upon her protuberant bosom--"Sir Charles"--
+
+He looked at the funny, tubby, jaunty, would-be smart, kneeling figure.
+
+"Oh! you inconceivably foolish woman," he said and turned away.
+
+Did more than that--walked out into the hall and to his own rooms,
+opening off the corridor. In the offices a bell tinkled. Theresa
+scrambled on to her feet, just as Hordle, in response to its summons,
+arrived at the sitting-room door.
+
+"Did you ring, Miss?" he asked grudgingly. Less than ever was she in
+favour with the servants' hall to-night.
+
+Past intelligible utterance, Theresa merely shook her head in reply. Made
+a return upon herself--began to instruct him to put out the lamps in the
+room. Remembered that now and henceforth the right to give orders in this
+house was no longer hers; and broke into sobbing, the sound of which her
+handkerchief pressed against her mouth quite failed to stifle.
+
+About an hour later, having bathed and changed, Sir Charles Verity made
+his way upstairs. Upon the landing Dr. McCabe met him.
+
+"Better," he said, "thank the heavenly powers, decidedly better.
+Temperature appreciably lower, and the pulse more even. Oh! we're on the
+road very handsomely to get top dog of the devil this bout, believe me,
+Sir Charles."
+
+"Then go to bed, my dear fellow," the other answered. "I will take
+over the rest of the watch for you. You need not be afraid. I can be an
+admirable sick-nurse on occasion. And by the way, McCabe, something has
+come to my knowledge which in my opinion throws considerable light upon
+the symptoms that have puzzled you. Probably I shall be more sure of my
+facts before morning. I will explain to you later, if it should seem
+likely to be helpful to you in your treatment of the case. Just now, as
+I see it, the matter lies exclusively between me"--he smiled looking at
+his companion full and steadily--"between me"--he repeated, "and my
+only child."
+
+All which upon the face of it might, surely, be voted encouraging
+enough. Yet:
+
+"Should there be any that doubt the veritable existence of hell fire,"
+the doctor told himself, as he subsequently and thankfully pulled on his
+night-shirt, "to recover them, and in double quick time, of their heresy
+let 'em but look in my friend Verity's eyes."--And he rounded off the
+sentence with an oath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AN EXPERIMENT IN BRIDGE-BUILDING OF WHICH TIME ALONE CAN FIX THE VALUES
+
+
+Damaris lay on her side, her face turned to the wall. When Charles
+Verity, quietly crossing the room, sat down in an easy chair, so placed
+at the head of the half-tester bed as to be screened from it by the
+dimity curtains, she sighed and slightly shifted her position.
+
+Leaning back, he crossed his legs and let his chin drop on his breast.
+He had barely glanced at her in passing, receiving a vague impression
+of the outline of her cheek, of her neck, and shoulders, of her head,
+dark against the dim whiteness on which it rested, and the long dark
+stream of her hair spread loose across the pillows. He had no wish for
+recognition--not yet awhile. On the contrary, it was a relief to have
+time in which silently to get accustomed to her presence, to steep
+himself in the thought of her, before speech should define the new
+element intruded, as he believed, into his and her relation. Though
+little enough--too little, so said some of his critics--hampered by
+fear in any department, he consciously dreaded the smallest
+modification of that relation. Among the many dissatisfactions and
+bitternesses of life, it shone forth with a steady light of purity and
+sweetness, as a thing unspoiled, unbreathed on, even, by what is
+ignoble or base. And not the surface of it alone was thus free from all
+breath of defilement. It showed clear right through, as some gem of the
+purest water. To keep it thus inviolate, he had made sacrifices in the
+past neither easy nor inconsiderable to a man of his temperament and
+ambitions. Hence that its perfection should be now endangered was to
+him the more exquisitely hateful.
+
+Upon the altar of that hatred, promptly without scruple he sacrificed
+the wretched Theresa. Most of us are so constituted that, at a certain
+pass, pleasure--of a sort--is to be derived from witnessing the anguish
+of a fellow creature. In all save the grossly degenerate that pleasure,
+however, is short-lived. Reflection follows, in which we cut to ourselves
+but a sorry figure. With Charles Verity, reflection began to follow
+before he had spent many minutes in Damaris' sick-room. For here the
+atmosphere was, at once, grave and tender, beautifully honest in its
+innocence of the things of the flesh.--The woman had been inconceivably
+foolish, from every point of view. If she had known, good heavens, if she
+had only known! But he inclined now to the more merciful view that,
+veritably, she didn't know; that her practical, even her theoretic,
+knowledge was insufficient for her to have had any clear design. It was
+just a blind push of starved animal instinct. Of course she must go. Her
+remaining in the house was in every way unpermissible; still he need not,
+perhaps, have been so cold-bloodedly precipitate with her.
+
+Anyhow the thing was done--it was done--He raised his shoulders and
+making with his hands a graphic gesture of dismissal, let his chin drop
+on to his breast again.
+
+For the East had left its mark on his attitude towards women with one
+exception--that of his daughter--Charles Verity, like most men, not
+requiring of himself to be too rigidly consistent. Hence Theresa, and
+all which pertained to her, even her follies, appeared to him of
+contemptibly small moment compared with the developments for which those
+follies might be held accidentally responsible. His mind returned to
+that main theme painfully. He envisaged it in all its bearings, not
+sparing himself. Suffered, and looked on at his own suffering with a
+stoicism somewhat sardonic.
+
+Meanwhile Damaris slept. His nearness had not disturbed her, indeed he
+might rather suppose its effect beneficent. For her breathing grew even,
+just sweetly and restfully audible in the intervals of other sounds
+reaching him from out of doors.
+
+The wind, drawing out of the sunset, freshened during the night. Now it
+blew wet and gustily from south-west, sighing through the pines and
+Scotch firs in the Wilderness. A strand of the yellow Banksia rose,
+trained against the house wall, breaking loose, scratched and tapped at
+the window-panes with anxious appealing little noises.
+
+Many years had elapsed since Charles Verity spent a night upstairs in
+this part of the house, and by degrees those outdoor sounds attracted his
+attention as intimately familiar. They carried him back to his boyhood,
+to the spacious dreams and projects of adolescence. He could remember
+just such gusty wet winds swishing through the trees, such petulant
+fingering of errant creepers upon the windows, when he stayed here during
+the holidays from school at Harchester, on furlough from his regiment,
+and, later, on long leave from India, during his wonderful little
+great-uncle's lifetime.
+
+And his thought took a lighter and friendlier vein, recalling that
+polished, polite, encyclopedic minded and witty gentleman, who had lived
+to within a few months of his full century with a maximum of interest and
+entertainment to himself, and a minimum of injury or offence to others.
+To the last he retained his freshness of intellectual outlook, his
+insatiable yet discreet curiosity. Taking it as a whole, should his life
+be judged a singularly futile or singularly enviable one? Nothing
+feminine, save on strictly platonic lines, was recorded to have entered
+it at any period. Did that argue remarkable wisdom or defective courage,
+or some abnormal element in a composition otherwise deliciously mundane
+and human?
+
+Charles had debated this often. Even as a boy it had puzzled him. As a
+young man he had held his own views on the subject, not without lasting
+effect. For one winter he had passed at The Hard, in the fine bodily
+health and vigour of his early thirties, this very lack of women's
+society contributed, by not unnatural reaction, to force the idea of
+woman hauntingly upon him--thereby making possible a strange and hidden
+love passage off the Dead Sea fruit of which he was in process of
+supping here to-night.
+
+He moved, bent forward, setting his elbows on the two chair arms,
+closing his eyes as he listened, and leaning his forehead upon his
+raised hands. For in the plaintive voice of the moist, fitful
+southwesterly wind how, to his bearing, the buried, half-forgotten drama
+re-lived and reenacted itself!
+
+It dated far back, to a period when his career was still undetermined,
+hedged about by doubts and uncertainties--before the magnificent and
+terrible years of the Mutiny brought him, not only fame and distinction,
+but a power of self-expression and of plain seeing.--Before, too, his not
+conspicuously happy marriage. Before the Bhutpur appointment tested and
+confirmed his reputation as a most able if most autocratic ruler. Before,
+finally, his term of service under the Ameer in Afghanistan--that
+extraordinary experience of alternate good and evil fortune in barbaric
+internecine warfare, the methods and sentiments of which represented a
+swing back of three or four centuries, Christianity, and the attitude of
+mind and conduct Christianity inculcates, no longer an even nominal
+factor, Mahomet, sword in hand, ruthlessly outriding Christ.
+
+He had done largely more than the average Englishman, of his age and
+station, towards the making of contemporary history. Yet it occurred to
+him now, sitting at Damaris' bedside, those intervening years of
+strenuous public activity, of soldiering and of administration, along
+with the honours reaped in them, had procured cynically less substantial
+result, cynically less ostensible remainder, than the brief and hidden
+intrigue which preceded them. They sank away as water spilt on sand--thus
+in his present pain he pictured it--leaving barely a trace. While that
+fugitive and unlawful indulgence of the flesh not only begot flesh, but
+spirit,--a living soul, henceforth and eternally to be numbered among the
+imperishable generations of the tragic and marvellous children of men.
+
+Then, aware something stirred close to him, Charles Verity looked up
+sharply, turning his head; to find Damaris--raised on one elbow planted
+among the pillows--holding aside the dimity curtain and gazing
+wonderingly yet contentedly in his face.
+
+"Commissioner Sahib," she said, softly, "I didn't know you'd come back.
+I've had horrid bad dreams and seemed to see you--many of you--walking
+about. The room was full of you, you over and over again; but not like
+yourself, frightening, not loving me, busy about something or somebody
+else. I didn't at all enjoy that.--But I am awake now, aren't I? I
+needn't be frightened any more; because you do love me, don't you--and
+this really is you, your very ownself?"
+
+She put up her face to be kissed. But he, in obedience to an humility
+heretofore unfelt by and unknown to him, leaning sideways kissed the hand
+holding aside the curtain rather than the proffered lips.
+
+"Yes, my darling, very surely it is me," he said. "Any multiplication of
+specimens is quite superfluous--a single example of the breed is enough,
+conceivably more than enough."
+
+But to his distress, while he spoke, he saw the content die out of
+Damaris' expression and her eyes grow distended and startled. She glanced
+oddly at the hand he had just kissed and then at him again.
+
+"It seems to me something must have happened which I can't exactly
+remember," she anxiously told him, sitting upright and leaving go the
+curtain which slipped back into place shutting off the arm-chair and its
+occupant. "Something real, I mean, not just bad dreams. I know I had to
+ask you about it, and yet I didn't want to ask you."
+
+Charles Verity rose from his place, slowly walked the length of the room;
+and, presently returning, stood at the foot of the bed. Damaris still sat
+upright, her hands clasped, her hair hanging in a cloud about her to
+below the waist. The light was low and the shadow cast by the bed-curtain
+covered her. But, through it, he could still distinguish the startled
+anxiety of her great eyes as she pondered, trying to seize and hold some
+memory which escaped her. And he felt sick at heart, assured it could be
+but a matter of time before she remembered; convinced now, moreover, what
+she would, to his shame and sorrow, remember in the end.
+
+The purity in which he delighted, and to which he so frequently and
+almost superstitiously had turned for refreshment and the safeguarding of
+all the finest instincts of his own very complex nature, would, although
+she remembered, remain essentially intact. But, even so, the surface of
+it must be, as he apprehended, henceforth in some sort dimmed, and that
+by the breath of his own long ago misdoing. The revelation of passion and
+of sex, being practically and thus intimately forced home on her, the
+transparent innocence of childhood must inevitably pass away from her;
+and, through that same passing she would consciously go forward,
+embracing the privileges and the manifold burdens, the physical and
+emotional needs and aspirations of a grown woman. The woman might,
+would--such was his firm belief--prove a glorious creature. But it was
+not she whom he wanted. Her development, in proportion as it was rich and
+complete, led her away from and made her independent of him.--No, it
+wasn't she, but the child whom he wanted. And, standing at the foot of
+Damaris' bed, he knew, with a cruel certainty, he was there just simply
+to watch the child die.
+
+Yes, it was a mere matter of time. Sooner or later she would put a
+leading question--her methods being bravely candid and direct. Of course,
+it was open to him to meet that question with blank denial, open to him
+to lie--as is the practice of the world when such damnably awkward
+situations come along.--A solution having, in the present case, the
+specious argument behind it that in so doing he would spare her, save her
+pain, in addition to the obvious one that he would save his own skin.
+Moreover, if he lied he could trust Damaris' loyalty. Whether she
+believed it or not, she would accept his answer as final. No further
+question upon the subject would ever pass her lips. The temptation was
+definite and great. For might not the lie, if he could stomach his
+disgust at telling it, even serve to prolong the life of the child?
+Should he not sell his honour to save his honour--if it came to that?
+
+Thus he debated, his nature battling with itself, while at that battle he
+stoically, for a time, looked on. But when, at last, the climax was
+reached, and Damaris commenced to speak, stoicism dragged anchor. For he
+could conquer neither his disgust nor his sorrow, could find courage
+neither for his denial nor for watching the child die. Leaving the foot
+of the bed, he went and sat down in the arm-chair, where the dimity
+curtain screened Damaris from his, and him from Damaris' sight.
+
+"Commissioner Sahib," she began, her voice grave and low, "it has come
+back to me--the thing I had to ask you, but it is very hard to say. If it
+makes you angry, please try to forgive me--because it does hurt me to ask
+you. It hurts me through and through. Only I can't speak of it. I
+oughtn't just to leave it. To leave it would be wrong--wrong by you."
+
+"Very well, my darling, ask me then," he said, a little hoarsely.
+
+"You have heard about my being out on the Bar and--and all that?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I have heard."
+
+"Captain Faircloth, who found me and brought me home, told me something."
+
+Damaris' voice broke into tones of imploring tenderness.
+
+"I love you, Commissioner Sahib, you know how I love you--but--but is
+what Captain Faircloth told me true?"
+
+Whereupon temptation surged up anew, inviting, inciting Charles Verity
+to lie--dressing up that lie in the cloak of most excellent charity, of
+veritable duty towards Damaris' fine courage and her precious innocence.
+And he hedged, keeping open, if only for a few minutes longer, the way
+of escape.
+
+"How can I answer until I know what he did tell you?" he took her up, at
+last, almost coldly.
+
+"That he is your son--is my brother," Damaris said.
+
+Even at this pass, Charles Verity waited before finally committing
+himself, thereby unwittingly giving sentiment--in the shape of the
+Powers of the Air--the chance to take a rather unfairly extensive hand
+in the game.
+
+For while he thus waited, he could not but be aware, through the tense
+silence otherwise reigning in the room, of the tap and scratch of the
+rose-spray upon the window-panes; of the swish of the moist gusty wind
+sweeping from across the salt-marsh and mud-flats of the Haven--from the
+black cottages, too, beyond the warren, gathered, as somewhat sinister
+boon companions, about the bleak, grey stone-built Inn. And this served
+to transfix his consciousness with visions of what once had been--he
+knowing so exactly how it would all sound, all look out there, the
+wistful desolation, the penetrating appeal bred of the inherent sadness
+of the place on a wild autumn night such as this.
+
+"Yes," he said at last, and putting a great constraint upon himself he
+spoke calmly, without sign of emotion. "What the young man told is true,
+Damaris, perfectly true."
+
+"I--I thought so," she answered back, gravely. "Though I didn't
+understand"--And, after a moment's pause, with a certain hopelessness of
+resignation--"Though I don't understand even now."
+
+In her utterance Charles Verity so distinctly heard the last words of
+the--to him--dying child, that, smitten with raging bitterness of grief
+and of regret, he said:
+
+"Nevertheless it is, in my opinion, disgraceful, abominable, that he
+should have made the occasion, or, to put the matter at its best, have
+taken advantage of the occasion, when you were alone and, in a sense, at
+his mercy, to tell you this most unhappy thing."
+
+"No, no," Damaris cried, in her generous eagerness catching back the
+curtain and looking at him nobly unselfconscious, nobly zealous to defend
+and to set right. "You mustn't think that. He didn't start with any
+intention of telling me. He fancied I might have lost my way among the
+sand-hills, that I might be frightened or get some harm, and so came
+straight to look for me, and take care of me. He was very beautifully
+kind; and I felt beautifully safe with him--safe in the same way I feel
+safe with you, almost."
+
+Her mouth was soft, her eyes alight--dangerously alight now, for
+her pulse had quickened. As she pleaded and protested her
+temperature raced up.
+
+"It happened later," she went on, "when we were in the boat, and it was
+partly my fault. He wrapped my feet up in his coat. They were very cold.
+And he believed I was asleep because I didn't speak or thank him. I was
+so tired, and everything seemed so strange. I couldn't rouse myself
+somehow to speak. And as he wrapped them in his coat, he kissed my feet,
+thinking I shouldn't know. But I wasn't asleep, and it displeased me. I
+felt angry, just as you felt when you condemned him just now."
+
+"Ah! as I felt just now!" he commented, closing his eyes and, just
+perceptibly, bowing his head.
+
+"Yes, Commissioner Sahib, as you felt just now--but as, please you
+mustn't go on feeling.--What he had done seemed to me treacherous; and it
+pained as well as displeased me. But in all that I was unjust and
+mistaken.--And it was then, because he saw he'd pained me, displeased and
+made me angry, that he told me in self-defence--told me to show he wasn't
+treacherous, but had the right--a right no one else in all the world has
+over me except yourself."
+
+"And you believed this young man, you forgave his audacity, and admitted
+his right?" Sir Charles said.
+
+He leaned back in the angle of the chair, away from her, smiling as he
+spoke--a smile which both bade farewell and mocked at the sharpness and
+futility of the grief which that farewell brought with it. For this was a
+grown woman who pleaded with him surely, acting as advocate? A child,
+compelled to treat such controversial, such debatable matters at all,
+would have done so to a different rhythm, in a different spirit.
+
+"Forgave him? But after just the first, when, I had time to at all think
+of it," Damaris answered with rather desperate bravery, "I couldn't see
+there was anything for me to forgive. It was the other way about. For
+haven't I so much which he might very well feel belonged, or should have
+belonged, to him?"
+
+"You cut deep, my dear," Sir Charles said quietly.
+
+Still holding back the curtain with one hand, Damaris flung herself
+over upon her face. She would not give way, she would not cry, but her
+soul was in travail. These words, as coming from her father, were
+anguish to her. She could look at him no longer, and lying outstretched
+thus, the lines of her gracious body, moulded by the embroidered linen
+quilt, quivered from head to heel. Still that travail of soul should
+bring forth fruit. She would not give in, cost what anguish it might,
+till all was said.
+
+"I only want to do what is right," she cried, her voice half stifled by
+the pillows. "You know, surely you know, how I love you, Commissioner
+Sahib, from morning till night and round till morning again, always and
+above all, ever since I can first remember. But this is different to
+anything that has ever happened to me before, and it wouldn't be right
+not to speak about it. It would be there all the time, and it would
+creep in between us--between you and me--and interfere in all my
+thinking about you."
+
+"It may very well do that in any case, my dear," he said.
+
+"No--no," Damaris answered hotly, "not if I do right now--right by both.
+For you must not entertain wrong ideas about him--about Captain Faircloth
+I mean. You must not suppose he said a word about my having what might,
+or ought to be his. He couldn't do so. He isn't the least that sort of
+person. He took pains to make me understand--I couldn't think why at
+first, it seemed a little like boasting--that he is quite well off and
+that he's very proud of his profession. He doesn't want anything
+from--from us. Oh! no," she cried, "no."
+
+And, in her excitement, Damaris raised herself, from the small of her
+back, resting on her elbows, sphinx-like in posture, her hands and
+arms--from the elbows--stretched out in front of her across the pillows.
+Her face was flushed, her eyes blazed. There was storm and vehemence in
+her young beauty.
+
+"No--he's too much like you, you yourself, Commissioner Sahib, to want
+anything, to accept anything from other people. He means to act for
+himself, and make people and things obey him, just as you yourself do.
+And," she went on, with a daring surely not a little magnificent under
+the circumstances--"he told me he loved life too well to care very much
+how he came by it to begin with."
+
+Damaris folded her arms, let her head sink on them as she finished
+speaking, and lay flat thus, her face hidden, while she breathed short
+and raspingly, struggling to control the after violence of her emotion.
+
+The curtain hung straight. The wind took up its desolate chant again. And
+Sir Charles Verity sat back in the angle of the arm-chair, motionless,
+and, for the present, speechless.
+
+In truth he was greatly moved, stirred to the deep places of perception,
+and of conscience also. For this death of childhood and birth of
+womanhood undoubtedly presented a rare and telling spectacle, which, even
+while it rent him, in some aspects enraged and mortified him, he still
+appreciated. He found, indeed, a strangely vital, if somewhat cruel,
+satisfaction in looking on at it--a satisfaction fed, on its more humane
+and human side, by the testimony to the worth of the unknown son by the
+so well-beloved daughter. Respecting himself he might have cause for
+shame; but respecting these two beings for whose existence--whether born
+in wedlock or out of it--he was responsible, he had no cause for shame.
+In his first knowledge of them as seen together, they showed strong,
+generous, sure of purpose, a glamour of high romance in their
+adventitious meeting and companionship.
+
+This was the first, the unworldly and perhaps deepest view of the matter.
+In it Charles Verity allowed himself to rest, inactive for a space. That
+there were, not one, but many other views of the said matter, very
+differently attuned and coloured he was perfectly well aware. Soon these
+would leap on him, and that with an ugly clamour which he consciously
+turned from in repulsion and weary disgust. For he was very tired, as he
+now realized. The anxiety endured during his tedious cross-country
+journey, the distasteful tragic-comedy of the _scene de seduction_ so
+artlessly made him by unlucky Theresa Bilsen, followed by this prolonged
+vigil; lastly the very real tragedy--for such it in great measure
+remained and must remain--of his interview with Damaris and the re-living
+of long buried drama that interview entailed, left him mentally and
+physically spent. He fell away into meditation, mournful as it was
+indefinite, while the classic lament of another age and race formed
+itself silently upon his lips.
+
+"_Comprehenderunt me iniquitates meae, et non potui ut viderem.
+Multiplicatae sunt super capillos capitis mei; et cor meum dereliquit
+me_," he quoted, in the plenitude of his existing discouragement.
+
+At his time of life, he told himself, earth held no future; and in
+heaven--as the Churches figure it--namely, an adjustment of the balance
+on the other side death, his belief was of the smallest. A sea of
+uncertainty, vast, limitless, laps the shores of the meagre island of the
+present--which is all we actually have to our count. Faith is a
+gift.--You possess it, or you possess it not; yet without it--
+
+But here his attention was caught, and brought home to that very present,
+by a movement upon the bed and Damaris' voice, asking tremulously:
+
+"Commissioner Sahib are you angry, too angry to speak to me?"
+
+Whereupon Charles Verity got up, gathered back the curtain stuffing it in
+between the head board and the wall, and stood, tall, spare, yet
+graceful, looking down at her. Whether from fatigue or from emotion, his
+expression was softer, his face less keen than usual, and the likeness
+between him and Darcy Faircloth proportionately and notably great.
+
+"No, my dear," he said, "why should I be angry? What conceivable right
+have I to be angry? As a man sows so does he reap. I only reap to-day
+what I sowed eight or nine-and-twenty years ago--a crop largely composed
+of tares, though among those tares I do find some modicum of wheat. Upon
+that modest provision of wheat I must make shift to subsist with the best
+grace I may. No, don't cry, my darling. It is useless. Tears never yet
+altered facts. You will only do yourself harm, and put a crown to my
+self-reproach."
+
+He sat down on the side of the bed, taking her hand, holding and
+coaxing it.
+
+"Only let there be no doubt or suspicion on your part, my dear," he went
+on. "As you have travelled so far along this dolorous way, take courage
+and travel a little farther. To stop, to turn back, is only to leave your
+mind open to all manner of imaginations worse very likely than the truth.
+I will be quite plain with you. This episode--which I do not attempt to
+explain or excuse--took place, and ended, several years before I first
+met your mother. And it ended absolutely. Never, by either written or
+spoken word, have I held any communication with Lesbia Faircloth since.
+Never have I attempted to see her--this in the interests of her
+reputation every bit as much as in those of my own. For her station in
+life she was a woman of remarkable qualities and character. She had made
+an ugly, a repulsive marriage, and she was childless.--More than this it
+is not seemly I should tell you."
+
+Charles Verity waited a minute or so. He still coaxed Damaris' hand,
+calmly, soothingly. And she lay very still watching him; but with
+half-closed eyes, striving to prevent the tears which asked so
+persistently to be shed. For her heart went out to him in a new and
+over-flowing tenderness, in an exalted pity almost maternal. Never had she
+felt him more attractive, more, in a sense, royally lovable than in this
+hour of weariness, of moral nakedness, and humiliation.
+
+"Not until I had rejoined my regiment in India," he presently continued,
+in the same low even tones, "did I hear of the birth of her son. I have
+never seen him--or made enquiries regarding him. I meant to let the
+dead bury its dead in this matter. For everyone concerned it seemed best
+and wisest so. Therefore all you have told me to-night comes as news to
+me--and in some respects as good news. For I gather I have no reason to
+be ashamed of this young man--which on your account, even more than on my
+own, is so much clear gain.--But I oughtn't to have brought you here to
+live at Deadham. I ought to have taken the possibility of some accidental
+revelation, such as the present one, into serious account and saved you
+from that. To expose you, however remotely, to the risk was both callous
+and stupid on my part. I own I have a strong sentiment for this house. It
+seemed natural and restful to return to it--the only house to call a
+home, I have ever had. And so much has happened during the last eight or
+nine-and-twenty years, to occupy my mind, that I had grown indifferent
+and had practically forgotten the risks. This was selfish,
+self-indulgent, lacking in consideration and reverence towards you,
+towards your peace of mind, your innocence.--And for it, my darling, I
+beg your forgiveness."
+
+Damaris sat up in the bed, raised her face to be kissed.
+
+"No--no," she implored him, "don't say that. I can't bear to have you say
+it--to have you speak as if you had been, could ever be anything but
+beautiful and perfect towards me. I can't have you, not even for a little
+minute, step down, from the high place, which is your own, and talk of
+forgiveness. It hurts me.--I begin to understand that your world, a man's
+world, is different to my world--the world, I mean, in which I have been
+brought up. I know what is right for myself--but it would be silly to
+believe mine is the only rightness"--
+
+"Ah!" Charles Verity murmured, under his breath, "alas! for the child
+that is dead."
+
+And leaning forward he kissed her lips.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+TELLING HOW MISS FELICIA VERITY UNSUCCESSFULLY ATTEMPTED A RESCUE
+
+
+With the assistance of the Miss Minetts, reinforced by a bribe of five
+shillings, Theresa Bilson procured a boy on a bicycle, early the
+following morning, to convey a note the twelve miles to Paulton Lacy--Mr.
+Augustus Cowden's fine Georgian mansion, situate just within the Southern
+boundaries of Arnewood Forest. Miss Felicia Verity, to whom the note was
+addressed, still enjoyed the hospitality of her sister and
+brother-in-law; but this, as Mrs. Cowden gave her roundly to understand,
+must not be taken to include erratic demands upon the stables. If she
+required unexpectedly to visit her brother or her niece at Deadham Hard,
+she must contrive to do so by train, and by such hired conveyances as the
+wayside station of Paulton Halt at this end of her journey, and of
+Marychurch at the other, might be equal to supplying.
+
+"In my opinion, Felicia, it is quite ridiculous you should attempt to go
+there at all to-day," Mrs. Cowden, giving over for the moment her study
+of the _Morning Post,_ commandingly told her. "If Damaris has got a cold
+in her head through some imprudence, and if Charles has called Miss
+Bilson over the coals for not being more strict with her, that really is
+no reason why Augustus' and my plans for the afternoon should be set
+aside or why you should be out in the rain for hours with your
+rheumatism. I shall not even mention the subject to Augustus. We arranged
+to drive over to Napworth for tea, and I never let anything interfere
+with my engagements to the Bulparcs as you know. I encourage Augustus to
+see as much as possible of his own people.--I have no doubt in my own
+mind that the account of Damaris' illness is absurdly exaggerated. You
+know how Charles spoils her! She has very much too much freedom; and
+little Miss Bilson, though well-meaning, is incapable of coping with a
+headstrong girl like Damaris. She ought--Damaris ought I mean--to have
+been sent to a finishing school for another year at least. She might then
+have found her level. If Charles had consulted me, or shown the least
+willingness to accept my advice, I should have insisted upon the
+finishing school. It would have been immensely to Damaris' advantage. I
+have known all along that the haphazard methods of her education were
+bound to have deplorable results.--But look here, Felicia, if you really
+intend to go on this wild-goose-chase notwithstanding the rain, let the
+boy who brought the note order Davis' fly for you on his way back. He
+passes Paulton Halt. I shall not expect you before dinner to-night. Now
+that is settled."
+
+With which she returned to her interrupted study of the _Morning Post_.
+
+The above pronouncement while rendering Felicia Verity somewhat uneasy,
+in nowise turned her from her purpose. Her powers of sympathy were as
+unlimited as they were confused and, too often, ineffective. Forever she
+ran after the tribulations of her fellow creatures, pouring forth on them
+treasures of eager sympathy, but without discrimination as to whether the
+said tribulations were in fact trivial or profound, deserving or
+deserved. That anyone under any circumstances, should suffer, be
+uncomfortable or unhappy, filled her with solicitude. The loss of an
+eyelash, the loss of a fortune, the loss of the hope of a lifetime
+equally ranked. Illness and disease appealed to her in hardly less degree
+than unfortunate affairs of the heart. She practised the detection of
+extenuating circumstances as one might practise a fine art. She wallowed
+in sentiment, in short; but that with such native good-breeding and
+singleness of mind, as went far to redeem the said wallowings from
+morbidity or other offence. Her friends and acquaintances loved her,
+quite unconscionably made use of her, secretly laughed at her, grew weary
+of her, declared that "of such are the Kingdom of Heaven;" and, having
+successfully exploited her, turned with relief to the society of persons
+frankly belonging to the kingdoms of earth. Men petted but did not
+propose to her; affected to confide in her, but carefully withheld the
+heart of their confessions. Tall, thin, gently hurried and bird-like, she
+yet bore a quaint, almost mirthful, resemblance to her brother, Sir
+Charles Verity. Such was the lady who responded, in a spirit of liveliest
+charity, to Theresa's wildly waved flag of distress.
+
+By the time Miss Verity reached Marychurch the rain amounted to a
+veritable downpour. Driven by the southwesterly wind, it swept in sheets
+over the low-lying country, the pallid waters, drab mud-flats, dingy
+grey-green salt-marsh, and rusty brown reed-beds of the estuary. The
+dusty road, running alongside this last through the hamlets of Horny
+Cross and Lampit, grew hourly deeper in gritty mud. Beyond question
+summer and all its dear delights were departed and the chill mournfulness
+of autumn reigned in their stead.
+
+With the surrounding mournfulness, Miss Verity's simple, yet devious,
+mind played not ungratefully. For it seemed to her to harmonize with the
+true inwardness of her mission, offering a sympathetic background to the
+news of her niece's indisposition and the signals of distress flown by
+her little _protegee_, Theresa Bilson. The note addressed to her by the
+latter was couched in mysterious and ambiguous phrases, the purport of
+which she failed to grasp. Theresa's handwriting, usually so neat and
+precise, was wobbly, bearing unmistakable traces of severe agitation and
+haste. She hinted at nothing short of catastrophe, though whether in
+relation to herself, to her ex-pupil, or to Sir Charles, Miss Verity
+couldn't for the life of her discover. It was clear in any case, however,
+that affairs at The Hard had, for cause unknown, gone quite startlingly
+astray, and that Theresa found herself entirely unequal to righting
+them--hence her outcry.
+
+Under these circumstances, it struck Miss Verity as only tasteful and
+tactful that her approach to the distracted dwelling should take place
+unheralded by rumble of wheels or beat of horse-hoofs, should be pitched
+in a, so to speak, strictly modest and minor key. On arriving at the
+front gate she therefore alighted and, bidding her grumpy and streaming
+flyman take himself and his frousty landau to the Bell and Horns in
+Deadham village there to await her further orders, proceeded to walk up
+the carriage-drive under the swaying, dripping trees.
+
+About fifty yards from the gate the drive turns sharply to the left; and,
+just at the turn, Miss Verity suddenly beheld a tall figure clad in a
+seaman's oilskins and sou'wester, coming towards her from the direction
+of the house. Youth and good looks--more especially perhaps masculine
+ones--whatever rank of life might exhibit them, acted as a sure passport
+to Miss Verity's gentle heart. And the youth and good looks of the man
+approaching her became momentarily more incontestable. His bearing, too,
+notwithstanding the clumsiness of his shiny black over-garment, had a
+slightly ruffling, gallantly insolent air to it, eminently calculated to
+impress her swift and indulgent fancy.
+
+The young man, on his part, calmly took stock of her appearance, as she
+beat up against the wind, her flapping waterproof cloak giving very
+inefficient protection to the rather girlish dove-grey cashmere dress,
+picked out with pink embroidery, beneath it. At first his eyes challenged
+hers in slightly defiant and amused enquiry. But as she smiled back at
+him, sweetly eager, ingenuously benignant, his glance softened and his
+hand went up to his sou'wester with a courteous gesture.
+
+"What weather!" she exclaimed. "How fearfully wet!"--while her expression
+testified to a flattering interest and admiration.
+
+"Yes, it's a wild day," he said, in answer. "I expect We've seen the last
+of the sun, anyhow for this week."
+
+The incident, though of the most casual and briefest, gave a new
+direction to Miss Verity's thought. It pleased and intrigued her,
+bringing a pretty blush to her thin cheeks. "Who and what can he be?" she
+said to herself. "Where can I have seen him before?" And the blush
+deepened. "I must really describe him to Charles and find out who he is."
+
+This monologue brought her as far as the front door, at which, it may be
+added, she--though by no means impatient--did in point of fact ring twice
+before the man-servant answered it. Although Mr. Hordle had the reputation
+of "being fond of his joke" in private life, in his official capacity his
+manner offered a model of middle-aged sedateness and restraint. To-day
+neither humour nor reserve were in evidence, but a harassed and hunted
+look altogether surprising to Miss Verity. He stared at her, stared past
+her along the drive, before attempting to usher her into the hall and
+relieve her of her umbrella and her cloak.
+
+"Sir Charles doesn't expect me, Hordle," she said. "But hearing Miss
+Damaris was unwell I came over from Paulton Lacy at once."
+
+"Quite so, ma'am. Sir Charles has not left his room yet. He did not reach
+home till late, and he sat up with Miss Damaris the rest of the night."
+
+"Oh! dear--did he? Then, of course, I wouldn't disturb him on any
+account, Hordle. I had better see Miss Bilson first. Will you tell her
+I am here?"
+
+"I can send Laura to enquire, ma'am. But, I doubt if Miss Bilson, will
+care to come downstairs at present."
+
+"She is with Miss Damaris?"
+
+"No, ma'am, Miss Bilson is not with Miss Damaris."
+
+Hordle paused impressively, sucking in his under lip.
+
+"If I might presume to advise, ma'am, I think it would be wise you should
+see Miss Bilson in the schoolroom--and go up by the back staircase,
+ma'am, if you don't object so as to avoid passing Miss Damaris' bedroom
+door. I should not presume to suggest it, ma'am, but that our orders as
+to quiet are very strict."
+
+In this somewhat ignominious method of reaching her objective Miss
+Verity, although more and more mystified, amiably acquiesced--to be
+greeted, when Hordle throwing open the schoolroom door formally announced
+her, by a sound closely resembling a shriek.
+
+Entrenched behind a couple of yawning trunks, a litter of feminine
+apparel and of personal effects--the accumulation of a long term of
+years, for she was an inveterate hoarder--encumbering every available
+surface, the carpet included, Theresa Bilson stood as at bay.
+
+"My dear friend," Miss Verity exclaimed advancing with kindly
+outstretched hands--"what is the meaning of this?"--She looked at the
+miscellaneous turn-out of cupboards and chests of drawers, at the display
+of garments not usually submitted to the public gaze. "Are you preparing
+a rummage sale or are you--but no, surely not!--are you packing? I cannot
+describe how anxious I am to hear what has occurred. My sister, Mrs.
+Cowden, was extremely adverse to my facing the bad weather; but, I felt
+your note could only be answered in person. Let me hear everything."
+
+She drew Theresa from behind the luggage entrenchments, and, putting
+aside an assortment of derelict hats and artificial flowers strewn in
+most admired confusion on the sofa, made her sit down upon the said piece
+of furniture beside her.
+
+Whereupon, in the pensive, rain-washed, mid-day light, which served to
+heighten rather than mitigate the prevailing, very unattractive and
+rather stuffy disorder obtaining in the room, Theresa Bilson, not without
+chokings and lamentations, gave forth the story of her--to herself quite
+spectacular--deposition from the command of The Hard and its household.
+She had sufficiently recovered her normal attitude, by this time, to pose
+to herself, now as a heroine of one of Charlotte Bronte's novels, now as
+a milder and more refined sample of injured innocence culled from the
+pages of Charlotte Yonge. A narrow, purely personal view inevitably
+embodies an order of logic calculated to carry conviction; and Theresa,
+even in defeat, retained a degree of self-opinionated astuteness. She
+presented her case effectively. To be discharged, and that in disgrace,
+to be rendered homeless, cast upon the world at a moment's notice, for
+that which--with but trifling, almost unconscious, manipulation of
+fact--could be made to appear as nothing worse than a venial error of
+judgment, did really sound and seem most unduly drastic punishment.
+
+Miss Verity's first instinct was to fling herself into the breech; and,
+directly her brother emerged from his room, demand for her _protegee_
+redress and reinstatement. Her second instinct was--she didn't, in truth,
+quite know what--for she grew sadly perplexed as she listened.
+
+Her sympathy, in fact, split into three inconveniently distinct and
+separate streams. Of these Theresa's woes still claimed the widest and
+deepest, since with Theresa she was in immediate and intimate contact.
+Yet the other two began to show a quite respectable volume and current,
+as she pictured Damaris marooned on the Bar and Sir Charles ravished away
+from the seasonable obligation of partridge shooting to take his place at
+his daughter's bedside.
+
+"But this young Captain Faircloth, of whom you speak," she presently
+said, her mind taking one of its many inconsequent skippits--"who so
+providentially came to the dearest child's assistance--could he, I
+wonder, be the same really very interesting-looking young man I met in
+the drive, just now, when I came here?"
+
+And Miss Verity described him, while a pretty stain of colour illuminated
+her cheek once more.
+
+"You think quite possibly yes?--How I wish I had known that at the time.
+I would certainly have stopped and expressed my gratitude to him. Such a
+mercy he was at hand!--Poor dearest Damaris! I hope his good offices
+have already been acknowledged. Do you know if my brother has seen and
+thanked him?"
+
+The expression of Theresa's round little face, still puffy and blotched
+from her last night's weeping, held a world of reproachful remindings.
+
+"Ah! no," the other cried conscience-stricken--"no, of course not. How
+thoughtless of me to ask you. And"--another mental skippit--"and that you
+should be forbidden the sick-room too, not permitted to nurse Damaris! My
+poor friend, indeed I do feel for you. I so well understand that must
+have caused you more pain than anything."
+
+A remark her hearer found it not altogether easy to counter with
+advantage to her own cause, so wisely let it pass in silence.
+
+"I know--I know, you can hardly trust yourself to speak of it. I am so
+grieved--so very grieved. But one must be practical. I think you are wise
+to yield without further protest. I will sound my brother--just find out
+if he shows any signs of relenting. Of course, you can understand, I
+ought to hear his view of the matter too--not, that I question your
+account, dear friend, for one instant. Meanwhile make all your
+arrangements."
+
+"The village!"--Theresa put in, with a note of despair this time
+perfectly genuine.
+
+"Ah, yes--the village. But if I take you away, in my fly I mean, that
+will give you a position, a standing. It will go far to prevent
+unpleasant gossip!"
+
+Miss Verity's soul looked out of her candid eyes with a positive
+effulgence of charity.
+
+"Oh! I can enter so fully into your shrinking from all that. We will
+treat your going as temporary, merely temporary--in speaking of it both
+here and at Paulton Lacy. Of course, you might stay with your friends,
+the good Miss Minetts; but I can't honestly counsel your doing so. I am
+afraid Sir Charles might not quite like your remaining in Deadham
+directly after leaving his house. It might be awkward, and give rise to
+tiresome enquiries and comment. One has to consider those things.--No--I
+think it would be a far better plan that you should spend a week at
+Stourmouth. That would give us time to see our way more clearly. I know
+of some quite nice rooms kept by a former maid of Lady Bulparc's. You
+would be quite comfortable there--and, as dinner at Paulton Lacy isn't
+till eight, I could quite well go into Stourmouth with you myself this
+afternoon. And, my dear friend, you will, won't you, forgive my speaking
+of this"--
+
+Miss Verity--whose income, be it added, was anything but princely--gave
+an engagingly apologetic little laugh.
+
+"Pray don't worry yourself on the score of expense. The week in
+Stourmouth must cost you nothing. As I recommend the rooms I naturally am
+responsible--you go to them as my guest, of course.--Still I'll sound my
+brother at luncheon, and just see how the land lies. But don't build too
+much on any change of front. I don't expect it--not yet. Later, who knows
+Meanwhile courage--do try not to fret."
+
+And Miss Verity descended the backstairs again.
+
+"Poor creature--now her mind will be more at rest, I do trust. I am
+afraid Charles has been rather severe. I never think he does quite
+understand women. But how should he after only being married for
+three--or four years, was it?--Such a very limited experience!--It is a
+pity he didn't marry again, while Damaris was still quite small--some
+really nice woman who one knows about. But I suppose Charles has never
+cared about that side of things. His public work has absorbed him. I
+doubt if he has ever really been in love"--Miss Verity sighed.--"Yes,
+Hordle, thanks I'll wait in the long sitting-room. Please let Sir Charles
+know I am there, that I came over to enquire for Miss Damaris. He is
+getting up?--Yes--I shall be here to luncheon, thanks."
+
+But, during the course of luncheon, that afore-mentioned split in Miss
+Verity's sympathies was fated to declare itself with ever growing
+distinctness. The stream consecrated to Theresa's woes--Theresa herself
+being no longer materially present--declined in volume and in force,
+while that commanded by Felicia's affection for her brother soon rushed
+down in spate. Perhaps, as she told herself, it was partly owing to the
+light--which, if pensive upstairs in the white-walled schoolroom, might,
+without exaggeration, be called quite dismally gloomy in the
+low-ceilinged dining-room looking out on the black mass of the ilex
+trees over a havoc of storm-beaten flower-beds--but Sir Charles struck
+her as so worn, so aged, so singularly and pathetically sad. He was
+still so evidently oppressed by anxiety concerning Damaris that, to hint
+at harsh action on his part, or plead Theresa's cause with convincing
+earnestness and warmth, became out of the question. Miss Verity hadn't
+the heart for it.
+
+"Be true to your profession of good Samaritan, my dear Felicia," he
+begged her with a certain rueful humour, "and take the poor foolish
+woman off my hands. Plant her where you like, so long as it is well out
+of my neighbourhood. She has made an egregious fiasco of her position
+here. As you love me, just remove her from my sight--let this land have
+rest and enjoy its Sabbaths in respect of her at least. I'll give you a
+cheque for her salary, something in excess of the actual amount if you
+like; for, heaven forbid, you should be out of pocket yourself as a
+consequence of your good offices.--Now let us, please, talk of some less
+unprofitable subject."
+
+Brightly, sweetly eager, Miss Verity hastened to obey, as she believed,
+his concluding request.
+
+"Ah! yes," she said, "that reminds me of something about which I do so
+want you to enlighten me.--This young Captain Faircloth, who so
+opportunely appeared on the scene and rescued darling Damaris, I believe
+I met him this morning, as I walked up from the front gate. I wondered
+who he was. His appearance interested me, so did his voice. It struck me
+as being so quaintly like some voice I know quite well--and I stupidly
+cannot remember whose."
+
+The coffee-cups chattered upon the silver tray as Hordle handed it to
+Miss Verity.
+
+"You spoke to him then?" Sir Charles presently said.
+
+"Oh! just in passing, you know, about the weather--which was phenomenally
+bad, raining and blowing too wildly at the moment. I supposed you had
+seen him. He seemed to be coming away from the house."
+
+Charles Verity turned sideways to the table, bending down a little over
+the tray as he helped him. The coffee splashed over into the saucer; yet
+it was not the hand holding the coffee-pot, but those holding the tray
+that shook. Whereupon Charles Verity glanced up into the manservant's
+face, calmly arrogant.
+
+"Pray be careful, Hordle," he said. And then--"Is Miss Verity right in
+supposing Captain Faircloth called here this morning?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir Charles. Yes, Sir Charles, he did."
+
+"What did he want?"
+
+"He came to enquire after Miss Damaris, Sir Charles. I understood him to
+say he was going away to sea shortly."
+
+"Did he ask for me?"
+
+"No, Sir Charles," rather hurriedly; and later, with visible effort to
+recapture the perfection of well-trained nullity.--"He only asked after
+Miss Damaris."
+
+"When he calls again, let me know. Miss Damaris wishes to see him if she
+is sufficiently well to do so."
+
+"Very good, Sir Charles."
+
+And during this conversation, Felicia felt keenly distressed and
+perplexed. It made her miserable to think evil of anyone--particularly an
+old and trusted servant. But from the moment of her arrival Hordle's
+manner had seemed so very strange. Of course it was horrid even to
+suspect such a thing; but was it possible that he over-indulged
+sometimes, that he, in plain English, drank? Poor dear Charles--if he
+knew it, what an additional worry! It really was too deplorable.--Anyway
+she could alleviate his worries to a certain extent by carrying Theresa
+off. She would do so at once.--Was there an evening train from
+Stourmouth, which stopped at Paulton Halt? Well--if there wasn't she must
+get out at Marychurch, and drive from there. She only trusted she would
+be in time to dress for dinner. Harriet was such a stickler for
+etiquette.
+
+From all which it may be deduced that the confessions, made to Miss
+Verity to-day, had this in common with those habitually heard by
+her--that the point of the story had been rather carefully left out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+IN WHICH DAMARIS RECEIVES INFORMATION OF THE LOST SHOES AND
+STOCKINGS--ASSUMPTION OF THE GOD-HEAD
+
+
+As Darcy Faircloth prophesied, the wild weather lasted throughout that
+week. Then, the rain having rained itself out, the wind backed and the
+skies cleared. But all to a different mode and rhythm. A cold white sun
+shone out of a cold blue sky, diapered, to the north above the indigo and
+umber moorland and forest, with perspectives of tenuous silken-white
+cloud. Land and sky were alike washed clean, to a starkness and nakedness
+calling for warm clothing out of doors, and well-stoked fires within.
+
+At the beginning of the next week, invited by that thin glinting
+sunshine--beneath which the sea still ran high, in long, hollow-backed
+waves, brokenly foam-capped and swirling--Damaris came forth from her
+retreat, sufficiently convalescent to take up the ordinary routine of
+life again. But this, also, to a changed mode and rhythm, having its
+source in causes more recondite and subtle than any matter of fair or
+foul weather.
+
+To begin with she had, in the past week, crossed a certain bridge there
+is no going back over for whoso, of her sex, is handicapped or
+favoured--in mid-nineteenth century the handicap rather than the favour
+counted even more heavily than it does to-day, though even to-day, as
+some of us know to our cost, it still counts not a little!--by possession
+of rarer intelligence, more lively moral and spiritual perceptions, than
+those possessed by the great average of her countrymen or countrywomen.
+Damaris' crossing of that bridge--to carry on the figure--affected her
+thought of, and relation to everyone and everything with which she now
+came in contact. She had crossed other bridges on her eighteen years'
+journey from infancy upwards; but, compared with this last, they had been
+but airy fantastic structures, fashioned of hardly more substantial stuff
+than dreams are made of.--Thus, anyhow, it appeared to her as she lay
+resting in her pink-and-white curtained bed, watching the loose
+rose-sprays tremble against the rain-spattered window-panes.--For this
+last bridge was built of the living stones of fact, of deeds actually
+done; and, just because it was so built, for one of her perceptions and
+temperament, no recrossing of it could be possible.
+
+So much to begin with.--To go on with, even before Dr. McCabe granted her
+permission to emerge from retirement, all manner of practical matters
+claimed her attention; and that not unwholesomely, as it proved in the
+sequel. For with the incontinent vanishing of Theresa Bilson into space,
+or,--more accurately--into the very comfortable lodgings provided for her
+by Miss Verity in Stourmouth, the mantle of the ex-governess-companion's
+domestic responsibilities automatically descended upon her ex-pupil. The
+said vanishing was reported to Damaris by Mary, on the day subsequent to
+its occurrence, not without signs of hardly repressed jubilation. For
+"Egypt," in this case represented by the Deadham Hard servants' hall, was
+unfeignedly "glad at her departing."
+
+"A good riddance, I call it--and we all know the rest of that saying,"
+Mrs. Cooper remarked to an audience of Hordle and Mary Fisher, reinforced
+by the Napoleonic Patch and his wife--who happened to have looked in from
+the stables after supper--some freedom of speech being permissible,
+thanks to the under-servants' relegation to the kitchen.
+
+"I never could see she was any class myself. But the airs and graces
+she'd give herself! You'll never persuade me she wasn't sweet on the
+master. That was at the back of all her dressings up, and flouncings and
+fidgetings. The impidence of it!--You may well say so, Mrs. Patch. But
+the conceit of some people passes understanding. To be Lady Verity, if
+you please, that was what she was after. To my dying day I shall believe
+it. Don't tell me!"
+
+Mary's announcement of the event was couched in sober terms, shorn of
+such fine flowers of suggestion and comment. Yet it breathed an
+unmistakable satisfaction, which, to Damaris' contrition, found instant
+echo in her own heart. She ought, she knew, to feel distressed at poor
+Theresa's vanishing--only she didn't and couldn't. As an inherent
+consequence of the afore-chronicled bridge-crossing, Theresa was more
+than ever out of the picture. To listen to her chatterings, to evade her
+questionings would, under existing circumstances, amount to a daily trial
+from which the young girl felt thankful to escape. For Damaris
+entertained a conviction the circumstances in question would call for
+fortitude and resource of an order unknown, alike in their sternness and
+their liberality of idea, to Theresa's narrowly High Anglican and
+academic standards of thought and conduct. She therefore ascertained from
+her informant that Miss Verity had been as actively instrumental in the
+vanishing--had, to be explicit, taken "Miss Bilson, and all her luggage
+(such a collection!) except two disgraceful old tin boxes which were to
+be forwarded by the carrier, away with her in her own Marychurch
+fly."--And at this Damaris left the business willingly enough, secure
+that if tender-hearted Aunt Felicia was party to the removal, it would
+very surely be effected with due regard to appearances and as slight
+damage to "feelings" as could well be.
+
+Later Sir Charles referred briefly to the subject, adding:
+
+"When you require another lady-in-waiting we will choose her ourselves, I
+think, rather than accept a nominee of my sister Felicia's. She is
+certain to have some more or less unsuitable and incapable person on
+hand, upon whom she ardently desires to confer benefits."
+
+"But must I have another lady-in-waiting?" Damaris meaningly and
+pleadingly asked.
+
+Charles Verity drew his hand down slowly over his flowing moustache, and
+smiled at her in tender amusement, as she sat up in a much lace and
+ribbon befrilled jacket, her hair hanging down in a heavy plait on
+either side the white column of her warmly white throat. Her face was
+refined to a transparency of colouring, even as it seemed of texture,
+from confinement to the house and from lassitude following upon fever,
+which, while he recognized its loveliness, caused him a pretty sharp
+pang. Still she looked content, as he told himself. Her glance was frank
+and calm, without suggestion of lurking anxiety.
+
+Nor was she unoccupied and brooding--witness the counterpane strewn with
+books, with balls of wool, a sock in leisurely process of knitting, and,
+in a hollow of it, Mustapha, the brindled cat, luxuriously sleeping
+curled round against her feet.
+
+"Heaven knows I've no special craving your lady-in-waiting should find a
+speedy successor," he said. "But to do without one altogether might
+appear a rather daring experiment. Your aunts would be loud in protest."
+
+"What matters isn't the aunts, is it, but ourselves?" Damaris quite gaily
+took him up.
+
+"But wouldn't you be lonely, my dear, and would you not find it
+burdensome to run the house yourself?"
+
+"No--no," she cried. "Not one bit. Anyway let me try, Commissioner
+Sahib. Let us be by ourselves together--beautifully by ourselves, for a
+time at least."
+
+"So be it then," Charles Verity said.
+
+And perhaps, although hardly acknowledged, in the mind of each the same
+consideration operated. For there remained a thing still to be done
+before the new order could be reckoned as fully initiated, still more
+fully established,--a thing which, as each knew, could be best done
+without witnesses; a thing which both intended should very surely be
+done, yet concerning which neither proposed to speak until the hour of
+accomplishment actually struck.
+
+That hour, in point of fact, struck sooner than Damaris anticipated, the
+sound and sight of it reaching her without prelude or opportunity of
+preparation. For early in the afternoon of the second day she spent
+downstairs, as, sitting at the writing table in the long drawing-room,
+she raised her eyes from contemplation of the house-keeping books spread
+out before her, she saw her father walking slowly up from the sea-wall
+across the lawn. And seeing him, for the moment, her mind carried back to
+that miracle of interchangeable personalities so distressingly haunting
+her at the beginning of her illness, when James Colthurst's charcoal
+sketch of her father played cruel juggler's tricks upon her. For beside
+him now walked a man so strangely resembling him in height, in bearing
+and in build that, but for the difference of clothing and the bearded
+face, it might be himself had the clock of his life been set back by
+thirty years.
+
+Damaris' first instinct was of flight. Just as when, out on the Bar with
+her cousin, Tom Verity, now nearly a month ago, overcome by a foreboding
+of far-reaching danger she had--to the subsequent bitter wounding of her
+self-respect and pride--shown the white feather, ignominiously turned
+tail and run away, was she tempted to run away now.
+
+For it seemed too much. It came too close, laying rough hands not only
+upon the deepest of her love and reverence for her father, but upon that
+still mysterious depth of her own nature, namely her apprehension of
+passion and of sex. A sacred shame, an awe as at the commission of some
+covert act of impiety, overcame her as she looked at the two men walking,
+side by side, across the moist vividly green carpet of turf in the chill
+white sunshine, the plain of an uneasy grey sea behind them. She wanted
+to hide herself, to close eyes and ears against further knowledge.
+Yes--it came too close; and at the same time made her feel, as never
+before, isolated and desolate--as though a great gulf yawned between her
+and what she had always counted pre-eminently her own, most securely her
+property because most beloved.
+
+She had spoken valiantly on Faircloth's behalf, had generously acted as
+his advocate; yet now, beholding him thus in open converse with her
+father, the wings of love were scorched by the flame of jealousy--not so
+much of the young man himself, as of a past which he stood for and in
+which she had no part. Therefore to run--yes, run and hide from further
+knowledge, further experience and revelation, to claim the privileges,
+since she was called on to endure the smart, of isolation.--Yet to run,
+as she almost directly began to reason, was not only cowardly but
+useless. Fact remains fact, and if she refused to accept it, range
+herself in line with it to-day, she in nowise negatived but merely
+postponed the event. If not to-day, then to-morrow she was bound to empty
+the cup. And she laughed at the specious half-truth which had appeared so
+splendid and exhilarating a discovery--the half-truth that nothing is
+really inevitable unless you yourself will it to be so. For this was
+inevitable, sooner or later unescapable, fight against it, fly from it as
+she might.
+
+Therefore she must stay, whether she liked it or not--stay, because to do
+otherwise was purposeless, because she couldn't help herself, because
+there was nowhere to run to, in short--
+
+She heard footsteps upon the flags outside the garden door, speech, calm
+and restrained, of which she could not distinguish the import.
+Mechanically Damaris gathered the scattered house-keeping books lying
+before her upon the table--baker's, butcher's, grocer's, corn-chandler's,
+coal-merchant's--into a tight little heap; and, folding her hands on the
+top of them, prayed simply, almost wordlessly, for courage to hold the
+balance even, to seek not her own good but the good of those two others,
+to do right. Then she waited.
+
+The door opened, closed, and, after a minute's pause, one of the two
+men--Damaris did not know which, she could not bring herself to
+look--coming from between the stumpy pillars walked towards her down the
+half-length of the room; and bent over her, resting one hand on the back
+of her chair, the other on the leather inlay of the writing-table just
+beside the little pile of house-books.
+
+The hand was young, sunburnt, well-shaped, the finger nails well kept.
+Across the back of it a small-bodied, wide-winged sea-bird, in apparent
+act of flight, and the letters D.V.F. were tattooed in blue and crimson.
+A gold bangle, the surface of it dented in places and engraved with
+Japanese characters, encircled the fine lean wrist. These Damaris saw,
+and they worked upon her strangely, awakening an emotion of almost
+painful tenderness, as at sight of decorations pathetically fond,
+playfully child-like and ingenuous. While, as he bent over her, she also
+became aware of a freshness, a salt sweetness as of the ocean and the
+great vacant spaces where all the winds of the world blow keen and free.
+
+"Sir Charles wrote to me," Faircloth said a little huskily. "He told me I
+might come and see you again and talk to you, and bid you good-bye before
+I go to sea. And I should have been here sooner, but that I was away at
+Southampton Docks, and the letter only reached me this morning. I
+telegraphed and started on at once. And he--Sir Charles--walked out over
+the warren to meet me, and brought me up here right to the door. And on
+the way we talked a little,--if he chose he could make the very stones
+speak, I think--and he said one or two things for which--I--well--I thank
+first Almighty God, and next to God, you--Damaris"--
+
+This last imperatively.
+
+"You did ask for me? You did wish to have me come to you?"
+
+"Yes, I did wish it," she answered. "But I never knew how much until now,
+when he has brought you. For that is the right, the beautiful, safe way
+of having you come to me and to this house."
+
+Yet, as she spoke, she lightly laid her hand over the tattooed image of
+the flying sea-bird, concealing it, for it moved her to the point of
+active suffering in its quaint prettiness fixed thus indelibly up in the
+warm live flesh.
+
+At the touch of her hand Faircloth drew in his breath sharply, seeming to
+wince. Then, at last, Damaris looked up at him, her eyes full of
+questioning and startled concern.
+
+"I didn't hurt you?" she asked, a vague idea of suffering, attached to
+that fanciful stigmata, troubling her.
+
+"Hurt me--good Lord, how could you, of all people, hurt me?" he gently
+laughed at her. "Unless you turned me down, gave me to understand that,
+on second thoughts, you didn't find me up to your requirements or some
+mean class devilry of that kind--of which, by the way, had I judged you
+capable, you may be sure I should have been uncommonly careful never to
+come near you again.--No, it isn't that you hurt me; but that you delight
+me a little overmuch, so that it isn't easy to keep quite level-headed.
+There's so much to hear and to tell, and such scanty time to hear or tell
+it in, worse luck."
+
+"You are obliged to go so soon?"
+
+The flames of jealousy had effectually, it may be noted, died down
+in Damaris.
+
+"Yes--we're taking on cargo for all we're worth. We are booked to sail
+by noon the day after to-morrow. I stretched a point in leaving at all,
+which won't put me in the best odour with my officers and crew,
+or--supposing they come to hear of it--with my owners either. I am
+giving my plain duty the slip; but, in this singular ease, it seemed to
+me, a greater duty stood back of and outweighed the plain obvious
+one--since it mounted to a reconstruction, a peace-making, ridding the
+souls of four persons of an ugly burden. I wanted the affair all
+settled up and straightened out before this, my maiden voyage, in
+command of a ship of my own. For me it is a great event, a great step
+forward. And, perhaps I'm over-superstitious--most men of my trade are
+supposed to be touched that way--but I admit I rather cling to the
+notion of this private peace-making, this straightening out of an
+ancient crookedness, as a thing of good augury, a favourable omen. As
+such--let alone other reasons"--and he looked down at Damaris with a
+fine and delicate admiration--"I desired it and, out of my heart, I
+prize it.--Do you see?"
+
+"Yes--indeed a thing of good augury"--she affirmed.
+
+Yet in speaking her lips shook. For, in truth, poor child, she was
+hard-pressed. This intimate intercourse, alike in its simple directness
+and its novelty, began to wear on her to the point of physical distress.
+She felt tremulous and faint. Not that Faircloth jarred upon or was
+distasteful to her. Far from that. His youth and health, the unspoiled
+vigour and force of him, captivated her imagination. Even the dash of
+roughness, the lapses from conventional forms of speech and manner she
+now and again observed in him, caught her fancy, heightening his
+attraction for her. Nor was she any longer tormented by a sense of
+isolation. For, as she recognized, he stole nothing away which heretofore
+belonged to her. Rather did he add his own by no means inconsiderable
+self to the sum of her possessions.--And in that last fact she probably
+touched the real crux, the real strain, of the present, to her
+disintegrating, situation. For in him, and in his relation to her, a
+wonderful and very precious gift was bestowed upon her, namely another
+human life to love and live for.--Bestowed on her, moreover, without
+asking or choice of her own, arbitrarily, through the claim of his and
+her common ancestry and the profound moral and spiritual obligations, the
+mysterious affinities, which a common ancestry creates.
+
+Had she possessed this gift from childhood, had it taken its natural
+place in her experience through the linked and orderly progress of the
+years, it would have been wholly welcome, wholly profitable and sweet.
+But it was sprung upon her from the outside, quite astoundingly
+ready-made. It bore down on her, and at a double, foot, horse, and siege
+guns complete. Small discredit to her if she staggered under its onset,
+trembled and turned faint! For as she now perceived, it was exactly this
+relation of brother and sister of which she had some prescience, some dim
+intuition, from her first sight of Faircloth as he stood among the
+skeleton lobster-pots on board Timothy Proud's old boat. It was this call
+of a common blood which begot in her unreasoning panic, which she had run
+from and so wildly tried to escape. And yet it remained a gift of great
+price, a crown of gold; but oh! so very heavy--just at this moment
+anyhow--for her poor proud young head.
+
+Lifting her hand off Faircloth's, she made a motion to rise. Change of
+attitude and place might bring her relief, serve to steady her nerves and
+restore her endangered composure! Brooding over the whole singular matter
+in the peace and security of her room upstairs, her course had appeared a
+comparatively easy one, granted reasonable courage and address. But the
+young man's bodily presence, as now close beside her, exercised an
+emotional influence quite unforeseen and unreckoned with. Under it her
+will wavered. She ceased to see her way clearly, to be sure of herself.
+She grew timid, bewildered, unready both of purpose and of speech.
+
+Faircloth, meanwhile, being closely observant of her, was quick to
+detect her agitation. He drew aside her chair, and backed away, leaving
+her free to pass.
+
+"I am afraid we have talked too long," he said. "You're tired. I ought to
+have been more careful of you, remembered how ill you have been--and that
+partly through my doing too. So now, I had better bid you good-bye, I
+think, and leave you to rest."
+
+But Damaris, contriving to smile tremulous lips notwithstanding, shook
+her head. For, in lifting her hand from his, she caught sight of the
+tattooed blue-and-crimson sea-bird and the initials below it. And again
+her heart contracted with a spasm of tenderness; while those three
+letters, more fully arresting her attention, aroused in her a fascinated,
+half-shrinking curiosity. What did they mean? What could they stand for?
+She longed intensely to know--sure they were in some sort a symbol, a
+token, not without special significance for herself. But shyness and a
+quaint disposition, dating from her childhood, to pause and hover on the
+threshold of discovery, thus prolonging a period of entrancing,
+distracting suspense, withheld her. She dared not ask--in any case dared
+not ask just yet; and therefore took up his words in their literal
+application.
+
+"Indeed, you haven't talked too long," she assured him, as she went over
+to the tiger skin before the fire-place, and standing there looked down
+into the core of the burning logs. "We have only just begun to talk, so
+it isn't that which has tried me. But--if you won't misunderstand--pray
+don't--the thought of--of you, and of all that which lies between us, is
+still very new to me. I haven't quite found you, or myself in my relation
+to you, yet. Give me time, and indeed, I won't disappoint you."
+
+Faircloth, who had followed her, put his elbows on the mantelshelf, and
+sinking his head somewhat between his shoulders, stared down at the
+burning logs too.
+
+"Ah! when you take that tone, I'm a little scared lest I should turn out
+to be the disappointment, the failure, in this high adventure of ours,"
+he said under his breath.
+
+"So stay, please," the young girl went on, touched by, yet ignoring, his
+interjected comment. "Let me get as accustomed as I can now, so that I
+may feel settled. That is the way to prevent my being tired--the way to
+rest me, because it will help to get all my thinkings about you into
+place.--Yes, please stay.--That is," she added with a pretty touch of
+ceremony--"if you have time, and don't yourself wish to go."
+
+"I wish it! What, in heaven's name, could well be further from any wish
+of mine?" Faircloth broke out almost roughly, without raising his eyes.
+"Do you suppose when a man's gone thirsty many days, he is in haste to
+forego the first draught of pure water offered to him--and that after
+just putting his lips to the dear comfort of it?"
+
+"Ah! you care too much," Damaris cried, smitten by swift shrinking
+and dread.
+
+Faircloth lifted his head and looked at her, his face keen, brilliant
+with a far from ignoble emotion.
+
+"It is not, and never will be possible--so I fancy"--he said, "to care
+too much about you."
+
+And he fell into contemplation of the glowing logs again.
+
+But Damaris, seeing his transfigured countenance, hearing his rejoinder,
+penetrated, moreover, by the conviction of his entire sincerity, felt the
+weight of a certain golden crown more than ever heavy upon her devoted
+young head. She stepped aside, groping with outstretched hands behind her
+until she found and held on to the arm of the big sofa stationed at
+right angles to the hearth. And she waited, morally taking breath, to
+slip presently on to the wide low seat of it and lean thankfully against
+its solidly cushioned back for support.
+
+"Neither for you, or for my ship"--Faircloth went on, speaking, as it
+seemed, more to himself than to his now pale companion. "I dare couple
+you and her together, though she is no longer in the dew of her youth.
+Oh! I can't defend her looks, poor dear. She has seen service. Is only a
+battered, travel-weary old couple-of-thousand-ton cargo boat, which has
+hugged and nuzzled the foul-smelling quays of half the seaports of
+southern Europe and Asia. All the same--next to you--she's the best and
+finest thing life, up to now, has brought me, and I love her.--My
+affection for her, though," he went on, "is safe to be transitory. She is
+safe to have rivals and successors in plenty--unless, of course, by some
+ugly turn of luck, she and I go to the bottom in company."
+
+Faircloth broke off. A little sound, a little gesture of protest and
+distress, making him straighten himself up and turn quickly, his eyes
+alight with enquiry and laughter.
+
+"May I take that to mean I'm not quite alone in my caring," he asked;
+"but that you, Damaris, care, perhaps, just a trifling amount too?"
+
+He went across to the sofa, sat down sideways, laying his right arm along
+the back of it, and placing his left hand--inscribed with the fanciful
+device--over the girl's two hands clasped in her lap. The strong, lean
+fingers exercised a quiet, steady pressure, for a minute. After which he
+leaned back, no longer attempting to touch her, studiously indeed keeping
+his distance, while he said:
+
+"The other affection is stable for ever--safe from all rivals or
+successors. That is another reason why I jumped at the chance Sir
+Charles's letter gave me of coming here to-day, and seeing you, with this
+room--as I hoped--in which so much of your time must be spent, for
+background. I wanted to stamp a picture of you upon my memory, burn it
+right into the very tissue of my brain, so that I shall always have it
+with me, wherever I go, and however rarely we meet.--Because, as I see
+it, we shall rarely meet. We ought to be clear on that point--leave no
+frayed edges. There is a bar between us, which for the sake of others, as
+well as for your sake, it is only right and decent I should respect, a
+wall of partition through which I shouldn't attempt to break."
+
+"I know--but it troubles me," Damaris murmured. "It is sad."
+
+"Yes, of course, it is sad. But it's just the penalty that is bound to be
+paid, and which it is useless to ignore or lie to ourselves about.--So I
+shall never come, unless he--Sir Charles--sends for me as he did to-day,
+or unless you send. Only remember your picture will never leave me. I
+have it safe and sound"--Faircloth smiled at her.--"It will be with me
+just as actually and ineffaceably as this is with me."
+
+He patted the back of his left hand.
+
+"Nothing, short of death, can rub either out. I have pretty thoroughly
+banked against that, you see. So you've only to send when, and if, you
+want me. I shall turn up--oh! never fear, I shall turn up."
+
+"And I shall send--we shall both send," Damaris answered gravely, even a
+little brokenly.
+
+The crown might be heavy; but she had strangely ceased to desire to be
+rid of it, beginning, indeed, to find its weight oddly satisfying, even,
+it may be asserted, trenching on the exquisite. And, with this altered
+attitude, a freedom of spirit, greater than she had enjoyed since the
+commencement of the whole astonishing episode, since before her cousin
+Tom Verity's visit in fact, came upon her. It lightened her heart. It
+dispelled her fatigue--which throughout the afternoon had been, probably,
+more of the moral than bodily sort. Her soul no longer beat its wings
+against iron bars, fluttered in the meshes of a net; but looked forth shy
+yet serene, accepting the position in which it found itself. For
+Faircloth inspired her with deepening faith. He needed no guiding, as she
+told herself; but was strong enough, as his words convincingly testified,
+clear-sighted and quick-witted enough, to play his part in the
+complicated drama without prompting. Hadn't he done just what she
+asked?--Stayed until, by operation of some quality in himself or--could
+it be?--simply through the mysterious draw of his and her brother and
+sisterhood, she had already grown accustomed, settled in her thought of
+him, untormented by the closeness of his presence and unabashed.
+
+And having reached this vantage-point, discovering the weight of the
+crown dear now rather than irksome, Damaris permitted herself a closer
+observation of her companion than ever before. Impressions of his
+appearance she had received in plenty--but received them in flashes,
+confusing from their very vividness. Confusing, also, because each one of
+them was doubled by a haunting consciousness of his likeness to her
+father. The traits common to both men, rather than those individually
+characteristic of the younger, had been in evidence. And, in her present
+happier mood, Damaris also desired a picture to set in the storehouse of
+memory. But it must represent this brother of hers in and by himself,
+divorced, as far as might be, from that pursuing, and, to her, singularly
+agitating likeness.
+
+Her design and her scrutiny were easier of prosecution that, during the
+last few minutes, Faircloth had retired into silence, and an attitude of
+abstraction. Sitting rather forward upon the sofa, his legs crossed,
+nursing one blue serge trousered knee with locked hands, his glance
+travelled thoughtfully over the quiet, low-toned room and its varied
+contents. Later, sought the window opposite, and ranged across the garden
+and terrace walk, with its incident of small ancient cannon, to the long
+ridge of the Bar--rising, bleached, wind-swept, and notably deserted
+under the colourless sunshine, beyond the dark waters of the tide river
+which raced tumultuously seaward in flood.
+
+Seen thus in repose--and repose is a terrible tell-tale,--the lines of
+the young man's face and figure remained firm, gracefully angular and
+definite. No hint of slackness or sloppiness marred their effect. The
+same might be said of his clothes, which though of ordinary regulation
+colour and cut--plus neat black tie and stiff-fronted white shirt,
+collar, and wristbands--possessed style, and that farthest from the cheap
+or flashy. Only the gold bangle challenged Damaris' taste as touching on
+florid; but its existence she condoned in face of its wearer's hazardous
+and inherently romantic calling. For the sailor may, surely, be here and
+there permitted a turn and a flourish, justly denied to the safe
+entrenched landsman.
+
+If outward aspects were thus calculated to engage her approval and
+agreeably fill in her projected picture, that which glimmered through
+them--divined by her rather than stated, all being necessarily more an
+affair of intuition than of knowledge--gave her pleasure of richer
+quality. High-tempered she unquestionably read him, arrogant and on
+occasion not inconceivably remorseless; but neither mean nor ungenerous,
+his energy unwasted, his mind untainted by self-indulgence. If he were
+capable of cruelty to others, he was at least equally capable of turning
+the knife on himself, cutting off or plucking out an offending member.
+This appealed to the heroic in her. While over her vision, as she thus
+considered him, hung the glamour of youth which, to youth, displays such
+royal enchantments--untrodden fields of hope and promise inviting the
+tread of eager feet, the rush of glorious goings forward towards
+conquests, towards wonders, well assured, yet to be. The personality of
+this man clearly admitted no denial, as little bragged as it apologized,
+since his candour matched his force of will.
+
+Taking stock of him thus, from the corner of the sofa, imagination,
+intelligence, affections alike actively in play, Damaris' colour rose,
+her pulse quickened, and her great eyes grew wide, finely and softly gay.
+
+Faircloth moved. Turned his head. Met her eyes, and looking into them his
+face blanched perceptibly under its _couche_ of sunburn.
+
+"Damaris," he said, "Damaris, what has happened?--Stop though, you
+needn't tell me. I know. We've found one another--haven't we?--Found one
+another more in the silence than in the talking.--Queer, things should
+work that way! But it puts a seal on fact. For they couldn't so work
+unless the same stuff, the same inclination, were embedded right in the
+very innermost substance of both of us. You look rested. You look
+glad--bless you.--Isn't that so?"
+
+"Yes," she simply told him.
+
+Faircloth set his elbows on his knees, his chin on his two hands, wrist
+against wrist, and his glance ranged out over the garden again, to the
+pale strip of the Bar spread between river and sea.
+
+"Then I can go," he said, "but not because I've tired you."
+
+"I shall never be tired any more from--from being with you."
+
+"I don't fancy you will. All the same I must go, because my time's up. My
+train leaves Marychurch at six, and I have to call at the Inn, to bid my
+mother good-bye, on my way to the station."
+
+Was the perfect harmony, the perfect adjustment of spirit to spirit a wee
+bit jarred, did a mist come up over the heavenly bright sky, Faircloth
+asked himself? And answered doggedly that, if it were so, he could not
+help it. For since, by all ruling of loyalty and dignity, the wall of
+partition was ordained to stand, wasn't it safer to remind both himself
+and Damaris, at times, of its presence? He must keep his feet on the
+floor, good God--keep them very squarely on the floor--for otherwise,
+wasn't it possible to conceive of their skirting the edge of unnamable
+abysses? In furtherance of that so necessary soberness of outlook he now
+went on speaking.
+
+"But before I go, I want to hark back to a matter of quite ancient
+history--your lost shoes and stockings--for thereby hangs a tale."
