TELLING HOW DAMARIS RENEWED HER ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BELOVED LADY OF
HER INFANCY
The windows of the sitting-room--upon the first floor of the long,
three-storied, yellow-painted hotel--commanded a vast and glittering
panorama of indented coast-line and purple sea. Here and there, in the
middle distance, little towns, pale-walled and glistering, climbed upward
amid gardens and olive yards from the rocky shore. Heathlands and pine
groves covered the intervening headlands and steep valleys, save where
meadows marked the course of some descending stream. To the north-east,
above dark wooded foot-hills, the flushed whiteness of snow-summits cut
delicately into the solid blue of the sky.
Stretched upon the sun-faded, once scarlet cushions of the window-seat,
Damaris absorbed her fill of light, and warmth, and colour. Pleading
imperative feminine mendings, she stayed at home this afternoon. She felt
disposed to rest--here in the middle of her pasture, so to say--and
resting, both count her blessings and dream, offering hospitality to all
and any pleasant visions which might elect to visit her. And, indeed,
those blessings appeared a goodly company, worthy of congratulation and
of gratitude. She let the black silk stocking, the toe of which she
affected to darn, slip neglected on to the floor while she added up the
pleasant column of them.
The journey might be counted as a success--that to start with. For her
father was certainly better, readier of speech and of interest in outside
things. Oh! the dear "man with the blue eyes" had a marvellous hand on
him--tactful, able, devoted, always serene, often even gay. Never could
there be another so perfect, because so sane and comfortable, a friend.
Her debt to him was of old standing and still for ever grew. How she
could ever pay it she didn't know! Which consideration, for an instant,
clouded her content. Not that she felt the obligation irksome; but, that
out of pure affection, she wanted to make him some return, some
acknowledgment; wanted to give, since to her he had so lavishly given.
Then the book--of all Carteret's clever manipulations the cleverest! For
hadn't it begun to grip her father, and that quite divertingly much? He
was occupied with it to the point of really being a tiny bit
self-conscious and shy. Keen on it, transparently eager--though
contemptuous, in high mighty sort, of course, of his own eagerness when
he remembered. Only, more than half the time he so deliciously failed to
remember.--And with that Damaris' thought took another turn, a more
private and personal one.
For in truth the book gripped her, too, in most intimate and novel
fashion, revealing to her the enchantments of an art in process of being
actively realized in living, constructive effort. Herein she found, not
the amazement of a new thing, but of a thing so natural that it appeared
just a part of her very self, though, until now, an undiscovered one. To
read other people's books is a joyous employment, as she well knew; but
to make a book all one's own self, to watch and compel its growth into
coherent form and purpose is--so she began to suspect--among the rarest
delights granted to mortal man.
Her own share of such making, in the present case, was of the humblest
it is true, mere spade labour and hod-bearing--namely, writing from
Charles Verity's dictation, verifying names and dates, checking
references and quotations. Still each arresting phrase, each felicitous
expression, the dramatic ring of some virile word, the broad onward
sweep of stately prose in narrative or sustained description, not only
charmed her ear but challenged her creative faculty. She put herself to
school in respect of it all, learning day by day a lesson.--This was the
way it should be done. Ambition prodded her on.--For mightn't she
aspire to do it too, some day? Mightn't, granted patience and
application, the writing of books prove to be her business, her
vocation? The idea floated before her, vague as yet, though infinitely
beguiling. Whereupon the whole world took on a new significance and
splendour, as it needs must when nascent talent claims its own, asserts
its dawning right to dominion and to freedom.
And there the pathos of her father's position touched her nearly. For
wasn't it a little cruel this remarkable gift of his should so long have
lain dormant, unsuspected by his friends, unknown to the reading public,
only to disclose itself, and that by the merest hazard, as a last
resource?--It did not seem fair that he had not earlier found and enjoyed
his literary birthright.
Damaris propounded this view to Colonel Carteret with some heat. But he
smilingly discounted her fondly indignant lament.
