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Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

L >> Lucas Malet >> Deadham Hard




Here the late afternoon sun still lay hot. The booming plunge of the
tideless sea, breaking upon the rocks below, quivered in the quiet air.
Henrietta Frayling withdrew her hands from her muff, unfastened the
collar of her sable cape. The change from the shadowed woods to this
glaring sheltered stretch of road was oppressive. She felt strangely
tired and spent. She trusted Damaris would not perceive her uncomfortable
state and proffer sympathy. And Damaris, in fact, did nothing of the
sort, being very fully occupied with her own concerns at present.

Half a mile ahead, pastel-tinted, green-shuttered houses--a village of a
single straggling street--detached themselves in broken perspective from
the purple of pine-crowned cliff and headland beyond. Behind them the
western sky began to grow golden with the approach of sunset. The road
lead straight towards that softly golden light--to St. Augustin. It led
further, deeper into the gold, deeper, as one might fancy, into the heart
of the coming sunset, namely to the world-famous seaport of Marseilles.

Damaris sought to stifle remembrance of this alluring fact, as soon as it
occurred to her. She must not dally with it--no she mustn't. To in
anywise encourage or dwell on it, was weak and unworthy, she having
accepted the claims of clearly apprehended duty. She could not go back on
her decision, her choice, since, in face of the everlasting hills, she
had pledged herself.

So she let her eyes no longer rest on the high-road, but looked out to
sea--where, as tormenting chance would have it, the black hull of a big
cargo boat, steaming slowly westward, cut into the vast expanse of blue,
long pennons of rusty grey smoke trailing away from its twin rusty-red
painted funnels.

Hard-pressed, the girl turned to her companion, asking abruptly,
inconsequently--"Is that every one whom you expect on Thursday,
Henrietta?"

For some seconds Mrs. Frayling regarded her with a curious lack of
intelligent interest or comprehension. Her thoughts, also, had run
forward into the gold of the approaching sunset; and she had some
difficulty in overtaking, or restraining them, although they went no
further than the Grand Hotel; and--so to speak--sat down there all of a
piece, on a buff-coloured iron chair, which commanded an uninterrupted
view of four gentlemen standing talking before the front door.

"On Thursday?" she repeated--"Why Thursday?"--and her usually
skilful hands fumbled with the fastening of her sable cape. Their
helpless ineffectual movements served to bring her to her senses,
bring her to herself.

"Really you possess an insatiable thirst for information regarding my
probable guests, precious child," she exclaimed. "All--of course not. I
have only portrayed the heads of tribes as yet for your delectation. We
shall number many others--male and female--of the usual self-expatriated
British rank and file.--Derelicts mostly."

Lightly and coldly, Henrietta laughed.

"Like, for example, the General and myself. Wanderers possessed of a
singularly barren species of freedom, without ties, without any
sheet-anchor of family or of profession to embarrass our movements,
without call to live in one place rather than another. All along this
sun-blessed Riviera you will find them swarming, thick as flies,
displaying the trumpery spites and rivalries through which, as I started
by pointing out to you, they can alone maintain a degree of individuality
and persuade themselves and others they still are actually alive."

Shocked at this sudden bitterness, touched to the quick by generous pity,
regardless of possible onlookers--here in the village street, where the
hoof-beats of the trotting horses echoed loud from the house-walls on
either side--Damaris put her arms round Henrietta Frayling, clasping,
kissing her.

"Ah! don't, Henrietta," she cried. "Don't dare to say such ugly,
lying things about your dear self. They aren't true. They're absurdly,
scandalously untrue.--You who are so brilliant, so greatly admired,
who have everyone at your feet! You who are so kind too,--think of all
the pleasure you have given me to-day, for instance--and then think
how beautifully good you've been, and all the time are being, to poor
Mr. Wace"--

Whether Mrs. Frayling's surprising lapse into sincerity and bald
self-criticism were intentional, calculated, or not, she was undoubtedly
quick to see and profit by the opening which Damaris' concluding words
afforded her.

"How sweet you are, darling child! How very dear of you to scold me
thus!" she murmured, gently disengaging herself and preening her
feathers, somewhat disarranged by the said darling child's
impetuous onset.

"I know it is wrong to grumble. Yet sometimes--as one grows older--one
gets a dreadful sense that the delights of life are past; and that
perhaps one has been overscrupulous, over-timid and so missed the
best.--That is one reason why I find it so infinitely pleasing to have
you with me--yet pathetic too perhaps.--Why? Well, I don't know that I am
quite at liberty to explain exactly why."