+
+And he proceeded to tell her how, about a week ago, being caught by a
+wild flurry of rain in an outlying part of the island, behind the black
+cottages and Inn, he took shelter in a disused ruinous boat-house opening
+on the great reed-beds which here rim the shore. A melancholy, forsaken
+place, from which, at low tide, you can walk across the mud-flats to
+Lampit, with a pleasing chance of being sucked under by quicksands. Abram
+Sclanders' unhappy half-witted son haunted this boat-house, it seemed,
+storing his shrimping nets there, any other things as well, a venerable
+magpie's hoard of scraps and lumber; using it as a run-hole, too, when
+the other lads hunted and tormented him according to their healthy,
+brutal youthful way.
+
+--A regular joss-house, he'd made of it. And set up in one corner, white
+and ghostly--making you stare a minute when you first came inside--a
+ship's figure-head, a three-foot odd Britannia, pudding-basin bosomed and
+eagle-featured, with castellated headgear, clasping a trident in her
+hand. She, as presiding deity and--
+
+"In front of her," Faircloth said, his chin still in his hands and eyes
+gazing away to the Bar--"earth and pebbles banked up into a flat-topped
+mound, upon which stood your shoes filled with sprays of hedge fruit and
+yellow button-chrysanthemums--stolen too, I suppose, from one of the
+gardens at Lampit. They grow freely there. Your silk stockings hung round
+her neck, a posy of flowers twisted into them.--When I came on this
+exhibition, I can't quite tell you how I felt. It raised Cain in me to
+think of that degraded, misbegotten creature pawing over and playing
+about with anything which had belonged to you. I was for making
+Sclanders, his father, bring him over and give him the thrashing of his
+life, right there before the proofs of his sins."
+
+"But you didn't," Damaris cried. "You didn't. What do my shoes and
+stockings matter? I oughtn't to have left them on the shore. It was
+putting temptation in his way."
+
+Faircloth looked at her smiling.
+
+"No I didn't, and for two reasons. One that I knew--even then--you would
+find excuses, plead for mercy, as you have just now. Another, those
+flowers. If I had found--well--what I might have found, oh! he should
+have had the stick or the dog-whip without stint. But one doesn't
+practise devil-worship with flowers. It seemed to me some craving after
+beauty was there, as if the poor germ of a soul groped out of the
+darkness towards what is fair and sweet. I dared not hound it back into
+the darkness, close down any dim aspiration after God it might have. So I
+left its pitiful joss-house inviolate, the moan of the wind and sighing
+of the great reed-beds making music for such strange rites of worship as
+have been, or may be, practised within. Any god is better than
+none--that's my creed, at least. And to defile any man's god--however
+trumpery--unless you're amazingly sure you've a better one to offer him
+in place of it is to sin against the Holy Ghost."
+
+Faircloth rose to his feet.
+
+"Time's up"--he said. "I must go. Here is farewell to the most beautiful
+day of my life.--But see, Damaris"--
+
+And he knelt down, in front of her.
+
+"Leave your shoes and stockings cast away on the Bar and thereby open the
+door--for some people--on to the kingdom of heaven, if you like. But
+don't, don't, if you've the smallest mercy for my peace of mind ever
+wander about there again alone. I've a superstition against it. Something
+unhappy will come of it. It isn't right. It isn't safe. When--when I
+called you and you answered me through the mist, I had a horrible fear I
+was too late. You see I care--and the caring, after to-day, very
+certainly will not grow less. Take somebody, one of your women, always,
+with you. Promise me never to be out by yourself."
+
+Wondering, inexpressibly touched, Damaris put her hands on his shoulders.
+His hands sprang to cover them.
+
+"Of course, I promise," she said.
+
+And, closing her eyes, put up her lips to be kissed.
+
+Then the rattle of the glass door on to the garden as it shut. In the
+room a listening stillness, a great all-invading emptiness. Finally
+Hordle, with the tea-tray, and--
+
+"Mrs. Cooper, if it isn't troubling you, Miss, would be glad to have the
+house-books to pay, as she's walking up the village after tea."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CONCERNING A SERMON WHICH NEVER WAS PREACHED AND OTHER MATTERS OF
+LOCAL INTEREST
+
+
+Before passing on to more dignified matters, that period of nine days
+demands to be noted during which the inhabitants of Deadham, all very
+much agog, celebrated the wonder of Miss Bilson's indisputable
+disappearance and Damaris Verity's reported adventure.
+
+Concerning the former, Dr. Horniblow, good man, took himself seriously to
+task, deploring his past action and debating his present duty.
+
+"It is no use, Jane," he lamented to his wife. The two had retired for
+the night, darkness and the bedclothes covering them. "I am very much
+worried about my share in the matter."
+
+"But, my dear James, you really are overscrupulous. What share had you?"
+
+The clerical wife does not always see eye to eye with her spouse in
+respect of his female parishioners, more particularly, perhaps, the
+unmarried ones. Mrs. Horniblow loved, honoured, and--within reasonable
+limits--obeyed her James; but this neither prevented her being shrewd,
+nor knowing her James, after all, to be human. Remembrance of Theresa,
+heading the Deadham procession during the inspection of Harchester
+Cathedral, sandwiched in between him and the Dean, still rankled in her
+wifely bosom.
+
+"I overpersuaded Miss Bilson to accompany us on the choir treat. I forgot
+she must not be regarded as an entirely free agent. She has shown
+interest in parish work and really proved very useful and obliging. Her
+acquaintance with architecture--the technical terms, too--is unusually
+accurate for a member of your sex."
+
+"Her business is teaching," said the lady.
+
+"And I can't but fear I have been instrumental in her loss of an
+excellent position."
+
+"If her learning is as remarkable as you consider it, she will doubtless
+soon secure another."
+
+"Ah! you're prejudiced, my love. One cannot but be struck, at times, by
+the harshness with which even women of high principle, like yourself,
+judge other women."
+
+"Possibly the highness of my principles may be accountable for my
+judgments--in some cases."
+
+"Argument is very unrestful," the vicar remarked, turning over on his
+side.
+
+"But there would be an end of conversation if I always agreed with you."
+
+"Tut--tut," he murmured. Then with renewed plaintiveness--"I cannot make
+up my mind whether it is not my duty, my chivalrous duty, to seek an
+interview with Sir Charles Verity and explain--put the aspects of the
+case to him as I see them."
+
+"Call on him by all means. I'll go with you. We ought, in common
+civility, to enquire for Damaris after this illness of hers. But don't
+explain or attempt to enlarge on the case from your own point of view.
+Sir Charles will consider it an impertinence. It won't advantage Miss
+Bilson and will embroil you with the most important of your parishioners.
+The wisdom of the serpent is permitted, on occasion even recommended."
+
+"A most dangerous doctrine, Jane, most dangerous, save under authority."
+
+"What authority can be superior to that under which the recommendation
+was originally given?"
+
+"My love, you become slightly profane.--I implore you don't argue--and at
+this hour! When a woman touches on exegesis, on theology "--
+
+"All I know upon those subjects you, dear, have taught me."
+
+"Ah! well--ah! well"--the good man returned, at once mollified and
+suspicious. For might not the compliment be regarded as something of a
+back-hander? "We can defer our decision till to-morrow. Perhaps we had
+better, as you propose, call together. I need not go straight to the
+point, but watch my opportunity and slip in a word edgeways."
+
+He audibly yawned--the hint, like the yawn, a broad one. The lady did
+not take it, however. So far she had held her own; more--had nicely
+secured her ends. But further communications trembled upon her tongue.
+The word is just--literally trembled, for they might cause anger, and
+James' anger--it happened rarely--she held in quite, to herself,
+uncomfortable respect.
+
+"I fear there is a good deal of objectionable gossip going about the
+village just now," she tentatively commenced.
+
+"Then pray don't repeat it to me, my love"--another yawn and an irritable
+one. "Gossip as you know is abhorrent to me."
+
+"And to me--but one needs to be forearmed with the truth if one is to
+rebut it conclusively. Only upon such grounds should I think of
+mentioning this to you."
+
+She made a dash.
+
+"James, have you by chance ever heard peculiar rumours about young Darcy
+Faircloth's parentage?"
+
+"In mercy, Jane--what a question!--and from you! I am
+inexpressibly shocked."
+
+"So was I, when--I won't mention names--when such rumours were hinted to
+me. I assured the person with whom I was talking that I had never heard a
+word on the subject. But she said, 'One can't help having eyes.'"
+
+"Or, some of you, noses for carrion."
+
+Here he gave her the advantage. She was not slow to make play with it.
+
+"Now it is my turn to be shocked," she said--"and not, I think, James,
+without good cause."
+
+"Yes, I apologize," the excellent man answered immediately. "I apologize;
+but to have so foul a suggestion of parochial scandal let loose on me
+suddenly, flung in my teeth, as I may say--and by you! I was taken off
+my guard and expressed myself coarsely. Yes, Jane, I apologize."
+
+"Then I have you authority for contradicting these rumours?"
+
+The Vicar of Deadham groaned in the darkness, and rustled under the
+bedclothes. His perplexity was great on being thus confronted by the
+time-honoured question as to how far, in the interests of public
+morality, it is justifiable for the private individual roundly to lie.
+Finally he banked on compromise, that permanently presiding genius of the
+Church of England 'as by law established.'
+
+"You have me on the hip, my love," he told his wife quite meekly.
+
+But, as she began rather eagerly to speak, he stopped her.
+
+"Let be, my dear Jane," he bade her, "let be. I neither deny or confirm
+the rumours to which I imagine you allude. Silence is most becoming for
+us both. Continue to assure any persons, ill-advised and evil-minded
+enough to approach you--I trust they may prove but few--that you have
+never heard a word of this subject. You will never--I can confidently
+promise you--hear one from me.--I shall make it my duty to preach on the
+iniquity of back-biting, tale-bearing, scandal-mongering next Sunday,
+and put some to the blush, as I trust. St. Paul will furnish me with
+more than one text eminently apposite.--Let me think--let me
+see--hum--ah! yes."
+
+And he fell to quoting from the Pauline epistles in Greek--to the lively
+annoyance of his auditor, whose education, though solid did not include a
+knowledge of those languages vulgarly known as "dead." She naturally
+sought means to round on him.
+
+"Might you not compromise yourself rather by such a sermon, James?" she
+presently said.
+
+"Compromise myself? Certainly not.--Pray, Jane, how?"
+
+"By laying yourself open to the suspicion of a larger acquaintance with
+the origin of those rumours than you are willing to admit."
+
+The shaft went home.
+
+"This is a mere attempt to draw me. You are disingenuous."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," the lady declared. "My one object is to protect
+you from criticism. And preaching upon gossip must invite rather than
+allay interest, thus giving this particular gossip a new lease of
+life. The application would be too obvious. Clearly, James, it would
+be wiser to wait."
+
+"The serpent, again the serpent--and one I've warmed in my bosom,
+too"--Then aloud--"I will think it over, my love. Possibly your view
+may be the right one. It is worth consideration.--That must be
+sufficient. And now, Jane, I do implore you give over discussion and
+let us say good night."
+
+It may be registered as among the consequences of these nocturnal
+exercises, that Dr. Horniblow abstained from tickling the ears of his
+congregation, on the following Sunday, with a homily founded upon the sin
+tale-bearing; and that he duly called, next day, at The Hard accompanied
+by his wife.
+
+The visit--not inconceivably to his inward thanksgiving--proved
+unfruitful of opportunity for excusing Miss Bilson, to her former
+employer, by accusing himself, Sir Charles Verity's courtesy being of an
+order calculated to discourage any approach to personal topics.
+Unfruitful, also, of enlightenment to Mrs. Horniblow respecting matters
+which--as the good lady ashamedly confessed to herself--although
+forbidden by her lord, still intrigued her while, of course, they most
+suitably shocked. For the life of her she could not help looking out for
+signs of disturbance and upheaval. But found none, unless--and that
+presented a conundrum difficult of solution--Damaris' pretty social
+readiness and grace in the reception of her guests might be, in some way,
+referable to lately reported events. That, and the fact the young girl
+was--as the saying is--"all eyes"--eyes calm, fathomless, reflective,
+which yet, when you happened to enter their sphere of vision, covered
+you with a new-born gentleness. Mrs. Horniblow caught herself growing
+lyrical--thinking of stars, of twin mountain lakes, the blue-purple of
+ocean. A girl in love is blessed with just such eyes--sometimes.
+Whereupon, remembering her own two girls, May and Doris--good as gold,
+bless them, yet, her shrewdness pronounced, when compared with Damaris,
+but homely pieces--the excellent woman sighed.
+
+What did it all then amount to? Mrs. Horniblow's logic failed. "All
+eyes"--and very lovely ones at that--Damaris might be; yet her
+tranquillity and serenity appeared beyond question. Must thrilling
+mystery be voted no more than a mare's-nest?--Only, did not the fact
+remain that James had refused to commit himself either way, thereby
+naturally landing himself in affirmation up to the neck? She gave it up.
+
+But, even in the giving up, could not resist probing just a little. The
+two gentlemen were out of earshot, standing near the glass door.--How
+James' black, bow-windowed figure and the fixed red in his clean-shaven,
+slightly pendulous cheeks, did show up to be sure, in the
+light!--Unprofitable gift of observation, for possession of which she so
+frequently had cause to reproach herself.--
+
+"You still look a little run down and pale, my dear," she said. "It isn't
+for me to advise, but wouldn't a change of air and scene be good, don't
+you think?"
+
+Damaris assured her not--in any case not yet. Later, after Christmas, she
+and her father might very likely go abroad. But till then they had a full
+programme of guests.
+
+"Colonel Carteret comes to us next week; and my aunt Felicia always likes
+to be here in November. She enjoys that month at the seaside, finding it,
+she says, so poetic."
+
+Damaris smiled, her eyes at once, and more than ever, eloquent and
+unfathomable.
+
+"And I learned only this morning an old Anglo-Indian friend of ours, Mrs.
+Mackinder, whom I should be quite dreadfully sorry to miss, is spending
+the autumn at Stourmouth."
+
+Mrs. Horniblow permitted herself a dash.
+
+"At Stourmouth--yes?" she ventured. "That reminds me. I hear--how far the
+information is correct I cannot pretend to say--that kind little person,
+Miss Bilson, has been there with Miss Verity this last week. I observed
+we had not met her in the village just lately. I hope you have good news
+of her. When is she expected back?"
+
+Without hesitation or agitation came the counter-stroke.
+
+"I don't know," Damaris answered. "Her plans, I believe, are uncertain at
+present. You and Dr. Horniblow will stay to tea with us, won't
+you?"--this charmingly. "It will be here in a very few minutes--I can
+ring for it at once."
+
+And the lady laughed to herself, good-temperedly accepting the rebuff.
+For it was neatly delivered, and she could admire clever fencing even
+though she herself were pinked.--As to tea, she protested positive shame
+at prolonging her visit--for didn't it already amount rather to a
+"visitation?"--yet retained her seat with every appearance of
+satisfaction.--If the truth must be told, Mrs. Cooper's cakes were
+renowned throughout society at Deadham, as of the richest, the most
+melting in the mouth; and James--hence not improbably the tendency to
+abdominal protuberance--possessed an inordinate fondness for cakes. He
+had shown himself so docile in respect of projected inflammatory sermons,
+and of morning calls personally conducted by his wife, that the latter
+could not find it in her heart to ravish him away from these approaching
+very toothsome delights. Nay--let him stay and eat--for was not such
+staying good policy, she further reflected, advertising the fact she bore
+no shadow of malice towards her youthful hostess for that neatly
+delivered rebuff.
+
+After this sort, therefore, was gossip, for the time being at all events,
+scotched if not actually killed. Parochial excitement flagged the sooner,
+no doubt, because, of the four persons chiefly responsible for its
+creation, two were invisible and the remaining two apparently quite
+unconscious of its ever having existed.--Mrs. Lesbia Faircloth, at the
+Inn, the Vicar's wife left out of the count.--If Sir Charles Verity and
+Damaris had hurried away, gossip would have run after them with liveliest
+yelpings. But this practise of masterly inactivity routed criticism. How
+far was it studied, cynical on the part of the father, or innocent upon
+that of the daughter, she could not tell one bit; but that practically it
+carried success along with it, she saw to be indubitable. "Face the music
+and the band stops playing"--so she put it to herself, as she walked down
+the drive to the front gate, her James--was he just a trifle crestfallen,
+good man?--strolling, umbrella in hand, beside her.
+
+All subsequent outbreaks of gossip may be described as merely sporadic.
+They did not spread. As when, for instance, peppery little Dr.
+Cripps--still smarting under Dr. McCabe's introduction into preserves he
+had reckoned exclusively his own--advised himself to throw off a nasty
+word or so on the subject to Commander Battye and Captain Taylor, over
+strong waters and cigars in his surgery--tea, the ladies, and the
+card-table left to their own devices in the drawing-room meanwhile--one
+evening after a rubber of whist.
+
+"Damn bad taste, I call it, in a newcomer like Cripps," the sailor had
+remarked later to the soldier. "But if a man isn't a gentleman what can
+you expect?"--And with that, as among local persons of quality, the
+matter finally dropped.
+
+Mrs. Doubleday and Butcher Cleave, to give an example from a lower social
+level, agreed, across the former's counter in the village shop, that--
+
+"It is the duty of every true Christian to let bygones be bygones--and a
+downright flying in the face of Providence, as you may say, to do
+otherwise, when good customers, whose money you're sure of, are so
+scarce. For without The Hard and--to give everyone their due--without the
+Island also, where would trade have been in Deadham these ten years and
+more past? Mum's the word, take it from me,"--and each did take it from
+the other, with rich conviction of successfully making the best of both
+worlds, securing eternal treasure in Heaven while cornering excellent
+profits on earth.
+
+William Jennifer had many comments to make in the matter, and with
+praiseworthy reticence concluded to make them mainly to himself. The
+majority of them, it is to be feared, were humorous to the point of being
+unsuited to print, but the refrain may pass--
+
+"And to think if I hadn't happened to choose that particular day to take
+the little dorgs and the ferrets ratting, the 'ole bleesed howd'ye do
+might never have come to pass! Tidy sum, young master Darcy's in my debt,
+Lord succour him, for the rest of his nat'ral life!"
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+THE WORLD BEYOND THE FOREST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AN EPISODE IN THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
+
+
+Thus far, for the surer basing of our argument, it has appeared advisable
+to proceed step by step. But the foundations being now well and truly
+laid, the pace of our narrative may, with advantage, quicken; a twelve
+month be rounded up in a page, a decade, should convenience so dictate,
+in a chapter.
+
+To the furthering of which advance, let it be stated that the close of
+the year still in question marked the date, for Damaris, of two matters
+of cardinal importance. For it was then Sir Charles Verity commenced
+writing his history of the reign of Shere Ali, covering the eleven years
+following the latter's accession to the very turbulent throne of
+Afghanistan in 1863.--Colonel Carteret may be held mainly responsible for
+the inception of this literary enterprise, now generally acclaimed a
+classic. Had not Sir William Napier, so he argued, made the soldier, as
+historian, for ever famous? And why should not Charles Verity, with his
+unique knowledge of court intrigues, of the people and the country, do
+for the campaigns of the semi-barbarous Eastern ruler, that which Sir
+William had done for Wellington's campaign in the Spanish Peninsular?
+
+Carteret prophesied--and truly as the event richly proved--a finely
+fascinating book would eventually come of it. Meanwhile--though this
+argument, in favour of the scheme, he kept to himself--the preparation of
+the said book would supply occupation and interest of which his old
+friend appeared to him to stand rather gravely in need. For that
+something was, just now, amiss with Charles Verity, Carteret could not
+disguise from himself. He was changed, in a way a little broken--so at
+least the younger man's kindly, keenly observant, blue eyes regretfully
+judged him. He fell into long silences, seeming to sink away into some
+abyss of cheerless thought; while his speech had, too often, a bitter
+edge to it. Carteret mourned these indications of an unhappy frame of
+mind. Did more--sought by all means in his power to conjure them away.
+
+"We must make your father fight his battles over again, dear witch," he
+told Damaris, pacing the terrace walk topping the sea-wall beside her,
+one evening in the early November dusk. "His record is a very brilliant
+one and he ought to get more comfort out of the remembrance of it. Let's
+conspire, you and I, to make him sun himself in the achievements and
+activities of those earlier years. What do you say?"
+
+"Oh! do it, do it," she answered fervently. "He is sad--and I am so
+afraid that it is partly my fault."
+
+"Your fault? Why what wicked practises have you been up to since I was
+here last?" he asked, teasing her.
+
+A question evoking, in Damaris, sharp inward debate. For her father's
+melancholy humour weighed on her, causing her perplexity and a measure of
+self-reproach. She would have given immensely much to unburden herself to
+this wise and faithful counsellor; and confide to him the--to
+her--strangely moving fact of Darcy Faircloth's existence. Yet,
+notwithstanding her conviction of Colonel Carteret's absolute loyalty,
+she hesitated; restrained in part by modesty, in part by the fear of
+being treacherous. Would it be altogether honourable to give away the
+secret places of Charles Verity's life--of any man's life if it came to
+that--even to so honourable and trusted a friend? She felt handicapped by
+her own ignorance moreover, having neither standards nor precedents for
+guidance. She had no idea--how should she?--in what way most men regard
+such affairs, how far they accept and condone, how far condemn them. She
+could not tell whether she was dealing with a case original and
+extraordinary, or one of pretty frequent occurrence in the experience of
+those who, as the phrase has it, know their world. These considerations
+kept her timid and tongue-tied; though old habit, combined with
+Carteret's delightful personality and the soothing influence of the dusky
+evening quiet, inclined her to confidences.
+
+"It's not anything I've done," she presently took him up gravely. "But,
+quite by chance, I learned something which I think the Commissioner Sahib
+would rather not have had me hear. I had to be quite truthful with him
+about it; but I was bewildered and ill. I blurted things out rather I'm
+afraid, and hurt him more than I need have done. I was so taken by
+surprise, you see."
+
+"Yes, I see," Carteret said, regardless of strict veracity. For he didn't
+see, though he believed himself on the road to seeing and that some
+matter of singular moment.
+
+"He was beautiful to me--beautiful about everything--everybody," she
+asserted. "And we love one another not less, but more, he and I--of that
+I am sure. Only it's different--different. We can't either of us quite go
+back to the time before--and that has helped to make him sad."
+
+Carteret listened in increasing interest aware that he sounded
+unlooked-for depths, apprehensive lest those depths should harbour
+disastrous occurrences. He walked the length of the terrace before again
+speaking. Then, no longer teasing but gently and seriously, he asked her:
+
+"Do you feel free to tell me openly about this, and let me try to help
+you--if it's a case for help?"
+
+Damaris shook her head, looking up at him through the soft enclosing
+murk, and smiling rather ruefully.
+
+"I wish I knew--I do so wish I knew," she said. "But I don't--not yet,
+anyway. Help me without my telling you, please. The book is a splendid
+idea. And then do you think you could persuade him to let us go away
+abroad, for a time? Everything here must remind him--as it does me--of
+what happened. It was quite right," she went on judicially--"for
+everyone's sake, we should stay here just the same at first. People,"
+with a scornful lift of the head Carteret noted and admired--"might have
+mistaken our reason for going away. They had to be made to understand we
+were perfectly indifferent.--I knew all that, though we never discussed
+it. One does things, sometimes, just because it's right they should be
+done, without any sort of planning--just by instinct. Still I know we
+can't be quite natural here. What happened comes between us. We're each
+anxious about the other and feel a constraint, though we never speak of
+it. That can't be avoided, I suppose, for we both suffered a good deal at
+the time--but he most, much the most because"--
+
+Damaris paused.
+
+"Because why?"
+
+"I suppose because I'm young; and then, once I got accustomed to the
+idea, I saw it meant what was very wonderful in some ways--a
+wonderfulness which, for me, would go on and on--a whole new country for
+me to explore and travel in, quite my own--and--and--which I couldn't
+help loving."
+
+"Heigh ho! heigh ho!" Carteret put in softly. "This becomes exciting,
+dear witch, you know."
+
+"I don't want to be tantalizing," she answered him, still pacing in the
+growing dimness of land and sea.
+
+The dead black mass of the great ilex trees looked to touch the low
+hanging sky. A grey gleam, here and there, lit the surface of the
+swirling tide-river. The boom of the slow plunging waves came from the
+back of the Bar, and now and again wild-fowl cried, faint and distant,
+out on the mud-flats of the Haven.
+
+"Listen," Damaris said. "It is mournful here. It tells you the same
+things over and over again. It sort of insists on them. The place seems
+so peaceful, but it never lets you alone, really. And now, after what
+happened, it never leaves him--the Commissioner Sahib--alone. It repeats
+the same story to him over and over again. It wears him as dropping water
+wears away stone. And there is no longer the same reason for staying
+there was at first. Persuade him to go away, to take me abroad. And come
+with us--couldn't you?--for a little while at least. Is it selfish to ask
+you to leave your hunting and shooting so early in the season? I don't
+want to be selfish. But he isn't well. Whether he isn't well in his body
+or only in his thinkings, I can't tell. But it troubles me. He sleeps
+badly, I am afraid. The nights must be very long and lonely when one
+can't sleep.--If you would come, it would be so lovely. I should feel so
+safe about him. You and the book should cure him between you. I'm
+perfectly sure of that. To have you would make us both so happy"--
+
+And, in her innocent importunity, Damaris slipped her hand within Colonel
+Carteret's arm sweetly coaxing him.
+
+He started slightly. Threw back his head, standing, straight and tall, in
+the mysterious twilight beside her. Raised his deerstalker cap, for a
+moment, letting the moist chill of the November evening dwell on his hair
+and forehead.
+
+Though very popular with women, Carteret had never married, making a home
+for his elder sister, Mrs. Dreydel--widow of a friend and fellow officer
+in the then famous "Guides"--and her four sturdy, good-looking boys at
+the Norfolk manor-house, which had witnessed his own birth and those of a
+long line of his ancestors. To bring up a family of his own, in addition
+to his sister's, would have been too costly, and debt he abhorred.
+Therefore, such devoirs as he paid the great goddess Aphrodite, were but
+few and fugitive--he being by nature and temperament an idealist and a
+notably clean liver. By his abstention, however, sentiment was
+fine-trained rather than extinguished. His heart remained young, capable
+of being thrilled in instant response to any appeal of high and delicate
+quality. It thrilled very sensibly, now, in response to the appeal of
+Damaris' hand, emphasizing her tender pleading regarding her father. She
+touched, she charmed him to an extent which obliged him rather sharply to
+call his senses to order. Hadn't he known her ever since she was a babe
+a span long? Wasn't she, according to all reason, a babe still, in as far
+as any decently minded male being of his mature age could be concerned?
+He told himself, at once humorously and sternly, he ought to feel so,
+think so--whether he did or not. And ought, in his case, was a word not
+to be played fast and loose with. Once uttered it must be obeyed.
+
+Wherefore, thus conclusively self-admonished, he put his cap on his head
+again and, bending a little over Damaris, patted her hand affectionately
+as it rested upon his arm.
+
+"Very good--I'll hold myself and my future at your disposition," he gaily
+said to her. "As much hunting and shooting as I care for will very well
+keep. Don't bother your pretty head about them. During the Christmas
+holidays, my nephews will be ready enough, in all conscience, to let fly
+with my guns and ride my horses, so neither will be wasted. I'll go along
+with you gladly, for no man living is dearer to me than your father, and
+no business could be more to my taste than scotching and killing the
+demons which plague him. They plague all of us, in some form or other, at
+times, as life goes on."
+
+Very gently he disengaged his arm from her hand.
+
+"Take me indoors," he said, "and give me my tea--over which we'll further
+discuss plots for kidnapping Verity and carrying him off south. The
+French Riviera for preference?--Hullo--what the deuce is that?"
+
+For, as he spoke, the two cats appearing with miraculous suddenness out
+of nowhere--as is the custom of their priceless tribe--rushed wildly
+past. Fierce, sinuous, infinitely graceful shapes, leaping high in air,
+making strange noises, chirrupings and squeakings, thudding of quick
+little paws, as they chased one another round the antiquated,
+seaward-trained cannon and pyramid of ball.
+
+For a minute or so Damaris watched them, softly laughing. Then, in the
+content bred of Carteret's promise and the joy of coming travel,
+something of their frisky spirit caught her too--a spirit which, for all
+young creatures, magically haunts the dusk. And, as they presently fled
+away up the lawn, Damaris fled after them, circling over the moist
+grass, darting hither and thither, alternately pursuing and pursued.
+
+Colonel Carteret, following soberly, revolving many thoughts, did not
+overtake her until the garden door was reached. There, upon the
+threshold, the light from within covering and revealing her, she awaited
+him. Her bosom rose and fell, her breathing being a little hurried, her
+face a little flushed. Her grave eyes sparkled and danced.
+
+"Oh! you've made me so glad, so dreadfully glad," she said. "And I never
+properly thanked you. Forgive me. I never can resist them--I went mad
+with the cats."
+
+Her young beauty appeared to Carteret very notable; and, yes--although
+she might disport herself in this childishly frolic fashion--it was
+idle to call her, or pretend her any longer a babe. For cause to him
+unknown, through force of some experience of which he remained
+ignorant, she had undeniably come into the charm and mystery of her
+womanhood--a very fair and noble blossoming before which reverently, if
+wistfully, he bowed his head.
+
+"It's good to have you declare yourself glad, dear witch, in that case
+I'm glad too," he answered her. "But as to forgiveness, I'm inclined to
+hold it over until you leave off being tantalizing--and, upon my word, I
+find you uncommonly far from leaving off just now!"
+
+"You mean until I tell you what happened?"
+
+Carteret nodded, searching her face with wise, fearless, smiling eyes.
+
+"Ah! yes," he said, "we can put it that way if you please." Damaris
+hesitated detecting some undercurrent of meaning which puzzled her.
+
+"I may never have to tell you. My father may speak of it--or you may just
+see for yourself. Only then, then"--she with a moving earnestness prayed
+him--"be kind, be lenient. Don't judge harshly--promise me you won't."
+
+And as she spoke her expression softened to a great and unconscious
+tenderness; for she beheld, in thought, a wide-winged sea-bird, above
+certain letters, tattooed in indigo and crimson upon the back of a lean
+shapely brown hand.
+
+"I promise you," Carteret said, and passed in at the door marvelling
+somewhat sadly.
+
+"Is it that?" he asked himself. "If so, it comes early. Has she gone the
+way of all flesh and fallen in love?"
+
+And this conversation, as shall presently be set forth, ushered in that
+second matter of cardinal importance, already referred to, which for
+Damaris marked the close of this eventful year.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+TELLING HOW DAMARIS RENEWED HER ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BELOVED LADY OF
+HER INFANCY
+
+
+The windows of the sitting-room--upon the first floor of the long,
+three-storied, yellow-painted hotel--commanded a vast and glittering
+panorama of indented coast-line and purple sea. Here and there, in the
+middle distance, little towns, pale-walled and glistering, climbed upward
+amid gardens and olive yards from the rocky shore. Heathlands and pine
+groves covered the intervening headlands and steep valleys, save where
+meadows marked the course of some descending stream. To the north-east,
+above dark wooded foot-hills, the flushed whiteness of snow-summits cut
+delicately into the solid blue of the sky.
+
+Stretched upon the sun-faded, once scarlet cushions of the window-seat,
+Damaris absorbed her fill of light, and warmth, and colour. Pleading
+imperative feminine mendings, she stayed at home this afternoon. She felt
+disposed to rest--here in the middle of her pasture, so to say--and
+resting, both count her blessings and dream, offering hospitality to all
+and any pleasant visions which might elect to visit her. And, indeed,
+those blessings appeared a goodly company, worthy of congratulation and
+of gratitude. She let the black silk stocking, the toe of which she
+affected to darn, slip neglected on to the floor while she added up the
+pleasant column of them.
+
+The journey might be counted as a success--that to start with. For her
+father was certainly better, readier of speech and of interest in outside
+things. Oh! the dear "man with the blue eyes" had a marvellous hand on
+him--tactful, able, devoted, always serene, often even gay. Never could
+there be another so perfect, because so sane and comfortable, a friend.
+Her debt to him was of old standing and still for ever grew. How she
+could ever pay it she didn't know! Which consideration, for an instant,
+clouded her content. Not that she felt the obligation irksome; but, that
+out of pure affection, she wanted to make him some return, some
+acknowledgment; wanted to give, since to her he had so lavishly given.
+
+Then the book--of all Carteret's clever manipulations the cleverest! For
+hadn't it begun to grip her father, and that quite divertingly much? He
+was occupied with it to the point of really being a tiny bit
+self-conscious and shy. Keen on it, transparently eager--though
+contemptuous, in high mighty sort, of course, of his own eagerness when
+he remembered. Only, more than half the time he so deliciously failed to
+remember.--And with that Damaris' thought took another turn, a more
+private and personal one.
+
+For in truth the book gripped her, too, in most intimate and novel
+fashion, revealing to her the enchantments of an art in process of being
+actively realized in living, constructive effort. Herein she found, not
+the amazement of a new thing, but of a thing so natural that it appeared
+just a part of her very self, though, until now, an undiscovered one. To
+read other people's books is a joyous employment, as she well knew; but
+to make a book all one's own self, to watch and compel its growth into
+coherent form and purpose is--so she began to suspect--among the rarest
+delights granted to mortal man.
+
+Her own share of such making, in the present case, was of the humblest
+it is true, mere spade labour and hod-bearing--namely, writing from
+Charles Verity's dictation, verifying names and dates, checking
+references and quotations. Still each arresting phrase, each felicitous
+expression, the dramatic ring of some virile word, the broad onward
+sweep of stately prose in narrative or sustained description, not only
+charmed her ear but challenged her creative faculty. She put herself to
+school in respect of it all, learning day by day a lesson.--This was the
+way it should be done. Ambition prodded her on.--For mightn't she
+aspire to do it too, some day? Mightn't, granted patience and
+application, the writing of books prove to be her business, her
+vocation? The idea floated before her, vague as yet, though infinitely
+beguiling. Whereupon the whole world took on a new significance and
+splendour, as it needs must when nascent talent claims its own, asserts
+its dawning right to dominion and to freedom.
+
+And there the pathos of her father's position touched her nearly. For
+wasn't it a little cruel this remarkable gift of his should so long have
+lain dormant, unsuspected by his friends, unknown to the reading public,
+only to disclose itself, and that by the merest hazard, as a last
+resource?--It did not seem fair that he had not earlier found and enjoyed
+his literary birthright.
+
+Damaris propounded this view to Colonel Carteret with some heat. But he
+smilingly discounted her fondly indignant lament.
+
+"Better late than never anyhow, my dear witch," he said. "And just
+picture the satisfaction of this brilliant rally when, as we'd reason to
+believe, he himself reckoned the game was up! Oh! there are points about
+a tardy harvest such as this, by no means to be despised. Thrice blessed
+the man who, like your father, finding such a harvest, also finds it to
+be of a sort he can without scruple reap."
+
+Of which cryptic utterance Damaris, at the time, could--to quote her own
+phrase--"make no sense!"--Nor could she make sense of it, now, when
+counting her blessings, she rested, in happy idleness, upon the faded
+scarlet cushions of the window-seat.
+
+She remembered the occasion quite well on which Carteret thus expressed
+himself one afternoon, during their stay in Paris, on the southward
+journey. She had worn a new myrtle-green, black-braided, fur-trimmed
+cloth pelisse and hat to match, as she also remembered, bought the day
+before at a fascinating shop in the Rue Castiglione. Agreeably conscious
+her clothes were not only very much "the right thing" but decidedly
+becoming, she had gone, with him, to pay a visit of ceremony at the
+convent school--near the Church of St. Germain-les-Pres--where, as a
+little girl of six, fresh from India and the high dignities of the
+Bhutpur Sultan-i-bagh, she had been deposited by her father's old friend,
+Mrs. John Pereira, who had brought her and Sarah Watson, her nurse, back
+to Europe.
+
+The sojourn at the convent--once the surprise of translation from East to
+West, from reigning princess to little scholar was surmounted--proved
+fertile in gentle memories. The visit of to-day, not only revived these
+memories, but added to their number. For it passed off charmingly.
+Carteret seemed by no means out of place among the nuns--well-bred and
+gracious women of hidden, consecrated lives. They, indeed, appeared
+instinctively drawn to him and fluttered round him in the sweetest
+fashion imaginable; he, meanwhile, bearing himself towards them with an
+exquisite and simple courtesy beyond all praise. Never had Damaris
+admired the "man with the blue eyes" more, never felt a more perfect
+trust in him, than when beholding him as _Mousquetaire au Couvent_ thus!
+
+As they emerged again into the clear atmosphere and resonance of the
+Paris streets, and made their way back by the Rue du Bac, the Pont Royal
+and the gardens of the Tuileries, to their hotel in the Rue de Rivoli,
+Carteret spoke reverently of the religious life, and the marvellous
+adaptability of the Catholic system to every need, every attitude of the
+human heart and conscience. He spoke further of the loss those inevitably
+sustain, who--from whatever cause--stand outside the creeds, unable to
+set their spiritual God-ward hopes and aspirations within a definite
+external framework of doctrine and practice hallowed by tradition.
+
+"I could almost wish those dear holy women had gathered your little soul
+into the fold, when they had you in their keeping and made a good
+Catholic of you, dearest witch," he told her. "It would have been a
+rather flagrant case of cradle-snatching, I own, but I can't help
+thinking it would have simplified many difficulties for you."
+
+"And raised a good many, too," Damaris gaily answered him. "For Aunt
+Harriet Cowden would have been furious, and Aunt Felicia distressed and
+distracted; and poor Nannie--though she really got quite tame with the
+Sisters, and came to respect them in the end--would have broken her heart
+at my being taught to worship images, and have believed hell yawned to
+devour me. Oh! I think it was more fair to wait.--All the same I loved
+their religion--I love it still."
+
+"Go on loving it," he bade her.--And at once turned the conversation to
+other themes--that of her father, Charles Verity among them, and the book
+on Afghanistan, the fair copy of the opening chapters of which was just
+completed.
+
+Then, the stimulating, insistent vivacity of Paris going a little to
+Damaris' head--since urging, as always, to fullness of enterprise,
+fullness of endeavour, giving, as always, immense joy and value to the
+very fact of living--she lamented the late development of her father's
+literary genius. A lament which called forth Carteret's consolatory
+rejoinder, along with this--to her--cryptic assertion as to the thrice
+blessed state of the man whose harvest, when tardy, is of a description
+he need not scruple to reap.
+
+"Why," she asked herself, "should he have said that unless with
+reference to himself. Reference to some private harvest which he himself
+scrupled to reap?"
+
+Damaris slipped her feet from the cushioned window-seat to the floor, and
+stooping down recovered her fallen black silk stocking. She felt
+disturbed, slightly conscience-stricken. For it had never occurred to
+her, strong, able, serene of humour and of countenance as he was, that
+the "man with the blue eyes" could have personal worries, things--as she
+put it--he wanted yet doubted whether he ought to have. Surely his
+unfailing helpfulness and sympathy gave him the right, in fee-simple, to
+anything and everything he might happen to covet. That he should covet
+what was wrong, what was selfish, detrimental to others, seemed
+incredible. And the generous pity of her youthful tenderness, her
+impatience of all privation, all disappointment or denial for those she
+held in affection, overflowed in her. She longed to do whatever would
+greatly please him, to procure for him whatever he wanted. Wouldn't it be
+delicious to do that--if she could only find out!
+
+But this last brought her up against a disquieting lesson lately
+learned.--Namely, against recognition of how very far the lives of
+men--even those we know most dearly and closely--and the lives of us
+women are really apart. She thought of her father and Darcy Faircloth and
+their entirely unsuspected relation. This dulled the edge of her
+enthusiasm. For wasn't it only too probably the same with them all?
+Loyalty compelled the question. Had not every man a secret, or secrets,
+only penetrable, both for his peace of mind and for your own, at
+considerable risk?
+
+Damaris planted her elbows on the window-sill, her chin in the hollow of
+her hands. Her eyes were solemn, her face grave with thought.--Verily the
+increase of knowledge is the increase of perplexity, if not of actual
+sorrow. Even the apparently safest and straightest paths are beset with
+"pitfall and with gin" for whoso studies to pursue truth and refuse
+subscription to illusion. Your charity should be wide as the world
+towards others. Towards yourself narrow as a hair, lest you condone your
+own weakness, greed, or error. Of temptation to any save very venial sins
+Damaris had, in her own person, little conception as yet.--Still to a
+maiden of eighteen, though she may have a generous proportion of health
+and beauty, sufficient fortune and by no means contemptible intelligence,
+noble instincts, complications and distresses, both of the practical and
+theoretic order, may, and do, at times occur. Damaris suffered the shock
+of such now; and into what further jungles of cheerless speculation she
+might have been projected it is impossible to say, had not persons and
+events close at hand claimed her attention.
+
+The Grand Hotel at St. Augustin is situated upon a long narrow
+promontory, which juts out into the sea at right angles to the main trend
+of the coast-line. It faces east, turning its back upon the little
+town--built on the site of a Roman colonial city, originally named in
+honour of the pagan Emperor rather than the Christian Confessor and
+ascetic. Mediaeval piety bestowed on it the saintly prefix, along with a
+round-arched cathedral church, of no great size, but massive proportions
+and somewhat gloomy aspect.
+
+From the terrace garden and carriage drive, immediately in front of the
+hotel, the ground drops sharply, beneath scattered pines with undergrowth
+of heather, wild lavender, gum-cistus, juniper, mastic and myrtle, to the
+narrow white beach a hundred feet below. Little paths traverse the rough
+descent. And up one of these, halting to rest now and then on a
+conveniently placed bench in the shade of some spreading umbrella pine,
+to discourse to the company of gentlemen following in her wake, or
+contemplate the view, came a notably graceful and telling figure.
+
+As the lady advanced with leisurely composure, Damaris, gazing down from
+her point of vantage in the first floor window, received the impression
+of a person almost extravagantly finished and feminine, in which all
+irregularities and originalities of Nature had suffered obliteration by
+the action of art. Not art of the grosser sort, dependent on dyes, paint
+and cosmetics. The obliteration was not superficial merely, and must have
+been achieved by processes at once subtle and profound. The result
+obtained, however, showed unquestionably charming--if in a line slightly
+finical and exotic--as she picked her way through the fragrant
+undergrowth of the pine wood, slanting sunshine playing on her dark blue
+raiment, wide-brimmed white hat, and floating veil.
+
+Coming completely into view at last, when stepping from the path on to
+the level carriage drive, a gold chain she wore, from which dangled a
+little bunch of trinkets and a long-handled lorgnette, glinted, catching
+the light. Damaris gave an exclamation of sudden and rapturous
+recognition. So far she had had eyes for the lady only; but now she took
+a rapid scrutiny of the latter's attendants. With two of them she was
+unacquainted. The other two were her father and Carteret.
+
+Whereupon rapture gave place to a pang of jealous alarm and resentment.
+For they belonged to her, those dear two; and to see them even thus
+temporarily appropriated by someone else caused her surprising agitation.
+They had been so good, so apparently content, alone with her upon this
+journey. It would be too trying, too really intolerable to have outsiders
+interfere and break up their delightful solitude _a trois_, their
+delightful intercourse! Yet, almost immediately, the girl flushed, going
+hot all over with shame, scolding herself for even passing entertainment
+of such unworthy and selfish emotions.
+
+"For it is Henrietta Pereira," she said half aloud. "My own darling,
+long-ago Henrietta, who used to be so beautifully kind to me and give me
+presents I loved above everything."
+
+And, after a pause, the note of alarm sounding again though modified to
+wistfulness--
+
+"Will she care for me still, and shall I still care for her--but I must
+care--I must--now I'm grown up?"
+
+To set which disturbing questions finally at rest, being a valiant young
+creature, Damaris permitted herself no second thoughts, no vacillation or
+delay; but went straight downstairs and crossing the strip of terrace
+garden, bare-headed as she was, waited at the head of the steps leading up
+from the carriage drive to greet the idol of her guileless infancy.
+
+To Colonel Carteret who, bringing up the rear of the little procession
+was the first to notice her advent, she made a touching and gallant
+picture. Her face had gone very pale and he saw, or fancied he saw, her
+lips tremble. But her solemn eyes shone with a steady light, and,
+whatever the excitement affecting her, she held it bravely in check.
+Noting all which he could not but speculate as to whether she had any
+knowledge of a certain romantic attachment--culminating on the one hand
+in an act of virtuous treachery, on the other in an act of
+renunciation--which had overshadowed and wrenched from its natural
+sequence so large a portion of her father's life. He earnestly hoped she
+was ignorant of all that; although the act of renunciation, made for her,
+Damaris' sake, represented a magnificent gesture if an exaggerated and
+almost fanatical one, on Charles Verity's part. It gave the measure of
+the man's fortitude, the measure of his paternal devotion. Still
+knowledge of it might, only too readily, prove a heavy burden to a young
+girl's imaginative and tender conscience. Yes--he hoped she had been
+spared that knowledge.
+
+If she had escaped it thus far--as he reflected not without
+amusement--the other actor in that rather tragic drama, now so
+unexpectedly and arrestingly present in the flesh, could be trusted not
+to enlighten her. He knew Henrietta Pereira of old, bless her hard little
+heart. Not only did she detest tragedy, but positively revelled in any
+situation where clever avoidance of everything even remotely approaching
+it was open to her. She ruled the sublime and the ridiculous alike
+impartially out of the social relation; and that with so light though
+determined a touch, so convincing yet astute a tact and delicacy, you
+were constrained not only to submit to, but applaud her strategy.
+
+Had she not within the very last hour given a masterly example of her
+powers in this line? For when he, Carteret, and Charles Verity, strolling
+in all innocence along the shore path back from St. Augustin, had to
+their infinite astonishment met her and her attendant swains face to
+face, she hadn't turned a hair. Her nerve was invincible. After clasping
+the hand of each in turn with the prettiest enthusiasm, she had
+introduced--"My husband, General Frayling--Mr. Marshall Wace, his
+cousin," with the utmost composure. Thus making over to them any
+awkwardness which might be going and effectually ridding herself of it.
+
+Carteret felt his jaw drop for the moment.--He had heard of John
+Pereira's death two years ago, and welcomed the news on her account,
+since, if report said true, that dashing cavalry officer had taken to
+evil courses. Gambling and liquor made him a nuisance, not to say
+disgrace to his regiment, and how much greater a one to his wife. Poor
+thing, she must have had a lot to endure and that of the most sordid! It
+wasn't nice to think about. Clearly Pereira's removal afforded matter for
+thankfulness.
+
+But of this speedy reconstruction on her part, in the shape of a third
+matrimonial venture, he had heard never a word. How would Verity take
+it?--Apparently with a composure as complete as her own.--And then the
+inherent humour of the position, and her immense skill and coolness in
+the treatment of it, came uppermost. Carteret felt bound to support her
+and help her out by accepting her little old General--lean-shanked and
+livery, with pompously outstanding chest, aggressive white moustache and
+mild appealing eye--as a matter of course. Bound to buck him up, and
+encourage him in the belief he struck a stranger as the terrible fellow
+he would so like to be, and so very much feared that he wasn't.
+Carteret's large charity came into play in respect of the superannuated
+warrior; who presented a pathetically inadequate effect, specially when
+seen, as now, alongside Charles Verity. Surely the contrast must hit the
+fair Henrietta rather hard? Carteret expended himself in kindly
+civilities, therefore, going so far as to say "sir" once or twice in
+addressing Frayling. Whereat the latter's timorous step grew almost
+jaunty and his chest more than ever inflated.
+
+If Henrietta carried things off to admiration in the first amazement of
+impact, she carried them off equally to admiration in her meeting with
+Damaris. It was the prettiest little scene in the world.
+
+For reaching up and placing her hands on the girl's shoulders her
+chiselled face--distinct yet fragile in outline as some rare
+cameo--suffused for once with transparent, shell-like pink, she kissed
+Damaris on either cheek.
+
+"Ah! precious child, most precious child," she fondly murmured. "What an
+enchanting surprise! How little I imagined such a joy was in store for me
+when I came out this afternoon!"
+
+And louder, for the benefit of the assistants.
+
+"Yes--here are my husband, General Frayling, and Mr. Wace his cousin--he
+shall sing to you some day--that by the way--who is travelling with us.
+But they must talk to you later. I can't spare you to them now. I am
+greedy after our long separation and want to have you all to myself."
+
+And, including the four gentlemen in a gesture of friendly farewell, she
+put her arm round Damaris' waist, gently compelling her in the direction
+of a group of buff-painted iron chairs, placed in a semicircle in the
+shade of ilex and pine trees at the end of the terrace.
+
+"I have so much to hear," she said, "so many dropped threads to pick up,
+and it is impossible to talk comfortably and confidentially in a crowd.
+Our men must really contrive to play about by themselves for a little
+while and leave me to enjoy you in peace."
+
+"But won't they mind?" Damaris asked, upon whom the spell of the elder
+woman's personality began sensibly to work.
+
+"Let them mind, let them mind," she threw off airily in answer. "So much
+the better. It will do them good. It is excellent discipline for men to
+find they can't always have exactly their own way."
+
+Which assertion served to dissipate any last remnant of jealous alarm
+Damaris' mind may have unconsciously harboured. In its place shy
+curiosity blossomed, and quick intimate pleasure in so perfectly
+fashioned and furnished a creature. For wasn't her childish adoration
+fully justified? Wasn't her darling Henrietta a being altogether
+captivating and unique? Damaris loved the feeling of that arm and hand
+lightly clasping her waist. Loved the faint fragrance--hadn't it
+intoxicated her baby senses?--pervading Henrietta's hair, her clothes,
+her whole pretty person. Loved the tinkle of the bunch of trinkets
+dangling from the long chain which reached below her waist. She had
+feared disappointment. That, as she now perceived, was altogether
+superfluous. Henrietta enthralled her eyes, enthralled her affection. She
+longed to protect, to serve her, to stand between her and every rough
+wind which blew, because she was so pretty, so extraordinarily and
+completely civilized from head to foot.
+
+No doubt in the generosity of her youthful inexperience Damaris
+exaggerated the lady's personal charm. Yet the dozen years
+intervening--since their last meeting--had, in truth, dealt mercifully
+with the latter's good looks. A trifle pinched, a trifle faded she might
+be, as compared with the Henrietta of twelve years ago; but immediately
+such damage, such wear and tear of the fleshly garment, showed at its
+least conspicuous. She negotiated the double encounter, as Carteret had
+noted, with admirable sang-froid; but not, as to the first one in any
+case, without considerably greater inward commotion than he gave her
+credit for. She was in fact keyed up by it, excited, taken out of herself
+to an unprecedented extent, her native optimism and egoism in singular
+disarray. Yet thereby, through that very excitement, she recaptured for
+the time being the physical loveliness of an earlier period. Beauty is
+very much a matter of circulation; and the blood cantered, not to say
+galloped, through Henrietta's veins.
+
+The sight of Charles Verity did indeed put back the clock for her in
+most astounding sort. Henrietta was no victim of impulse. Each of her
+three marriages had been dictated by convenience, carefully thought out
+and calculated. Over neither husband had she, for ever so brief a
+period, lost her head. But over Charles Verity she had come perilously
+near losing it--once. That, it is not too much to say, constituted the
+greatest sensation, the greatest emotion of her experience. As a rule
+the most trying and embarrassing part of encountering a former lover is
+that you wonder what, under Heaven, induced you to like him so well?
+Here the position was reversed, so that Henrietta wondered--with a
+sickening little contraction of the heart--what, under Heaven, had
+prevented her liking him much more, why, under Heaven, she ever let him
+go? Of course, as things turned out, it was all for the best, since her
+insensibility made for righteousness, or anyhow for respectability--in
+the opinion of the world the same, if not an even superior article. She
+ought to congratulate herself, ought to feel thankful. Only just now she
+didn't. On the contrary she was shaken--consciously and most
+uncomfortably shaken to the very deepest of such depths as her shallow
+soul could boast--sitting here, on a buff-painted chair in the shade of
+the pines and ilex trees, in company with Damaris, holding the girl's
+hand in both her own with a clinging, slightly insistent, pressure as it
+rested upon her lap.
+
+"Dearest child, I believe, though you have grown so tall, I should have
+recognized you anywhere," she said.
+
+"And I you," Damaris echoed. "I did, I did, after just the first
+little minute."
+
+"Ah! you've a memory for faces too?"
+
+Her glance wandered to the group of men gathered before the hotel
+portico--Sir Charles and General Frayling side by side, engaged in civil
+if not particularly animated conversation. The two voices reached her
+with a singular difference of timbre and of tone. Carteret spoke,
+apparently making some proposition, some invitation, in response to which
+the four passed into the house.
+
+Henrietta settled herself in her chair with a movement of sensible
+relief. While they remained there she must look, and it was not quite
+healthy to look.--Her good, little, old General, who only asked
+respectfully to adore and follow in her wake--a man of few demands and
+quite tidy fortune--and after poor, besotted, blustering, gambling,
+squashily sentimental and tearful Johnnie Pereira wasn't he a haven of
+rest--oh, positively a haven of rest? All the same she preferred his
+not standing there in juxtaposition to Charles Verity. She much
+preferred their all going indoors--Carteret along with the rest, if it
+came to that.
+
+She turned and smiled upon Damaris.
+
+"However good your memory for faces may be, I find it very sweet you
+should have recognized mine after 'just the first little minute,'" she
+said, with a coaxing touch of mimicry. "You haven't quite parted company
+with the baby I remember so well, even yet. I used to call you my downy
+owl, with solemn saucer eyes and fierce little beak. You were
+extraordinarily, really perplexingly like your father then. A miniature
+edition, but so faithful to the original it used, sometimes, to give me
+the quaintest jump."
+
+Henrietta mused, raising one hand and fingering the lace at her throat
+as seeking to loosen it. Damaris watched fascinated, in a way
+troubled, by her extreme prettiness. Every point, every detail was so
+engagingly complete.
+
+"You are like Sir Charles still; but I see something which is not
+him--the personal equation, I suppose, developing in you, the element
+which is individual, exclusively your own and yourself. I should enjoy
+exploring that."
+
+She looked at Damaris very brightly for an instant, then looked down.
+
+"I want to hear more about Sir Charles," she said. "Of all the
+distinguished men I have been fortunate enough to know, who--who have let
+me be their friend, no one has ever interested me more than he. We have
+known one another ever since I was a girl and his career meant so much to
+me. I followed it closely, rejoiced in his promotion, his successes; felt
+indignant--and said so--when he met with adverse criticism. I am speaking
+of his Indian career. When he accepted that Afghan command, it made a
+break. We lost touch, which I regretted immensely. From that time onward
+I only knew what any and everybody might know from the newspapers--except
+occasionally when I happened to meet Colonel Carteret."
+
+The explanation was lengthy, laboured, not altogether spontaneous.
+Damaris vaguely mystified by it made no comment. Henrietta raised her
+head, glancing round from under lowered eyelids.
+
+"You appreciate the ever-faithful Carteret?" she asked, an edge of
+eagerness in her voice.
+
+"The dear 'man with the blue eyes?' Of course I love him, we both love
+him almost better than anybody in the world," Damaris warmly declared.
+
+"And he manifestly returns your affection. But, dearest child, why
+'almost.' Is that reservation intentional or merely accidental?"
+
+Then seeing the girl's colour rise.
+
+"Perhaps it's hardly a fair question. Forgive me. I forgot how long it
+is since we met, forgot I'm not, after all, talking to the precious
+little downy owl, who had no more serious secrets than such as might
+concern her large family of dolls."
+
+"I am not sure the 'almost' was quite true." Damaris put in hastily, her
+cheeks more than ever aflame.
+
+"Yes it was, most delicious child--I protest it was. And I'm not sure I'm
+altogether sorry."
+
+Slightly, daintily, she kissed the flaming cheek.
+
+"But I do love Colonel Carteret," Damaris repeated, with much wide-eyed
+earnestness. "I trust him and depend on him as I do on nobody else."
+
+"'Almost' nobody else?"
+
+Damaris shook her head. She felt a wee bit disappointed in Henrietta.
+This persistence displeased her as trivial, as lacking in perfection of
+breeding and taste.
+
+"Quite nobody," she said. And without permitting time for rejoinder
+launched forth into the subject of the book on the campaigns of Shere
+Ali, which, as she explained, had been undertaken at Carteret's
+suggestion and with such encouraging result. She waxed eloquent regarding
+the progress of the volume and its high literary worth.
+
+"But I was a little nervous lest my father should lose his interest and
+grow slack when we were alone, and he'd only me to talk things over with
+and to consult, so I begged Colonel Carteret to come abroad with us."
+
+"Ah! I see--quite so," Henrietta murmured. "It was at your request."
+
+"Yes. He was beautifully kind, as he always is. He agreed at once, gave
+up all his own plans and came."
+
+"And stays"--Henrietta said.
+
+"Yes, for the present. But to tell the truth I'm worried about his
+staying."
+
+"Why?"--again with a just perceptible edge of eagerness.
+
+"Because, of course, I have no right to trade on his kindness, even for
+my father's sake or the sake of the book."
+
+"And that is your only reason?"
+
+"Isn't it more than reason enough? There must be other people who want
+him and things of his own he wants to do. It would be odiously selfish of
+me to interfere by keeping him tied here. I have wondered lately whether
+I oughtn't to speak to him about it and urge his going home. I was
+worrying rather over that when you arrived this afternoon, and then the
+gladness of seeing you put it out of my head. But how I wish you would
+advise me, Henrietta, if it's not troubling you too much. You and they
+have been friends so long and you must know so much better than I can
+what's right. Tell me what is my duty--about his staying, I mean--to, to
+them both, do you think?"
+
+Henrietta Frayling did not answer at once. Her delicate features
+perceptibly sharpened and hardened, her lips becoming thin as a thread.
+
+"You're not vexed with me? I haven't been tiresome and asked you
+something I shouldn't?" Damaris softly exclaimed, smitten with alarm of
+unintended and unconscious offence.
+
+"No--no--but you put a difficult question, since I have only impressions
+and those of the most, fugitive to guide me. Personally, I am always
+inclined to leave well alone."
+
+"But is this well?--There's just the point."
+
+"You are very anxious"--
+
+"Yes, I am very anxious. You see I care dreadfully much."
+
+Henrietta bent down, giving her attention to an inch of kilted
+silk petticoat, showing where it should not, beneath the hem of
+her blue skirt.
+
+"I hesitate to give you advice; but I can give you my impressions--for
+what they may be worth. Seeing Colonel Carteret this afternoon he struck
+me as being in excellent case--enviably young for his years and content."
+
+"You thought so? Yet that's just what has worried me. Once or twice
+lately I have not been sure he was quite content."
+
+"Oh! you put it too high!" Henrietta threw off. "Can one ever be sure
+anyone--even one's own poor self--is quite content?"
+
+And she looked round, bringing the whole artillery of her still great, if
+waning, loveliness suddenly to bear upon Damaris, dazzling, charming,
+confusing her, as she said:
+
+"My precious child, has it never occurred to you Colonel Carteret may
+stay on, not against has will, but very much with it? Or occurred to you,
+further, not only that the pleasures of your father's society are by no
+means to be despised; but that you yourself are a rather remarkable
+product--as quaintly engagingly clever, as you are--well--shall we
+say--handsome, Damaris?"
+
+"I am deputed to enquire whether you propose to take tea indoors, Miss
+Verity, or have it brought to you here; and, in the latter case, whether
+we have leave to join you?"
+
+The speaker, Marshall Wace--a young man of about thirty years of age--may
+be described as soft in make, in colouring slightly hectic, in manner a
+subtle cross between the theatrical and the parsonic. Which, let it be
+added, is by no means to condemn him wholesale, laugh him off the stage
+or out of the pulpit. In certain circles, indeed, these traits, this
+blend, won for him unstinted sympathy and approval. He possessed talents
+in plenty, and these of an order peculiarly attractive to the amateur
+because tentative rather than commanding. Among his intimates he was seen
+and spoken of as one cloaked with the pathos of thwarted aspirations.
+Better health, less meagre private means and a backing of influence, what
+might he not have done? His star might have flamed to the zenith!
+Meanwhile it was a privilege to help him, to such extent as his extreme
+delicacy of feeling permitted. That it really permitted a good deal, one
+way or another, displaying considerable docility under the infliction of
+benefits, would have been coarse to perceive and unpardonably brutal to
+mention.--Such, anyhow, was the opinion held by his cousin, General
+Frayling, at whose expense he now enjoyed a recuperative sojourn upon the
+French Riviera. Some people, in short, have a gift of imposing
+themselves, and Marshall Wace may be counted among that conveniently
+endowed band.
+
+He imposed himself now upon one at least of his hearers. For, though the
+address might seem studied, the voice delivering it was agreeable,
+causing Damaris, for the first time, consciously to notice this member of
+Mrs. Frayling's retinue. She felt amiably disposed towards him since his
+intrusion closed a conversation causing her no little disturbance of
+mind. Henrietta's last speech, in particular, set her nerves tingling
+with most conflicting emotions. If Henrietta so praised her that praise
+must be deserved, for who could be better qualified to give judgment on
+such a subject than the perfectly equipped Henrietta? Yet she shrank in
+distaste, touched in her maiden modesty and pride, from so frank an
+exposition of her own charms. It made her feel unclothed, stripped in the
+market-place--so to speak--and shamed. Secretly she had always hoped she
+was pretty rather than plain. She loved beauty and therefore naturally
+desired to possess it. But to have the fact of that possession thus
+baldly stated was another matter. It made her feel unnatural, as though
+joined to a creature with whom she was insufficiently acquainted, whose
+ways might not be her ways or its thoughts her thoughts. Therefore the
+young man, Marshall Wace, coming as a seasonable diversion from these
+extremely personal piercings and probings, found greater favour in her
+eyes than he otherwise might. And this with results, for Damaris'
+gratitude, once engaged, disdained to criticize, invariably tending to
+err on the super-generous side.
+
+Yes, they would all have tea out here, if Henrietta was willing. And, if
+Henrietta would for the moment excuse her, she would go and order
+Hordle--her father's man--to see to the preparation of it himself.
+Foreign waiters, whatever their ability in other departments, have no
+natural understanding of a tea-pot and are liable to the weirdest ideas of
+cutting bread and butter.
+
+With which, conscious she was guilty of somewhat incoherent chatter,
+Damaris sprang up and swung away along the terrace, through the clear
+tonic radiance, buoyant as a caged bird set free.
+
+"Go with her, Marshall, go with her," Mrs. Frayling imperatively bade
+him.
+
+"And leave you, Cousin Henrietta?"
+
+She rose with a petulant gesture.
+
+"Yes, go at once or you won't overtake her. I am tired, really wretchedly
+tired--and am best left alone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHICH CONCERNS ITSELF, INCIDENTALLY, WITH THE GRIEF OF A VICTIM OF
+CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE RECEPTION OF A BELATED CHRISTMAS GREETING
+
+
+Henrietta Frayling left the Grand Hotel, that afternoon, in a chastened
+frame of mind. Misgivings oppressed her. She doubted--and even more than
+doubted--whether she had risen to the full height of her own reputation,
+whether she had not allowed opportunity to elude her, whether she had not
+lost ground difficult to regain. The affair was so astonishingly sprung
+upon her. The initial impact she withstood unbroken--and from this she
+derived a measure of consolation. But afterwards she weakened. She had
+felt too much--and that proved her undoing. It is foolish, because
+disabling, to feel.
+
+Her treatment of Damaris she condemned as mistaken, admitting a point of
+temper. It is hard to forgive the younger generation their youth, the
+infinite attraction of their ingenuous freshness, the fact that they have
+the ball at their feet. Hence she avoided the society of the young of her
+own sex--as a rule. Girls are trying when pretty and intelligent, hardly
+less trying--though for other reasons--when the reverse. Boys she
+tolerated. In the eyes of young men she sunned herself taking her ease,
+since these are slow to criticize, swift to believe--between eighteen and
+eight-and-twenty, that is.--We speak of the mid-Victorian era and then
+obtaining masculine strain.
+
+Misgivings continued to pursue her during the ensuing evening and even
+interfered with her slumbers during the night. This--most unusual
+occurrence--rendered her fretful. She reproached her tractable and
+distressed little General with having encouraged her to walk much too
+far. In future he swore to insist on the carriage, however confidently
+she might assert the need of active exertion. She pointed out the fallacy
+of rushing to extremes; which rather cruelly floored him, since
+"rushing," in any shape or form, had conspicuously passed out of his
+programme some considerable time ago.
+
+"My wife is not at all herself," he told Marshall Wace, at breakfast next
+morning--"quite overdone, I am sorry to say, and upset. I blame myself.
+I must keep a tight hand on her and forbid over exertion."
+
+With a small spoon, savagely, daringly he beat in the top of his
+boiled egg.
+
+"I must be more watchful," he added. "Her nervous energy is deceptive. I
+must refuse to let it override my better judgment and take me in."
+
+By luncheon time, however, Henrietta was altogether herself, save for a
+pretty pensiveness, and emerged with all her accustomed amiability from
+this temporary eclipse.
+
+The Fraylings occupied a small detached villa, built in the grounds of
+the Hotel de la Plage--a rival and venerably senior establishment to the
+Grand Hotel--situate just within the confines of St. Augustin, where the
+town curves along the glistering shore to the western horn of the little
+bay. At the back of it runs the historic high road from Marseilles to the
+Italian frontier, passing through Cannes and Nice. Behind it, too, runs
+the railway with its many tunnels, following the same, though a somewhat
+less serpentine, course along the gracious coast.
+
+To the ex-Anglo-Indian woman, society is as imperative a necessity as
+water to a fish. She must foregather or life loses all its savour; must
+entertain, be entertained, rub shoulders generally or she is lost.
+Henrietta Frayling suffered the accustomed fate, though to speak of
+rubbing shoulders in connection with her is to express oneself
+incorrectly to the verge of grossness. Her shoulders were of an order far
+too refined to rub or be rubbed. Nevertheless, after the shortest
+interval consistent with self-respect, such society as St. Augustin and
+its neighbourhood afforded found itself enmeshed in her dainty net. Mrs.
+Frayling's villa became a centre, where all English-speaking persons
+met. There she queened it, with her General as loyal henchman, and
+Marshall Wace as a professor of drawing-room talents of most varied sort.
+
+Discovery of the party at the Grand Hotel, took the gilt off the
+gingerbread of such queenings, to a marked extent, making them look
+make-shifty, lamentably second-rate and cheap. Hence Henrietta's
+fretfulness in part. For with the exception of Lady Hermione
+Twells--widow of a once Colonial Governor--and the Honourable Mrs.
+Callowgas _nee_ de Brett, relict of a former Bishop of Harchester, they
+were but scratch pack these local guests of hers. Soon, however, a scheme
+of putting that discovery to use broke in on her musings. The old
+friendship must, she feared, be counted dead. General Frayling's
+existence, in the capacity of husband, rendered any resurrection of it
+impracticable. She recognized that. Yet exhibition of its tombstone, were
+such exhibition compassable, could not fail to bring her honour and
+respect. She would shine by a reflected light, her glory all the greater
+that the witnesses of it were themselves obscure--Lady Hermione and Mrs.
+Callowgas excepted of course. Carteret's good-nature could be counted on
+to bring him to the villa. And Damaris must be annexed. Assuming the role
+and attitude of a vicarious motherhood, Henrietta herself could hardly
+fail to gain distinction. It was a touching part--specially when played
+by a childless woman only a little--yes, really only quite a little--past
+her prime.
+
+Here, indeed, was a great idea, as she came to grasp the possibilities
+and scope of it. As chaperon to Damaris how many desirable doors would be
+open to her! Delicately Henrietta hugged herself perceiving that, other
+things being equal, her own career was by no means ended yet. Through
+Damaris might she not very well enter upon a fresh and effective phase of
+it? How often and how ruefully had she revolved the problem of advancing
+age, questioning how gracefully to confront that dreaded enemy, and
+endure its rather terrible imposition of hands without too glaring a loss
+of prestige and popularity! Might not Damaris' childish infatuation
+offer a solution of that haunting problem, always supposing the
+infatuation could be revived, be recreated?
+
+Ah! what a double-dyed idiot she had been yesterday, in permitting
+feeling to outrun judgment!--With the liveliest satisfaction Henrietta
+could have boxed her own pretty ears in punishment of her passing
+weakness.--Yet surely time still remained wherein to retrieve her error
+and restore her ascendency. Damaris might be unusually clever; but she
+was also finely inexperienced, malleable, open to influence as yet. Let
+Henrietta then see to it, and that without delay or hesitation, bringing
+to bear every ingenious social art, and--if necessary--artifice, in which
+long practice had made her proficient.
+
+To begin with she would humble herself by writing a sweet little letter
+to Damaris. In it she would both accuse and excuse her maladroitness of
+yesterday, pleading the shock of so unlooked-for a coming together and
+the host of memories evoked by it.--Would urge how deeply it affected
+her, overcame her in fact, rendering her incapable of saying half the
+affectionate things it was in her heart to say. She might touch on the
+subject of Damaris' personal appearance again; which, by literally taking
+her breath away, had contributed to her general undoing.--On second
+thoughts, however, she decided it would be politic to avoid that
+particular topic, since Damaris was evidently a little shy in respect of
+her own beauty.--Henrietta smiled to herself.--That is a form of shyness
+exceedingly juvenile, short-lived enough!
+
+Marshall should act as her messenger, she being--as she could truthfully
+aver--eager her missive might reach its destination with all possible
+despatch. A letter, moreover, delivered by hand takes on an importance,
+makes a claim on the attention, greater than that of one received by
+post. There is a personal gesture in the former mode of transmission by
+no means to be despised in delicate operations such as the present--"I
+want to set myself right with you _at once_, dearest child, in case, as I
+fear, you may have a little misunderstood, me yesterday. Accident having
+so strangely restored us to one another, I long to hold you closely if
+you will let me do so."--Yes, it should run thus, the theme embroidered
+with high-flashing colour of Eastern reminiscence--the great subtropic
+garden of the Sultan-i-bagh, for example, its palms, orange grove and
+lotus tank, the call of the green parrots, chant of the well-coollie and
+creak of the primitive wooden gearing, as the yoke of cream white oxen
+trotted down and laboriously backed up the walled slope to the well-head.
+
+Mrs. Frayling set herself to produce a very pretty piece of sentiment,
+nicely turned, decorated, worded, and succeeded to her own
+satisfaction. Might not she too, at this rate, claim possession of the
+literary gift--under stress of circumstance? The idea was a new one. It
+amused her.
+
+And what if Damaris elected to show this precious effusion to
+her father, Sir Charles? Well, if the girl did, she did. It might
+just conceivably work on him also, to the restoration of
+past--infatuation?--Henrietta left the exact term in doubt. But her hope
+of such result was of the smallest. Exhibition of a tombstone was the
+most she could count upon.--More probably he would regard it critically,
+cynically, putting his finger through her specious phrases. She doubted
+his forgiveness of a certain act of virtuous treachery even yet;
+although he had, in a measure, condoned her commission of it by making
+use of her on one occasion since, namely, that of her bringing Damaris
+back twelve years ago to Europe. But whether his attitude were cynical
+or not, he would hold his peace. Such cogent reasons existed for silence
+on his part that if he did slightly distrust her, hold her a little
+cheap, he would hardly venture to say as much, least of all to
+Damaris.--Venture or condescend?--Again Mrs. Frayling left the term in
+doubt and went forward with her schemes, which did, unquestionably just
+now, add a pleasing zest to life.
+
+The innocent subject of these machinations received both the note and its
+bearer in a friendly spirit, though she was already, as it happened, rich
+in letters to-day. The bi-weekly packet from Deadham--addressed in Mary
+Fisher's careful copy-book hand--arrived at luncheon time, and
+contained, among much of apparently lesser interest, a diverting
+chronicle of Tom Verity's impressions and experiences during the first
+six weeks of his Indian sojourn. The young man's gaily self-confident
+humour had survived his transplantation. He wrote in high feather, quite
+unabashed by the novelty of his surroundings, yet not forgetting to pay
+honour where honour was due.
+
+"It has been 'roses, roses all the way' thanks to Sir Charles's
+introductions, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful," he told
+her. "They have procured me no end of delightful hospitality from the
+great ones of the local earth, and really priceless opportunities of
+getting into touch with questions of ruling importance over here. I am
+letting my people at home know how very much I owe, and always shall owe,
+to his kindness in using his influence on my behalf at the start."
+
+Damaris glowed responsive to this fine flourish of a tone, and passed the
+letter across the small round dinner table to her father. Opened a fat
+packet, enclosed in an envelope of exaggerated tenuity, from Miss
+Felicia, only to put it aside in favour of another letter bearing an
+Italian stamp and directed in a, to her, unfamiliar hand.
+
+This was modest in bulk as compared with Miss Felicia's; but while
+examining it, while touching it even, Damaris became aware of an inward
+excitement, of a movement of tenderness not to be ignored or denied.
+
+Startled by her own prescience, and the agitation accompanying it, she
+looked up quickly to find Carteret watching her; whereupon, mutely,
+instinctively, her eyes besought him to ask no questions, make no
+comment. For an appreciable space he kept her in suspense, his glance
+holding and challenging hers in close observation. Then as though,
+not without a measure of struggle, granting her request, he smiled
+at her, and, turning his attention to the contents of his plate,
+quietly went on with the business of luncheon. Damaris meanwhile,
+conscience-stricken--she couldn't tell why--by this silent interchange
+of intelligence, this silent demand on his forbearance, on his
+connivance in her secrecy, laid the letter face downwards on the white
+table-cloth, unopened.
+
+Later, Sir Charles Verity being busy with his English correspondence and
+Carteret having disappeared--gone for a solitary walk, as she divined,
+being, as she feared, not quite pleased with her--she read it in the
+security of her bedroom, seated, for greater ease, upon the polished
+parquet floor just inside an open, southward-facing French window, where
+the breeze coming up off the sea gently fanned her face.