"Better late than never anyhow, my dear witch," he said. "And just
picture the satisfaction of this brilliant rally when, as we'd reason to
believe, he himself reckoned the game was up! Oh! there are points about
a tardy harvest such as this, by no means to be despised. Thrice blessed
the man who, like your father, finding such a harvest, also finds it to
be of a sort he can without scruple reap."
Of which cryptic utterance Damaris, at the time, could--to quote her own
phrase--"make no sense!"--Nor could she make sense of it, now, when
counting her blessings, she rested, in happy idleness, upon the faded
scarlet cushions of the window-seat.
She remembered the occasion quite well on which Carteret thus expressed
himself one afternoon, during their stay in Paris, on the southward
journey. She had worn a new myrtle-green, black-braided, fur-trimmed
cloth pelisse and hat to match, as she also remembered, bought the day
before at a fascinating shop in the Rue Castiglione. Agreeably conscious
her clothes were not only very much "the right thing" but decidedly
becoming, she had gone, with him, to pay a visit of ceremony at the
convent school--near the Church of St. Germain-les-Près--where, as a
little girl of six, fresh from India and the high dignities of the
Bhutpur Sultan-i-bagh, she had been deposited by her father's old friend,
Mrs. John Pereira, who had brought her and Sarah Watson, her nurse, back
to Europe.
The sojourn at the convent--once the surprise of translation from East to
West, from reigning princess to little scholar was surmounted--proved
fertile in gentle memories. The visit of to-day, not only revived these
memories, but added to their number. For it passed off charmingly.
Carteret seemed by no means out of place among the nuns--well-bred and
gracious women of hidden, consecrated lives. They, indeed, appeared
instinctively drawn to him and fluttered round him in the sweetest
fashion imaginable; he, meanwhile, bearing himself towards them with an
exquisite and simple courtesy beyond all praise. Never had Damaris
admired the "man with the blue eyes" more, never felt a more perfect
trust in him, than when beholding him as _Mousquetaire au Couvent_ thus!
As they emerged again into the clear atmosphere and resonance of the
Paris streets, and made their way back by the Rue du Bac, the Pont Royal
and the gardens of the Tuileries, to their hotel in the Rue de Rivoli,
Carteret spoke reverently of the religious life, and the marvellous
adaptability of the Catholic system to every need, every attitude of the
human heart and conscience. He spoke further of the loss those inevitably
sustain, who--from whatever cause--stand outside the creeds, unable to
set their spiritual God-ward hopes and aspirations within a definite
external framework of doctrine and practice hallowed by tradition.
"I could almost wish those dear holy women had gathered your little soul
into the fold, when they had you in their keeping and made a good
Catholic of you, dearest witch," he told her. "It would have been a
rather flagrant case of cradle-snatching, I own, but I can't help
thinking it would have simplified many difficulties for you."
"And raised a good many, too," Damaris gaily answered him. "For Aunt
Harriet Cowden would have been furious, and Aunt Felicia distressed and
distracted; and poor Nannie--though she really got quite tame with the
Sisters, and came to respect them in the end--would have broken her heart
at my being taught to worship images, and have believed hell yawned to
devour me. Oh! I think it was more fair to wait.--All the same I loved
their religion--I love it still."
"Go on loving it," he bade her.--And at once turned the conversation to
other themes--that of her father, Charles Verity among them, and the book
on Afghanistan, the fair copy of the opening chapters of which was just
completed.
Then, the stimulating, insistent vivacity of Paris going a little to
Damaris' head--since urging, as always, to fullness of enterprise,
fullness of endeavour, giving, as always, immense joy and value to the
very fact of living--she lamented the late development of her father's
literary genius. A lament which called forth Carteret's consolatory
rejoinder, along with this--to her--cryptic assertion as to the thrice
blessed state of the man whose harvest, when tardy, is of a description
he need not scruple to reap.
"Why," she asked herself, "should he have said that unless with
reference to himself. Reference to some private harvest which he himself
scrupled to reap?"