Henrietta smiled at her long, wistfully and oh! so sagely.

"And, indirectly, that reminds me I am most anxious you should not
exaggerate, or run off with any mistaken ideas about my dealings with
poor Marshall Wace. I don't deny I did find his constantly being with us
a trial at first. But I am reconciled to it. A trifle of discipline,
though screamingly disagreeable, is no doubt sometimes useful--good for
one's character, I mean. And I really have grown quite attached to him.
He has charming qualities. His want of self-confidence is really his
worst fault--and what a trivial one if you've had experience of the
horrid things men can do, gamble, for example, and drink."

Henrietta paused, sighed. The yellow facade of the Grand Hotel came into
sight, a pale spot amid dark trees in the distance.

"And Marshall, poor fellow," she continued, "is more grateful to me,
that I know, than words can say. So do like him and encourage him a
little--it would be such a help and happiness to me as well as to him,
dearest Damaris."




CHAPTER V

IN WHICH HENRIETTA PULLS THE STRINGS


Mrs. Frayling's afternoon party passed off to admiration. But this by no
means exhausted her social activities. Rather did it stimulate them; so
that, with Damaris' amusement as their ostensible object and excuse, they
multiplied exceedingly. Henrietta was in her native element. Not for
years had she enjoyed herself so much. This chaperonage, this vicarious
motherhood, was rich in opportunity. She flung wide her nets, even to the
enmeshing of recruits from other larger centres, Cannes, Antibes and
Nice. This more ambitious phase developed later. Immediately our
chronicle may address itself to the initial Thursday, which, for our
nymph-like maiden, saw the birth of certain illusions destined to all too
lengthy a span of life.

Luncheon at the villa--or as Henrietta preferred it called, The
Pavilion--set in the grounds of the Hotel de la Plage and dependent for
service upon that house--was served at mid-day. This left a considerable
interval before the advent of the expected guests. Mrs. Frayling refused
to dedicate it to continuous conversation, as unduly tiring both for
Damaris and for herself. They must reserve their energies, must keep
fresh. Marshall Wace was, therefore, bidden to provide peaceful
entertainment, read aloud--presently, perhaps, sing to them at such time
as digestion--bad for the voice when in process--might be supposed
complete. The young man obeyed, armed with Tennyson's _Maud_ and a volume
of selected lyrics.

His performance fairly started General Frayling furtively vanished in
search of a mild _siesta_. It inflated his uxorious breast with pride to
have his Henrietta shine in hospitality thus. But his lean shanks
wearied, keeping time to the giddy music. Wistfully he feared he must be
going downhill, wasn't altogether the man he used to be, since he found
the business of pleasure so exhaustingly strenuous. And that was beastly
unfair to his lovely wife--wouldn't do, would not do at all, by Gad!
Therefore did he vanish into a diminutive and rather stuffy smoking-room,
under the stairs, unfasten his nankeen waistcoat, unfasten his
collar-stud, doze and finally, a little anxiously, sleep.

Whatever Marshall Wace's diffidence in ordinary intercourse, it
effectually disappeared so soon as he began to declaim or to recite. The
histrionic in him declared itself, rising dominant. Given a character to
impersonate, big swelling words to say, fine sentiments to enunciate, he
changed to the required colour chameleon-like. You forgot--at least the
feminine portion of his audience, almost without exception, forgot--that
his round light-brown eyes stared uncomfortably much; that his nose, thin
at the root and starting with handsome aquiline promise, ended in a
foolish button-tip. Forgot that his lips were straight and compressed,
wanting in generous curves and in tenderness--an actor's mouth,
constructed merely for speech. Forgot the harsh quality of the triangular
redness on either cheek, fixed and feverish. Ceased to remark how the
angle of the jaw stood away from and beyond the sinewy, meagre neck, or
note the rise and fall of Adam's apple so prominent in his throat.--No
longer were annoyed by the effeminate character of the hands, their
retracted nails and pink, upturned finger-tips, offering so queer a
contrast to the rather inordinate size of his feet.

For the voice rarely failed to influence its hearers, to carry you indeed
a little out of yourself by its variety of intonation, its fire and
fervour, its languishing modulations, broken pauses, yearning melancholy
of effect. The part of the neurotic hero of the--then--Laureate's poem,
that somewhat pinch-beck Victorian Hamlet, suited our young friend,
moreover, down to the ground. It offered sympathetic expression to his
own nature and temperament; so that he wooed, scoffed, blasphemed,
orated, drowned in salt seas of envy and self-pity, with a simulation of
sincerity as convincing to others as consolatory to himself.

