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Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds. - "The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII"

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Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

L >> Lucas Malet >> Deadham Hard




And from such prickings he sensibly suffered to-night, as he leaned his
shoulder against the iron pillar of the verandah at the Hotel de la
Plage, and looked down into the _claire obscure_ of the moonlit gardens,
while over the polished floor of the big room at his back, the rhythmical
tread of the dancers' feet kept time to the music of piano and sweet
wailing strings.--For that a change showed increasingly evident in
Damaris he could not disguise from himself. In precisely what that change
consisted it was not easy to say. He discovered it more in an attitude of
mind and atmosphere than in outward action or even in words said. But she
was not quite the same as the grave and steadfast young creature who had
asked his help for her father, and indirectly for herself, in the moist
chill of the November twilight at The Hard--and who, receiving promise
of such help, had darted away over the drenched lawn in company with the
wildly gambolling cats alternately pursuing and pursued. Nor was she
quite the same as when he had walked with her, through the resounding
Paris streets, to pay her devoirs to her former guardians and teachers at
the convent school; and, later returning, had spoken to her of the safety
of religion, the high worth of the doctrine and practice of a definite
historic creed.

Her relation to her father appeared--and this pained Carteret--to lack
its old intimacy, its intensity of consideration and tenderness. Her
interest in the child of his brain, his belated literary experiment, was
less sustained and spontaneous. How could it flourish in its former
proportions when she was so much away, so often absent from morning till
night?--Not without leave though, for she scrupulously asked permission
before answering Henrietta's gay call and taking part in that lady's
junketings and jaunts. Sir Charles never refused the requested
permission; but, while granting it, did he not tend to retreat into his
former sardonic humour, fall into long silences, become inaccessible
again and remote? The book went forward; yet, more than once recently,
Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly
delivered of the admirable volume were not he--Carteret--permanently at
hand to act midwife. An unpleasant idea pursued him that Sir Charles
went, in some strange fashion, in fear of Damaris, of her criticism, her
judgment. Yet fear seemed a hatefully strong and ugly word to employ as
between a father and daughter so straitly, heretofore, bound to one
another in love.

And then--there lay the heart of the worry, proving him only too likely a
graceless jealous middle-age curmudgeon, a senile sentimentalist, thus
did he upbraidingly mock himself--were there not signs of Damaris
developing into a rather thorough paced coquette? She accepted the homage
offered her with avidity, with many small airs and graces--_a la_
Henrietta--of a quite novel sort. Old General Frayling--poor pathetic old
warrior--was her slave. Peregrine Ditton, Harry Ellice, even the cleric
Binning--let alone the permanently self-conscious, attitudinizing
Wace--with other newer acquaintances, English and foreign, ran at her
heels. And she let them run, bless her, even encouraged their running by
turns of naughty disdain and waywardness. She was fatal to boys--that was
in the natural course of things. And fatal to those considerably older
than boys--perhaps--

The music flew faster and faster--stopped with a shriek and a crash.
Laughing, talking, the dancers streamed out of the hot brightly lighted
room into the soft peace, the delicate phantasy of the colourless
moonlight.

Carteret drew back, flattening himself against the iron pillar in the
shadow, as they passed down the steps into the garden below; the women's
pale airy forms and the men's dark ones, pacing the shining paths in
groups and couples, between the flower-beds, under the flat-headed pines,
the shaggy-stemmed palms and towering eucalyptus, in and out massed banks
of blossoming shrubs and dwarf hedges of monthly roses.

Midway in the light-hearted procession came Damaris, Peregrine Ditton on
one side of her, Harry Ellice on the other. Leaving the main alley, the
trio turned along a path, running parallel to the verandah, which opened
into a circle surrounding the stone basin of a tinkling fountain,
immediately below Colonel Carteret's post of solitary observation.

Damaris carried the demi-train of her white satin gown over her arm,
thereby revealing a wealth of lace frilled petticoat, from beneath
which the toes of her high-heeled, white satin shoes stepped with a
pretty measured tread. The two boys, leaning a little towards one
another, talked across her, their voices slightly raised in argument,
not to say dispute.

"I call it rotten mean to bag my dance like that, I tell you.--Go
away?--No I swear I won't go away, won't budge one blessed inch unless
Miss Verity actually orders me to. If my dance was stolen, all the more
reason I should have her to talk to now as a sort of make-up. So you
just clear out, if you please, my good chap, and leave the field to your
elders and betters. Remove your superfluous carcass till further
notice.--Vamoose, my son, do you hear?"