Damaris slipped her feet from the cushioned window-seat to the floor, and
stooping down recovered her fallen black silk stocking. She felt
disturbed, slightly conscience-stricken. For it had never occurred to
her, strong, able, serene of humour and of countenance as he was, that
the "man with the blue eyes" could have personal worries, things--as she
put it--he wanted yet doubted whether he ought to have. Surely his
unfailing helpfulness and sympathy gave him the right, in fee-simple, to
anything and everything he might happen to covet. That he should covet
what was wrong, what was selfish, detrimental to others, seemed
incredible. And the generous pity of her youthful tenderness, her
impatience of all privation, all disappointment or denial for those she
held in affection, overflowed in her. She longed to do whatever would
greatly please him, to procure for him whatever he wanted. Wouldn't it be
delicious to do that--if she could only find out!
But this last brought her up against a disquieting lesson lately
learned.--Namely, against recognition of how very far the lives of
men--even those we know most dearly and closely--and the lives of us
women are really apart. She thought of her father and Darcy Faircloth and
their entirely unsuspected relation. This dulled the edge of her
enthusiasm. For wasn't it only too probably the same with them all?
Loyalty compelled the question. Had not every man a secret, or secrets,
only penetrable, both for his peace of mind and for your own, at
considerable risk?
Damaris planted her elbows on the window-sill, her chin in the hollow of
her hands. Her eyes were solemn, her face grave with thought.--Verily the
increase of knowledge is the increase of perplexity, if not of actual
sorrow. Even the apparently safest and straightest paths are beset with
"pitfall and with gin" for whoso studies to pursue truth and refuse
subscription to illusion. Your charity should be wide as the world
towards others. Towards yourself narrow as a hair, lest you condone your
own weakness, greed, or error. Of temptation to any save very venial sins
Damaris had, in her own person, little conception as yet.--Still to a
maiden of eighteen, though she may have a generous proportion of health
and beauty, sufficient fortune and by no means contemptible intelligence,
noble instincts, complications and distresses, both of the practical and
theoretic order, may, and do, at times occur. Damaris suffered the shock
of such now; and into what further jungles of cheerless speculation she
might have been projected it is impossible to say, had not persons and
events close at hand claimed her attention.
The Grand Hotel at St. Augustin is situated upon a long narrow
promontory, which juts out into the sea at right angles to the main trend
of the coast-line. It faces east, turning its back upon the little
town--built on the site of a Roman colonial city, originally named in
honour of the pagan Emperor rather than the Christian Confessor and
ascetic. Mediaeval piety bestowed on it the saintly prefix, along with a
round-arched cathedral church, of no great size, but massive proportions
and somewhat gloomy aspect.
From the terrace garden and carriage drive, immediately in front of the
hotel, the ground drops sharply, beneath scattered pines with undergrowth
of heather, wild lavender, gum-cistus, juniper, mastic and myrtle, to the
narrow white beach a hundred feet below. Little paths traverse the rough
descent. And up one of these, halting to rest now and then on a
conveniently placed bench in the shade of some spreading umbrella pine,
to discourse to the company of gentlemen following in her wake, or
contemplate the view, came a notably graceful and telling figure.
As the lady advanced with leisurely composure, Damaris, gazing down from
her point of vantage in the first floor window, received the impression
of a person almost extravagantly finished and feminine, in which all
irregularities and originalities of Nature had suffered obliteration by
the action of art. Not art of the grosser sort, dependent on dyes, paint
and cosmetics. The obliteration was not superficial merely, and must have
been achieved by processes at once subtle and profound. The result
obtained, however, showed unquestionably charming--if in a line slightly
finical and exotic--as she picked her way through the fragrant
undergrowth of the pine wood, slanting sunshine playing on her dark blue
raiment, wide-brimmed white hat, and floating veil.