+
+The letter began without preamble:
+
+"We made this port--Genoa--last night. All day we have been discharging
+cargo. Half my crew has gone ashore, set on liquoring and wenching after
+the manner of unregenerate sailor-men all the world over. The other half
+follows their bad example to-morrow, as we shall be lying idle in honour
+of the Christmas festival. On board discipline is as strict as I know how
+to make it, but ashore my hand is lifted off them. So long as they turn
+up on time they are free to follow their fancy, even though it lead them
+to smutty places. My own fancies don't happen to lie that way, for which
+I in nowise praise myself. It is an affair of absence of inclination
+rather than overmuch active virtue. I am really no better than they,
+seeing I yield to the only temptation which takes me--the temptation to
+write to you. I have resisted it times out of number since I bade you
+good-bye at The Hard. But Christmas-night turns one a bit soft and
+craving for sight and touch of those who belong to one. So much I dare
+say, though I go back on nothing I said to you then about the keeping up
+of decent barriers. Only being Christmas-night-soft I give myself the
+licence of a holiday--for once. The night is clear as glass and the city
+rises in a great semicircle, pierced by and outlined in twinkling lights,
+right up to the ring of forts crowning the hills, where the sky begins--a
+sky smothered in stars. I have been out, on deck, looking at it all, at
+the black masts and funnels of the ships ranging to right and left
+against the glare of the town, and at the oily, black water, thick with
+floating filth and garbage and with wandering reflections like jewels and
+precious metals on the surface of it--the rummiest mixture of fair and
+foul. And then, all that faded out somehow--and I saw black water again,
+but clean this time and with no reflections, under a close-drawn veil of
+falling rain; and I felt to lift you out of the boat and carry you in
+across the lawn and up to your room. And then I could not hold out
+against temptation any longer, but came here into my cabin and sat down
+to write to you. The picture of you, wet and limp and helpless in my
+arms, is always with me, stamped on the very substance of my brain, as is
+the other picture of you in the drawing-room lined with book-cases, where
+we found one another for the second time. Found one another in spirit, I
+mean; an almost terribly greater finding than the first one, because it
+can go on for ever as it belongs to the part of us which does not die.
+That is my faith anyhow. To-morrow morning I will go ashore and into one
+of those big, tawdry Genoa churches, and listen to the music, standing in
+some quiet corner, and think about you and renew my vows to you. It won't
+be half bad to keep Christmas that way.
+
+"I don't pretend to be a great letter-writer, so if this one has
+funny fashions to it you must forgive both them and me. I write as I
+feel and must leave it so. The voyage has been good, and my poor old
+tub has behaved herself, kept afloat and done her best, bravely if a
+bit wheezingly, in some rather nasty seas. When we are through here I
+take her across to Tripoli and back along the African coast to
+Algiers, then across to Marseilles. I reckon to reach there in six
+weeks or two months from now. You might perhaps be willing to write a
+line to me there--to the care of my owners, Messrs. Denniver, Holland
+& Co. Their office is in the Cannebiere. I don't ask you to do this,
+but only tell you I should value it more than you can quite
+know.--Now my holiday is over and I will close down till next
+Christmas-night--unless miracles happen meanwhile--so good-bye.--Here
+is a boatload of my lads coining alongside, roaring with song and as
+drunk as lords.--God bless you. In spirit I once again kiss your dear
+feet. Your brother till death and after.
+
+"DARCY FAIRCLOTH."
+
+Dazed, enchanted, held captive by the secular magic pertaining to those
+who "go down to the sea in ships" and ply their calling in the great
+waters, held captive, too, by the mysterious prenatal sympathies which
+unite those who come of the same blood, Damaris stayed very still,
+sitting child-like upon the bare polished floor, while the wind murmured
+through the spreading pines, shading the terrace below, and gently fanned
+her throat and temples.
+
+For Faircloth's letter seemed to her very wonderful, alike in its vigour,
+its simplicity and--her lips quivered--its revelation of loving.--How he
+cared--and how he went on caring!--There were coarse words in it, the
+meaning of which she neither knew nor sought to know; but she did not
+resent them. The letter indeed would have lost some of its living force,
+its convincing reality, had they been omitted. They rang true, to her
+ear. And just because they rang true the rest rang blessedly true as
+well. She gloried in the whole therefore, breathing through it a larger
+air of faith and hope, and confident fortitude. The kindred qualities of
+her own heart and intelligence, the flush of her fine enthusiasm, sprang
+to meet and join with the fineness of it, its richness of promise and of
+good omen.
+
+For a time mind and emotion remained thus in stable and exalted
+equilibrium. Then, as enchantment reached its necessary term and her
+apprehensions and thought began to work more normally, she badly wanted
+someone to speak to. She wanted to bear witness, to testify, to pour
+forth both the moving tale and her own sensations, into the ear of some
+indulgent and friendly listener. She--she--wanted to tell Colonel
+Carteret about it, to enlist his interest, to read him, in part at least,
+Darcy Faircloth's letter, and hear his confirmation of the noble spirit
+she discerned in it, its poetry, its charm. For the dear man with the
+blue eyes would understand, of that she felt confident, understand
+fully--and it would set her right with him, if, as she suspected, he was
+not somehow quite pleased with her. She caressed the idea, while, so
+doing, silence and concealment grew increasingly irksome to her. Oh! she
+wanted to speak--and to her father she could not speak.
+
+With that both Damaris' attitude and expression changed, the glory
+abruptly departing. She got up off the floor, left the window, and sat
+down very soberly, in a red-velvet covered arm-chair, placed before the
+flat stone hearth piled with wood ashes.
+
+There truly was the fly in the ointment, the abiding smirch on the
+otherwise radiant surface--as she now hailed it--of this strangely moving
+fraternal relation. The fact of it did come, and, as she feared, would
+inevitably continue to come between her and her father, marring to an
+appreciable degree their mutual confidence and sympathy. At Deadham he
+had braced himself to deal with the subject in a spirit of rather
+magnificent self-abnegation. But the effort had cost him more than she
+quite cared to estimate, in lowered pride and moral suffering. It had
+told on not only his mental but his physical health. Now that he was in
+great measure restored, his humour no longer saturnine, he no longer
+remote, sunk in himself and inaccessible, it would be not only
+injudicious, but selfish, to the verge of active cruelty, to press the
+subject again upon his notice, to propose further concessions, or further
+recognition of its existence. She couldn't ask that of him--ten thousand
+times no, she couldn't ask it--though not to ask it was to let the breach
+in sympathy and confidence widen silently and grow.
+
+So much was sadly clear to her. She unfolded Faircloth's letter and read
+it through a second time, in vain hope of discovering some middle way,
+some leading. Read it, feeling the first enchantment but all
+cross-hatched now and seamed with perplexity and regret. For decent
+barriers must stand, he declared, which meant concealment indefinitely
+prolonged, the love of brother and sister wasted, starved to the mean
+proportions of an occasional furtive letter; sacrificed, with all its
+possibilities of present joy and future comfort, to hide the passage of
+long-ago wrongdoing in which it had its source.
+
+Her hesitation went a step behind this presently, arguing as to how that
+could be sin which produced so gracious a result. It wasn't logical an
+evil tree should bear such conspicuously good fruit. Yet conscience and
+instinct assured her the tree was indeed evil--a thing of license, of
+unruly passion upon which she might not look. Had it not been her first
+thought--when Faircloth told her, drifting down the tide-river in the
+chill and dark--that he must feel sad, feel angry having been wronged by
+the manner of his birth? He had answered "yes," thereby admitting the
+inherent evil of the tree of which his existence was the fruit--adding,
+"but not often and not for long," since he esteemed the gift of life too
+highly to be overnice as to the exact method by which he became possessed
+of it. He palliated, therefore, he excused, but he did not deny.
+
+By this time Damaris' mind wheeled in a vicious circle, perpetually
+swinging round to the original starting-point. The moral puzzle proved
+too complicated for her, the practical one equally hard of solution. She
+stood between them, her father and her brother. Their interests
+conflicted, as did the duty she owed each; and her heart, her judgment,
+her piety were torn two ways at once. Would it always be thus--or would
+the pull of one prove conclusively the stronger? Would she be compelled
+finally to choose between them? Not that either openly did or ever would
+strive to coerce her. Both were honourable, both magnanimous. And, out of
+her heart, she desired to serve both justly and equally--only--only--upon
+youth the pull of youth is very great.
+
+She put her hands over her eyes, shrinking, frightened. Was it possible
+she loved Darcy Faircloth best?
+
+A knocking. Damaris slipped the letter into the pocket of her dress, and
+rising crossed the room and opened the door.
+
+Hordle stood in the pale spacious corridor without. He presented Marshall
+Wace's card. The gentleman, he said rather huffily, had called, bringing
+a message from Mrs. Frayling as Hordle understood, which he requested to
+deliver to Miss Damaris in person. He begged her to believe he was in no
+hurry. If she was engaged he could perfectly well wait.--He would do so
+in the hotel drawing-room, until it was convenient to her to allow him a
+few minutes' conversation.
+
+So, for the second time, this young man's intrusion proved by no means
+unwelcome, as offering Damaris timely escape. She went down willingly
+to receive him. Yesterday he struck her as a pleasant and agreeable
+person--and of a type with which she was unacquainted. It would be
+interesting to talk to him.--She felt anxious, moreover, to learn what
+Henrietta, lovely if not entirely satisfactory Henrietta, could
+possibly want.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+BLOWING OF ONE'S OWN TRUMPET PRACTISED AS A FINE ART
+
+
+The slender little Corsican horses, red-chestnut in colour and active as
+cats, trotted, with a tinkle of bells, through the barred sunshine and
+shadow of the fragrant pine and cork woods. The road, turning inland,
+climbed steadily, the air growing lighter and fresher as the elevation
+increased--a nip in it testifying that January was barely yet out. And
+that nip justified the wearing of certain afore-mentioned myrtle-green,
+fur-trimmed pelisse, upon which Damaris' minor affections were, at this
+period, much set. Though agreeably warm and thick, it moulded her bosom,
+neatly shaped her waist, and that without any defacing wrinkle. The broad
+fur band at the throat compelled her to carry her chin high, with a not
+unbecoming effect. Her cheeks bloomed, her eyes shone bright, as she sat
+beside Mrs. Frayling in the open victoria, relishing the fine air, the
+varying prospect, her own good clothes, her companion's extreme
+prettiness and lively talk.
+
+This drive, the prelude to Henrietta's campaign, presented that lady at
+her best. The advantage of being--as Henrietta--essentially artificial,
+is that you can never, save by forgetful lapse into sincerity, be untrue
+to yourself. Hence what a saving of scruples, of self-accusation, of
+self-torment! Her plans once fixed she proceeded to carry them out with
+unswerving ease and spontaneity. She refused to hurry, her only
+criterion of personal conduct being success; and success, so she
+believed, if sound, being a plant of gradual growth. Therefore she gave
+both herself and others time. Once fairly in the saddle, she never
+strained, never fussed.
+
+Her cue to-day was to offer information rather than to require it.
+Curious about many things she might be; but gratification of her
+curiosity must wait. Damaris, on her part, listened eagerly, asking
+nothing better than to be kept amused, kept busy, helped to forget.--Not
+Faircloth's letter--very, very far from that!--but the inward conflict of
+opposing loves, opposing duties, which meditation upon his letter so
+distractingly produced. Relatively all, outside that conflict and the
+dear cause of it, was of small moment--mere play stuff at best. But her
+brain and conscience were tired. She would be so glad, for a time, only
+to think about play stuff.
+
+"I want you to go on being kind to Marshall Wace," Henrietta in the
+course of conversation presently said. "He told me how charmingly you
+received him yesterday, when he called with my note. He was so pleased.
+He is exaggeratedly sensitive owing to unfortunate family complications
+in the past."
+
+Damaris pricked up her ears, family complications having latterly
+acquired a rather painful interest for her.
+
+"Poor man--I'm sorry," she said.
+
+"His mother, a favourite cousin of my husband, General Frayling, married
+an impossible person--eloped with him, to tell the truth. Her people, not
+without reason, were dreadfully put out. The children were brought up
+rather anyhow. Marshall did not go to a public school, which he imagines
+places him at a disadvantage with other men. Perhaps it does. Men always
+strike me as being quaintly narrow-minded on that subject. Later he was
+sent to Cambridge with the idea of his taking Orders and going into the
+Church. My husband's elder brother, Leonard Frayling, is patron of
+several livings. He would have presented Marshall to the first which fell
+vacant, and thus his future would have been secured. But just as he was
+going up for deacon's orders, Marshall, rather I can't help feeling like
+a goose, developed theological difficulties. They were perfectly genuine,
+I don't doubt; but they were also singularly ill-timed--a little earlier,
+a little later, or not at all would have been infinitely more convenient.
+So there he was, poor fellow, thrown on the world at three-and-twenty
+with no profession and no prospects; for my brother-in-law washed his
+hands of him when the theological difficulties were announced. Marshall
+tried bear-leading; but people are not particularly anxious to entrust
+their boys to a non-public school man afflicted by religious doubts. He
+thought of making use of his really exquisite voice and becoming a public
+singer; but the training is fearfully expensive, and so somehow that plan
+also fell through. For a time I am afraid he was really reduced to great
+straits, with the consequence that he broke down in health. Through
+friends, my husband got to hear of Marshall's miserable
+circumstances--shortly after our marriage it was--and felt it incumbent
+upon him to go to the rescue."
+
+Henrietta paused, thereby giving extra point to what was to follow, and
+pulled the fur rug up absently about her waist.
+
+"For the last eighteen months," she said, "Marshall has practically
+made his home with us. The arrangement has its drawbacks, of course.
+For one thing the General and I are never alone, and that is a trial to
+us both. Two's company and three's none. When a husband and wife are
+really devoted they don't want always to have a third wheel to the
+domestic cart."
+
+Then, as if checking further and very natural inclination to repining,
+she looked round at Damaris, smiling from behind her thick white net veil
+with most disarming sweetness.
+
+"No--no--I'm not naughty. I don't mean to complain about it," she
+prettily protested. "For I do so strongly feel if one sets out to do good
+it shouldn't be by driblets, with your name, in full, printed in
+subscription lists against every small donation. You should plump for
+your _protege_, and that with the least ostentation possible. The General
+and I are careful not to let people know Marshall stays with us as a
+guest. It is rather a slip speaking of it even to you; but I can trust
+you not to repeat what I say. I am sure of that."
+
+Damaris laid a hand fondly, impulsively upon the elder woman's knee.
+
+"For certain you can trust me. For certain anything you say to me is just
+between our two selves. I should never dream of repeating it."
+
+"There speaks the precious downy owl of long ago," Mrs. Frayling brightly
+cried, "bustling up in defence of its own loyalty and honour. Ah!
+Damaris, how very delicious it is to have you with me!"
+
+For, her main point having been made, she now adroitly discarded pathos.
+Another word regarding her philanthropic harbourage of the young man,
+Marshall Wace, remained to be spoken--but not yet. Let it come in later,
+naturally and without hint of insistence.
+
+"We must be together as much as possible during the next few weeks," she
+went on--"as often as Sir Charles can be persuaded to spare you to me.
+Whether the General and I shall ever make up our minds to settle down in
+a home of our own, where I could ask you to stay with us, I don't know.
+I'm afraid we are hopelessly nomadic. Therefore I am extra anxious to
+make the most of the happy accident which has thrown us together, anxious
+to get every ounce possible of intercourse out of it.--We quite
+understand you have luncheon with me on Thursday, don't we?--and that you
+stay and help me through the afternoon. I am always at home on Thursdays
+to the neighbours. They aren't all of them conspicuously well-bred or
+exciting; but I have learnt to take the rough with the smooth, the boring
+along with the gifted and brilliant. India is a good school in which to
+learn hospitality. The practise of that virtue becomes a habit. And I for
+one quite refuse to excuse myself from further exercise of it on coming
+back to Europe. The General feels with me; and we have laid ourselves out
+to be civil to our compatriots here at St. Augustin this winter. A few
+people were vexatiously stiff and starched at first; but each one of them
+has given in, in turn. They really do, I believe, appreciate our little
+social efforts."
+
+"Who wouldn't give in to you Henrietta?" Damaris murmured.
+
+Whereupon Mrs. Frayling delicately beamed on her; and, agreeable
+unanimity of sentiment being thus established, conversation between the
+two ladies for a while fell silent.
+
+The little chestnut horses, meantime, encouraged with "Oh he-s" and "Oh
+la-s" by their driver, trotted and climbed, climbed and trotted, until
+the woodland lay below and the Signal de la Palu was reached. A wide
+level space on a crest of the foot-hills--with flag staff bearing the
+valorous tricolor, and rustic log-built restaurant offering
+refreshment--opening upon the full splendour of the Maritime Alps.
+
+Damaris stepped out of the carriage, and, patting the near horse on the
+neck in passing, went forward across the sparse turf, starred with tiny
+clear coloured flowers, to the edge of the platform.
+
+The Provencal coachman, from his perch on the box-seat of the victoria,
+his rough-caste crumpled countenance sun-baked to the solid ruddy brown
+of the soil of his own vineyard, followed her movements with approving
+glances.--For she was fresh as an opening rose the young English _Mees_,
+and though most elegant, how agile, how evidently strong!
+
+Innocent of the admiration she excited, Damaris stood absorbed, awed
+even, by the grandeur of the scene. Many hundred feet below, the rent
+chasm down which it took its course steeped in violet gloom, the
+milk-white waters of an ice-fed river impetuously journeyed to the
+fertile lowlands and the sea. Opposite, across the gorge, amazingly
+distinct in the pellucid atmosphere, rose the high mountains, the
+undefiled, untrodden and eternal snows. Azure shadow, transparent,
+ethereal, haunted them, bringing into evidence enormous rounded shoulder,
+cirque, crinkled glacier, knife-edge of underlying rock.
+
+They belonged to the deepest the most superb of life, this rent gorge,
+these mountains--like Faircloth's letter. Would beautiful and noble
+sights, such as these, always in future give her an ache of longing for
+the writer of that letter, for the romance, the poetry, of the
+unacknowledged relation he bore to her? Tears smarted hot in Damaris'
+eyes, and resolutely, if rather piteously, she essayed to wink them away.
+For to her it just now seemed, the deepest, the most superb of life was
+also in great measure the forbidden. The ache must be endured, then, the
+longing go unsatisfied, since she could only stay the pain of them by
+doing violence to plain and heretofore fondly cherished, duties.
+
+But her tears defied the primitive process of winking. Not so
+cheaply could she rid herself of their smart and the blurred
+distorted vision they occasioned. She pulled out her handkerchief
+petulantly and wiped them. Then schooled herself to a colder, more
+moderate and reasonable temper.
+
+And, so doing, her thought turned gratefully to Mrs. Frayling. For
+mercifully Henrietta was here to help fill the void; to, in a manner,
+break her fall. Henrietta didn't belong to the depths or the heights,
+that she regretfully admitted. With the eternal snows she possessed
+little or nothing in common. But, at a lower, more everyday level, had
+not she a vast amount to offer, what with her personal loveliness, her
+social cleverness, her knowledge of the world and its ways? She might not
+amount to the phoenix of Damaris' childhood's adoration; but she was very
+friendly, very diverting, delightfully kind. Damaris honestly believed
+all these excellent things of her.--She had been stupidly fastidious
+three days ago, and failed to do Henrietta justice. What she had
+learned--by chance--this afternoon, of Henrietta's unselfishness and
+generous treatment of Marshall Wace bore effectively convincing witness
+to the sweetness of her disposition and kindness of her heart. Damaris
+felt bound to make amends for that unspoken injustice, of which she now
+repented. How better could she do so than by giving herself warmly,
+without reserve or restraint, in response to the interest and attention
+Henrietta lavished upon her?--At eighteen, to be wooed by so finished and
+popular a person was no mean compliment.--She wouldn't hold back,
+suspicious and grudging; but enjoy all Henrietta so delightfully offered
+to the uttermost.
+
+And there, as though clenching the conclusion thus arrived at, Mrs.
+Frayling's voice gaily hailed her, calling:
+
+"Damaris, Damaris, here is our tea--or rather our coffee. Come, darling
+child, and partake before it gets cold."
+
+So after a brief pause, spent in determined looking, the girl bowed her
+head in mute farewell; and turned her back perhaps courageously, perhaps
+unwisely and somewhat faithlessly, upon the mountains, and the rare
+mysteries of their untrodden snows. She went across the sparse turf,
+starred with tiny clear, coloured flowers, her face stern, for all its
+youthful bloom and softness, her eyes meditative and profound.
+
+The owner of the log-built restaurant, a thick-set, grizzled veteran of
+the Franco-Prussian war, the breast of his rusty velveteen jacket proudly
+bearing a row of medals, stood talking to Mrs. Frayling, hat in hand. His
+right foot had suffered amputation some inches above the ankle, and he
+walked with the ungainly support of a crutch-topped peg-leg strapped to
+the flexed knee.
+
+As Damaris approached the carriage, he swept back the fur rug in
+gallantly respectful invitation; and, so soon as she ensconced herself on
+the seat beside Henrietta, bending down he firmly and comfortably tucked
+it round her. He declared, further, as she thanked him, it an honour in
+any capacity to serve her, since had not Madame, but this moment, so
+gracefully informed him of the commanding military career of the
+Mademoiselle's father, possessor of that unique distinction the Victoria
+Cross--a person animated, moreover, as Madame reported, by sincere
+sympathy for the tragic sorrows of well-beloved and so now cruelly
+dismembered France.
+
+Damaris heard, in this singing of her father's praises, a grateful
+reconciling strain. She found it profitable, just now, to recall the
+heroic deeds, the notable achievements which marked his record. Her
+coffee tasted the more fragrant for it, the butter the fresher, the
+honey the sweeter wherewith she spread the clean coarse home-baked bread.
+She ate, indeed, with a capital appetite, the long drive and stimulating
+air, making her hungry. Possibly even her recent emotion contributed to
+that result; for in youth heartache by no means connotes a disposition
+towards fasting, rather does diet, generous in quantity, materially
+assist to soothe its anguish.
+
+This meal, in fact, partaken of in the open, alone with Henrietta,
+object of her childhood's idolatry--the first they had shared since
+those remote and guileless years--assumed to Damaris a sacramental
+character, though of the earthly and mundane rather than transcendental
+kind. Its communion was one of good fellowship, of agreement in
+cultivation of the lighter social side; which, upon our maiden's part,
+implied tacit consent to conform to easier standards than those until
+now regulating her thought and action, implied tacit acceptance of
+Henrietta as example and as guide.
+
+Whether the latter would have found cause for self-congratulation, could
+she have fathomed the precise cause of this apparently speedy conquest
+and speedy surrender, is doubtful; since it, in fact, took its rise less
+in the fascination of devotion given, than in that of devotion denied.
+She happened to be here on the spot at a critical juncture, and thus to
+catch the young girl's heart on the rebound. That was all--that, joined
+with Damaris' instinctive necessity to play fair and pay in honest coin
+for every benefit received.
+
+So much must be said in extenuation of our nymph-like damsel's apparent
+subjection to levity--a declension which, in the sequel and in certain
+quarters, went neither unnoticed nor undeplored. But to labour this point
+is to forestall history. Immediately her change of attitude announced its
+existence innocently enough. For the sacramental meal once consumed, and
+courteous parting words bestowed upon the valiant soldier broken in his
+country's wars, the coachman mounted the box, and gathering up the reins,
+with "Ho he's" and "ho la's," swung his horses half round the level and
+plunged them over the hill-side, along a steep woodland track, leading by
+serpentine twists and curves down to join the Corniche Road--a blonde
+ribbon rimming the indentations of the five-mile distant coast.
+
+Damaris steadied herself well back on the seat of the carriage as it
+swayed and bumped over ruts and tree-roots to the lively menace of its
+springs. She studiously kept her face turned towards her companion, a
+myrtle-green shoulder as studiously turned towards the view. For she
+found it wiser not even to glance in that direction, lest rebellious
+regrets and longings should leap on her across the violet-blotted abyss
+from out those shining Alpine citadels. While to strengthen herself in
+allegiance to Mrs. Frayling and to, what may be called, the lighter side,
+she pushed one hand into that lady's muff and coaxed the slender
+pointed-fingers hiding in the comfortable pussy-warmth within.
+
+"Tell me stories, Henrietta, please," she entreated, "about all the
+people whom you've asked to your party on Thursday. Dress them up for me
+and put them through their paces, so that I may know who they all are
+when I see them and make no mistakes, but behave to them just as you
+would wish me to."
+
+"Gradate your attentions and not pet the wrong ones?"
+
+Mrs. Frayling gave gentle squeeze for squeeze in the pussy-warmth,
+laughing a trifle impishly.
+
+"You sinful child," she said--"Gracious, what jolts--my spine will soon
+be driven through the top of my skull at this rate!--Yes, sinful in
+tempting me to gibbet my acquaintances for your amusement."
+
+"But why gibbet them? Aren't they nice, don't you care for them?"
+
+"Prodigiously, of course. Yet would you find it in the least interesting
+or illuminating if I indexed their modest virtues only?"
+
+"I think the old soldier found it both interesting and illuminating when
+you indexed my father's virtues just now."
+
+"Sir Charles's virtues hardly come under the head of modest ones," Mrs.
+Frayling threw off almost sharply. "Give me someone as well worth
+acclaiming and I'll shout with the best! But you scarcely quote your
+father as among the average, do you?--The people whom you'll meet on
+Thursday compared to him, I'm afraid, are as molehills to the mountains
+yonder. If I described them by their amiable qualities alone they'd be as
+indistinguishable and as insipid as a row of dolls. Only through their
+aberrations, their unconscious perfidies, iniquities, do they develop
+definiteness of outline and begin to live. Oh! nothing could be unkinder
+than to whitewash them. Take Mrs. Callowgas, for instance, with one eye
+on the Church, the other on the world. The permanent inconsistency of her
+attitude, as I may say her permanent squint, gives her a certain _cachet_
+without which she'd be a positive blank.--She is most anxious to meet
+you, by the way, and Sir Charles--always supposing he is self-sacrificing
+enough to come--because she knows connections of his and yours at
+Harchester, a genial pillar of the Church in the form of an Archdeacon,
+in whom, as I gather, her dear dead Lord Bishop very much put his trust."
+
+"Tom Verity's father, I suppose," Damaris murmured, her colour rising,
+the hint of a cloud too upon her brow.
+
+"And who may Tom Verity be?" Mrs. Frayling, noting both colour and cloud,
+alertly asked.
+
+"A distant cousin. He stayed with us in the autumn just before he went
+out to India. He passed into the Indian Civil Service from Oxford at the
+top of the list."
+
+"Praiseworthy young man."
+
+"Oh! but you would like him, Henrietta," the girl declared. "He is very
+clever and very entertaining too when"--
+
+"When?"
+
+"Well, when he doesn't tease too much. He has an immense amount to talk
+about, and very good manners."
+
+"Also, when he does not tease too much?--And you like him?"
+
+"I don't quite know," Damaris slowly said. "He did not stay with us
+long enough for me to make up my mind. And then other things happened
+which rather put him out of my head. He was a little conceited, perhaps,
+I thought."
+
+"Not unnaturally, being at the top of the pass list. But though other
+things put him out of your head, he writes to you?"
+
+In the pussy-warmth within her muff, Mrs. Frayling became sensible
+that Damaris' hand grew unresponsive, at once curiously stiff and
+curiously limp.
+
+"He has written twice. Once on the voyage out, and again soon after he
+arrived. The--the second letter reached me this week."
+
+Notwithstanding sunshine, the eager air, and lively bumping of the
+descent, Henrietta observed the flush fade, leaving the girl white as
+milk. Her eyes looked positively enormous set in the pallor of her face.
+They were veiled, telling nothing, and thereby--to Mrs. Frayling's
+thinking--betraying much. She scented a situation--some girlish
+attachment, budding affair of the heart.
+
+"My father gave Tom Verity letters of introduction, and he wanted us to
+know how kindly he had been received in consequence."
+
+"Most proper on his part," Mrs. Frayling said.
+
+She debated discreet questioning, probing--the establishment of herself
+in the character of sympathetic confidante. But decided against that. It
+might be impolitic, dangerous even, to press the pace. Moreover the young
+man, whatever his attractions, might be held a negligible quantity in as
+far as any little schemes of her own were concerned at present, long
+leave and reappearance upon the home scene being almost certainly years
+distant.--And, just there, the hand within the muff became responsive
+once more, even urgent in its seeking and pressure, as though appealing
+for attention and tenderness.
+
+"Henrietta, I don't want to be selfish, but won't you go on telling me
+stories about your Thursday party people?--I interrupted you--but it's
+all new, you see, and it interests me so much," Damaris rather
+plaintively said.
+
+Mrs. Frayling needed no further inducement to exercise her really
+considerable powers of verbal delineation. Charging her palette with
+lively colours, she sprang to the task--and that with a sprightly
+composure and deftness of touch which went far to cloak malice and rob
+flippancy of offence.
+
+Listening, Damaris brightened--as the adroit performer intended she
+should--under the gay cascade of talk. Laughed at length, letting finer
+instincts of charity go by the wall, in her enjoyment of neatly turned
+mockeries and the sense of personal superiority they provoked. For
+Henrietta's dissection of the weaknesses of absent friends, inevitably
+amounted to indirect flattery of the friend for whose diversion that
+process of dissection was carried out.
+
+She passed the whole troop in review.--To begin with Miss Maud Callowgas,
+in permanent waiting upon her ex-semi-episcopal widowed mother--in age a
+real thirty-five though nominal twenty-eight, her muddy complexion,
+prominent teeth and all too long back.--Her designs, real or imagined,
+upon Marshall Wace. Designs foredoomed to failure, since whatever his
+intentions--Henrietta smiled wisely--they certainly did not include Maud
+Callowgas's matrimonial future in their purview.
+
+Herbert Binning followed next--the chaplain who served the rather staring
+little Anglican church at Le Vandou, a suburb of St. Augustin much
+patronized by the English in the winter season, and a chapel somewhere in
+the Bernese Oberland during the summer months. Energetic, athletic, a
+great talker and squire of dames--in all honesty and correctness, this
+last, well understood, for there wasn't a word to be breathed against the
+good cleric's morals. But just a wee bit impressionable and flirtatious,
+as who might not very well be with such a whiney-piney wife as Mrs.
+Binning, always ailing; what mind she might (by stretch of charity) be
+supposed to possess exclusively fixed upon the chronic irregularities of
+her internal organs? Recumbency was a mania with her and she had a
+disconcerting habit of wanting to lie down on the most inconveniently
+unsuitable occasions.--To mitigate his over-flowing energies, which cried
+aloud for work, Mr. Binning took pupils. He had two exceptionably nice
+boys with him this winter, in the interval between leaving Eton and going
+up to Oxford, namely, Peregrine Ditton, Lord Pamber's younger son, and
+Harry Ellice, a nephew of Lady Hermione Twells. They were very well-bred.
+Their high spirits were highly infectious. They played tennis to
+perfection and Harry Ellice danced quite tidily into the
+bargain.--Damaris must make friends with them. They were her
+contemporaries, and delightfully fresh and ingenuous.
+
+Lady Hermione herself--here Henrietta's tone conveyed restraint, even
+comparative reverence--who never for an instant forgot she once had
+reigned over some microscopic court out in the far Colonial
+wilderness, nor allowed you to forget it either. Her glance half
+demanded your curtsy. Still she was the "real thing" and, in that,
+eminently satisfactory--genuine _grande dame_ by right both of birth
+and of training.
+
+"She won't condescend to tell me so, being resolved to keep me very much
+in my proper place," Henrietta continued; "but I learned yesterday from
+Mary Ellice--Harry's sister, who lives with her--that she is intensely
+desirous to meet Sir Charles. She wants to talk to him about Afghanistan
+and North-west Frontier policy. A brother of hers it appears was at one
+time in the Guides; and she is under the impression your father and
+Colonel Carteret would have known him.--By the way, dearest child, they
+do mean to honour me, those two, don't they, with their presence on
+Thursday?"
+
+"Of course they will, since you asked them. Why, they love to come
+and see you."
+
+"Do they?" Mrs. Frayling said--"Anyhow, let us hope so. I can trust
+Carteret's general benevolence, but I am afraid your father will be
+unutterably bored with my rubbishing little assembly."
+
+"But, of course, he'll be nice to everybody too--as tame and gentle as
+possible with them all to please you, don't you see, Henrietta."
+
+"Ah! no doubt, all to please me!" she repeated. And fell to musing,
+while the carriage, quitting at last the rough forest track, rattled out
+on to the metalled high road, white in dust.
+
+Here the late afternoon sun still lay hot. The booming plunge of the
+tideless sea, breaking upon the rocks below, quivered in the quiet air.
+Henrietta Frayling withdrew her hands from her muff, unfastened the
+collar of her sable cape. The change from the shadowed woods to this
+glaring sheltered stretch of road was oppressive. She felt strangely
+tired and spent. She trusted Damaris would not perceive her uncomfortable
+state and proffer sympathy. And Damaris, in fact, did nothing of the
+sort, being very fully occupied with her own concerns at present.
+
+Half a mile ahead, pastel-tinted, green-shuttered houses--a village of a
+single straggling street--detached themselves in broken perspective from
+the purple of pine-crowned cliff and headland beyond. Behind them the
+western sky began to grow golden with the approach of sunset. The road
+lead straight towards that softly golden light--to St. Augustin. It led
+further, deeper into the gold, deeper, as one might fancy, into the heart
+of the coming sunset, namely to the world-famous seaport of Marseilles.
+
+Damaris sought to stifle remembrance of this alluring fact, as soon as it
+occurred to her. She must not dally with it--no she mustn't. To in
+anywise encourage or dwell on it, was weak and unworthy, she having
+accepted the claims of clearly apprehended duty. She could not go back on
+her decision, her choice, since, in face of the everlasting hills, she
+had pledged herself.
+
+So she let her eyes no longer rest on the high-road, but looked out to
+sea--where, as tormenting chance would have it, the black hull of a big
+cargo boat, steaming slowly westward, cut into the vast expanse of blue,
+long pennons of rusty grey smoke trailing away from its twin rusty-red
+painted funnels.
+
+Hard-pressed, the girl turned to her companion, asking abruptly,
+inconsequently--"Is that every one whom you expect on Thursday,
+Henrietta?"
+
+For some seconds Mrs. Frayling regarded her with a curious lack of
+intelligent interest or comprehension. Her thoughts, also, had run
+forward into the gold of the approaching sunset; and she had some
+difficulty in overtaking, or restraining them, although they went no
+further than the Grand Hotel; and--so to speak--sat down there all of a
+piece, on a buff-coloured iron chair, which commanded an uninterrupted
+view of four gentlemen standing talking before the front door.
+
+"On Thursday?" she repeated--"Why Thursday?"--and her usually
+skilful hands fumbled with the fastening of her sable cape. Their
+helpless ineffectual movements served to bring her to her senses,
+bring her to herself.
+
+"Really you possess an insatiable thirst for information regarding my
+probable guests, precious child," she exclaimed. "All--of course not. I
+have only portrayed the heads of tribes as yet for your delectation. We
+shall number many others--male and female--of the usual self-expatriated
+British rank and file.--Derelicts mostly."
+
+Lightly and coldly, Henrietta laughed.
+
+"Like, for example, the General and myself. Wanderers possessed of a
+singularly barren species of freedom, without ties, without any
+sheet-anchor of family or of profession to embarrass our movements,
+without call to live in one place rather than another. All along this
+sun-blessed Riviera you will find them swarming, thick as flies,
+displaying the trumpery spites and rivalries through which, as I started
+by pointing out to you, they can alone maintain a degree of individuality
+and persuade themselves and others they still are actually alive."
+
+Shocked at this sudden bitterness, touched to the quick by generous pity,
+regardless of possible onlookers--here in the village street, where the
+hoof-beats of the trotting horses echoed loud from the house-walls on
+either side--Damaris put her arms round Henrietta Frayling, clasping,
+kissing her.
+
+"Ah! don't, Henrietta," she cried. "Don't dare to say such ugly,
+lying things about your dear self. They aren't true. They're absurdly,
+scandalously untrue.--You who are so brilliant, so greatly admired,
+who have everyone at your feet! You who are so kind too,--think of all
+the pleasure you have given me to-day, for instance--and then think
+how beautifully good you've been, and all the time are being, to poor
+Mr. Wace"--
+
+Whether Mrs. Frayling's surprising lapse into sincerity and bald
+self-criticism were intentional, calculated, or not, she was undoubtedly
+quick to see and profit by the opening which Damaris' concluding words
+afforded her.
+
+"How sweet you are, darling child! How very dear of you to scold me
+thus!" she murmured, gently disengaging herself and preening her
+feathers, somewhat disarranged by the said darling child's
+impetuous onset.
+
+"I know it is wrong to grumble. Yet sometimes--as one grows older--one
+gets a dreadful sense that the delights of life are past; and that
+perhaps one has been overscrupulous, over-timid and so missed the
+best.--That is one reason why I find it so infinitely pleasing to have
+you with me--yet pathetic too perhaps.--Why? Well, I don't know that I am
+quite at liberty to explain exactly why."
+
+Henrietta smiled at her long, wistfully and oh! so sagely.
+
+"And, indirectly, that reminds me I am most anxious you should not
+exaggerate, or run off with any mistaken ideas about my dealings with
+poor Marshall Wace. I don't deny I did find his constantly being with us
+a trial at first. But I am reconciled to it. A trifle of discipline,
+though screamingly disagreeable, is no doubt sometimes useful--good for
+one's character, I mean. And I really have grown quite attached to him.
+He has charming qualities. His want of self-confidence is really his
+worst fault--and what a trivial one if you've had experience of the
+horrid things men can do, gamble, for example, and drink."
+
+Henrietta paused, sighed. The yellow facade of the Grand Hotel came into
+sight, a pale spot amid dark trees in the distance.
+
+"And Marshall, poor fellow," she continued, "is more grateful to me,
+that I know, than words can say. So do like him and encourage him a
+little--it would be such a help and happiness to me as well as to him,
+dearest Damaris."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+IN WHICH HENRIETTA PULLS THE STRINGS
+
+
+Mrs. Frayling's afternoon party passed off to admiration. But this by no
+means exhausted her social activities. Rather did it stimulate them; so
+that, with Damaris' amusement as their ostensible object and excuse, they
+multiplied exceedingly. Henrietta was in her native element. Not for
+years had she enjoyed herself so much. This chaperonage, this vicarious
+motherhood, was rich in opportunity. She flung wide her nets, even to the
+enmeshing of recruits from other larger centres, Cannes, Antibes and
+Nice. This more ambitious phase developed later. Immediately our
+chronicle may address itself to the initial Thursday, which, for our
+nymph-like maiden, saw the birth of certain illusions destined to all too
+lengthy a span of life.
+
+Luncheon at the villa--or as Henrietta preferred it called, The
+Pavilion--set in the grounds of the Hotel de la Plage and dependent for
+service upon that house--was served at mid-day. This left a considerable
+interval before the advent of the expected guests. Mrs. Frayling refused
+to dedicate it to continuous conversation, as unduly tiring both for
+Damaris and for herself. They must reserve their energies, must keep
+fresh. Marshall Wace was, therefore, bidden to provide peaceful
+entertainment, read aloud--presently, perhaps, sing to them at such time
+as digestion--bad for the voice when in process--might be supposed
+complete. The young man obeyed, armed with Tennyson's _Maud_ and a volume
+of selected lyrics.
+
+His performance fairly started General Frayling furtively vanished in
+search of a mild _siesta_. It inflated his uxorious breast with pride to
+have his Henrietta shine in hospitality thus. But his lean shanks
+wearied, keeping time to the giddy music. Wistfully he feared he must be
+going downhill, wasn't altogether the man he used to be, since he found
+the business of pleasure so exhaustingly strenuous. And that was beastly
+unfair to his lovely wife--wouldn't do, would not do at all, by Gad!
+Therefore did he vanish into a diminutive and rather stuffy smoking-room,
+under the stairs, unfasten his nankeen waistcoat, unfasten his
+collar-stud, doze and finally, a little anxiously, sleep.
+
+Whatever Marshall Wace's diffidence in ordinary intercourse, it
+effectually disappeared so soon as he began to declaim or to recite. The
+histrionic in him declared itself, rising dominant. Given a character to
+impersonate, big swelling words to say, fine sentiments to enunciate, he
+changed to the required colour chameleon-like. You forgot--at least the
+feminine portion of his audience, almost without exception, forgot--that
+his round light-brown eyes stared uncomfortably much; that his nose, thin
+at the root and starting with handsome aquiline promise, ended in a
+foolish button-tip. Forgot that his lips were straight and compressed,
+wanting in generous curves and in tenderness--an actor's mouth,
+constructed merely for speech. Forgot the harsh quality of the triangular
+redness on either cheek, fixed and feverish. Ceased to remark how the
+angle of the jaw stood away from and beyond the sinewy, meagre neck, or
+note the rise and fall of Adam's apple so prominent in his throat.--No
+longer were annoyed by the effeminate character of the hands, their
+retracted nails and pink, upturned finger-tips, offering so queer a
+contrast to the rather inordinate size of his feet.
+
+For the voice rarely failed to influence its hearers, to carry you indeed
+a little out of yourself by its variety of intonation, its fire and
+fervour, its languishing modulations, broken pauses, yearning melancholy
+of effect. The part of the neurotic hero of the--then--Laureate's poem,
+that somewhat pinch-beck Victorian Hamlet, suited our young friend,
+moreover, down to the ground. It offered sympathetic expression to his
+own nature and temperament; so that he wooed, scoffed, blasphemed,
+orated, drowned in salt seas of envy and self-pity, with a simulation of
+sincerity as convincing to others as consolatory to himself.
+
+And Damaris, being unlearned in the curious arts of the theatre, listened
+wide-eyed, spellbound, until flicked by the swishing skirts of fictitious
+emotion into genuine, yet covert, excitement. As the reading progressed
+Henrietta Frayling's presence increasingly sank into unimportance. More
+and more did the poem assume a personal character, of which, if the
+reader were hero, she--Damaris--became heroine. Marshall Wace seemed to
+read not to, but definitely at her; so that during more than one ardent
+passage, she felt herself go hot all over, as though alone with him, an
+acknowledged object of his adoring, despairing declarations. This she
+shrank from, yet--it must be owned--found stirring, strangely and not
+altogether unpleasantly agitating. For was not this _protege_ of
+Henrietta's--whom the latter implored her to encourage and treat
+kindly--something of a genius? Capable of sudden and amazing
+transformation, talking to you with a modesty and deference agreeably
+greater than that of most young men of his age; then, on an instant,
+changing at will, and extraordinarily voicing the accumulated wrongs,
+joys and sorrows of universal humanity? Could Henrietta, who usually
+spoke of him in tones of commiseration, not to say of patronage, be aware
+how remarkable he really was? Damaris wondered; regarding him, meanwhile,
+with innocent respect and admiration. For how tremendously much he must
+have experienced, how greatly he must have suffered to be able to portray
+drama, express profound emotion thus! That the actor's art is but
+glorified make-believe, the actor himself too often hollow as a drum,
+though loud sounding as one, never for an instant occurred to her. How
+should it?
+
+Therefore when Mrs. Frayling--recollecting certain mysteries of the
+toilet which required attention before the arrival of her expected
+guests--brought the performance to an abrupt termination, Damaris felt a
+little taken aback, a little put about, as though someone should be
+guilty of talking millinery in church.
+
+For--"Splendid, my dear Marshall, splendid," the lady softly yet
+emphatically interrupted him. "To-day you really surpass yourself. I
+never heard you read better, and I hate to be compelled to call a halt.
+But time has flown--look."
+
+And she pointed to the blue and gold Sevres clock upon the mantelpiece.
+
+"Miss Verity is an inspiring auditor," he said, none best pleased at
+being thus arbitrarily arrested in midcourse. "For whatever merit my
+reading may have possessed, your thanks are due to her rather than to me,
+Cousin Henrietta."
+
+He spoke to the elder woman. He looked at the younger. With a nervous yet
+ponderous movement--it was Marshall Wace's misfortune always to take up
+more room than by rights belonged to his height and bulk--he got on to
+his feet. Inattentively let drop the volume of poems upon a neighbouring
+table, to the lively danger of two empty coffee cups.
+
+The cups rattled. "Pray be careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with
+some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention
+had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had
+been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She,
+therefore, hit out--to regret her indiscretion the next moment.
+
+"Nothing--nothing," she prettily added. "I beg your pardon, Marshall, but
+I quite thought those cups would fall off the table--So stupid of me."
+
+The fixed red widened, painfully inundating the young man's countenance.
+He was infuriated by his own awkwardness. Humiliated by Mrs. Frayling's
+warning, of which her subsequent apology failed to mitigate the disgrace.
+And that this should occur just in the hour of satisfied vanity, of
+agreeable success--and before Damaris! In her eyes he must be miserably
+disqualified henceforth.
+
+But his misfortunes worked to quite other ends than he anticipated. For
+Damaris came nearer, her expression gravely earnest as appealing to him
+not to mind, not to let these things vex him.
+
+"I have never heard anyone read so beautifully," she told him. "You make
+the words come alive so that one sees the whole story happening. It is
+wonderful. I shall always remember this afternoon because of your
+reading--and shall long to hear you again--often, I know, long for that."
+
+Wace bowed. This innocent enthusiasm was extremely assuaging to his
+wounded self-esteem.
+
+"You have but to ask me, Miss Verity. I shall be only too honoured,
+too happy to read to you whenever you have leisure and inclination
+to listen."
+
+But here Mrs. Frayling put her arm round Damaris' waist, affectionately,
+laughingly, and drew her towards the door.
+
+"Come, come, darling child--don't be too complimentary or Marshall will
+grow unbearably conceited.--You'll put on flannels, by the way, Marshall,
+won't you?" she added as an after-thought.
+
+"I shall not play tennis this afternoon," he answered, his nose in the
+air. "There will be plenty for a change of setts without me. I am not
+good enough for Binning and his two young aristocrats, and I don't choose
+to make sport for the Philistines by an exhibition of my ineptitude. I
+have no pretentious to being an athlete."
+
+"Nonsense, Marshall, nonsense," she took him up quickly, conscious his
+reply was not in the best taste. "You wilfully underrate yourself."
+
+Then later, as, still entwined, she conducted Damaris upstairs to her
+bed-chamber.
+
+"There you have the position in a nutshell," she said. "Still am I not
+right? For hasn't he charm, poor dear fellow, so very much cleverness--so
+really gifted isn't he?"
+
+And as the girl warmly agreed:
+
+"Ah! I am so very glad you appreciate him.--And you have yet to hear
+him sing! That takes one by storm, I confess--Unhappy Maud
+Callowgas!--But you see how frightfully on edge he is--how he turns off
+for no valid reason, imagines himself a failure, imagines himself out
+of it? In point of fact he plays a quite passable game of tennis--and
+you heard what he said? These fits of depression and self-depreciation
+amount to being tragic. One requires endless tact to manage him and
+save him from himself."
+
+Henrietta paused, sighed, sitting on the stool before her toilette table,
+neatly placing tortoiseshell hairpins, patting and adjusting her bright
+brown hair.
+
+"I could have bitten my tongue out for making that wretched slip about
+the coffee cups; but I was off my guard for once. And like all artistic
+people Marshall is a little absent-minded--absorbed to the point of not
+seeing exactly what he is doing.--Poor young man, I sometimes tremble for
+his future. Such a highly strung, sensitive nature amounts almost to a
+curse. If he got into wrong hands what mightn't the end be?--Catastrophe,
+for he is capable of fatal desperation. And I must own men--with the
+exception of my husband who is simply an angel to him--do not always
+understand and are not quite kind to him. He needs a wise loving woman to
+develop the best in him--there is so very much which is good--and to
+guide him."
+
+"Well," Damaris said, and that without suspicion of irony, "dearest
+Henrietta, hasn't he you?"
+
+Mrs. Frayling took up the ivory hand-glass, and sitting sideways on the
+dressing-stool, turned her graceful head hither and thither, to obtain
+the fuller view of her back hair.
+
+"Me? But you forget, I have other claims to satisfy. I can't look after
+him for ever. I must find him a wife I suppose; though I really shall be
+rather loath to give him up. His gratitude and loneliness touch me so
+much," she said, looking up and smiling, with a little twist in her
+mouth, as of playful and unwilling resignation, captivating to see.
+
+By which cajoleries and expression of praiseworthy sentiment, Henrietta
+raised herself notably in Damaris' estimation--as she fully intended to
+do. Our maiden kissed her with silent favour; and, mysteries of the
+toilette completed, more closely united than ever before--that is, since
+the date of the elder's second advent--the two ladies, presenting the
+prettiest picture imaginable, went downstairs again, gaily, hand in hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CARNIVAL--AND AFTER
+
+
+Tall and slim, in the black and white of his evening clothes, Colonel
+Carteret leaned his shoulder against an iron pillar of the verandah of
+the Hotel de la Plage, and smoked, looking meditatively down into the
+moonlit garden. Through the range of brightly lighted open windows
+behind him came the sound of a piano and stringed instruments, a subdued
+babble of voices, the whisper of women's skirts, and the sliding rush of
+valsing feet.
+
+To-night marked the culmination and apex of Henrietta Frayling's social
+effort. It was mid-March, mid-Lent--which last fact she made an
+excuse--after taking ecclesiastical opinion on the subject, namely, that
+of Herbert Binning, the Anglican chaplain--for issuing invitations to a
+Cinderella dance. Damaris Verity, it appeared, had never really, properly
+and ceremoniously "come out"--a neglect which Henrietta protested should
+be repaired. Positively, but very charmingly, she told Sir Charles it
+must. She only wished the affair could be on a larger, more worthy scale.
+This was, after all, but a makeshift--the modest best she could arrange
+under the circumstances. But he--Sir Charles--must not refuse. It would
+give her such intense pleasure to have the darling child make her
+official _debut_ under her, Henrietta's, auspices. The hours would of
+necessity be early, to avoid disturbance of the non-dancing residents in
+the hotel. But, if the entertainment were bound to end at midnight, it
+could begin at a proportionately unfashionable hour. For once _table
+d'hote_ might surely be timed for six o'clock; and the dining-room--since
+it offered larger space than any other apartment--be cleared, aired, and
+ready for dancing by a quarter-past eight.--Henrietta unquestionably had
+a way with her; proprietors, managers, servants alike hastening obedient
+to her cajoling nod.--Thanks to importations by road and rail, from other
+coast resorts, she reckoned to muster sixteen to twenty couples.--A
+rubbishing apology at best, in the matter of a "coming out" ball, for a
+girl of Damaris' position and deserts--no one could know that better than
+she, Henrietta, herself did!
+
+"A poor thing but mine own," she quoted, when enlarging upon the scheme
+to Charles Verity. "But as at Easter we are fated to scatter, I suppose,
+and go our several roads with small promise of reunion, you must really
+be gracious, dear friend, and, for old sake's sake, give in to my
+desires. It's my last chance, for heaven knows how long--not impossibly
+for ever."
+
+Carteret happened to be present during the above conversation. Had he
+not, it may be doubted whether it would ever have taken place--with this
+dash of affecting reminiscence in any case. Allusions to a common past
+were barred for excellent reasons, as between these two persons, save
+strictly in public. Even so it struck him as a humorous piece of audacity
+on the lady's part. Her effrontery touched on the colossal! But it
+succeeded, always had done so.--In his judgment of Henrietta, Carteret
+never failed to remember, being compact of chivalry and of truthfulness,
+that he had once on a time been a good half in love with her
+himself.--All the same he was not sure her close association with Damaris
+met with his approval.
+
+That association had grown, Jonah's gourd-like, during the last six
+weeks, until, as he rather uneasily noted, the two were hardly ever
+apart. Luncheons, teas, picnics, excursions, succeeded one another.
+Afternoons of tennis in the hotel grounds, the athletic gregarious
+Binning and his two pupils, Peregrine Ditton and Harry Ellice in
+attendance. Sometimes the latter's sister, Mary Ellice, joined the
+company--when Lady Hermione condescended to spare her--or the long-backed
+Miss Maud Callowgas. Afternoons of reading and song, too, supplied by
+Marshall Wace.--Carteret felt self-reproachful, yet knew his charity
+too often threatened to stop short of the young man Wace--though the
+beggar had a voice to draw tears from a stone, plague him!--At intervals,
+all-day expeditions were undertaken to Monte Carlo, or shopping raids
+upon Cannes or Nice.
+
+Yes, verily--as he reflected--Henrietta Frayling did keep the ball
+rolling with truly Anglo-Indian frivolity and persistence, here in the
+heart of Europe! And was that altogether wholesome for Damaris? He
+delighted to have the beautiful young creature enjoy herself, spread her
+wings, take her place among the courted and acclaimed. But he prized her
+too highly not to be ambitious for her; and would have preferred her
+social education to be conducted on more dignified and authorized lines,
+in the great world of London, namely, or Paris. When all came to all,
+this was hardly good enough.
+
+No one, he honestly admitted, trumpeted that last truth more loudly than
+Henrietta--at times. Nevertheless she went on and on, making the business
+of this rather second-rate pleasure-seeking daily of greater importance.
+How could Damaris be expected to discriminate, to retain her sense of
+relative values, in the perpetual scrimmage, the unceasing rush? Instinct
+and nobility of nature go an immensely long way as preservatives--thank
+God for that--still, where you have unsophistication, inexperience, a
+holy ignorance, to deal with, it is unwise to trust exclusively to their
+saving grace. Even the finest character is the safer--so he supposed--for
+some moulding and direction in its first contact with the world, if it is
+to come through the ordeal unscathed and unbesmirched. And to ask such
+moulding and direction of Henrietta Frayling was about as useful as
+asking a humming-bird to draw a water-cart.
+
+He was still fond of Henrietta and derived much silent entertainment from
+witnessing her manoeuvres. But he was under no delusion regarding her. He
+considered her quite the most selfish woman of his acquaintance, though
+also one of the most superficially attractive. Hers was a cold, not a
+hot selfishness, refined to a sort of exquisiteness and never for an
+instant fleshly or gross. But that selfishness, in its singleness of
+purpose, made her curiously powerful, curiously capable of influencing
+persons of larger and finer spirit than herself--witness her ascendency
+over Charles Verity during a long period of years, and that without ever
+giving, or even seriously compromising, herself.
+
+Into whoever she fixed her dainty little claws, she did it with an eye to
+some personal advantage. And here Carteret owned himself puzzled--for
+what advantage could she gain from this close association with Damaris?
+The girl's freshness went, rather mercilessly, to show up her fading.
+
+At times, it is true, watching her pretty alacrity of manner, hearing her
+caressing speech, he inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt,
+believe her self-forgetful, her affection genuine, guiltless of design or
+after-thought. If so, so very much the better! He was far from grudging
+her redemption, specially at the hands of Damaris.--Only were things, in
+point of fact, working to this commendable issue? With the best will in
+the world to think so, he failed to rid himself of some prickings of
+anxiety and distrust.
+
+And from such prickings he sensibly suffered to-night, as he leaned his
+shoulder against the iron pillar of the verandah at the Hotel de la
+Plage, and looked down into the _claire obscure_ of the moonlit gardens,
+while over the polished floor of the big room at his back, the rhythmical
+tread of the dancers' feet kept time to the music of piano and sweet
+wailing strings.--For that a change showed increasingly evident in
+Damaris he could not disguise from himself. In precisely what that change
+consisted it was not easy to say. He discovered it more in an attitude of
+mind and atmosphere than in outward action or even in words said. But she
+was not quite the same as the grave and steadfast young creature who had
+asked his help for her father, and indirectly for herself, in the moist
+chill of the November twilight at The Hard--and who, receiving promise
+of such help, had darted away over the drenched lawn in company with the
+wildly gambolling cats alternately pursuing and pursued. Nor was she
+quite the same as when he had walked with her, through the resounding
+Paris streets, to pay her devoirs to her former guardians and teachers at
+the convent school; and, later returning, had spoken to her of the safety
+of religion, the high worth of the doctrine and practice of a definite
+historic creed.
+
+Her relation to her father appeared--and this pained Carteret--to lack
+its old intimacy, its intensity of consideration and tenderness. Her
+interest in the child of his brain, his belated literary experiment, was
+less sustained and spontaneous. How could it flourish in its former
+proportions when she was so much away, so often absent from morning till
+night?--Not without leave though, for she scrupulously asked permission
+before answering Henrietta's gay call and taking part in that lady's
+junketings and jaunts. Sir Charles never refused the requested
+permission; but, while granting it, did he not tend to retreat into his
+former sardonic humour, fall into long silences, become inaccessible
+again and remote? The book went forward; yet, more than once recently,
+Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly
+delivered of the admirable volume were not he--Carteret--permanently at
+hand to act midwife. An unpleasant idea pursued him that Sir Charles
+went, in some strange fashion, in fear of Damaris, of her criticism, her
+judgment. Yet fear seemed a hatefully strong and ugly word to employ as
+between a father and daughter so straitly, heretofore, bound to one
+another in love.
+
+And then--there lay the heart of the worry, proving him only too likely a
+graceless jealous middle-age curmudgeon, a senile sentimentalist, thus
+did he upbraidingly mock himself--were there not signs of Damaris
+developing into a rather thorough paced coquette? She accepted the homage
+offered her with avidity, with many small airs and graces--_a la_
+Henrietta--of a quite novel sort. Old General Frayling--poor pathetic old
+warrior--was her slave. Peregrine Ditton, Harry Ellice, even the cleric
+Binning--let alone the permanently self-conscious, attitudinizing
+Wace--with other newer acquaintances, English and foreign, ran at her
+heels. And she let them run, bless her, even encouraged their running by
+turns of naughty disdain and waywardness. She was fatal to boys--that was
+in the natural course of things. And fatal to those considerably older
+than boys--perhaps--
+
+The music flew faster and faster--stopped with a shriek and a crash.
+Laughing, talking, the dancers streamed out of the hot brightly lighted
+room into the soft peace, the delicate phantasy of the colourless
+moonlight.
+
+Carteret drew back, flattening himself against the iron pillar in the
+shadow, as they passed down the steps into the garden below; the women's
+pale airy forms and the men's dark ones, pacing the shining paths in
+groups and couples, between the flower-beds, under the flat-headed pines,
+the shaggy-stemmed palms and towering eucalyptus, in and out massed banks
+of blossoming shrubs and dwarf hedges of monthly roses.
+
+Midway in the light-hearted procession came Damaris, Peregrine Ditton on
+one side of her, Harry Ellice on the other. Leaving the main alley, the
+trio turned along a path, running parallel to the verandah, which opened
+into a circle surrounding the stone basin of a tinkling fountain,
+immediately below Colonel Carteret's post of solitary observation.
+
+Damaris carried the demi-train of her white satin gown over her arm,
+thereby revealing a wealth of lace frilled petticoat, from beneath
+which the toes of her high-heeled, white satin shoes stepped with a
+pretty measured tread. The two boys, leaning a little towards one
+another, talked across her, their voices slightly raised in argument,
+not to say dispute.
+
+"I call it rotten mean to bag my dance like that, I tell you.--Go
+away?--No I swear I won't go away, won't budge one blessed inch unless
+Miss Verity actually orders me to. If my dance was stolen, all the more
+reason I should have her to talk to now as a sort of make-up. So you
+just clear out, if you please, my good chap, and leave the field to your
+elders and betters. Remove your superfluous carcass till further
+notice.--Vamoose, my son, do you hear?"
+
+This excitedly from Peregrine Ditton. They reached the fountain. Damaris
+stayed her measured walk, and stood gazing at the jet of water in its
+uprush and myriad sparkling fall. Ellice answered chaffingly yet with an
+underlying growl; and the dispute threatened to wax warm. But the girl
+heeded neither disputant, her attention rapt in watching the play of the
+falling water.
+
+Throughout the evening she had easily been chief centre of attraction,
+besieged by partners. And those not only her present rival attendants or
+Marshall Wace; but by Mrs. Frayling's various importations, plus Mr.
+Alban Titherage--a fat, smart and very forthcoming young London
+stock-broker, lately established, in company of a pretty, silly,
+phthisis-stricken wife, at the Grand Hotel. Very much mistress of
+herself, Damaris had danced straight through the programme with an air of
+almost defiant vivacity. Now, as it seemed, her mood had changed and
+sobered. For presently Colonel Carteret saw her bosom heave, while she
+fetched a long sigh and, raising her head, glanced upwards, her great
+eyes searching the shadowed space of the verandah.
+
+The cool lunar brightness flooded her upturned face, her bare neck and
+arms, the glittering folds of her satin gown. She was exceedingly fair to
+look upon just now. For an appreciable length of time her glance met
+Carteret's and held it; giving him--though the least neurotic of men,
+calm of body and of mind--a strange sensation as of contact with an
+electric current which tingled through every nerve and vein. And this,
+although he perceived that, dazzled by the moonlight, she either did not
+see or quite failed to recognize him. An expression of disappointment,
+akin, so he read it, to hope defeated, crossed her face. She lowered her
+eyes, and moved slowly forward along the path, the boys on either side
+her. Again Peregrine Ditton took up his tale--in softened accents though
+still as one sorely injured and whose temper consequently inclines not
+unjustly to the volcanic.
+
+"Upon my honour, I think you might have given me just a minute's law,
+Miss Verity," he protested. "It was no fault of mine being late. Maud
+Callowgas kept me toddling to the most unconscionable extent. First she
+wanted an ice, and then a tumbler of lemon squash; and then she lost her
+fan, or pretended she did, and expected me to hunt for the beastly thing.
+I give you my word I was as rude as sin, in hope of shaking her off; but
+she didn't, or wouldn't, see what I was driving at. There was no getting
+away from her. I tell you she sticks like a burr, that girl, once she
+lays hold of you. Octopuses aren't in it. Her power of adhesion is
+something utterly frantic "--
+
+Here Ellice cut in with a doubtless scathing though, to Carteret,
+inaudible remark, at which Damaris laughed outright; and the fresh young
+voices trailed away in the distance alternately mocking and remonstrant.
+
+As he listened, still conscious of contact with that surprising electric
+current, Carteret found himself taking stock of his own forty-nine years
+with swift and lively repugnance. To accept the sum of them, and the
+limitations and restrictions that sum is currently supposed to entail,
+proved just now astonishingly difficult. Damaris, as beheld in the
+fantastic loveliness of the moonlight, her searching, unseeing eyes
+meeting and dwelling upon his own, the look of disappointment and defeat
+crossing her sweetly serious countenance, wrought upon him begetting a
+dangerous madness in his blood. That it was dangerous and a madness, and
+therefore promptly to be mastered and ejected, he would not permit
+himself an instant's doubt. Yet it very shrewdly plagued him, daring even
+to advance specious arguments upon its own behalf.
+
+For, when he came to consider matters, was he not in perfect health, more
+sound and fit than many a man but half his age? And were not his
+fortunes just now at a specially happy turn, his sister, Mrs. Dreydel,
+having lately been blessed with a windfall, in the shape of yearly
+income, which--did he so choose--relieved him of much expenditure on her
+account. Her eldest son had received his commission. The three younger
+boys had done well as to scholarships thereby materially reducing the
+cost of their education. Never had he, Carteret, been so free to consult
+his private desires; and never, as he knew too profoundly well, had his
+desires taken so definite and delicious a form. Nevertheless it remained
+a madness to be mastered, to be ejected.--His last thought, as his first,
+pronounced it that.
+
+Unconsciously, pushed by this stress of rather turbulent sensations,
+Carteret walked the length of the verandah and drew up in the full glare
+of the moonlight. From here he could see the curve of the shore; and,
+beyond the quay and esplanade and last scattered houses of the little
+town, the lighthouse marking the tip of the western horn of the bay. He
+could hear the soft stealthy plunge and following rush of the sea up the
+white shelving beach. Could hear also--less soothing sound--through the
+open windows of the drawing-room of the Pavilion, just across the garden,
+Marshall Wace singing, with all the impassioned fervour of his rich and
+well-trained baritone, a ballad, then much in vogue, entitled "The Lost
+Chord." The words, to Carteret's thinking, were futile, meaning anything,
+everything, or nothing, according to your private interpretation of them.
+But as to the fine quality and emotional appeal of the voice there could
+not be two opinions, as it palpitated thus in the mild night air. Was
+Damaris Verity a member of the singer's devout audience? Were her hands
+among those which now enthusiastically applauded the conclusion of the
+song? Under his breath, slowly, gently but most comprehensively, Carteret
+swore. And felt all the better for that impious exercise, even amused at
+this primitive expression of his moral and sentimental disturbance, and
+so on the high-road, as he fondly imagined, to capture his habitual
+attitude of charity and tolerance once again. But heaven had further
+trial of his fortitude and magnanimity, not to say his good honest horse
+sense, in store to-night.
+
+For, as the clapping of hands died down, the whisper of a woman's dress,
+upon the asphalt of the verandah just behind him, caught his ear, and
+Damaris came rapidly towards him.
+
+"So you are here after all, dear Colonel Sahib," she cried. "I felt you
+were when I was down there looking at the fountain. It sort of pulled at
+me with remindings of you ages and ages ago, in the gardens of the club
+at Bhutpur--when you brought me a present--a darling little green jade
+elephant in a sandalwood box, as a birthday gift from Henrietta. Later
+there was a terrible tragedy. An odious little boy broke my elephant, on
+purpose, and broke my heart along with it."
+
+Carteret made a determined effort over himself, taking her up lightly.
+
+"But not altogether past mending, dear witch--judging by existing
+appearances."
+
+"Ah! I'm none so sure of that," Damaris answered him back with a pretty
+quickness--"if it hadn't been for you. For I was very ill, when you came
+again to the Sultan-i-bagh--don't you remember?--the night of the riots
+and great fires in the Civil Lines and Cantonments, just at the breaking
+of the monsoon."
+
+"Yes, I remember," he said.
+
+And wondered to himself--thereby gaining ease and a measure of
+tranquillity, inasmuch as he thought of another man's plight rather than
+of his own--whether Damaris had knowledge of other occurrences, not
+unallied to tragedy, which had marked that same night of threatened
+mutiny and massacre and of bellowing tempest, not least among them a vow
+made by her father, Charles Verity, and made for her sake.
+
+"The whole story comes back in pictures," she went on, "whenever I look
+at fountains playing, because of the water-jets in the canal in the
+Bhutpur club garden where you gave me Henrietta's present. You see it all
+dates from then. And it came back to me specially clearly just now,
+partly because I felt lonely--"
+
+"Lonely?--How lonely," he smilingly interjected, "with a goodly youth as
+a protector on either hand?"
+
+"Yes--lonely," Damaris repeated, ignoring the allusion to her devoted if
+irascible escort. "Dance music always makes one rather sad--don't you
+think so? It seems to ache with everything one wants and hasn't got; and
+the ache goes on.--I turned homesick for--for India, and for my green
+jade elephant I used to love so dreadfully much.--I've all that is left
+of him, still wrapped in the same rice paper in the same sandalwood box
+you brought him in, put away with my best treasures in my own room at
+The Hard."
+
+She came nearer, stood beside him, bending down a little as she rested
+her hands on the top of the iron balustrade of the verandah, while her
+eyes followed the curve of the bay to where the lighthouse rose, a
+black column with flashing headpiece, above the soft glitter of the
+moonlit sea.
+
+"And homesick, Colonel Sahib, for you," she said.
+
+"For me?" he exclaimed almost involuntarily, roughly startled out of his
+partially recovered tranquillity and ease.
+
+"Yes"--she said, looking up at him. "Isn't that quite natural, since
+you have stepped in so often to help me when things have gone rather
+wrong?--I knew you must be somewhere quite close by. I sort of felt
+you were there. And you were there--weren't you? Why did you hide
+yourself away?"
+
+Carteret could not bring himself immediately to answer. He was perplexed,
+infinitely charmed, distrustful, all at once--distrustful, though for
+very different reasons, both of himself and of her.
+
+"Are things, then, going rather wrong now?" he asked presently.
+
+For he judged it wise to accept her enigmatic speech according to its
+most simple and obvious interpretation. By so doing he stood, moreover,
+to gain time; and time in his existing perplexity appeared to him of
+cardinal importance.
+
+"That's just what I'm not sure about." Damaris spoke slowly, gravely, her
+glance again fixed upon the beacon light set for the safety of passing
+ships on the further horn of the bay. "If I could be sure, I should know
+what to do--know whether it is right to keep on as--as I am. Do you see?"
+
+But what, at this juncture, Carteret did, in point of fact, most
+consciously see was the return of Henrietta Frayling's scattered guests,
+from the Pavilion and other less fully illuminated quarters, towards the
+main building of the hotel. From the improvised ball-room within chords
+struck on the piano and answering tuning of strings invited to the
+renewal of united and active festivity. In the face of consequently
+impending interruption he hazarded a trifle of admonition.
+
+"Dearest witch, you elect to speak in riddles," he gently told her. "I am
+in the dark as to your meaning; so, if I am guilty of uttering
+foolishness, you must pardon me. But I own I could wish--just a
+bit--that, in some particulars, you wouldn't keep on--I quote your own
+words--as you are, or rather have been just lately."
+
+"Why?" she asked, without moving.
+
+"Because, to be quite honest with you, I am not altogether satisfied
+about your father. I am afraid he is getting back into the habit of mind
+we set out to cure him of, you and I, last November."
+
+Damaris sprang to attention.
+
+"And I haven't noticed it. I Wouldn't stop to notice it. I have been too
+busy about my own concerns and have neglected him."
+
+Arrayed in her spotless virgin finery, her head carried proudly, though
+her eyes were sombre with self-reproach, self-accusation, and her lips
+quivered, she confronted Carteret. And his clean loyal soul went out to
+her in a poignant, an exquisite, agony of tenderness and of desire. He
+would have given his right hand to save her pain. Given his life gladly,
+just then, to secure her welfare and happiness; yet he had struck
+her--for her own good possibly--possibly just blindly, instinctively, in
+self-defence. He tried to shut down the emotion which threatened to
+betray him and steady on to the playfully affectionate tone of their
+customary intercourse; but it is to be feared the effort lacked
+convincingness of quality.
+
+"No--no," he said, "you take it altogether too hard. You exaggerate, dear
+witch, to the point of extravagance. You have been less constantly with
+your father than usual--you're the delight of his life after all, as you
+must very well know--and inevitably he has missed you. Nothing worse than
+that. The damage, such as it is, can easily be repaired."
+
+"Ah! but the damage, as you call it, starts behind all that in something
+else--something older, much deeper down, of which I doubt whether any
+lasting reparation is possible. I did try to repair it. All my going out
+with Henrietta, and this rushing about lately, began in that
+trying--truly it did, Colonel Sahib. And then I suppose I got above
+myself--as poor Nannie used to say--and came to care for the rushing
+about just for its own sake"--
+
+"My dance, I believe, Miss Verity."
+
+The speaker, Mr. Alban Titherage--well-groomed, rosy and
+self-complacent--pulled down the fronts of his white waistcoat. He
+inclined to distinct rotundity of person, and the garment in question,
+though admirable in cut, showed, what with the exertions of dancing, a
+damnable tendency, as he expressed it, to "ride up."
+
+"And my dance next afterwards, Miss Verity"--this from Peregrine Ditton,
+his youthful, well-bred, if somewhat choleric, countenance presenting
+itself over the top of the stock-broker's smooth and not conspicuously
+intelligent head.
+
+Damaris looked from one to the other of these claimants for her favour,
+with instant and very becoming composure.
+
+"I'm dreadfully sorry," she told them collectively, "but surely there is
+some mistake. Both those next dances--they are the last, I'm afraid, too,
+aren't they?--belong to Colonel Carteret."
+
+"The deuce they do!" Ditton exploded, turning scarlet. With a cocked eye
+and a jaunty movement of the head Mr. Titherage shot out his right shirt
+cuff, and pointed a stout forefinger at certain hieroglyphics inscribed
+on its glossy surface.
+
+"Your name, Miss Verity, and written with an indelible pencil, to the
+permanent embellishment of my best party-going linen and witness to your
+infidelity."
+
+"I can only repeat I am dreadfully sorry," Damaris said, with a becoming
+air of concern, "if the confusion has arisen through my fault. But"--
+
+She appealed to Carteret.
+
+"They always were your dances, weren't they?"
+
+"Without doubt," he affirmed.
+
+Amusedly and very kindly he smiled upon the angry boy and portly young
+man, although the beat of his pulse was accelerated and his throat felt
+queerly dry.
+
+"I am sure you understand how impossible it is for me to release Miss
+Verity from her promise," he said courteously. "Would you willingly do so
+yourselves, were the positions reversed and either of you happy enough to
+stand in my shoes at this moment?"
+
+Titherage gave a fat good-tempered laugh.
+
+"By George, you have me there, Colonel. Under such A1 circumstances catch
+me making way for a stranger! Not if I know it."
+
+With which he attempted jovially to put his arm through that of his
+companion in misfortune and lead Ditton away. But the latter flung off
+from him with a petulant, half-smothered oath; and, his back very
+straight, his walk very deliberate, pushed through the cheerfully
+discoursing throng into the ball-room.
+
+Damaris turned about, resting her hands on the top of the iron balustrade
+again and gazed out to sea. Her breath came with a catch in it.
+
+"Colonel Sahib," she said, proudly if just a trifle brokenly, "are
+you angry?"
+
+"Angry?--good Lord!"
+
+Then recovering control of senses and of sense--"But, dear witch," he
+asked her--"since when, if I may venture to enquire, have you become an
+adept in the fine art of--well--lying?"
+
+Damaris looked around, her face irradiated by laughter.
+
+"And you played up, oh! so beautifully quick! I was a teeny bit afraid
+you might fail me. For the idea came all of a minute, there wasn't time
+to warn you. And that was fortunate perhaps--for me. You might have had
+scruples. And I was obliged to do it. After talking about the things
+which really matter, I couldn't dance with that vulgar little man
+again--or with those jealous boys. They had an idiotic quarrel, actual
+quarrel, down in the garden. It displeased me. I told them so, and left
+them, and came here to find you--because of the fountain and the sort of
+home-sickness it gave me."
+
+Between laughing and crying, Damaris held out her hands, the white
+moonlight covering her.
+
+"Oh! I am tired of rushing about," she said. "Come and dance with
+me--it's nonsense to tell me you can't dance, and that you've forgotten
+how, because you have danced once this evening already--with Henrietta. I
+watched you and you dance better than anybody."
+
+"With Henrietta--that's rather a different matter!"
+
+"I should hope it was," Damaris took him up naughtily. "But dance with
+me, and then, then please take me home. Yes," as he tried to speak. "I
+know I had arranged to stay the night at the Pavilion. But I'll find some
+excuse to make to Henrietta--Haven't you just told me I'm proficient in
+lying?--You were going to walk back? Why shouldn't I walk with you? I
+won't be five minutes changing into my day clothes. It would be so
+fascinating down on the shore road at night. And I should get quiet all
+inside of me. I am tired of rushing about, Colonel Sahib, it hasn't been
+a success."
+
+She stopped breathless, her hands pressed over her lace and satin
+swathed bosom.
+
+"Now come and dance,--oh! so beautifully, please, come and dance."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TELLING HOW DAMARIS DISCOVERED THE TRUE NATURE OF A CERTAIN SECRET TO THE
+DEAR MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES
+
+
+The beat of a tideless sea, upon the shore, is at once unrestful and
+monotonous; in this only too closely resembling the beat of the human
+heart, when the glory of youth has departed. The splendid energy of the
+flow and grateful easing of the ebb alike are denied it. Foul or fair,
+shine or storm, it pounds and pounds--as a thing chained--without
+relief of advance or of recession, always at the same level, always in
+the same place.