This excitedly from Peregrine Ditton. They reached the fountain. Damaris
stayed her measured walk, and stood gazing at the jet of water in its
uprush and myriad sparkling fall. Ellice answered chaffingly yet with an
underlying growl; and the dispute threatened to wax warm. But the girl
heeded neither disputant, her attention rapt in watching the play of the
falling water.

Throughout the evening she had easily been chief centre of attraction,
besieged by partners. And those not only her present rival attendants or
Marshall Wace; but by Mrs. Frayling's various importations, plus Mr.
Alban Titherage--a fat, smart and very forthcoming young London
stock-broker, lately established, in company of a pretty, silly,
phthisis-stricken wife, at the Grand Hotel. Very much mistress of
herself, Damaris had danced straight through the programme with an air of
almost defiant vivacity. Now, as it seemed, her mood had changed and
sobered. For presently Colonel Carteret saw her bosom heave, while she
fetched a long sigh and, raising her head, glanced upwards, her great
eyes searching the shadowed space of the verandah.

The cool lunar brightness flooded her upturned face, her bare neck and
arms, the glittering folds of her satin gown. She was exceedingly fair to
look upon just now. For an appreciable length of time her glance met
Carteret's and held it; giving him--though the least neurotic of men,
calm of body and of mind--a strange sensation as of contact with an
electric current which tingled through every nerve and vein. And this,
although he perceived that, dazzled by the moonlight, she either did not
see or quite failed to recognize him. An expression of disappointment,
akin, so he read it, to hope defeated, crossed her face. She lowered her
eyes, and moved slowly forward along the path, the boys on either side
her. Again Peregrine Ditton took up his tale--in softened accents though
still as one sorely injured and whose temper consequently inclines not
unjustly to the volcanic.

"Upon my honour, I think you might have given me just a minute's law,
Miss Verity," he protested. "It was no fault of mine being late. Maud
Callowgas kept me toddling to the most unconscionable extent. First she
wanted an ice, and then a tumbler of lemon squash; and then she lost her
fan, or pretended she did, and expected me to hunt for the beastly thing.
I give you my word I was as rude as sin, in hope of shaking her off; but
she didn't, or wouldn't, see what I was driving at. There was no getting
away from her. I tell you she sticks like a burr, that girl, once she
lays hold of you. Octopuses aren't in it. Her power of adhesion is
something utterly frantic "--

Here Ellice cut in with a doubtless scathing though, to Carteret,
inaudible remark, at which Damaris laughed outright; and the fresh young
voices trailed away in the distance alternately mocking and remonstrant.

As he listened, still conscious of contact with that surprising electric
current, Carteret found himself taking stock of his own forty-nine years
with swift and lively repugnance. To accept the sum of them, and the
limitations and restrictions that sum is currently supposed to entail,
proved just now astonishingly difficult. Damaris, as beheld in the
fantastic loveliness of the moonlight, her searching, unseeing eyes
meeting and dwelling upon his own, the look of disappointment and defeat
crossing her sweetly serious countenance, wrought upon him begetting a
dangerous madness in his blood. That it was dangerous and a madness, and
therefore promptly to be mastered and ejected, he would not permit
himself an instant's doubt. Yet it very shrewdly plagued him, daring even
to advance specious arguments upon its own behalf.

For, when he came to consider matters, was he not in perfect health, more
sound and fit than many a man but half his age? And were not his
fortunes just now at a specially happy turn, his sister, Mrs. Dreydel,
having lately been blessed with a windfall, in the shape of yearly
income, which--did he so choose--relieved him of much expenditure on her
account. Her eldest son had received his commission. The three younger
boys had done well as to scholarships thereby materially reducing the
cost of their education. Never had he, Carteret, been so free to consult
his private desires; and never, as he knew too profoundly well, had his
desires taken so definite and delicious a form. Nevertheless it remained
a madness to be mastered, to be ejected.--His last thought, as his first,
pronounced it that.