Coming completely into view at last, when stepping from the path on to
the level carriage drive, a gold chain she wore, from which dangled a
little bunch of trinkets and a long-handled lorgnette, glinted, catching
the light. Damaris gave an exclamation of sudden and rapturous
recognition. So far she had had eyes for the lady only; but now she took
a rapid scrutiny of the latter's attendants. With two of them she was
unacquainted. The other two were her father and Carteret.
Whereupon rapture gave place to a pang of jealous alarm and resentment.
For they belonged to her, those dear two; and to see them even thus
temporarily appropriated by someone else caused her surprising agitation.
They had been so good, so apparently content, alone with her upon this
journey. It would be too trying, too really intolerable to have outsiders
interfere and break up their delightful solitude _à trois_, their
delightful intercourse! Yet, almost immediately, the girl flushed, going
hot all over with shame, scolding herself for even passing entertainment
of such unworthy and selfish emotions.
"For it is Henrietta Pereira," she said half aloud. "My own darling,
long-ago Henrietta, who used to be so beautifully kind to me and give me
presents I loved above everything."
And, after a pause, the note of alarm sounding again though modified to
wistfulness--
"Will she care for me still, and shall I still care for her--but I must
care--I must--now I'm grown up?"
To set which disturbing questions finally at rest, being a valiant young
creature, Damaris permitted herself no second thoughts, no vacillation or
delay; but went straight downstairs and crossing the strip of terrace
garden, bare-headed as she was, waited at the head of the steps leading up
from the carriage drive to greet the idol of her guileless infancy.
To Colonel Carteret who, bringing up the rear of the little procession
was the first to notice her advent, she made a touching and gallant
picture. Her face had gone very pale and he saw, or fancied he saw, her
lips tremble. But her solemn eyes shone with a steady light, and,
whatever the excitement affecting her, she held it bravely in check.
Noting all which he could not but speculate as to whether she had any
knowledge of a certain romantic attachment--culminating on the one hand
in an act of virtuous treachery, on the other in an act of
renunciation--which had overshadowed and wrenched from its natural
sequence so large a portion of her father's life. He earnestly hoped she
was ignorant of all that; although the act of renunciation, made for her,
Damaris' sake, represented a magnificent gesture if an exaggerated and
almost fanatical one, on Charles Verity's part. It gave the measure of
the man's fortitude, the measure of his paternal devotion. Still
knowledge of it might, only too readily, prove a heavy burden to a young
girl's imaginative and tender conscience. Yes--he hoped she had been
spared that knowledge.
If she had escaped it thus far--as he reflected not without
amusement--the other actor in that rather tragic drama, now so
unexpectedly and arrestingly present in the flesh, could be trusted not
to enlighten her. He knew Henrietta Pereira of old, bless her hard little
heart. Not only did she detest tragedy, but positively revelled in any
situation where clever avoidance of everything even remotely approaching
it was open to her. She ruled the sublime and the ridiculous alike
impartially out of the social relation; and that with so light though
determined a touch, so convincing yet astute a tact and delicacy, you
were constrained not only to submit to, but applaud her strategy.
Had she not within the very last hour given a masterly example of her
powers in this line? For when he, Carteret, and Charles Verity, strolling
in all innocence along the shore path back from St. Augustin, had to
their infinite astonishment met her and her attendant swains face to
face, she hadn't turned a hair. Her nerve was invincible. After clasping
the hand of each in turn with the prettiest enthusiasm, she had
introduced--"My husband, General Frayling--Mr. Marshall Wace, his
cousin," with the utmost composure. Thus making over to them any
awkwardness which might be going and effectually ridding herself of it.
Carteret felt his jaw drop for the moment.--He had heard of John
Pereira's death two years ago, and welcomed the news on her account,
since, if report said true, that dashing cavalry officer had taken to
evil courses. Gambling and liquor made him a nuisance, not to say
disgrace to his regiment, and how much greater a one to his wife. Poor
thing, she must have had a lot to endure and that of the most sordid! It
wasn't nice to think about. Clearly Pereira's removal afforded matter for
thankfulness.
