CHAPTER I

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.