Unconsciously, pushed by this stress of rather turbulent sensations,
Carteret walked the length of the verandah and drew up in the full glare
of the moonlight. From here he could see the curve of the shore; and,
beyond the quay and esplanade and last scattered houses of the little
town, the lighthouse marking the tip of the western horn of the bay. He
could hear the soft stealthy plunge and following rush of the sea up the
white shelving beach. Could hear also--less soothing sound--through the
open windows of the drawing-room of the Pavilion, just across the garden,
Marshall Wace singing, with all the impassioned fervour of his rich and
well-trained baritone, a ballad, then much in vogue, entitled "The Lost
Chord." The words, to Carteret's thinking, were futile, meaning anything,
everything, or nothing, according to your private interpretation of them.
But as to the fine quality and emotional appeal of the voice there could
not be two opinions, as it palpitated thus in the mild night air. Was
Damaris Verity a member of the singer's devout audience? Were her hands
among those which now enthusiastically applauded the conclusion of the
song? Under his breath, slowly, gently but most comprehensively, Carteret
swore. And felt all the better for that impious exercise, even amused at
this primitive expression of his moral and sentimental disturbance, and
so on the high-road, as he fondly imagined, to capture his habitual
attitude of charity and tolerance once again. But heaven had further
trial of his fortitude and magnanimity, not to say his good honest horse
sense, in store to-night.

For, as the clapping of hands died down, the whisper of a woman's dress,
upon the asphalt of the verandah just behind him, caught his ear, and
Damaris came rapidly towards him.

"So you are here after all, dear Colonel Sahib," she cried. "I felt you
were when I was down there looking at the fountain. It sort of pulled at
me with remindings of you ages and ages ago, in the gardens of the club
at Bhutpur--when you brought me a present--a darling little green jade
elephant in a sandalwood box, as a birthday gift from Henrietta. Later
there was a terrible tragedy. An odious little boy broke my elephant, on
purpose, and broke my heart along with it."

Carteret made a determined effort over himself, taking her up lightly.

"But not altogether past mending, dear witch--judging by existing
appearances."

"Ah! I'm none so sure of that," Damaris answered him back with a pretty
quickness--"if it hadn't been for you. For I was very ill, when you came
again to the Sultan-i-bagh--don't you remember?--the night of the riots
and great fires in the Civil Lines and Cantonments, just at the breaking
of the monsoon."

"Yes, I remember," he said.

And wondered to himself--thereby gaining ease and a measure of
tranquillity, inasmuch as he thought of another man's plight rather than
of his own--whether Damaris had knowledge of other occurrences, not
unallied to tragedy, which had marked that same night of threatened
mutiny and massacre and of bellowing tempest, not least among them a vow
made by her father, Charles Verity, and made for her sake.

"The whole story comes back in pictures," she went on, "whenever I look
at fountains playing, because of the water-jets in the canal in the
Bhutpur club garden where you gave me Henrietta's present. You see it all
dates from then. And it came back to me specially clearly just now,
partly because I felt lonely--"

"Lonely?--How lonely," he smilingly interjected, "with a goodly youth as
a protector on either hand?"

"Yes--lonely," Damaris repeated, ignoring the allusion to her devoted if
irascible escort. "Dance music always makes one rather sad--don't you
think so? It seems to ache with everything one wants and hasn't got; and
the ache goes on.--I turned homesick for--for India, and for my green
jade elephant I used to love so dreadfully much.--I've all that is left
of him, still wrapped in the same rice paper in the same sandalwood box
you brought him in, put away with my best treasures in my own room at
The Hard."

She came nearer, stood beside him, bending down a little as she rested
her hands on the top of the iron balustrade of the verandah, while her
eyes followed the curve of the bay to where the lighthouse rose, a
black column with flashing headpiece, above the soft glitter of the
moonlit sea.

"And homesick, Colonel Sahib, for you," she said.

"For me?" he exclaimed almost involuntarily, roughly startled out of his
partially recovered tranquillity and ease.

"Yes"--she said, looking up at him. "Isn't that quite natural, since
you have stepped in so often to help me when things have gone rather
wrong?--I knew you must be somewhere quite close by. I sort of felt
you were there. And you were there--weren't you? Why did you hide
yourself away?"

Carteret could not bring himself immediately to answer. He was perplexed,
infinitely charmed, distrustful, all at once--distrustful, though for
very different reasons, both of himself and of her.

"Are things, then, going rather wrong now?" he asked presently.

For he judged it wise to accept her enigmatic speech according to its
most simple and obvious interpretation. By so doing he stood, moreover,
to gain time; and time in his existing perplexity appeared to him of
cardinal importance.

"That's just what I'm not sure about." Damaris spoke slowly, gravely, her
glance again fixed upon the beacon light set for the safety of passing
ships on the further horn of the bay. "If I could be sure, I should know
what to do--know whether it is right to keep on as--as I am. Do you see?"