+
+Suspicion of this cheerless truth was borne in upon Carteret
+as--bare-headed, his overcoat upon his arm, the night being singularly
+mild and clement--he walked with Damaris through the streets of the
+silent town. The dwellers in St. Augustin, both virtuous or otherwise,
+had very effectually retired to their beds behind drawn curtains, closed
+shutters, locked doors, and gave no sign. Vacancy reigned, bringing in
+its train an effect of suspense and eeriness, causing both our friends
+involuntarily to listen, with slightly strained hearing, for sounds which
+did not come. Once a cat, nimble and thin, streaked out of a cavernous
+side-alley across the pallor of the pavement and cobbled roadway, to be
+swallowed up in a black split--knife narrow, as it seemed--between the
+blank house fronts opposite. And once, as they turned into the open space
+of the Grand Place--unreal and stark with its spidery framework of
+stalls, set up ready for to-morrow's market, under the budding plane
+trees--they encountered a tired gendarme making his round, picturesque of
+aspect in _kepi_ and flowing cloak. His footsteps brisked up, as he met
+and treated them to a discreetly sympathetic and intelligent
+observation, only to lag again wearily as soon as they had passed.
+
+These were the sole creatures in St. Augustin, save themselves, visibly
+alive and awake. Yet whether other beings, other presences, unmaterial,
+imponderable, intangible, did not walk the streets along with them, is
+open to doubt. More than once Damaris shrank close to Carteret, startled
+by and apprehensive of she knew not what. For who dare say in such a
+place what leavings-over there may not be from times pre-Christian and
+remote, when mighty Rome ruled, and the ancient gods bore sway over that
+radiant coast? On the outskirts of St. Augustin you may visit a fine
+amphitheatre, still perfect save for some ruin along the upper tier of
+seats; and in the centre of the town, within a stone's throw of the
+somewhat gloomy cathedral church, may trace the airy columns and portions
+of the sculptured architrave of a reputed temple of Venus, worked into
+the facade of the municipal buildings.
+
+Turning out of the Grande Place by an avenue on the right, Damaris and
+Carteret gained the esplanade following the curve of the bay. Here a
+freshness of the sea pleasantly accosted them along with that unrestful,
+monotonous trample of waves upon the beach.
+
+Not until they reached this stage of the homeward journey, and, setting
+their faces eastward, paced the pale level asphalt of this wide
+promenade, did any sustained effort of conversation arise. Thus far they
+had proffered fugitive remarks only, lapsing speedily into somewhat
+constrained silence. For a coldness, or shyness, might appear to have
+sprung up between them, oddly holding them asunder in thought and moral
+attitude after the close association of the dance--a reaction from its
+contact so surprisingly more intimate than any they had yet experienced,
+from that harmonious rhythmic unity of purpose and of movement which, in
+dancing, alike excites emotion quasi-physical, and so alluringly serves
+to soothe and allay the emotion it excites.
+
+These aspects of their association affected Damaris but dimly, since
+speaking a language of which she barely knew the alphabet. Carteret they
+took in a different measure. He read their direction and potency with
+clear understanding, the insidious provocations and satisfactions of them
+printed in large type. With a rush, his youth returned and troubled him.
+Or was it the phantom of youth merely? His heart-beats but the beat of a
+tideless sea. He feared as much.--Oh, these tardy harvests, these tardy
+harvests--are they not to most men a plague rather than a benison, since,
+in honour and fine feeling, so abominably perilous to reap!
+
+For the greater promotion of calm and of sanity he welcomed the young
+girl's change of dress. The powder-blue walking suit, with belted jacket
+and kilted skirt, brought her more within the terms of their ordinary
+intercourse. But the impression of the fair young body, lately so close
+against his own, clothed in bride-like raiment, fresh as an opening
+flower and vaguely fragrant, could not easily be dispelled. Strive as he
+might to put it from him, the impression remained recurrent. Therefore it
+must not be held to Carteret's discredit if his senses took part with his
+nobler affections just now, against his considered judgment; or that he
+fared badly at the hands of the sea-born goddess--worshipped hero in her
+temple in ancient days, with music, with dance and with nameless rites of
+sex, when the moon rode high heaven at the full, even as to-night.
+
+Her influence was still abroad, and in his flesh Carteret shrewdly
+suffered it; yet neither basely nor bestially, being clean of life and of
+spirit. He whipped himself even, with rather sorry humour, seeing, in
+Damaris' willingness to entrust herself thus to his sole care in the
+midnight loneliness, a handsomer compliment to his morals than to his
+manhood. How little, bless her, she knew what stuff men are made
+of!--therein underrating her acquaintance with fact, as her conversation
+presently and surprisingly proved to him.
+
+The revelation began in all apparent innocence--for:
+
+"I'm not ungrateful to Henrietta," Damaris said, breaking silence softly
+yet abruptly, as speaking to herself rather than addressing him, in
+apology and argument. "And I'm dreadfully sorry to have vexed her--for
+she was vexed with me for not staying at the Pavilion to-night, as I
+promised. She was really quite cross."
+
+"She will get over that--never fear," Carteret answered off the surface.
+
+"Still it troubles me to have vexed her. I must have seemed so
+unreasonable, making silly sounding excuses--because I could not explain
+to her why I really wanted so much to go home."
+
+"You find a limit to the dear lady's powers of comprehension or of
+sympathy?" he asked, again off the surface.
+
+"I suppose I must do so, because there are things it never occurs to one
+to speak of to Henrietta."
+
+"Whole cartloads of them," Carteret comprehensively agreed.
+
+"And yet I don't know why."
+
+"Don't you? Well, I think I do perhaps know why; and knowing, I must
+confess to being not altogether sorry your confidences are restricted,
+dear witch, in that particular direction."
+
+The use of the pet name, though involuntary--possibly on that very
+account--eased his fever. Clearly he must get back to their former
+relation. Rejoice in her beauty, in her sweet faith and dependence, love
+her--yes--he admitted the word,--but for God's sake keep the physical
+side out of the business. Damaris' easily-aroused loyalty, meanwhile,
+caught alight.
+
+"Oh, but we've just been Henrietta's guests," she said, with a pretty
+mingling of appeal and rebuke--"and it seems hardly kind, does it, to
+find faults in her. She has been beautifully good to me all this time,
+ending up with this dance which she gave on purpose to please me."
+
+"And herself also," Carteret returned.
+
+--Yes decidedly he felt better, steadier, to the point of now trusting
+himself to look at his companion, notwithstanding the strange influences
+abroad in the magical moonlight, with his accustomed smiling,
+half-amused indulgence. The unremitting trample of the waves, there on
+the right, made for level-headedness actually if a little
+mercilessly--so he thought.
+
+"I don't wish to be guilty of taking Mrs. Frayling's name in vain a
+second time," he went on--"you've pulled me up, and quite rightly, for
+doing so once already--but depend upon it, she enjoyed her ball every
+morsel as much as you did. In respect of the minor delights of existence,
+she slumbers not nor sleeps, our perenially charming and skilful
+Henrietta."
+
+"You think she enjoyed it too? I am glad."
+
+Then after an interval of silence, her whole figure alert, her
+speech eager:
+
+"See there--see there, Colonel Sahib--yes, far, far out to sea--aren't
+those the lights of a ship?"
+
+"Yes," he answered--"creeping westward--bound for Toulon, most likely, or
+possibly for Marseilles."
+
+And he would have moved forward. But Damaris unaccountably lingered.
+Carteret waited a good three to four minutes to suit her convenience; but
+the delay told on him. The night and hour down here by the shore, on the
+confines of the silent town, were too full of poetry, too full of
+suggestion, of the fine-drawn excitement of things which had been and
+might not impossibly again be. It was dangerous to loiter, and in such
+company, though waves might beat out a constant reminder with merciless
+pertinacity upon the beach.
+
+"Come, dear witch, come," he at last urged her. "We still have more than
+a mile to go and a pretty stiff hill to climb. It grows late, you will be
+abominably tired to-morrow. Why this fascination for a passing steamer,
+probably some unromantic, villainously dirty old tramp too, you would not
+condescend to look at by daylight."
+
+"Because,"--Damaris began. She came nearer to him, her expression
+strangely agitated.--"Oh! Colonel Sahib, if I could only be sure it
+wasn't treacherous to tell you!"
+
+"Tell me what? One of the many things it would never occur to you to
+confide to Mrs. Frayling?" he said, trying to treat her evident emotion
+lightly, to laugh it off.
+
+"To Henrietta? Of course not. It would be unpardonable, hateful to tell
+Henrietta."
+
+She flushed, her face looking, for the moment, dark from excess of
+colour.
+
+"You are the only person I could possibly tell."
+
+Carteret moved aside a few steps. He too felt strangely agitated. Wild
+ideas, ideas of unholy aspect, presented themselves to him--ideas, again,
+beyond words entrancing and sweet. He fought with both alike, honestly,
+manfully. Returned and took Damaris' hand quietly, gently in both his.
+
+"Look here, dear witch," he said, "all this evening a--to me--unknown
+spirit has possessed you. You haven't been like yourself. You have made
+me a little anxious, a little alarmed on your account."
+
+"Oh! it isn't only this evening," she caught him up. "It has been going
+on for weeks."
+
+"So I have seen--and that is not good for you, isn't for your happiness.
+So, if I am--as you say--the only person you care to acquaint with this
+matter, had not you better tell me here and now? Better worry yourself no
+more with mysteries about it, but let us, once and for all, have the
+thing out?"
+
+"I should be thankful," Damaris said simply, looking him in the eyes--"if
+I could be sure I wasn't sacrificing some one else--their pride I
+mean--their--their honour."
+
+For a few seconds Carteret paused, meeting her grave and luminous
+glance. Then:
+
+"I think you may risk it," he said. "I promise you this some-one-else's
+honour shall be sacred to me as my own. Without your direct request no
+word of what you choose to tell me will ever pass my lips."
+
+"Ah! I'm very sure of that,"--Her smile, her voice bore transparent
+testimony to a faith which went, somewhat giddily, not only to her
+hearer's heart but to his head. "It isn't a question of your repeating
+anything; but of your thinking differently of some one you care for very
+much--and who is almost as dependent on you, Colonel Sahib, as I am
+myself. At least I fear you might.--Oh! I am so perplexed, I'm in such
+a maze," she said. "I've nothing to go on in all this, and I turn it
+over and over in my mind to no purpose till my head aches. You see I
+can't make out whether this--the thing which began it all and happened
+oh! long ago--is extraordinary--one which you--and most people like
+you--in your position, I mean--would consider very wrong and
+disgraceful; or whether it often happens and is just accepted, taken for
+granted, only not talked about."
+
+Carteret felt cold all down his spine. For what, in God's name, could
+this supremely dear and--as he watched her grave and sweetly troubled
+countenance--supremely lovely child, be driving at?
+
+"And I care so dreadfully much," she went on. "It is the story of the
+darling little green jade elephant over again--like its being broken and
+spoilt. Only now I'm grown up I don't give in and let it make me ill.
+There was a time even of that--of illness, I mean--at first just before
+you came to The Hard last autumn. But I wouldn't suffer it, I would not
+let the illness go on. I got over that. But then a second crisis occurred
+soon after we came here; and I thought Henrietta's kindness opened a way
+out. So I rushed about whenever and wherever she invited me to rush. But
+as I told you this evening--just before we had our two dances, you
+remember."
+
+"Am I likely to forget!" Carteret murmured under his breath.
+
+"The rushing about has not proved a success. I thought it would help to
+stifle certain longings and keep me nearer to my father--more at one with
+him. But it didn't, it made me neglect him. You see--you see"--the words
+were dragged from her, as by active suffering and distress of mind--"I
+had to choose between him and another person. One cannot serve two
+masters. I choose him. His claim was the strongest in duty. And I love to
+see him satisfied and peaceful. He always ranked first in everything I
+felt and did ever since I can remember; and I so want him to stay first.
+But I have been pulled two ways, and seem to have got all astray somehow
+lately. I haven't been really true to myself any more than to him--only
+frivolous and busy about silly pleasures."
+
+"Don't let the frivolity burden your precious conscience," Carteret
+comfortably told her, touched by the pathos of her self-reproach. For her
+sincerity was surely, just now, unimpeachable and she a rare creature
+indeed! Love, he could less than ever banish; but surely he might utterly
+banish distrust and fear?--"As frivolity goes, dear witch, and greed of
+pleasure, yours have been innocent enough both in amount and in quality,
+heaven knows!"
+
+"I should like to believe so--but all that's relative, isn't it? The real
+wrongness of what you do, depends upon the level of rightness you start
+from, I mean."
+
+"Insatiable casuist!" Carteret tenderly laughed at her.
+
+And with that, by common though unspoken consent, they walked
+onward again.
+
+Even while so doing, however, both were sensible that this resumption of
+their homeward journey marked a period in, rather than the conclusion of,
+their conversation. Some outside compelling force--so in any case it
+appeared to Carteret--encompassed them. It was useless to turn and
+double, indulge in gently playful digression. That force would inevitably
+make them face the innermost of their own thought, their own emotion, in
+the end. In obedience to which unwelcome conviction, Carteret presently
+brought himself to ask her:
+
+"And about this other person--for we have wandered a bit from the point
+at issue, haven't we?--whose interests as I gather clash, for some
+reason, with those of your father, and whose pride and honour you are so
+jealously anxious to safeguard."
+
+"His pride, yes," Damaris said quickly, her head high, a warmth in her
+tone. "His honour is perfectly secure, in my opinion."
+
+"Whose honour is in danger then?--Dear witch, forgive me, but don't you
+see the implication?"
+
+Damaris looked around at him with unfathomable eyes. Her lips parted, yet
+she made no answer.
+
+After a pause Carteret spoke again, and, to his own hearing, his voice
+sounded hoarse as that of the tideless sea upon the beach yonder.
+
+"Do you mean me to understand that the conflict between your father's
+interests and those of this other person--this other man's--arise from
+the fact that you love him?"
+
+"Yes," Damaris calmly declared.
+
+"Love him,"--having gone thus far Carteret refused to spare himself. He
+turned the knife in the wound--"Love him to the point of marriage?"
+
+There, the word was said. Almost unconsciously he walked onward without
+giving time for her reply.--He moistened his lips, weren't they dry as a
+cinder? He measured the height to which hope had borne him, to-night, by
+the shock, the positive agony of his existing fall. At the young girl,
+_svelte_ and graceful, beside him, he could not look; but kept his eyes
+fixed on the mass of the wooded promontory, dark and solid against the
+more luminous tones of water and of sky, some half-mile distant. Set high
+upon the further slope of it, from here invisible, the Grand Hotel
+fronted--as he knew--the eastward trending coast. Carteret wished the
+distance less, since he craved the shelter of that friendly yellow-washed
+caravanserai. He would be mortally thankful to find himself back there,
+and alone, the door of his bachelor quarters shut--away from the beat of
+the waves, away from the subtle glory of this Venus-ridden moon now
+drawing down to her setting. Away, above all, from Damaris--delivered
+from the enchantments and perturbations, both physical and moral, her
+delicious neighbourhood provoked.
+
+But from that fond neighbourhood, as he suddenly became aware, he was in
+some sort delivered already. For she stopped dead, with a strange choking
+cry; and stood solitary, as it even seemed forsaken, upon the wide grey
+whiteness of the asphalt of the esplanade. Behind her a line of
+lamps--pale burning under the moonlight--curved, in perspective, with the
+curving of the bay right away to the lighthouse. On her left the crowded
+houses of the sleeping town, slashed here and there with sharp edged
+shadows, receded, growing indistinct among gardens and groves. The
+scene, as setting to this single figure, affected him profoundly, taken
+in conjunction with that singular cry. He retraced the few steps dividing
+him from her.
+
+"Marriage?" she almost wailed, putting out her hands as though to prevent
+his approach. "No--no--never in life, Colonel Sahib. You quite dreadfully
+misunderstand."
+
+"Do I?" Carteret said, greatly taken aback, while, whether he would
+or no, unholy ideas again flitted through his mind maliciously
+assailing him.
+
+"It has nothing to do with that sort of loving. It belongs to something
+much more beautifully part of oneself--something of one's very, very own,
+right from the very beginning."
+
+"Indeed!" he said, sullenly, even roughly, his habitual mansuetude giving
+way before this--for so he could not but take it--contemptuous flinging
+of his immense tenderness, his patient, unswerving devotion, back in his
+face. "Then very certainly I must plead guilty to not understanding, or
+if you prefer it--for we needn't add to our other discomforts by
+quarrelling about the extra syllable--of misunderstanding. In my
+ignorance, I confess I imagined the love, which finds its crown and seal
+of sanctity in marriage, can be--and sometimes quite magnificently
+is--the most beautiful thing a man has to give or a woman to receive."
+
+Damaris stared at him, her face blank with wonder.
+
+Set at regular intervals between the tall blue-grey painted lamp
+standards, for the greater enjoyment of visitors and natives, stone
+benches, of a fine antique pattern, adorn St. Augustin's esplanade. Our
+much-perplexed maiden turned away wearily and sat down upon the nearest
+of these. She held up her head, bravely essaying to maintain an air of
+composure and dignity; but her shoulders soon not imperceptibly quivered,
+while, try hard as she might, setting her teeth and holding her breath,
+small plaintive noises threatened betrayal of her tearful state.
+
+Carteret, quite irrespective of the prescience common to all true lovers
+where the beloved object's welfare is concerned, possessed unusually
+quick and observant hearing. Those small plaintive noises speedily
+reached him and pierced him as he stood staring gloomily out to sea.
+Whereupon he bottled up his pain, shut down his natural and admirably
+infrequent anger, and came over to the stone bench.
+
+"You're not crying, dearest witch, are you?" he asked her.
+
+"Yes, I am," Damaris said. "What else is there left for me to
+do?--Everyone I care for I seem to make unhappy. Everything I do goes
+wrong. Everything I touch gets broken and spoilt somehow."
+
+"Endless tragedies of little green jade elephants?" he gently
+bantered her.
+
+"Yes--endless. For now I have hurt you. You are trying to be good and
+like your usual self to me; but that doesn't take me in. I know all
+through me I have hurt you--quite dreadfully badly--though I never, never
+meant to, and haven't an idea how or why."
+
+This was hardly comforting news to Carteret. He attempted no disclaimer;
+while she, after fumbling rather helplessly at the breast-pocket of her
+jacket, at last produced a folded letter and held it out to him.
+
+"Whether it's treacherous or not, I am obliged to tell you," she said,
+with pathetic desperation. "For I can't bear any more. I can't but try my
+best to keep you, Colonel Sahib. And now you are hurt, I can only keep
+you by making you understand--just everything. You may still think me
+wrong; but anyhow my wrongness will be towards somebody else, not towards
+you.--So please read this, and don't skip, because every word helps to
+explain. Read it right through before you ask me any questions--that's
+more fair all round.--If you go across there--under the lamp, I
+mean--there still is light enough, I think, for you to be able to see."
+
+And Carteret, thus admonished--partly to pacify her, partly to satisfy a
+very vital curiosity which stirred in him to compass the length, breadth,
+and height of this queer business, learn the truth and so set certain
+vague and agitating fears at rest--did as Damaris bade him. Standing in
+the conflicting gaslight and moonlight, the haunted quiet of the small
+hours broken only by the trample and wash of the sea, he read Darcy
+Faircloth's letter from its unconventional opening, to its equally
+unconventional closing paragraph.
+
+"Now my holiday is over and I will close down till next Christmas
+night--unless miracles happen meanwhile--so good-bye--Here is a boatload
+of my lads coming alongside, roaring with song and as drunk as
+lords.--God bless you. In spirit I once again kiss your dear feet"--
+
+Carteret straightened himself up with a jerk. Looked at Damaris sitting
+very still, a little sunk together, as in weariness or dejection upon the
+stone bench. His eyes blazed fierce, for once, with questions he burned
+yet dreaded to ask. But on second thoughts--they arrived to him
+swiftly--he restrained his impatience and his tongue. Mastering his heat
+he looked down at the sheet of note-paper again. He would obey Damaris,
+absorb the contents of this extraordinary document, the facts it conveyed
+both explicitly and implicitly, to the last word before he spoke.
+
+Happily the remaining words were few. "Your brother," he read, "till
+death and after"--followed by a name and date.
+
+At the name he stared fairly confounded. It meant nothing whatever to
+him.--That is, at first. Then, rising as a vision from out some
+subconscious drift of memory, he saw the cold, low-toned colouring of
+wide, smooth and lonely waters, of salt-marsh, of mud-flat and reed-bed
+in the lowering light of a late autumn afternoon--a grey, stone-built
+tavern, moreover, above the open door of which, painted upon a board,
+that same name of Faircloth figured above information concerning divers
+liquors obtainable within. Yes--remembrance grew more precise and stable.
+He recalled the circumstances quite clearly now. He had seen it on his
+way back from a solitary afternoon's wild fowl shooting on Marychurch
+Haven; during his last visit to Deadham Hard.
+
+So much was certain. But the name in its present connection? Carteret's
+imagination shied. For, to have the existence of an illegitimate son of
+your oldest and dearest friend thus suddenly thrust upon you, and that by
+a young lady of the dearest friend's family, is, to say the least of it,
+a considerable poser for any man. It may be noted as characteristic of
+Carteret that, without hesitation, he recognized the sincerity and fine
+spirit of Faircloth's letter. Characteristic, also, that having seized
+the main bearings of it, his feeling was neither of cynical acquiescence,
+or of covert and cynical amusement; but of vicarious humiliation, of
+apology and noble pitying shame.
+
+He came over and sat down upon the stone bench beside Damaris.
+
+"Dear witch," he said slowly, "this, if I apprehend it aright, is a
+little staggering. Forgive me--I did altogether, and I am afraid rather
+crassly, misunderstand. But that I could hardly help, since no remotest
+hint of this matter has ever reached me until now."
+
+Damaris let her hand drop, palm upwards, upon the cool, slightly rough,
+surface of the seat. Carteret placed the folded letter in it, and so
+doing, let his hand quietly close down over hers--not in any sense as a
+caress, but as assurance of a sympathy it was forbidden him, in decency
+and loyalty, to speak. For a while they both remained silent. Damaris
+was first to move. She put the letter back into the breast-pocket of
+her jacket.
+
+"I am glad you know, Colonel Sahib," she gravely said. "You see how
+difficult it has all been."
+
+"I see--yes"--
+
+After a pause, the girl spoke again.
+
+"I only came to know it myself at the end of last summer, quite by
+accident. I was frightened and tried not to believe. But there was no way
+of not believing. I had lost my way in the mist out on the Bar. I mistook
+the one for the other--my brother, I mean, for"--
+
+Damaris broke off, her voice failing her.
+
+"Yes," Carteret put in gently, supportingly.
+
+He leaned back, his arms crossed upon his breast, his head carried
+slightly forward, slightly bent, as he watched the softly sparkling line
+of surf, marking the edge of the plunging waves upon the sloping shore.
+Vicarious shame claimed him still. He weighed man's knowledge, man's
+freedom of action, man's standards of the permissible and unpermissible
+as against those of this maiden, whose heart was at once so much and so
+little awake.
+
+"For my father," she presently went on. "But still I wanted to deny the
+truth. I was frightened at it. For if that was true so much else--things
+I had never dreamed of until then--might also be true. I wanted to get
+away, somehow. But later, after I had been ill, and my father let him
+come and say good-bye to me before he went to sea, I saw it all
+differently, and far from wanting to get away I only longed that we
+might always be together as other brothers and sisters are. But I knew
+that wasn't possible. I was quite happy, especially after you came with
+us, Colonel Sahib, out here. Then I had this letter and the longing grew
+worse than ever. I did try to school myself into not wanting, not
+longing--did silly things--frivolous things, as I told you. But I can't
+stop wanting. It all came to a head, somehow to-night, with the dancing
+and music, and those foolish boys quarrelling over me--and then your
+showing me that--instead of being faithful to my father, I have
+neglected him."
+
+"Ah, you poor sweet dear!" Carteret said, greatly moved and
+turning to her.
+
+In response she leaned towards him, her face wan in the expiring
+moonlight, yet very lovely in its pleading and guileless affection.
+
+"And my brother is beautiful, Colonel Sahib," she declared, "not only to
+look at but in his ideas. You would like him and be friends with him,
+though he doesn't belong to the same world as you--indeed you would. And
+he is not afraid--you know what I mean?--not afraid of being alive and
+having adventures. He means to do big things--not that he has talked
+boastfully to me, or been showy. Please don't imagine that. He knows
+where he comes in, and doesn't pretend to be anybody or anything beyond
+what he is. Only it seems to me there is a streak of something original
+in him--almost of genius. He makes me feel sure he will never bungle any
+chance which comes in his way. And he has time to do so much, if chances
+do come"--this with a note of exultation. "His life is all before him,
+you see. He is so beautifully young yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+FIDUS ACHATES
+
+
+In which final pronouncement of Damaris' fond tirade, Carteret heard the
+death knell of his own fairest hopes. He could not mistake the set of the
+girl's mind. Not only did brother call to sister, but youth called to
+youth. Whereat the goad of his forty-nine years pricked him shrewdly.
+
+He must accept the disabilities of the three decades, plus one year,
+which divided him in age from Damaris, as final; and range himself with
+the elder generation--her father's generation, in short. How, after
+all, could he in decency go to his old friend and say: "Give me your
+daughter." The thing, viewed thus, became outrageous, offensive not
+only to his sense of fitness, but of the finer and more delicate
+moralities. For cradle-snatching is not, it must be conceded, a
+graceful occupation; nor is a middle-aged man with a wife still in her
+teens a graceful spectacle. Sentimentalists may maunder over it in
+pinkly blushing perversity; but the naughty world thinks otherwise,
+putting, if not openly its finger to its nose, at least secretly its
+tongue in its cheek. And rightly, as he acknowledged. The implication
+may be coarse, libidinous; but the instinct producing it is a sound
+one, both healthy and just.
+
+Therefore he had best sit no longer upon stone benches by the sounding
+shore, in this thrice delicious proximity and thrice provocative magic of
+the serene southern night. All the more had best not do so, because
+Damaris proved even more rare in spirit, exquisite in moral and
+imaginative quality--so he perhaps over-fondly put it--than ever before.
+Carteret got on his feet and walked away a few paces, continuing to
+heckle himself with merciless honesty and rather unprintable
+humour--invoking even the historic name of Abishag, virgin and martyr,
+and generally letting himself "have it hot."
+
+A self-chastisement which may be accounted salutary, since, as he
+administered it, his thought again turned to a case other than his own,
+namely, that of Charles Verity. To pronounce judgment on his friend's
+past relations with women, whether virtuous or otherwise, was no business
+of his. Whatever irregularities of conduct that friend's earlier career
+may have counted, had brought their own punishment--were indeed actually
+bringing it still, witness current events. It wasn't for him, Carteret,
+by the smallest fraction to add to that punishment; but rather, surely,
+to do all in his power to lighten the weight of it. Here he found safe
+foothold. Let him invite long-standing friendship, with the father, to
+help him endure the smart of unrequited love for the daughter. To pretend
+these two emotions moved on the same plane and could counter-balance one
+another, was manifestly absurd; but that did not affect the essence of
+the question. Ignoring desire, which to-night so sensibly and
+disconcertingly gnawed at his vitals, let him work to restore the former
+harmony and sweet strength of their relation. If in the process he could
+obtain for Damaris--without unseemly revelation or invidious
+comment--that on which her innocent soul was set he would have his
+reward.--A reward a bit chilly and meagre, it is true, as compared
+with--Comparisons be damned!--Carteret left his pacing and came back to
+the stone bench.
+
+"Well, I have formed my own conclusions in respect of the whole matter.
+Now tell me what you actually want me to do, and I will see how far it
+can be compassed, dear witch." he said.
+
+Damaris had risen too, but she was troubled.
+
+"Ah! I still spoil things," she wailed. "I was so happy telling
+you about--about Faircloth. And yet somehow I've hurt you again. I
+know I have."
+
+Carteret took her by the elbow lightly, gently, carrying her onward
+beside him over the wide pallor of the asphalt.
+
+"Hurt me, you vanitatious creature? Against babes of your tender age,
+I long ago became hurt-proof"--he gaily lied to her. "What do you take
+me for?--A fledgling like the Ditton boy, or poor Harry Ellice, with
+whose adolescent affections you so heartlessly played chuck-farthing at
+our incomparable Henrietta's party to-night?--No, no--but joking apart,
+what exactly is it you want me to do for you? Take you to Marseilles
+for the day, perhaps, to meet this remarkable young sea-captain and go
+over his ship?"
+
+"He is remarkable," Damaris chimed in, repeating the epithet with eager
+and happier emphasis.
+
+"Unquestionably--if I'm to judge both by your account of him and by the
+tenor of his letter."
+
+"And you would take me? Oh! dear Colonel Sahib, how beautifully good you
+are to me."
+
+"Of course, I'll take you--if"--
+
+"If what?"
+
+"If Sir Charles gives his consent."
+
+He slipped Damaris' hand within his arm, still bearing her onward. The
+last of the long line of gas-lamps upon the esplanade, marking the curve
+of the bay, was now left behind. A little further and the road
+forked--the main one followed the shore. The other--a footpath--mounted
+to the left through the delicate gloom and semi-darkness of the wood
+clothing the promontory. Carteret did not regret that impending
+obscurity, apprehending it would be less embarrassing, under cover of it,
+to embark on certain themes which must be embarked upon were he to bring
+his purpose to full circle.
+
+"Listen, my dear," he told her, "while I expound. Certain laws of
+friendship exist, between men, which are imperative. They must be
+respected. To evade them, still worse, wilfully break them is to be
+guilty of unpardonably bad taste and bad feeling--to put it no higher.
+Had your father chosen to speak to me of this matter, well and good. I
+should have felt honoured by his confidence, have welcomed it--for he is
+dearer to me than any man living and always must be.--But the initiative
+has to come from him. Till he speaks I am dumb. For me to approach the
+subject first is not possible."
+
+"Then the whole beautiful plan falls through," she said brokenly.
+
+"No, not at all, very far from that," he comforted her. "I gather you
+have already discussed it with your father. You must lay hold of your
+courage and discuss it again. I know that won't be easy; but you owe it
+to him to be straightforward, owe it to his peculiar devotion to you.
+Some day, perhaps, when you are older and more ripe in experience, I may
+tell you, in plain language of a vow he once made for your sake--when he
+was in his prime, too, his life strong in him, his powers at their
+height. Some persons might consider his action exaggerated and fanatical.
+But such accusations can be brought against most actions really heroic.
+And that this action, specially in a man of his temperament, may claim to
+be heroic there can be, in my opinion, no manner of doubt."
+
+The path climbed steeply through the pine wood. Damaris' hand grew
+heavy on Carteret's arm. Once she stumbled, and clung to him in
+recovering her footing, thereby sending an electric current tingling
+through his nerves again.
+
+"He did what was painful, you mean, and for my sake?"
+
+"Say rather gave up something very much the reverse of painful,"
+Carteret answered, his voice not altogether under control, so that it
+struck away, loud and jarring, between the still ranks of the
+tree-trunks to right and left.
+
+"Which is harder?"
+
+"Which is much harder--immeasurably, incalculably harder, dearest witch."
+
+After a space of silence, wherein the pines, lightly stirred by some
+fugitive up-draught off the sea, murmured dusky secrets in the vault of
+interlacing branches overhead, Carteret spoke again. He had his voice
+under control now. Yet, to Damaris' hearing, his utterance was permeated
+by an urgency and gravity almost awe-inspiring, here in the loneliness
+and obscurity of the wood. She went in sudden questioning,
+incomprehensible fear of the dear man with the blue eyes. His arm was
+steady beneath her hand, supporting her. His care and protection sensibly
+encircled her, yet he seemed to her thousands of miles away, speaking
+from out some depth of knowledge and of reality which hopelessly
+transcended her experience. She felt strangely diffident, strangely
+ignorant. Felt, though she had no name for it, the mystical empire,
+mystical terror of sex as sex.
+
+"The night of the breaking of the monsoon, of those riotings and fires at
+Bhutpur, your father bartered his birthright, in a certain particular,
+against your restoration to health. The exact nature of that renunciation
+I cannot explain to you. The whole transaction lies beyond the range of
+ordinary endeavour; and savours of the transcendental--or the
+superstitious, if you please to take it that way. But call it by what
+name you will, his extravagant gamble with the Lords of Life and Death
+worked, apparently. For you got well; and you have stayed well, dear
+witch--thanks to those same Lords of Life and Death, whose favour your
+father attempted to buy with this act of personal sacrifice. He was
+willing to pay a price most men would consider prohibitive to secure your
+recovery. And, with an unswerving sense of honour, he has gone on paying,
+until that which, at the start, must have amounted to pretty severe
+discipline has crystallized into habit. What you tell me of this young
+man, Darcy Faircloth's history, goes, indirectly, to strengthen my
+admiration for your father's self-denying ordinance, both in proposing
+and in maintaining this strange payment."
+
+There--it was finished, his special pleading. Carteret felt unfeignedly
+glad. He was unaccustomed to put forth such elaborate expositions, more
+particularly of a delicate nature and therefore offering much to avoid as
+well as much to state.
+
+"So you are bound to play a straight game with him--dear child. Believe
+me he deserves it, is finely worthy of it. Be open with him. Show him
+your letter. Ask his permission--if you have sufficient courage. Your
+courage is the measure of the sincerity of your desire in this business.
+Do you follow me?"
+
+"Yes--but I shall distress him," Damaris mournfully argued.
+
+She was bewildered, and in her bewilderment held to the immediate
+and obvious.
+
+"Less than by shutting him out from your confidence, by keeping him at
+arm's length."
+
+"Neglecting him?"
+
+"Ah! so that rankles still, does it? Yes, neglecting him just a
+trifle, perhaps."
+
+"But the neglect is over--indeed, it is over and utterly done with."
+
+And in the ardour of her disclaimer, Damaris pressed against Carteret,
+her face upturned and, since she too was tall, very close to his.
+
+"Just because it is over and done with I begged you to bring me back
+with you to-night. I wanted to make a clean break with all the
+frivolities, while everything was quite clear to me. I wanted, while I
+still belonged to you, Colonel Sahib, through our so beautifully dancing
+together twice"--
+
+"God in Heaven!" Carteret said under his breath. For what a past-master
+in the art of the torturer is your white souled maiden at moments!
+
+"To go right away from all that rushing about worldliness--I don't blame
+Henrietta--she has been sweet to me--but it is worldliness, rather, isn't
+it?--and to be true to him again and true to myself. I wanted to return
+to my allegiance. You believe me, don't you? You made me see, Colonel
+Sahib, you brought my foolishness home to me--Oh! yes, I owe you endless
+gratitude and thanks. But I was uneasy already. I needed a wholesome
+shove, and you gave it. And now you deliver a much-needed supplementary
+shove--one to my courage. I obey you, Colonel Sahib, without question or
+reservation--not on the chance of getting what I long for; but because
+you have convinced me of what is right. I will tell him--tell my
+father--all about everything--to-morrow."
+
+"It is now to-morrow--and, with the night, many dreams have packed up
+their traps and fled."
+
+"But we needn't be sorry for that," Damaris declared, in prettily rising
+confidence. "The truth is going to be better than the dreams, isn't it?"
+
+"For you, yes--with all my heart, I hope."
+
+"But for you--why not for you?" she cried, smitten by anxiety regarding
+him and by swift tenderness.
+
+They had reached the end of the upward climbing path, and stepped from
+the semi-darkness of the wood into the greater clarity of the gravel
+terrace in front of the hotel. Far below unseen waves again beat upon the
+beach. The sound reached them faintly. The dome of the sky, thick sown
+with stars, appeared prodigious in expanse and in height. It dwarfed the
+block of hotel buildings upon the right. Dwarfed all visible things, the
+whole earth, indeed, which it so sensibly enclosed. Dwarfed also, and
+that to the point of desolation, the purposes and activities of
+individual human lives. How could these count, what could they matter in
+presence of the countless worlds swinging, there, through the illimitable
+fields of space?
+
+To Carteret this thought, or rather this sensation, of human
+insignificance brought a measure of stoic consolation. He lifted Damaris'
+hand off his arm, and held it, while he said, smiling at her:
+
+"For me--yes, of course. Why not? For me too, dearest witch, truth is
+assuredly the most profitable bedfellow."
+
+Then, as she shrank, drawing away a little, startled by the crudeness of
+the expression:
+
+"I enjoyed our two dances," he told her, "and I shall enjoy taking you to
+Marseilles and making Faircloth's acquaintance, if our little scheme
+works out successfully--if it is sanctioned, permitted. After that--other
+things being equal--I think I ought to break camp and journey back to
+England, to look after my property and my sister's affairs. I have gadded
+long enough. It is time to get into harness--such harness as claims me in
+these all too easy-going days. And now you must really go indoors without
+further delay, and go to bed. May the four angels of pious tradition
+stand at the four corners of it, to keep you safe in body, soul and
+spirit. Sleep the sleep of innocence and wake radiant and refreshed."
+
+"Ah! but you're sad--you are sad," Damaris cried, her lips quivering.
+"Can't I do anything?--I would do so much, would love so much--beyond
+anything--to make you unsad."
+
+The man with the blue eyes shook his head.
+
+"Impossible, alas! Your intervention, in this case, is finally ruled out,
+my sweet lamb," he affectionately, but conclusively said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WHICH FEATURES VARIOUS PERSONS WITH WHOM THE READER IS ALREADY ACQUAINTED
+
+
+Some are born great, some attain greatness, and some have it thrust upon
+them to the lively embarrassment of their humble and retiring little
+souls. To his own notable surprise, General Frayling, on the morning
+following his wife's Cinderella dance, awoke to find himself the centre
+of interest in the life of the pretty pavilion situated in the grounds of
+the Hotel de la Plage. He owed this unaccustomed ascendency to physical
+rather than moral or intellectual causes, being possessed of a
+temperature, the complexion of the proverbial guinea, and violent pains
+in his loins and his back.
+
+These anxious symptoms developed--one cannot but feel rather unjustly--as
+the consequence of his own politeness, his amenity of manner, and the
+patient attentions he paid on the previous evening to one of his wife's
+guests. He had sat altogether too long for personal comfort in a draughty
+corner of the hotel garden, with Mrs. Callowgas. Affected by the poetic
+influences of moon, stars, and sea, affected also conceivably by pagan
+amorous influences, naughtily emanating from the neighbouring Venus
+Temple--whose elegant tapering columns adorn the facade of the local
+Mairie--Mrs. Callowgas became extensively reminiscent of her dear dead
+Lord Bishop. Protracted anecdotes of visitations and confirmation tours,
+excerpts from his sermons, speeches and charges, arch revelations of his
+diurnal and nocturnal conversation and habits--the latter tedious to the
+point of tears when not slightly immodest--poured from her widowed lips.
+The good lady overflowed. She frankly babbled. General Frayling listened,
+outwardly interested and civil, inwardly deploring that he had omitted
+to put on a waistcoat back-lined with flannel--waxing momentarily more
+conscious, also, that the iron--of the hard cold slats composing the seat
+of his garden chair--if not entering into his soul, was actively entering
+a less august and more material portion of his being through the slack of
+his thin evening trousers. He endured both tedium and bodily suffering
+with the fortitude of a saint and martyr; but next morning revealed him
+victim of a violent chill demanding medical aid.
+
+The native local practitioner was reported mono-lingual, and of small
+scientific reputation; while our General though fluent in vituperative
+Hindustani, and fairly articulate in Arabic, could lay no claim to
+proficiency in the French language. Hence probable deadlock between
+doctor and patient. Henrietta acted promptly, foreseeing danger of
+jaundice or worse; and bade Marshall Wace telegraph to Cannes for an
+English physician. As a nurse she was capable if somewhat
+unsympathetic--illness and death being foreign to her personal programme.
+She attended upon her small sick warrior assiduously; thereby earning the
+admiration of the outsiders, and abject apologies for "being such a
+confounded nuisance to you, my love," from himself. Her maid, a
+Eurasian--by name Serafina Lousada, whom she had brought with her from
+Bombay a couple of years earlier, prematurely-wrinkled of skin and
+shrunken of figure, yet whose lustrous black eyes still held the embers
+of licentious fires--would readily have shared her labours. But Henrietta
+was at some trouble to eliminate Serafina from the sick-chamber, holding
+her tendencies suspect as insidiously and quite superfluously
+sentimental, where any male creature might be concerned.
+
+Carteret and Sir Charles Verity, on the other hand, she encouraged with
+the sweetest dignity imaginable, to take turns at the bedside--and to
+look in upon her drawing-room, also, on their way back and forth thither.
+A common object and that a philanthropic one, gives unimpeachable
+occasions of intimacy. These Henrietta did not neglect, though touching
+them with a disarming pensiveness of demeanour. The invalid was, "the
+thing "--the thought of him wholly paramount with her. Her anxiety might
+be lightened, perhaps, but by no means deleted, by the attentions of
+these friends of former years.--A pretty enough play throughout, as the
+two gentlemen silently noted, the one with kindly, the other with
+sardonic, humour.
+
+Her henchman, Marshall Wace, meanwhile, Henrietta kept on the run until
+the triangular patch of colour, straining either prominent cheek-bone,
+was more than ever accentuated. There was method, we may however take it,
+in the direction of these apparently mad runnings, since they so
+incessantly landed the runner in the _salon_ of the Grand Hotel crowning
+the wooded headland. Damaris she refused to have with her. No--she
+couldn't consent to any clouding of the darling child's bright spirit by
+her private worries. Trouble, heaven knows, is bound to overtake each one
+of us more than soon enough! She--Henrietta--could endure her allotted
+portion of universal tribulation best in the absence of youthful
+witnesses.
+
+But let Marshall carry Damaris news daily--twice daily, if needs be. Let
+him read with her, sing to her; so that she, charming child, should miss
+her poor Henrietta, and their happy meetings at the little pavilion, the
+less. Especially let him seek the young girl, and strive to entertain
+her, when Sir Charles and Colonel Carteret were engaged on their good
+Samaritan visits to General Frayling.
+
+"This break in our cherished intercourse," Henrietta wrote, in one of
+those many Wace-borne bulletins, "grieves me more than I can express.
+Permit Marshall to do all in his power to make up for this hospital
+incarceration of mine. Poor dear fellow, it is such a boon to him. I
+really crave to procure him any pleasure I can--above all the pleasure of
+being with you, which he values so very highly. All his best qualities
+show in this time of trial. He is only too faithful and wears himself to
+positive fiddle-strings in my service and that of the General. I send him
+to you, darling child, for a little change and recreation--relaxation
+from the strain of my husband's illness. Marshall is so sympathetic and
+feels for others so deeply. His is indeed a rare nature; but one which
+does not, alas! always quite do itself justice. I attribute this to an
+unfortunate upbringing rather than to any real fault in himself. So be
+good to him, Damaris. In being good to him--as I have said all along--you
+are being good to your fondly loving and, just now, sorely tried
+Henrietta Frayling."
+
+All which sounded a note designed to find an echo in Damaris' generous
+heart. Which it did--this the more readily because, still penitent for
+her recent trifle of wild-oats sowing, our beloved maiden was
+particularly emulous of good works, the missionary spirit all agog in
+her. She was out to comfort, to sympathize and to sustain. Hence she
+doubly welcomed that high-coloured hybrid, Wace--actor, cleric, vocalist
+in one. Guilelessly she indulged and mothered him, overlooking his
+egoism, his touchiness and peevishness, his occasional defects of
+breeding and of taste. She permitted him, moreover, to talk without
+restraint upon his favourite subject--that of himself. To retail the
+despairs of an ailing and unhappy childhood; the thwarted aspirations of
+a romantic and sensitive boyhood; the doubts and disappointments of a
+young manhood conspicuously rich in promise, had the fates and his fellow
+creatures but shown themselves more intelligently sensible of his merits
+and his needs.
+
+For this was the burden of his recurrent lament. Throughout life he had
+been misunderstood.
+
+"But you, Miss Verity, do understand me," he almost passionately
+declared, waving white effeminate hands. "Ah! a pure influence such
+as yours"--
+
+Here, rather to Damaris' thankfulness, words appeared to fail him. He
+moved to the piano and exhaled his remaining emotion in song.
+
+Affairs had reached the above point about ten days after Henrietta's
+party and Damaris' midnight walk with Colonel Carteret by the shore of
+the sounding sea. General Frayling, though mending, was still possessed
+of a golden complexion and a temperature slightly above the normal, while
+his dutiful wife, still self-immured, was in close attendance, when an
+event occurred which occasioned her considerable speculation and
+perplexity.
+
+It came about thus. At her request Marshall Wace walked up to the
+station early that morning, to secure the English papers on their arrival
+by the mail train from Paris. After a quite unnecessarily long interval,
+in Henrietta's opinion, he returned with an irritable expression and
+flustered manner. Such, at least, was the impression she received on his
+joining her in the wide airy corridor outside the General's sick-chamber.
+
+"I thought you were never coming back," she greeted him. "What has
+detained you?"
+
+"The Paris train was late," he returned. "And--wait an instant, Cousin
+Henrietta. I want to speak to you. Yes, I am hot and tired, and I am put
+out--I don't deny it."
+
+"Why?" Henrietta asked him indifferently.
+
+Her own temper was not at its brightest and best. The office of
+ministering angel had begun most woefully to pall on her. What if this
+illness betokened a break up of health on the part of General Frayling?
+Bath chairs, hot bottles, air-cushions, pap-like meals and such kindred
+unlovelinesses loomed large ahead! That was the worst of marrying an old,
+or anyhow an oldish, man. You never could tell how soon the natural order
+of things might be reversed, and you obliged to wait hand and foot on
+him, instead of his waiting hand and foot on you. Henrietta felt fretful.
+Her looking-glass presented a depressing reflection of fine lines and
+sharpened features. If she should wilt under this prolonged obligation of
+nursing, her years openly advertise their number, and she grow faded,
+_passee_, a woman who visibly has outlived her prime? She could have
+shaken the insufficiently dying General in his bed! Yes, insufficiently
+dying--for, in heaven's name, let him make up his mind and that
+speedily--get well and make himself useful, or veritably and finally
+depart before, for the preservation of her good looks, it was too late.
+
+"I met Sir Charles Verity at the station," Wace went on. "He was coming
+out of the first class _salle d'attente_. He stopped and spoke to me,
+enquired for cousin Fred; but his manner was peculiar, autocratic to a
+degree. He made me feel in the way, feel that he was annoyed at my being
+there and wanted to get rid of me."
+
+"Imagination, my dear Marshall. In all probability he wasn't thinking
+about you one way or the other, but merely about his own affairs, his
+own--as Carteret reports--remarkably clever book.--But why, I wonder, was
+he at the station so early?"
+
+Henrietta stood turning the folded newspaper about and idly scanning the
+head-lines, while the wind, entering by the open casements at the end of
+the corridor, lifted and fluttered the light blue gauze scarf she wore
+round her shoulders over her white frilled morning gown.
+
+"He didn't tell me," the large, soft, very hot young man said. "You may
+call it imagination, Cousin Henrietta; but I can't. I am positive his
+manner was intentional. He meant to snub me, by intimating of how slight
+account I am in his estimation. It was exceedingly galling. I do not want
+to employ a vulgar expression--but he looked down his nose at me as if I
+was beneath contempt. You know that insolent, arrogant way of his?"
+
+"Oh, la-la!" Henrietta cried. "Don't be so childish!"--Though she did in
+point of fact know the said way perfectly well and admired it. Once upon
+a time hadn't Sir Charles, indeed, rather superbly practised it in
+her--Henrietta's--defence?
+
+She sighed; while her temper took a nasty turn towards her yellow-faced,
+apologetic little General, waiting patiently for sight of the English
+newspapers, under the veil of mosquito netting in his little bed. Even in
+his roaring forties--had his forties ever roared though?--she doubted
+it--not to save his life could he ever have looked down his nose at an
+offending fellow-man like that.--Ah! Charles Verity--Charles Verity!--Her
+heart misgave her that she had been too precipitate in this third
+marriage. If she had waited?--
+
+"Of course, with my wretchedly short sight, I may have been mistaken,"
+Wace continued, pointedly ignoring her interruption, "but I am almost
+convinced I recognized Colonel Carteret and Miss Verity--Damaris--through
+the open door, on the other side of the _salle d'attente,_ in the crowd
+on the platform about to take their places in the train from Cannes,
+which had just come in."
+
+Henrietta ceased to scan the head-lines or deplore her matrimonial
+precipitation.
+
+"Carteret and Damaris alone and together?" she exclaimed with
+raised eyebrows.
+
+"Yes, and it occurred to me that I there touched upon the explanation, in
+part at least, of Sir Charles Verity's offensive manner. He had been to
+see them off and was, for some reason, unwilling that we--you and I,
+cousin Henrietta--should know of their journey."
+
+Even in private life, at the very head-waters and source of her intrigues
+and her scheming, Henrietta cleverly maintained an effect of secrecy. She
+showed herself an adept in the fine art of outflanking incautious
+intruders. Never did she wholly reveal herself or her purposes; but
+reserved for her own use convenient run-holes, down which she could
+escape from even the most intimate of her co-adjutors and employees. If
+masterly in advance, she showed even more masterly in retreat; and that
+too often at the expense of her fellow intriguers. Without scruple she
+deserted them, when personal safety or personal reputation suggested the
+wisdom of so doing. Though herself perplexed and suspicious, she now
+rounded on Wace, taking a high tone with him.
+
+"But why, my dear Marshall, why?" she enquired, "should Sir Charles
+object to our--as you put it--_knowing_? That seems to me an entirely
+gratuitous assumption on your part. In all probability Mary Ellice and
+the boys were on the platform too, only you didn't happen to catch sight
+of them. And, in any case, our friends at the Grand Hotel are not
+accountable to us for their comings and goings. They are free agents, and
+it does really strike me as just a little gossipy to keep such a very
+sharp eye upon their movements.--Don't be furious with me"--
+
+Henrietta permitted herself to reach up and pat the young man on the
+shoulder, playfully, restrainingly. An extraordinarily familiar
+proceeding on her part, marking the strength of her determination to
+avoid any approach to a quarrel, since she openly denounced and detested
+all those demonstrations, as between friends and relations, which come
+under the generic title of "pawing."
+
+"No, pray don't be furious with me," she repeated. "I quite appreciate
+how sensitive you naturally must be upon the subject of Damaris."
+
+"You have given me encouragement, cousin Henrietta"--this resentfully.
+
+"And why not? Don't be disingenuous, my dear Marshall. I have given you
+something much more solid than mere encouragement, namely active help,
+opportunity. In the right direction, to the right person, I have
+repeatedly praised you. But the prize, in this case, is to him who has
+address and perseverance to win it. You possess signal advantages through
+your artistic tastes, your music, your reciting. But I have never
+disguised from you--now honestly, have I?--there were obstacles and even
+prejudices to be overcome."
+
+"Sir Charles despises me."
+
+"But his daughter gives ample proof that she does not. And--you don't
+propose to marry Sir Charles, do you?"
+
+Henrietta laughed a trifle shrilly. The tone of that laugh pierced her
+hearer's armour of egoism. He stared at her in interrogative
+surprise--observing which she hastened to retreat down a run-hole.
+
+"Ah!" she cried, "it is really a little too bad to tease you, Marshall.
+But one can't but be tempted to do so at moments. You take everything so
+terribly _au grand serieux_, my young friend."
+
+"You mean to convey that I am ponderous?"
+
+"Well--perhaps--just a shade," she archly agreed. "And of ponderosity you
+must make an effort to cure yourself.--Mind, though a fault, I consider
+it one on the right side--in the connection, that is, which we have just
+now been discussing. When a girl has as much intelligence as--we needn't
+name names, need we?--she resents perpetual chaff and piffle. They bore
+her--seem to her a flagrant waste of time. Her mind tends to scorn
+delights and live laborious days--a tendency which rectifies itself
+later as a rule. All the same in avoiding frivolity, one must not rush to
+the other extreme and be heavy in hand. A happy mien in this as in all
+things, my dear Marshall."
+
+"I cannot so far degrade myself as to be an opportunist," he returned
+sententiously.
+
+"Yet the opportunist arrives; and to arrive is the main thing, after
+all--at least I imagine so.--Now I really cannot stay here any longer
+giving you priceless advice; but must take the General his
+newspapers.--By the way, did Sir Charles say anything about coming to see
+him this afternoon?"
+
+As she asked the question Henrietta ran her eye down over the
+announcements in the Court Circular. Marshall replied in the negative.
+She made no comment, hardly appearing to notice his answer. But, as
+she stepped lightly and delicately away down the airy corridor to the
+door of the sick-room, over her blue gauze draped shoulder she flung
+back at him--
+
+"This confinement to the house is getting quite on my nerves. I must
+really allow myself a little holiday.--Take a drive to-morrow if Frederic
+is no worse. I will call at the Grand Hotel, I think, and see darling
+Damaris, just for a few minutes, myself."
+
+Information which went far to restore her hearer's equanimity. His
+affairs, as he recognized, were in actively astute safe-keeping.
+
+Marshall Wace spent the rest of the morning in the drawing-room of the
+villa, at the piano, composing a by no means despicable setting of
+Shelley's two marvellous stanzas, which commence:
+
+"Rarely, rarely comest thou,
+  Spirit of Delight!
+Wherefore hast thou left me now
+  Many a day and night?"
+
+The rich baritone voice, vibrant with apparent passion, swept out
+through the open windows, across the glittering garden. Miss Maud
+Callowgas, walking along that portion of the esplanade immediately in
+front of the hotel, paused in the grilling sunshine to listen. Heaven
+upon earth seemed to open before her pale, white-lashed eyes. If she
+could only ascertain what fortune she might eventually count on
+possessing--but Mama was so dreadfully close about everything to do with
+money! The Harchester bishopric was a fat one, worth from ten to fifteen
+thousand a year. That she knew from the odious, impudent questions asked
+about it by some horrible nonconformist member, in the House of Commons,
+just after her father's death. Surely Mama must have saved a
+considerable amount out of so princely an income? She had always kept
+down expenses at the Palace. The servants left so often because they
+declared they had not enough to eat.
+
+Then through the open window of the villa embowered in roses, there amid
+the palms and pines--and in a falling cadence too:
+
+"How shall ever one like me
+  Win thee back again?"
+
+But Maud Callowgas needed no winning, being very effectually won already,
+so it was superfluous thus movingly to ask the question. The mid-day sun
+striking through her black-and-white parasol made her feel dizzy and
+faint.--If only she could learn the amount of her fortune, she could let
+Mrs. Frayling learn the amount of it too--just casually, in the course of
+conversation, and then--Everyone said Mrs. Frayling was doing her best to
+"place" her cousin-by-marriage, to secure him a well-endowed wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+WHICH IT IS TO BE FEARED SMELLS SOMEWHAT POWERFULLY OF BILGE WATER
+
+
+Warm wind, hot sun, the confused sound and movement of a great southern
+port, all the traffic and trade of it, man and beast sweating in the
+splendid glare. Rattle of cranes, scream of winches, grind of wheels, and
+the bellowing of a big steamer, working her way cautiously through the
+packed shipping of the basin, to the blue freedom of the open sea.--Such
+was the scene which the boatswain and white-jacketed steward, leaning
+their folded arms on the bulwarks and smoking, lazily watched.
+
+The _Forest Queen_ rode high at the quayside, having discharged much, and
+taken on but a moderate amount of cargo for her homeward voyage. This was
+already stowed. She had coaled and was bound to clear by dawn. Now she
+rested in idleness, most of her crew taking their pleasure ashore, a
+Sabbath calm pervading her amid the strident activities going forward on
+every hand. The ship's dog, a curly-haired black retriever, lay on the
+clean deck in the sunshine stretched on his side, all four legs limp,
+save when, pestered beyond endurance, he whisked into a sitting position
+to snap at the all too numerous flies.
+
+The boatswain--a heavily built East Anglian, born within sight of Boston
+Stump five-and-forty years ago, his face seamed and pitted by smallpox
+almost to the extinction of expression and altogether to that of
+eyebrows, eyelashes and continuity of beard--spat deliberately and
+voluminously into the oily, refuse-stained water, lapping against the
+ship's side over twenty feet below, and resumed a desultory conversation
+which for the moment had fallen dead.
+
+"So that's the reason of his giving us hell's delight, like he has all
+day, cleaning up?--Got a lady coming aboard to tea has he? If she's too
+fine to take us as we are, a deal better let 'er stay ashore, in my
+opinion. Stuff a' nonsense all this set out, dressing up and dressing
+down. Vanity at the bottom of it--and who's it to take in?--For a tramp's
+a tramp, and a liner's a liner; and all the water in God's ocean, and all
+the rubbing and scrubbing on man's earth, won't convert the one into the
+other, bless you."
+
+He pointed away, with his pipestem, to the violet-shadowed mouth of one
+of the narrow lanes opening between the slop-shops, wine-shops, and cheap
+eating-houses--their gaudy striped, flounced awnings bellying and
+straining in the fervid southerly breeze--which lined the further side of
+the crowded quay.
+
+"As well try to wash some gutter-bred, French trollop, off the streets in
+behind there, into a white-souled, white-robed heavenly angel," he
+grumbled on. "All this purifying of the darned old hulk's so much labour
+lost. Gets the men's monkey up too, putting all this extray work on 'em."
+
+He leaned down again, folding his arms along the top of the bulwarks.
+
+"And, angel or trollop, I find no use for her, nor any other style of
+woman either, on board this 'ere blasted rusty iron coffin," he said.
+
+Whereat the stewart, a pert-eyed, dapper little cockney--amateur of the
+violin and noted impersonator of popular music-hall comedians--took him
+up in tones of amiable argument.
+
+"Your stomach's so turned on the subject of females you can't do 'em
+justice. Gone sour, regularly sour, it is. And I don't hold with you
+there, Partington, never shall and never do. I'm one as can always find a
+cosy corner in me manly bosom for the lidies--blame me if I can't, the
+pore 'elpless little lovey-doveys. After all's said and done Gawd made
+'em just as much as 'e made you, Partington, that 'e did."
+
+"And called you in, sonny, to lend 'im an 'and at the job, didn't 'e?
+All I can say is you'd both have been better employed putting in your
+time and talents somewhere else."
+
+After which sally the two smoked in silence, while the ship's dog
+alternately stretched himself on the hot boards, and started up with a
+yelp to snap at the cloud of buzzing flies again.
+
+The steward merely bided his time, however, and enquired presently with a
+nice air of nonchalance:
+
+"Never been married, Partington, 'ave you? I've often known that put a
+fellow sadly off the sex."
+
+"Never," the other replied, "though I came precious near it once, when I
+was a youngster and greener--greener even than you with your little
+lovey-doveys and your manly bosom, William, which is allowing a lot. But
+my wife as was to 'ave been--met her down Bristol way, gone blind silly
+on 'er I was--got took with the smallpox the week before the ceremony was
+pulled off, and give me all she had to spare of the disease with her
+dying breath. Soft chap as I was then, I held it as a sort of a
+compliment. Afterwards, when the crape had worn a bit brown, I saw it was
+jealousy of any other female I might come to cast my eye over as made her
+act like that."
+
+"A private sore!" William commented. "To tell you gospel truth,
+Partington, I guessed as much. But you should learn to tike the larger
+view. Blimey, you should rise above that. To be marked like you are is a
+misfortune, I don't pretend to the contrary, looking at it along the
+level so to speak. But beauty's so much dust and ashes, if yer can just
+boost yerself up to tike the larger view. Think of all that pore dying
+woman mayn't 'ave saved you from by making yer outward fascinations less
+staring to the sex? Regular honey-pot to every passing petticoat you
+might 'ave been."
+
+He broke off, springing erect and shading his eyes with one hand to
+obtain a better view.
+
+"My Sammy--whoever's the skipper a bringing 'ome 'ere with him? Dooks and
+duchesses and all the blamed airistorkracy?--English too, or I'm a
+blooming nigger.--Tea for a lidy?--I should rather think it.--Partington,
+I'm off to put meself inside of a clean jacket and make sure the
+cockroaches ain't holding a family sing-song on my best white
+table-cloth.--Say, that young ole man of ours don't stop 'arf way up the
+ladder, once 'e starts climbing. Gets to the top rung 'e does stright
+orf, s'elp me. And tikes 'is ease there, seemingly, as to the manner
+born. Looks like he does any'ow, the way 'e's behaving of hisself
+now.--So long, bo'sun," he added jauntily. "I'm called from yer side to
+descend the companion _ong route_ for higher spheres. Sounds like a
+contradiction that, but ain't so.--See you again when the docks 'as
+quitted this fond old floating 'earse of ours and took themselves back to
+their 'ereditary marble 'alls to roost."
+
+On the other side of the quay, meanwhile, in the brave dancing breeze and
+the sunshine, Darcy Faircloth stepped down on to the uneven paving just
+opposite to where the _Forest Queen_ lay. Colonel Carteret followed and
+stood aside, leaving him to hand Damaris out of the open carriage.
+
+For this was the younger man's day; and, as the elder ungrudgingly
+acknowledged, he played the part of host with a nice sense of taste, his
+hospitality erring neither in the direction of vulgar lavishness, nor of
+over-modesty and economy. Breeding tells, is fertile in social
+intuitions, as Carteret reflected, even when deformed by an ugly bar
+sinister. During the past hours he had been observant--even above his
+wont--jealous both for his friend Charles Verity and his dear charge,
+Damaris, in this peculiar association. The position was a far from easy
+one, so many slips of sorts possible; but the young merchant sea-captain
+had carried it off with an excellent simplicity and unconscious
+grace.--In respect of a conveyance, to begin with, he eschewed hiring a
+hack, and met his arriving guests, at the station, with the best which
+the stables of the _Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix_ could produce. Had
+offered a quiet well-served luncheon at that same stately hostelry
+moreover, in preference to the more flashy and popular restaurants of the
+town. Afterwards he had driven them, in the early hours of the
+afternoon, up to the church of _Notre Dame de la Garde_, which, perched
+aloft on its eminence, godspeeds the outward bound and welcomes the
+homecoming voyager, while commanding so noble a prospect of port and
+city, of islands sacred to world-famous romance, and wide horizons of
+rich country and historic sea.
+
+And now, before parting, Faircloth brought them to his ship. To this
+private kingdom of his and all it implied--and denied too--of social
+privilege, social distinction. Implied, further, of administrative and
+personal power--all it set forth of the somewhat rugged facts of his
+profession and daily environment. Of this small world he was undisputed
+autocrat, Grand Cham of this miniature Tartary--of this iron-walled
+two-thousand-ton empire, the great white Czar.
+
+So far Carteret had lent himself to the extensive day's "outing" in a
+spirit of very sweet-tempered philosophy. He had been delightful,
+unfailing in courtesy and tactful address. Now, having analysed his
+host's character to his own satisfaction, he felt justified in giving
+himself a holiday from the office of chaperon and watch-dog. He had
+fulfilled his promise, royally done his duty by Damaris in that
+quasi-avuncular relation which he had assumed in place of a closer
+and--how profoundly more--coveted one; thereby earning temporary release
+from her somewhat over-moving neighbourhood. Not but what he had been
+keenly, almost painfully, interested in watching this drama of brother
+and sister, and gauging the impulses, the currents of action and of
+emotion which lay behind it. Gauging too the difficulties, even dangers,
+inherent in it, the glamour and the clouding of shame--whether
+conventional or real he did not pretend exactly to determine--which so
+strangely wrapped it about. To use Damaris' favourite word, they were
+very "beautiful" both in themselves and in their almost mystic affection,
+these two young creatures. And just on that very account he would be glad
+to get away from them, to be no longer onlooker, or--to put it
+vulgarly--gooseberry, fifth wheel to the cart.
+
+He went with them as far as the shoreward end of the up-sloping
+gangway.--A tall grey-clad figure, with an equally tall blue-clad figure
+on the other side of the young girl's, also tall, biscuit-coloured
+one,--a dash of pink showing in her burnt-straw hat, pink too at her
+throat and waist seen between the open fronts of her dust-coat.--But at
+the gangway he stopped.
+
+"Dear witch," he said, "I have some telegrams I should be glad to send
+off, and another small matter of business to transact in the town, so
+here, I will leave you, if you permit, in our friend's safe-keeping"--he
+smiled upon Faircloth. "At the station, at five-thirty, we meet. _Au
+revoir_, then."
+
+And, without waiting for any reply, he sauntered away along the
+sun-flooded quay between piled up bales of merchandize, wine barrels,
+heaps of sand, heaps too of evilly smelling hides, towering cases and
+crates. His shadow--clear violet upon the grey of the granite--from his
+feet onwards, travelled before him as he walked. And this leading by,
+this following of, his own shadow, casual accident of light and of
+direction though in all common sense he must account it, troubled the
+peace of the man with the blue eyes, making him feel wistful, feel past
+the zenith of his allotted earthly achievement, queerly out of the
+running, aged and consequently depressed.
+
+Upon Damaris the suddenness of his exit reacted in a sensation of
+constraint. Carteret had been very exquisite to her throughout this
+delicate adventure, throughout these hours of restrained yet exalted
+emotion. Left thus to her own resources she grew anxious, consciously
+diffident. The, in a sense, abnormal element in her relation to Faircloth
+darted down on her, so that she could not but remember how slight, after
+all, was her actual acquaintance with him, how seldom--only thrice in
+point of fact--had he and she had speech of one another.
+
+Upon Faircloth, Carteret's withdrawal also reacted, though with different
+effect. For an instant he watched the tall retreating form of this, as he
+perceived, very perfect gentleman. Then he turned to Damaris, looking her
+over from head to heel, in keen somewhat possessive fashion. And as,
+meeting his eyes, bravely if shyly, her colour deepened.
+
+"You are happy?" he affirmed rather than asked.
+
+"As the day is long," she answered him steadily.
+
+"But the day's not been overlong, by chance, has it?"
+
+"Not half long enough."
+
+"All's well, then, still." He pressed her--"You aren't weary of me yet?"
+
+Damaris reassuringly shook her head.
+
+Nevertheless she was very sensible of change in the tenor of their
+intercourse, sensible of a just perceptible hardness in his bearing and
+aspect. For some cause, the nature of which she failed to divine though
+she registered the fact of its existence, he no longer had complete faith
+in her, was no longer wholly at one with her in sympathy and in belief.
+He needed wooing, handling. And had she the knowledge and the art
+successfully to handle this sun-browned, golden-bearded, rather
+magnificent young master mariner--out here in the open too, the shout of
+the great port in her ears, the dazzle of the water and the push of the
+warm wind upon her face?
+
+"Ah, why waste precious time in putting questions to which you surely
+already know the answer?" with a touch of reproach she took him up. "Show
+me rather where you live--where you eat and sleep, where you walk up and
+down, walk quarter-deck, when you are far away there out at sea."
+
+"Does all that really interest you?"
+
+Damaris' lips quivered the least bit.
+
+"Why have you turned perverse and doubting? Isn't it because they
+interest me, above and beyond anything, beautifully interest me, that I
+am here?--It would have been very easy to stay away, if I hadn't
+wanted--as I do want--to be able to fancy you from morning until night,
+to know where you sit, know just what you first see when in the grey of
+the morning you first wake."
+
+Faircloth continued to look at her; but his expression softened, gaining
+a certain spirituality.
+
+"I have questioned more than once to-day whether I had not been foolhardy
+in letting you come here--whether distance wasn't safest, and the hunger
+of absence sweeter than the full meal of your presence for--for both of
+us, things being between us as they actually are. What if the bubble
+burst?--I have had scares--hideous scares--lest you should be
+disappointed in me."
+
+"Or you in me?" Damaris said.
+
+"No. Only your being disappointed in me could disappoint me in you--and
+hardly that, because you'd have prejudice, facts even, natural and
+obvious enough ones, upon your side. Faircloth's Inn on Marychurch Haven
+and your Indian palace, as basis to two children's memories and outlook,
+are too widely divergent, when one comes to think of it. When listening
+to you and Colonel Carteret talking at luncheon I caught very plain sight
+of that. Not that he talked of set purpose to read me a wholesome lesson
+in humility--never in life. He's not that sort. But the lesson went home
+all the more directly for that very reason.--Patience one little minute,"
+he quickly admonished her as she essayed to speak--"patience. You ask,
+with those dear wonderful eyes of yours, what I'm driving at.--This,
+beloved one--you see the waiting carriage over there. Hadn't we best get
+into it, turn the horses' heads citywards again, and drink our tea, you
+and I, on the way up to the station somewhere very much else than on
+board this rough-and-tumble rather foul-breathed cargo boat?--I'm so
+beastly afraid you may be disgusted and shocked by the interval between
+what you're accustomed to and what I am. To let you down"--
+
+Faircloth's handsome face worked. Whereat Damaris' diffidence took to
+itself wings and flew away. Her heart grew light.
+
+"Let me down?" she said. "You can't let me down. Oh! really, really
+you're a little slow of comprehension. We are in this--in everything that
+has happened since I first knew who you are, and everything which is
+going to happen from now onwards--in it together. What joins us goes
+miles, miles deeper and wider than any petty surface things. Must I tell
+you how much I care? Can't you feel it for yourself?"
+
+And she stepped before him on to the upward sloping gangway plank.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+WHEREIN DAMARIS MEETS HERSELF UNDER A NOVEL ASPECT
+
+
+Damaris threw back the bedclothes, her eyes still dim with slumber, and
+gathered herself into a sitting position, clasping her knees with both
+hands. She had a vague impression that something very pleasant awaited
+her attention; but, in the soft confusion of first awakening, could not
+remember exactly what it was.
+
+To induce clearer consciousness she instinctively parted the mosquito
+curtains, slipped her feet down over the side of the bed; and, a little
+crouched together and fumbly--baby-fashion--being still under the
+comfortable empire of sleep, crossed the room and set back the inward
+opening casements of the south window. Thereupon the outdoor freshness,
+fluttering her hair and the lace and nain-sook of her nightdress,
+brought her, on the instant, into full possession of her wandering wits.
+She remembered the nature of that charmingly pleasant something; yet
+paused, before yielding it attention, held captive by the spectacle of
+returning day.
+
+It was early. The disc of the sun still below the horizon. But shafts of
+light, striking up from it, patterned the underside of a vast dapple of
+fleecy cloud--heliotrope upon the back-cloth of blue ether--with fringes
+and bosses of scarlet flame. Against this, occupying the foreground, the
+pine trees, which sheltered the terrace, showed up a deep greenish purple
+bordering upon black.
+
+Leaning out over the polished wooden bar--which topped the ironwork of
+the window-guard--Damaris sought and gained sight of the sea. This,
+darker even than the tufted foliation of the pines--since still untouched
+by sunlight--spread dense and compact as molten metal, with here and
+there a sheen, like that of the raven's wing, upon its corrugated
+surface. To Damaris it appeared curiously forbidding. Seeing it thus she
+felt, indeed, to have taken Nature unawares, surprised her without
+disguise; so that for once she displayed her veritable face--a face not
+yet made up and camouflaged to conceal the fact of its in-dwelling terror
+from puny and defenceless man.
+
+With that the girl's thoughts flew, in longing and solicitude, to
+Faircloth, whose business so perpetually brought him into contact with
+Nature thus naked and untamed.--By now, and over as sinister a sea--since
+westward the dawn would barely yet have broke--the _Forest Queen_ must be
+steaming along the Andalusian coast, making for Gibraltar and the Straits
+upon her homeward voyage. And by some psychic alchemy, an influence more
+potent and tangible than that of ordinary thought, her apprehension fled
+out, annihilating distance, bridging intervening space. For, just as
+certainly as Damaris' fair body leaned from the open window, so certainly
+did her fair soul or--to try a closer and more scientific definition--her
+living consciousness, stand in the captain's cabin of the ocean-bound
+tramp, making Darcy Faircloth turn smiling in his sleep, he having vision
+and glad sense of her--which stayed by him, tempering his humour to a
+peculiar serenity throughout the ensuing day.
+
+That their correspondence was no fictitious one, a freak of disordered
+nerves or imagination, but sane and actual, both brother and sister could
+convincingly have affirmed. And this although time--as time is usually
+figured--had neither lot nor part in it. Such projections of personality
+are best comparable, in this respect, to the dreams which seize us in the
+very act of waking--vivid, coherent and complete, yet ended by the
+selfsame sound or touch by which they are evoked.
+
+In Damaris' case, before the scarlet, dyeing the cloud dapple, warmed to
+rose, or the dense metallic sea caught reflections of the sunrise,
+broadening incandescence, her errant consciousness was again cognizant
+of, subjected to, her immediate surroundings. She was aware, moreover,
+that the morning sharpness began to take a too unwarrantable liberty
+with her thinly clad person for comfort. She hastily locked the casements
+together; and then waited, somewhat dazed by the breathless pace of her
+strange and tender excursion, looking about her in happy amazement.
+
+And, so doing, her eyes lighted upon a certain oblong parcel lying on her
+dressing-table. There was the charmingly pleasant something which awaited
+her attention! A present, and the most costly, the most enchanting one
+(save possibly the green jade elephant of her childish adoration) she had
+ever received!
+
+She picked up, not only the precious parcel, but a hand-mirror lying near
+it; and, thus armed, bestowed herself, once more, in her still warm bed.
+
+The last forty-eight hours had been fertile in experiences and in events,
+among which the arrival of this gift could by no means be accounted the
+least exciting.--Hordle had brought the packet here to her, last night,
+about an hour after she and her father--standing under the portico--waved
+reluctant farewells to Colonel Carteret, as the hotel omnibus bore him
+and his baggage away to the station to catch the mail train through to
+Paris. This parting, when it actually came about, proved more distressing
+than she had by any means prefigured. She had no notion beforehand what a
+really dreadful business she would find it, after these months of close
+association, to say good-bye to the man with the blue eyes.
+
+"We shall miss you at every turn, dear, dear Colonel Sahib," she almost
+tearfully assured him. "How we are going ever to live without you I
+don't know."
+
+And impulsively, driven by the excess of her emotion to the point of
+forgetting accustomed habits and restraints, she put up her lips for a
+kiss. Which, thus invited, kiss Carteret, taking her face in both hands
+for the minute, bestowed upon her forehead rather than upon those
+proffered lips. Then his glance met Charles Verity's, held it in silent
+interchange of friendship needing no words to declare its quality or
+depth; and he turned away abruptly, making for the inside of the waiting
+omnibus--cavernous in the semi-darkness--distributing largesse to all and
+sundry as he went.
+
+Damaris was aware of her father's arm passed through hers, holding her
+against his side with a steadying pressure, as they went together across
+the hall on their way to the first floor sitting-room. Aware of poor,
+pretty, coughing little Mrs. Titherage's raised eyebrows and enquiring
+stare, as they passed her with her coffee, cigarette, and fat, florid
+stock-broker husband--who, by the way, had the grace to keep his eyes
+glued to the patience cards, ranged upon the small table before him,
+until father and daughter were a good half-way up the flight of stairs.