And Damaris, being unlearned in the curious arts of the theatre, listened
wide-eyed, spellbound, until flicked by the swishing skirts of fictitious
emotion into genuine, yet covert, excitement. As the reading progressed
Henrietta Frayling's presence increasingly sank into unimportance. More
and more did the poem assume a personal character, of which, if the
reader were hero, she--Damaris--became heroine. Marshall Wace seemed to
read not to, but definitely at her; so that during more than one ardent
passage, she felt herself go hot all over, as though alone with him, an
acknowledged object of his adoring, despairing declarations. This she
shrank from, yet--it must be owned--found stirring, strangely and not
altogether unpleasantly agitating. For was not this _protege_ of
Henrietta's--whom the latter implored her to encourage and treat
kindly--something of a genius? Capable of sudden and amazing
transformation, talking to you with a modesty and deference agreeably
greater than that of most young men of his age; then, on an instant,
changing at will, and extraordinarily voicing the accumulated wrongs,
joys and sorrows of universal humanity? Could Henrietta, who usually
spoke of him in tones of commiseration, not to say of patronage, be aware
how remarkable he really was? Damaris wondered; regarding him, meanwhile,
with innocent respect and admiration. For how tremendously much he must
have experienced, how greatly he must have suffered to be able to portray
drama, express profound emotion thus! That the actor's art is but
glorified make-believe, the actor himself too often hollow as a drum,
though loud sounding as one, never for an instant occurred to her. How
should it?

Therefore when Mrs. Frayling--recollecting certain mysteries of the
toilet which required attention before the arrival of her expected
guests--brought the performance to an abrupt termination, Damaris felt a
little taken aback, a little put about, as though someone should be
guilty of talking millinery in church.

For--"Splendid, my dear Marshall, splendid," the lady softly yet
emphatically interrupted him. "To-day you really surpass yourself. I
never heard you read better, and I hate to be compelled to call a halt.
But time has flown--look."

And she pointed to the blue and gold Sevres clock upon the mantelpiece.

"Miss Verity is an inspiring auditor," he said, none best pleased at
being thus arbitrarily arrested in midcourse. "For whatever merit my
reading may have possessed, your thanks are due to her rather than to me,
Cousin Henrietta."

He spoke to the elder woman. He looked at the younger. With a nervous yet
ponderous movement--it was Marshall Wace's misfortune always to take up
more room than by rights belonged to his height and bulk--he got on to
his feet. Inattentively let drop the volume of poems upon a neighbouring
table, to the lively danger of two empty coffee cups.

The cups rattled. "Pray be careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with
some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention
had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had
been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She,
therefore, hit out--to regret her indiscretion the next moment.

"Nothing--nothing," she prettily added. "I beg your pardon, Marshall, but
I quite thought those cups would fall off the table--So stupid of me."

The fixed red widened, painfully inundating the young man's countenance.
He was infuriated by his own awkwardness. Humiliated by Mrs. Frayling's
warning, of which her subsequent apology failed to mitigate the disgrace.
And that this should occur just in the hour of satisfied vanity, of
agreeable success--and before Damaris! In her eyes he must be miserably
disqualified henceforth.

But his misfortunes worked to quite other ends than he anticipated. For
Damaris came nearer, her expression gravely earnest as appealing to him
not to mind, not to let these things vex him.

"I have never heard anyone read so beautifully," she told him. "You make
the words come alive so that one sees the whole story happening. It is
wonderful. I shall always remember this afternoon because of your
reading--and shall long to hear you again--often, I know, long for that."

Wace bowed. This innocent enthusiasm was extremely assuaging to his
wounded self-esteem.

"You have but to ask me, Miss Verity. I shall be only too honoured,
too happy to read to you whenever you have leisure and inclination
to listen."

But here Mrs. Frayling put her arm round Damaris' waist, affectionately,
laughingly, and drew her towards the door.

"Come, come, darling child--don't be too complimentary or Marshall will
grow unbearably conceited.--You'll put on flannels, by the way, Marshall,
won't you?" she added as an after-thought.

"I shall not play tennis this afternoon," he answered, his nose in the
air. "There will be plenty for a change of setts without me. I am not
good enough for Binning and his two young aristocrats, and I don't choose
to make sport for the Philistines by an exhibition of my ineptitude. I
have no pretentious to being an athlete."