But what, at this juncture, Carteret did, in point of fact, most
consciously see was the return of Henrietta Frayling's scattered guests,
from the Pavilion and other less fully illuminated quarters, towards the
main building of the hotel. From the improvised ball-room within chords
struck on the piano and answering tuning of strings invited to the
renewal of united and active festivity. In the face of consequently
impending interruption he hazarded a trifle of admonition.

"Dearest witch, you elect to speak in riddles," he gently told her. "I am
in the dark as to your meaning; so, if I am guilty of uttering
foolishness, you must pardon me. But I own I could wish--just a
bit--that, in some particulars, you wouldn't keep on--I quote your own
words--as you are, or rather have been just lately."

"Why?" she asked, without moving.

"Because, to be quite honest with you, I am not altogether satisfied
about your father. I am afraid he is getting back into the habit of mind
we set out to cure him of, you and I, last November."

Damaris sprang to attention.

"And I haven't noticed it. I Wouldn't stop to notice it. I have been too
busy about my own concerns and have neglected him."

Arrayed in her spotless virgin finery, her head carried proudly, though
her eyes were sombre with self-reproach, self-accusation, and her lips
quivered, she confronted Carteret. And his clean loyal soul went out to
her in a poignant, an exquisite, agony of tenderness and of desire. He
would have given his right hand to save her pain. Given his life gladly,
just then, to secure her welfare and happiness; yet he had struck
her--for her own good possibly--possibly just blindly, instinctively, in
self-defence. He tried to shut down the emotion which threatened to
betray him and steady on to the playfully affectionate tone of their
customary intercourse; but it is to be feared the effort lacked
convincingness of quality.

"No--no," he said, "you take it altogether too hard. You exaggerate, dear
witch, to the point of extravagance. You have been less constantly with
your father than usual--you're the delight of his life after all, as you
must very well know--and inevitably he has missed you. Nothing worse than
that. The damage, such as it is, can easily be repaired."

"Ah! but the damage, as you call it, starts behind all that in something
else--something older, much deeper down, of which I doubt whether any
lasting reparation is possible. I did try to repair it. All my going out
with Henrietta, and this rushing about lately, began in that
trying--truly it did, Colonel Sahib. And then I suppose I got above
myself--as poor Nannie used to say--and came to care for the rushing
about just for its own sake"--

"My dance, I believe, Miss Verity."

The speaker, Mr. Alban Titherage--well-groomed, rosy and
self-complacent--pulled down the fronts of his white waistcoat. He
inclined to distinct rotundity of person, and the garment in question,
though admirable in cut, showed, what with the exertions of dancing, a
damnable tendency, as he expressed it, to "ride up."

"And my dance next afterwards, Miss Verity"--this from Peregrine Ditton,
his youthful, well-bred, if somewhat choleric, countenance presenting
itself over the top of the stock-broker's smooth and not conspicuously
intelligent head.

Damaris looked from one to the other of these claimants for her favour,
with instant and very becoming composure.

"I'm dreadfully sorry," she told them collectively, "but surely there is
some mistake. Both those next dances--they are the last, I'm afraid, too,
aren't they?--belong to Colonel Carteret."

"The deuce they do!" Ditton exploded, turning scarlet. With a cocked eye
and a jaunty movement of the head Mr. Titherage shot out his right shirt
cuff, and pointed a stout forefinger at certain hieroglyphics inscribed
on its glossy surface.

"Your name, Miss Verity, and written with an indelible pencil, to the
permanent embellishment of my best party-going linen and witness to your
infidelity."

"I can only repeat I am dreadfully sorry," Damaris said, with a becoming
air of concern, "if the confusion has arisen through my fault. But"--

She appealed to Carteret.

"They always were your dances, weren't they?"

"Without doubt," he affirmed.

Amusedly and very kindly he smiled upon the angry boy and portly young
man, although the beat of his pulse was accelerated and his throat felt
queerly dry.

"I am sure you understand how impossible it is for me to release Miss
Verity from her promise," he said courteously. "Would you willingly do so
yourselves, were the positions reversed and either of you happy enough to
stand in my shoes at this moment?"

Titherage gave a fat good-tempered laugh.

"By George, you have me there, Colonel. Under such A1 circumstances catch
me making way for a stranger! Not if I know it."

With which he attempted jovially to put his arm through that of his
companion in misfortune and lead Ditton away. But the latter flung off
from him with a petulant, half-smothered oath; and, his back very
straight, his walk very deliberate, pushed through the cheerfully
discoursing throng into the ball-room.