But of this speedy reconstruction on her part, in the shape of a third
matrimonial venture, he had heard never a word. How would Verity take
it?--Apparently with a composure as complete as her own.--And then the
inherent humour of the position, and her immense skill and coolness in
the treatment of it, came uppermost. Carteret felt bound to support her
and help her out by accepting her little old General--lean-shanked and
livery, with pompously outstanding chest, aggressive white moustache and
mild appealing eye--as a matter of course. Bound to buck him up, and
encourage him in the belief he struck a stranger as the terrible fellow
he would so like to be, and so very much feared that he wasn't.
Carteret's large charity came into play in respect of the superannuated
warrior; who presented a pathetically inadequate effect, specially when
seen, as now, alongside Charles Verity. Surely the contrast must hit the
fair Henrietta rather hard? Carteret expended himself in kindly
civilities, therefore, going so far as to say "sir" once or twice in
addressing Frayling. Whereat the latter's timorous step grew almost
jaunty and his chest more than ever inflated.
If Henrietta carried things off to admiration in the first amazement of
impact, she carried them off equally to admiration in her meeting with
Damaris. It was the prettiest little scene in the world.
For reaching up and placing her hands on the girl's shoulders her
chiselled face--distinct yet fragile in outline as some rare
cameo--suffused for once with transparent, shell-like pink, she kissed
Damaris on either cheek.
"Ah! precious child, most precious child," she fondly murmured. "What an
enchanting surprise! How little I imagined such a joy was in store for me
when I came out this afternoon!"
And louder, for the benefit of the assistants.
"Yes--here are my husband, General Frayling, and Mr. Wace his cousin--he
shall sing to you some day--that by the way--who is travelling with us.
But they must talk to you later. I can't spare you to them now. I am
greedy after our long separation and want to have you all to myself."
And, including the four gentlemen in a gesture of friendly farewell, she
put her arm round Damaris' waist, gently compelling her in the direction
of a group of buff-painted iron chairs, placed in a semicircle in the
shade of ilex and pine trees at the end of the terrace.
"I have so much to hear," she said, "so many dropped threads to pick up,
and it is impossible to talk comfortably and confidentially in a crowd.
Our men must really contrive to play about by themselves for a little
while and leave me to enjoy you in peace."
"But won't they mind?" Damaris asked, upon whom the spell of the elder
woman's personality began sensibly to work.
"Let them mind, let them mind," she threw off airily in answer. "So much
the better. It will do them good. It is excellent discipline for men to
find they can't always have exactly their own way."
Which assertion served to dissipate any last remnant of jealous alarm
Damaris' mind may have unconsciously harboured. In its place shy
curiosity blossomed, and quick intimate pleasure in so perfectly
fashioned and furnished a creature. For wasn't her childish adoration
fully justified? Wasn't her darling Henrietta a being altogether
captivating and unique? Damaris loved the feeling of that arm and hand
lightly clasping her waist. Loved the faint fragrance--hadn't it
intoxicated her baby senses?--pervading Henrietta's hair, her clothes,
her whole pretty person. Loved the tinkle of the bunch of trinkets
dangling from the long chain which reached below her waist. She had
feared disappointment. That, as she now perceived, was altogether
superfluous. Henrietta enthralled her eyes, enthralled her affection. She
longed to protect, to serve her, to stand between her and every rough
wind which blew, because she was so pretty, so extraordinarily and
completely civilized from head to foot.
No doubt in the generosity of her youthful inexperience Damaris
exaggerated the lady's personal charm. Yet the dozen years
intervening--since their last meeting--had, in truth, dealt mercifully
with the latter's good looks. A trifle pinched, a trifle faded she might
be, as compared with the Henrietta of twelve years ago; but immediately
such damage, such wear and tear of the fleshly garment, showed at its
least conspicuous. She negotiated the double encounter, as Carteret had
noted, with admirable sang-froid; but not, as to the first one in any
case, without considerably greater inward commotion than he gave her
credit for. She was in fact keyed up by it, excited, taken out of herself
to an unprecedented extent, her native optimism and egoism in singular
disarray. Yet thereby, through that very excitement, she recaptured for
the time being the physical loveliness of an earlier period. Beauty is
very much a matter of circulation; and the blood cantered, not to say
galloped, through Henrietta's veins.