"Nonsense, Marshall, nonsense," she took him up quickly, conscious his
reply was not in the best taste. "You wilfully underrate yourself."

Then later, as, still entwined, she conducted Damaris upstairs to her
bed-chamber.

"There you have the position in a nutshell," she said. "Still am I not
right? For hasn't he charm, poor dear fellow, so very much cleverness--so
really gifted isn't he?"

And as the girl warmly agreed:

"Ah! I am so very glad you appreciate him.--And you have yet to hear
him sing! That takes one by storm, I confess--Unhappy Maud
Callowgas!--But you see how frightfully on edge he is--how he turns off
for no valid reason, imagines himself a failure, imagines himself out
of it? In point of fact he plays a quite passable game of tennis--and
you heard what he said? These fits of depression and self-depreciation
amount to being tragic. One requires endless tact to manage him and
save him from himself."

Henrietta paused, sighed, sitting on the stool before her toilette table,
neatly placing tortoiseshell hairpins, patting and adjusting her bright
brown hair.

"I could have bitten my tongue out for making that wretched slip about
the coffee cups; but I was off my guard for once. And like all artistic
people Marshall is a little absent-minded--absorbed to the point of not
seeing exactly what he is doing.--Poor young man, I sometimes tremble for
his future. Such a highly strung, sensitive nature amounts almost to a
curse. If he got into wrong hands what mightn't the end be?--Catastrophe,
for he is capable of fatal desperation. And I must own men--with the
exception of my husband who is simply an angel to him--do not always
understand and are not quite kind to him. He needs a wise loving woman to
develop the best in him--there is so very much which is good--and to
guide him."

"Well," Damaris said, and that without suspicion of irony, "dearest
Henrietta, hasn't he you?"

Mrs. Frayling took up the ivory hand-glass, and sitting sideways on the
dressing-stool, turned her graceful head hither and thither, to obtain
the fuller view of her back hair.

"Me? But you forget, I have other claims to satisfy. I can't look after
him for ever. I must find him a wife I suppose; though I really shall be
rather loath to give him up. His gratitude and loneliness touch me so
much," she said, looking up and smiling, with a little twist in her
mouth, as of playful and unwilling resignation, captivating to see.

By which cajoleries and expression of praiseworthy sentiment, Henrietta
raised herself notably in Damaris' estimation--as she fully intended to
do. Our maiden kissed her with silent favour; and, mysteries of the
toilette completed, more closely united than ever before--that is, since
the date of the elder's second advent--the two ladies, presenting the
prettiest picture imaginable, went downstairs again, gaily, hand in hand.




CHAPTER VI

CARNIVAL--AND AFTER


Tall and slim, in the black and white of his evening clothes, Colonel
Carteret leaned his shoulder against an iron pillar of the verandah of
the Hotel de la Plage, and smoked, looking meditatively down into the
moonlit garden. Through the range of brightly lighted open windows
behind him came the sound of a piano and stringed instruments, a subdued
babble of voices, the whisper of women's skirts, and the sliding rush of
valsing feet.

To-night marked the culmination and apex of Henrietta Frayling's social
effort. It was mid-March, mid-Lent--which last fact she made an
excuse--after taking ecclesiastical opinion on the subject, namely, that
of Herbert Binning, the Anglican chaplain--for issuing invitations to a
Cinderella dance. Damaris Verity, it appeared, had never really, properly
and ceremoniously "come out"--a neglect which Henrietta protested should
be repaired. Positively, but very charmingly, she told Sir Charles it
must. She only wished the affair could be on a larger, more worthy scale.
This was, after all, but a makeshift--the modest best she could arrange
under the circumstances. But he--Sir Charles--must not refuse. It would
give her such intense pleasure to have the darling child make her
official _debut_ under her, Henrietta's, auspices. The hours would of
necessity be early, to avoid disturbance of the non-dancing residents in
the hotel. But, if the entertainment were bound to end at midnight, it
could begin at a proportionately unfashionable hour. For once _table
d'hote_ might surely be timed for six o'clock; and the dining-room--since
it offered larger space than any other apartment--be cleared, aired, and
ready for dancing by a quarter-past eight.--Henrietta unquestionably had
a way with her; proprietors, managers, servants alike hastening obedient
to her cajoling nod.--Thanks to importations by road and rail, from other
coast resorts, she reckoned to muster sixteen to twenty couples.--A
rubbishing apology at best, in the matter of a "coming out" ball, for a
girl of Damaris' position and deserts--no one could know that better than
she, Henrietta, herself did!

