Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

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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--

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