The sight of Charles Verity did indeed put back the clock for her in
most astounding sort. Henrietta was no victim of impulse. Each of her
three marriages had been dictated by convenience, carefully thought out
and calculated. Over neither husband had she, for ever so brief a
period, lost her head. But over Charles Verity she had come perilously
near losing it--once. That, it is not too much to say, constituted the
greatest sensation, the greatest emotion of her experience. As a rule
the most trying and embarrassing part of encountering a former lover is
that you wonder what, under Heaven, induced you to like him so well?
Here the position was reversed, so that Henrietta wondered--with a
sickening little contraction of the heart--what, under Heaven, had
prevented her liking him much more, why, under Heaven, she ever let him
go? Of course, as things turned out, it was all for the best, since her
insensibility made for righteousness, or anyhow for respectability--in
the opinion of the world the same, if not an even superior article. She
ought to congratulate herself, ought to feel thankful. Only just now she
didn't. On the contrary she was shaken--consciously and most
uncomfortably shaken to the very deepest of such depths as her shallow
soul could boast--sitting here, on a buff-painted chair in the shade of
the pines and ilex trees, in company with Damaris, holding the girl's
hand in both her own with a clinging, slightly insistent, pressure as it
rested upon her lap.
"Dearest child, I believe, though you have grown so tall, I should have
recognized you anywhere," she said.
"And I you," Damaris echoed. "I did, I did, after just the first
little minute."
"Ah! you've a memory for faces too?"
Her glance wandered to the group of men gathered before the hotel
portico--Sir Charles and General Frayling side by side, engaged in civil
if not particularly animated conversation. The two voices reached her
with a singular difference of timbre and of tone. Carteret spoke,
apparently making some proposition, some invitation, in response to which
the four passed into the house.
Henrietta settled herself in her chair with a movement of sensible
relief. While they remained there she must look, and it was not quite
healthy to look.--Her good, little, old General, who only asked
respectfully to adore and follow in her wake--a man of few demands and
quite tidy fortune--and after poor, besotted, blustering, gambling,
squashily sentimental and tearful Johnnie Pereira wasn't he a haven of
rest--oh, positively a haven of rest? All the same she preferred his
not standing there in juxtaposition to Charles Verity. She much
preferred their all going indoors--Carteret along with the rest, if it
came to that.
She turned and smiled upon Damaris.
"However good your memory for faces may be, I find it very sweet you
should have recognized mine after 'just the first little minute,'" she
said, with a coaxing touch of mimicry. "You haven't quite parted company
with the baby I remember so well, even yet. I used to call you my downy
owl, with solemn saucer eyes and fierce little beak. You were
extraordinarily, really perplexingly like your father then. A miniature
edition, but so faithful to the original it used, sometimes, to give me
the quaintest jump."
Henrietta mused, raising one hand and fingering the lace at her throat
as seeking to loosen it. Damaris watched fascinated, in a way
troubled, by her extreme prettiness. Every point, every detail was so
engagingly complete.
"You are like Sir Charles still; but I see something which is not
him--the personal equation, I suppose, developing in you, the element
which is individual, exclusively your own and yourself. I should enjoy
exploring that."
She looked at Damaris very brightly for an instant, then looked down.
"I want to hear more about Sir Charles," she said. "Of all the
distinguished men I have been fortunate enough to know, who--who have let
me be their friend, no one has ever interested me more than he. We have
known one another ever since I was a girl and his career meant so much to
me. I followed it closely, rejoiced in his promotion, his successes; felt
indignant--and said so--when he met with adverse criticism. I am speaking
of his Indian career. When he accepted that Afghan command, it made a
break. We lost touch, which I regretted immensely. From that time onward
I only knew what any and everybody might know from the newspapers--except
occasionally when I happened to meet Colonel Carteret."