"A poor thing but mine own," she quoted, when enlarging upon the scheme
to Charles Verity. "But as at Easter we are fated to scatter, I suppose,
and go our several roads with small promise of reunion, you must really
be gracious, dear friend, and, for old sake's sake, give in to my
desires. It's my last chance, for heaven knows how long--not impossibly
for ever."

Carteret happened to be present during the above conversation. Had he
not, it may be doubted whether it would ever have taken place--with this
dash of affecting reminiscence in any case. Allusions to a common past
were barred for excellent reasons, as between these two persons, save
strictly in public. Even so it struck him as a humorous piece of audacity
on the lady's part. Her effrontery touched on the colossal! But it
succeeded, always had done so.--In his judgment of Henrietta, Carteret
never failed to remember, being compact of chivalry and of truthfulness,
that he had once on a time been a good half in love with her
himself.--All the same he was not sure her close association with Damaris
met with his approval.

That association had grown, Jonah's gourd-like, during the last six
weeks, until, as he rather uneasily noted, the two were hardly ever
apart. Luncheons, teas, picnics, excursions, succeeded one another.
Afternoons of tennis in the hotel grounds, the athletic gregarious
Binning and his two pupils, Peregrine Ditton and Harry Ellice in
attendance. Sometimes the latter's sister, Mary Ellice, joined the
company--when Lady Hermione condescended to spare her--or the long-backed
Miss Maud Callowgas. Afternoons of reading and song, too, supplied by
Marshall Wace.--Carteret felt self-reproachful, yet knew his charity
too often threatened to stop short of the young man Wace--though the
beggar had a voice to draw tears from a stone, plague him!--At intervals,
all-day expeditions were undertaken to Monte Carlo, or shopping raids
upon Cannes or Nice.

Yes, verily--as he reflected--Henrietta Frayling did keep the ball
rolling with truly Anglo-Indian frivolity and persistence, here in the
heart of Europe! And was that altogether wholesome for Damaris? He
delighted to have the beautiful young creature enjoy herself, spread her
wings, take her place among the courted and acclaimed. But he prized her
too highly not to be ambitious for her; and would have preferred her
social education to be conducted on more dignified and authorized lines,
in the great world of London, namely, or Paris. When all came to all,
this was hardly good enough.

No one, he honestly admitted, trumpeted that last truth more loudly than
Henrietta--at times. Nevertheless she went on and on, making the business
of this rather second-rate pleasure-seeking daily of greater importance.
How could Damaris be expected to discriminate, to retain her sense of
relative values, in the perpetual scrimmage, the unceasing rush? Instinct
and nobility of nature go an immensely long way as preservatives--thank
God for that--still, where you have unsophistication, inexperience, a
holy ignorance, to deal with, it is unwise to trust exclusively to their
saving grace. Even the finest character is the safer--so he supposed--for
some moulding and direction in its first contact with the world, if it is
to come through the ordeal unscathed and unbesmirched. And to ask such
moulding and direction of Henrietta Frayling was about as useful as
asking a humming-bird to draw a water-cart.

He was still fond of Henrietta and derived much silent entertainment from
witnessing her manoeuvres. But he was under no delusion regarding her. He
considered her quite the most selfish woman of his acquaintance, though
also one of the most superficially attractive. Hers was a cold, not a
hot selfishness, refined to a sort of exquisiteness and never for an
instant fleshly or gross. But that selfishness, in its singleness of
purpose, made her curiously powerful, curiously capable of influencing
persons of larger and finer spirit than herself--witness her ascendency
over Charles Verity during a long period of years, and that without ever
giving, or even seriously compromising, herself.

Into whoever she fixed her dainty little claws, she did it with an eye to
some personal advantage. And here Carteret owned himself puzzled--for
what advantage could she gain from this close association with Damaris?
The girl's freshness went, rather mercilessly, to show up her fading.

At times, it is true, watching her pretty alacrity of manner, hearing her
caressing speech, he inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt,
believe her self-forgetful, her affection genuine, guiltless of design or
after-thought. If so, so very much the better! He was far from grudging
her redemption, specially at the hands of Damaris.--Only were things, in
point of fact, working to this commendable issue? With the best will in
the world to think so, he failed to rid himself of some prickings of
anxiety and distrust.