Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

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"And to think if I hadn't happened to choose that particular day to take
the little dorgs and the ferrets ratting, the 'ole bleesed howd'ye do
might never have come to pass! Tidy sum, young master Darcy's in my debt,
Lord succour him, for the rest of his nat'ral life!"

BOOK III

THE WORLD BEYOND THE FOREST

CHAPTER I

AN EPISODE IN THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES

Thus far, for the surer basing of our argument, it has appeared advisable
to proceed step by step. But the foundations being now well and truly
laid, the pace of our narrative may, with advantage, quicken; a twelve
month be rounded up in a page, a decade, should convenience so dictate,
in a chapter.

To the furthering of which advance, let it be stated that the close of
the year still in question marked the date, for Damaris, of two matters
of cardinal importance. For it was then Sir Charles Verity commenced
writing his history of the reign of Shere Ali, covering the eleven years
following the latter's accession to the very turbulent throne of
Afghanistan in 1863.--Colonel Carteret may be held mainly responsible for
the inception of this literary enterprise, now generally acclaimed a
classic. Had not Sir William Napier, so he argued, made the soldier, as
historian, for ever famous? And why should not Charles Verity, with his
unique knowledge of court intrigues, of the people and the country, do
for the campaigns of the semi-barbarous Eastern ruler, that which Sir
William had done for Wellington's campaign in the Spanish Peninsular?

Carteret prophesied--and truly as the event richly proved--a finely
fascinating book would eventually come of it. Meanwhile--though this
argument, in favour of the scheme, he kept to himself--the preparation of
the said book would supply occupation and interest of which his old
friend appeared to him to stand rather gravely in need. For that
something was, just now, amiss with Charles Verity, Carteret could not
disguise from himself. He was changed, in a way a little broken--so at
least the younger man's kindly, keenly observant, blue eyes regretfully
judged him. He fell into long silences, seeming to sink away into some
abyss of cheerless thought; while his speech had, too often, a bitter
edge to it. Carteret mourned these indications of an unhappy frame of
mind. Did more--sought by all means in his power to conjure them away.

"We must make your father fight his battles over again, dear witch," he
told Damaris, pacing the terrace walk topping the sea-wall beside her,
one evening in the early November dusk. "His record is a very brilliant
one and he ought to get more comfort out of the remembrance of it. Let's
conspire, you and I, to make him sun himself in the achievements and
activities of those earlier years. What do you say?"

"Oh! do it, do it," she answered fervently. "He is sad--and I am so
afraid that it is partly my fault."

"Your fault? Why what wicked practises have you been up to since I was
here last?" he asked, teasing her.

A question evoking, in Damaris, sharp inward debate. For her father's
melancholy humour weighed on her, causing her perplexity and a measure of
self-reproach. She would have given immensely much to unburden herself to
this wise and faithful counsellor; and confide to him the--to
her--strangely moving fact of Darcy Faircloth's existence. Yet,
notwithstanding her conviction of Colonel Carteret's absolute loyalty,
she hesitated; restrained in part by modesty, in part by the fear of
being treacherous. Would it be altogether honourable to give away the
secret places of Charles Verity's life--of any man's life if it came to
that--even to so honourable and trusted a friend? She felt handicapped by
her own ignorance moreover, having neither standards nor precedents for
guidance. She had no idea--how should she?--in what way most men regard
such affairs, how far they accept and condone, how far condemn them. She
could not tell whether she was dealing with a case original and
extraordinary, or one of pretty frequent occurrence in the experience of
those who, as the phrase has it, know their world. These considerations
kept her timid and tongue-tied; though old habit, combined with
Carteret's delightful personality and the soothing influence of the dusky
evening quiet, inclined her to confidences.

"It's not anything I've done," she presently took him up gravely. "But,
quite by chance, I learned something which I think the Commissioner Sahib
would rather not have had me hear. I had to be quite truthful with him
about it; but I was bewildered and ill. I blurted things out rather I'm
afraid, and hurt him more than I need have done. I was so taken by
surprise, you see."

"Yes, I see," Carteret said, regardless of strict veracity. For he didn't
see, though he believed himself on the road to seeing and that some
matter of singular moment.