The explanation was lengthy, laboured, not altogether spontaneous.
Damaris vaguely mystified by it made no comment. Henrietta raised her
head, glancing round from under lowered eyelids.
"You appreciate the ever-faithful Carteret?" she asked, an edge of
eagerness in her voice.
"The dear 'man with the blue eyes?' Of course I love him, we both love
him almost better than anybody in the world," Damaris warmly declared.
"And he manifestly returns your affection. But, dearest child, why
'almost.' Is that reservation intentional or merely accidental?"
Then seeing the girl's colour rise.
"Perhaps it's hardly a fair question. Forgive me. I forgot how long it
is since we met, forgot I'm not, after all, talking to the precious
little downy owl, who had no more serious secrets than such as might
concern her large family of dolls."
"I am not sure the 'almost' was quite true." Damaris put in hastily, her
cheeks more than ever aflame.
"Yes it was, most delicious child--I protest it was. And I'm not sure I'm
altogether sorry."
Slightly, daintily, she kissed the flaming cheek.
"But I do love Colonel Carteret," Damaris repeated, with much wide-eyed
earnestness. "I trust him and depend on him as I do on nobody else."
"'Almost' nobody else?"
Damaris shook her head. She felt a wee bit disappointed in Henrietta.
This persistence displeased her as trivial, as lacking in perfection of
breeding and taste.
"Quite nobody," she said. And without permitting time for rejoinder
launched forth into the subject of the book on the campaigns of Shere
Ali, which, as she explained, had been undertaken at Carteret's
suggestion and with such encouraging result. She waxed eloquent regarding
the progress of the volume and its high literary worth.
"But I was a little nervous lest my father should lose his interest and
grow slack when we were alone, and he'd only me to talk things over with
and to consult, so I begged Colonel Carteret to come abroad with us."
"Ah! I see--quite so," Henrietta murmured. "It was at your request."
"Yes. He was beautifully kind, as he always is. He agreed at once, gave
up all his own plans and came."
"And stays"--Henrietta said.
"Yes, for the present. But to tell the truth I'm worried about his
staying."
"Why?"--again with a just perceptible edge of eagerness.
"Because, of course, I have no right to trade on his kindness, even for
my father's sake or the sake of the book."
"And that is your only reason?"
"Isn't it more than reason enough? There must be other people who want
him and things of his own he wants to do. It would be odiously selfish of
me to interfere by keeping him tied here. I have wondered lately whether
I oughtn't to speak to him about it and urge his going home. I was
worrying rather over that when you arrived this afternoon, and then the
gladness of seeing you put it out of my head. But how I wish you would
advise me, Henrietta, if it's not troubling you too much. You and they
have been friends so long and you must know so much better than I can
what's right. Tell me what is my duty--about his staying, I mean--to, to
them both, do you think?"
Henrietta Frayling did not answer at once. Her delicate features
perceptibly sharpened and hardened, her lips becoming thin as a thread.
"You're not vexed with me? I haven't been tiresome and asked you
something I shouldn't?" Damaris softly exclaimed, smitten with alarm of
unintended and unconscious offence.
"No--no--but you put a difficult question, since I have only impressions
and those of the most, fugitive to guide me. Personally, I am always
inclined to leave well alone."
"But is this well?--There's just the point."
"You are very anxious"--
"Yes, I am very anxious. You see I care dreadfully much."
Henrietta bent down, giving her attention to an inch of kilted
silk petticoat, showing where it should not, beneath the hem of
her blue skirt.
"I hesitate to give you advice; but I can give you my impressions--for
what they may be worth. Seeing Colonel Carteret this afternoon he struck
me as being in excellent case--enviably young for his years and content."
"You thought so? Yet that's just what has worried me. Once or twice
lately I have not been sure he was quite content."
