FIDUS ACHATES
In which final pronouncement of Damaris' fond tirade, Carteret heard the
death knell of his own fairest hopes. He could not mistake the set of the
girl's mind. Not only did brother call to sister, but youth called to
youth. Whereat the goad of his forty-nine years pricked him shrewdly.
He must accept the disabilities of the three decades, plus one year,
which divided him in age from Damaris, as final; and range himself with
the elder generation--her father's generation, in short. How, after
all, could he in decency go to his old friend and say: "Give me your
daughter." The thing, viewed thus, became outrageous, offensive not
only to his sense of fitness, but of the finer and more delicate
moralities. For cradle-snatching is not, it must be conceded, a
graceful occupation; nor is a middle-aged man with a wife still in her
teens a graceful spectacle. Sentimentalists may maunder over it in
pinkly blushing perversity; but the naughty world thinks otherwise,
putting, if not openly its finger to its nose, at least secretly its
tongue in its cheek. And rightly, as he acknowledged. The implication
may be coarse, libidinous; but the instinct producing it is a sound
one, both healthy and just.
Therefore he had best sit no longer upon stone benches by the sounding
shore, in this thrice delicious proximity and thrice provocative magic of
the serene southern night. All the more had best not do so, because
Damaris proved even more rare in spirit, exquisite in moral and
imaginative quality--so he perhaps over-fondly put it--than ever before.
Carteret got on his feet and walked away a few paces, continuing to
heckle himself with merciless honesty and rather unprintable
humour--invoking even the historic name of Abishag, virgin and martyr,
and generally letting himself "have it hot."
A self-chastisement which may be accounted salutary, since, as he
administered it, his thought again turned to a case other than his own,
namely, that of Charles Verity. To pronounce judgment on his friend's
past relations with women, whether virtuous or otherwise, was no business
of his. Whatever irregularities of conduct that friend's earlier career
may have counted, had brought their own punishment--were indeed actually
bringing it still, witness current events. It wasn't for him, Carteret,
by the smallest fraction to add to that punishment; but rather, surely,
to do all in his power to lighten the weight of it. Here he found safe
foothold. Let him invite long-standing friendship, with the father, to
help him endure the smart of unrequited love for the daughter. To pretend
these two emotions moved on the same plane and could counter-balance one
another, was manifestly absurd; but that did not affect the essence of
the question. Ignoring desire, which to-night so sensibly and
disconcertingly gnawed at his vitals, let him work to restore the former
harmony and sweet strength of their relation. If in the process he could
obtain for Damaris--without unseemly revelation or invidious
comment--that on which her innocent soul was set he would have his
reward.--A reward a bit chilly and meagre, it is true, as compared
with--Comparisons be damned!--Carteret left his pacing and came back to
the stone bench.
"Well, I have formed my own conclusions in respect of the whole matter.
Now tell me what you actually want me to do, and I will see how far it
can be compassed, dear witch." he said.
Damaris had risen too, but she was troubled.
"Ah! I still spoil things," she wailed. "I was so happy telling
you about--about Faircloth. And yet somehow I've hurt you again. I
know I have."
Carteret took her by the elbow lightly, gently, carrying her onward
beside him over the wide pallor of the asphalt.
"Hurt me, you vanitatious creature? Against babes of your tender age,
I long ago became hurt-proof"--he gaily lied to her. "What do you take
me for?--A fledgling like the Ditton boy, or poor Harry Ellice, with
whose adolescent affections you so heartlessly played chuck-farthing at
our incomparable Henrietta's party to-night?--No, no--but joking apart,
what exactly is it you want me to do for you? Take you to Marseilles
for the day, perhaps, to meet this remarkable young sea-captain and go
over his ship?"
"He is remarkable," Damaris chimed in, repeating the epithet with eager
and happier emphasis.
"Unquestionably--if I'm to judge both by your account of him and by the
tenor of his letter."
"And you would take me? Oh! dear Colonel Sahib, how beautifully good you
are to me."
"Of course, I'll take you--if"--
"If what?"
"If Sir Charles gives his consent."