"He was beautiful to me--beautiful about everything--everybody," she
asserted. "And we love one another not less, but more, he and I--of that
I am sure. Only it's different--different. We can't either of us quite go
back to the time before--and that has helped to make him sad."

Carteret listened in increasing interest aware that he sounded
unlooked-for depths, apprehensive lest those depths should harbour
disastrous occurrences. He walked the length of the terrace before again
speaking. Then, no longer teasing but gently and seriously, he asked her:

"Do you feel free to tell me openly about this, and let me try to help
you--if it's a case for help?"

Damaris shook her head, looking up at him through the soft enclosing
murk, and smiling rather ruefully.

"I wish I knew--I do so wish I knew," she said. "But I don't--not yet,
anyway. Help me without my telling you, please. The book is a splendid
idea. And then do you think you could persuade him to let us go away
abroad, for a time? Everything here must remind him--as it does me--of
what happened. It was quite right," she went on judicially--"for
everyone's sake, we should stay here just the same at first. People,"
with a scornful lift of the head Carteret noted and admired--"might have
mistaken our reason for going away. They had to be made to understand we
were perfectly indifferent.--I knew all that, though we never discussed
it. One does things, sometimes, just because it's right they should be
done, without any sort of planning--just by instinct. Still I know we
can't be quite natural here. What happened comes between us. We're each
anxious about the other and feel a constraint, though we never speak of
it. That can't be avoided, I suppose, for we both suffered a good deal at
the time--but he most, much the most because"--

Damaris paused.

"Because why?"

"I suppose because I'm young; and then, once I got accustomed to the
idea, I saw it meant what was very wonderful in some ways--a
wonderfulness which, for me, would go on and on--a whole new country for
me to explore and travel in, quite my own--and--and--which I couldn't
help loving."

"Heigh ho! heigh ho!" Carteret put in softly. "This becomes exciting,
dear witch, you know."

"I don't want to be tantalizing," she answered him, still pacing in the
growing dimness of land and sea.

The dead black mass of the great ilex trees looked to touch the low
hanging sky. A grey gleam, here and there, lit the surface of the
swirling tide-river. The boom of the slow plunging waves came from the
back of the Bar, and now and again wild-fowl cried, faint and distant,
out on the mud-flats of the Haven.

"Listen," Damaris said. "It is mournful here. It tells you the same
things over and over again. It sort of insists on them. The place seems
so peaceful, but it never lets you alone, really. And now, after what
happened, it never leaves him--the Commissioner Sahib--alone. It repeats
the same story to him over and over again. It wears him as dropping water
wears away stone. And there is no longer the same reason for staying
there was at first. Persuade him to go away, to take me abroad. And come
with us--couldn't you?--for a little while at least. Is it selfish to ask
you to leave your hunting and shooting so early in the season? I don't
want to be selfish. But he isn't well. Whether he isn't well in his body
or only in his thinkings, I can't tell. But it troubles me. He sleeps
badly, I am afraid. The nights must be very long and lonely when one
can't sleep.--If you would come, it would be so lovely. I should feel so
safe about him. You and the book should cure him between you. I'm
perfectly sure of that. To have you would make us both so happy"--

And, in her innocent importunity, Damaris slipped her hand within Colonel
Carteret's arm sweetly coaxing him.

He started slightly. Threw back his head, standing, straight and tall, in
the mysterious twilight beside her. Raised his deerstalker cap, for a
moment, letting the moist chill of the November evening dwell on his hair
and forehead.

Though very popular with women, Carteret had never married, making a home
for his elder sister, Mrs. Dreydel--widow of a friend and fellow officer
in the then famous "Guides"--and her four sturdy, good-looking boys at
the Norfolk manor-house, which had witnessed his own birth and those of a
long line of his ancestors. To bring up a family of his own, in addition
to his sister's, would have been too costly, and debt he abhorred.
Therefore, such devoirs as he paid the great goddess Aphrodite, were but
few and fugitive--he being by nature and temperament an idealist and a
notably clean liver. By his abstention, however, sentiment was
fine-trained rather than extinguished. His heart remained young, capable
of being thrilled in instant response to any appeal of high and delicate
quality. It thrilled very sensibly, now, in response to the appeal of
Damaris' hand, emphasizing her tender pleading regarding her father. She
touched, she charmed him to an extent which obliged him rather sharply to
call his senses to order. Hadn't he known her ever since she was a babe
a span long? Wasn't she, according to all reason, a babe still, in as far
as any decently minded male being of his mature age could be concerned?
He told himself, at once humorously and sternly, he ought to feel so,
think so--whether he did or not. And ought, in his case, was a word not
to be played fast and loose with. Once uttered it must be obeyed.