+Later, when outwardly mistress of herself, the inclination to tears
+successfully conquered and her normal half-playful gravity regained, she
+went to her bedroom, Hordle had brought her this beguiling packet.
+
+Inside the silver paper wrappings she found a red leather jewel case, and
+a note in Carteret's singularly definite hand, character rather than
+script, the severe yet decorative quality of Arabic about it.
+
+"To the dear witch," it read, "in memory of our incomparable Henrietta's
+dance, and of the midnight walk which followed it, and of our hours of
+pleasant sightseeing at Marseilles."
+
+No signature followed, only the date.
+
+Now, sitting up in bed, while the day came into full and joyous being,
+Nature's face duly decked and painted by the greatly reconciling sun,
+Damaris read the exquisitely written note again. The writing in itself
+moved her with a certain home-sickness for the East, which it seemed in
+some sort to embody and from which to hail. Then meanings she detected,
+behind the apparently light-hearted words, filled her with gratitude.
+They reminded her gently of duties accepted, promises made. They gathered
+in Faircloth, too, by implication; thus assuring her of sympathy and
+approval where she needed them most.
+
+She opened the case and, taking out the string of pearls it contained,
+turned them about and about, examining, counting, admiring their lustre
+and ethereal loveliness. They were graduated from the size of a
+hemp-seed, so she illustrated it, on either side the diamond clasp, to
+that of a marrow-fat pea. Not all of them--and this charmed her fancy as
+giving them individuality and separate life--were faultlessly perfect;
+but had minute irregularities of shape, tiny dimples in which a special
+radiance hovered. She clasped the necklace round her throat, and, holding
+up the hand-mirror, turned her head from side to side--with pardonable
+vanity--to judge and enjoy the effect.
+
+Damaris was unlearned in the commercial value of such treasures; nor did
+money seem exactly a graceful or pretty thing--in some respects our
+maiden was possessed of a very unworldly innocence--to think of in
+connection with a present. Still she found it impossible not to regard
+these jewels with a certain awe. What the dear Colonel Sahib must have
+spent on them! A small fortune she feared. In the buying of this
+all-too-costly-gift, then, consisted that business transaction he had
+made the excuse for leaving her alone with Faircloth, upon the quay
+alongside which lay the _Forest Queen_.
+
+Oh! he surpassed himself! Was too indulgent, too munificent to her!--As
+on a former occasion, she totted up the sum of his good deeds. Hadn't he
+given up his winter's sport for her sake? Didn't she--and wouldn't an
+admiring English reading public presently--owe to his suggestion her
+father's noble book? When she had run wild for a space, and sold herself
+to unworthy frivolities, hadn't he led her back into the right road, and
+that with the lightest, courtliest, hand imaginable, making all
+harmonious and sweetly perfect, once more, between her father and
+herself? Lastly, hadn't he procured her her heart's desire in the meeting
+with Darcy Faircloth--and, incidentally, given her the relief of free
+speech, now and whenever she might desire to claim it, concerning the
+strange and secret relationship which dominated her imagination and so
+enriched the hidden places of her daily life and thought?
+
+Damaris held up the hand-mirror contemplating his gift, this necklace of
+pearls; and, from that, by unconscious transition fell to contemplating
+her own face. It interested her. She looked at it critically, as at some
+face other than her own, some portrait, appraising and studying it. It
+was young and fresh, surely, as the morn--in its softness of contour and
+fine clear bloom; yet grave to the verge of austerity, owing partly to
+the brown hair which, parted in the middle and drawn down in a plain
+full sweep over the ears, hung thence in thick loose plait on either
+side to below her waist. She looked long and curiously into her own
+eyes, "dear wonderful eyes," as Faircloth, her brother, so deliciously
+called them. And with that her mouth curved into a smile, sight of which
+brought recognition, new and very moving, of her own by no means
+inconsiderable beauty.
+
+She went red, and then white almost as her white nightdress and the white
+pillows behind her. Laid the mirror hastily down, and held her face in
+both hands as--as Carteret had held it last night, at the moment of
+parting, when he had kissed not her lips but her forehead. Yet very
+differently, since she now held it with strained, clinging fingers, which
+hurt, making marks upon the flesh.--For could it be that--the other kind
+of love, such as men bear the woman of their choice, which dictated
+Carteret's unfailing goodness to her--the love that he had bitterly and
+almost roughly defended when she praised the love of brother and sister
+as dearest, purest, and therefore above all best?
+
+Was it conceivable this hero of a hundred almost fabulous adventures, of
+hair-breath escapes, and cunningly defied dangers in Oriental,
+semi-barbarous, wholly gorgeous, camps, Courts and cities, this
+philosopher of gently humorous equanimity, who appeared to weigh all
+things in an equal balance and whom she had regarded as belonging to an
+age and order superior to her own, had set his affections upon her
+singling her out from among all possible others? That he wanted her for
+his own, wanted her exclusively and as his inseparable companion, the
+object of--
+
+A sentence from the English marriage service flashed across her
+mind.--"With my body I thee worship," it ran, "and with all my worldly
+goods I thee endow."
+
+"With my body I thee worship"--He, her father's elect and beloved friend,
+in whom she had always so beautifully trusted, who had never failed her,
+the dear man with the blue eyes--and she, Damaris? Her womanhood,
+revealed to itself, at once shrank back bewildered, panic-stricken, and,
+passion-stricken, called to her aloud.
+
+For here Carteret's grace of bearing and of person, his clean health,
+physical distinction and charm, arose and confronted her. The visible,
+tangible attributes of the man--as man--presented themselves in fine
+relief, delighting her, stirring her heretofore dormant senses, begetting
+in her needs and desires undreamed of until now, and, even now, in
+substance incomprehensible. She was enchanted, fevered, triumphant; and
+then--also incomprehensibly--ashamed.
+
+As the minutes passed, though the triumph continued to subsist, the shame
+subsisted also, so that the two jostled one another striving for the
+mastery. Damaris took her hands from her face, again clasped them about
+her drawn-up knees, and sat, looking straight in front of her with
+sombre, meditative eyes. To use a phrase of her childhood, she was busy
+with her "thinkings"; her will consciously hailing emotion to the
+judgment-seat of intelligence for examination and for sentence.
+
+If this was what people commonly understand when they speak of love, if
+this was the love concerning which novelists write and poets sing--this
+riot of the blood and heady rapture, this conflict of shame and triumph
+in which the animal part of one has so loud a word to say--she didn't
+like it. It was upsetting, to the confines of what she supposed
+drunkenness must be. It spoilt things heretofore exquisite, by giving
+them too high a colour, too violent a flavour. No--she didn't like it.
+Neither did she like herself in relation to it--like this unknown,
+storm-swept Damaris. Nor--for he, alas! couldn't escape inclusion--this
+new, unfamiliar presentment of the man with the blue eyes. Yet--and here
+was a puzzle difficult of solution--even while this new presentment of
+him, and conception of his sentiment towards her, pulled him down from
+his accustomed pedestal in her regard, it erected for him another
+pedestal, more richly sculptured and of more costly material--since had
+not his manifold achievements, the whole fine legend as well as the whole
+physical perfection of him, manifested themselves to, and worked upon her
+as never before?--Did this thing, love, then, as between man and woman,
+spring from the power of beauty while soiling and lowering beauty--bestow
+on it an hour of extravagant effulgence, of royal blossoming, only to
+degrade it in the end?--The puzzle is old as humanity, old, one may say,
+as sex. Little wonder if Damaris, sitting up in her maidenly bedchamber,
+in the unsullied brightness of the early morning hour, failed to find any
+satisfactory answer to it.
+
+Her thoughts ranged out to the other members of her little local
+court--to Peregrine Ditton and Harry Ellice, to Marshall Wace. Had they
+personal experience of this disquieting matter? Was it conceivable the
+boys' silly rivalries and jealousies concerning her took their rise in
+this? Did it inspire the fervour of Marshall Wace's singing, his
+flattering dependence on her sympathy?--Suspicion widened. Everywhere she
+seemed to find hint and suggestion of this--no, she wouldn't too
+distinctly define it. Let it remain nameless.--Everywhere, except in
+respect of her father and of her brother. There she could spend her heart
+in peace. She sighed with a sweetness of relief, unclasping her hands,
+raising her fixed, bowed head.
+
+The hotel, meanwhile, was sensibly in act of coming awake. Doors opened,
+voices called. From the other side of the corridor sounded poor little
+Mrs. Titherage's hacking cough, increasing to a convulsive struggle
+before, the fit at last passing off, it sunk into temporary quiescence.
+Andre, the stout, middle-aged _valet de chambre_, hummed snatches of gay
+melody as he rubbed and polished the parquet flooring without. These
+noises, whether cheerful or the contrary, were at least ordinary enough.
+By degrees they gained Damaris' ear, drawing her mind from speculation
+regarding the nature, origin, prevalence and ethics of love. Soon
+Pauline, the chamber-maid, would bring her breakfast-tray, coffee and
+rolls, those pale wafer-like pats of butter which taste so good, and thin
+squares of beetroot sugar which are never half as sweet as one would
+like. Would bring hot water and her bath, too, and pay her some nicely
+turned little compliment as to the becoming effect of her night's
+sleep.--Everything would pick itself up, in short, and go on, naturally
+and comfortably just as before.
+
+Before what?
+
+Damaris straightened the hem of the sheet over the billowing edge of
+flowered down quilt; and, while so doing, her hand came in contact both
+with the mirror and the open jewel-case. She looked at this last with an
+expression bordering on reproach, unfastened the pearls from her throat,
+and laid them on the wadded, cream-coloured velvet lining. She delighted
+to possess them and deplored possessing them in the same breath. They
+spoke to her too freely and conclusively, told her too much. She would
+rather not have acquired this knowledge either of Carteret or of
+herself.--If it really were knowledge?--Again she repeated the question,
+arising from the increasing normality of surrounding things--Before what?
+
+For when all was said and done, the dear man with the blue eyes had
+veritably and very really departed. Throughout the night his train had
+been rushing north-north-westward to Paris, to England, to that Norfolk
+manor-house of his, where his sister, his nephews, all his home
+interests and occupations awaited him. What proof had she that more
+intimate and romantic affairs did not await him there, or thereabouts,
+also? Had not she, once and for all, learned the lesson that a man's
+ways are different and contain many unadvertised occupations and
+interests? If he had wished to say something, anything, special to her,
+before going away, how easily--thus she saw the business--how easily he
+might have said it! But he hadn't spoken, rather conspicuously, indeed,
+had avoided speaking. Perhaps it was all a silly, conceited mistake of
+her own--a delusion and one not particularly creditable either to her
+intelligence or her modesty.
+
+Damaris shut up the jewel-case. The pearls were entrancing; but somehow
+she did not seem to think she cared to look at them any more--just now.
+
+When her breakfast arrived she ate it in a pensive frame of mind. In a
+like frame of mind she went through the routine of her toilette. She felt
+oddly tired; oddly shy, moreover, of her looking-glass.
+
+Miss Felicia Verity had made a tentative proposal, about a week before,
+of joining her niece and her brother upon the Riviera. She reported much
+discomfort from rheumatism during the past winter. Her doctor advised a
+change of climate. Damaris, while brushing and doing up her hair,
+discovered in herself a warm desire for Miss Felicia's company. She
+craved for a woman--not to confide in, but to somehow shelter behind. And
+Aunt Felicia was so perfect in that way. She took what you gave in a
+spirit of gratitude almost pathetic; and never asked for what you didn't
+give, never seemed even to, for an instant, imagine there was anything
+you withheld from her. It would be a rest--a really tremendous rest, to
+have Aunt Felicia. She--Damaris--would propound the plan to her father as
+soon as she went downstairs.
+
+After luncheon and a walk with Sir Charles, her courage being higher, she
+repented in respect of the pearl necklace. Put it on--and with results.
+For that afternoon Henrietta Frayling--hungry for activity, hungry for
+prey, after her prolonged abstention from society--very effectively
+floated into the forefront of the local scene.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CONCERNING ITSELF WITH A GATHERING UP OP FRAGMENTS
+
+
+An unheralded invasion on the part of the physician from Cannes had
+delayed, by a day, Henrietta's promised descent upon, or rather ascent
+to, the Grand Hotel.
+
+That gentleman, whose avaricious pale grey eye belied the extreme
+silkiness of his manner--having been called to minister to Lady Hermione
+Twells in respect of some minor ailment--elected to put in the overtime,
+between two trains, in a visit to General Frayling. For the date drew
+near of his yearly removal from the Riviera to Cotteret-les-Bains, in the
+Ardennes, where, during the summer season, he exploited the physical
+infelicities and mental credulities of his more wealthy fellow-creatures.
+The _etablissement_ at Cotteret was run by a syndicate, in which Dr.
+Stewart-Walker held--in the name of an obliging friend and solicitor--a
+preponderating number of shares. At this period of the spring he always
+became anxious to clear up, not to say clear out, his southern clienetle
+lest any left-over members of it should fall into the clutches of one of
+his numerous local rivals. And, in this connection, it may be noted as
+remarkable to how many of the said clientele a "cure" at
+Cotteret-les-Bains offered assurance of permanent restoration to health.
+
+Among that happy band, as it now appeared, General Frayling might
+be counted. The dry, exciting climate of St. Augustin, and its
+near neighbourhood to the sea, were calculated to aggravate the
+gastric complications from which that polite little warrior so
+distressingly suffered.
+
+"This, I fear we must recognize, my dear madam, is a critical period with
+your husband; and treatment, for the next six months or so, is of
+cardinal importance; I consider high inland air, if possible forest air,
+indispensable. What I should _like_ you to do is to take our patient
+north by slow stages; and I earnestly counsel a course of waters before
+the return to England is attempted."
+
+Thereupon, agreeable visions of festive toilettes and festive casinos
+flitting through Henrietta's mind, she named Homburg and other German
+spas of world-wide popularity. But at such ultra-fashionable resorts, as
+Dr. Stewart-Walker, with a suitable air of regret, reminded her, the
+season did not open until too late to meet existing requirements.
+
+"Let me think, let me think," he repeated, head sagely bent and
+forefinger on lip.
+
+He ran through a number of Latin terms, to her in the main
+incomprehensible; then looked up, relieved and encouraging.
+
+"Yes, we might, I believe, safely try it. The medical properties of the
+springs--particularly those of La Nonnette--meet our patient's case
+excellently. And I should not lose sight of him--a point, I own, with me,
+for your husband's condition presents features of peculiar interest.
+Cotteret-les-Bains, my dear madam--in his case I can confidently
+recommend it. Lady Hermione talks of taking the cure at Cotteret this
+spring. But about that we shall see--we shall see. The question demands
+consideration. As you know, Lady Hermione is charmingly outspoken,
+emphatic; but I should be false to my professional honour, were I to
+allow her wishes to colour my judgment.--Meanwhile I have reason to know
+that other agreeable people are going to Cotteret shortly. Not the rank
+and file. For such the place does not pretend to cater. There the
+lucrative stock-broker, or lucrative Jew, is still a _rara avis_. Long
+may he continue to be so, and Cotteret continue to pride itself on its
+exclusiveness!--In that particular it will admirably suit you, Mrs.
+Frayling."
+
+To a compliment so nicely turned Henrietta could not remain insensible.
+Before the destined train bore Dr. Stewart-Walker back to his more
+legitimate zone of practise, she saw herself committed to an early
+striking of camp, with this obscure, if select, _ville d'eaux_ as her
+destination.
+
+In some respects the prospect did not smile on her. Yet as, next day,
+emancipated at length from monotonies of the sick-chamber, she drove
+behind the free-moving little chestnut horses through the streets of the
+town--sleepy in the hot afternoon quiet--and along the white glaring
+esplanade, Henrietta admitted the existence of compensations. In the
+brilliant setting of some world-famous German spa, though she--as she
+believed--would have been perfectly at her ease, what about her
+companions? For in such scenes of high fashion, her own good clothes are
+not sufficient lifebelt to keep a pretty woman quite complacently afloat.
+Your male associates must render you support, be capable of looking the
+part and playing up generally, if your enjoyment is to be complete. And
+for all _that_ Marshall Wace, frankly, couldn't be depended on. Not only
+was he too unmistakably English and of the middle-class; but the clerical
+profession, although he had so unfortunately failed it, or it so unkindly
+rejected him, still seemed to soak through, somehow, when you saw him in
+public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his
+trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and
+that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the
+footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or
+sample of "neck-wear." To head a domestic procession, in eminently
+cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very palpable invalid
+and a probable curate in mufti, demanded an order of courage to which
+Henrietta felt herself entirely unequal. Preferable the obscurity of
+Cotteret-les-Bains--gracious heaven, ten thousand times preferable!
+
+Did not Dr. Stewart-Walker, moreover, hold out hopes that, by following
+his advice, the General's strength might be renewed, if not precisely
+like that of the eagle, yet in the more modest likeness of some good,
+biddable, burden-bearing animal--the patient ass, if one might so put it
+without too obvious irony? As handyman, aide-de-camp, and, on occasion,
+her groom of the chambers, the General had deserved very well of
+Henrietta. He had earned her sincere commendation. To restore him to that
+level of convenient activity was, naturally, her main object; and if a
+sojourn at some rather dull spot in the Ardennes, promised to secure this
+desired end, let it be accepted without hesitation. For the proverbial
+creaking, yet long-hanging, gate--here Henrietta had the delicacy to take
+refuge in hyperbole--she had no liking whatever. She could not remember
+the time when Darby and Joan had struck her as an otherwise than
+preposterous couple, offspring of a positively degraded sentimentality.
+
+But there, since it threatened depressing conclusions, Henrietta agreed
+with herself to pursue the line of reflection no further.--"Sufficient
+unto the day"--to look beyond is, the thirties once passed, to raise
+superfluous spectres. And this day, in itself supplied food for
+reflections of a quite other character; ones which set both her curiosity
+and partiality for intrigue quite legitimately afire.
+
+The morning post had brought her a missive from Colonel Carteret
+announcing his "recall" to England, and deploring the imposed haste of
+it as preventing him from making his adieux to her in person. The
+letter contained a number of flattering tributes to her own charms and
+to old times in India, the pleasures of which--unforgettable by him--he
+had had the happiness of sharing with her. Yet--to her reading of
+it--this friendly communication remained enigmatic, its kindly
+sentences punctuated by more than one interjectional enquiry. Namely,
+what was the cause of this sudden "recall"? And what was his reason for
+not coming to say good-bye to her? Haste, she held an excuse of almost
+childish transparency. It went deeper than that. Simply he had wanted
+not to see her.
+
+Since the night of the dance no opportunity had occurred for observing
+Carteret and Damaris when together.--Really, how General Frayling's
+tiresome illness shipwrecked her private plans!--And, from the beginning,
+she had entertained an uneasy suspicion regarding Carteret's attitude.
+Men can be so extraordinarily feeble-minded where young girls are
+concerned! Had anything happened during her withdrawal from society? In
+the light, or rather the obscurity, of Carteret's letter, a visit to
+Damaris became more than ever imperative.
+
+Her own competence to extract the truth from that guileless maiden,
+Henrietta in nowise questioned. "The child," she complacently told
+herself, when preparing to set forth on her mission, "is like wax in
+my hands."
+
+The above conviction she repeated now, as the horses swept the victoria
+along the shore road, while from beneath her white umbrella she
+absently watched the alternate lift and plunge of the dazzling
+ultramarine and Tyrian purple sea upon the polished rocks and pebbles
+of the shelving beach.
+
+To Henrietta Nature, save as decoration to the human drama, meant
+nothing. But the day was hot, for the time of year royally so, and this
+rejoiced her. She basked in the sunshine with a cat-like luxury of
+content. Her hands never grew moist in the heat, nor her hair untidy, her
+skin unbecomingly red, nor her general appearance in the least degree
+blousy. She remained enchantingly intact, unaffected, except for an added
+glint, an added refinement. To-day's temperature justified the adoption
+of summer attire, of those thin, clear-coloured silk and muslin fabrics
+so deliciously to her taste. She wore a lavender dress. It was new, every
+pleat and frill inviolate, at their crispest and most uncrumpled. In this
+she found a fund of permanent satisfaction steeling her to intrepid
+enterprise.
+
+Hence she scorned all ceremonies of introduction. She dared to pounce.
+Having ascertained the number of Sir Charles Verity's sitting-room she
+refused obsequious escort, tripped straight upstairs unattended, rapped
+lightly, opened the door and--with swift reconnoitering of the scene
+within--announced her advent thus:
+
+"Damaris, are you there? Ah! yes. Darling child. At last!"
+
+During that reconnoitering she inventoried impressions of the room and
+its contents.--Cool, first--blue walls, blue carpet, blue upholstering of
+sofa and of chairs. Not worn or shabby, but so graciously faded by sun
+and air, that this--decoratively speaking--most perilous of colours
+became innocuous, in a way studious, in keeping with a large
+writing-table occupying the centre of the picture, laden with manuscripts
+and with books. The wooden outside shutters of two of the three windows
+were closed, which enhanced the prevailing coolness and studiousness of
+effect. Red cushions, also agreeably faded, upon the window-seats, alone
+echoed, in some degree, the hot radiance obtaining out of doors--these,
+and a red enamelled vase holding sprays of yellow and orange-copper
+roses, placed upon a smaller table before which Damaris sat, her back
+towards the invader.
+
+At the sound of the latter's voice, the girl started, raised her head
+and, in the act of looking round, swept together some scattered sheets of
+note-paper and shut her blotting-book.
+
+"Henrietta!" she cried, and thereupon sprang up; the lady, meanwhile,
+advancing towards her with outstretched arms, which enclosed her in a
+fragrant embrace.
+
+"Yes--nothing less than Henrietta"--imprinting light kisses on either
+cheek. "But I see you are busy writing letters, dearest child. I am in
+the way--I interrupt you?"
+
+And, as Damaris hastily denied that such was the case:
+
+"Ah! but I do," she repeated. "I have no right to dart in on you thus _a
+l'improviste_. It is hardly treating such an impressive young
+person--absolutely I believe you have grown since I saw you last!--yes,
+you are taller, darling child--handsomer than ever, and a tiny bit
+alarming too--what have you been doing with, or to, or by
+yourself?--Treating her--the impressive young person, I mean--with proper
+respect. But it was such a chance. I learnt that you were alone"--A fib,
+alas! on Henrietta's part.--"And I couldn't resist coming. I so longed to
+have you, like this, all to myself. What an eternity since we met!--For
+me a wearing, ageing eternity. The duties of a sick-room are so horribly
+anxious, yet so deadening in their repetition of ignoble details. I could
+not go through with them, honestly I could not--though I realize it is a
+damning admission for a woman to make--if it wasn't that I am rather
+absurdly attached to what good Dr. Stewart-Walker persists in calling
+'our patient.' Is not that enough in itself?--To fall from all normal
+titles and dignities and become merely a patient? No, joking apart, only
+affection makes nursing in any degree endurable to me. Without its saving
+grace the whole business would be too unpardonably sordid."
+
+She pursed up her lips, and shivered her graceful shoulders with the
+neatest exposition of delicate distaste.
+
+"And too gross. But one must face and accept the pathetic risk of being
+eventually converted in _garde malade_ thus, if one chooses to marry a
+man considerably older than oneself. It is a mistake. I say so though I
+committed it with my eyes open. I was betrayed by my affection."
+
+As she finished speaking Henrietta stepped across to the sofa and sat
+down. The airy perfection of her appearance lent point to the plaintive
+character of this concluding sentence. The hot day, the summer
+costume--possibly the shaded room also--combined to strip away a good ten
+years from her record. Any hardness, any faint sense of annoyance, which
+Damaris experienced at the abruptness of her guest's intrusion melted.
+Henrietta in her existing aspect, her existing mood proved irresistible.
+Our tender-hearted maiden was charmed by her and coerced.
+
+"But General Frayling is better, isn't he?" she asked, also taking her
+place upon the sofa. "You are not any longer in any serious anxiety about
+him, darling Henrietta? All danger is past?"
+
+"Oh, yes--he is better of course, or how could I be here? But I have
+received a shock that makes me dread the future."
+
+Which was true, though in a sense other than that in which her hearer
+comprehended it. For the studious atmosphere of the room reacted upon
+Henrietta, as did its many silent testimonies to Sir Charles Verity's
+constant habitation. This was his workshop. She felt acutely conscious
+of him here, nearer to him in idea and in sentiment than for many years
+past. The fact that he did still work, sought new fields to conquer,
+excited both her admiration and her regrets. He disdained to be laid on
+the shelf, got calmly and forcefully down off the shelf and spent his
+energies in fresh undertakings. Once upon a time she posed as his
+Egeria, fancying herself vastly in the part. During the Egerian period
+she lived at a higher intellectual and emotional level than ever before
+or since, exerting every particle of brain she possessed to maintain
+that level. The petty interests of her present existence, still more,
+perhaps, the poor odd and end of a yellow little General in his
+infinitely futile sick-bed, shrank to a desolating insufficiency. Surely
+she was worthy--had, anyway, once been worthy--of better things than
+that? The lavender dress, notwithstanding its still radiantly uncrumpled
+condition, came near losing its spell. No longer did she trust in it as
+in shining armour. Her humour soured. She instinctively inclined to
+revenge herself upon the nearest sentient object available--namely to
+stick pins into Damaris.
+
+"Sweetest child," she said, "you can't imagine how much this room means
+to me through its association with your father's wonderful book.--Oh!
+yes, I know a lot about the book. Colonel Carteret has not failed to
+advertise his acquaintance with it. But, what have I said?"
+
+For at mention of that gentleman's name Damaris, so she fancied, changed
+colour, the bloom fading upon her cheeks, while her glance became
+reserved, at once proud and slightly anxious.
+
+"Is it forbidden to mention the wonderful book at this stage of its
+development? Though even if it were," she added, with a rather impish
+laugh, looking down at and fingering the little bunch of trinkets,
+attached to a long gold chain, which rested in her lap--"Carteret would
+hardly succeed in holding his peace. Speak of everything, sooner or
+later, he must."
+
+She felt rather than saw Damaris' figure grow rigid.
+
+"Have you ever detected that small weakness in him? But probably not. He
+keeps overflowings for the elder members of his acquaintance, and in the
+case of the younger ones does exercise some caution. Ah! yes, I've no
+doubt he seems to you a model of discretion. Yet, in point of fact, when
+you've known him as long as I, you will have discovered he is a more than
+sufficiently extensive sieve."
+
+Then, fearing she had gone rather far, since Damaris remained rigid
+and silent:
+
+"Not a malicious sieve," the lady hastened to add, raising her eyes. "I
+don't imply that for a single instant. On the contrary I incline to
+believe that his attitude of universal benevolence is to blame for this
+inclination to gossip. It is so great, so all-enclosing, that I can't
+help feeling it blunts his sense of right and wrong to some extent. He is
+the least censorious of men and therefore--though it may sound cynical to
+say so--I don't entirely trust his judgment. He is too ready to make
+excuses for everyone.--But, my precious child, what's the matter? What
+makes you look so terrifically solemn and severe?"
+
+And playfully she put her hand under the girl's chin, drawing the grave
+face towards her, smilingly studying, then lightly and daintily kissing
+it. In the course of this affectionate interlude, the string of pearls
+round Damaris' throat, until now hidden by the V-shaped collar of her
+soft lawn shirt, caught Henrietta's eye. Their size, lustre and worth
+came near extracting a veritable shriek of enquiry and jealous admiration
+from her. But with praiseworthy promptitude she stifled her astonishment
+and now really rampant curiosity. Damaris but half yielded to her
+blandishments. She must cajole more successfully before venturing to
+request explanation. Therefore she cried, soothingly, coaxfully:
+
+"There--there--descend from those imposing heights of solemnity, or upon
+my word you will make me think my poor little visit displeases and bores
+you. That would be peculiarly grievous to me, since it is, in all
+probability, my last."
+
+"Your last?" Damaris exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, darling child, the fiat, alas! has gone forth. We are ordered away
+and start for Cotteret-les-Bains in a day or two. Dr. Stewart-Walker
+considers the move imperative on account of General Frayling's health.
+This was only settled yesterday. Marshall would have rushed here to tell
+you; but I forbade him. I felt I must tell you myself. I confess it is a
+blow to me. Our tenancy of the Pavilion expires at the end of the month;
+but I proposed asking for an extension, and, if that failed, taking up
+our abode at the hotel for a while. To me Dr. Stewart-Walker's orders
+come as a bitter disappointment, for I counted on remaining until
+Easter--remaining just as long as you and Sir Charles and Carteret
+remained, in fact."
+
+Here the bloom, far from further extinction, warmed to a lovely blush.
+Henrietta's curiosity craned its naughty neck standing on tiptoe. But,
+the blush notwithstanding, Damaris looked at her with such sincerity of
+quickening affection and of sympathy that she again postponed
+cross-examination.
+
+For over this piece of news our maiden could--in its superficial aspects
+at all events--lament in perfect good faith. She proceeded to do so,
+eagerly embracing the opportunity to offer thanks and praise. All
+Henrietta's merits sprang into convincing evidence. Had not her
+hospitality been unstinted--the whole English colony had cause to mourn.
+
+"But for you they'd still be staring at one another, bristling like so
+many strange dogs," Damaris said. "And you smoothed them all down so
+divertingly. Oh! you were beautifully clever in that. It was a lesson in
+the art of the complete hostess. While, as for me, Henrietta, you've
+simply spoiled me. I can never thank you enough. Think of the amusements
+past counting you planned for me, the excursions you've let me share with
+you--our delicious drives, and above all my coming-out dance."
+
+Whereat Mrs. Frayling disclaimingly shook her very pretty head.
+
+"In pleasing you I have merely pleased myself, dearest, so in that
+there's no merit.--Though I do plead guilty to but languid enthusiasm
+for girls of your age as a rule. Their conversation and opinions are
+liable to set my teeth a good deal on edge. I have small patience, I'm
+afraid, at the disposal of feminine beings at once so omniscient and so
+alarmingly unripe.--But you see, a certain downy owl, with saucer eyes
+and fierce little beak, won my heart by its beguiling ways a dozen
+years ago."
+
+"Darling Henrietta!" Damaris softly murmured; and, transported by
+sentiment to that earlier date when the said darling Henrietta
+commanded her unqualified adoration, began playing with the
+well-remembered bunch of trinkets depending from the long gold chain
+the lady wore about her neck.
+
+Watching her, Mrs. Frayling sighed.
+
+"Ah, my child, the thought of you is inextricably joined to other
+thoughts upon which I should be far wiser not to dwell--far wiser to put
+from me and forget--only they are stronger than I am--and I can't."
+
+There was a ring of honest human feeling in Henrietta Frayling's
+voice for once.
+
+"No, no--I am more justly an object of commiseration than anyone I leave
+behind me at St. Augustin."
+
+And again she laughed, not impishly, but with a hardness altogether
+astonishing to her auditor.
+
+"Think," she cried, "of my sorry fate!--Not only a wretchedly ailing
+husband on my hands, needing attention day and night, but a wretchedly
+disconsolate young lover as well. For poor Marshall will be
+inconsolable--only too clearly do I foresee that.--Picture what a pair
+for one's portion week in and week out!--Whereas you, enviable being, are
+sure of the most inspiring society. Everything in this quiet room"--
+
+She indicated the laden writing-table with a quick, flitting gesture.
+
+"So refreshingly removed from the ordinary banal hotel _salon_--is
+eloquent of the absorbing, far-reaching pursuits and interests amongst
+which you live. Who could ask a higher privilege than to share your
+father's work, to be his companion and amanuensis?"--She paused, as
+emphasising the point, and then mockingly threw off--"Plus the smart
+_beau sabreur_ Carteret, as devoted bodyguard and escort, whenever you
+are not on duty. To few women of your age, or indeed of any age, is
+Fortune so indulgent a fairy godmother as that!"
+
+Astonished and slightly resentful at the sharpness of her guest's
+unprovoked onslaught, Damaris had dropped the little bunch of trinkets
+and backed into her corner of the sofa.
+
+"Colonel Carteret has gone," she said coldly, rather irrelevantly, the
+statement drawn from her by a vague instinct of self-defence.
+
+"Gone!" Henrietta echoed, with equal irrelevance. For she was singularly
+discomposed.
+
+"Yes, he started for England last night. But you must know that already,
+Henrietta. He wrote to you--he told me so himself."
+
+But having once committed herself by use of a word implying ignorance,
+Mrs. Frayling could hardly do otherwise than continue the deception.
+Explanation would be too awkward a business. The chances of detection,
+moreover, were infinitesimal. There were things she meant to say which
+would sound far more unstudied and obvious could she keep up the fiction
+of ignorance. This, quickly realizing, she again and more flagrantly
+fibbed. The voluntary lie acts as a tonic giving you--for the moment at
+least--most comforting conceit of your own courage and perspicacity. And
+Henrietta just now stood in need of a tonic. She had been strangely
+overcome by the force of her own emotion--an accident which rarely
+happened to her and which she very cordially detested when it did.
+
+"Someone must have omitted to post the letter, then," she said, with a
+suitable air of annoyance. "How exceedingly careless--unless it has not
+been sent over from the hotel to the Pavilion. I have been obliged, more
+than once, to complain of the hall porter's very casual delivery of my
+letters. I will make enquiries directly, if I don't find it on my return.
+But this is all by the way. Tell me, dearest child, what is the reason of
+Colonel Carteret's leaving so suddenly? Is it not surprisingly
+unexpected?"
+
+"He was wanted at home on business of some sort," Damaris replied, as she
+felt a little lamely. She was displeased, worried by Henrietta. It was
+difficult to choose her words. "He has been away for a long time, you
+see. I think he has been beautifully unselfish in giving up so much of
+his time to us."
+
+"Do you?" Henrietta enquired with meaning. "If I remember right we
+discussed that point once before. I can repeat now what I then told you,
+with even firmer assurance, namely, that he struck me as remarkably well
+pleased with himself and his surroundings and generally content."
+
+"Of course he loves being with my father," Damaris hastened to put in,
+having no wish to enlarge on the topic suggested by the above speech.
+
+"Of course. Who doesn't, or rather who wouldn't were they sufficiently
+fortunate to have the chance. But come--to be honest--_je me demande_, is
+it exclusively Sir Charles whom Carteret loves to be with?"
+
+And as she spoke, Henrietta bent forward from the waist, her dainty
+lavender skirts spread out on the faded blue of the sofa mattress, the
+contours of her dainty lavender bodice in fine relief against the faded
+blue cushions, her whole person, in the subdued light, bright and
+apparently fragile as some delicate toy of spun glass. She put out her
+hand, and lightly, mischievously, touched the string of pearls encircling
+the girl's throat.
+
+"And what is the meaning of these, then," she asked, "you sweetly
+deceiving little puss!"
+
+It was cleverly done, she flattered herself. She asserted nothing,
+implied much, putting the onus of admission or denial upon Damaris. The
+answer came with grave and unhesitating directness.
+
+"Colonel Carteret gave them to me."
+
+"So I imagined. They are the exquisite fruit, aren't they, of the little
+expedition by train of two days ago?"
+
+Damaris' temper rose, but so did her protective instinct. For that
+journey to Marseilles, connected as it was with the dear secret of Darcy
+Faircloth, did not admit of investigation by Henrietta.
+
+"About where and when Colonel Carteret may have got them for me, I know
+nothing," she returned. "He left them to be given to me last night
+after he went."
+
+She unclasped the necklace.
+
+"They are very lovely pearls, aren't they? Pray look at them if you care
+to, Henrietta," she said.
+
+Thus at once invited and repulsed--for that it amounted to a repulse she
+could not but acknowledge--Mrs. Frayling advised herself a temporary
+retreat might be advisable. She therefore discoursed brightly concerning
+pearls and suchlike costly frivolities. Inwardly covetousness consumed
+her, since she possessed no personal ornament of even approximate value.
+
+The conversation drifted. She learned the fact of Miss Felicia's
+projected arrival, and deplored her own approaching exile the less. Only
+once, long ago, had she encountered Miss Verity. The memory afforded her
+no satisfaction, for that lady's peculiar brand of good breeding and--as
+she qualified it--imbecility, did not appeal to her in the least. There
+was matter of thankfulness, therefore, she had not elected to join Sir
+Charles and Damaris sooner. She would undoubtedly have proved a most
+tiresome and impeding element. Unless--here Henrietta's mind
+darted--unless she happened to take a fancy to Marshall. Blameless
+spinsters, of her uncertain age and of many enthusiasms, did not
+infrequently very warmly take to him--in plain English, fell over head
+and ears in love with him, poor things, though without knowing it, their
+critical faculty being conspicuous by its absence where their own hearts
+were concerned.--By the way that was an idea!--Swiftly Henrietta reviewed
+the possibilities it suggested.--As an ally, an auxiliary, Miss Felicia
+might be well worth cultivation. Would it not be diplomatic to let
+Marshall stay on at the Hotel de la Plage by himself for a week or so?
+The conquest of Miss Felicia might facilitate another conquest on which
+her--Henrietta's--mind was set. For such mature enamoured virgins,
+as she reflected, are almost ludicrously selfless. To ensure the
+happiness of the beloved object they will even donate to him their
+rival.--Yes--distinctly an idea! But before attempting to reduce it to
+practice, she must make more sure of her ground in another direction.
+
+During the above meditation, Henrietta continued to talk off the
+surface, her mind working on two distinct planes. Damaris, off the
+surface, continued to answer her.
+
+Our maiden felt tired both in body and in spirit. She felt all "rubbed
+up the wrong way"--disturbed, confused. The many moral turns and twists
+of Henrietta's conversation had been difficult to follow. But from
+amid the curious maze of them, one thing stood out, arrestingly
+conspicuous--Henrietta believed it then also. Believed Carteret cared for
+her "in _that_ way"--thus, with a turning aside of the eyes and
+shrinking, she phrased it. It wasn't any mistaken, conceited imagination
+of her own since Henrietta so evidently shared it. And Henrietta must be
+reckoned an expert in that line, having a triad of husbands to her
+credit--a liberality of allowance in matrimony which had always appeared
+to Damaris as slightly excessive. She had avoided dwelling upon this so
+outstanding feature of her friend's career; but that it gave assurance of
+the latter's ability to pronounce upon "caring in _that_ way" was she now
+admitted incontestable.
+
+Whether she really felt glad or sorry Henrietta's expert opinion
+confirmed her own suspicions, Damaris could not tell. It certainly tended
+to complicate the future; and for that she was sorry. She would have
+liked to see the road clear before her--anyhow for a time--complications
+having been over numerous lately. They were worrying. They made her feel
+unsettled, unnatural. In any case she trusted she shouldn't suffer again
+from those odious yet alluring feelings which put her to such shame this
+morning.--But--unpleasant thought--weren't they, perhaps, an integral
+part of the whole agitating business of "caring in _that_ way?"
+
+Her eyes rested in wide meditative enquiry upon Henrietta, Henrietta
+sitting up in all her finished elegance upon the faded blue sofa and so
+diligently making company conversation. Somehow, thus viewing her, it
+was extremely difficult to suppose Henrietta had ever experienced
+excited feelings. Yet--the wonder of it!--she'd actually been married
+three times.
+
+Then, wearily, Damaris made a return upon herself. Yes--she was glad,
+although it might seem ungrateful, disloyal, the man with the blue eyes
+had gone away. For his going put off the necessity of knowing her own
+mind, excused her from making out exactly how she regarded him, thus
+relegating the day of fateful decision to a dim distance. Henrietta
+accused him of being a sieve.--Damaris grew heated in strenuous denial.
+That was a calumny which she didn't and wouldn't credit. Still you could
+never be quite sure about men--so she went back on the old, sad,
+disquieting lesson. Their way of looking at things, their angle of
+admitted obligation is so bewilderingly different!--Oh! how thankful she
+was Aunt Felicia would soon be here. Everything would grow simpler,
+easier to understand and to manage, more as it used to be, with dear Aunt
+Felicia here on the spot.
+
+At this point she realized that Mrs. Frayling was finishing a sentence to
+the beginning of which she had not paid the smallest attention. That was
+disgracefully rude.
+
+"So I am to go home then, dearest child, and break it to Marshall that he
+stands no chance--my poor Marshall, who has no delightful presents with
+which to plead his cause!"
+
+"Mr. Wace?--Plead his cause? What cause? I am so sorry,
+Henrietta--forgive me. It's too dreadful, but I am afraid I wasn't quite
+listening"--this with most engaging confusion.
+
+"Yes--his cause. I should have supposed his state of mind had been
+transparently evident for many a long day."
+
+"But indeed--Henrietta, you must be mistaken. I don't know what you
+mean"--the other interposed smitten by the liveliest distress and alarm.
+
+The elder lady waved aside her outcry with admirable playfulness and
+determination.
+
+"Oh! I quite realize how crazy it must appear on his part, poor dear
+fellow, seeing he has so little to offer from the worldly and commercial
+standpoint. As he himself says--'the desire of the moth for the star, of
+the night for the morrow.' Still money and position are not everything
+in life, are they? Talent is an asset and so, I humbly believe, is the
+pure devotion of a good man's heart. These count for something, or used
+to do so when I was your age. But then the women of my generation were
+educated in a less sophisticated school. You modern young persons are
+wiser than we were no doubt, in that you are less romantic, less easily
+touched.--I have not ventured to give Marshall much encouragement. It
+would have been on my conscience to foster hopes which might be dashed.
+And yet I own, darling child, your manner not once nor twice, during our
+happy meetings at the Pavilion, when he read aloud to us or sang, gave me
+the impression you were not entirely indifferent. He, I know, has thought
+so too--for I have not been able to resist letting him pour out his hopes
+and fears to me now and then. I could not refuse either him or myself
+that indulgence, because"--
+
+Mrs. Frayling rose, and, bending over our much tried and now positively
+flabbergasted damsel, brushed her hair with a butterfly kiss.
+
+"Because my own hopes were also not a little engaged," she said. "Your
+manner to my poor Marshall, your willingness to let him so often be with
+you made me--perhaps foolishly--believe not only that his sad life might
+be crowned by a signal blessing, but you might be given to me some day as
+a daughter of whom I could be intensely proud. I have grown to look upon
+Marshall in the light of a son, and his wife would"--
+
+Damaris had risen also. She stood at bay, white, strained, her lips
+quivering.
+
+"Do--do you mean that I have behaved badly to Mr. Wace, Henrietta? That I
+have flirted with him?"
+
+Mrs. Frayling drew her mouth into a naughty little knot. There were
+awkward corners to be negotiated in these questions. She avoided them by
+boldly striking for the open.
+
+"Oh! it is natural, perfectly natural at your rather thoughtless time of
+life. Only Marshall's admiration for you is very deep. He has the poetic
+temperament which makes for suffering, for despair as well as for
+rapture. And his disillusionments, poor boy, have been so grievously
+many.--But Colonel Carteret--yes--dearest child, I do quite follow.--It's
+an old story. He has always had _des bonnes fortunes_."
+
+Since her return to Europe, Mrs. Frayling had become much addicted to
+embellishing her conversation with such foreign tags, not invariably, it
+may be added, quite correctly applied or quoted.
+
+"Women could never resist him in former days in India. They went down
+before his charms like a row of ninepins before a ball. I don't deny a
+passing _tendresse_ for him myself, though I was married and very happily
+married. So I can well comprehend how he may take a girl's fancy by
+storm. _Sans peur et sans reproche_, he must seem to her.--And so in the
+main, I dare say, he is. At worst a little easy-going, owing to his
+cultivation of the universally benevolent attitude. Charity has a habit
+of beginning at home, you know; and a man usually views his own
+delinquencies at least as leniently as he views those of others. But that
+leniency is part of his charm--which I admit is great.--Heaven forbid, I
+should undermine your faith in it, if there is anything settled between
+you and him."
+
+"But there isn't, there isn't," Damaris broke in, distressed beyond all
+calmness of demeanour. "You go too fast, Henrietta. You assume too
+much. Nothing is settled of--of that sort. Nothing of that sort has
+ever been said."
+
+Mrs. Frayling raised her eyebrows, cast down her eyes, and fingered the
+bunch of trinkets hanging from her gold chain in silence for a few
+seconds. The ring of sincerity was unquestionable--only where did that
+land her? Had not she, in point of fact, very really gone too fast? In
+defeat Henrietta became unscrupulous.
+
+"Merely another flirtation, Damaris?" she said. "Darling child, I am just
+a wee bit disappointed in you."
+
+Which, among her many fibs, may rank amongst her most impudent and
+full-fed, though by no means her last.
+
+Here, the door opened behind her. Henrietta turned alertly, hailing any
+interruption which--her bolt being shot--might facilitate her retreat
+from a now most embarrassing situation. After all she had planted more
+than one seed, which might fruitfully grow, so at that she could leave
+matters.--The interruption, however, took a form for which she was
+unprepared. To her intense disgust her nerves played her false. She gave
+the oddest little stifled squeak as she met Charles Verity's glance,
+fixed upon her in cool, slightly ironic scrutiny.
+
+Some persons very sensibly bring their mental atmosphere along with them.
+You are compelled to breathe it whether you like or not. The atmosphere
+Charles Verity brought with him, at this juncture, was too masculine,
+intellectually too abstract yet too keenly critical, for comfortable
+absorption by Henrietta's lungs. Her self-complacency shrivelled in it.
+She felt but a mean and pitiful creature, especially in her recent
+treatment of Damaris. It was a nasty moment, the more difficult to
+surmount because of that wretchedly betraying squeak. Fury against
+herself gingered her up to action. She must be the first to speak.
+
+"Ah! how delightful to see you," she said, a little over-playing the
+part--"though only for an instant. I was in the act of bidding Damaris
+farewell. As it is I have scandalously outstayed my leave; but we had a
+thousand and one things, hadn't we, to say to one another."
+
+She smiled upon both father and daughter with graceful deprecation.
+
+"_Au, revoir_, darling child--we must manage to meet somehow, just once
+more before I take my family north"--
+
+And still talking, new lavender dress, trinkets, faint fragrance and all,
+she passed out on to the corridor accompanied by Sir Charles Verity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WHICH RECOUNTS A TAKING OF SANCTUARY
+
+
+Left alone Damaris sat down on the window-seat, within the shelter of the
+wooden shutters which interposed a green barred coolness between her and
+the brilliant world without. That those two, her father and Henrietta
+Frayling, should thus step off together, the small, softly crisp,
+feminine figure beside the tall, fine-drawn and--in a way--magnificent
+masculine one, troubled her. Yet she made no attempt to accompany or to
+follow them. Her head ached. Her mind and soul ached too. She felt spent
+and giddy, as from chasing round and round in an ever-shifting circle
+some tormenting, cleverly lovely thing which perpetually eluded her.
+Which thing, finally, floated out of the door there, drawing a
+personage unmeasurably its superior, away with it, and leaving
+her--Damaris--deserted.
+
+Leaving, moreover, every subject on which its nimble tongue had lighted,
+damaged by that contact--at loose ends, frayed and ravelled, its inwove
+pattern just slightly discoloured and defaced. The patterned fabric of
+Damaris' thought and inner life had not been spared, but suffered
+disfigurement along with the rest. She felt humiliated, felt unworthy.
+The ingenious torments of a false conscience gnawed her. Her better
+judgment pronounced that conscience veritably false; or would, as she
+believed, so pronounce later when she had time to get a true perspective.
+But, just now, she could only lamentably, childishly, cry out against
+injustice. For wasn't Henrietta mainly responsible for the character of
+her intercourse with Marshall Wace? Hadn't Henrietta repeatedly entreated
+her to see much of him, be kind to him?--Wishing, even in her present
+rebellion to be quite fair, she acknowledged that she had enjoyed his
+singing and reading; that she had felt pleased at his eagerness to
+confide his troubles to her and talk confidentially about himself. She
+not unwillingly accepted a mission towards him, stimulated thereto by
+Henrietta's plaudits and thanks.
+
+And--and Colonel Carteret? For now somehow she no longer, even in
+thought, could call him by her old name for him, "the dear man with the
+blue eyes."--Could it be true, as Henrietta intimated, that he went
+through life throwing the handkerchief first to one woman and then to
+another? That there was no real constancy or security in his affections,
+but all was lightly come and lightly go with him?
+
+How her poor head ached! She held it in both hands and closed her
+eyes.--She would not think any more about Colonel Carteret. To do so made
+her temples throb and raised the lump, which is a precursor of tears, in
+her throat.
+
+No--she couldn't follow Henrietta's statements and arguments either way.
+They were self-contradictory. Still, whose ever the fault, that the young
+man Wace should be unhappy on her account, should think she--Damaris--had
+behaved heartlessly to him, was quite dreadful. Humiliating too--false
+conscience again gnawing. Had she really contracted a debt towards him,
+which she--in his opinion and Henrietta's--tried to repudiate? She seemed
+to hear it, the rich impassioned voice, and hear it with a new
+comprehension. Was "caring in _that_ way" what it had striven to tell
+her; and had she, incomparably dense in missing its meaning, appeared to
+sanction the message and to draw him on? Other people understood--so at
+least Henrietta implied; while she, remaining deaf, had rather cruelly
+misled him. Ought she not to do something to make up? Yet what could she
+do?--It had never occurred to her that--that--
+
+She held her head tight. Held it on, as with piteous humour she told
+herself, since she seemed in high danger of altogether losing it.--Must
+she believe herself inordinately stupid, or was she made differently to
+everybody else? For, as she now suspected, most people are constantly
+occupied, are quite immensely busy about "caring in _that_ way." And she
+shrank from it; actively and angrily disliked it. She felt smirched, felt
+all dealings as between men and women made suspect, rendered ugly, almost
+degraded by the fact--if fact it was--of that kind of caring and excited
+feelings it induces, lurking just below the surface, ready to dart
+out.--And this not quite honestly either. The whole matter savoured of
+hypocrisy, since the feelings disguised themselves in beautiful sounds,
+beautiful words, clothing their unseemliness with the noble panoply of
+poetry and art, masquerading in wholesome garments of innocent
+good-comradeship.
+
+--A grind of wheels on the gravel below. Henrietta's neat limpid accents
+and Charles Verity's grave ones. The flourish and crack of a whip and
+scrambling start of the little chestnut horses. The rhythmical beat of
+their quick even trot and thin tinkle of their collar bells receding into
+the distance.
+
+These sounds to our sorrowfully perplexed maiden opened fresh fields of
+uneasy speculation. For those diverse accents--the speakers being
+unseen--heard thus in conjunction, seized on and laboured her
+imagination. Throughout the past months of frequent meeting, Damaris had
+never quite understood her father's attitude towards Henrietta Frayling.
+It was marked by reserve; yet a reserve based, as she somehow divined,
+upon an uncommon degree of former intimacy. Judging from remarks let drop
+now and again by Henrietta, they knew, or rather had known, one another
+very well indeed. This bore out Damaris' own childhood's recollections;
+though in these last she was aware of lacunae, of gaps, of spaces
+unbridged by any coherent sequence of remembered events. A dazzling and
+delicious image, the idol of her baby adoration--thus did memory paint
+that earlier Henrietta. Surrounding circumstances remained shadowy. She
+could not recall them even in respect of herself, still less in respect
+of her father. So that question, as to the past, ruled the present. What
+had parted them, and how did they to-day envisage one another? She could
+not make out. Had never, indeed, attempted seriously to make out, shying
+from such investigation as disloyal and, in a way, irreverent. Now
+investigation was forced on her. Her mind worked independent of her will,
+so that she could neither prevent or arrest it. Sir Charles showed
+himself scrupulously attentive and courteous to General Frayling. He
+offered no spoken objection to her association with Henrietta. Yet an
+unexplained element did remain. Subtlely, but perceptibly, it permeated
+both her father's and Henrietta's speech and bearing. She, Damaris, was
+always conscious of a certain constraint beneath their calm and
+apparently easy talk. Was their relation one of friendship or of covert
+enmity?--Or did these, just perceptible, peculiarities of it betoken
+something deeper and closer still?
+
+Suspicion once kindled spreads like a conflagration.--Damaris' hands
+dropped, a dead weight, into her lap. She sat, strained yet inert, as
+though listening to catch the inner significance of her own unformulated
+question, her eyes wide and troubled, her lips apart. For might it not be
+that they had once--long ago--in the princely, Eastern pleasure palace of
+her childhood--cared in _that_ way?
+
+Then the tears which, what with tiredness and the labour pains of her
+many conflicting emotions, had threatened more than once to-day, came
+into their own. She wept quietly, noiselessly, the tears running down her
+cheeks unchecked and unheeded. For there was no escape. Turn where she
+would, join hands with whom she would in all good faith and innocence,
+this thing reared its head and, evilly alluring looked at her. Now it set
+its claim upon her well-beloved Sultan-i-bagh--and what scene could in
+truth be more sympathetic to its display? She felt the breath of high
+romance. Imagination played strange tricks with her. She could feel, she
+could picture, a drama of rare quality with those two figures as
+protagonists. It dazzled while wounding her. She remembered Faircloth's
+words, spoken on that evening of fateful disclosure when knowledge of
+things as they are first raped her happy ignorance, while the boat
+drifted through the shrouding darkness of rain upon the inky waters of
+the tide-river.--"They were young," he had said, "and mayn't we allow
+they were beautiful? They met and, God help them, they loved."
+
+The statement covered this case, also, to a nicety. It explained
+everything. But what an explanation, leaving her, Damaris, doubly
+orphaned and desolate! For the first case, that of which Faircloth
+actually had spoken, brought her royal, if secret compensation in the
+brotherhood and sisterhood it made known. But this second case brought
+nothing, save a sense of being tricked and defrauded, the victim of a
+conspiracy of silence. For nothing, as it now appeared, was really her
+own, nor had really belonged to her. "Some one," so she phrased it in the
+incoherence of her pain, "had always been there before her." What she
+supposed her exclusive property was only second-hand, had been already
+owned by others. They let her play at being first in the field, original
+and sole proprietress, because it saved them trouble by keeping her quiet
+and amused. But all the while they knew better and must have smiled at
+her possessive antics once her silly back was turned. And here Damaris
+lost sight of reasonable proportion and measure, exaggerating wildly, her
+pride and self-respect cut to the quick.
+
+It was thus, in the full flood of mystification and resentment, Charles
+Verity found her when presently he returned. Sensible of something very
+much amiss, since she stayed within the shadow of the closed shutters,
+silent and motionless, he crossed the room and stood before her looking
+down searchingly into her upturned face. Stubborn in her misery, she met
+his glance with mutinous, and hard, if misty, eyes.
+
+"Weeping, my dear? Is the occasion worth it? Has Mrs. Frayling then
+taken so profound a hold?" he asked, his tone mocking, chiding her yet
+very gently.
+
+Damaris hedged. To expose the root of her trouble became impossible under
+the coercion of that gently bantering tone.
+
+"It's not Henrietta's going; but that I no longer mind her going."
+
+"A lost illusion--yes?" he said.
+
+"I can't trust her. She--she isn't kind."
+
+"Eh?" he said. "So you too have made that illuminating little discovery.
+I supposed it would be only a matter of time. But you read character, my
+dear, more quickly than I do. What it has taken you months to discover,
+took me years."
+
+His frankness, the unqualified directness of his response, though
+startling, stimulated her daring.
+
+"Then--then you don't really like Henrietta?" she found audacity
+enough to say.
+
+"Ah! there you rush too headlong to conclusions," he reasoned, still with
+that same frankness of tone. "She is an ingenious, unique creature,
+towards whom one's sentiments are ingenious and unique in their turn. I
+admire her, although--for you are right there--she is neither invariably
+trustworthy nor invariably kind. Admire her ungrudgingly, now I no longer
+ask of her what she hasn't it in her to give. Limit your demand and you
+limit the risks of disappointment--a piece of wisdom easier to enunciate
+than to apply."
+
+Lean, graceful, commanding under the cloak of his present gentle humour,
+Charles Verity sat down on the faded red cushion beside Damaris, and laid
+one arm along the window-ledge behind her. He did not touch her; being
+careful in the matter of caresses, reverent of her person, chary of
+claiming parental privileges unasked.
+
+"In the making of Henrietta Frayling," he went on, "by some accident soul
+was left out. She hasn't any. She does not know it. Let us hope she never
+will know it, for it is too late now for the omission to be rectified."
+
+"Are you laughing at me?" Damaris asked, still stubborn, though his
+presence enclosed her with an at once assuaging and authoritative charm.
+
+"Not in the least. I speak that which I soberly believe. Just as some
+ill-starred human creatures are born physically or mentally
+defective--deformed or idiots--so may they be born spiritually
+defective. Why not? My reason offers no scientific or moral objection to
+such a belief. In other respects she is conspicuously perfect. But,
+verily, she has no soul; and the qualities which--for happiness or
+misery--draw their life from the soul, she does not possess. Therefore
+she sparkles, lovely and chill as frost. Is as astute as she is cold at
+heart; and can, when it suits her purpose, be both false and cruel
+without any subsequent prickings of remorse. But this very coldness and
+astuteness save her from misdeeds of the coarser kind. Treacherous she
+has been, and, for aught I know, may on occasions still be. But, though
+temptation has pretty freely crossed her path, she has never been other
+than virtuous. She is a good woman--in the accepted, the popular sense of
+the word."
+
+Silence stole down upon the room. Damaris remained motionless, leaning
+forward gathered close into herself, her hands still heavy in her lap.
+Could she accept this statement as comfort, or must she bow under it
+as rebuke?
+
+"Why," she asked at last huskily--the tears were no longer upon her
+cheeks but queerly in her throat, impeding utterance, "do you tell me
+these things?"
+
+"To prevent you beholding lying visions, my dear, or dreaming lying
+dreams of what might very well have been but--God be thanked--never has
+been--never was.--Think a minute--remember--look."
+
+And once more Damaris felt the breath of high romance and touched drama
+of rare quality, with those same two figures as protagonists, and that
+same Indian pleasure palace as their stage; but this time with a notable
+difference of sentiment and of result.
+
+For she visualized another going of Henrietta, a flight before the dawn.
+Saw, through a thick scent-drenched atmosphere, between the expiring
+lamp-light and broadening day, a deserted child beating its little hands,
+in the extremity of its impotent anguish, upon the pillows of a
+disordered unmade bed. Saw a man, too, worn and travel-stained from long
+riding throughout the night, lost to all decent dignities of
+self-control, savage with the animalism of frustrated passion, rage to
+and fro amidst the litter of a smart woman's hurried packing, a trail of
+pale blue ribbon plucking at and tripping him entangled in the rowels of
+his spurs.
+
+All this she saw; and knew that her father--sitting on the cushioned
+window-seat beside her, his legs crossed, his chin sunk on his
+breast--saw it also. That he, indeed, voluntarily and of set purpose made
+her see, transferring the living picture from his consciousness to her
+own. And, as she watched, each detail growing in poignancy and
+significance she--not all at once, but gropingly, rebelliously and only
+by degrees--comprehended that purpose, and the abounding love, both of
+herself and of justice, which dictated it. Divining the root of her
+trouble and the nature of her suspicion he took this strange means to
+dissipate them. Setting aside his natural pride, he caused her to look
+upon his hour of defeat and debasement, careless of himself if thereby he
+might mend her hurt and win her peace of mind.
+
+Damaris was conquered. Her stubbornness went down before his sacrifice.
+All the generosity in her leapt forth to meet and to acclaim the signal
+generosity in him--a generosity extended not only towards herself but to
+Henrietta Frayling as well. This last Damaris recognized as superb.--He
+bade her remember. And, seeing in part through her own eyes, in part
+through his, she penetrated more deeply into his mind, into the rich
+diversity and, now mastered, violence of his character, than could
+otherwise have been possible. She learnt him from within as well as from
+without. He had been terrible--so she remembered--yet beautiful in his
+fallen god-head. She had greatly feared him under that aspect. Later, she
+more than ever loved him; and that with a provenant, protective and, baby
+though she was, a mothering love. He was beautiful now; but no longer
+terrible, no longer fallen--if not the god-head, yet the fine flower of
+his manhood royally and very sweetly disclosed. Her whole being yearned
+towards him; but humbly, a note of lowliness in her appreciation, as
+towards something exalted, far above her in experience, in
+self-knowledge and self-discipline.
+
+She was, indeed, somewhat overwhelmed, both by realization of his
+distinction and of her own presumption in judging him, to the point of
+being unable as yet to look him in the face. So she silently laid hold of
+his hand, drew it down from the window-ledge and round her waist.
+Slipping along the cushioned seat until she rested against him, she laid
+her head back upon his shoulder. Testimony in words seemed superfluous
+after that shared consciousness, seemed impertinent even, an anti-climax
+from which both taste and insight recoiled.
+
+For a while Charles Verity let the silent communion continue. Then, lest
+it should grow enervating, to either or to both, he spoke of ordinary
+subjects--of poor little General Frayling's illness, of Miss Felicia's
+plans, of his own book. It was wiser for her, better also for himself, to
+step back into the normal thus quietly closing the door upon their dual
+act of retrospective clairvoyance.
+
+Damaris, catching his intention, responded; and if rather languidly yet
+loyally played up. But, before the spell was wholly broken and frankness
+gave place to their habitual reserve, there was one further question she
+must ask if the gnawings of that false conscience, begotten in her by
+Henrietta's strictures, were wholly to cease.
+
+"Do you mind if we go back just a little minute," she said.
+
+"Still unsatisfied, my dear?"
+
+"Not unsatisfied--never again that as between us two, Commissioner Sahib.
+You have made everything beautifully, everlastingly smooth and clear."
+
+"Then why tempt Providence, or rather human incertitude, by going back?"
+
+"Because--can I say it quite plainly?"
+
+"As plainly as you will."
+
+"Because Henrietta tells me I have--have flirted--have played fast and
+loose with--with more than one person."
+
+A pause, and the question came from above her--her head still lying
+against his breast--with a trace of severity, or was it anxiety?
+
+"And have you?"
+
+"Not intentionally--not knowingly," Damaris said.
+
+"If that is so, is it not sufficient?"
+
+"No--because she implies that I have raised false hopes, and so entangled
+myself--and that I ought to go further, that, as I understand her, I
+ought to be ready to marry--that it is not quite honourable to withdraw."
+
+Charles Verity moved slightly, yet held her close. She felt the rise and
+fall of his ribs as he breathed slow and deep.
+
+"Do you want to marry?" he at last asked her.
+
+"No," she said, simply. "I'd much rather not, if I can keep out of it
+without acting unfairly by anyone--if you don't agree with Henrietta, and
+don't think I need. You don't want me to marry do you?"
+
+"God in heaven, no," Charles Verity answered. He put her from him, rose
+and moved about the room.
+
+"To me, the thought of giving you in marriage to any man is little short
+of abhorrent," he said hoarsely.
+
+For fear clutched him by the throat. The gift of pearls, the little scene
+of last night, and Damaris' emotion in bidding Carteret farewell,
+confronted him. The idea had never occurred to him before. Now it glared
+at him, or rather he glared at it. It would be torment to say "yes"; and
+yet very difficult to say his best friend "nay." Anger kindled against
+Henrietta Frayling. Must this be regarded as her handiwork? Yet he could
+hardly credit it. Or had she some other candidate--Peregrine Ditton,
+young Harry Ellice?--But they were mere boys.--Of Marshall Wace he never
+thought, the young man being altogether outside his field of vision in
+this connection.
+
+Long habit of personal chastity made Charles Verity turn, with a greater
+stabbing and rending of repulsion, from the thought of marriage for
+Damaris. She asserted she had no wish to marry, that she--bless her sweet
+simplicity!--would rather not. But this bare broaching of the subject
+threw him into so strange a tumult that, only too evidently, he was no
+competent observer, he laboured under too violent a prejudice. He had no
+right to demand from others the abstinence he chose himself to practise.
+Carteret, in desiring her, was within his rights. Damaris within hers,
+were she moved by his suit. Marriage is natural, wholesome, the
+God-ordained law and sanction of human increase since man first drew
+breath here upon earth. To condemn obedience to that law, by placing any
+parental embargo upon Damaris' marriage, would be both a defiance of
+nature and act of grossest selfishness.
+
+He sat down on the window-seat again; and forced himself to put his arm
+around that fair maiden body, destined to be the prize, one day, of some
+man's love; the prey--for he disdained to mince matters, turning the
+knife in the wound rather--the prey of some man's lust. He schooled
+himself, while Damaris' heart beat a little tempestuously under his hand,
+to invite a conclusion which through every nerve and fibre he loathed.
+
+"My dear," he said, "I spoke unadvisedly with my lips just now, letting
+crude male jealousy get the mastery of reason and common sense. Put my
+words out of your mind. They were unjustifiable, spoken in foolish heat.
+If you are in love with anyone"--
+
+Damaris nestled against him.
+
+"Only with you, dearest, I think," she said.
+
+Charles Verity hesitated, unable to speak through the exquisite blow she
+delivered and his swift thankfulness.
+
+"Let us put the question differently then--translating it into the
+language of ordinary social convention. Tell me, has anyone
+proposed to you?"
+
+Damaris, still nestling, shook her head.
+
+"No--no one. And I hope now, no one will. I escaped that, partly thanks
+to my own denseness.--It is not an easy thing, Commissioner Sahib, to
+explain or talk about. But I have come rather close to it lately,
+and"--with a hint of vehemence--"I don't like it. There is something in
+it which pulls at me but not at the best part of me. So that I am divided
+against myself. Though it does pull, I still want to push it all away
+with both hands. I don't understand myself and I don't understand it, I
+would rather be without it--forget it--if you think I am free to do so,
+if you are satisfied that I haven't intentionally hurt anyone or
+contracted a--a kind of debt of honour?"
+
+"I am altogether satisfied," he said. "Until the strange and ancient
+malady attacks you in a very much more virulent form, you are free to
+cast Henrietta Frayling's insinuations to the winds, to ignore them and
+their existence."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+THROUGH SHADOWS TOWARDS THE DAWN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WHICH CARRIES OVER A TALE OF YEARS, AND CARRIES ON
+
+
+The last sentence was written. His work finished. And, looking upon his
+completed creation, Charles Verity saw that it was good. Yet, as he put
+the pen back in the pen-tray and, laying the last page of manuscript face
+downwards upon the blotting-paper passed his hand over it, he was less
+sensible of exultation than of a pathetic emptiness. The book had come to
+be so much part of him that he felt a nasty wrench when he thus finally
+rid himself of it.
+
+He had kept the personal pronoun out of it, strictly and austerely,
+desiring neither self-glorification nor self-advertisement. Yet his mind
+and attitude towards life seasoned and tempered the whole, giving it
+vitality and force. This was neither a "drum-and-trumpet history"
+designed to tickle the vulgar ear, nor a blank four-wall depository of
+dry facts, names, dates, statistics, such as pedants mustily adore; but a
+living thing, seen and felt. Not his subconscious, but that much finer
+and--as one trusts--more permanent element in our human constitution, his
+super-conscious self found expression in its pages and travelled freely,
+fruitfully, through them amid luminous and masterful ideas. At times the
+intellectual sweep threatened to be overdaring and overwide; so that, in
+the interests of symmetry and balance of construction, he had been forced
+to clip the wings of thought, lest they should bear him to regions too
+remotely high and rare. Race, religion, customs and the modifications of
+these, both by climate and physical conformation of the land on the face
+of which they operate, went to swell the interest and suggestion of his
+theme. In handling such varied and coloured material the intellectual
+exercise had been to him delicious, as he fashioned and put a fine edge
+to passages of admirable prose, coined the just yet startling epithet,
+perfected the flow of some graceful period, and ransacked the English
+language for fearless words in which to portray the mingled splendour and
+vileness of a barbaric oriental Court, the naked terrors of tribal feuds
+and internecine war.
+
+The occupation had, indeed, proved at once so refreshing and so absorbing
+that he went leisurely, lengthening out the process of production until
+it came nearer covering the thirty months of elephantine gestation than
+the normal human nine.
+
+With but two brief sojourns to England, for the consultation of certain
+authorities and of his publishers, the said near on thirty months were
+passed in wandering through Southern France, Central Italy, and, taking
+ship from Naples to Malaga, finally through Eastern and Northern Spain.
+Charles Verity was too practised a campaigner for his power of
+concentration to depend on the stability or familiarity of his
+surroundings. He could detach himself, go out into and be alone with his
+work, at will. But the last chapter, like the first, he elected to write
+in the study at The Hard. A pious offering of incense, this, to the
+pleasant memory of that excellent scholar and devoted amateur of letters,
+his great-uncle, Thomas Clarkson Verity, whose society and conversation
+awakened the literary sense in him as a schoolboy, on holiday from
+Harchester, now nearly five decades ago. He judged it a matter of good
+omen, moreover,--toying for the moment with kindly superstition--that the
+book should issue from a house redeemed by his kinsman from base and
+brutal uses and dedicated to the worship of knowledge and of the printed
+word. That fat, soft-bodied, mercurial-minded little gentleman--to whom
+no record of human endeavour, of human speculation, mental or moral
+experiment, came amiss--would surely relish the compliment, if his
+curious and genial ghost still, in any sort, had cognizance of this, his
+former, dwelling-place.
+
+The Hard, just now, showed a remarkably engaging countenance, the year
+standing on the threshold of May.--Mild softly bright weather made amends
+for a wet and windy April, with sunshine and high forget-me-not blue
+skies shading to silver along the sea-line. The flower-beds, before the
+garden house-front, were crowded with early tulips, scarlet, golden, and
+shell-pink. Shrubberies glowed with rhododendrons, flamed with azaleas.
+At the corner of the battery and sea-wall, misty grey-green plumes of
+tamarisk veiled the tender background of grey-blue water and yellow-grey
+sand. Birds peopled the scene. Gulls, in strong fierce flight, laughed
+overhead. Swallows darted back and forth, ceaselessly twittering, as they
+built their cup-shaped mud nests beneath the eaves. Upon the lawn
+companies of starlings ran, flapping glossy wings, squealing, whistling;
+to the annoyance of a song thrush, in spotted waistcoat and neatly
+fitting brown _surtout_, who, now tall, now flattened to the level of the
+turf, its head turned sideways, peered and listened, locating the
+presence of the victim worm.--Three or four vigorous pecks--the starlings
+running elsewhere--to loosen the surrounding soil, and the moist pink
+living string was steadily, mercilessly, drawn upward into the
+uncompromising light of day, to be devoured wriggling, bit by bit, with
+most unlovely gusto.--The chaff-chaff sharpened his tiny saw tipping
+about the branches of the fir trees in the Wilderness, along with the
+linnets, tits, and gold-finches.
+
+Such, out of doors, was the home world which received Damaris after those
+many months of continental travel, on the eve of her twenty-first
+birthday. To pass from the dynamic to the static mode must be always
+something of an embarrassment and trial, especially to the young with
+whom sensation is almost disconcertingly direct and lively. Damaris
+suffered the change of conditions not without a measure or doubt and
+wonder. For they made demands to which she had become unaccustomed, and
+to which she found it difficult to submit quite naturally and simply. A
+whole social and domestic order, bristling with petty obligations, closed
+down upon her, within the bounds of which she felt to move awkwardly, at
+first, conscious of constraint.
+
+Sympathetic Mrs. Cooper, comely and comfortable Mary, and the Napoleonic
+Patch, still reigned in house and stable. Laura had returned to her
+former allegiance on the announcement of "the family's" arrival, and
+other underlings had been engaged by the upper servants in conclave. To
+these latter entered that Ulysses, Mr. Hordle, so rendering the
+establishment once again complete.
+
+The neighbours duly called--Dr. and Mrs. Horniblow, conscious of notable
+preferment, since high ecclesiastical powers had seen fit to present the
+former to a vacant canonry at Harchester. For three months yearly he
+would in future be resident in the cathedral city. This would necessitate
+the employment of a curate at Deadham, for the spiritual life of its
+inhabitants must by no means suffer through its vicar's promotion. At the
+moment of Sir Charles and Damaris' return the curate excitement was at
+its height. It swept through the spinster-ranks of the congregation like
+an epidemic. They thrilled with unacknowledgeable hopes. The Miss
+Minetts, though mature, grew pink and quivered, confessing themselves not
+averse to offering board and lodging to a suitable, a well-connected,
+well-conducted paying guest. To outpourings on the enthralling subject of
+the curate, Damaris found herself condemned to listen from every feminine
+visitor in turn. It held the floor, to the exclusion of all other topics.
+Her own long absence, long journeys, let alone the affairs of the world
+at large, were of no moment to these very local souls. So our young lady
+retired within herself, deploring the existence of curates in general,
+and the projected, individual, Deadham curate in particular, with a
+heartiness she was destined later to remember. Had it been
+prophetic?--Not impossibly so, granted the somewhat strange prescience by
+which she was, at times, possessed.
+
+For the psychic quality that, from a child, now and again had manifested
+itself in her--though happily unattended by morbid or hysteric
+tendencies, thanks to her radiant health--grew with her growth. To her,
+in certain moods and under certain conditions, the barrier between things
+seen and unseen, material and transcendental, was pervious. It yielded
+before the push of her apprehension, sense of what it guards, what it
+withholds within an ace of breaking through.
+
+Affairs of the heart would, so far, seem to have begun and ended with the
+winter spent at St. Augustin. Now and again Damaris met an Englishman, or
+foreigner, who stirred her slightly. But if one accident of travel
+brought them together, another accident of travel speedily swept them
+apart. The impression was fugitive, superficial, fading out and causing
+but momentary regret. Colonel Carteret she only saw in London, during
+those two brief visits to England. He had been captivating, treating her
+with playful indulgence, teasing a little; but far away, somehow--so she
+felt him--though infinitely kind. And the dear man with the blue
+eyes--for she could use her old name for him again now, though she
+couldn't quite tell why--looked older. The sentimental passage at St.
+Augustin assumed improbability--a fact over which she should, in all
+reason, have rejoiced, yet over which she, in point of fact when safe
+from observation, just a little wept.
+
+From Henrietta some few letters reached her. One of them contained the
+news that Marshall Wace, surmounting his religious doubts and
+scruples--by precisely what process remained undeclared--had at last
+taken Holy Orders. Concerning this joyful consummation Henrietta waxed
+positively unctuous. "He had gone through so much"--the old cry!--to
+which now was added conviction that his own trials fitted him to minister
+the more successfully to his brethren among the sorely tried.
+
+"His preaching will, I feel certain, be quite extraordinarily original
+and sympathetic--full of poetry. And I need hardly tell you what an
+immense relief it is both to the General and to myself to feel he is
+settled in life, and that his future is provided for--though not,
+alas! in the way I fondly hoped, and which--for his happiness' sake
+and my own--I should have chosen," she insidiously and even rather
+cynically wrote.
+
+But, if in respect of the affections our maiden, during these two years,
+made no special progress and gained no further experimental knowledge of
+the perilous workings of sex, her advance in other departments was ample.