He slipped Damaris' hand within his arm, still bearing her onward. The
last of the long line of gas-lamps upon the esplanade, marking the curve
of the bay, was now left behind. A little further and the road
forked--the main one followed the shore. The other--a footpath--mounted
to the left through the delicate gloom and semi-darkness of the wood
clothing the promontory. Carteret did not regret that impending
obscurity, apprehending it would be less embarrassing, under cover of it,
to embark on certain themes which must be embarked upon were he to bring
his purpose to full circle.
"Listen, my dear," he told her, "while I expound. Certain laws of
friendship exist, between men, which are imperative. They must be
respected. To evade them, still worse, wilfully break them is to be
guilty of unpardonably bad taste and bad feeling--to put it no higher.
Had your father chosen to speak to me of this matter, well and good. I
should have felt honoured by his confidence, have welcomed it--for he is
dearer to me than any man living and always must be.--But the initiative
has to come from him. Till he speaks I am dumb. For me to approach the
subject first is not possible."
"Then the whole beautiful plan falls through," she said brokenly.
"No, not at all, very far from that," he comforted her. "I gather you
have already discussed it with your father. You must lay hold of your
courage and discuss it again. I know that won't be easy; but you owe it
to him to be straightforward, owe it to his peculiar devotion to you.
Some day, perhaps, when you are older and more ripe in experience, I may
tell you, in plain language of a vow he once made for your sake--when he
was in his prime, too, his life strong in him, his powers at their
height. Some persons might consider his action exaggerated and fanatical.
But such accusations can be brought against most actions really heroic.
And that this action, specially in a man of his temperament, may claim to
be heroic there can be, in my opinion, no manner of doubt."
The path climbed steeply through the pine wood. Damaris' hand grew
heavy on Carteret's arm. Once she stumbled, and clung to him in
recovering her footing, thereby sending an electric current tingling
through his nerves again.
"He did what was painful, you mean, and for my sake?"
"Say rather gave up something very much the reverse of painful,"
Carteret answered, his voice not altogether under control, so that it
struck away, loud and jarring, between the still ranks of the
tree-trunks to right and left.
"Which is harder?"
"Which is much harder--immeasurably, incalculably harder, dearest witch."
After a space of silence, wherein the pines, lightly stirred by some
fugitive up-draught off the sea, murmured dusky secrets in the vault of
interlacing branches overhead, Carteret spoke again. He had his voice
under control now. Yet, to Damaris' hearing, his utterance was permeated
by an urgency and gravity almost awe-inspiring, here in the loneliness
and obscurity of the wood. She went in sudden questioning,
incomprehensible fear of the dear man with the blue eyes. His arm was
steady beneath her hand, supporting her. His care and protection sensibly
encircled her, yet he seemed to her thousands of miles away, speaking
from out some depth of knowledge and of reality which hopelessly
transcended her experience. She felt strangely diffident, strangely
ignorant. Felt, though she had no name for it, the mystical empire,
mystical terror of sex as sex.
"The night of the breaking of the monsoon, of those riotings and fires at
Bhutpur, your father bartered his birthright, in a certain particular,
against your restoration to health. The exact nature of that renunciation
I cannot explain to you. The whole transaction lies beyond the range of
ordinary endeavour; and savours of the transcendental--or the
superstitious, if you please to take it that way. But call it by what
name you will, his extravagant gamble with the Lords of Life and Death
worked, apparently. For you got well; and you have stayed well, dear
witch--thanks to those same Lords of Life and Death, whose favour your
father attempted to buy with this act of personal sacrifice. He was
willing to pay a price most men would consider prohibitive to secure your
recovery. And, with an unswerving sense of honour, he has gone on paying,
until that which, at the start, must have amounted to pretty severe
discipline has crystallized into habit. What you tell me of this young
man, Darcy Faircloth's history, goes, indirectly, to strengthen my
admiration for your father's self-denying ordinance, both in proposing
and in maintaining this strange payment."
There--it was finished, his special pleading. Carteret felt unfeignedly
glad. He was unaccustomed to put forth such elaborate expositions, more
particularly of a delicate nature and therefore offering much to avoid as
well as much to state.
