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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12520-0.txt b/12520-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..badc240 --- /dev/null +++ b/12520-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17365 @@ +*** 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 *** diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..16e9bc2 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #12520 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12520) diff --git a/old/12520-8.txt b/old/12520-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5dc10c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12520-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17791 @@ +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*** + + +******* This file should be named 12520-8.txt or 12520-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/5/2/12520 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: +https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: +https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** diff --git a/old/12520-8.zip b/old/12520-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3027374 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12520-8.zip diff --git a/old/12520.txt b/old/12520.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..92c6ed4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12520.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17791 @@ +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*** + + +******* This file should be named 12520.txt or 12520.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/5/2/12520 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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