A	»	B	»	C	»	D	»	E
F	»	G	»	H	»	I	»	J
K	»	L	»	M	»	N	»	O
P	»		R	»	S	»		T
U	»		V	»	W	»		Z

Cleveland Moffett - "Through the Wall"

Carter Goodloe - "Calvert of Strathore"

W.W. Jacobs - "A Mixed Proposal"

American Anti Slavery Society - "The Anti Slavery Examiner, Part 3 of 4"

Layoffs at Random House, Simon & Schuster
Moreover Technologies - Premier purveyor of real-time news and RSS feeds from across the Web

Citigroup Cuts Estimates and Price Target on Amazon.com (AMZN) Due To Flat Online Retail Growth
Ad - Get Info for Book Publishing from 14 search engines in 1.

Farewell To Okada In PortHarcourt
'Yes, Virginia, book publishing is NOT recession proof,' said Patricia Schroeder, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Publishers. 'It's sad day.' At Random House, the country's largest general trade publisher, the man who

Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

L >> Lucas Malet >> Deadham Hard




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.