+
+For faith now called to her with no uncertain note. The great spiritual
+forces laid hold of her intelligence and imagination, drawing, moulding,
+enlightening her. In the library of a somewhat grim hotel at Avila, in
+old Castile, she lighted upon an English translation of the life of St.
+Theresa--that woman of countless practical activities, seer and sybil,
+mystic and wit. The amazing biography set her within the magic circle of
+Christian feminine beatitude; and opened before her gaze mighty
+perspectives of spiritual increase, leading upward through unnumbered
+ranks of prophets, martyrs, saints, angelic powers, to the feet of the
+Virgin Mother, with the Divine Child on her arm.--He, this last, as
+gateway, intermediary, between the human soul and the mystery of God
+Almighty, by whom, and in whom, all things visible and invisible subsist.
+For the first time some dim and halting perception, some faintest hint
+and echo, reached Damaris of the awful majesty, the awful beauty of the
+fount of Universal Being; and, caught with a great trembling, she
+worshipped.
+
+This culminating perception, in terms of time, amounted to no more than a
+single flash, the fraction of an instant's contact. An hour or so later,
+being very young and very human, the things of everyday resumed their
+sway. A new dress engaged her fancy, a railway journey through--to
+her--untrodden country excited her, a picturesque street scene held her
+delighted interest. Nevertheless that had taken place within her--call it
+conversion, evocation, the spiritual receiving of sight, as you
+please--upon which, for those who have once experienced it, there is no
+going back while life and reason last. Obscured, overlaid, buried beneath
+the dust of the trivial and immediate, the mark of revelation upon the
+forehead and the heart can never be obliterated quite. Its resurrection
+is not only possible but certain, if not on the near side, then surely on
+the farther side of death.
+
+And not only did faith thus call her, at this period, but art, in its
+many forms, called her likewise. The two, indeed, according to her
+present understanding of them, moved--though at different levels--side by
+side, singularly conjoined, art translating faith into terms of sound,
+form and colour, faith consecrating and supplementing art. All of which,
+as she pondered, appeared to her only fitting and reasonable--the object
+of art being to capture beauty and touch reality, the substance of faith
+being nothing less than beauty and reality absolute.
+
+With Sir Charles sometimes, but more often with her aunt, Miss
+Felicia--most enthusiastic, diligent and ingenuous of sightseers--she
+visited buildings of historic interest, galleries of statuary and of
+pictures. For here, too, in architecture, in marble god or hero, upon
+painted panel or canvas, she caught, at moments, some flickering shadow
+of the everlasting light, touched at moments both by its abiding terror
+and the ecstasy of its everlasting youth. But this appreciation of the
+height and grandeur of man's endeavour was new in her. To Nature she had
+from childhood, been curiously near. She sought expression and
+confirmation of it with silent ardour, her mind aflame with the joy of
+recognition. And, as daily, hourly background to these her many
+experiments and excursions, was the stable interest of her father's book.
+For in the pages of that, too, she caught sight of beauty and reality of
+no mean order, held nobly to ransom through the medium of words.
+
+And while this high humour still possessed her, alive at every point,
+her thoughts--often by day, still oftener in dreams or wakeful
+intervals by night--rapt away beyond the stars, she was called upon, as
+already noted, to pass abruptly from the dynamic to the static mode.
+Called on to embrace domestic duties, and meet local social
+obligations, including polite endurance of long-drawn disquisitions
+regarding Canon Horniblow's impending curate. The drop proved
+disconcerting, or would have eminently done so had not another
+element--disquieting yet very dear--come into play.
+
+Meantime the change from the stimulating continental atmosphere to the
+particularly soft and humid, not to say stagnant, English one, acted as a
+drop too. She drooped during the process of acclimatization. The fetid
+sweet reek off the mud-flats of the Haven oppressed and strangely pursued
+her, so that she asked for the horses to take her to the freshness of the
+high lying inland moors, for a boat to carry her across the tide-river to
+the less confined air and outlook of the Bar. Sight and sense of the
+black wooden houses, upon the forbidden island, hanging like disreputable
+boon companions about the grey stone-built inn, oppressed and strangely
+pursued her too. She could see them from her bedroom between the red
+trunks of the bird-haunted Scotch firs in the Wilderness. First thing, on
+clear mornings, the sunlight glittered on the glass of their small
+windows. Last thing, at night, the dim glow of lamp-light showed through
+open doorway, or flimsy curtain from within. They stood alone, but
+curiously united and self-sufficing, upon the treeless inhospitable piece
+of land, ringed by the rivers, the great whispering reed-beds and the
+tide. Their life was strangely apart from, defiant of, that of the
+mainland and the village. It yielded obedience to traditions and customs
+of an earlier, wilder age; and in so much was sinister, a little
+frightening. Yet out of precisely this rather primitive and archaic
+environment came Darcy Faircloth, her half-brother, the human being
+closest to her by every tie of blood and sentiment in the world save
+one--the father of them both. The situation was startling, alike in its
+incongruities and in its claims.
+
+During those two years of continental wandering--following upon her
+meeting with him at Marseilles--the whole sweet and perplexing matter of
+Faircloth had fallen more or less into line, taking on a measure of
+simplicity and of ease. She thought of him with freedom, wrote to him
+when he could advise her of his next port of call.--To him at Deadham, by
+his request, he being very careful for her, she never wrote.--And
+therefore, all the more perhaps, being here at Deadham, his home and all
+the suggestive accessories of it so constantly before her eyes, did her
+relation to him suffer a painful transformation. In remembrance she had
+come to picture him on board his ship, governing his little floating
+kingdom with no feeble or hesitating sway. But here every impeding fact
+of class and education, every worldly obstacle to his and her
+intercourse, above all the hidden scandal of his birth sprang into high
+relief. All the dividing, alienating influences of his antecedents, his
+social position and her own, swung in upon her with aggravated intensity
+and pathos.
+
+Away, she felt sweetly secure of him. Sure his and her bond remained
+inviolate. Sure his affection never wavered or paled, but stood always at
+the flood, a constant quantity upon which she could draw at need; or--to
+change the metaphor--a steady foundation upon which her heart could
+safely build. He would not, could not, ever fail her. This had been
+sufficient to stay her longing for sight and speech of him, her longing
+for his bodily presence. But now, in face of the very concrete facts of
+the island, the inn, which bore his name and where his mother lived and
+ruled, of the property he owned, the place and people to which--by half
+at least of his nature and much more than half his memory--he belonged,
+the comfort of this spiritual esoteric relation became but a meagre
+evasive thing. It was too unsubstantial. Doubts and fears encircled it.
+She grew heart-sick for some fresh testimony, some clear immediate
+assurance that time and absence had not staled or undermined the romance.
+
+If only she could speak of it! But that was forbidden by every obligation
+of filial piety. Never had her relation to her father been more tender,
+more happy; yet only through sudden pressure of outward circumstance
+could she speak to him of Faircloth. To do so, without serious necessity,
+would be, as she saw it, a wanton endangering of his peace.--If only the
+dear man with the blue eyes hadn't removed himself! She had counted upon
+his permanent support and counsel, on his smoothing away difficulties
+from the path of her dealings with Faircloth; but he appeared to have
+given her altogether the go-by, to have passed altogether out of her
+orbit. And meditating, in the softly bright May weather beneath those
+high forget-me-not blue skies, upon his defection, our maiden felt quite
+desperately experienced and grown up, thrown back upon her own resources,
+thrown in upon her rather solitary life.
+
+Throughout the summer visitors came and went; but never those two desired
+figures, Faircloth or Carteret. Dr. McCabe, vociferous in welcome,
+affectionate, whimsical and choleric, trundled over from Stourmouth on a
+bicycle of phenomenal height.
+
+"On the horse without wheels I'm proficient enough," he declared. "Know
+the anatomy of the darlin' beast as well as I do my own, inside and out.
+But, be dashed, if the wheels without the horse aren't beyond me quite.
+Lord love you, but the skittish animal's given me some ugly knocks, cast
+me away, it has, in the wayside ditch, covering me soul with burning
+shame, and me jacket with malodorous mud."
+
+At intervals Aunt Harriet Cowden and Uncle Augustus drove over in state
+the twelve miles from Paulton Lacy--the lady faithful to garments dyed,
+according to young Tom Verity, in the horrid hues of violet ink. She
+expressed her opinions with ruthless frankness, criticized, domineered,
+put all and sundry in--what she deemed--"their place"; and departed for
+the big house on the confines of Arnewood Forest again, to, had she but
+known it, a chorus of sighings of relief from those she left behind her
+and on whose emotional and intellectual tastes and toes she so
+mercilessly trod.
+
+Garden parties, tennis tournaments, the Napworth cricket week, claimed
+Damaris' attendance in turn, along with agreeable display of her foreign
+spoils in the matter of Paris hats and frocks. Proofs arrived in big
+envelopes perpetually by post; first in the long, wide-margined galley
+form, later in the more dignified one of quire and numbered page. The
+crude, sour smell of damp paper and fresh printer's ink, for the first
+time assailed our maiden's nostrils. It wasn't nice; yet she sniffed it
+with a quaint sense of pleasure. For was it not part of the whole
+wonderful, beautiful business of the making of books? To the artist the
+meanest materials of his art have a sacredness not to be denied or
+ignored. They go to forward the birth of the precious whole, and hence
+are redeemed, for him, from all charge of common or uncleanness.
+
+Finally Miss Felicia, arriving in mid-June, paid an unending visit, of
+which Damaris felt no impatience. Miss Felicia during the last two years
+had, indeed, become a habit. The major affairs of life it might be both
+useless and unwise to submit to her judgment. She lost her way in them,
+fluttering ineffectual, gently hurried and bird-like. But, in life's
+minor affairs, her innocent enthusiasm was invaluable as an encouraging
+asset. It lent point and interest to happenings and occupations otherwise
+trivial or monotonous. If silly at times, she never was
+stupid--distinction of meaning and moment.--A blameless creature,
+incapable of thinking, still more of speaking, evil of the worst or
+weakest, her inherent goodness washed about you like sun-warmed water, if
+sterile yet translucently pure.
+
+And so the months accumulated. The clear colours of spring ripened to the
+hotter gamut of mid-summer, to an August splendour of ripening harvest in
+field, orchard and hedgerow, and thence to the purple, russet and gold of
+autumn. The birds, their nesting finished, ceased from song, as the
+active care of hungry fledglings grew on them. The swallows had gathered
+for their southern flight, and the water-fowl returned from their
+northern immigration to the waters and reed-beds of the Haven, Sir
+Charles Verity's book, in two handsome quarto volumes, had been duly
+reviewed and found a place of honour in every library, worth the name, in
+the United Kingdom, before anything of serious importance occurred
+directly affecting our maiden. Throughout spring, summer and the first
+weeks of autumn, she marked time merely. Her activities and emotions--in
+as far, that is, as outward expression of these last went--were
+vicarious, those of others. She glowed over and gloried in the triumph of
+her father's book, it is true, but it was his adventure, after all,
+rather than her own.
+
+Then suddenly, as is the way with life, events crowded on one
+another, the drama thickened, sensation was tuned to a higher pitch.
+And it all began, not unludicrously, through the praiseworthy, if
+rather ill-timed moral indignation of Canon Horniblow's newly
+installed curate, Reginald Sawyer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+RECALLING, IN SOME PARTICULARS, THE EASIEST RECORDED THEFT IN
+HUMAN HISTORY
+
+
+He was short, neat, spectacled, in manner prompt and perky, in age under
+thirty, a townsman by birth and education, hailing from Midlandshire.
+Further, a strong advocate of organization, and imbued with the deepest
+respect for the obligations and prerogatives of his profession upon the
+ethical side. He took himself very seriously; and so took, also, the
+decalogue as delivered to mankind amid the thunders of Sinai. Keep the
+Ten Commandments, according to the letter, and you may confidently expect
+all things, spiritual and temporal, to be added unto you--such was the
+basis of his teaching and of his private creed.
+
+He came to Deadham ardent for the reformation of that remote, benighted
+spot, so disgracefully, as he feared--and rather hoped--behind the times.
+He suspected its canon-vicar of being very much too easy-going; and its
+population, in respect of moral conduct, of being lamentably lax. In
+neither of which suppositions, it must be admitted, was he altogether
+incorrect. But he intended to alter all that!--Regarding himself thus, in
+the light of a providentially selected new broom, he applied himself
+diligently to sweep. A high-minded and earnest, if not conspicuously
+well-bred young man, he might in a suburban parish have done excellent
+work. But upon Deadham, with its enervating, amorous climate and queer
+inheritance of forest and seafaring--in other words poaching and
+smuggling--blood, he was wasted, out of his element and out of touch. The
+slow moving South Saxon cocked a shrewd sceptical eye at him, sized him
+up and down and sucked in its cheek refusing to be impressed. While by
+untoward accident, his misfortune rather than his fault, the earliest of
+his moral sweepings brought him into collision with the most reactionary
+element in the community, namely the inhabitants of the black cottages
+upon the Island.
+
+The event fell out thus. The days shortened, the evenings lengthened
+growing misty and secret as October advanced. The roads became plashy and
+rutted, the sides of them silent with fallen leaves under foot. An odd
+sense of excitement flickers through such autumn twilights. Boys herded
+in little troops on wickedness intent. Whooping and whistling to disarm
+their elders' suspicion until the evil deed should be fairly within
+reach, then mum as mice, stealthily vanishing, becoming part and parcel
+of the earth, the hedge, the harsh dusky grasses of the sand-hills, the
+foreshore lumber on the beach.
+
+Late one afternoon, the hour of a hidden sunset, Reginald Sawyer called
+at The Hard; and to his eminent satisfaction--for social aspirations were
+by no means foreign to him--was invited to remain to tea. The
+ladies--Damaris and Miss Felicia--were kind, the cakes and cream
+superlative. He left in high feather; and, at Damaris' suggestion, took a
+short cut through the Wilderness and by a path crossing the warren to the
+lane, leading up from the causeway, which joins the high-road just
+opposite the post office and Mrs. Doubleday's shop. By following this
+route he would save quite half a mile on his homeward journey; since the
+Grey House, where he enjoyed the Miss Minetts' assiduous and genteel
+hospitality, is situate at the extreme end of Deadham village on the road
+to Lampit.
+
+Out on the warren, notwithstanding the hour and the mist, it was still
+fairly light, the zigzagging sandy path plainly visible between the
+heath, furze brakes, stunted firs and thorn bushes. The young clergyman,
+although more familiar with crowded pavements and flare of gas-lamps than
+open moorland in the deepening dusk, pursued his way without difficulty.
+What a wild region it was though! He thought of the sober luxury of the
+library at The Hard, the warmth, the shaded lights, the wealth of books;
+of the grace of Damaris' clothing and her person, and wondered how
+people of position and education could be content to live in so out of
+the way and savage a spot. It was melancholy to a degree, in his
+opinion.--Oh! well, he must do his best to wake it up, infuse a spirit of
+progress into it more in keeping with nineteenth-century ideas. Everyone
+would be grateful to him--
+
+A little questioning pause--assurance in momentary eclipse. Then with
+renewed cheerfulness--Of course they would--the upper classes, that is.
+For they must feel the disadvantages of living in such a back-water. He
+gave them credit for the wish to advance could they but find the way.
+All they needed was leadership, which Canon Horniblow--evidently past
+his work--was powerless to supply. He, Sawyer, came as a pioneer. Once
+they grasped that fact they would rally to him. The good Miss Minetts
+were rallying hard, so to speak, already. Oh! there was excellent
+material in Deadham among the gentlefolk. It merely needed working,
+needed bringing out.
+
+From the lower, the wage-earning class, sunk as it was in ignorance, he
+must, he supposed, expect but a poor response, opposition not impossibly.
+Opposition would not daunt him. You must be prepared to do people good,
+if not with, then against their will. He was here to make them rebel
+against and shake off the remnants of the Dark Ages amid which they so
+extraordinarily appeared still to live. He had no conception so low a
+state of civilization could exist within little over a hundred miles of
+the metropolis!--It was a man's work, anyhow, and he must put his back
+into it. Must organize--word of power--organize night classes, lectures
+with lantern slides, social evenings, a lads' club. Above all was there
+room and necessity for this last. The Deadham lads were very rowdy, very
+unruly. They gathered at corners in an objectionable manner; hung about
+the public-house. He must undersell the public-house by offering counter
+attractions. Amongst the men he suspected a sad amount of drinking. Their
+speech, too, was so reprehensibly coarse. He had heard horrible language
+in the village street. He reproved the offenders openly, as was his duty,
+and his admonitions were greeted with a laugh, an insolent, offensive,
+jeering laugh.
+
+Sawyer cut at the dark straggling furzes bordering the path with his
+walking-stick. Recollection of that laugh made him go red about the ears;
+made his skin tingle and his eyes smart. It represented an insult not
+only to himself but to his cloth. Yet he'd not lost control of himself,
+he was glad to remember, though the provocation was rank--
+
+He cut at the furze again, being by nature combative. And--stopped short,
+with a start, a tremor running through him. Something rustled, scuttled
+away amongst the bushes, and something flapped upward behind him into the
+thick lowering sky above. A wailing cry--whether human, or of bird or
+beast, he was uncomfortably ignorant--came out of the mist ahead, to be
+answered by a like and nearer cry from a spot which he failed, in his
+agitation, to locate.
+
+Under ordinary conditions the young cleric was neither troubled by
+imagination nor lacking in pluck. His habitual outlook was sensible,
+literal and direct. But, it must be owned, this wide indistinct
+landscape, over which pale vapours trailed and brooded, the immense
+loneliness of the felt rather than seen, expanse of water, marsh and
+mud-flat of the Haven--the tide being low--along with the goblin
+whispering chuckle of the river speeding seaward away there on his left,
+made him oddly jumpy and nervous. No human being was in sight, neither
+did any human dwelling show signs of habitation. He wished he had gone
+round by the road and through the length of the village. He registered a
+vow against short cuts--save in broad daylight--for his present
+surroundings inspired him with the liveliest distrust. They were to him
+positively nightmarish. He suffered the nastiest little fears of what
+might follow him, what might, even now, peer and lurk. Heretofore he had
+considered the earth as so much dead matter, to be usefully and
+profitably exploited by all-dominant man--specially by men of his own
+creed and race. But now the power of the earth laid hands on him. She
+lived, and mankind dwindled to the proportions of parasitic insects, at
+most irritating some small portions of her skin, her vast indifferent
+surface. Such ideas had never occurred to him before. He resented
+them--essayed to put them from him as trenching on blasphemy.
+
+Starting on again, angry alike with himself for entertaining, and with
+the unknown for engendering, such subversive notions, his pace
+unconsciously quickened to a run. But the line of some half-dozen ragged
+Scotch firs, which here topped the low cliff bordering the river, to his
+disordered vision seemed most uncomfortably to run alongside him,
+stretching gaunt arms through the encircling mist to arrest his flight.
+
+He regarded them with an emotion of the liveliest antipathy; consciously
+longing, meanwhile, for the humming thoroughfares of his native
+industrial town, for the rattle and grind of the horse-trams, the
+brightly lighted shop-fronts, the push all about him of human labour, of
+booming trade and vociferous politics. Even the glare of a gin palace,
+flooding out across the crowded pavement at some street corner, would
+have, just now, been fraught with solace, convinced prohibitionist though
+he was. For he would, at least, have been in no doubt how to feel towards
+that stronghold of Satan--righteously thanking God he was not as those
+reprehensible others, who passed in and out of its ever-swinging doors.
+While towards this earth dominance, this dwarfing of human life by the
+life of things he had hitherto called inanimate, he did not know how to
+feel at all. It attacked some unarmoured, unprotected part of him.
+Against its assault he was defenceless.
+
+With a sense of escape from actual danger, whether physical or moral he
+did not stay to enquire, he stumbled, a few minutes later, through a gap
+in the earth-bank into the wet side lane. Arrived, he gave himself a
+moment's breathing space. It was darker here than out upon the warren;
+but, anyhow, this was a lane. It had direction and meaning. Men had
+constructed it for the linking up of house with house, hamlet with
+hamlet. Like all roads, it represented the initial instinct of communal
+life, the basis of a reasoned social order, of civilization in short.
+He walked forward over the soft couch of fallen, water-soaked leaves,
+his boots squelching at times into inches of sucking mud, and his
+spirits rose. He began to enter into normal relations both with himself
+and with things in general. A hundred yards or so and the village green
+would be reached.
+
+Then on his left, behind an ill-kept quick-set hedge that guarded a strip
+of garden and orchard, he became aware of movement. Among the apple trees
+three small figures shuffled about some dark recumbent object. For the
+most part they went on all fours, but at moments reared up on their hind
+legs. Their action was at once silent, stealthy and purposeful. Our young
+clergyman's shortness of sight rendered their appearance the more
+peculiar. His normal attitude was not so completely restored, moreover,
+but that they caused him another nervous tremor. Then he grasped the
+truth; while the detective, latent in every moralist, sprang to
+attention. Here were criminals to be brought to justice, criminals caught
+red-handed. Reginald Sawyer, having been rather badly scared himself,
+lusted--though honestly ignorant of any personal touch in the matter--to
+very badly scare others.
+
+Standing back beside the half-open gate, screened by the hedge, here high
+and straggling, he awaited the psychological moment, ready to pounce. To
+enter the orchard and confront these sinners with their crime, if their
+activities did by chance happen to be legitimate, was to put himself
+altogether in the wrong. He would bide his time, would let them conclude
+their--in his belief--nefarious business and challenge them as they
+passed out.
+
+Nor had he long to wait. The two smaller boys, breathing hard, hoisted
+the bulging, half-filled sack on to the back of their bigger
+companion; who, bowed beneath its weight, grunting with exertion,
+advanced towards the exit.
+
+Sawyer laid aside his walking-stick, and, as the leader of the procession
+came abreast of him, pounced. But missed his aim. Upon which the boy cast
+down the sack, from the mouth of which apples, beets, turnips rolled into
+the road; and, with a yelp, bolted down the lane towards the causeway,
+leaving his accomplices to their fate. These, thrown into confusion by
+the suddenness of his desertion, hesitated and were lost. For, pouncing
+again, and that the more warily for his recent failure, Sawyer collared
+one with either hand.
+
+They were maladorous children; and the young clergyman, grasping woollen
+jersey-neck and shirt-band, the backs of his hands in contact with the
+backs of their moist, warm, dirty little necks, suffered disgust, yet
+held them the more firmly.
+
+"I am convinced you have no right to that fruit or to those vegetables.
+You are stealing. Give an account of yourselves at once."
+
+And he shook them slightly to emphasize his command. One hung on his
+hand, limp as a rag. The other showed fight, kicking our friend liberally
+about the shins, with hobnailed boots which did, most confoundly, hurt.
+
+"You lem' me go," he cried. "Lem' me go, or I'll tell father, and first
+time you come along by our place 'e'll set the ratting dawgs on to you.
+Our ole bitch 'as got 'er teeth yet. She'll bite. Ketch the fleshy part
+of your leg, she will, and just tear and bite."
+
+This carrying of war into the enemy's country proved as disconcerting as
+unexpected, while to mention the sex of an animal was, in Reginald
+Sawyer's opinion, to be guilty of unpardonable coarseness. The atmosphere
+of a Protestant middle-class home clung to him yet, begetting in him a
+squeamishness, not to say prudery, almost worthy of his hostesses, the
+Miss Minetts. He shook the culprits again, with a will. He also blushed.
+
+"If you were honest you would be anxious to give an account of
+yourselves," he asserted, ignoring the unpleasant matter of the dogs. "I
+am afraid you are very wicked boys. You have stolen these vegetables and
+fruits. Thieves are tried by the magistrates, you know, and sent to
+prison. I shall take you to the police-station. There the constable will
+find means to make you confess."
+
+Beyond provoking a fresh paroxysm of kicking, these adjurations were
+without result. His captives appeared equally impervious to shame,
+contrition or alarm. They remained obstinately mute. Whereupon it began
+to dawn upon their captor that his position risked becoming not a little
+invidious, since the practical difficulty of carrying his threats into
+execution was so great. How could he haul two sturdy, active children,
+plus a sack still containing a goodly quantity of garden produce, some
+quarter of a mile without help? To let them go, on the other hand, was
+to have them incontinently vanish into those trailing whitish vapours
+creeping over the face of the landscape. And, once vanished, they were
+lost to him, since he knew neither their names nor dwelling place; and
+could, with no certainty, identify them, having seen them only in the
+act of struggle and in this uncertain evening light. He felt himself
+very nastily planted on the horns of a dilemma, when on a sudden there
+arrived help.
+
+A vehicle of some description turned out of the main road and headed
+down the lane.
+
+Laocooen-like, flanked on either hand by a writhing youthful figure,
+Reginald Sawyer called aloud:
+
+"Hi!--Stop, there--pray, stop."
+
+Darcy Faircloth lighted down out of a ramshackle Marychurch station fly,
+and advanced towards the rather incomprehensible group.
+
+"What's happened? What's the matter?" he said. "What on earth do you want
+with those two youngsters?"
+
+"I want to convey them to the proper authorities," Sawyer answered, with
+all the self-importance he could muster. He found his interlocutor's
+somewhat abrupt and lordly manner at once annoying and impressive, as
+were his commanding height and rather ruffling gait. "These boys have
+been engaged in robbing a garden. I caught them in the act, and it is my
+duty to see that they pay the penalty of their breach of the law. I count
+on your assistance in taking them to the police-station."
+
+"You want to give them in charge?"
+
+"What else?--The moral tone of this parish is, I grieve to say,
+very low."
+
+Sawyer talked loud and fast in the effort to assert himself.
+
+"Low and coarse," he repeated. "Both as a warning to others, and in
+the interests of their own future, an example must be made of these
+two lads."
+
+"Must it?" Faircloth said, towering above him in the pale
+bewildering mist.
+
+The little boys, who had remained curiously and rather dangerously still
+since the advent of this stranger, now strained together, signalling,
+whispering. Sawyer shook them impatiently apart.
+
+"Steady there, please," Faircloth put in sharply. "It strikes me you take
+a good deal upon yourself. May I ask who you are?"
+
+"I am the assistant priest," Reginald began. But his explanation was cut
+short by piping voices.
+
+"It's Cap'en Darcy, that's who it is. We never meant no 'arm, Cap'en.
+That we didn't. The apples was rotting on the ground, s'h'lp me if they
+wasn't. Grannie Staples was took to the Union last Wednesday fortnight,
+and anyone's got the run of her garden since. Don't you let the new
+parson get us put away, Cap'en. We belongs to the Island--I'm William
+Jennifer's Tommy, please Cap'en, and 'e's Bobby Sclanders 'e is."
+
+And being cunning, alike by nature and stress of circumstance, they
+pathetically drooped, blubbering in chorus:
+
+"We never didn't mean no 'arm, Cap'en. Strike me dead if we did."
+
+At which last implied profanity Reginald Sawyer shuddered, loosening
+his grasp.
+
+Of what followed he could subsequently give no definite account. The
+dignities of his sacred profession and his self-respect alike reeled
+ignominiously into chaos. He believed he heard the person, addressed as
+Captain Darcy, say quietly:
+
+"Cut it, youngsters. Now's your chance."
+
+He felt that both the children violently struggled, and that the round
+hard head of one of them butted him in the stomach. He divined that
+sounds of ribald laughter, in the distance, proceeded from the driver
+of the Marychurch station fly. He knew two small figures raced whooping
+down the lane attended by squelchings of mud and clatter of heavy
+soled boots.
+
+Knew, further, that Captain Darcy, after nonchalantly picking up the
+sack, dropping it within the garden hedge and closing the rickety gate,
+stood opposite him and quite civilly said:
+
+"I am sorry I could not give you the sort of assistance, sir, which you
+asked. But the plan would not have worked."
+
+Sawyer boiled over.
+
+"You have compounded a felony and done all that lay in your power to
+undermine my authority with my parishioners. Fortunately I retain the
+boys' names and can make further enquiries. This, however, by no means
+relieves you of the charge of having behaved with reprehensible levity
+both towards my office and myself."
+
+"No--no," Faircloth returned, goodnaturedly. "Sleep upon it, and you will
+take an easier view of the transaction. I have saved you from putting
+unmerited disgrace upon two decent families and getting yourself into hot
+water up to the neck. I know these Deadham folk better than you do. I'm
+one of them, you see, myself. They've uncommonly long memories where
+they're offended, though it may suit them to speak you soft. Take it from
+me, you'll never hound them into righteousness. They turn as stubborn as
+so many mules under the whip."
+
+He hailed the waiting flyman.
+
+"Good evening to you, sir," he said. And followed by the carriage, piled
+with sea-chest and miscellaneous baggage, departed into the
+mysteriousness of deepening dusk.
+
+Had the young clergyman been willing to leave it at that, all might yet
+have been well, his ministry at Deadham a prolonged and fruitful one,
+since his intentions, at least, were excellent. But, as ill-luck would
+have it, while still heated and sore, every feather on end, his natural
+combativeness almost passionately on top, turning out in the high-road he
+encountered Dr. Cripps, faring westward like himself on the way to visit
+a patient at Lampit. The two joined company, falling into a conversation
+the more confidential that the increasing darkness gave them a sense of
+isolation and consequent intimacy.
+
+Of all his neighbours, the doctor--a peppery disappointed man, struggling
+with a wide-strewn country practice mainly prolific of bad debts,
+conscious of his own inefficiency and perpetually smarting under imagined
+injuries and slights--was the very last person to exercise a mollifying
+influence upon Sawyer in his existing angry humour. The latter recounted
+and enlarged upon the insults he had just now suffered. His hearer fanned
+the flame of indignation with comment and innuendo--recognized Faircloth
+from the description, and proceeded to wash his hands in scandalous
+insinuation at the young sea-captain's expense.
+
+For example, had not an eye to business dictated the sheltering from
+justice of those infant, apple-stealing reprobates? Their respective
+fathers were good customers! The islanders all had the reputation of hard
+drinkers--and an innkeeper hardly invites occasion to lower his receipts.
+The inn stood in old Mrs. Faircloth's name, it is true; but the son
+profited, at all events vicariously, by its prosperity. A swaggering
+fellow, with an inordinate opinion of his own ability and merits; but in
+that he shared a family failing. For arrogance and assumption the whole
+clan was difficult to beat.
+
+"You have heard whose son this young Faircloth is, of course?"
+
+Startled by the question, and its peculiar implication, Reginald Sawyer
+hesitatingly admitted his ignorance.
+
+The Grey House stands flush with the road, and the two gentlemen finished
+their conversation upon the doorstep. Above them a welcoming glow shone
+through the fanlight; otherwise its windows were shuttered and blank.
+
+"This is a matter of common knowledge," Dr. Cripps said; "but one about
+which, for reasons of policy, or, more truly, of snobbery, it is the
+fashion to keep silent. So, for goodness' sake, don't give me as your
+authority if you should ever have occasion to speak of it"--
+
+And lowering his voice he mentioned a name.
+
+"As like as two peas," he added, "when you see them side by side--which,
+in point of fact, you never do. Oh! I promise you the whole dirty
+business has been remarkably well engineered--hush-money, I suppose.
+Sometimes I am tempted to think poverty is the only punishable sin in
+this world. For those who have a good balance at their bankers there is
+always a safe way out of even the most disgraceful imbroglios of this
+sort. But I must be moving on, Mr. Sawyer. I sympathize with your
+annoyance. You have been very offensively treated. Good night."
+
+The young clergyman remained planted on the doorstep, incapable of
+ringing the bell and presenting himself to his assiduously attentive
+hostesses, the Miss Minetts, for the moment.
+
+He was, in truth, indescribably shocked. Deadham presented itself to
+his mind as a place accursed, a veritable sink of iniquity. High and
+low alike, its inhabitants were under condemnation.--And he had so
+enjoyed his tea with the ladies at The Hard. Had been so flattered by
+their civility, spreading himself in the handsome room, agreeably
+sensible of its books, pictures, ornaments, and air of cultured
+leisure.--While behind all that, as he now learned, was this glaring
+moral delinquency! Never had he been more cruelly deceived. He felt
+sick with disgust. What callousness, what hypocrisy!--He recalled his
+disquieting sensations in crossing the warren. Was the very soil of
+this place tainted, exhaling evil?
+
+He made a return upon himself. For what, after all, was he here for save
+to let in light and combat evil, to bring home the sense of sin to the
+inhabitants of this place, convincing them of the hatefulness of the
+moral slough in which they so revoltingly wallowed. He must slay and
+spare not. He saw himself as David, squaring up to Goliath, as Christian
+fighting single-handed against the emissaries of Satan who essayed to
+defeat his pilgrimage. Yes, he would smite these lawbreakers hip and
+thigh, whatever their superficial claims to his respect, whatever their
+worldly position. He would read them all a lesson--that King Log, Canon
+Horniblow, included.
+
+He at once pitied and admired himself, not being a close critic of
+his own motives; telling himself he did well to be angry, while
+ignoring the element of personal pique which gave point and
+satisfaction to that anger.
+
+He was silent and reserved with the Miss Minetts at supper; and retired
+early to his own room to prepare a sermon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+BROTHER AND SISTER
+
+
+Upon the Sunday morning following, Damaris went to the eleven o'clock
+service alone. Miss Felicia Verity attended church at an earlier hour
+to-day, partly in the interests of private devotion, partly in those of a
+person she had warmly befriended in the past, and wanted to befriend in
+the present--but with delicacy, with tact and due consideration for the
+susceptibilities of others. She wished earnestly to effect a
+reconciliation; but not to force it. To force it was to endanger its
+sincerity and permanence. It should seem to come about lightly,
+naturally. Therefore did she go out early to perfect her plans--of which
+more hereafter--as well as to perform her religious duties. Sir Charles
+Verity was from home, staying with Colonel Carteret for partridge
+shooting, over the Norfolk stubble-fields. The habit of this annual visit
+had, for the last two seasons, been in abeyance; but now, with his return
+to The Hard, was pleasantly revived, although this autumn, owing to
+business connected with the publication of his book, the visit took place
+a few weeks later than usual.
+
+Hence did Damaris--arrayed in a russet-red serge gown, black velvet
+collar and cuffs to its jacket of somewhat manly cut, and a russet-red
+upstanding plume in her close-fitting black velvet hat--set forth alone
+to church. This, after redirecting such letters as had arrived for her
+father by the morning post. One of them bore the embossed arms of the
+India Office, and signature of the, then, Secretary of State for that
+department in the corner of the envelope. She looked at it with a measure
+of respect and curiosity, wondering as to the purport of its contents.
+She studied the envelope, turning it about in the hope of gleaning
+enlightenment from its external aspect. Still wondering, slightly
+oppressed even by a persuasion--of which she could not rid herself--that
+it held matters of no common moment closely affecting her father, she
+went out of the house, down the sheltered drive, and through the entrance
+gates. Here, as she turned inland, the verve of the clear autumn morning
+rushed on her, along with a wild flurry of falling leaves dancing to the
+breath of the crisp northerly breeze.
+
+A couple of fine days, with a hint of frost in the valley by night, after
+a spell of soft mists and wet, sent the leaves down in fluttering
+multitudes, so that now all trees, save the oaks only, were bare.
+These--by which the road is, just here, overhung--still solidly clothed
+in copper, amber and--matching our maiden's gown--in russet-red, offered
+sturdy defiance to the weather. The sound of them, a dry crowded
+rustling, had a certain note of courage and faithfulness in it which
+caused Damaris to wait awhile and listen; yet a wistfulness also, since
+to her hearing a shudder stirred beneath its bravery, preluding the
+coming rigours of winter.
+
+And that wistfulness rather strangely enlarged its meaning and area, as
+the reiterated ting, tang, tong of Deadham's church bells recalled the
+object of her walk. For English church services, of the parochial variety
+such as awaited her, had but little, she feared, to give. Little, that
+is, towards the re-living of those instants of exalted spiritual
+perception which had been granted to her at distant Avila.
+
+In overstrained and puritanic dread of idolatory, the English Church has
+gone lamentably far to forfeit its sacramental birthright. It savours too
+strongly of the school and class-room, basing its appeal upon words, upon
+spoken expositions, instructive no doubt, but cold, academic. It offers
+no tangible object of worship to sight or sense. Its so-called altars are
+empty. Upon them no sacrifice is offered, no presence abidingly dwells.
+In its teaching the communion of saints and forgiveness of sins are
+phrases rather than living agencies. Its atmosphere is self-conscious,
+its would-be solemnity forced.--This, in any case, was how Damaris saw
+the whole matter--though, let us hasten to add, she was modest enough to
+question whether the fault might not very well be in herself rather than
+in our national variant of the Christian Faith. Many sweet, good
+persons--dear Aunt Felicia among them--appeared to find Anglican
+ministrations altogether sufficient for their religious needs. But to
+Damaris those ministrations failed to bring any moment of vision, of
+complete detachment. She must be to blame, she supposed--which was
+discouraging, a little outcasting and consequently sad.
+
+In a somewhat pensive spirit she therefore, pursued her way, until, where
+the prospect widened as she reached the village green, a larger sky
+disclosed itself flaked with light cirrus cloud. This glory of space, and
+the daring northerly breeze blowing out from it, sent her fancy flying.
+It beckoned to journeyings, to far coasts and unknown seas--an offshore
+wind, filling the sails of convoys outward bound. And, with the thought
+of ships upon the sea, came the thought of Darcy Faircloth, and that with
+sharp revolt against the many existing hindrances to his and her
+intercourse. Freedom seemed abroad this morning. Even the leaves declared
+for liberty, courting individual adventure upon the wings of that daring
+wind. And this sense of surrounding activity worked upon Damaris, making
+her doubly impatient of denials and arbitrary restraints. She sent her
+soul after Darcy Faircloth across the waste of waters, fondly, almost
+fiercely seeking him. But her soul refused to travel, curiously turning
+homeward again, as though aware not the prodigious fields of ocean, nor
+any loud-voiced foreign port of call, held knowledge of him, but rather
+the immediate scene, the silver-glinting levels of the Haven and lonely
+stone-built inn.
+
+Deadham church, originally a chapelry of Marychurch Abbey, crowns a green
+monticule in the centre of Deadham village, backed by a row of big
+elms.--A wide, low-roofed structure, patched throughout the course of
+centuries beyond all unity and precision of design; yet still showing
+traces of Norman work in the arch of the belfry and in the pillars
+supporting the rafters of the middle aisle. At the instance of a former
+vicar, the whole interior received a thick coat of whitewash, alike over
+plaster and stone. This, at the time in question, had been in places
+scraped off, bringing to light some mural paintings of considerable
+interest and antiquity.
+
+In the chancel, upon the gospel side, is a finely-carved tomb, with
+recumbent figures of an armoured knight and richly-robed lady, whose
+slippered feet push against the effigy of a particularly alert,
+sharp-muzzled little hound. The two front pews, in the body of the
+church, at the foot of the said tomb, are allotted to the owner and
+household at The Hard. The slender, lively little hound and the two
+sculptured figures lying, peaceful in death, for ever side by side,
+touched and captivated Damaris from the first time she set eyes on them.
+She reverenced and loved them, weaving endless stories about them when,
+in the tedium of prayer or over-lengthy sermon, her attention, all too
+often, strayed.
+
+This morning the three bells jangled altogether as she reached the
+churchyard gate. Then the smallest tolled alone, hurrying stragglers. She
+was indeed late, the bulk of the congregation already seated, the Canon
+at the reading-desk and Mrs. Horniblow wheezing forth a voluntary upon
+the harmonium, when she walked up the aisle.
+
+But, during her brief passage, Damaris could not but observe the
+largeness of the assembly. An uncommon wave of piety must have swept over
+the parish this morning! The Battyes and Taylors were present in force.
+Farmers and tradespeople mustered in impressive array. Even Dr.
+Cripps--by no means a frequent churchgoer--and his forlorn-looking,
+red-eyed little wife were there. The Miss Minetts had a lady with them--a
+plump, short little person, dressed with attempted fashion, whose back
+struck Damaris as quaintly familiar, she catching a glimpse of it in
+passing. Most surprising of all, William Jennifer headed a contingent
+from the Island, crowding the men's free seats to right and left of the
+west door. An expectancy, moreover, seemed to animate the throng. Then
+she remembered, the new curate, Reginald Sawyer, had informed her and
+Miss Felicia two evenings ago when he had called and been bidden to stay
+to tea, that he would preach for the first time at the eleven o'clock
+service. So far he had only occupied the pulpit on Sunday afternoons,
+when a country congregation is liable to be both scanty and somnolent.
+To-day he would prove himself before the heads of tribes, before the
+notables. And Damaris wished him well, esteeming him a worthy young man,
+if somewhat provincial and superfluously pompous.
+
+In the servants' pew directly behind, Mary and Mrs. Cooper were duly
+ensconced, supported by Mr. Patch, two small male Patches, white-collared
+and shining with excess of cleanliness, wedged in between him and his
+stable sub-ordinate Conyers, the groom. The Hard thus made a commendably
+respectable show, as Damaris reflected with satisfaction.
+
+She stood, she knelt, her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the
+tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog
+serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and
+droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The
+choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch.
+And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting
+excursions right and left. For half-way through the litany some belated
+worshipper arrived, causing movement in the men's free seats. This oddly
+disturbed her. Her mind flew again to Faircloth, and the strange
+impression of her own soul's return declaring this and no other to be his
+actual neighbourhood. And if it indeed were so?--Damaris thrust back the
+emotions begotten of that question, as unpermissibly stormy at this time
+and in this place.
+
+She tried to fix her thoughts wholly upon the office. But, all too soon
+they sprang aside again, now circling about the enigmatic back beheld in
+the Miss Minetts' pew. Of whom did that round, dressy little form remind
+her? Why--why--of Theresa, of course. Not Theresa, genius and saint of
+Spanish Avila; but Theresa Bilson, her sometime governess-companion of
+doubtfully amiable memory. She longed to satisfy herself, but could only
+do so by turning round and looking squarely--a manoeuvre impossible
+during the prayers, but which might be accomplished later, when the
+congregation rose to sing the hymn before the sermon.
+
+She must wait. And during that waiting light, rather divertingly, broke
+in on her. For supposing her belief as to the lady's identity correct,
+must not dear Aunt Felicia be party to this resurrection? Had not she
+known, and stolen forth this morning to perfect some innocent plot of
+peace-making? In furtherance of which she now cunningly remained at home,
+thus leaving Damaris free to offer renewal of favour or withhold it as
+she pleased. Was not that deliciously characteristic of Aunt Felicia and
+her permanent effort to serve two masters--to make everybody happy, and,
+regardless of conflicting interests, everybody else too?--Well, Damaris
+was ready to fulfil her wishes. She bore Theresa no ill-will. An
+inclination to grudge or resentment seemed to her unworthy. Whatever
+Theresa's tiresomenesses, they were over and done with, surely, quite
+immensely long ago.
+
+The hymn given out and the tune of it played through, the assembly
+scraped and rustled to its feet. Damaris standing, in height overtopping
+her neighbours, discreetly turned her head. Let her eyes rest an instant,
+smiling, upon the upturned polished countenances of the two small
+Patches--shyly watching her--and then seek a more distant goal. Yes,
+veritably Theresa Bilson in the flesh--very much in the flesh, full of
+face and plump of bosom, gold-rimmed glasses gleaming, her mouth opened
+wide in song. It was a little astonishing to see her so unchanged. For
+how much had happened since the day of that choir-treat, at Harchester,
+which marked her deposition, the day of Damaris' sleep in the sunshine
+and awakening in the driving wet out on the Bar.--The day wherein so much
+began, and so much ended, slashed across and across with an extravagance
+of lasting joy and lasting pain!--In the sense of it all Damaris lost
+herself a little, becoming forgetful of her existing situation. She
+looked past, over Theresa and beyond.
+
+At the extreme end of the church, in the last of the free seats where
+the light from the west door streamed inward, a man's figure detached
+itself with singular distinctness from the background of whitewashed
+wall. He, too, overtopped his fellows, and that by several inches. And
+from the full length of the building, across the well-filled benches, his
+glance sought and met that of Damaris, and held it in fearless, high
+security of affection not to be gainsaid.
+
+The nice, clean-shining little Patches, still watching shyly out of their
+brown, glossy, mouse-like eyes, to their extreme mystification saw the
+colour flood Damaris' face, saw her lips tremble and part as in prelude
+to happy speech. Then saw her grow very pale, and, turning away, clutch
+at the head of the alert little hound. Mrs. Cooper delivered herself of a
+quite audible whisper to the effect--"that Miss Damaris was took
+faint-like, as she feared." And Mary leaned forward over the front of the
+pew in quick anxiety. But our maiden's weakness was but passing. She
+straightened herself, stood tall and proudly again, looking at the knight
+and his lady lying so peacefully side by side upon their marble couch.
+She gathered them into her gladness--they somehow sympathized, she felt,
+in her present sweet and poignant joy. Her soul had known best, had been
+right in its homing--since Faircloth was here--was here.
+
+That sweet, poignant joy flooded her, so that she wordlessly gave thanks
+and praise. He was in life--more, was within sight of her, hearing the
+same sounds, breathing the same air. Across the short dividing space,
+spirit had embraced spirit. He claimed her.--Had not his will, indeed,
+far more than any curiosity regarding the identity of poor, plump little
+Theresa, compelled her to look around?
+
+She demanded nothing further, letting herself dwell in a perfection of
+content--without before or after--possible only to the pure in heart and
+to the young.
+
+The hymn concluded, Damaris knelt, while Reginald Sawyer, having mounted
+into the pulpit, read the invocation; mechanically rose from her knees
+with the rest, and disposed herself in the inner corner of the pew,
+sitting sideways so that her left hand might rest upon the carven marble
+margin of the tomb. She liked touch of it still, in the quietude of her
+great content, cherishing a pretty fancy of the knight and his lady's
+sympathy and that also of their sprightly little footstool dog.
+
+Otherwise she was deaf to outward things, deliciously oblivious, wrapped
+away sweetly within herself. Hence she quite failed to notice how
+awkwardly Sawyer stumbled, treading on the fronts of his long surplice
+when going up the pulpit stairs. How he fumbled with his manuscript as
+he flattened it out on the cushioned desk. Or how husky was his voice,
+to the point of the opening sentences being almost inaudible. The young
+clergyman suffered, indeed, so it appeared, from a painfully excessive
+fit of nervousness. All this she missed, not awakening from her state of
+blissful trance until the sermon had been under way some good five to
+ten minutes.
+
+Her awakening even then was gradual. It was also unpleasant. It began in
+vague and uneasy suspicion of something unusual and agitating toward. In
+consciousness of a hushed and strained attention, very foreign to the
+customary placid, not to say bovine, indifference of the ordinary country
+congregation. The preacher's voice was audible enough now, in good truth,
+though still under insufficient control. It roared, cracked upward,
+approaching a scream. Sentences trod on one another's heels, so rapid was
+his delivery; or bumped and jolted so overlaid was it with emphasis. He,
+dealt in ugly words, too--"lies, drunkenness, theft, profanity;" and
+worse still, "uncleanness, adultery, carnal debauchery." For not venial
+sins only, but mortal sins likewise were rife in Deadham, as he averred,
+matters of common knowledge and everyday occurrence--tolerated if not
+openly encouraged, callously winked at. The public conscience could
+hardly be said to exist, so indurated was it, so moribund through lack of
+stimulation and through neglect. Yet such wickedness, sooner or later,
+must call down the vengeance of an offended God. It would be taken upon
+these lawbreakers. Here or hereafter these evil-livers would receive the
+chastisement their deeds invited and deserved. Let no man deceive
+himself. God is just. He is also very terrible in judgment. Hell yawns
+for the impenitent.
+
+Breathless, he paused; and a subdued sigh, an instinctive shuffling of
+feet ran through the assembly.--Yet these were but generalities after
+all, often heard before, when you came to think, though seldom so
+forcibly put. Every man made liberal gift of such denunciations to his
+neighbours, rather than applied their lesson to himself. But Reginald
+Sawyer was merely gathering energy, gathering courage for more detailed
+assault. He felt nervous to the verge of collapse--a new and really
+horrible experience. His head was hot, his feet cold. The temptation
+simply and crudely to give in, bundle down the pulpit stairs and bolt,
+was contemptibly great. His eyesight played tricks on him. Below there,
+in the body of the church, the rows of faces ran together into irregular
+pink blots spread meaninglessly above the brown of the oaken pews, the
+brown, drab, and black, too, of their owners' Sunday best. Here and
+there a child's light frock or white hat intruded upon the prevailing
+neutral tints; as did, in a startling manner, Damaris Verity's
+russet-red plume and suit.
+
+Time and again, since he began his sermon, had that dash of rich colour
+drawn his reluctant attention. He recoiled from, oddly dreaded it--now
+more than ever, since to him it rather mercilessly focussed the subject
+and impending climax of his denunciatory address.
+
+The pause began to affect the waiting congregation, which stirred
+uneasily. Some one coughed. And Sawyer was a sufficiently practised
+speaker to know that, once you lose touch with an audience, it is next to
+impossible successfully to regain your ascendency over it. Unless he was
+prepared to accept ignominious defeat he must brace himself, or it would
+be too late. He abominated defeat. Therefore, summoning all his native
+combativeness, he took his own fear by the throat, straightened his
+manuscript upon the desk, and vehemently broke forth into speech.
+
+--Did his hearers deny or doubt the truth of his assertions, suppose that
+he spoke at random, or without realization of the heavy responsibility
+he incurred in advancing such accusations? They were in error, so he told
+them. He advanced no accusations which he could not justify by examples
+chosen from among themselves, from among residents in this parish. He
+would be false to his duty both to them--his present audience--and to his
+and their Creator, were he to abstain from giving those examples out of
+respect of persons. Other occupants of this pulpit might have--he feared
+had--allowed worldly considerations to influence and silence them.
+
+A nasty cut this, at the poor vicar-canon, increasingly a prey to
+distracted fidgets, sitting helpless in the chancel.
+
+But of such pusillanimity, such time-serving, he--Reginald
+Sawyer--scorned to be guilty. The higher placed the sinner, the more
+heinous the sin.--He would deal faithfully with all, since not only was
+the salvation of each one in jeopardy, but his own salvation was in peril
+likewise, inasmuch as, at the dread Last Assize, he would be required to
+give account of his stewardship in respect of this sinful place.
+
+Thus far Damaris had listened in deepening distaste. Surely the young man
+very much magnified his office, was in manner exaggerated, in matter
+aggressive and verbose? Notwithstanding its attempted solemnity and heat,
+his sermon seemed to be conventional, just a "way of talking," and a
+conceited one at that. But, as he proceeded to set forth his promised
+examples of local ill-living, distaste passed into bewilderment and
+finally into a sense of outrage, blank and absolute. He named no names,
+and wrapped his statements up in Biblical language. Yet they remained
+suggestive and significant enough. He spoke, surely, of those whose
+honour was dearest to her, whom she boundlessly loved. Under plea of
+rebuking vice, he laid bare the secrets, violated the sanctities of their
+private lives. Yet was not that incredible? All decencies of custom and
+usage forbade it, stamped such disclosure as unpermissible, fantastic. He
+must be mad, or she herself mad, mishearing, misconceiving him.
+
+"Adulterous father, bastard son--publican sheltering youthful offenders
+from healthy punishment in the interests of personal gain."--Of that last
+she made nothing, failed to follow it. But the rest?--
+
+It was true, too. But not as he represented it, all its tragic beauty,
+all the nobleness which tempered and, in a measure at least, discounted
+the great wrong of it, stripped away--leaving it naked, torn from its
+setting, without context and so without perspective. Against this not
+only her tenderness, but sense of justice, passionately fought. He made
+it monstrous and, in that far, untrue, as caricature is untrue, crying
+aloud for explanation and analysis. Yet who could explain? Circumstances
+of time and place rendered all protest impossible. Nothing could be done,
+nothing said. Thus her beloved persons were exposed, judged, condemned
+unheard, without opportunity of defence.
+
+And realizing this, realizing redress hopelessly barred, she cowered
+down, her head bowed, almost to the level of the marble couch whereon the
+figures of knight and lady reposed in the high serenity of love and
+death. Happier they than she, poor child, for her pride trailed in the
+dust, her darling romance of brother and sister and all the rare pieties
+of her heart, defiled by a shameful publicity, exposed for every Tom,
+Dick and Harry to paw over and sneer at!
+
+Horror of a crowd, which watches the infliction of some signal disgrace,
+tormented her imagination, moreover, to the temporary breaking of her
+spirit. Whether that crowd was, in the main, hostile or sympathetic
+mattered nothing. The fact that it silently sat there, silently observed,
+made every member of it, for the time, her enemy. Even the trusted
+servants just behind, comfortable comely Mary, soft Mrs. Cooper, the
+devoted Patch, were hateful to her as the rest. Their very loyalty--which
+she for no instant doubted--went only to fill the cup of her humiliation
+to the brim.
+
+Reginald Sawyer's voice continued; but what he said now she neither heard
+nor cared. Her martyrdom could hardly suffer augmentation, the whole
+world seemed against her, she set apart, pilloried.--But not alone.
+Faircloth was set apart, pilloried, also. And remembering this, her
+courage revived. The horror of the crowd lifted. For herself she could
+not fight; but for him she could fight, with strength and conviction, out
+of the greatness of her love for him, out of her recognition that the
+ignominy inflicted upon him was more bitter, more cruel, than any
+inflicted upon her. For those who dare, in a moment the worst can turn
+best.--She would make play with the freedom which this breach of
+convention, of social reticence, of moral discretion, conferred upon her.
+The preacher had gone far in demolition. She would go as far, and
+further, in construction, in restitution. Would openly acknowledge the
+bond which joined Faircloth to her and to her people, by openly claiming
+his protection now, in this hour of her disgrace and supreme dismay. She
+would offer no excuse, no apology. Only there should be no more attempted
+concealment or evasion of the truth on her part, no furtiveness in his
+and her relation. Once and for all she would make her declaration, cry it
+from the house-top in fearless yet tender pride.
+
+Damaris stood up, conspicuous in her red dress amid that rather drab
+assembly as a leaping flame. She turned about, fronting the perplexed and
+agitated congregation, her head carried high, her face austere for all
+its youthful softness, an heroic quality, something, indeed, superlative
+and grandiose in her bearing and expression, causing a shrinking in those
+who saw her and a certain sense of awe.
+
+Her eyes sought Faircloth again. Found him, and unfalteringly spoke with
+him, bidding him claim her as she, claimed him, bidding him come. Which
+bidding he obeyed; and that at the same rather splendid level of
+sentiment, worthily sustaining her abounding faith in him. For a touch of
+the heroic and superlative was present in his bearing and expression,
+also, as he came up the church between the well-filled pews--these
+tenanted, to left and right, by some who figured in his daily life,
+figured in his earliest recollections, by others, newcomers, to him, even
+by sight, barely known; yet each and all, irrespective of age, rank, and
+position, affecting his outlook and mental atmosphere in some particular,
+as every human personality does and must, with whom one's life, ever so
+transiently, is thrown. Had he had time to consider them, this cloud of
+witnesses might have proved disturbing even to his masterful will and
+steady nerve. But he had not time. There was for him--so perfectly--the
+single object, the one searching yet lovely call to answer, the one act
+to be performed.
+
+Reaching the front pew upon the gospel side, Darcy Faircloth took
+Damaris' outstretched hand. He looked her in the eyes, his own
+worshipful, ablaze at once with a great joy and a great anger; and then
+led her back, down the length of the aisle, through the west door into
+the liberty of the sunshine and the crisp northerly wind outside.
+
+Standing here, the houses and trees of the village lay below them. The
+whole glinting expanse of the Haven was visible right up to the town of
+Marychurch gathered about its long-backed Abbey, whose tower, tall and in
+effect almost spectral, showed against the purple ridges of forest and
+moorland beyond. Over the salt marsh in the valley, a flock of plovers
+dipped and wheeled, their backs and wide flapping wings black, till, in
+turning, their breasts and undersides flashed into snow and pearl.
+
+And because brother and sister, notwithstanding diversities of upbringing
+and of station, were alike children of the open rather than of cities,
+born to experiment, to travel and to seafaring round this ever-spinning
+globe, they instinctively took note of the extensive, keen though
+sun-gilded prospect--before breaking silence and giving voice to the
+emotion which possessed them--and, in so doing, found refreshment and a
+brave cleansing to their souls.
+
+Still holding Faircloth's hand, and still silent, her shoulder touching
+his now and again in walking, Damaris went down the sloping path, hoary
+lichen-stained head-and-foot stones set in the vivid churchyard grass--as
+yet unbleached by the cold of winter--on either side. The sense of his
+strength, of the fine unblemished vigour of his young manhood, here
+close beside her--so strangely her possession and portion of her natural
+inalienable heritage--filled her with confident security and with a
+restful, wondering calm. So that the shame publicly put on her to shed
+its bitterness, her horror of the watching crowd departed, fading out
+into unreality. Though still shaken, still quivering inwardly from the
+ordeal of the past hour, she already viewed that shame and horror as but
+accidents to be lived down and disregarded, by no means as essential
+elements in the adventurous and precious whole. Presently they would
+altogether lose their power to wound and to distress her, while this
+freedom and the closer union, gained by means of them, continued
+immutable and fixed.
+
+It followed that, when in opening the churchyard gate and holding it back
+for her to pass, Faircloth perforce let go her hand and, the spell of
+contact severed, found himself constrained to speak at last, saying:
+
+"You know you have done a mighty splendid, dangerous thing--no less than
+burned your boats--and that in the heat of generous impulse, blind,
+perhaps--I can't but fear so--to the heavy cost."
+
+Damaris could interrupt him, with quick, sweet defiance:
+
+"But there is no cost!"
+
+And, to drive home the sincerity of her disclaimer, and further reassure
+him, she took his hand again and held it for an instant close against her
+bosom, tears and laughter together present in her eyes.
+
+"Ah! you beautiful dear, you beautiful dear," Faircloth cried, brokenly,
+as in pain, somewhat indeed beside himself. "Before God, I come near
+blessing that blatant young fool and pharisee of a parson since he has
+brought me to this."
+
+Then he put her a little way from him, penetrated by fear lest the white
+love which--in all honour and reverence--he was bound to hold her in,
+should flush ever so faintly, red.
+
+"For, after all, it is up to me," he said, more to himself than to her,
+"to make very sure there isn't, and never--by God's mercy--shall be,
+any cost."
+
+And with that--for the avoidance of the congregation, now streaming
+rather tumultuously out of church--they went on across the village green,
+hissed at by slow waddling, hard-eyed, most conceited geese, to the lane
+which leads down to the causeway and warren skirting the river-bank.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WHEREIN MISS FELICIA VERITY CONCLUSIVELY SHOWS WHAT SPIRIT SHE IS OF
+
+
+Her attraction consisted in her transparency, in the eager simplicity
+with which she cast her home-made nets and set her innocuous springes.
+To-day Miss Felicia was out to wing the Angel of Peace, and crowd that
+celestial messenger into the arms of Damaris and Theresa Bilson
+collectively and severally. Such was the major interest of the hour. But,
+for Miss Felicia the oncoming of middle-age by no means condemned the
+lesser pleasures of life to nullity. Hence the minor interest of the hour
+centred in debate as to whether or not the thermometer justified her
+wearing a coat of dark blue silk and cloth, heavily trimmed with ruchings
+and passementerie, reaching to her feet. A somewhat sumptuous garment
+this, given her by Sir Charles and Damaris last winter in Madrid. She
+fancied herself in it greatly, both for the sake of the dear donors, and
+because the cut of it was clever, disguising the over-narrowness of her
+maypole-like figure and giving her a becoming breadth and fulness.
+
+She decided in favour of the coveted splendour; and at about a
+quarter-past twelve strolled along the carriage-drive on her way to the
+goose green and the village street. There, or thereabouts, unless her
+plot lamentably miscarried, she expected to meet her niece and that
+niece's ex-governess-companion, herded in amicable converse by the
+pinioned Angel of Peace. Her devious and discursive mind fluttered to and
+fro, meanwhile, over a number of but loosely connected subjects.
+
+Of precisely what, upon a certain memorable occasion, had taken place
+between her brother, Sir Charles, and poor Theresa--causing the latter
+to send up urgent signals of distress to which she, Miss Felicia,
+instantly responded--she still was ignorant. Theresa had, she feared,
+been just a wee bit flighty, leaving Damaris unattended while herself
+mildly gadding. But such dereliction of duty was insufficient to account
+for the arbitrary fashion in which she had been sent about her business,
+literally--the word wasn't pretty--chucked out! Miss Felicia always
+suspected there must be _something_, she would say _worse_--it sounded
+harsh--but something _more_ than merely that. Her interpretations of
+peculiar conduct were liable to run in terms of the heart. Had Theresa,
+poor thing, by chance formed a hopeless attachment?--Hopeless, of course,
+almost ludicrously so; yet what more natural, more comprehensible,
+Charles being who and what he was? Not that he would, in the faintest
+degree, lend himself to such misplaced affection. Of that he was
+incapable. The bare idea was grotesque. He, of course, was guiltless.
+But, assuming there _was_ a feeling on Theresa's side, wasn't she equally
+guiltless? She could not help being fascinated.--Thus Miss Felicia was
+bound to acquit both. Alike they left the court without a stain on their
+respective characters.
+
+Not for worlds would she ever dream of worrying Charles by attempting to
+reintroduce poor Theresa to his notice. But with Damaris it was
+different. The idea that any persons of her acquaintance were at sixes
+and sevens, on bad terms, when, with a little good will on their part
+and tactful effort upon hers, they might be on pleasant ones was to her
+actively afflicting. To drop an old friend, or even one not
+conspicuously friendly if bound to you by associations and habit,
+appeared to her an offence against corporate humanity, an actual however
+fractional lowering of the temperature of universal charity. The loss to
+one was a loss to all--in some sort. Therefore did she run to adjust, to
+smooth, to palliate.
+
+Charles was away--it so neatly happened--and Theresa Bilson here, not, it
+must be owned, altogether without Miss Felicia's connivance. If darling
+Damaris still was possessed of a hatchet she must clearly be given, this
+opportunity to bury it. To have that weapon safe underground would be,
+from every point of view, so very much nicer.
+
+At this point in her meditations beneath the trees bordering the carriage
+drive, their bare tops swaying in the breeze and bright sunshine, Miss
+Felicia fell to contrasting the present exhilarating morning with that
+dismally rainy one, just over three years ago, when--regardless of her
+sister, Mrs. Cowden's remonstrances--she had come here from Paulton Lacy
+in response to Theresa's signals of distress. Just at the elbow of the
+drive, so she remembered, she had met a quite astonishingly good-looking
+young man, brown-gold bearded, his sou'wester and oilskins shining with
+wet. She vaguely recalled some talk about him with her brother, Sir
+Charles, afterwards during luncheon.--What was it?--Oh! yes, of course,
+it was he who had rescued Damaris when she was lost out on the Bar, and
+brought her home down the tide-river by boat. She had often wanted to
+know more about him, for he struck her at the time as quite out of the
+common, quite remarkably attractive. But on the only occasion since when
+she had mentioned the subject, Damaris drew in her horns and became
+curiously uncommunicative. It was all connected, of course, with the dear
+girl's illness and the disagreeable episode of Theresa's dismissal.--How
+all the more satisfactory, then, that the Theresa business, in any case,
+was at this very hour in process of being set right! Miss Felicia had
+advised Theresa how to act--to speak to Damaris quite naturally and
+affectionately, taking her good-will for granted. Damaris would be
+charming to her, she felt convinced.
+
+Felicia Verity held the fronts of her long blue coat together, since the
+wind sported with them rather roughly, and went forward with her quick,
+wavering gait.
+
+It was a pity Damaris did not marry she sometimes felt. Of course,
+Charles would miss her quite terribly. Their love for one another was so
+delightful, so really unique. On his account she was glad.--And yet--with
+a sigh, while the colour in her thin cheeks heightened a little--lacking
+marriage a woman's life is rather incomplete. Not that she herself had
+reason for complaint, with all the affection showered upon her! The last
+two years, in particular, had been abundantly blessed thanks to Charles
+and Damaris. She admired them, dear people, with all her warm heart and
+felt very grateful to them.
+
+Here it should be registered, in passing, that the resilience of Felicia
+Verity's inherent good-breeding saved her gratitude from any charge of
+grovelling, as it saved her many enthusiasms from any charge of
+sloppiness. Both, if exaggerated, still stood squarely, even gallantly
+upon their feet.
+
+Her mind switched back to the ever fertile question of the married and
+the single state. She often wondered why Charles never espoused a second
+wife. He would have liked a son surely? But then, were it possible to
+find a fault in him, it would be that of a little coldness, a little
+loftiness in his attitude towards women. He was too far above them in
+intellect and experience, she supposed, and through all the remarkable
+military commands he had held, administrative posts he had occupied,
+quite to come down to their level. In some ways Damaris was very like
+him--clever, lofty too at moments. Possibly this accounted for her
+apparent indifference to affairs of the heart and to lovers. Anyhow, she
+had ample time before her still in relation to all that.
+
+Miss Felicia passed into the road. About fifty yards distant she saw the
+servants--Mary, Mrs. Cooper and Patch--standing close together in a
+quaint, solemn, little bunch. The two small Patches circled round the
+said bunch, patiently expectant, not being admitted evidently to whatever
+deliberations their elders and betters had in hand.
+
+Felicia Verity's relations with the servants were invariably excellent.
+Yet, finding them in mufti, outside the boundaries of her brother's
+demesne thus, she was conscious of a certain modesty, hesitating alike to
+intrude upon their confabulations and to pass onward without a trifle
+amiable of talk. She advanced, smiling, nodded to the two women, then--
+
+"A delicious day, isn't it, Patch?" she said, adding, for lack of a more
+pertinent remark--"What kind of sermon did the new curate, Mr. Sawyer,
+give you?--A good one, I hope?"
+
+A pause followed this guileless question, during which Mary looked on the
+ground, Mrs. Cooper murmured: "Oh! dear, oh, dear!" under her breath, and
+Patch swallowed visibly before finding voice to reply:
+
+"One, I regret to say, ma'am, he never ought to have preached."
+
+"Poor young man!" she laughed it off. "You're a terribly severe critic,
+I'm afraid, Patch. Probably he was nervous."
+
+"And reason enough. You might think Satan himself stood at his elbow, the
+wicked things he said."
+
+This statement, coming from the mild and cow-like Mrs. Cooper, caused
+Felicia Verity the liveliest surprise. She glanced enquiringly from one
+to the other of the little group, reading constraint and hardly repressed
+excitement in the countenance of each. Their aspect and behaviour struck
+her, in fact, as singular to the point of alarm.
+
+"Mary," she asked, a trifle breathlessly, "has anything happened? Where
+is Miss Damaris?"
+
+"Hadn't she got back to The Hard, ma'am, before you came out?"
+
+"No--why should she? You and the other servants always reach home first."
+
+"Miss Damaris went out before the rest," Mrs. Cooper broke forth in
+dolorous widowed accents. "And no wonder, pore dear young lady, was it,
+Mr. Patch? My heart bled for her, ma'am, that it did."
+
+Miss Felicia, gentle and eager, so pathetically resembling yet not
+resembling her famous brother, grew autocratic, stern as him
+almost, for once.
+
+"And you allowed Miss Damaris to leave church alone--she felt unwell,
+I suppose--none of you accompanied her? I don't understand it at
+all," she said.
+
+"Young Captain Faircloth went out with Miss Damaris. She wished it,
+ma'am," Mary declared, heated and resentful at the unmerited rebuke. "She
+as good as called to him to come and take her out of church. It wasn't
+for us to interfere, so we held back."
+
+"Captain Faircloth? But this becomes more and more extraordinary! Who is
+Captain Faircloth?"
+
+"Ah! there you touch it, you must excuse my saying, ma'am." Mrs.
+Cooper gasped.
+
+But at this juncture, Patch, rising to the height of masculine
+responsibility, flung himself gallantly--and how unwillingly--into the
+breach. He was wounded in his respect and respectability alike, wounded
+for the honour of the family whom he had so long and faithfully served.
+He was fairly cut to the quick--while these three females merely darkened
+judgment by talking all at cross purposes and all at once. Never had the
+solid, honest coachman found himself in a tighter or, for that matter, in
+anything like so tight a place. But, looking in the direction of the
+village, black of clothing, heavy of walk and figure, he espied, as he
+trusted, approaching help.
+
+"If you please, ma'am," he said, touching his black bowler as he
+spoke, "I see Canon Horniblow coming along the road. I think it would
+be more suitable for him to give you an account of what has passed.
+He'll know how to put it with--with the least unpleasantness to all
+parties. It isn't our place--Mrs. Cooper's, Mary's, or mine--if you'll
+pardon my making so free with my opinion, to mention any more of
+what's took place."
+
+Felicia Verity, now thoroughly frightened, darted forward. The fronts of
+her blue coat again flew apart, and that rich garment stood out in a
+prodigious frill around and behind her from the waist, as she leaned on
+the wind, almost running in her agitation and haste.
+
+"My dear Canon," she cried, "I am in such anxiety. I learn something has
+happened to my niece, who I had come to meet. Our good servants are so
+distractingly mysterious. They refer me to you. Pray relieve my
+uncertainty and suspense."
+
+But, even while she spoke, Miss Felicia's anxiety deepened, for the
+kindly, easy-going clergyman appeared to suffer, like the servants, from
+some uncommon shock. His large fleshy nose and somewhat pendulous
+cheeks were a mottled, purplish red. Anger and deprecation struggled in
+his glance.
+
+"I was on my way to The Hard," he began, "to express my regrets--offer my
+apologies would hardly be too strong a phrase--to your niece, Miss
+Verity, and to yourself. For I felt compelled, without any delay, to
+dissociate myself from the intemperate procedure of my colleague--of my
+curate. He has used, or rather misused, his official position, has
+grievously misused the privileges of the pulpit--the pulpit of our parish
+church--to attack the reputation of private individuals and resuscitate
+long-buried scandals."
+
+The speaker was, unquestionably, greatly distressed. Miss Felicia,
+though more than ever bewildered, felt for him warmly. It pained her
+excessively to observe how his large hands clasped and unclasped, how
+his loose lips worked.
+
+"Let me assure you," he went on, "though I trust that is superfluous--"
+
+"I am certain it is, dear Dr. Horniblow," she feelingly declared.
+
+"Thanks," he replied. "You are most kind, most indulgent to me, Miss
+Verity.--Superfluous, I would say, to assure you that my colleague
+adopted this deplorable course without my knowledge or sanction. He
+sprang it on me like a bomb-shell. As a Christian my conscience, as a
+gentleman my sense of fair play, condemns his action."
+
+"Yes--yes--I sympathize.--I am convinced you are incapable of any
+indiscretion, any unkindness, in the pulpit or out of it. But why, my
+dear Canon, apologize to us? How can this unfortunate sermon affect me or
+my niece? How can the scandal you hint at in any respect concern us?"
+
+"Because," he began, that mottling of purple increasingly deforming his
+amiable face.--And there words failed him, incontinently he stuck. He
+detested strong language, but--heavens and earth--how could he put it to
+her, as she gazed at him with startled, candid eyes, innocent of guile as
+those of a babe? Only too certainly no word had reached her of the
+truth. The good man groaned in spirit for, like Patch, he found himself
+in a place of quite unexampled tightness, and with no hope of shunting
+the immense discomfort of it on to alien shoulders such as had been
+granted the happier Patch.
+
+"Because," he began again, only to suffer renewed agony of wordlessness.
+In desperation he shifted his ground.
+
+"You have heard, perhaps, that your niece, Miss Damaris, left the church
+before the conclusion of the sermon? I do not blame her"--
+
+He waved a fatherly hand. Miss Verity acquiesced.
+
+"Or rather was led out by--by Captain Faircloth--a young officer in the
+mercantile marine, whose abilities and successful advance in his
+profession this village has every reason to respect."
+
+He broke off.
+
+"Let us walk on towards The Hard. Pray let us walk on.--Has no rumour
+ever reached you, Miss Verity, regarding this young man?"
+
+The wildest ideas flitted through Miss Felicia's brain.
+
+--The figure in shiny oilskins--yet preposterous, surely?--After all, an
+affair of the heart--misplaced affection--Damaris?--Did this account for
+the apparent indifference?
+
+--How intensely interesting; yet how unwise.--How--but she must keep her
+own counsel. The wind, now at her back, glued the blue coat
+inconveniently against and even between her legs, unceremoniously
+whisking her forward.
+
+"Rumours--oh, none," she protested.
+
+"None?" he echoed despairingly. "Pray let us walk on."
+
+A foolish urgency on his part this, she felt, since she was already
+almost on the run.
+
+"None that, by birth, Captain Faircloth is somewhat nearly related to
+your family--to your--your brother, Sir Charles, in fact?"
+
+There, the incubus was off his straining chest at last! He felt easier,
+capable of manipulating the situation to some extent, smoothing down its
+rather terrible ascerbities.
+
+"Such connections do," he hastened to add, "as we must regretfully
+admit, exist even in the highest, the most exalted circles.
+Irregularities of youth, doubtlessly deeply repented of. I repeat sins
+of youth, at which only the sinless--and they, alas! to the shame of my
+sex are lamentably few--can be qualified to cast a stone.--You, you
+follow me?"
+
+"You mean me to understand"--
+
+"Yes, yes--exactly so--to understand that this young man is
+reputed to be"--
+
+"Thank you, my dear Canon--thank you," Felicia Verity here interposed
+quickly, yet with much simple dignity, for on a sudden she became
+singularly unflurried and composed.
+
+"I do, I believe, follow you," she continued.--"You have discharged your
+difficult mission with a delicacy and consideration for which I am
+grateful; but I am unequal to discussing the subject in further detail
+just now.--To me, you know, my brother is above criticism. Whatever
+incidents may--may belong to former years, I accept without cavil or
+question, in silence--dear Dr. Horniblow--in silence. His wishes upon
+this matter--should he care to confide them to me--and those of my
+niece, will dictate my conduct to--towards my nephew, Captain
+Faircloth.--Believe me, in all sincerity, I thank you. I am very much
+indebted to you for the information you have communicated to me. It
+simplifies my position. And now," she gave him her hand, "will you pardon
+my asking you to leave me?"
+
+Walking slowly--for he felt played out, pretty thoroughly done for, as he
+put it, and beat--back to the vicarage and his belated Sunday dinner:--
+
+"And of such are the Kingdom of Heaven," James Horniblow said to
+himself--perhaps truly.
+
+He also said other things, distinctly other things, in which occurred the
+name of Reginald Sawyer whose days as curate of Deadham were numbered. If
+he did not resign voluntarily, well then, pressure must, very certainly,
+be employed to make him resign.