Wherefore, thus conclusively self-admonished, he put his cap on his head
again and, bending a little over Damaris, patted her hand affectionately
as it rested upon his arm.

"Very good--I'll hold myself and my future at your disposition," he gaily
said to her. "As much hunting and shooting as I care for will very well
keep. Don't bother your pretty head about them. During the Christmas
holidays, my nephews will be ready enough, in all conscience, to let fly
with my guns and ride my horses, so neither will be wasted. I'll go along
with you gladly, for no man living is dearer to me than your father, and
no business could be more to my taste than scotching and killing the
demons which plague him. They plague all of us, in some form or other, at
times, as life goes on."

Very gently he disengaged his arm from her hand.

"Take me indoors," he said, "and give me my tea--over which we'll further
discuss plots for kidnapping Verity and carrying him off south. The
French Riviera for preference?--Hullo--what the deuce is that?"

For, as he spoke, the two cats appearing with miraculous suddenness out
of nowhere--as is the custom of their priceless tribe--rushed wildly
past. Fierce, sinuous, infinitely graceful shapes, leaping high in air,
making strange noises, chirrupings and squeakings, thudding of quick
little paws, as they chased one another round the antiquated,
seaward-trained cannon and pyramid of ball.

For a minute or so Damaris watched them, softly laughing. Then, in the
content bred of Carteret's promise and the joy of coming travel,
something of their frisky spirit caught her too--a spirit which, for all
young creatures, magically haunts the dusk. And, as they presently fled
away up the lawn, Damaris fled after them, circling over the moist
grass, darting hither and thither, alternately pursuing and pursued.

Colonel Carteret, following soberly, revolving many thoughts, did not
overtake her until the garden door was reached. There, upon the
threshold, the light from within covering and revealing her, she awaited
him. Her bosom rose and fell, her breathing being a little hurried, her
face a little flushed. Her grave eyes sparkled and danced.

"Oh! you've made me so glad, so dreadfully glad," she said. "And I never
properly thanked you. Forgive me. I never can resist them--I went mad
with the cats."

Her young beauty appeared to Carteret very notable; and, yes--although
she might disport herself in this childishly frolic fashion--it was
idle to call her, or pretend her any longer a babe. For cause to him
unknown, through force of some experience of which he remained
ignorant, she had undeniably come into the charm and mystery of her
womanhood--a very fair and noble blossoming before which reverently, if
wistfully, he bowed his head.

"It's good to have you declare yourself glad, dear witch, in that case
I'm glad too," he answered her. "But as to forgiveness, I'm inclined to
hold it over until you leave off being tantalizing--and, upon my word, I
find you uncommonly far from leaving off just now!"

"You mean until I tell you what happened?"

Carteret nodded, searching her face with wise, fearless, smiling eyes.

"Ah! yes," he said, "we can put it that way if you please." Damaris
hesitated detecting some undercurrent of meaning which puzzled her.

"I may never have to tell you. My father may speak of it--or you may just
see for yourself. Only then, then"--she with a moving earnestness prayed
him--"be kind, be lenient. Don't judge harshly--promise me you won't."

And as she spoke her expression softened to a great and unconscious
tenderness; for she beheld, in thought, a wide-winged sea-bird, above
certain letters, tattooed in indigo and crimson upon the back of a lean
shapely brown hand.

"I promise you," Carteret said, and passed in at the door marvelling
somewhat sadly.

"Is it that?" he asked himself. "If so, it comes early. Has she gone the
way of all flesh and fallen in love?"

And this conversation, as shall presently be set forth, ushered in that
second matter of cardinal importance, already referred to, which for
Damaris marked the close of this eventful year.

CHAPTER II

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-Pres--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?

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