"Oh! you put it too high!" Henrietta threw off. "Can one ever be sure
anyone--even one's own poor self--is quite content?"
And she looked round, bringing the whole artillery of her still great, if
waning, loveliness suddenly to bear upon Damaris, dazzling, charming,
confusing her, as she said:
"My precious child, has it never occurred to you Colonel Carteret may
stay on, not against has will, but very much with it? Or occurred to you,
further, not only that the pleasures of your father's society are by no
means to be despised; but that you yourself are a rather remarkable
product--as quaintly engagingly clever, as you are--well--shall we
say--handsome, Damaris?"
"I am deputed to enquire whether you propose to take tea indoors, Miss
Verity, or have it brought to you here; and, in the latter case, whether
we have leave to join you?"
The speaker, Marshall Wace--a young man of about thirty years of age--may
be described as soft in make, in colouring slightly hectic, in manner a
subtle cross between the theatrical and the parsonic. Which, let it be
added, is by no means to condemn him wholesale, laugh him off the stage
or out of the pulpit. In certain circles, indeed, these traits, this
blend, won for him unstinted sympathy and approval. He possessed talents
in plenty, and these of an order peculiarly attractive to the amateur
because tentative rather than commanding. Among his intimates he was seen
and spoken of as one cloaked with the pathos of thwarted aspirations.
Better health, less meagre private means and a backing of influence, what
might he not have done? His star might have flamed to the zenith!
Meanwhile it was a privilege to help him, to such extent as his extreme
delicacy of feeling permitted. That it really permitted a good deal, one
way or another, displaying considerable docility under the infliction of
benefits, would have been coarse to perceive and unpardonably brutal to
mention.--Such, anyhow, was the opinion held by his cousin, General
Frayling, at whose expense he now enjoyed a recuperative sojourn upon the
French Riviera. Some people, in short, have a gift of imposing
themselves, and Marshall Wace may be counted among that conveniently
endowed band.
He imposed himself now upon one at least of his hearers. For, though the
address might seem studied, the voice delivering it was agreeable,
causing Damaris, for the first time, consciously to notice this member of
Mrs. Frayling's retinue. She felt amiably disposed towards him since his
intrusion closed a conversation causing her no little disturbance of
mind. Henrietta's last speech, in particular, set her nerves tingling
with most conflicting emotions. If Henrietta so praised her that praise
must be deserved, for who could be better qualified to give judgment on
such a subject than the perfectly equipped Henrietta? Yet she shrank in
distaste, touched in her maiden modesty and pride, from so frank an
exposition of her own charms. It made her feel unclothed, stripped in the
market-place--so to speak--and shamed. Secretly she had always hoped she
was pretty rather than plain. She loved beauty and therefore naturally
desired to possess it. But to have the fact of that possession thus
baldly stated was another matter. It made her feel unnatural, as though
joined to a creature with whom she was insufficiently acquainted, whose
ways might not be her ways or its thoughts her thoughts. Therefore the
young man, Marshall Wace, coming as a seasonable diversion from these
extremely personal piercings and probings, found greater favour in her
eyes than he otherwise might. And this with results, for Damaris'
gratitude, once engaged, disdained to criticize, invariably tending to
err on the super-generous side.
Yes, they would all have tea out here, if Henrietta was willing. And, if
Henrietta would for the moment excuse her, she would go and order
Hordle--her father's man--to see to the preparation of it himself.
Foreign waiters, whatever their ability in other departments, have no
natural understanding of a tea-pot and are liable to the weirdest ideas of
cutting bread and butter.
With which, conscious she was guilty of somewhat incoherent chatter,
Damaris sprang up and swung away along the terrace, through the clear
tonic radiance, buoyant as a caged bird set free.
"Go with her, Marshall, go with her," Mrs. Frayling imperatively bade
him.
"And leave you, Cousin Henrietta?"
She rose with a petulant gesture.
"Yes, go at once or you won't overtake her. I am tired, really wretchedly
tired--and am best left alone."