+
+Meanwhile that blue-coated, virginal member of the Kingdom of Heaven
+sped homeward at the top of her speed. She was conscious of immense
+upheaval. Never had she felt so alive, so on the spot. The portals of
+highest drama swung wide before her. She hastened to enter and pour forth
+the abounding treasures of her sympathy at the feet of the actors in this
+most marvellous piece. That her own part in it must be insignificant,
+probably not even a speaking one, troubled her not the least. She was out
+for them, not for herself. It was, also, characteristic of Miss Felicia
+that she felt in nowise shocked. Not the ethical, still less the social
+aspects of the drama affected her, but only its human ones. These dear
+people had suffered, and she hadn't known it. They suffered still. She
+enclosed them in arms of compassion.--If to the pure all things are pure,
+Felicia Verity's purity at this juncture radiantly stood the test. And
+that, not through puritanical shutting of the eyes or juggling with fact.
+As she declared to Canon Horniblow, she accepted the incident without
+question or cavil--for her brother. For herself, any possibility of
+stepping off the narrow path of virtue, and exploring the alluring,
+fragrant thickets disposed to left of it and to right, had never, ever so
+distantly, occurred to her.
+
+She arrived at The Hard with a bright colour and beating heart. Crossed
+the hall and waited at the drawing-room door. A man's voice was audible
+within, low-toned and grave, but very pleasant. It reminded her curiously
+of Charles--Charles long ago on leave from India, lightening the heavy
+conventionalities of Canton Magna with his brilliant, enigmatic, and--to
+her--all too fugitive presence. Harriet had never really appreciated
+Charles--though she was dazzled by his fame at intervals--didn't really
+appreciate him to this day. Well, the loss was hers and the gain
+indubitably Felicia's, since the elder sister's obtuseness had left the
+younger sister a free field.--At thought of which Felicia softly laughed.
+
+Again she listened to the man's voice--her brother Charles's delightful
+young voice. It brought back the glamour of her girlhood, of other
+voices which had mingled with his, of dances, picnics, cricket matches,
+days with the hounds. She felt strangely moved, transported; also
+strangely shy--so that she debated retirement. Did not, of course,
+retire, but went into the drawing-room with a gentle rush, a dart
+between the stumpy pillars.
+
+"I hoped that I should find you both," she said. "Yes," to Damaris'
+solemn and enquiring eyes--"I happened to meet our good, kind Canon and
+have a little conversation with him. I hope"--to Faircloth--"you and I
+may come to know one another better, know one another as friends. You are
+not going?--No, indeed, you must stay to luncheon. It would grieve
+me--and I think would grieve my brother Charles also, if you refused to
+break bread in this house."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DEALING WITH EMBLEMS, OMENS AND DEMONSTRATIONS
+
+
+Deadham resembled most country parishes in this, that, while revelling in
+internal dissensions, when attacked from without its inhabitants promptly
+scrapped every vendetta and, for the time being, stood back to back
+against the world.
+
+As one consequence of such parochial solidarity, the village gentry set
+in a steady stream towards The Hard on the Monday afternoon following
+the historic Sunday already chronicled. Commander and Mrs. Battye
+called. Captain and Mrs. Taylor called, bringing with them their
+daughter Louisa, a tight-lipped, well instructed High School mistress,
+of whom her parents stood--one couldn't but notice it--most wholesomely
+in awe. As is the youthful cuckoo in the nest of the hedge sparrow, so
+was Louisa Taylor to the authors of her being.--Mrs. Horniblow called
+also, flanked by her two girls, May and Doris--plain, thick-set,
+energetic, well-meaning young persons, whom their shrewd mother loved,
+sheltered, rallied, and cherished, while perfectly aware of their
+limitations as to beauty and to brains. Immediately behind her slipped
+in Mrs. Cripps. The doctor abstained, conscious of having put a match to
+the fuse which had exploded yesterday's astounding homiletic torpedo.
+The whole affair irritated him to the point of detestable ill-temper.
+Still, if only to throw dust in the public eye, the house of Cripps must
+be represented. He therefore deputed the job--like so many another
+ungrateful one--to his forlorn-looking and red-eyed spouse. This vote of
+confidence, if somewhat crudely proposed and seconded, was still so
+evidently sincere and kindly meant that Damaris and Miss Felicia felt
+constrained to accept it in good part.
+
+Conversation ran upon the weather, the crops, the migratory wild fowl
+now peopling the Haven, the Royal Family--invariably a favourite topic
+this, in genteel circles furthest removed from the throne--in anecdotes
+of servants and of pets interspersed with protests against the rise in
+butcher Cleave's prices, the dullness of the newspapers and the
+surprising scarcity of eggs.--Ran on any and every subject, in short,
+save that of sermons preached by curates enamoured of the Decalogue.
+
+Alone--saving and excepting Dr. Cripps--did the Miss Minetts fail to put
+in an appearance. This of necessity, since had not they, figuratively
+speaking, warmed the viper in their bosoms, cradled the assassin upon
+their hearth? They were further handicapped, in respect of any
+demonstration, by the fact of Theresa Bilson's presence in their midst.
+Owing to the general combustion, Miss Felicia and the Peace Angel's joint
+mission had gone by the wall. Theresa was still an exile from The Hard,
+and doomed to remain so as the event proved. With that remarkable
+power--not uncommon in her sex--of transmuting fact, granted the healing
+hand of time, from defeat to personal advantage, she had converted her
+repulse by Sir Charles Verity into a legend of quite flattering quality.
+She had left The Hard because--But--
+
+"She must not be asked to give chapter and verse. The position had been
+_extremely_ delicate. Even now she could barely speak of it--she had gone
+through too much. To be more explicit"--she bridled--"would trench upon
+the immodest, almost. But just _this_ she _could_ say--she withdrew from
+The Hard three years ago, because she saw withdrawal would be best for
+_others_. Their peace of mind had been her object."
+
+The above guarded confidences the Miss Minetts, hanging upon her lips,
+received with devout admiration and fully believed. And, the best of it
+was, Theresa had come by now, thanks to frequent rehearsal, fully to
+believe this version herself. At the present juncture it had its
+convenience, since she could declare her allegiance to her former
+employer unimpaired. Thereby was she at liberty to join in the local
+condemnation of Reginald Sawyer and his sermon. She did so with an
+assumption of elegant, if slightly hysterical, omniscience. This was not
+without its practical side. She regretted her inability to meet him at
+meals. In consequence the Miss Minetts proposed he should be served in
+his own sitting-room, until such time as it suited him to find another
+place of residence than the Grey House. For their allegiance went on all
+fours with Theresa's. It was also unimpaired. Propriety had been outraged
+on every hand; matters, heretofore deemed unmentionable, rushed into the
+forefront of knowledge and conversation; yet never had they actually
+enjoyed themselves so greatly. The sense of being a storm
+centre--inasmuch as they harboured the viper assassin--produced in
+them an unexampled militancy. Latent sex-antagonism revealed itself.
+The man, by common consent was down; and, being down, the Miss Minetts
+jumped on him, pounded him, if terms so vulgar are permissible in
+respect for ladies so refined. For every sin of omission, committed
+against their womanhood by the members of his sex, they made him
+scapegoat--unconsciously it is true, but effectively none the less. From
+being his slaves they became his tormentors. Never was young fellow more
+taken aback. Such revulsions of human feeling are instructive--deplorable
+or diverting according as you view it.
+
+Meanwhile that portion of the local gentry aforesaid, whom awkward
+personal predicament--as in the case of Dr. Cripps and the Miss
+Minetts--did not preclude from visiting The Hard, having called early on
+Monday afternoon also left early, being anxious to prove their civility
+of purest water, untainted by self-seeking, by ulterior greed of tea and
+cakes. It followed that Damaris found herself relieved of their somewhat
+embarrassed, though kindly and well-intentioned, presence before sunset.
+And of this she was glad, since the afternoon had been fruitful of
+interests far more intimate and vital in character.
+
+While Captain and Mrs. Taylor, with their highly superior offspring
+Louisa, still held the floor, Damaris received a telegram from her
+father announcing a change of plans involving his immediate return.
+
+"Send to meet the seven-thirty at Marychurch," so the pink paper
+instructed her. "Carteret comes with me. When we arrive will explain."
+
+On reception of the above, her first thought was of the letter forwarded
+yesterday from the India Office, bearing the signature of the Secretary
+of State. And close on the heels of that thought, looking over its
+shoulder, indeed, in the effort--which she resisted--to claim priority,
+was the thought of the dear man with the blue eyes about to be a guest,
+once again, under this roof. This gave her a little thrill, a little
+gasp, wrapping her away to the borders of sad inattention to Louisa
+Taylor's somewhat academic discourse.--The girl's English was altogether
+too grammatical for entire good-breeding. In that how very far away from
+Carteret's!--Damaris tried to range herself with present company. But the
+man with the blue eyes indubitably held the centre of the stage. She wore
+the pearls to-day he gave her at St. Augustin. In what spirit did he
+come?--She hoped in the earlier one, that of the time when she so
+completely trusted him. For his counsel, dared she claim it in that
+earlier spirit, would be of inestimable value just now. She so badly
+needed someone in authority to advise with as to the events of yesterday,
+both in their malign and their beneficent aspects. Aunt Felicia had risen
+to the height of her capacity--dear thing, had been exquisite; but she
+would obey orders rather than issue them. Her office was not to lead, but
+rather to be led. And that the events of yesterday opened a new phase of
+her own and Faircloth's relation to one another appeared beyond dispute.
+Where exactly did the curve of duty towards her father touch that
+relation, run parallel with or intersect it? She felt perplexed.
+
+After tea, Miss Felicia having vanished on some affair of her
+own--Damaris asked no question, but supposed it not unconnected with the
+now, since Sir Charles was about to return, permanently exiled
+Theresa--our maiden went upstairs, in the tender evening light, on
+domestic cares intent. She wished to assure herself that the chintz
+bedroom, opening off the main landing and overlooking the lawn and front
+garden, had been duly made ready for Colonel Carteret. She took a
+somewhat wistful pleasure in silently ministering to his possible small
+needs in the matter of sufficient wealth of towels, candles and soap. She
+lengthened out the process. Lingered, rearranged the ornaments upon the
+mantelpiece, the bunch of sweet-leafed geranium--as yet unshrivelled by
+frost--and belated roses, placed in a vase upon the toilet-table.
+
+In so doing she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror, and paused,
+studying it. Her looks were not at their best. She was wan.--That might,
+in part, be owing to the waning light. Around her eyes were dark circles,
+making them appear unnaturally large and solemn. So yesterday's emotions
+had left their mark! The nervous strain had been considerable and she
+showed it. One cannot drink the cup of shame, however undeserved, with
+physical any more than with mental impunity. She still felt a little
+shattered, but hoped neither her father nor Carteret would remark her
+plight. If the whole affair of yesterday could, in its objectionable
+aspects, be kept from Sir Charles's knowledge she would be infinitely
+glad. And why shouldn't it be? Without permission, Aunt Felicia certainly
+would not tell. Neither would the servants. The parish had given
+testimony, this afternoon, both of its good faith and its discretion.
+
+So much for the objectionable side of the matter. But there was another
+side, far from objectionable, beautiful in sentiment and in promise. And,
+still viewing her reflection in the glass, she saw her eyes lose their
+solemnity, lighten with a smile her lips repeated. This was where
+Carteret's advice would be of so great value. How much ought she to tell
+her father of all that?
+
+For, from amidst the shame, the anger, the strain and effort, Faircloth
+showed, to her thinking, triumphant, satisfying alike to her affection
+and her taste. In no respect would she have asked him other than he was.
+
+She moved across to the window, and sat down there, looking out over the
+garden and battery, with its little cannons, to the Bar, and sea beyond
+which melted into the dim primrose and silver of the horizon. Such colour
+as existed was soft, soothing, the colour of a world of dreams, of
+subdued and voiceless fancies. It was harmonious, restful as an
+accompaniment to vision.--Damaris let it lap against her consciousness,
+encircling, supporting this, as water laps, also encircling and
+supporting--while caressing, mysteriously whispering against a boat's
+side--a boat lying at its moorings, swinging gently upon an even
+keel.--And her vision was of Faircloth, exclusively of him, just now.
+
+For he had stayed to luncheon yesterday. A meal, to him in a sense
+sacred, as being the first eaten by him in his father's house. So
+graciously invited, how, indeed, could he do otherwise than stay? And,
+the initial strangeness, the inherent wonder of that sacred character
+wearing off, he found voice and talked not without eloquence. Talked of
+his proper element, the sea, gaining ease and self-possession from the
+magnitude and manifold enchantments of his theme.
+
+To him, as to all true-born sailor-men--so Damaris divined--the world is
+made of water, with but accident of land. Impeding, inconvenient accident
+at that, too often blocking the passage across or through, and
+constraining you to steer a foolishly, really quite inordinately
+divergent course. Under this obstructive head the two Americas offend
+direfully, sprawling their united strength wellnigh from pole to pole.
+The piercing of their central isthmus promised some mitigation of this
+impertinence of emergent matter; though whether in his, the speaker's
+lifetime, remained--so he took it--open to doubt. The "roaring forties,"
+and grim blizzard-ridden Fuegian Straits would long continue, as he
+feared, to bar the way to the Pacific. Not that his personal fancy
+favoured West so much as East. Not into the sunset but into the sunrising
+did he love to sail some goodly black-hulled ship.--And as he talked,
+more especially at his mention of this eastward voyaging, those manifold
+enchantments of his calling stirred Damaris' imagination, making her
+eyes bright as the fabled eyes of danger, and fathomless as well.
+
+But the best came later. For, Mary having served coffee, Miss Felicia,
+making an excuse of letters to be written, with pretty tact left them to
+themselves. And Faircloth, returning after closing the door behind her
+fluttering, gently eager figure, paused behind Damaris' chair.--Jacobean,
+cane-panelled, with high-carved back and arms to it. Thomas Clarkson
+Verity had unquestionably a nice taste in furniture.--The young
+sea-captain rested his right hand on the dark terminal scroll-work, and
+bending down, laid his left hand upon Damaris' hand, covering it as it
+lay on the white damask table-cloth.
+
+"Have I done what I should, and left undone what I shouldn't do, my dear
+and lovely sister?" he asked her, half-laughing and half-abashed. "It's a
+tricky business being here, you know--to put it no higher than that. And
+it might, with truth, be put far higher. I get so horribly fearful of
+letting you down in any way--however trivial--before other people. I
+balance on a knife-edge all the while."
+
+"Have no silly fears of that sort," Damaris said quickly, a trifle
+distressed.
+
+For it plucked at her sisterly pride in him that he should, even by
+implication, debase himself, noting inequality of station between himself
+and her. She held the worldly aspects of the matter in contempt. They
+angered her, so that she impulsively banished reserve. Leaning forward,
+she bent her head, putting her lips to the image of the flying
+sea-bird--which so intrigued her loving curiosity--and those three
+letters tattooed in blue and crimson upon the back of his hand.
+
+"There--there"--she murmured, as soothing a child--"does this
+convince you?"
+
+But here broke off, her heart contracting with a spasm of wondering
+tenderness. For under that pressure of her lips she felt his flesh quiver
+and start. She looked up at the handsome bearded face, so close above
+her, in swift enquiry, the potion--as once before--troubling her that, in
+touching this quaint stigmata, she inflicted bodily suffering. And, as
+on that earlier occasion, asked the question:
+
+"Ah! but have I hurt you?"
+
+Faircloth shook his head, smiling. Words failed him just then and he went
+pale beneath the overlay of clear brown sunburn.
+
+"Then tell me what this stands for?" she said, being herself strangely
+moved, and desirous to lower the temperature of her own emotion--possibly
+of his as well. "Tell me what it means."
+
+"Just a boy's fear and a boy's superstition--a bit morbid, both of them,
+perhaps--that is as I see things now. For I hold one should leave one's
+body as it pleased the Almighty to make it, unblemished by semi-savage
+decorations which won't wash off."
+
+Faircloth moved away, drew his chair up nearer the head of the table,
+the corner between them, so that his hand could if desire prompted again
+find hers.
+
+"By the way, I'm so glad you don't wear ear-rings, Damaris," he said.
+"They belong to the semi-savage order of decoration. I hate them. You
+never will wear them? Promise me that."
+
+And she had promised, somewhat diverted by his tone of authority and of
+insistence.
+
+"But about this?" she asked him, indicating the blue and crimson symbol.
+
+"As I say, fruit of fear and superstition--a pretty pair in which to put
+one's faith! All the same, they went far to save my life, I fancy--for
+which I thank them mightily being here, with you, to-day."
+
+And he told her--softening the uglier details, as unfit for a
+gently-nurtured woman's hearing--a brutal story of the sea. Of a sailing
+ship becalmed in tropic waters, waiting, through long blistering days and
+breathless sweltering nights, for the breeze which wouldn't come--a
+floating hell, between glaring skies and glaring ocean--and of bullyings,
+indignities and torments devised by a brain diseased by drink.
+
+"But was there no one to interfere, no one to protect you?" Damaris
+cried, aghast.
+
+"A man's master in his own ship," Faircloth answered. "And short of
+mutiny there's no redress. Neither officers nor men had a stomach for
+mutiny. They were a poor, cowed lot. Till this drunken madness came on
+him he had been easy going enough. They supposed, when it passed, he'd
+be so again. And then as he reserved his special attentions for me,
+they were willing to grin and bear it--or rather let me bear it, just
+stupidly letting things go. It was my first long voyage. I'd been lucky
+in my skippers so far, and was a bit soft still. A bit conceited, I
+don't doubt, as well. He swore he'd break my spirit--for my own good,
+of course--and he came near succeeding.--But Damaris, Damaris, dear,
+don't take it to heart so. What does it matter? It did me no lasting
+harm, and was all over and done with--would have been forgotten too,
+but for the rather silly sign of it--years and years ago. Let us talk
+no more about it."
+
+"Oh, no!--go on--please, go on," she brokenly prayed him.
+
+So he told her, further, how at Singapore, the outward voyage at last
+ended, he was tempted to desert; or, better still, put an end, once and
+for all, to the whole black business of living. And how, meditating on
+the methods of such drastic deliverance--sitting in the palm-shaded
+verandah of a fly-blown little eating-house, kept by a monkey-faced,
+squint-eyed Japanese--he happened to pick up a Calcutta newspaper. He
+read its columns mechanically, without interest or understanding, his
+mind still working on methods of death, when a name leapt at him weighted
+with personal meaning.
+
+"It hit me," Faircloth said, "full between the eyes, knocking the
+cry-baby stuff out of me, and knocking stuff of very different order in.
+For I wanted something stronger than mother-love--precious though that
+is--to brace me up and put some spunk into me just then.--Sir Charles was
+campaigning in Afghanistan, and this Calcutta paper sang his praises to a
+rousing tune. Lamented the loss of him to the Indian Government, and the
+lack of appreciation and support of him at home which induced him to take
+foreign service. Can't you imagine how all this about a great soldier,
+whose blood after all ran in my veins, pulled me clean up out of the
+slime, where suicide tempted the soft side of me, into another world?--A
+sane world, in which a man can make good, if only he's pluck to hold
+on.--Yes, he saved me; or at all events roused the spirit in me which
+makes for salvation, and which that drunken brute had almost killed. But,
+because I was only a boy as yet, with a boy's queer instincts and
+extravagancies, I made the monkey-faced, Japanese eating-house
+keeper--who added artistic tattooing to other and less reputable ways of
+piling up a fortune--fix the sea-bird, for faith in my profession--and
+those three initials of my own name and a name not altogether my own,
+right here.--Fix them for remembrance and for a warning of which I could
+never get free. Always I should be forced to see it. And others must see
+it too. Through it my identity--short of mutilation--was indestructibly
+established. From that identity, henceforward, there wasn't any possible
+running away."
+
+Faircloth had ended on a note of exultation, calmly sounded yet profound.
+
+And upon that final note Damaris dwelt now, sitting on the chintz-covered
+window-seat of the room which Carteret would to-night inhabit. She went
+through the cruel story again, while the transparent twilight drew its
+elfin veil over all things, outdoor and in.
+
+The crescent moon, a slender, upright wisp of a thing, climbed the
+southern sky. And Damaris' soul was strangely satisfied, for the story,
+if cruel, was one of restitution and the healing of a wrong. To her
+father--his father--the boy had turned in that bad hour, which very
+perfectly made for peace between them. The curve of her duty to the one,
+as she now apprehended, in nowise cut across or deflected the curve of
+her duty towards the other. The two were the same, were one. And this,
+somehow, some day, when time and sentiment offered opportunity for such
+disclosure, she must let her father know. She must repeat to him the
+story of the eating-house and its monkey-faced proprietor--of
+questionable reputation--away in tropic Singapore. It could hardly fail
+to appeal to him if rightly told. About the events and vulgar publicity
+of yesterday nothing need be said. About this, within careful limits,
+much; and that, with, as she believed, happiest result. She had succeeded
+in bringing father and son together in the first instance. Now, with this
+pathetic story as lever, might she not hope to bring them into closer,
+more permanent union? Why should not Faircloth, in future, come and go,
+if not as an acknowledged son, yet as acknowledged and welcome friend, of
+the house? A consummation this, to her, delightful and reasonable as
+just. For had not the young man passed muster, and that triumphantly--she
+again told herself--in small things as well as great, in things of social
+usage and habit, those "little foxes" which, as between class and class,
+do so deplorably and disastrously "spoil the grapes?"
+
+Therefore she began to invent ingenious speeches to Carteret and to her
+father. Hatch ingenious schemes and pretty plots--in the style of dear
+Aunt Felicia almost!--Was that lady's peace-making passion infectious, by
+chance? And supposing it were, hadn't it very charming and praiseworthy
+turns to it--witness Felicia's rather noble gathering in and acceptance
+of Faircloth yesterday.
+
+Arriving at which engaging conclusion, Damaris felt minded to commune for
+a space with the restful loveliness of the twilight, before going
+downstairs again and seeking more definite employment of books or
+needlework. She raised the window-sash and, kneeling on the
+chintz-covered cushioned window-seat, leaned out.
+
+The gardeners to-day had rooted up the geraniums and dug over the empty
+flower beds, just below, preparatory to planting them with bulbs for
+spring blossoming. The keen, pungent scent of the newly-turned earth
+hung in the humid air, as, mingling with it--a less agreeable
+incense--did the reek of the mud-flats. On the right the twin ilex trees
+formed a mass of soft imponderable gloom. Above and behind them the sky
+was like smoked crystal. The lawn lay open and vacant. Upon it nothing
+hopped or crept. The garden birds had eaten their suppers long since,
+and sought snug bosky perching places for the night. Even the unsleeping
+sea was silent, the tide low and waveless, no more than a languid ripple
+far out upon the shelving sands. All dwelt in calm, in a brooding
+tranquillity which might be felt.
+
+Damaris listened to the silence, until her ears began to suspect its
+sincerity. Sounds were there in plenty, she believed, were her hearing
+sharp enough to detect them. They naughtily played hide-and-seek with
+her, striking a chord too deep or too thinly acute for human sense.
+Sights were there too, had her eyes but a cat's or an owl's keener
+faculty of seeing. Behind the tranquillity she apprehended movement and
+action employing a medium, obeying impulses, to us unknown. Restfulness
+fled away, but, in place of it, interest grew. If she concentrated her
+attention and listened more carefully, she should hear; looked more
+steadily, she should see.
+
+Just because she was tired, a little shattered still and spent, did this
+predominance of outward nature draw her, imposing itself. It beckoned
+her; and, through passing deficiency of will, she followed its beckoning,
+making no serious effort to resist. With the consequence she presently
+did hear sounds, but sounds surely real and recognizable enough.
+
+Coming from the shore eastwards, below the sea-wall along the river
+frontage, ponies walked, or rather floundered, fetlock deep in blown
+sand--a whole drove of them to judge by the confused and muffled
+trampling of their many hoofs. The drop from the top of the sea-wall to
+the beach was too great, and the space between the foot of the wall and
+the river-bank and breakwater too confined, for her to see the animals,
+even had not oncoming darkness rendered all objects increasingly
+ill-defined.
+
+But the confused trampling instead of keeping along the foreshore, as in
+all reason it should, now came up and over the sea-wall, on to the
+battery, into the garden, heading towards the house, Damaris strained her
+eyes through the tranquil obscurity, seeking visible cause of this
+advancing commotion, but without effect. Yet all the while, as her
+hearing clearly testified, the unseen ponies hustled one another,
+plunging, shying away from the swish and crack of a long-thonged whip.
+One stumbled and rolled over in the sand.--For although the mob was
+half-way up the lawn by now, the shuffling, sliding sand stayed always
+with them.--After a nasty struggle it got on to its feet, tottering
+forward under savage blows, dead lame. Another, a laggard, fell into its
+tracks, and lay there foundered, rattling in the throat.
+
+By this time the foremost of the drove came abreast the house front,
+where Sir Charles Verity's three ground-floor rooms, with the corridor
+behind them, ranged out from the main building. The many-paned
+semicircular windows of these rooms dimly glistened, below their
+fan-shaped, slated roofs. The crowding scurry of scared, over-driven
+animals was so indisputable that Damaris expected a universal smashing of
+glass. But the sound of many hoofs, still muted by sliding sand, passed
+straight on into and through the house as though no obstacle intervened
+barring progress.
+
+The many-paned windows remained intact, undemolished, dimly glistening
+beneath their slated roofs. The garden stretched vacant, as before, right
+away to the battery, in the elusive twilight, a sky of smoked
+crystal--through which stars began to show faintly, points of cold
+blurred light--above the gloom of the ilex trees to the west, and in the
+south, above the indistinguishable sea, the slender moon hanging upright,
+silver and sickle-shaped.
+
+Thus far Damaris' entire consciousness had resided in and been limited to
+her auditory sense; concentration being too absorbed and intense to allow
+room for reasoning, still less for scepticism or even astonishment. She
+had watched with her ears--as the blind watch--desperate to interpret,
+instant by instant, inch by inch, this reconstructed tragedy of long-dead
+man and long-dead beast. There had been no thinking round the central
+interest, no attempted reading of its bearing upon normal events. Mind
+and imagination were fascinated by it to the exclusion of all else. It
+acted as an extravagant dream acts, abrogating all known laws of cause
+and effect, giving logic and science the lie, negativing probability,
+making the untrue true, the impossible convincingly manifest.
+
+Not, indeed, until she beheld Mary Fisher, deep-bosomed and comely, in
+black gown, white apron and cap, moving within those rooms
+downstairs--still echoing, as they surely must, to that tumultuous and
+rather ghastly equine transit--did the extraordinary character of the
+occurrence flash into fullness of relief.
+
+Mary, meanwhile, set down her flat candlestick upon the big writing-table
+in Sir Charles's study, lighted lamps and drew blinds and curtains. Went
+into the bedroom next door and dressing-room beyond, methodically
+performing the evening ritual of "shutting up." Her shadow marched with
+her, as though mockingly assisting in her operations, now crouching, now
+leaping ahead, blotting a ceiling, extending itself upon a wall space.
+Other shadows, thrown by the furniture, came forth and leapt also,
+pranced, skipping back into hiding as the candle-light shifted and
+passed. But save this indirect admission of the immaterial and grotesque,
+everything showed reassuringly ordinary, the woman herself unconcerned,
+ignorant of disturbance.
+
+Damaris rose from her kneeling posture upon the window-seat and,
+standing, lowered the sash. Once was enough. It was no longer incumbent
+upon her to listen or to look. If these ghostly phenomena were repeated
+they could convey nothing more to her, nothing fresh. They had delivered
+their message--one addressed wholly and solely to herself, so she judged,
+since Mary had so conspicuously no suspicion of it.
+
+Our maiden's lips were dry. Her heart beat in her ears. Yet she was in no
+degree unnerved. Seldom indeed had she been more mistress of her powers,
+self-realized and vigilant. Nor did she feel tired any more, infirm of
+will and spent. Rather was she consciously resolute to encounter and
+withstand events--of what order she did not know as yet but events of
+moment and far-reaching result, already on the road, journeying toward
+her hotfoot. They were designed to test and try her. Would do their
+utmost to overwhelm, to submerge her, were she weak. But she didn't
+intend them to submerge her. She bade weakness quit, all her young
+courage rising in arms.
+
+The marvellous things she just now heard, so nearly saw--for it had come
+very near to seeing, hadn't?--were _avant couriers_ of these same
+journeying events, their appointed prelude. She could explain neither how
+nor why--but, very certainly, somehow. Nor could she explain the
+relation--if any--coupling together the said marvels heard and the
+events. Nevertheless, she knew the former rode ahead, whether in
+malignity or mercy, to forewarn her. This place, The Hard, in virtue of
+its numerous vicissitudes of office and of ownership, of the memories and
+traditions which it harboured, both sinister, amiable, erudite,
+passionate, was singularly sentient, replete with influences. In times of
+strain and stress the normal wears thin, and such lurking influences are
+released. They break bounds, shouting--to such as have the psychic
+genius--convincing testimony of their existence.
+
+All this Damaris perceived, standing in the middle of the room while the
+silver crescent moon looked in at her. The stillness once again was
+absolute. The dusk, save where the windows made pale squares upon the
+carpet, thick. The four-post bed, gay enough by day with hangings and
+valences patterned in roses on a yellow ground, looked cavernous.
+Carteret would lie under its black canopy to-night if--
+
+"If all goes well."
+
+Damaris said the words aloud, her thought becoming personal and
+articulate.
+
+Once before she had heard the smugglers' ponies, waiting in this same
+room. Waiting at the open window to catch the first rumble of the wheels
+of a returning carriage. Her poor dear Nannie, Sarah Watson, was
+returning home after a summer holiday spent with her own people in the
+north. And Damaris, younger then by nearly five years, had listened
+impatiently, ready to skirmish down into the front hall--directly the
+carriage turned the elbow of the drive--and enclose her faithful nurse
+and foster-mother in arms of child-like love. But destiny ruled otherwise.
+In vain she waited. Sarah Watson returned no more, death having elected
+to take her rather horribly to himself some hours previously amid the
+flaming wreckage of a derailed express.
+
+What did this second hearing presage? A like vain waiting and disclosure
+of death-dealing accident? Notwithstanding her attitude of high
+resolution, the question challenged Damaris in sardonic fashion from
+beneath the black canopy of the great bed. Her hand went up to the string
+of pearls which, on a sudden, grew heavy about her throat.
+
+"But not--not--pray God, the dear man with the blue eyes," she cried.
+
+She was glad to be alone, in the encompassing semi-dark, for a warm wave
+of emotion swept over her, an ardour hardly of the spiritual sort. Had
+she deceived herself? Was she, in truth, desirous Carteret should
+approach her solely according to that earlier manner, in which she so
+simply trusted him? Did she hail his coming as that of a wise counsellor
+merely--or--
+
+But here Mary--still pursuing the time-honoured ritual of shutting
+up--entered candle in hand, the landing showing brightly lit behind her.
+
+"Dear heart alive!" she exclaimed, "whoever's that? You, Miss Damaris?
+Alone here in the dark. You did make me jump. But there," she added,
+repentant of her unceremonious exclamation, "I don't know what possesses
+us all to-night. The least thing seems to make you jump. Mrs. Cooper's
+all of a twitter, and Laura--silly girl--is almost as bad. I suppose it's
+the weather being so quiet after yesterday's gale. For my own part I
+always do like a wind about. It seems company, particularly these long
+evenings if you're called on to go round the house by yourself."
+
+All of which amounted to an admission, as Damaris was not slow to detect.
+She was still under the empire of emotion. The abrupt intrusion affected
+her. She, too, needed to carry off the situation.
+
+"Poor Mary," she said, "you have been frightened--by what? Did you hear
+anything you could not account for when you were down in the library
+just now?"
+
+The answer came after a pause, as though the speaker were suspicious,
+slightly unwilling to commit herself.
+
+"No, Miss Damaris, not in Sir Charles's rooms or in the west wing either.
+Whatever unaccountable noises there ever is belong to this old part of
+the house."
+
+She set her candlestick on the dressing-table, and went to each window in
+turn, drawing blinds down and curtains across. So doing she continued to
+talk, moving to and fro meanwhile with a firm, light tread.
+
+"Not that I pay much attention to such things myself. I don't hold it's
+right. It's my opinion there's no sort of nonsense you can't drive
+yourself into believing once you let ideas get a root in you. I've seen
+too much of Mrs. Cooper giving away like that. The two winters you and
+Sir Charles was abroad I'd a proper upset with her--though we are good
+friends--more than once. After sundown she was enough to terrify you out
+of your life--wouldn't go here and wouldn't go there for fear of she
+didn't know what. Tempting Providence, I call it, and spoke to her quite
+sharp. If ever I wanted to go over to spend an hour or two with father
+and mother in Marychurch, I was bound to ask Mrs. Patch and the children
+to come in and keep her company. There's no sense in putting yourself
+into such a state. It makes you a trouble to yourself and everybody else.
+And in the end, a thousand to one if anything comes of all the turmoil
+and fuss--Mrs. Cooper, to be only fair to her, when she's in a reasonable
+humour, allows as much."
+
+Mary stepped across to the bed and doubled back the quilt, preparatory to
+turning down the fine linen sheet. She felt she had extracted herself
+from a somewhat invidious position with flying colours; and, in the
+process, had administered timely advice. For it wasn't suitable Miss
+Damaris should be moping alone upstairs at odd times like this. It all
+came of yesterday's upset.--Her righteous anger blazed against the
+clerical culprit. In that connection there was other matter of which she
+craved to deliver herself--refreshing items of local gossip, sweet as
+honey to the mouth did she but dare retail them. She balanced the
+question this way and that. Would satisfaction outweigh offence, or
+offence satisfaction, on the part of Miss Damaris? You could not be sure
+how she'd take things--quite. And yet she ought to know, for the affair
+certainly placed Captain Faircloth in a pleasant light. Only one who was
+every inch a gentleman would behave so handsomely as he had.
+
+She stretched across the bed to smooth the slightly wrinkled surface of
+the sheet. This gymnastic feat necessitated the averting of her face and
+turning of her back.
+
+"There's a fine tale going round of how the Island lads--wild young
+fellows ready for any pranks--served Mr. Sawyer, the curate," she began.
+"They say William Jennifer put them up to it, having a grudge against him
+for trying to get his youngest boy taken up for stealing apples last
+week. They planned to give him a ducking in the pool just above the
+ferry, where the water's so deep under the bank. And if Captain Faircloth
+hadn't happened to come along, for certain they'd have made Mr. Sawyer
+swim for it. Mr. Patch hears they handled him ever so rough, tore his
+coat, and were on the very tick of pitching him in. But Captain Faircloth
+would not suffer it. He took a very high line with them, it is said. And
+not content with getting Mr. Sawyer away, walked with him as far as the
+Grey House to protect him from any further interference."
+
+She gave the pillows sundry judicious strokings and pats.
+
+"I hope Mr. Sawyer's properly thankful, for it isn't many that would have
+shown him so much leniency as that."
+
+She would have enjoyed labouring the point. But comment appeared to her,
+under the circumstances, to trench on impertinence. Facts spoke for
+themselves. She restrained herself, fetched her candlestick from the
+dressing-table, and stood by the open door, thereby enjoining her young
+lady's exit.
+
+Thus far Damaris maintained silence, but in passing out on to the
+landing, she said--"Thank you. I am glad to know what has happened."
+
+Encouraged by which acknowledgment, the excellent woman ventured
+further advice.
+
+"And now, miss, you must please just lie down on the schoolroom sofa and
+get a little sleep before the gentlemen and Mr. Hordle arrive back. There
+is a good two hours to wait yet, and I'll call you in plenty of time for
+you to dress. You don't look altogether yourself, miss. Too much talking
+with all that host of callers. You are properly fagged out. I'll get Mrs.
+Cooper to beat up an egg for you in a tumbler of hot milk, with a
+tablespoonful of sherry and just a pinch of sugar in it. That will get
+your circulation right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+SHOWING HOW SIR CHARLES VERITY WAS JUSTIFIED OF HIS LABOURS
+
+
+Which homely programme being duly executed, worked restorative wonders.
+Matter, in the sublimated form of egg-flip, acted upon mind beneficially
+through the functions of a healthy, if weary, young body. Our maiden
+slept, to dream not of ghostly ponies or other uncomfortably discarnate
+creatures; but of Darcy Faircloth in his pretty piece of Quixotism,
+rescuing a minister of the Church of England "as by law established" from
+heretical baptismal rites of total immersion. The picture had a rough
+side to it, and also a merry one; but, beyond these, generous dealing
+wholly delightful to her feeling. She awoke soothed and restored, ready
+to confront the oncoming of events--whatever their character--in a spirit
+of high confidence as well as of resolution.
+
+With the purpose of advertising this brave humour she dressed herself in
+her best. I do not deny a love of fine clothes in Damaris. Yet in her own
+home, and for delectation of the men belonging to her, a woman is surely
+free to deck herself as handsomely as her purse allows. "Beauty
+unadorned" ceased to be practicable, in self-respecting circles, with the
+expulsion of our first parents from the paradisaic state; while beauty
+merely dowdy, is a pouring of contempt on one of God's best gifts to the
+human race. Therefore I find no fault with Damaris, upon this rather
+fateful evening, in that she clothed herself in a maize-coloured silk
+gown flowered in faint amber and faint pink. Cut in the piece from
+shoulder to hem, according to a then prevailing fashion, it moulded
+bosom, waist and haunches, spreading away into a demi-train behind. The
+high Medici collar of old lace, at the back of the square decolletage,
+conferred dignity; the hanging lace of the elbow sleeves a lightness. Her
+hair, in two wide plaits, bound her head smoothly, save where soft
+disobedient little curls, refusing restriction, shaded her forehead and
+the nape of her neck.
+
+After a few seconds of silent debate she clasped Carteret's pearls about
+her throat again; and so fared away, a creature of radiant aspect, amid
+sombre setting of low ceilings and dark carpeted floors, to await the
+advent of the travellers.
+
+These arrived some little while before their time, so that the girl, in
+her gleaming dress, had gone but half-way down the staircase when they
+came side by side into the hall.--Two very proper gentlemen, the moist
+freshness of the night attending them, a certain nobility in their
+bearing which moved her to enthusiasm, momentarily even bringing a mist
+before her eyes. For they were safe and well both of them, so she
+joyously registered, serene of countenance, moreover, as bearers of glad
+tidings are. Whatever the ghostly ponies foretold could be no evil
+shadowing them--for which she gave God thanks.
+
+Meanwhile, there without, the light of the carriage lamps pierced the
+enclosing gloom, played on the silver plating of harness, on the shining
+coats of the horses, whose nostrils sent out jets of pale steam. Played
+over the faces of the servants, too, Mary and Laura just within the open
+door, Hordle and Conyers outside loading down the baggage from the back
+of the mail-phaeton, and on Patch, exalted high above them on the
+driving-seat.
+
+As Damaris paused, irradiated by the joy of welcome and of forebodings
+falsified, upon the lowest step of the staircase, Sir Charles turned
+aside and tenderly kissed her.
+
+"My darling," he said.
+
+And Carteret, following him an instant later, took her by both hands and,
+from arm's length, surveyed her in smiling admiration he made no effort
+to repress.
+
+"Dear witch, this is unexpected good fortune. I had little thought of
+seeing you so soon--resplendent being that you are, veritably clothed
+with sunshine."
+
+"And with your pearls," she gaily said.
+
+"Ah! my poor pearls," he took her up lightly. "I am pleased they still
+find favour in your sight. But aren't you curious to learn what has made
+us desert our partridge shooting at an hour's notice, granting the pretty
+little beggars unlooked-for length of life?"
+
+His blue eyes laughed into hers. There was a delightful atmosphere about
+him. Something had happened to him surely--for wasn't he, after all, a
+young man even yet?
+
+"Yes--what--what has brought you, Colonel Sahib?" Damaris laughed back at
+him, bubbling over with happy excitement.
+
+"Miracles," he answered. "A purblind Government at last admits the error
+of its ways and proposes to make reparation for its neglect of a notable
+public-servant."
+
+"You?" she cried.
+
+Carteret shook his head, still surveying her but with a soberer glance.
+
+"No--no--not me. In any case there isn't any indebtedness to
+acknowledge--no arrears to pay off. I have my deserts.--To a man
+immensely my superior. Look nearer home, dear witch."
+
+He made a gesture in the direction of his host.
+
+"My Commissioner Sahib?"
+
+"Yes--your Commissioner Sahib, who comes post haste to request your dear
+little permission, before accepting this tardy recognition of his
+services to the British Empire."
+
+"Ah! but that's too much!" the girl said softly, glancing from one to the
+other, enchanted and abashed by the greatness of their loyalty to and
+prominent thought of her.
+
+"Has this made him happy?" she asked Carteret, under her breath. "He
+looks so, I think. How good that this has come in time--that it hasn't
+come too late."
+
+For, in the midst of her joyful excitement, a shadow crossed Damaris'
+mind oddly obscuring the light. She suffered a perception things might so
+easily have turned out otherwise; a suspicion that, had the reparation of
+which Carteret spoke been delayed, even by a little, its beloved
+recipient would no longer have found use for or profit in it. Damaris
+fought the black thought, as ungrateful and faithless. To fear disaster
+is too often to invite it.
+
+Just at this juncture Miss Felicia made hurried and gently eager
+irruption into the hall; and with that irruption the tone of prevailing
+sentiment declined upon the somewhat trivial, even though warmly
+affectionate. For she fluttered round Sir Charles, as Mary Fisher helped
+divest him of his overcoat, in sympathetic overflowings of the simplest
+sort.--"She had been reading and failed to hear the carriage, hence her
+tardy appearance. Let him come into the drawing-room at once, out of
+these draughts. There was a delightful wood fire and he must be chilled.
+The drive down the valley was always so cold at night--particularly where
+the road runs through the marsh lands by Lampit."
+
+In her zeal of welcome Miss Verity was voluble to the point of
+inconsequence, not to say incoherence. Questions poured from her. She
+appeared agitated, quaintly self-conscious, so at least it occurred to
+Damaris. Finally she addressed Carteret.
+
+"And you too must be frozen," she declared. "How long it is since we met!
+I have always been so unlucky in just missing you here! Really I believe
+I have only seen you once since you and Charles stayed with us at Canton
+Magna.--You were both on leave from India. I dare not think how many
+years ago that is--before this child"--her candid eyes appealingly sought
+those of Damaris--"before this child existed. And you are so wonderfully
+unaltered."
+
+Colour dyed her thin face and rather scraggy neck. Only the young should
+blush. After forty such involuntary exhibitions of emotion are
+unattractive, questionably even pathetic.
+
+"Really time has stood still with you--it seems to me, Colonel Carteret."
+
+"Time has done better than stand still," Damaris broke in, with a rather
+surprising imperiousness. "It has beautifully run backwards--lately."
+
+And our maiden, in her whispering gleaming dress, swept down from the
+step, swept past the sadly taken aback Miss Felicia, and joined her
+father. She put her hand within his arm.
+
+"Come and warm yourself--come, dearest," she said, gently drawing him
+onward into the long room, where from above the range of dark
+bookshelves, goggle-eyed, pearl-grey Chinese goblins and monsters, and
+oblique-eyed Chinese philosophers and saints looked mysteriously down
+through the warm mellow light.
+
+Damaris was conscious of a singular inward turmoil. For Miss Felicia's
+speeches found small favour in her ears. She resented this open claiming
+of Carteret as a member of the elder generation. Still more resented her
+own relegation to the nullity of the prenatal state. Reminiscences, in
+which she had neither lot nor part, left her cold. Or, to be accurate,
+bred in her an intemperate heat, putting a match to jealousies which,
+till this instant, she had no knowledge of. Touched by that match they
+flared to the confusion of charity and reverence. Hence, impulsively,
+unscrupulously, yet with ingenious unkindness, she struck--her tongue a
+sword--to the wounding of poor Miss Felicia. And she felt no necessity
+for apology. She liked to be unkind. She liked to strike. Aunt Felicia
+should not have been so self-assertive, so tactless. She had brought
+chastisement upon herself. It wasn't like her to behave thus. Her
+enthusiasms abounded; but she possessed a delicate appreciation of
+relative positions. She never poached. This came perilously near
+poaching.--And everything had danced to so inspiring a tune, the movement
+of it so delicious! Now the evening was spoilt. The first fine alacrity
+of it could not be recaptured--which was all Aunt Felicia's fault.--No,
+for her unkindness Damaris felt no regret.
+
+It may be remarked that our angry maiden's mind dwelt rather upon the
+snub she had inflicted on Miss Verity, than upon the extensive compliment
+she had paid, and the challenge she had delivered, to Carteret. Hearing
+her flattering declaration, his mind not unnaturally dwelt more upon the
+latter. It took him like a blow, so that from bending courteously over
+the elder lady's hand, he straightened himself with a jerk. His eyes
+followed the imperious, sun-clad young figure, questioning and keenly
+alert. To-day he had liberally enjoyed the pleasures of friendship, for
+Charles Verity had been largely and generously elate. But Damaris'
+outburst switched feeling and sentiment onto other lines. They became
+personal. Were her words thrown off in mere lightness of heart, or had
+she spoken deliberately, with intention? It were wiser, perhaps, not to
+ask. He steadied his attention on to Miss Felicia once more, but not
+without effort.
+
+"You always said kind and charming things, I remember," so he told her.
+"You are good enough to say them still."
+
+Damaris stood by her father, upon the tiger skin before the hearth.
+
+"Tell me, dearest?" she prayed him.
+
+Charles Verity put his hand under her chin, turned up her face and looked
+searchingly at her. Her beauty to-night was conspicuous and of noble
+quality. It satisfied his pride. Public life invited him, offering him
+place and power. Ranklings of disappointment, of detraction and slight,
+were extinguished. His soul was delivered from the haunting vexations of
+them. He was in the saddle again, and this radiant woman-child, whom he
+so profoundly loved, should ride forth with him for all the world to
+see--if she pleased. That she would please he had no doubt. Pomp and
+circumstance would suit her well. She was, moreover, no slight or frothy
+piece of femininity; but could be trusted, amid the glamour of new and
+brilliant conditions, to use her judgment and to keep her head.
+Increasingly he respected her character as well as her intelligence. He
+found in her unswerving sense of right and wrong, sense of honour
+likewise. Impetuous she might be, swift to feel and to revolt; but of
+tender conscience and, on occasion, royally compassionate. Now he could
+give her fuller opportunity. Could place her in circumstances admittedly
+enviable and prominent. From a comparative back-water, she should gain
+the full stream--and that stream, in a sense, at the flood.
+
+Rarely, if ever, had Charles Verity experienced purer pleasure, touched a
+finer level of purpose and of hope than to-day, when thinking of and now
+when looking upon Damaris. He thankfully appraised her worth, and in
+spirit bowed before it, not doatingly or weakly but with reasoned
+conviction. Weighed in the balances she would not be found wanting, such
+was his firm belief. For himself he accepted this recall to active
+participation in affairs, active service to the State, with a lofty
+content. But that his daughter, in the flower of her young womanhood,
+would profit by this larger and more distinguished way of life, gave the
+said recall its deeper values and its zest.
+
+Still he put her off awhile as to the exact announcement, smiling upon
+her in fond, yet stately approval.
+
+"Let the telling keep until after dinner, my dear," he bade her. "Pacify
+the cravings of the natural man for food and drink. The day has been
+fertile in demands--strenuous indeed to the point of fatigue. So let us
+comfort ourselves inwardly and materially before we affront weighty
+decisions."
+
+He kissed her cheek.
+
+"By the way, though, does it ever occur to you to think of the Bhutpur
+Sultan-i-bagh and wish to go East again?"
+
+And Damaris, with still uplifted chin, surveyed him gravely and with a
+certain wistfulness, Miss Felicia's attempted poaching forgotten and an
+impression of Faircloth vividly overtaking her. For they were so
+intimately, disturbingly alike, the father and the son, in voice as well
+as in build and feature.
+
+"Go East?" she said, Faircloth's declared preference for sailing into the
+sunrise present to her. "Why, I go East in my dreams nearly every night.
+I love it--love it more rather than less as I grow older. Of course I
+wish to go--some day. But that's by the way, Commissioner Sahib. All that
+I really want, now, at once, is to go wherever you go, stay wherever you
+stay. You won't ask me to agree to any plan which parts us, will
+you?--which takes you away from me?"
+
+"Ruth to a strange Naomi, my dear," he answered. "But so be it. I desire
+nothing better than to have you always with me.--But I will not keep you
+on tenter-hooks as to your and my projected destination. Let them bring
+in dinner in half an hour. Carteret and I shall be ready. Meanwhile, read
+this--agreeing to relegate discussion of it to a less hungry season."
+
+And taking the letter she had forwarded to him yesterday, bearing the
+imprint of the Indian Office, from the breast pocket of his shooting
+coat, he put it into her hand.
+
+The appointment--namely, that of Lieutenant-Governor of an Indian
+presidency famous in modern history, a cradle of great reputations and
+great men, of English names to conjure with while our Eastern Empire
+endures--was offered, in terms complimentary above those common to
+official communications. Sir Charles Verity's expert knowledge, not only
+of the said mighty province but of the turbulent kingdom lying beyond its
+frontiers, marked him as peculiarly fitted for the post. A campaign
+against that same turbulent kingdom had but recently been brought to a
+victorious conclusion. His influence, it was felt, might be of supreme
+value at this juncture in the maintenance of good relations, and
+consolidation of permanent peace.
+
+Damaris' heart glowed within her as she read the courteous praiseful
+sentences. Even more than through the well-merited success of his book,
+did her father thus obtain and come into the fullness of his own at last.
+Her imagination glowed, too, calling up pictures of the half-remembered,
+half-fabulous oriental scene. The romance of English rule in India, the
+romance of India itself, its variety, its complexity, the multitude of
+its gods, the multitude of its peoples, hung before her as a mirage,
+prodigal in marvels, reaching back and linking up through the centuries
+with the hidden wisdom, the hidden terror of the Ancient of Days.
+
+To this land of alien faiths and secular wonders, she found herself
+summoned, not as casual sightseer or tourist, but as among the handful of
+elect persons who count in its social, political and administrative life.
+In virtue of her father's position, her own would be both conspicuous and
+assured. An intoxicating prospect this for a girl of one-and-twenty!
+Intoxicating, yet, as she envisaged it, disquieting likewise. She
+balanced on the thought of all it demanded as well as all it offered, of
+all it required from her--dazed by the largeness of the purview, volition
+in suspense.
+
+Carteret was the first to reappear, habited in the prescribed black and
+white of evening male attire. In the last six months he had, perhaps, put
+on flesh; but this without detriment to the admirable proportions of his
+figure. It retained its effect of perfect response to the will within,
+and all its natural grace. His fair hair and moustache were still almost
+untouched with grey. His physical attraction, in short, remained
+unimpaired. And of this Damaris was actually, if unconsciously, sensible
+as he closed the door and, passing between the stumpy pillars, walked up
+the long narrow room and stood, his hands behind him, his back to the
+pleasantly hissing and crackling fire of driftwood.
+
+"Alone, dear witch?" he said, and, seeing the open letter in her
+hand--"Well, what do you make of this proposition?" And yet again, as she
+raised serious pondering eyes--"You find it an extensive order?"
+
+"I find it magnificent for him--beautifully as it should be, adequate
+and right."
+
+"And for yourself?" Carteret asked, aware of a carefulness in her
+language and intrigued by it.
+
+"Magnificent for me, too--though it takes away my breath."
+
+"You must learn to breathe deeper, that's all," he returned, gently
+teasing her.
+
+"And who is to teach me to breathe deeper, dear Colonel Sahib," she
+quickly, and rather embarrassingly, asked. "Not my father. He'll have
+innumerable big things to do and to do them without waste of energy he
+must be saved at every point. He must not fritter away strength in
+coaching me in my odds and ends of duties, still less in covering up my
+silly mistakes."
+
+"Oh! you exaggerate difficulties," he said, looking not at her but at the
+fierce yellow and black striped tiger skin at his feet.--Bless the lovely
+child, what was she driving at?
+
+Carteret started for Deadham under the impression he had himself
+thoroughly in hand, and that all danger of certain inconvenient emotions
+was passed. He had lived them down, cast them out. For over two years now
+he had given himself to the superintendence of his estate, to county
+business, to the regulation of his sister's--happily more
+prosperous--affairs, to the shepherding of his two elder nephews in their
+respective professions and securing the two younger ones royally good
+times during their holidays at home. Throughout the hunting season,
+moreover, he rode to hounds on an average of three days a week. Such
+healthy sport helps notably to deliver a man from vain desires, by
+sending his body cleanly weary to bed and to sleep o' nights.
+
+By such varied activities had Carteret systematically essayed to rid
+himself of his somewhat exquisite distemper, and, when coming to Deadham,
+honestly believed himself immune, sane and safe. He was proportionately
+disturbed by finding the cure of this autumn love-madness less complete
+than, fool-like, he had supposed. For it showed disquieting signs of
+resurrection even when Damaris, arrayed in the sheen of silken sunlight,
+greeted him at the staircase foot, and an alarming disposition finally to
+fling away head-cloth and winding-sheet when she petulantly broke in upon
+Miss Verity's faded memories of Canton Magna with the flattering
+assertion that time had run backward with him of late.
+
+Now alone with her, confident, moreover, of her maidenly doubts
+and pretty self-distrust, he felt at a decided disadvantage. The
+detached, affectionately friendly, the avuncular--not to say
+grandfatherly--attitude escaped him. He could not play that part.
+
+"Oh! you exaggerate difficulties," he therefore told her, with a
+singular absence of his habitual mansuetude, his tone trenching on
+impatience. "Instinct and common sense will teach you-mother-wit, too-of
+which, you may take it from me, you have enough and to spare.-Let alone
+that there will be a host of people emulous of guiding your steps aright,
+if your steps should stand in need of guidance which I venture to doubt.
+Don't underrate your own cleverness." Hearing him, sensible of his
+apparent impatience and misconceiving the cause of it, Damaris' temper
+stirred. She felt vexed. She also felt injured.
+
+ "What has happened to you, Colonel Sahib?" she asked him squarely. "I
+ see nothing foolish in what I have said. You wouldn't have me so
+ conceited that I rushed into this immense business without a qualm,
+ without any thought whether I can carry it out creditably--with credit
+ to him, I mean?"
+
+ Thus astonishingly attacked, Carteret hedged.
+
+ "Miss Verity, of course, will be"--he began.
+
+ Damaris cut him short.
+
+ "Aunt Felicia is an angel, a darling," she declared, "but--but"--
+
+ And there stopped, pricked by a guilty conscience. For to expose Miss
+ Felicia's inadequacies and enlarge on her ineligibility for the position
+ of feminine Chief of the Staff, struck her as unworthy, a meanness to
+ which, under existing circumstances, she could not condescend to stoop.
+
+ Carteret looked up, to be entranced not only by the fair spectacle of
+ her youth but by her delicious little air of shame and self-reproach.
+ Evidently she had caught herself out in some small naughtiness--was both
+ penitent and defiant, at once admitting her fault and pleading for
+ indulgence. He suspected some thought at the back of her mind which he
+ could neither exactly seize nor place. She baffled him with her changes
+ of mood and of direction--coming close and then slipping from under his
+ hand. This humour was surely new in her. She would not leave him alone,
+ would not let him rest. Had she developed, since last he had converse
+ with her, into a practised coquette?
+
+"Look here, dear witch," he said, making a return upon himself, and
+manfully withstanding the sweet provocation of her near neighbourhood.
+"We seem to be queerly at cross purposes. I can't pretend to follow the
+turnings and doublings of your ingenious mind. I gather there is
+something you want of me. To be plain, then, what is it?"
+
+"That--that you shouldn't desert me--desert us--in this crisis. You have
+never deserted me before--never since I can first remember."
+
+"I desert you--good Lord!" Carteret exclaimed, his hands dropping at his
+sides with an odd sort of helplessness.
+
+"Ah! that's asking too much, I suppose," she said. "I'm selfish even to
+think of it. Yet how can I do otherwise? Don't you understand how all
+difficulties would vanish, and how beautifully simple and easy everything
+would be if you coached me--if you, dear Colonel Sahib, went with us?"
+
+The man with the blue eyes looked down at the tiger skin again, his
+countenance strained and blanched.
+
+More than ever did he find her humour baffling. Not once nor twice had
+he, putting force upon himself, resisted the temptation to woo
+her--witness his retirement from St. Augustin and his determined
+abstinence from intercourse with her since. But now, so it might
+veritably appear, the positions were reversed and she wooed him. Though
+whether pushed to that length merely by wayward fancy, by some
+transient skittish influence or frolic in the blood, or by realized
+design he had no means of judging.--Well, he had bidden her be plain,
+and she, in some sort at least, obeyed him. It behooved him, therefore,
+to be plain in return, in as far as a straightforward reading of her
+meaning would carry.
+
+"So you think all would be simple and easy were I to go with you and your
+father?" he said, both speech and manner tempered to gentleness. "I am
+glad to have you think so--should be still more glad could I share your
+belief. But I know better, dearest witch--know that you are mistaken.
+This is no case of desertion--put that out of your precious mind once
+and for all--but of discretion. My being in attendance, far from
+simplifying, would embroil and distort your position. An elderly
+gentleman perpetually trotting"--
+
+"Don't," Damaris cried, holding up both hands in hot repudiation. "Don't
+say that. There's distortion if you like! It's ugly--I won't have it, for
+it is not true."
+
+In the obvious sincerity of which denunciation Carteret found balm; yet
+adhered to his purpose.
+
+"But it is true, alas; and I therefore repeat it both for your admonition
+and my own. For an elderly gentleman trotting at a young girl's heels is
+a most unedifying spectacle--giving occasion, and reasonably, to the
+enemy to blaspheme--bad for her in numberless ways; and, if he's any
+remnant of self-respect left in him, is anything better than a fatuous
+dotard, damnably bad for him as well. Do you understand?"
+
+Damaris presented a mutinous countenance. She would have had much ado to
+explain her own motives during this ten minutes' conference. If her
+mental--or were they not rather mainly emotional?--turnings and doublings
+proved baffling to her companion, they proved baffling to herself in an
+almost greater degree. Things in general seemed to have gone into the
+melting-pot. So many events had taken place, so many more been
+preshadowed, so many strains of feeling excited! And these were
+confusingly unrelated, or appeared to be so as yet. Amongst the confusion
+of them she found no sure foothold, still less any highway along which to
+travel in confidence and security. Her thought ran wild. Her intentions
+ran with it, changing their colour chameleon-like from minute to minute.
+Now she was tempted to make an equivocal rejoinder.
+
+"To understand," she said, "is not always, Colonel Sahib, necessarily
+to agree."
+
+"I am satisfied with understanding and don't press for agreement," he
+answered, and on an easier note--"since to me it is glaringly evident
+you should take this fine flight unhandicapped. My duty is to stand
+aside and leave you absolutely free--not because I enjoy standing aside,
+but"--he would allow sentiment such meagre indulgence--"just exactly
+because I do not."
+
+Here for the second time, at the crucial moment, Felicia Verity made
+irruption upon the scene. But though her entrance was hurried, it
+differed fundamentally from that earlier one; so that both the man and
+the girl, standing in the proximity of their intimate colloquy before the
+fire, were sensible of and arrested by it. She was self-forgetful,
+self-possessed, the exalted touch of a pure devotion upon her.
+
+"I have been with my brother Charles," she began, addressing them both.
+"I happened to see Hordle coming from the library--and I put off dinner.
+I thought, darling"--this to Damaris, with a becoming hint of
+deference--"I might do so. I gathered that Charles--that your
+father--wished it. He has not been feeling well."
+
+And as Damaris anxiously exclaimed--
+
+"Yes"--Miss Felicia went on--"not at all well. Hordle told me. That was
+why I went to the library. He hoped, if he waited and rested for a little
+while, the uncomfortable sensations might subside and it would be
+needless to mention them. He did not want any fuss made. We gave him
+restoratives, and he recovered from the faintness. But he won't be equal,
+he admits, to coming in to dinner. Colonel Carteret must be hungry--your
+father begs us to wait no longer, I assured him we would not. Hordle is
+with him. He should not be alone, I think, while any pain continues."
+
+"Pain--pain?" Damaris cried, her imagination rather horribly caught by
+the word. "But is he hurt, has he had some accident?"
+
+While Carteret asked tersely: "Pain--and where?"
+
+"Here," Felicia answered, laying her hand upon her left side over the
+heart. She looked earnestly at Carteret as she spoke, conveying to him an
+alarm she sought to spare Damaris.
+
+"He tries to make little of it, and assures me it was only the heat of
+the house which caused him discomfort after the cold air out of doors.
+It may be only that, but I think we ought to make sure."
+
+Again, and with that same becoming hint of deference, she turned to
+her niece.
+
+"So I sent orders that Patch should drive at once to Stourmouth and fetch
+Dr. McCabe. I did not stop to consult you because it seemed best he
+should take out the horses before they were washed down and stabled."
+
+"Yes--but I can go to him?" Damaris asked.
+
+"Darling--of course. But I would try to follow his lead, if I were
+you--treat it all lightly, since he so wishes. Your father knows best in
+most things--and may know best in this. Please God it is so."
+
+Left alone with Carteret.
+
+"I am anxious--most cruelly anxious about my brother," she said.
+
+While Damaris, sweeping across the hall and down the corridor in her
+sunshine silken dress, repeated:
+
+"The ponies--the smugglers' ponies," a sob in her throat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+TELLING HOW CHARLES VERITY LOOKED ON THE MOTHER OF HIS SON
+
+
+"Which is equivalent to saying, 'Hear the conclusion of the whole
+matter,' isn't it, McCabe?"
+
+Dr. McCabe's square, hairy-backed hands fumbled with the stethoscope as
+he pushed it into his breast pocket, and, in replying, his advertised
+cheerfulness rang somewhat false.
+
+"Not so fast, Sir Charles--in the good Lord's name, not so fast. While
+there's life there's hope, it's me settled opinion. I'm never for signing
+a patient's death-warrant before the blessed soul of him's entirely
+parted company with its mortal tenement of clay. The normal human being
+takes a mighty lot of killing in my experience, where the will to live is
+still intact. Let alone that you can never be quite upsides with Nature.
+Ah! she's an astonishing box of tricks to draw on where final
+dissolution's concerned. She glories to turn round on your pathological
+and biological high science; and, while you're measuring a man for his
+coffin, to help him give death the slip."
+
+Charles Verity slightly shifted his position--and that with singular
+carefulness--against the pillows in the deep red-covered chair. His
+hands, inert and bluish about the finger-tips, lay along the padded arms
+of it. The jacket of his grey-and-white striped flannel sleeping-suit was
+unfastened at the throat, showing the irregular lift and fall of his
+chest with each laboured breath. His features were accentuated, his face
+drawn and of a surprising pallor.
+
+The chair, in which he sat, had been brought forward into the wide arc of
+the great window forming the front of the room. Two bays of this stood
+open down to the ground. Looking out, beyond the rich brown of the
+newly-turned earth in the flower-beds, the lawn stretched away--a dim
+greyish green, under the long shadows cast by the hollies masking the
+wall on the left, and glittering, powdered by myriads of scintillating
+dewdrops, where the early sunshine slanted down on it from between their
+stiff pinnacles and sharply serrated crests.
+
+In the shrubberies robins sang, shrilly sweet. A murmur of waves,
+breaking at the back of the Bar, hung in the chill, moist, windless air.
+Presently a handbarrow rumbled and creaked, as West--the head gardener,
+last surviving relic of Thomas Clarkson Verity's reign--wheeled it from
+beneath the ilex trees towards the battery, leaving dark smudgy tracks
+upon the spangled turf.
+
+Arrived at his objective, the old gardener, with most admired
+deliberation, loaded down long-handled birch-broom, rake and hoe; and
+applied himself to mysterious peckings and sweeping of the gravel around
+the wooden carriages of the little cannon and black pyramid of
+ball.--Man, tools, and barrow were outlined against the pensive
+brightness of autumn sea and autumn sky, which last, to southward, still
+carried remembrance of sunrise in a broad band of faint yellowish pink,
+fading upward into misty azure and barred with horizontal pencillings of
+tarnished silver cloud.
+
+Thus far Charles Verity had watched the progress of the bowed,
+slow-moving figure musingly. But now, as the iron of the hoe clinked
+against the gravel flints, he came back, so to say, to himself and back
+to the supreme question at issue. He looked up, his eyes and the
+soundless ironic laughter resident in them, meeting McCabe's twinkling,
+cunning yet faithful and merry little eyes, with a flash.
+
+"The work of the world is not arrested," he said. "See, that
+octogenarian, old West. He wheeled ill-oiled, squeaking barrows and
+hacked at the garden paths when I was a Harchester boy. He wheels the one
+and hacks at the other even yet--a fact nicely lowering to one's private
+egotism, when you come to consider it. Why, then, my good friend,
+perjure yourself or strive to mince matters? The work of the world will
+be done whether I'm here to direct the doing of it or not.--Granted I am
+tough and in personal knowledge of ill-health a neophyte. My luck
+throughout has been almost uncanny. Neither in soldiering nor in sport,
+from man or from beast, have I ever suffered so much as a scratch. I have
+borne a charmed life--established a record for invulnerability, which
+served me well in the East where the gods still walk in the semblance of
+man and miracle is still persistently prevalent. Accident has passed me
+by--save for being laid up once, nearly thirty years ago, with a broken
+ankle in the house of some friends at Poonah."
+
+He ceased speaking, checking, as it seemed, disposition to further
+disclosure; while the soundless laughter in his eyes found answering
+expression upon his lips, curving them, to a somewhat bitter smile
+beneath the flowing moustache.
+
+"In to-day's enforced idleness how persistently cancelled episodes and
+emotions rap, ghostly, on the door demanding and gaining entrance!" he
+presently said. "Must we take it, Doctor, that oblivion is a fiction,
+merciful forgetfulness an illusion; and that every action, every
+desire--whether fulfilled or not--is printed indelibly upon one's memory,
+merely waiting the hour of weakness and physical defeat to show up?"
+
+"The Lord only knows!" McCabe threw off, a little hopelessly. This was
+the first utterance approaching complaint; and he deplored it for his
+patient's sake. He didn't like that word defeat.
+
+Then, to his hearer's relief with a softened accent, Charles Verity took
+up his former theme.
+
+"Save for a trifling go of fever now and again, illness has given me the
+go-by equally with accident. But, for all my ignorance of such
+afflictions I know, beyond all shadow of doubt, that a few repetitions of
+the experience of last night must close any man's account. Experiment is
+more enlightening than argument. There is no shaking the knowledge you
+arrive at through it."
+
+McCabe, standing at ease by the open window, untidy, hirsute, unkempt,
+rammed his hands down into his gaping trouser pockets and nodded
+unwilling agreement.
+
+"The attack was bad," he said. "I'm not denying it was murderously bad.
+And all the harder on you because, but for the one defaulting organ, your
+heart, you're as sound as a bell. You're a well enough man to put up a
+good fight; and that, you see, cuts both ways, be danged to it."
+
+"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.--You know as well as I do
+the Indian appointment will never be gazetted."
+
+"There you have me, Sir Charles, loath though I am to admit as much. I'd
+be a liar if I denied it would not."
+
+"How long do you give me then? Months, or only weeks?"
+
+"That depends in the main on yourself, in as far as I can presume to
+pronounce. With care"--
+
+"Which means sitting still here"--
+
+"It does."
+
+Charles Verity raised his shoulders the least bit.
+
+"Not good enough, McCabe," he declared, "not good enough. There are rites
+to be duly performed, words to be said, which I refuse to neglect. Oh,
+no, don't misunderstand me. I don't need professional help to accomplish
+my dying. Were I a member of your communion it might be different, but I
+require no much-married parsonic intermediary to make my peace with God.
+I am but little troubled regarding that. Shall not the judge of all the
+earth do right?--Nevertheless, there remain rites to be decently
+performed. I must make my peace with man--and still more with
+woman--before I go hence and am no more seen. But, look here, I have no
+wish to commit myself too soon, and risk the bathos of an anti-climax by
+having to perform them twice, repeat them at a later date.--So how long
+do you give me--weeks? Too generous an estimate? A week, then
+or--well--less?"
+
+"You want it straight?"
+
+"I want it straight."
+
+"More likely days. God grant I am mistaken. With your fine constitution,
+as I tell you, you are booked to put up a good fight. All the same, to be
+honest, Sir Charles, it was touch and go more than once last night."
+
+In the room an interval of silence, and without song of the robins and
+murmur of the sea, nearer now and louder as the rising tide lapped up the
+sands at the back of the Bar. The faint yellow-pink after-thought of
+sunrise and pencillings of tarnished cloud alike had vanished into the
+all-obtaining misty blue of the upper sky. Heading for the French coast,
+a skein of wild geese passed in wedge-shaped formation with honking cries
+and the beat of strong-winged flight. The barrow creaked again, wheeled
+some few yards further along the battery walk.
+
+"Thanks--so I supposed," Sir Charles Verity calmly said.
+
+He stretched himself, falling into a less constrained and careful
+posture. Leaned his elbow on the chair-arm, his chin in the hollow of his
+hand, crossed the right leg over the left.
+
+"Twenty-four hours will give me time for all which is of vital
+importance. The rest must, and no doubt perfectly will, arrange
+itself.--Oh! I'll obey you within reasonable limits, McCabe. I have no
+craving to hurry the inevitable conclusion. These last hours possess
+considerable significance and charm--an impressiveness even, which it
+would be folly to thrust aside or waste."
+
+Once more he looked up, his tone and expression devoid now of all
+bitterness.
+
+"I propose to savour their pleasant qualities to the full. So make
+yourself easy, my good fellow," he continued with an admirable
+friendliness. "Go and get your breakfast. Heaven knows you've most
+thoroughly earned it, and a morning pipe of peace afterwards.--The bell
+upon the small table?--Yes--oh, yes--and Hordle within earshot. I've
+everything I require; and, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, shall be
+glad enough of a respite from this course of food and drink, potions and
+poultices--remedial to the delinquent flesh no doubt, but a notable
+weariness to the-spirit.--And, see here, report to the two ladies, my
+sister and--and Damaris, that you leave me in excellent case, free of
+discomfort, resting for a time before girding up my loins to meet the
+labours of the day."
+
+Charles Verity closed his eyes in intimation of dismissal, anxious to be
+alone the better to reckon with that deeper, final loneliness which
+confronted him just now in all its relentless logic.
+
+For, though his mind remained lucid, self-realized and observant, his
+control of its action and direction was incomplete owing to bodily
+fatigue. Hence it lay open to assault, at the mercy of a thousand and one
+crowding thoughts and perceptions. And over these he desired to gain
+ascendency--to drive, rather than be driven by them. The epic of his
+three-score years, from its dim, illusive start to this dramatic and
+inexorable finish--but instantly disclosed to him in the reluctant
+admissions of the good-hearted Irish doctor--flung by at a double, in
+coloured yet incoherent progression, so to speak, now marching to
+triumphant blare of trumpet, now to roll of muffled drum. Which
+incoherence came in great measure of the inalienable duality of his own
+nature--passion and austerity, arrogance and self-doubt, love--surpassing
+most men's capacity of loving--and a defacing strain of cruelty,
+delivering stroke and counter-stroke. From all such tumult he earnestly
+sought to be delivered; since not the thing accomplished--whether for
+fame, for praise or for remorse--not, in short, what has been, but what
+was, and still more what must soon be, did he need, at this juncture,
+dispassionately to contemplate.
+
+That sharp-toothed disappointment gnawed him, is undeniable, when he
+thought of the culminating gift of happy fortune, royally satisfying to
+ambition, as unexpectedly offered him as, through his own unlooked-for
+and tragic disability, it was unexpectedly withdrawn. But disappointment
+failed to vex him long. A more wonderful journey than any possible
+earthly one, a more majestic adventure than that of any oriental
+proconsulship, awaited him. For no less a person than Death issued the
+order--an order there is no disobeying. He must saddle up therefore, bid
+farewell, and ride away.
+
+Nor did he flinch from that ride with Death, the black captain, as
+escort, any more than, during the past night, he had flinched under the
+grip of mortal pain. For some persons the call to endurance brings actual
+pleasure--of a grim heroic kind. It did so to Charles Verity. And not
+only this conscious exercise of fortitude, this pride of bearing bodily
+anguish, but a strange curiosity worked to sustain him. The novelty of
+the experience, in both cases, excited and held his interest, continued
+to exercise it and to hold.
+
+Now, as in solitude his mental atmosphere acquired serenity and
+poise--the authority of the past declining--this matter of death
+increasingly engrossed him. For it trenches on paradox, surely, that the
+one absolutely certain event in every human career is also the most
+unexplored and practically incredible.--An everyday occurrence, a
+commonplace, concerning which there remains nothing new, nothing
+original, to be written, sung or said; yet a mystery still inviolate,
+aching with the alarm of the undiscovered, the unpenetrated, to each
+individual, summoned to accept its empire! He had sent others to their
+death. Now his own turn came and he found it, however calmly considered,
+a rather astounding business. An ending or a beginning?--Useless, after
+all, to speculate. The worst feature of it, not improbably, this same
+preliminary loneliness, this stripping naked, no smallest comfort left
+you of human companionship, or even of humble material keepsake from out
+the multitude of your familiar possessions here in the dear accustomed
+human scene.
+
+The gates of death open. You pass them. They close behind you. And what
+then?--The whole hierarchy of heaven, the whole company of your
+forerunners thither--beloved and honoured on earth--may be gathered to
+hail the homing soul within those amazing portals; or it may drop, as a
+stone into a well, down the blank nothingness of the abyss.--Of all
+gambles invented by God, man or devil--so he told himself--this daily,
+hourly gamble of individual dissolution is the biggest. Man's heart
+refuses the horror of extinction, while his intellect holds the question
+in suspense. We hope. We believe. From of old fair promises have been
+made us; and, granted the gift of faith, hope and belief neighbour upon
+assurance. But certainty is denied. No mortal, still clothed in flesh,
+has known, nor--the accumulated science of the ages notwithstanding--does
+know, actually and exactly, that which awaits it.
+
+Thus, anyhow, in the still, tender brightness of the autumn morning,
+while Nature and men alike pursued their normal activities and
+occupations, did this singular matter appear to Charles Verity--he,
+himself, arbitrarily cut off from all such activities and occupations
+in the very moment of high fruition. Had death been a less eminent
+affair, or less imminent, the sarcasm of his position might have seemed
+gross to the point of insult. But, the longer he envisaged it, the more
+did the enduring enigma and its accompanying uncertainty allure. Not as
+victim, but rather as conqueror of the final terror, did he begin to
+regard himself.