Damaris turned about, resting her hands on the top of the iron balustrade
again and gazed out to sea. Her breath came with a catch in it.

"Colonel Sahib," she said, proudly if just a trifle brokenly, "are
you angry?"

"Angry?--good Lord!"

Then recovering control of senses and of sense--"But, dear witch," he
asked her--"since when, if I may venture to enquire, have you become an
adept in the fine art of--well--lying?"

Damaris looked around, her face irradiated by laughter.

"And you played up, oh! so beautifully quick! I was a teeny bit afraid
you might fail me. For the idea came all of a minute, there wasn't time
to warn you. And that was fortunate perhaps--for me. You might have had
scruples. And I was obliged to do it. After talking about the things
which really matter, I couldn't dance with that vulgar little man
again--or with those jealous boys. They had an idiotic quarrel, actual
quarrel, down in the garden. It displeased me. I told them so, and left
them, and came here to find you--because of the fountain and the sort of
home-sickness it gave me."

Between laughing and crying, Damaris held out her hands, the white
moonlight covering her.

"Oh! I am tired of rushing about," she said. "Come and dance with
me--it's nonsense to tell me you can't dance, and that you've forgotten
how, because you have danced once this evening already--with Henrietta. I
watched you and you dance better than anybody."

"With Henrietta--that's rather a different matter!"

"I should hope it was," Damaris took him up naughtily. "But dance with
me, and then, then please take me home. Yes," as he tried to speak. "I
know I had arranged to stay the night at the Pavilion. But I'll find some
excuse to make to Henrietta--Haven't you just told me I'm proficient in
lying?--You were going to walk back? Why shouldn't I walk with you? I
won't be five minutes changing into my day clothes. It would be so
fascinating down on the shore road at night. And I should get quiet all
inside of me. I am tired of rushing about, Colonel Sahib, it hasn't been
a success."

She stopped breathless, her hands pressed over her lace and satin
swathed bosom.

"Now come and dance,--oh! so beautifully, please, come and dance."




CHAPTER VII

TELLING HOW DAMARIS DISCOVERED THE TRUE NATURE OF A CERTAIN SECRET TO THE
DEAR MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES


The beat of a tideless sea, upon the shore, is at once unrestful and
monotonous; in this only too closely resembling the beat of the human
heart, when the glory of youth has departed. The splendid energy of the
flow and grateful easing of the ebb alike are denied it. Foul or fair,
shine or storm, it pounds and pounds--as a thing chained--without
relief of advance or of recession, always at the same level, always in
the same place.

Suspicion of this cheerless truth was borne in upon Carteret
as--bare-headed, his overcoat upon his arm, the night being singularly
mild and clement--he walked with Damaris through the streets of the
silent town. The dwellers in St. Augustin, both virtuous or otherwise,
had very effectually retired to their beds behind drawn curtains, closed
shutters, locked doors, and gave no sign. Vacancy reigned, bringing in
its train an effect of suspense and eeriness, causing both our friends
involuntarily to listen, with slightly strained hearing, for sounds which
did not come. Once a cat, nimble and thin, streaked out of a cavernous
side-alley across the pallor of the pavement and cobbled roadway, to be
swallowed up in a black split--knife narrow, as it seemed--between the
blank house fronts opposite. And once, as they turned into the open space
of the Grand Place--unreal and stark with its spidery framework of
stalls, set up ready for to-morrow's market, under the budding plane
trees--they encountered a tired gendarme making his round, picturesque of
aspect in _kepi_ and flowing cloak. His footsteps brisked up, as he met
and treated them to a discreetly sympathetic and intelligent
observation, only to lag again wearily as soon as they had passed.

These were the sole creatures in St. Augustin, save themselves, visibly
alive and awake. Yet whether other beings, other presences, unmaterial,
imponderable, intangible, did not walk the streets along with them, is
open to doubt. More than once Damaris shrank close to Carteret, startled
by and apprehensive of she knew not what. For who dare say in such a
place what leavings-over there may not be from times pre-Christian and
remote, when mighty Rome ruled, and the ancient gods bore sway over that
radiant coast? On the outskirts of St. Augustin you may visit a fine
amphitheatre, still perfect save for some ruin along the upper tier of
seats; and in the centre of the town, within a stone's throw of the
somewhat gloomy cathedral church, may trace the airy columns and portions
of the sculptured architrave of a reputed temple of Venus, worked into
the facade of the municipal buildings.