"So you are bound to play a straight game with him--dear child. Believe
me he deserves it, is finely worthy of it. Be open with him. Show him
your letter. Ask his permission--if you have sufficient courage. Your
courage is the measure of the sincerity of your desire in this business.
Do you follow me?"
"Yes--but I shall distress him," Damaris mournfully argued.
She was bewildered, and in her bewilderment held to the immediate
and obvious.
"Less than by shutting him out from your confidence, by keeping him at
arm's length."
"Neglecting him?"
"Ah! so that rankles still, does it? Yes, neglecting him just a
trifle, perhaps."
"But the neglect is over--indeed, it is over and utterly done with."
And in the ardour of her disclaimer, Damaris pressed against Carteret,
her face upturned and, since she too was tall, very close to his.
"Just because it is over and done with I begged you to bring me back
with you to-night. I wanted to make a clean break with all the
frivolities, while everything was quite clear to me. I wanted, while I
still belonged to you, Colonel Sahib, through our so beautifully dancing
together twice"--
"God in Heaven!" Carteret said under his breath. For what a past-master
in the art of the torturer is your white souled maiden at moments!
"To go right away from all that rushing about worldliness--I don't blame
Henrietta--she has been sweet to me--but it is worldliness, rather, isn't
it?--and to be true to him again and true to myself. I wanted to return
to my allegiance. You believe me, don't you? You made me see, Colonel
Sahib, you brought my foolishness home to me--Oh! yes, I owe you endless
gratitude and thanks. But I was uneasy already. I needed a wholesome
shove, and you gave it. And now you deliver a much-needed supplementary
shove--one to my courage. I obey you, Colonel Sahib, without question or
reservation--not on the chance of getting what I long for; but because
you have convinced me of what is right. I will tell him--tell my
father--all about everything--to-morrow."
"It is now to-morrow--and, with the night, many dreams have packed up
their traps and fled."
"But we needn't be sorry for that," Damaris declared, in prettily rising
confidence. "The truth is going to be better than the dreams, isn't it?"
"For you, yes--with all my heart, I hope."
"But for you--why not for you?" she cried, smitten by anxiety regarding
him and by swift tenderness.
They had reached the end of the upward climbing path, and stepped from
the semi-darkness of the wood into the greater clarity of the gravel
terrace in front of the hotel. Far below unseen waves again beat upon the
beach. The sound reached them faintly. The dome of the sky, thick sown
with stars, appeared prodigious in expanse and in height. It dwarfed the
block of hotel buildings upon the right. Dwarfed all visible things, the
whole earth, indeed, which it so sensibly enclosed. Dwarfed also, and
that to the point of desolation, the purposes and activities of
individual human lives. How could these count, what could they matter in
presence of the countless worlds swinging, there, through the illimitable
fields of space?
To Carteret this thought, or rather this sensation, of human
insignificance brought a measure of stoic consolation. He lifted Damaris'
hand off his arm, and held it, while he said, smiling at her:
"For me--yes, of course. Why not? For me too, dearest witch, truth is
assuredly the most profitable bedfellow."
Then, as she shrank, drawing away a little, startled by the crudeness of
the expression:
"I enjoyed our two dances," he told her, "and I shall enjoy taking you to
Marseilles and making Faircloth's acquaintance, if our little scheme
works out successfully--if it is sanctioned, permitted. After that--other
things being equal--I think I ought to break camp and journey back to
England, to look after my property and my sister's affairs. I have gadded
long enough. It is time to get into harness--such harness as claims me in
these all too easy-going days. And now you must really go indoors without
further delay, and go to bed. May the four angels of pious tradition
stand at the four corners of it, to keep you safe in body, soul and
spirit. Sleep the sleep of innocence and wake radiant and refreshed."
"Ah! but you're sad--you are sad," Damaris cried, her lips quivering.
"Can't I do anything?--I would do so much, would love so much--beyond
anything--to make you unsad."
The man with the blue eyes shook his head.
"Impossible, alas! Your intervention, in this case, is finally ruled out,
my sweet lamb," he affectionately, but conclusively said.