+
+Meanwhile, though reason continued to hold the balance even between
+things positively known and things imagined only and hoped for, the
+god-ward impulse strengthened in him. Not by conscious or convincing
+argument from within, but by all-powerful compulsion from without, was
+his thought borne onward and upward to increasing confidence. So that he
+asked himself--as so many another, still unwearied, still enamoured of
+attainment, has asked in like case--whether impending divorce of soul and
+body may not confer freedom of a wider range and nobler quality, powers
+more varied and august than the mind, circumscribed by conditions of time
+and sense, has yet conception of?
+
+To him such development seemed possible--certainly. Probable?--Ah, well,
+perhaps--perhaps. Which brought him back to his former contention, that
+its inherent loneliness constitutes the bitterest sting of death.
+Smiling, he quoted the ancient, divinely tender saying: "There is a child
+in each one of us which cries at the dark."
+
+While, in swift reaction, he yearned towards battle where amid the
+fierce and bloody glory of the fight, souls of heroes troop forth
+together, shouting, into everlasting day or--sceptical reason shaking a
+sadly sage head once again--into everlasting night.
+
+He stretched out his hand instinctively for the bell on the little table
+at his elbow. Hordle answered his summons, grey of countenance from
+alarm, anxiety, and broken rest.
+
+"Let Miss Damaris know I shall be glad to see her when she is free to
+come to me," he said.
+
+And here, although our damsel's reputation for courage and resource may,
+thereby, sustain some damage, I am constrained to state that while in the
+sick-room Miss Felicia shone, Damaris gave off but a vacillating and
+ineffective light.
+
+Imagination is by no means invariably beneficent. The very liveliness of
+the perceptions which it engenders may intimidate and incapacitate. Upon
+Damaris imagination practised this mischief. Becoming, for the time, that
+upon which she looked, sharing every pang and even embroidering the
+context, she weakened, in some sort, to the level of the actual sufferer,
+helpless almost as he through the drench of overwhelming sympathy. She
+had been taken, poor child, at so villainous a disadvantage. Without
+preparation or warning--save of the most casual and inadequate--her
+humour wayward, she a trifle piqued, fancying her pretty clothes, her
+pretty looks, excited, both by the brilliant prospect presented by the
+Indian appointment and by her delicate passage of arms with Carteret, she
+was compelled of a sudden to witness the bodily torment of a human being,
+not only by her beloved beyond all others, but reverenced also. The
+impression she received was of outrage, almost of blasphemy. The cruelty
+of life lay uncovered, naked and open to her appalled and revolted
+consciousness. She received a moral, in addition to a physical shock,
+utterly confounding in its crudity, its primitive violence.
+
+The ravage of pain can be, in great measure, surmounted and concealed;
+but that baser thing, functional disturbance--in this case present as
+heart spasm, threatening suffocation, with consequent agonized and
+uncontrollable struggle for breath--defies concealment. This
+manifestation horrified Damaris. The more so that, being unacquainted
+with the sorry spectacle of disease, her father, under the deforming
+stress of it, appeared to her as a stranger almost--inaccessible to
+affection, hideously removed from her and remote. His person and
+character, to her distracted observation, were altered beyond recognition
+except during intervals, poignant to the verge of heart-break, when
+passing ease restored his habitual dignity and grace.
+
+Thus, while Miss Felicia and Carteret--with Hordle and Mary Fisher as
+assistants--ministered to his needs in as far as ministration was
+possible, she stood aside, consumed by misery, voluntarily effacing
+herself. Backed away even against the wall, out of range of the
+lamp-light, stricken, shuddering, and mute. Upon Dr. McCabe's arrival and
+assumption of command, Carteret, finding himself at liberty to note her
+piteous state, led her out into the passage and then to the long
+drawing-room, with gentle authority. There for a half-hour or more--to
+him sadly and strangely sweet--he sat beside her, while the tears
+silently coursed down her cheeks, letting her poor proud head rest
+against his shoulder, his arm supporting her gracious young body still
+clothed in all the bravery of her flowered silken sunshine dress.
+
+Later, Mary bringing more favourable news of Sir Charles--pain and
+suffocation having yielded for the time being to McCabe's
+treatment--Carteret persuaded her to go upstairs and let the said Mary
+put her to bed. Once there she slept the sleep of exhaustion, fatigue and
+sorrow mercifully acting as a soporific, her capacity for further thought
+or feeling literally worn out.
+
+During that session in the drawing-room Damaris, to his thankfulness, had
+asked no questions of him. All she demanded child-like, in her extremity,
+had been the comfort and security of human contact. And this he gave her
+simply, ungrudgingly, with a high purity of understanding, guiltless of
+any shadow of embarrassment or any after-thought. Their lighter, somewhat
+enigmatic relation of the earlier evening was extinguished, swamped by
+the catastrophe of Charles Verity's illness. Exactly in how far she
+gauged the gravity of that illness and its only too likely result, or
+merely wept, unnerved by the distressing outward aspect of it, Carteret
+could not determine. But he divined, and rightly, that she was in process
+of ranging herself, at least subconsciously, with a new and terrible
+experience which, could she learn the lesson of it aright would temper
+her nature to worthy issues.
+
+Hence, with a peculiar and tender interest, he watched her when, coming
+down in the morning, he found her already in the dining-room, the
+pleasant amenities of a well-ordered, hospitable house and household
+abundantly evident.
+
+Whatever the tragic occurrences of the last twelve hours, domestic
+discipline was in no respect relaxed. The atmosphere of the room
+distilled a morning freshness. Furniture and flooring shone with polish,
+a log fire, tipped by dancing flames, burned in the low wide grate. Upon
+the side-table, between the westward facing windows, a row of silver
+chafing-dishes gave agreeable promise of varied meats; as did the tea and
+coffee service, arrayed before Damaris, of grateful beverage. While she
+herself looked trim, and finished in white silk shirt and russet-red
+suit, her toilet bearing no sign of indifference or of haste.
+
+That her complexion matched her shirt in colour--or rather in all absence
+of it--that her face was thin, its contours hardened, her eyebrows drawn
+into a little frown, her eyes enormous, sombre and clouded as with
+meditative thought, increased, in Carteret's estimation, assurance of her
+regained self-mastery and composure. Nor did a reticence in her manner
+displease him.
+
+"I have persuaded Aunt Felicia to breakfast upstairs," she told him. "Dr.
+McCabe sends me word he--my father--wishes to rest for the present, so I
+engaged Aunt Felicia to rest too. She was wonderful."
+
+Damaris' voice shook slightly, as did her hand lifting the coffee-pot.
+
+"She stayed up all night. So did you, I'm afraid, didn't you,
+Colonel Sahib?"
+
+"Oh, for me that was nothing. A bath, a change, and ten minutes out there
+on the battery watching the sun come up over the sea," Carteret said. "So
+don't waste compassion on me. I'm as fit as a fiddle and in no wise
+deserve it."
+
+"Ah! but you and Aunt Felicia did stay," she repeated, her hands still
+rather tremulously busy with coffee-pot and milk jug. "You were faithful
+and I no better than a shirker. I fell through, miserably lost myself,
+which was selfish, contemptible. I am ashamed. Only I was so startled. I
+never really knew before such--such things could be.--Forgive me, Colonel
+Sahib. I have been to Aunt Felicia and asked her forgiveness
+already.--And don't think too meanly of me, please. The shirking is over
+and done with for always. You may trust me it never will happen again--my
+losing myself as I did last night, I mean."
+
+In making this appeal for leniency, her eyes met Carteret's fairly for
+the first time; and he read in them, not without admiration and a twinge
+of pain, both the height of her new-born, determined valour and the depth
+of her established distress.
+
+"You needn't tell me that, you needn't tell me that, dear witch," he
+answered quickly. "I was sure of it all along. I knew it was just a phase
+which would have no second edition. So put any question of shame or need
+of forgiveness out of your precious head. You were rushed up against
+circumstances, against a revelation, calculated to stagger the most
+seasoned campaigner. You did not shirk; but it took you a little time to
+get your bearings. That was all. Don't vex your sweet soul with quite
+superfluous reproaches.--Sugar? Yes, and plenty of it I am afraid.--But
+you, too, must eat."
+
+And on her making some show of repugnance--
+
+"See here, we can't afford to despise the day of small things, of minor
+aids to efficiency, dearest witch," he wisely admonished her.
+
+Whereupon, emulous to please him, bending her will to his, Damaris
+humbled herself to consumption of a portion of the contents of the
+chafing-dishes aforesaid. To discover that, granted a healthy subject,
+sorrow queerly breeds hunger, the initial distaste for food--in the main
+a sentimental one--once surmounted.
+
+Later McCabe joined them. Recognized Damaris' attitude of valour, and
+inwardly applauded it, although himself in woeful state. For he was hard
+hit, badly upset. Conscious of waste of tissue, he set about to restore
+it without apology or hesitation, trouble putting an edge to appetite in
+his case also, and that of formidable keenness. Bitterly he grieved,
+since bearing the patient, he feared very certainly to lose, an uncommon
+affection. He loved Charles Verity; while, from the worldly standpoint,
+his dealings with The Hard meant very much to him--made for glory, a
+feather in his cap visible to all and envied by many. Minus the fine
+flourish of it his position sank to obscurity. As a whist-playing,
+golf-playing, club-haunting, Anglo-Indian ex-civil surgeon--and Irishman
+at that--living in lodgings at Stourmouth, he commanded meagre
+consideration. But as chosen medical-attendant and, in some sort,
+retainer of Sir Charles Verity he ranked. The county came within his
+purview. Thanks to this connection with The Hard he, on occasion, rubbed
+shoulders with the locally great. Hence genuine grief for his friend was
+black-bordered by the prospect of impending social and mundane loss. The
+future frowned on him, view it in what terms he might. To use his own
+unspoken phrase, he felt "in hellishly low water."
+
+One point in particular just now worried him. Thus, as fish, eggs,
+porridge, hot cakes, honey, and jam disappeared in succession, he opened
+himself to Damaris and Carteret. A difficult subject, namely that of a
+second opinion.--Let no thought of any wounding of his susceptibilities
+operate against the calling in of such. He was ready and willing to meet
+any fellow practitioner they might select--a Harley Street big-wig, or
+Dr. Maskall, of Harchester, whose advice in respect of cardiac trouble
+was wide sought.
+
+He had, however, but just launched the question when Hordle entered and,
+walking to the head of the table, addressed Damaris.
+
+"Sir Charles desires me to say he will be glad to see you, miss, when you
+are at liberty," he told her in muffled accents.
+
+She sprang up, to pause an instant, irresolute, glancing wide-eyed
+at Carteret.
+
+He had risen too. Coming round the corner of the table, he drew back her
+chair, put his hand under her elbow, went with her to the door.
+
+"There is nothing to dread, dearest witch," he gently and quietly said.
+"Have confidence in yourself. God keep you--and him.--Now you are quite
+ready? That's right.--Well, then go."
+
+Carteret waited, looking after her until, crossing the hall followed by
+Hordle, she passed along the corridor out of sight. Silent, preoccupied,
+he closed the door and took a turn the length of the room before resuming
+his place at the opposite side of the table to McCabe, facing the light.
+
+The doctor, who had ceased eating and half risen to his feet at the
+commencement of this little scene, watched it throughout; at first
+indifferent, a prey to his own worries, but soon in quickening interest,
+shrewd enquiry and finally in dawning comprehension.
+
+"Holy Mother of Mercy, so that's the lay of the land, is it?" and his
+loose lips shaped themselves to a whistle, yet emitted no sound. To
+obliterate all signs of which tendency to vulgar expression of
+enlightenment he rubbed moustache, mouth and chin with his napkin,
+studying Carteret closely meanwhile.
+
+"In the pink of condition, by Gad--good for a liberal twenty years yet,
+and more--bar accident. Indefinite postponement of the grand climacteric
+in this case.--All the same a leetle, lee-tie bit dangerous, I'm
+thinking, for both, if she tumbles to it."
+
+Then aloud--"Has the poor darling girl grasped the meaning of her
+father's illness do you make out, Colonel grasped the ugly
+eventualities of it?"
+
+Carteret slowly brought his glance to bear on the speaker.
+
+"I believe so, though she has not actually told me as much," he
+said--"And now about this question of a second opinion, McCabe?"
+
+The easily huffed Irishman accepted the reproof in the best spirit
+possible, as confirming his own perspicacity.
+
+"Quite so. Flicked him neatly on the raw, and he winced. All the same
+he's a white man, a real jewel of a fellow, worthy of good fortune if the
+ball's thrown his way. I wonder how long, by-the-by, this handsome game's
+been a-playing?"
+
+With which, as requested, he returned to the rival claims of Harley
+Street and Harchester in respect of a consulting physician.
+
+Carteret proved a faithful prophet, for in truth there was nothing to
+dread the beloved presence once entered, as Damaris thankfully
+registered.
+
+The sun by now topped the hollies and shone into the study, flinging a
+bright slanting pathway across the dim crimson, scarlet and blue of the
+Turkey carpet. Charles Verity stood, in an open bay of the great window,
+looking out over the garden. Seen thus, in the still sunlight, the tall
+grey-clad figure possessed all its accustomed, slightly arrogant repose.
+Damaris thrilled with exalted hope. For the young are slow to admit even
+the verdict of fact as final. His attitude was so natural, so unstrained
+and unstudied, that the message of ghostly warning yesterday evening was
+surely discounted; while the subsequent terror of the night, that hideous
+battle with pain and suffocation, became to her incredible, an evil dream
+from which, in grateful ecstasy, she now awoke.
+
+Her joy found expression.
+
+"Dearest, dearest, you sent for me.--Is it to let me see you are
+really better, more beautifully recovered than they told me or I
+ventured to suppose?"
+
+Her voice broke under a gladness midway between tears and laughter.
+
+"The envious blades of Atropos' scissors have not cut the mortal thread
+yet anyhow," he answered, smiling, permitting himself the classic conceit
+as a screen to possible emotion. "But we won't build too much on the
+clemency of Fate. How long she proposes to wait before closing her
+scissors it is idle to attempt to say."
+
+He laid his hands on Damaris' shoulders. Bent his head and kissed
+her upward pouted lips--thereby hushing the loving disclaimer which
+rose to them.
+
+"So we will keep on the safe side of the event, my wise child," he
+continued. "Make all our preparations and thus deny the enemy any
+satisfaction of taking us unawares.--Can you write a business
+letter for me?"
+
+"A dozen, dearest, if you wish," Damaris assented eagerly. Yet that
+image of the scissors stayed by her. Already her joy was sensibly
+upon the wane.
+
+"Oh! one will be sufficient, I think--quite sufficient for this morning."
+
+Charles Verity turned his head, looking seaward through the
+tranquil sunshine.
+
+"That Indian appointment has to be suitably thanked for and--declined."
+
+Damaris drew back a step so as to gain a clearer view of him. The
+hands resting on her shoulders were oddly inert, so she fancied,
+forceless and in temperature cold. Even through the thickness of cloth
+jacket and silk shirt she was aware of their lifelessness and chill.
+This roused rebellion in her. Her instinct was for fight. She made a
+return on McCabe's suggestion regarding further advice. She would
+demand a consultation, call in expert opinion. The dear man with the
+blue eyes--here her white face flushed rosy--would manage all that for
+her, and compel help in the form of the last word of medical science
+and skill.
+
+"Might not your letter be put off for just a few days?" she pleaded, "in
+case--until"--
+
+But Charles Verity broke in before she could finish her tender protest,
+a sadness, even hint of bitterness in his tone.
+
+"You covet this thing so much," he said. "Your heart is so set on it?"
+
+She made haste to reassure him.--No, no not that way, not for her. How
+could it signify, save on his account? She only cared because greedy of
+his advancement, greedy to have him exalted--placed where he belonged, on
+the summit, the apex, so that all must perceive and acknowledge his
+greatness. As to herself--and the flush deepened, making her in aspect
+deliciously youthful and ingenious--she confessed misgivings. Reported
+her talk with Carteret concerning the subject, and the scolding received
+from him thereupon.
+
+"One more reason for writing in the sense I propose, then," her father
+declared, "since it sets your over-modest doubts and qualms at rest, my
+dear. That is settled."
+
+His hands weighed on her shoulders as though he suddenly needed and
+sought support.
+
+"I will sit down," he said. "There are other matters to be discussed, and
+I can, perhaps, talk more easily so."
+
+He went the few steps across to the red chair. Sank into it. Leaned
+against the pillows, bending backward, his hand pressed to his left
+side. His features contracted, and his breath caught as of one spent
+with running. And Damaris, watching him, again received that desolating
+impression of change, of his being in spirit far removed, inaccessible
+to her sympathy, a stranger. He had gone away and rather terribly left
+her alone.
+
+"Are you in pain?" she asked, agonized.
+
+"Discomfort," he replied. "We will not dignify this by the name of pain.
+But I must wait for a time before dictating the letter. There's something
+I will ask you to do for me, my dear, meanwhile."
+
+"Yes"--He paused, shifted his position, closed his eyes.
+
+"Have you held any communication with--"
+
+He stopped, for the question irked him. Even at this pass it went against
+the grain with him to ask of his daughter news of his son.
+
+But in that pause our maiden's scattered wits very effectually
+returned to her.
+
+"With Darcy Faircloth?" she said. And as Charles Verity bowed his head in
+assent--"Yes, I should have told you already but--but for all which has
+happened. He was here the day before yesterday. He came home from church
+with me.--That was my doing, not his, to begin with. You mustn't think he
+put himself forward--took advantage, I mean, of your being away. If there
+is any blame it is mine."
+
+"Mine, rather--and of long standing. God forgive me!"
+
+But Damaris, fairly launched now upon a wholly welcome topic, would have
+none of this. To maintain her own courage, and, if it might be, combat
+that dreaded withdrawal of his spirit into regions where she could not
+follow, she braced herself to reason with him.
+
+"No--there indeed you are mistaken, dearest," she gently yet confidently
+asserted. "You take the whole business topsy-turvy fashion, quite wrong
+way round. I won't weary you with explanations of exactly what led to
+Darcy Faircloth coming here with me on Sunday. But you ought to know that
+he and Aunt Felicia met. I hadn't planned that. It just happened. And she
+was lovely to him--lovely to us both. She made him stay to
+luncheon--inviting him in your name."
+
+"I seem to possess a singular gift for saddling my relations with the
+payment of my bad debts," Charles Verity remarked.
+
+"But there isn't any bad debt--that's what I so dearly want you to
+believe, what I'm trying so hard, Commissioner Sahib, to tell you,"
+Damaris cried. "Afterwards, when he and I were alone by ourselves, the
+ice broke somehow, he gave himself away and said beautiful things--things
+about you which made me delightfully happy, and showed how he has felt
+towards you all along."
+
+Simply, without picking of her words, hesitation or artifice, Damaris
+repeated that somewhat sinister tale of the sea. Of a sailing ship,
+becalmed through burning days and stifling nights in tropic waters. Of
+the ill-doings of a brutal, drunken captain. Of a fly-blown eating-house
+in Singapore. Of the spiritual deliverance there achieved through sight
+of Charles Verity's name and successful record in the columns of a
+Calcutta newspaper; and the boy's resultant demand for the infliction of
+some outward and visible sign, some inalienable stigmata, which should
+bear perpetual witness to the fact of his parentage.
+
+"So you see"--
+
+Damaris kindled, standing before him, flamed indeed to a rare
+carelessness of convention, of enjoined pruderies and secrecies.--
+
+"You gave him the beautiful gift of life to begin with; and saved his
+life later when he was so miserably tempted to end it. As he loves life,
+where then is the debt?--Not on your side certainly, dearest."
+
+Listening to which fondly exalted sophistries--for sophistries from
+worldly and moral standpoint alike must he not surely pronounce
+them?--Charles Verity still received comfort to his soul. They ought to
+be reckoned mistaken, of course, transparently in error, yet neither son
+nor daughter condemned him. Neither did his sister, in the pathetic
+innocence and purity of her middle-age maidenhood.
+
+This moved him to thankfulness, none the less genuine because shot with
+self-mockery. For he was curious to observe how, as the last urgings of
+ambition and thirst of power fell away from him,--he riding under escort
+of Death, the black captain--all tributes of human tenderness and
+approval gained in value.--Not the approval of notable personages, of
+those high in office, nor even that of sympathetic critics and readers;
+but of persons in his own immediate voisinage, bound to him by
+friendship, by association, or the tie of blood.--Their good-will was
+precious to him as never before. He craved to be in perfect amity with
+every member of that restricted circle. Hence it vexed and fretted him to
+know the circle incomplete, through the exclusion of one rather
+flagrantly intimate example. Yet to draw the said member, the said
+example, within the circle, yielding it the place which it might
+rightfully aspire to occupy, amounted--after half a lifetime of
+abstention and avoidance--to a rather tremendous demonstration, one which
+might well be hailed as extravagant, as a courting of offence possible
+only to a sentimental egoist of most aggravated kind.
+
+And he was tired--had no smallest inclination towards demonstrations. For
+the threatening of heart spasm, to which he lately denied the title of
+pain, though of short duration, affected him adversely, sapping his
+strength. His mind, it is true, remained clear, even vividly receptive;
+but, just as earlier this morning, his will proved insufficient for its
+direction or control. He mused, his chin sunk on his breast, his left
+hand travelling down over the long soft moustache, his eyes half closed.
+Thought and vision followed their own impulse, wandering back and forth
+between the low-caste eating-house in the sweltering heat and perfumed
+stenches of the oriental, tropic seaport; and the stone-built English
+inn--here on Marychurch Haven--overlooking the desolate waste of
+sand-hills, the dark reed-beds and chill gleaming tides.
+
+For love of Damaris, his daughter, while still in the heat of his prime,
+he had foresworn all traffic with women. Yet now, along with the tacitly
+admitted claims of the son, arose the claim of the mistress, mother of
+that son--in no sensual sort, but with a certain wildness of bygone
+romance, wind and rain-swept, unsubstantial, dim and grey. Ever since
+conviction of the extreme gravity of his physical condition dawned on
+him, the idea of penetrating the courts of that deserted sanctuary had
+been recurrent. In the summing up of his human, his earthly, experience,
+romance deserved, surely, a word of farewell? Damaris' story served to
+give the idea a fuller appeal and consistency.
+
+But he was tired--tired. He longed simply to drift. It was infinitely
+distasteful to him definitely to plan, or to decide respecting anything.
+
+Meanwhile his continued silence and abstraction wore badly upon Damaris.
+She had steeled herself; had flamed, greatly daring. Now reaction set in.
+Her effort proved vain. She had failed. For once more she recognized that
+an unknown influence, a power dark and incalculably strong--so she
+figured it--regained ascendency over her father, working to the insidious
+changing of his nature, strangely winning him away. Waiting for some
+response, some speech or comment on his part, fear and the sense of
+helplessness assailed, and would have submerged her, had she not clung to
+Carteret's parting "God bless you" and avowed faith in her stability, as
+to a wonder-working charm. Nor did the charm fail in efficacy.--Oh!
+really he was a wonderful sheet-anchor, "the shadow of a great rock in a
+weary land," that dear man with the blue eyes! Consciously she blessed
+him.--And, thanks to remembrance of him, presently found voice and
+purpose once again.
+
+"You aren't displeased with me, dearest?" she asked.
+
+"Displeased?" Charles Verity repeated, at first absently. "Displeased, my
+dear, no--why?"
+
+"We didn't do wrong?"--labouring the point, the more fully to recall and
+retain him--"Didn't take too much upon ourselves--Aunt Felicia, I mean,
+and I--by persuading Darcy Faircloth to stay on Sunday, by entertaining
+him when you were away? Or--or have I been stupid, dearest, and
+thoughtlessly wearied you by talking too much and too long?"
+
+"Neither," he said. "On the contrary, all you have told me goes to lessen
+certain difficulties, make the crooked, in some degree, straight and
+rough places plain."
+
+For, if Faircloth had been here so recently, broken bread too in the
+house, so he argued, it became the easier to bid him return. And Charles
+Verity needed to see him, see him this morning--since purpose of
+farewells, to be spoken in those long-deserted courts of romance,
+stiffened, becoming a thing not merely to be turned hither and thither
+in thought, but to be plainly and directly done.--"Send for him in your
+own name," he said. "Explain to him how matters stand, and ask him to
+talk with me."
+
+And, as Damaris agreed, rejoiced by the success of her adventurous
+diplomacy, making to go at once and give the required instructions--
+
+"Stay--stay a moment," her father said, and drew her down to sit on the
+chair-arm, keeping her hand in his, and with his other hand stroking it
+wistfully. For though certain difficulties might be sensibly lessened,
+they were not altogether removed; and he smiled inwardly, aware that not
+even in the crack of doom are feminine rights over a man other than
+conflicting and uncommonly ticklish to adjust.
+
+"Before we commit ourselves to further enterprises, my darling, let us
+quite understand one another upon one or two practical points--bearing in
+mind the blades of Atropos' envious scissors. My affairs are in
+order"--Damaris shrank, piteously expostulated.
+
+"Oh! but must we, are we obliged to speak of those things? They grate on
+me--Commissioner Sahib, they are ugly. They hurt."
+
+"Yes--distinctly we are obliged to speak of them. To do so can neither
+hasten nor retard the event. All the more obliged to speak of them,
+because I have never greatly cared about money, except for what I could
+do with it.--As a means, of vast importance. As an end,
+uninteresting.--So it has been lightly come and lightly go, I am afraid.
+All the same I've not been culpably improvident. A portion of my income
+dies with me; but enough remains to secure you against any anxiety
+regarding ways and means, if not to make you a rich woman. I have left an
+annuity to your Aunt Felicia. Her means are slender, dear creature, and
+her benevolence outruns them, so that she balances a little anxiously, I
+gather, on the edge of debt. The capital sum will return to you
+eventually. Carteret and McCabe consented, some years ago, to act as my
+executors. Their probity and honour are above reproach.--Now as to this
+place--if you should ever wish to part with it, let Faircloth take it
+over. I have made arrangements to that effect, about which I will talk
+with him when he comes.--Have no fear lest I should say that which might
+wound him. I shall be as careful, my dear, of his proper pride as of my
+own.--Understand I have no desire to circumscribe either your or his
+liberty of action unduly. But this house, all it contains, the garden,
+the very trees I see from these windows, are so knitted into the fabric
+of my past life that I shrink--with a queer sense of homelessness--from
+any thought of their passing into the occupation of strangers.--Childish,
+pitifully weak-minded no doubt, and therefore the more natural that one
+should crave a voice, thus in the disposition of what one has learned
+through long usage so very falsely to call one's own!"
+
+"We will do exactly what you wish, even to the littlest particular, I
+promise you--both for Faircloth and for myself," Damaris answered,
+forcing herself to calmness and restraint of tears.
+
+He petted her hands silently until, as the minutes passed, she began once
+more to grow fearful of that dreadful unknown influence insidiously
+possessing him and winning him away. And he may have grown fearful of it
+too, for he made a sharp movement, raising his shoulders as though
+striving to throw off some weight, some encumbrance.
+
+"There is an end, then, of business," he said, "and of such worldly
+considerations. I need worry you with them no more. Only one thing
+remains, of which, before I speak to others, it is only seemly, my
+darling, I should speak to you."
+
+Charles Verity lifted his eyes to hers, and she perceived his spirit as
+now in nowise remote; but close, evident almost to the point of alarm. It
+looked out from the wasted face, at once--to her seeing--exquisite and
+austere, reaching forward, keenly curious of all death should reveal,
+unmoved, yet instinct with the brilliance, the mirthfulness even, of
+impending portentous adventure.
+
+"You know, Damaris, how greatly I love and have loved you--how dear you
+have been to me, dearer than the satisfaction of my own flesh?"
+
+Speech was beyond her. She looked back, dazzled and for the moment
+broken.
+
+"Therefore it goes hard with me to ask anything which might, ever so
+distantly, cause you offence or distress. Only time presses. We are
+within sight of the end."
+
+"Ah! no--no," she exclaimed, wrenching away her hands and beating them
+together, passion of affection, of revolt and sorrow no more to be
+controlled. "How can I bear it, how can I part with you? I will not, I
+will not have you die.--McCabe isn't infallible. We must call in other
+doctors. They may be cleverer, may suggest new treatment, new remedies.
+They must cure you--or if they can't cure, at least keep you alive for
+me. I won't have you die!"
+
+"Call in whom you like, as many as you like, my darling, the whole
+medical faculty if it serves to pacify or to content you," he said,
+smiling at her.
+
+Damaris repented. Took poor passion by the throat, stifling its
+useless cries.
+
+"I tire you. I waste your strength. I think only of myself, of my own
+grief, most beloved, my own consuming grief and desolation.--See--I will
+be good--I am good. What else is there you want to have me do?"
+
+"This--but recollect you are free to say me nay, without scruple or
+hesitation. I shall not require you to give your reasons, but shall bow,
+unreservedly, to your wishes. For you possess a touchstone in such
+questions as the one now troubling me, which, did I ever possess it, I
+lost, as do most men, rather lamentably early in my career. If you suffer
+me to do so, I will ask Darcy Faircloth to bring his mother here to me,
+this evening at dusk, when her coming will not challenge impertinent
+observation--so that I may be satisfied no bitterness colours her thought
+of me and that we part in peace, she and I."
+
+Damaris got up from her seat on the arm of the red-covered chair. She
+stood rigid, her expression reserved to blankness, but her head
+carried high.
+
+"Of course," she said, a little hoarsely, and waited. "Of course. How
+could I object? Wasn't it superfluous even to ask me? Your word,
+dearest, is law."
+
+"But in the present case hardly gospel?"
+
+"Yes--gospel too--since it is your word. Gospel, that is, for me. Let
+Darcy Faircloth bring his mother here by all means. Only I think,
+perhaps, this is all a little outside my province. It would be better you
+should make the--the appointment with him yourself. I will send to him
+directly. Patch can take a note over to the island. I would prefer to
+have Patch go as messenger than either of the other men."
+
+She walked towards the door. Stopped half-way and turned, hearing her
+father move. And as she turned--her eyes quick with enquiry as to his
+case, but inscrutable as to her own--Charles Verity rose too and held
+out his arms in supreme invitation. She came swiftly forward and kissed
+him, while with all the poor measure of force left him, he strained her
+to his breast.
+
+"Have I asked too much from you, Damaris, and, in the desire to make
+sure of peace elsewhere, endangered the perfection of my far dearer
+peace with you?"
+
+She leaned back from the waist, holding her head away from him and laid
+her hand on his lips.
+
+"Don't blaspheme, most beloved," she said, "I have no will but yours."
+
+Again she kissed him, disengaged herself very gently, and went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTH WHICH IS ALSO CHAPTER THE LAST
+
+
+At Lady's Oak--an ancient forest boundary--where the main road forks,
+Damaris swung the dog-cart to the left, across the single-arch stone
+bridge spanning the Arne; and on, up the long winding ascent from the
+valley-bottom to the moorlands patched with dark fir plantations, which
+range inland from behind Stourmouth. This constituted the goal of her
+journey; for, the high-lying plateau reached, leagues of open country are
+disclosed north and west, far as the eye carries, to the fine bare
+outline of the Wiltshire Downs. She asked for wide prospects, for air and
+ample space; but as floored by stable earth rather than by the eternal
+unrest and "fruitless, sonorous furrows" of the sea.
+
+Ever since the day of the funeral, now nearly a fortnight ago, Damaris
+had kept within the sheltering privacy of the house and grounds. That
+day, one of soft drizzling rain and clinging ground fog, had also been to
+her one of hardly endurable distraction. Beneath assumption of respectful
+silence, it jarred, boomed, took notes, debated, questioned. Beneath
+assumption of solemnity, it peeped and stared. Her flayed nerves and
+desolated heart plagued her with suspicions of insincerity.
+
+In as far as Colonel Carteret controlled proceedings all had been marked
+by reverent simplicity. But where the carcass is, the eagles,
+proverbially, gather. And unfeathered fowl, in their own estimation
+eminently representative of that regal species, flocked to Deadham church
+and to The Hard.
+
+If--to vary our metaphor--some, in the past, inclined to stone the living
+prophet, these now outvied one another in their alacrity to bedeck his
+tomb. Dr. Cripps, for example, hurried to offer himself as pall-bearer--a
+request the more readily disposed of that there was no pall. While
+Archdeacon Verity, to cite a second example and from a higher social
+level, supported by his elder son Pontifex--domestic chaplain to the
+Bishop of Harchester--insisted on sharing with Canon Horniblow the
+melancholy honour of reading the burial service.
+
+For the rest, the head, and lesser members of the family, from the big
+house at Canton Magna, were solidly, not to say rather aggressively in
+evidence. With them Mrs. Cowden and her husband-satellite, the Honourable
+Augustus joined forces on arriving from Paulton Lacy.--Lord Bulparc drove
+over from Napworth Castle. The country, indeed, showed up with
+commendable indifference to depressing atmospheric conditions. Marychurch
+sent a contingent. Stourmouth followed suit in the shape of General
+Frayling--attended by Marshall Wace in full clerical raiment--bearing a
+wreath of palm, violets, and myrtle wholly disproportionate in bulk and
+circumference to his own shrivelled and rather tottery form.--Of this
+unlooked for advent more hereafter.--Other distinguished soldiers came
+from Aldershot and down from town. A permanent Under Secretary, correct
+but visibly bored, represented the India Office.
+
+The parish, neglecting its accustomed industries and occupations,
+mustered in strength; incited thereto, not only by the draw of recently
+resurrected scandal, but by news of the appointment recently offered Sir
+Charles Verity, which had somehow got noised abroad. The irony of his
+illness and death occurring precisely when he was invited to mount
+nothing less--according to local report--than an oriental throne,
+sufficed to stir the most lethargic imagination. Moralists of the
+Reginald Sawyer school might read in this the direct judgment of an
+offended deity. Deadham, however, being reprehensibly clannish, viewed
+the incident otherwise; and questioned--thanks to an ingeniously inverted
+system of reasoning--whether the said Reginald Sawyer hadn't laid himself
+open to a charge of manslaughter or of an even graver breach of the
+Decalogue.
+
+Theresa Bilson--in whose hat artificial buttercups and daisies hastily
+made room for bows of crape--lurked in the humble obscurity of the free
+seats near the west door. To right and left she was flanked by a guardian
+Miss Minett; but these ladies to-day were but broken reeds on which to
+lean. They still laboured under a sense of having been compromised, and
+of resultant social ostracism. This, although their former parsonic
+lodger had vanished from the scene on the day following his threatened
+immersion--a half-hearted proposition on his part of "facing out the
+undeserved obloquy, living down the coarse persecution" meeting with as
+scant encouragement from his ecclesiastical superior, the vicar, as from
+themselves. Theresa--it really was hard on her--shared their eclipse.
+Hence the humble obscurity of the free seats, where she sniffed, dabbed
+her eyes and gurgled, unheeded and unseen.
+
+Finally young Tom Verity--home on his first long leave--having
+accompanied the family party from Canton Magna and feeling his sense of
+humour unequal to the continued strain of their sublime insularity,
+benevolently herded two stately, though shivering, turbanned native
+gentlemen, who reached Deadham during the early stages of the ceremony no
+one quite knew whence or when. In the intervals of his self-imposed
+duties, he found time to admire the rich unction of his father, the
+Archdeacon's manner and voice.
+
+"_Plus ca change, plus la meme chose_," he quoted gleefully. "What a
+consummate fraud the dear old governor is; and how deliciously innocent
+of the fact, that he imposes upon no one half so successfully as he does
+upon himself!"
+
+Our young man also found time, from afar, to admire Damaris; but, let it
+be added, to a very different tune. Her beauty came as surprise to him
+as having much more than fulfilled its early promise. He found it
+impressive beyond that of any one of the many ladies, mature or callow,
+with whom it was his habit largely to flirt. So far he could
+congratulate himself on having successfully withstood the wiles of
+matrimony--but by how near a shave, at times by how narrow a squeak! If
+that fine parental fraud, the Archdeacon, had but known!--Tom,
+undeterred by the solemnity of the occasion, hunched up his shoulders
+like a naughty boy expecting his ears boxed.--But then--thank the
+powers, the Archdeacon so blessedly and refreshingly didn't, and, what
+was more, didn't in the very least want to know. He never asked for
+trouble; but, like the priest and Levite of sacred parable, carefully
+passed by on the other side when trouble was about.
+
+Our young friend looked again at Damaris. Yes--she had beauty and in the
+grand manner, standing there at the foot of the open brick-lined grave,
+calm, immobile, black-clad, white-faced, in the encircling melancholy of
+the drizzling mist. With the family grouped about her, large-boned,
+pompous, well-fed persons, impervious to general ideas as they were
+imperviously prosperous, he compared her to a strayed deer amongst a
+herd of store cattle. Really, with the exception of his cousin Felicia
+and--naturally--of himself, the Verity breed was almost indecently true
+to type. Prize animals, most of them, he granted, still cattle--for
+didn't he detect an underlying trace of obstinate bovine ferocity in
+their collective aspect?
+
+Damaris' calm and immobility exceeded theirs. But in quality and source
+how far removed, how sensitive and intelligent! Her mourning was in the
+grand manner, too, her grief sincere and absolute to the extent of a
+splendid self-forgetfulness. She didn't need to pose; for that forgotten
+self could be trusted--in another acceptation of the phrase--never to
+forget itself.
+
+And here Tom Verity's agreeable frivolity, the astute and witty
+shiftiness of mind and--in a degree--of practice, for which he so readily
+found excuses and forgave himself, made place for nobler apprehensions.
+Not merely Damaris', just now, rather tragic beauty moved and impressed
+him; but some quality inherent in her upon which he felt disposed to
+confer the title of genius. That was going far.--Mentally he pulled
+himself up short.--For wasn't it going altogether too far--absurdly so?
+What the dickens did this excessive admiration portend? Could he have
+received the _coup de foudre_?--He had to-day a fancy for French tags, in
+reaction from the family's over-powering Englishness.--That wouldn't suit
+his book in the very least. For in the matters of the affections he held
+it thriftless, to the confines of sheer lunacy, to put all your eggs into
+one basket. He, therefore, politicly abstained from further observation
+of Damaris; and, with engaging assiduity, reapplied himself to herding
+the two native gentlemen through the remainder of the ceremony and, at
+the conclusion of it, into the mildewed luxury of a Marychurch landau.
+
+Deadham parish went home to its tea that evening damp, not to say
+dripping, but well pleased with the figure it had cut in the public eye.
+For it had contributed its quota to contemporary history; and what parish
+can, after all, do more! Reporters pervaded it armed with note-books and
+pencils. They put questions, politely requested a naming of names. The
+information furnished in answer would reach the unassailable authority of
+print, giving Deadham opportunity to read the complimentary truth about
+itself. Still better, giving others opportunity to read the complimentary
+truth about Deadham. Hence trade and traffic of sorts, with much
+incidental replenishing of purses. Great are the uses of a dead prophet
+to the keepers of his tomb! Not within the memory of the oldest
+inhabitant had any funeral been so largely or honourably attended. Truly
+it spelled excellent advertisement--and this although two persons,
+calculated mightily to have heightened interest and brought up dramatic
+and emotional values, were absent from the scene.
+
+For Lesbia Faircloth, giving her barman and two women servants a holiday,
+closed the inn at noon. Alone within the empty house, she locked the
+outer doors. Drew the blinds, reducing the interior to uniform,
+shadow-peopled obscurity, with the exception of her own bed-chamber.
+There she left one small square window--set deep in the stone work of the
+wall--open and uncurtained.
+
+It faced the causeway and perspective of lane skirting the warren and
+leading to the high road and village. Looking out thence, in winter when
+the trees were bare, she could see Deadham church, crowning its
+monticule, part of the sloping graveyard and, below these in the middle
+distance, the roofs and gables of the village street.
+
+To-day the view was obliterated. For here, at the river level, mist and
+drizzle took the form of fog. Opaque, chill and dank, it drifted in
+continuous, just perceptible, undulations past and in at the open
+casement. Soon the air of the room grew thick and whitish, the dark oak
+furniture and the floor boards furred with moisture. Yet, her methodical
+closure of the house complete, Lesbia Faircloth elected to sit in full
+inward sweep of it, drawing a straight-backed chair, mounted on roughly
+carpentered rockers, close to the window.
+
+A handsome woman still, though in her late fifties, erect and of
+commanding presence, her figure well-proportioned if somewhat massive.
+Her dark hair showed no grey. Her rather brown skin was clear, smooth and
+soft in texture. Her eyes clear, too, watchful and reticent; on
+occasion--such as the driving of a business bargain say, or of a drunken
+client--hard as flint. Her mouth, a wholesome red, inclined to fullness;
+but had been governed to straightness of line--will dominant, not only in
+her every movement, but in repose as she now sat, the chair rockers at a
+backward tilt, her capable and well-shaped hands folded on her black
+apron in the hollow of her lap.
+
+Putting aside all work for once, and permitting herself a space of
+undisturbed leisure, she proceeded to cast up her account with love and
+life in as clear-headed, accurate a fashion as she would have cast up the
+columns of cash-book or ledger--and found the balance on the credit side.
+So finding it, she turned her head and looked across the room at the wide
+half-tester wooden bed, set against the inner wall--the white crochet
+counterpane of which, an affair of intricate fancy patterns and
+innumerable stitches, loomed up somewhat ghostly and pallid through the
+gloom. A flicker of retrospective victory passed across her face,
+attesting old scores as paid. For there, through sleepless nights,
+nursing the ardours and disgust of her young womanhood, she lay barren
+beside her apple-cheeked, piping-voiced spouse, his wife in name only.
+There later, times having, as by miracle, changed for her, she gave
+birth to her son.
+
+If somewhat pre-christian in instinct and in nature, the child of a more
+ancient and a simpler world, she was in no sort slow of intelligence or
+wanton. What had been, sufficed her. She cried out neither for further
+indulgence of passion, nor against barriers imposed by circumstance and
+class. That which she had done, she had done open-eyed, counting and
+accepting the cost. Since then wooers were not lacking; but she turned a
+deaf ear to all and each. A frank materialist in some ways, she proved an
+idealist in this. No subsequent love passage could rival, in wonder or
+beauty, that first one; since, compared with Charles Verity, the men who
+subsequently aspired to her favours--whether in wedlock or out--were, to
+her taste, at best dull, loutish fellows, at worst no more than human
+jackasses or human swine.
+
+And, through it all, she possessed the boy on whom to spend her heart, in
+whose interests to employ her foresight and singular capacity of
+money-making. For love's sake therefore, and for his sake also, she had
+lived without reproach, a woman chary even of friendship, chary, too, of
+laughter, chary above all of purposeless gaddings and of gossip.
+Business, and the boy's sea-going or returning, might take her as far as
+Southampton, Plymouth, Cardiff, more rarely London or some northern port.
+But Deadham village rarely beheld her, and never, it is to be feared, did
+the inside of Deadham church.
+
+Yet Deadham church bell plaintively, insistently tolling, the sound
+reaching her muted by the thickness of the fog, kept her attention on the
+stretch for the ensuing hour. Startling as it was poignant, Charles
+Verity's demand to see her, six days ago, brought the story of her love
+to full circle. Their meeting had been of the briefest, for he was
+exhausted by pain. But that he had sent, and she had gone, was unlocked
+for largesse on the part of fortune, sufficient to give her deep-seated
+and abiding sense of healing and of gain. And this stayed by her now,
+rather than any active call for mourning.
+
+She inhaled the dank chillness of the fog gratefully. It suited the
+occasion better far than sunshine and bright skies. For winter,
+darkness, sullen flowing waters and desolate crying winds furnished the
+accompaniment of those earlier meetings. Hearing the tolling bell she
+strove to relive them, and found she did so with singularly mounting
+wealth and precision of detail. Not only vision but sense pushed
+backward and inward, revitalizing what had been; until she ached with
+suspense and yearning, shrewdly evaded dangers, surmounted obstructions
+by action at once bold and wary and tasted the transfiguring rapture of
+the end attained.
+
+In the soberness of her middle years, occupied as she was with the rough,
+exacting business of the inn, and with the management of accumulating
+landed and other property--anxiety born of her son's perilous calling
+never absent from her thought--Lesbia Faircloth inclined to live
+exclusively in the present. Hence the colours of her solitary passion had
+somewhat faded, becoming clouded and dim. Recent events--led by the ugly
+publicity of Reginald Sawyer's sermon--served to revive those colours.
+To-day they glowed rich and splendid, a robing of sombre glory to her
+inward and backward searching sight.
+
+The bell tolled quicker, announcing the immediate approach of the dead.
+Lesbia listened, her head raised, her face, turned to open window, felt
+over by the clammy, impalpable fingers of the fog.
+
+Now they bore the coffin up the churchyard path, as she timed it. She
+wondered who the bearers might be, and whether they carried it shoulder
+high? The path was steep; and Charles Verity, though spare and lean,
+broad of chest and notably tall. Bone tells. They would feel the weight,
+would breathe hard, stagger a little even and sweat.
+
+And with this visualizing of grim particulars, love, bodily love and
+desire of that which rested stark and for ever cold within the narrow
+darkness of the coffin--shut away from all comfort of human contact and
+the dear joys of a woman's embrace--rushed on her like a storm, buffeted
+and shook her, so that she looked to right and to left as asking help,
+while her hands worked one upon the other in the hollow of her lap.
+
+Nor did Darcy Faircloth figure in Deadham's record funeral gathering.
+Upon the day preceding it, having watched by Charles Verity's corpse
+during the previous night, he judged it well to take his new command--a
+fine, five-thousand-ton steamer, carrying limited number of passengers
+as well as cargo, and trading from Tilbury to the far East and to Japan,
+via the Cape.
+
+In his withdrawal, at this particular date, Miss Felicia hailed a counsel
+of perfection which commanded, and continued to command, alike her
+enthusiastic approval and unfeigned regret. For that he should so
+seasonably efface himself, argued--in her opinion--so delightful a
+nature, such nice thought for others, such chivalrous instincts and
+excellent good taste!--All the more lamentable, then, effacement should
+be, from social, moral or other seasons, required.--Yet for the family to
+gain knowledge of certain facts without due preparation--how utterly
+disastrous! Think of her half-sister, Harriet Cowden, for instance, with
+a full-grown and, alas! wrong-way-about, step-nephew bounced on her out
+of a clear sky, and on such an occasion too.--The bare notion of what
+that formidable lady, not only might, but quite certainly would look and
+say turned Miss Felicia positively faint.--No--no, clearly it had to
+be--it had to be--or rather--she became incoherent--had not to be, if
+only for dearest Charles's sake. Yet what a ten thousand pities; for
+notwithstanding the plebeian origin on the mother's side, didn't
+Faircloth--these reflections came later--really surpass every male Verity
+present, young Tom included, though she confessed to a very soft spot in
+her heart for young Tom?--Surpass them, just as her brother Charles had
+always surpassed them in good looks and charm as in inches, above all in
+his air of singular good-breeding? And how extraordinarily he had
+transmitted this last to Faircloth, notwithstanding the--well, the
+drawback, the obstacle to--Miss Felicia did not finish the sentence,
+though in sentiment becoming sweetly abandoned. For how she would have
+revelled, other things being equal--which they so deplorably weren't--in
+shaking this singularly attractive nephew in the family's collective
+face, just to show them what dearest Charles--who they never had quite
+understood or appreciated--could do in the matter of sons, when he once
+set about it, even against admittedly heavy odds!
+
+As it was, she had to pacify her gentle extravagance by subjecting the
+said nephew's hand to a long tremulous pressure at parting.--He, worn,
+blanched, a little strange from the night's lonely and very searching
+vigil; she patchily pink as to complexion, fluttered, her candid eyes
+red-lidded.--Pacify herself by assuring him she could never express how
+deeply she had felt his unselfish devotion during this time of
+trouble--felt his--his perfect attitude towards her dearest brother--his
+father--or the consideration he had shown towards Damaris and herself.
+
+"You can count on my unswerving affection, my dear Darcy," she had
+said. Adding with, to him, very touching humility--"And any affection
+you have to give me in return I shall cherish most gratefully, be very
+sure of that."
+
+All which, as shall presently be shown, brings our narrative, though by
+devious courses, back to Damaris sweeping the dog-cart to the left across
+the bridge spanning the Arne, and on up the long winding ascent, from the
+woods and rich meadows in the valley to the wide prospects and keener air
+of the moorland above.
+
+Until now, as already chronicled, she had remained in house or garden,
+prey to an apathy which, while not amounting to definite ill-health,
+refused interest and exertion. She could not shake it off. To her all
+things were empty, blank, immensely purposeless. Religion failed to touch
+her state--religion, that is, in the only form accessible. The interior
+of some frowning Gothic church of old Castile, or, from another angle, of
+some mellow Latin basilica, might have found the required mystic word to
+say to her. But Protestantism, even in its mild Anglican form, shuts the
+door on its dead children with a heavy hand.--And she suffered this
+religious coldness, although any idea that death of the body implies
+extinction of the spirit, extinction of personality, never occurred to
+her. Damaris' sense of the unseen was too ingrained, her commerce with it
+too actual for that. No--the spirit lived on. He, her most beloved, lived
+on, himself, his very self; but far away from her. In just this consisted
+the emptiness, the unspeakable and blank bitterness--he was somewhere and
+she could not reach him. The dreadful going away of his spirit, against
+which she had fought during the thirty-six hours of his illness, had
+reached its ordained consummation--that was all.
+
+The body which had contained and by that beloved spirit been so nobly
+animated, in its present awful peace, its blind dumb majesty, meant
+scarcely more to her than some alabaster or waxen effigy of her dead. It
+was so like, yet so terrifyingly unlike Charles Verity in life!--She had
+visited it morning and evening, since to leave it in solitude appeared
+wanting in reverence. Throughout each night she thankfully knew that
+either Carteret, McCabe or Faircloth watched by it. Yet to her it hardly
+retained as much of her father's natural presence as the clothes he had
+worn, the books and papers littering his writing-table, the chair he
+preferred to sit in, his guns and swords upon the wall, or the collection
+of fishing-rods, walking-sticks and his spud stacked in a corner.
+
+After the strain and publicity of the funeral her apathy deepened,
+perplexing and saddening Carteret and bringing Miss Felicia near to
+veritable wailing. For while thanking them both she, in fact, put them
+both aside. This in no sour or irritable humour; but with a listlessness
+and apartness hopeless to overcome. She prayed them to give her time.
+Soon she would begin again; but not just yet. She "couldn't begin again
+to order--couldn't make herself begin again. They must not trouble, only
+be patient with her, please, a little longer--she wasn't, indeed she
+wasn't, pretending"--a statement which, in its simplicity, cut Carteret
+to the quick--for "she meant to begin again directly she could."
+
+To-day the weather took an encouraging turn for the better. Following
+the spell of fog and wet a northerly wind at last arose. It swept the sky
+clear of clouds, the land of melancholy vapours, begetting a brilliance
+of atmosphere which wooed our maiden to come forth and once more affront
+the open. She therefore ordered the dog-cart at two o'clock. Would
+herself drive; and, "if Aunt Felicia didn't mind and think her
+unsociable, would take Patch for sole company, because then"--renewed
+apologies--"she needn't talk and she felt disinclined to do so."
+
+During the first half mile or so, as must be confessed, each prick of
+the black horse's ears and change in his pace sent a quake through her,
+as did the sight of every vehicle upon the road she passed or met. Her
+nerve was nowhere, her self-confidence in tatters. But, since this
+parlous state was, in the main, physical, air and movement, along with
+the direct call on her attention, steadied the one and knit up the
+ravelled edges of the other. By the time the plateau was reached and the
+hill lay behind her, she could afford to walk the horse, tentatively
+invite her soul, and attempt to hold communion with Nature. Sorrow--as
+well as the Napoleonic Patch--still sat very squarely beside her; but
+the nightmare of mortality, with consequent blankness and emptiness, was
+no longer omnipresent. Interest again stirred in her, the healthy
+instinct of going on.
+
+Except in the foreground, where foxy browns of withered bracken and
+pink-shot browns of withered heather gave richness of tone, the colouring
+of the great view was somewhat cold. It dealt in thin, uncertain green,
+the buff of stubble, in sharp slate-like blues blended in places with
+indigo, the black purple of hawthorn hedges and grey-brown filigree of
+leafless trees.--This did her good, she asking to be strengthened and
+stimulated rather than merely soothed. To feel the harsh, untainted wind
+break against her, hear it shrill through the dry, shivering grasses of
+the roadside and sturdy spires of heath, to see it toss the dark crests
+and tufted branches of the outstanding firs at the edge of the
+plantation, brought up her morale. Brought her resignation, moreover--not
+of the self-indulgent order, of bowed head and languidly folded hands;
+but of the sort which acknowledges loss and sorrow as common to the sum
+of human experience, places it in its just relation to the rest, and,
+though more heavily weighted than before, takes up the onward march,
+sobered perhaps yet undismayed.
+
+Sins of omission began to prick her. The domestic establishment ran on
+wheels, even during the recent stress and agitation, though she had
+ceased to exercise control over it. Now it must be reorganized--and
+probably on a less liberal footing.--But these were minor questions,
+comparatively simple to cope with. Her life had been full, it must find
+fresh purpose, fresh interest and occupation, in a word, be refilled.
+
+Literature allured her. She dreamed of wonderful tellings, dreamed of the
+engrossing joys of the written word. But in what form--poetry, essay,
+history, novel?--The extreme limitation of her own knowledge, or rather
+the immensity of her own ignorance, confronted her. And that partly
+through her own fault, for she had been exclusive, fastidious, disposed
+to ignore both truths and people who offended her taste or failed to
+strike her fancy. Hitherto she had been led by fancy and feeling rather
+than by reasoned principle. She must at once simplify, broaden and
+democratize her outlook. Must force herself to remember that respect is,
+in some sort, due to everything--however unbeautiful, however even vile
+or repugnant--which is a constant quantity in human affairs and human
+character, due to everything in the realm of Nature also, however
+repellent, if it _is_ really so, actually exists.
+
+In this connection the mysterious and haunting question of sex obtruded
+itself. And, along with it, the thought of two eminently diverse persons,
+namely Lesbia Faircloth and the dear, the more than ever dear, man with
+the blue eyes. That, in his agony, her father should have desired the
+visit of the former, once his mistress, had been very bitter to bear,
+provoking in Damaris a profound though silent jealousy. This had even
+come in some degree between her and Faircloth. For, in proportion as
+that visit more effectually united father and son, it abolished her
+position as intermediary between the two.
+
+Recalling the incident jealousy moved her now, so that she gathered up
+the reins hastily and touched the horse with the whip. It sprang
+forward, danced and behaved, before settling down to the swinging trot
+which, in so handsome a fashion, ate up the blond road crossing the
+brown expanse of moor.
+
+Damaris was surprised and distressed by the vehemence of her own emotion.
+That her jealousy was retrospective, and belonged to a past now over and
+done with, she admitted. Yet, thinking of her father's demand to see
+Lesbia, how amazingly deep it went, how profound, and lasting is the
+empire of "feeling in _that_ way"--so she put it, falling back on her
+phrase of nearly three years ago, first coined at St. Augustin.
+
+And this was where Carteret came in.--For he alone, of all men, had made
+her, Damaris, ever consciously "feel in _that_ way."--A fact of immense
+significance surely, could she but grasp the full, the inner meaning of
+it--and one which entered vitally into the matter of "beginning again."
+Therefore, so she argued, the proposed simplifying, broadening,
+democratizing of her outlook must cover--amongst how much else!--the
+whole astonishing business of "feeling in _that_ way."
+
+She shrank from the conclusion as unwelcome. The question of sex was
+still distasteful to her. But she bade herself, sternly, not to shrink.
+For without some reasoned comprehension of it--as now dawned on her--the
+ways of human beings, of animals, of plants and, so some say, even of
+minerals, are unintelligible, arbitrary, and nonsensical. It is the push
+of life itself, essential, fundamental, which makes us "feel in _that_
+way"--the push of spirit yearning to be clothed upon with flesh, made
+visible and given its chance to enter the earthly arena, to play an
+individual part in the beautiful, terrible earthly scene. Therefore she
+must neglect it, reject it no longer. It had to be met and understood, if
+she would graduate in the school of reality; and in what other possible
+school is it worth while to graduate?
+
+Reaching which climax in her argument, the selfishness of her recent
+behaviour became humiliatingly patent to her. From the whole household,
+but especially from Carteret and Aunt Felicia, she had taken all and
+given nothing in return. She had added to their grief, their anxieties,
+by her silence, her apathy, her whimsies.
+
+"Patch," she asked suddenly, "which is the shortest way home, without
+going through Stourmouth and Marychurch? "--And, under his instructions,
+turned the dog-cart down a grassy side-track, heading south-east--her back
+now to the wind and inland country, her face to the larger horizon, the
+larger if more hazardous freedom of the sea.
+
+Conversation, started thus by her enquiry, flourished in friendly,
+desultory fashion until, about three-quarters of an hour later, the front
+gates of The Hard came in sight. By then afternoon merged itself in early
+evening. Lights twinkled in the windows of the black cottages, upon the
+Island, and in those of Faircloth's inn. The sky flamed orange and
+crimson behind the sand-hills and Stone Horse Head. The air carried the
+tang of coming frost. Upon the hard gravel of the drive, the wheels of
+the dog-cart grated and the horse's hoofs rang loud.
+
+Another Damaris came home to the Damaris who had set forth--a Damaris
+rested, refreshed, invigorated, no longer a passive but an active agent.
+Nevertheless, our poor maiden suffered some reaction on re-entering the
+house. For, so entering, her loss again confronted her as an actual
+entity. It sat throned in the lamp-lit hall. It demanded payment of
+tribute before permitting her to pass. Its attitude amounted, in her too
+fertile imagination, to a menace. Here, within the walls which had
+witnessed not only her own major acquaintance with sorrow, but so many
+events and episodes of strange and, sometimes, cruel import--super-normal
+manifestations, too, of which last she feared to think--she grew undone
+and weak, disposed to let tears flow, and yield once more to depression
+and apathy. The house was stronger than she. But--but--only stronger,
+surely, if she consented to turn craven and give way to it?--Whereupon
+she consciously, of set purpose, defied the house, denied its right to
+browbeat thus and enslave her. For had not she this afternoon, up on the
+moorland, found a finer manner of mourning than it imposed, a manner at
+once more noble and so more consonant with the temper and achievements of
+her beloved dead? She believed that she had.
+
+On the hall table lay a little flight of visiting cards. Her mind
+occupied in silent battle with the house, Damaris glanced at them
+absently and would have passed on. But something in the half-deciphered
+printed names caught her attention. She bent lower, doubting if she could
+have read aright.
+
+"Brig.-General and Mrs. Frayling."--Two smaller cards, also bearing the
+General's name, ranged with two others bearing that of "The Rev. Marshall
+Wace." A written inscription, in the corner of each, notified a leading
+hotel in Stourmouth as the habitat of their respective owners.
+
+This little discovery affected Damaris to a singular extent. She had
+small enough wish for Henrietta Frayling's society at this juncture;
+still less for that of her attendant singer-reciter-parson. Yet their
+names, and the train of recollections evoked by these, made for the
+normal, the average, and, in so far, had on her a wholesome effect. For
+Henrietta, of once adored and now somewhat tarnished memory--soulless,
+finished, and exquisitely artificial to her finger-tips, beguiling others
+yet never herself beguiled beyond the limits of a flawless
+respectability--was wonderfully at odds with high tragedies of
+dissolution. How had the house received such a guest? How put up with her
+intrusion? But wasn't the house, perhaps, itself at a disadvantage, its
+sting drawn in presence of such invincible materialism? For how impress a
+creature at once so light and so pachydermatous? The position lent itself
+to rather mordant comedy.
+
+In this sense, though not precisely in these phrases, did Damaris
+apprehend matters as, still holding Henrietta Frayling's visiting card
+in her hand, she crossed the hall and went into the drawing-room.
+
+There, from upon the sofa behind the tea-table, through the warm soft
+radiance of shaded lamps and glowing fire, Felicia Verity uplifted her
+voice in somewhat agitated greeting. She made no preliminary affectionate
+enquiries--such as might have been expected--regarding her niece's outing
+or general well-being, but darted, not to say exploded, into the
+declaration:
+
+"Darling, I am so exceedingly glad you weren't at home!--Mrs.
+Frayling's card?"
+
+This, as the girl sat down on the sofa beside her.
+
+"Then you know who's been here. I didn't intend to see anyone--unless
+poor little Theresa--But no, truly no one. Both Hordle and Mary were off
+duty--I ought not to have let them be away at the same time, perhaps, but
+I did feel they both needed a holiday, don't you know.--And either they
+had forgotten to give Laura my orders, or she lost her head, or was
+talked over. I daresay Mrs. Frayling insisted."
+
+"Henrietta is not easily turned from her purpose," Damaris said.
+
+"Exactly.--A very few minutes' conversation with her convinced me of
+that. And so I felt it would be unfair to blame Laura too severely. I
+should suppose Mrs. Frayling excessively clever in getting her own way.
+Poor Laura--even if she did know my orders, she hadn't a chance."
+
+"Not a chance," Damaris repeated.
+
+Once convalescence initiated, youth speedily regains its elasticity; and
+Aunt Felicia with her feathers ruffled, Aunt Felicia upon the warpath
+thus, presented a novel spectacle meriting observation. Evidently she and
+Henrietta had badly clashed!--A nice little demon of diversion stirred
+within Damaris. For the first time for many days she felt amused.
+
+"Excessively clever," Miss Felicia continued.
+
+--Without doubt the dear thing was finely worked up!--
+
+"And, though I hardly like to make such accusation, none too scrupulous
+in her methods. She leads you on with a number of irrelevant comments
+and questions, until you find she's extracted from you a whole host of
+things you never meant to say. She is far too inquisitive--too
+possessive."
+
+Miss Felicia ended on an almost violent note.
+
+"Yes, Henrietta has a tiresome little habit of having been there first,"
+Damaris said, a touch of weariness in her tone remembering past
+encounters.
+
+Miss Felicia, caught by that warning tone, patted her niece's rather
+undiscoverable knee--undiscoverable because still covered by a heavy
+fur-lined driving coat--lovingly, excitedly.
+
+"If you choose to believe her, darling," she cried, "which I, for one,
+emphatically don't."
+
+Following which ardent profession of faith, or rather of scepticism, Miss
+Felicia attempted to treat the subject broadly. She soared to
+mountain-tops of social and psychological astuteness; but only to make
+hasty return upon her gentler self, deny her strictures, and snatch at
+the skirts of vanishing Christian charity.
+
+"Men aren't so easily led away," she hopefully declared. "Nor can I think
+Mrs. Frayling so irresistible to each and all as she wishes one to
+imagine. She must magnify the number and, still more, the permanence of
+her conquests. No doubt she has been very much admired. I know she was
+lovely. I saw her once ages ago, at Tullingworth. Dearest Charles," the
+words came softly, as though her lips hesitated to pronounce them in so
+trivial a connection--"asked me to call on her as I was staying in the
+neighbourhood. She had a different surname then, by the way, I remember."
+
+"Henrietta has had four in all--counting in her maiden name, I mean."
+
+"Exactly," Miss Felicia argued, "and that, no doubt, does prejudice me a
+little against her. I suppose it is wrong, but when a woman marries so
+often one can't help feeling as if she ended by not being married at
+all--a mere change of partners, don't you know, which does seem rather
+shocking. It suggests such an absence of deep feeling.--Poor thing, I
+dare say that is just her nature; still it doesn't attract me. In fact
+it gives me a creep.--But I quite own she is pretty still, and
+extraordinarily well dressed--only too well dressed, don't you know, that
+is for the country.--More tea, darling. Yes, Mrs. Cooper's scones are
+particularly good this afternoon.--I wish I liked her better, Mrs.
+Frayling, I mean, because she evidently intends to be here a lot in
+future. She expressed the warmest affection for you. She was very
+possessive about you, more I felt than she'd any real right to be. That,
+I'm afraid, put my back up--that and one or two other things. She and
+General Frayling think of settling in Stourmouth for good, if Mr. Wace is
+appointed to the Deadham curacy."
+
+"The curacy here?" Damaris echoed, a rather lurid light breaking
+in on her.
+
+Miss Felicia's glance was of timid, slightly distressed, enquiry.
+
+"Yes," she said, "Mr. Wace has applied for the curacy. He and General
+Frayling were to have an interview with Canon Horniblow this afternoon.
+They dropped Mrs. Frayling here on their way to the vicarage, and sent
+the fly back for her. She talked a great deal about Mr. Wace and his
+immense wish to come here. She gave me to understand it was his one
+object to"--
+
+The speaker broke off, raised her thin, long-fingered hands to her
+forehead.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "but really I feel perhaps, darling, it is
+better to warn you. She implied--oh! she did it very cleverly, really, in
+a way charmingly--but she implied that things had gone very hard with Mr.
+Wace that winter at St. Augustin, and that all he went through has
+remarkably developed and strengthened his character--that it, in fact,
+was what determined him to take Holy Orders. His difficulties melted
+before his real need for the support of religion. It would have all been
+most touching if one had heard a story of such devotion from anyone
+but--but her, about anyone but him--under the circumstances, poor young
+man--because--darling--well, because of you."
+
+"Of me?" Damaris stiffened.
+
+"Yes--that is just the point. Mrs. Frayling left me in no doubt. She was
+determined to make me understand just what Mr. Wace's attitude had been
+towards you--and that it is still unchanged."
+
+Damaris got up. Pulled off her driving coat, gloves and hat. Threw them
+upon the seat of a chair. The act was symbolic. She felt suffocated,
+impelled to rid herself of every impediment. For wasn't she confronted
+with another battle--a worse one than that with the house, namely, a
+battle with her long-ago baby-love, and her father's love
+too--Henrietta.--Henrietta, so strangely powerful, so amazingly
+persistent--Henrietta who enclosed you in arms, apparently so soft but
+furnished with suckers, octopus arms adhering, never letting you go? She
+had played with the idea of this intrusion of Henrietta's and its effect
+upon Miss Felicia, at first as something amusing. It ceased to be
+amusing. It frightened her.
+
+"And my attitude is unchanged, too," she said presently, gravely proud.
+"I didn't want to marry Marshall Wace then. I was dreadfully sorry when
+Henrietta told me he cared for me. I don't want to marry him or have
+him care for me one bit more now. I think it very interfering of
+Henrietta to trouble you with this. It is not the moment. She might at
+least have waited."
+
+"So I felt," Miss Felicia put in. She watched her niece anxiously, as the
+latter went across to the fire-place and stood, her back to the room,
+looking down into the glowing logs.
+
+For she had--or rather ought she not to have?--another communication to
+make which involved the fighting of a battle on her own account, not
+against Henrietta Frayling, still less against Damaris, but against
+herself. It trembled on the tip of her tongue. She felt impelled, yet
+sorrowed to utter it. Hence her wishes and purposes jostled one another,
+being tenderly, bravely, heroically even, contradictory. In speaking she
+invited the shattering of a dream of personal election to happiness--a
+late blossoming happiness and hence the more entrancing, the more
+pathetic. That any hope of the dream's fulfilment was fragile as glass,
+lighter than gossamer, the veriest shadow of a shade, her natural
+diffidence and sane sense, alike, convinced her. For this very cause, the
+dream being of the sweetest and most intimate, how gladly would she have
+cherished the enchanting foolishness of it a trifle longer!--Her act of
+heroism would earn no applause, moreover, would pass practically
+unnoticed. No one would be aware of her sacrifice. She would only gain
+the satisfaction of knowing she had done the perfectly right and generous
+thing by two persons who would never share that knowledge.--She
+blushed.--Heaven forbid they ever should share it--and thank her.
+
+"Mrs. Frayling--I don't want"--
+
+Miss Felicia stopped.
+
+"What don't you want?"--This from Damaris over her shoulder, the pause
+being prolonged.
+
+"To set you against her, darling"--
+
+"I think," Damaris said, "I know all about Henrietta."
+
+"She insinuates so much," Miss Felicia lamented.--"Or seems to do so. One
+grows wretchedly suspicious of her meaning. Perhaps I exaggerate and
+misjudge her.--She is quite confusingly adroit; but I extremely disliked
+the way in which she spoke of Colonel Carteret."
+
+Damaris bent a little forward, holding her skirt back from the scorch of
+the fire, her eyes still downcast.
+
+"How did she speak of him?"
+
+"Oh! all she said was very indirect--but as though he had not played
+quite fair with her on some occasion. And--it's odious to repeat!--as if
+that was his habit with women, and with unmarried girls as well--as if he
+was liable to behave in a way which placed them in a rather invidious
+position while he just shuffled out of all responsibility himself. She
+hinted his staying on with us here was a case in point--that it might
+give people a wrong idea altogether. That, in short--at least thinking it
+over I feel sure this is the impression she meant to convey to me--that
+he is indulging his chronic love of philandering at your expense."
+
+"And thereby standing in the light of serious lovers such as
+Marshall Wace?"
+
+After a moment Damaris added:
+
+"Is that your idea of Colonel Carteret, Aunt Felicia?"
+
+"Ah! No, indeed no," the poor lady cried, with rather anguished
+sincerity. Then making a fine effort over herself:
+
+"Least of all where you are concerned, my darling."
+
+And she drifted hastily on to her feet. The curtains were still undrawn;
+and, through the window opposite, she caught sight of a tall figure
+coming up across the lawn in the frosty twilight.
+
+"Pardon me if I run away. I've forgotten a note I meant to send to poor
+little Theresa Bilson.--I must let Laura have it at once, or she mayn't
+catch the postman," she said with equal rapidity and apparent
+inconsequence.
+
+As Felicia Verity passed out into the hall, at one end of the avenue of
+stumpy pillars, Carteret came in at the other end through the garden
+door. He halted a moment, dazzled by the warmth and light within after
+the clair-obscure of the frosty dusk without, and looked round the room
+before recognizing the identity of its remaining occupant. Then:
+
+"Ah! you--dear witch," he said. "So you're home. And what of your drive?"
+
+Damaris turned round, all of a piece. Her hands, white against the black,
+the fingers slightly apart, still pressed back the skirt of her dress as
+though saving it from the fire scorch, in quaintly careful childish
+fashion. Her complexion was that of a child too, in its soft brightness.
+And the wonder of her great eyes fairly challenged Carteret's wits.
+
+"A babe of a thousand years," he quoted to himself. "Does that look grow
+out of a root of divine innocence, or of quite incalculable wisdom?"
+
+"I told you if you would be patient with me I should begin again. I have
+begun again, dear Colonel Sahib."
+
+"So I perceive," he answered her.
+
+"Is it written so large?" she asked curiously.
+
+"Very large," he said, falling in with her humour. "And where does the
+beginning lead to?"
+
+"I wish you'd tell me.--Henrietta has begun again too."
+
+"I know it," he said. "Our incomparable Henrietta overtook me on her way
+from here to the Vicarage, and bestowed her society on me for the better
+part of half an hour. She was in astonishing form."
+
+Carteret came forward and stood on the tiger skin beside Damaris. Mrs.
+Frayling's conversation had given him very furiously to think, and his
+thoughts had not proved by any means exhilarating.
+
+"Does this recrudescence of our Henrietta, her beginning again, affect
+the scope and direction of your own beginning again, dearest witch?" he
+presently enquired, in singularly restrained and colourless accents.
+
+"That depends a good deal upon you--doesn't it, Colonel Sahib?" our
+maiden gravely answered.
+
+Carteret felt as though she dealt him a blow. The pain was numbing. He
+could neither see, nor could he think clearly. But he traced Mrs.
+Frayling's hand in this, and could have cursed her elaborately--had it
+been worth while. But was anything worth while, just now? He inclined to
+believe not--so called himself a doating fool. And then, though
+tormented, shaken, turned his mind to making things easy for Damaris.
+
+"Oh! I see that," he told her. "And now you have got hold of your
+precious little self again and made a start, it's easy enough to manage
+your affairs--in as far as they need any management of mine--from a
+distance. This beginning again is triumphant. I congratulate you! You're
+your own best physician. You know how to treat your case to a marvel. So
+I abdicate."
+
+"But why? Why abdicate? Do you mean go away? Then Henrietta was right.
+What she said was true. I never believed her. I"--
+
+Damaris grew tall in her shame and anger. The solemn eyes blazed.
+
+"Yes--pray go," she said. "It's unwarrantable the way I kept you
+here--the way I've made use of you. But, indeed, indeed, I am very
+grateful, Colonel Sahib. I ought to have known better. But I didn't. I
+have been so accustomed all my life to your help that I took it all for
+granted. I never thought how much I taxed your forbearance or encroached
+on your time.--That isn't quite true though. I did have scruples; but
+little things you said and did put my scruples to sleep. I liked having
+them put to sleep.--Now you must not let me or my business interfere any
+more.--Oh! you've treated me, given to me, like a prince," she declared,
+rising superior to anger and to shame, her eyes shining--"like a king.
+Nobody can ever take your place or be to me what you've been. I shall
+always love to think of your goodness to--to him--my father--and to
+me--always--all my life."
+
+Damaris held out her hands.
+
+"And that's all.--Now let us say no more about this. It's difficult. It
+hurts us both, I fancy, a little."
+
+But Carteret did not take her proffered hands.
+
+"Dear witch," he said, "we've spoken so freely that I am afraid we must
+speak more freely still--even though it pains you a little perhaps, and
+myself, almost certainly very much more. I love you--not as a friend, not
+as an amiable elderly person should love a girl of your age.--This isn't
+an affair of yesterday or the day before yesterday. You crept into my
+heart on your sixth birthday--wasn't it?--when I brought you a certain
+little green jade elephant from our incomparable Henrietta, and found you
+asleep in a black marble chair, set on a blood-red sandstone platform,
+overlooking the gardens of the club at Bhutpur. And you have never crept
+out of it again--won't do so as long as body and mind hang together, or
+after. It has been a song of degrees.--For years you were to me a
+delicious plaything; but a plaything with a mysterious soul, after which
+I felt, every now and again, in worship and awe. The plaything stage came
+to an end when I was here with you before we went to Paris, four years
+ago. For I found then, beyond all question of doubt, that I loved you as
+a man only loves once, and as most men never love at all. I have tried
+to keep this from you because I have no right to burden your youth with
+my middle-age."
+
+Carteret smiled at her.
+
+"It has not been altogether easy to hold my peace, dearest witch," he
+said. "The seven devils of desire--of which you knew nothing, bless
+you"--"I'm not sure that I do know nothing," Damaris put in quietly.
+She looked him over from head to heel, and the wonder of her great
+eyes deepened.
+
+"It isn't wrong?" she said, brokenly, hoarsely. "I don't think it can
+be wrong?"
+
+Then, "You will be good to my brother, to Darcy Faircloth, and let me see
+him quite, quite often!"
+
+And lastly, her lips trembling:
+
+"It is beautiful, more beautiful than I ever knew about, to have you for
+quite my own, Colonel Sahib."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEADHAM HARD***
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