Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

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Turning out of the Grande Place by an avenue on the right, Damaris and
Carteret gained the esplanade following the curve of the bay. Here a
freshness of the sea pleasantly accosted them along with that unrestful,
monotonous trample of waves upon the beach.

Not until they reached this stage of the homeward journey, and, setting
their faces eastward, paced the pale level asphalt of this wide
promenade, did any sustained effort of conversation arise. Thus far they
had proffered fugitive remarks only, lapsing speedily into somewhat
constrained silence. For a coldness, or shyness, might appear to have
sprung up between them, oddly holding them asunder in thought and moral
attitude after the close association of the dance--a reaction from its
contact so surprisingly more intimate than any they had yet experienced,
from that harmonious rhythmic unity of purpose and of movement which, in
dancing, alike excites emotion quasi-physical, and so alluringly serves
to soothe and allay the emotion it excites.

These aspects of their association affected Damaris but dimly, since
speaking a language of which she barely knew the alphabet. Carteret they
took in a different measure. He read their direction and potency with
clear understanding, the insidious provocations and satisfactions of them
printed in large type. With a rush, his youth returned and troubled him.
Or was it the phantom of youth merely? His heart-beats but the beat of a
tideless sea. He feared as much.--Oh, these tardy harvests, these tardy
harvests--are they not to most men a plague rather than a benison, since,
in honour and fine feeling, so abominably perilous to reap!

For the greater promotion of calm and of sanity he welcomed the young
girl's change of dress. The powder-blue walking suit, with belted jacket
and kilted skirt, brought her more within the terms of their ordinary
intercourse. But the impression of the fair young body, lately so close
against his own, clothed in bride-like raiment, fresh as an opening
flower and vaguely fragrant, could not easily be dispelled. Strive as he
might to put it from him, the impression remained recurrent. Therefore it
must not be held to Carteret's discredit if his senses took part with his
nobler affections just now, against his considered judgment; or that he
fared badly at the hands of the sea-born goddess--worshipped hero in her
temple in ancient days, with music, with dance and with nameless rites of
sex, when the moon rode high heaven at the full, even as to-night.

Her influence was still abroad, and in his flesh Carteret shrewdly
suffered it; yet neither basely nor bestially, being clean of life and of
spirit. He whipped himself even, with rather sorry humour, seeing, in
Damaris' willingness to entrust herself thus to his sole care in the
midnight loneliness, a handsomer compliment to his morals than to his
manhood. How little, bless her, she knew what stuff men are made
of!--therein underrating her acquaintance with fact, as her conversation
presently and surprisingly proved to him.

The revelation began in all apparent innocence--for:

"I'm not ungrateful to Henrietta," Damaris said, breaking silence softly
yet abruptly, as speaking to herself rather than addressing him, in
apology and argument. "And I'm dreadfully sorry to have vexed her--for
she was vexed with me for not staying at the Pavilion to-night, as I
promised. She was really quite cross."

"She will get over that--never fear," Carteret answered off the surface.

"Still it troubles me to have vexed her. I must have seemed so
unreasonable, making silly sounding excuses--because I could not explain
to her why I really wanted so much to go home."

"You find a limit to the dear lady's powers of comprehension or of
sympathy?" he asked, again off the surface.

"I suppose I must do so, because there are things it never occurs to one
to speak of to Henrietta."

"Whole cartloads of them," Carteret comprehensively agreed.

"And yet I don't know why."

"Don't you? Well, I think I do perhaps know why; and knowing, I must
confess to being not altogether sorry your confidences are restricted,
dear witch, in that particular direction."

The use of the pet name, though involuntary--possibly on that very
account--eased his fever. Clearly he must get back to their former
relation. Rejoice in her beauty, in her sweet faith and dependence, love
her--yes--he admitted the word,--but for God's sake keep the physical
side out of the business. Damaris' easily-aroused loyalty, meanwhile,
caught alight.

"Oh, but we've just been Henrietta's guests," she said, with a pretty
mingling of appeal and rebuke--"and it seems hardly kind, does it, to
find faults in her. She has been beautifully good to me all this time,
ending up with this dance which she gave on purpose to please me."

"And herself also," Carteret returned.

--Yes decidedly he felt better, steadier, to the point of now trusting
himself to look at his companion, notwithstanding the strange influences
abroad in the magical moonlight, with his accustomed smiling,
half-amused indulgence. The unremitting trample of the waves, there on
the right, made for level-headedness actually if a little
mercilessly--so he thought.

"I don't wish to be guilty of taking Mrs. Frayling's name in vain a
second time," he went on--"you've pulled me up, and quite rightly, for
doing so once already--but depend upon it, she enjoyed her ball every
morsel as much as you did. In respect of the minor delights of existence,
she slumbers not nor sleeps, our perenially charming and skilful
Henrietta."

"You think she enjoyed it too? I am glad."

Then after an interval of silence, her whole figure alert, her
speech eager:

"See there--see there, Colonel Sahib--yes, far, far out to sea--aren't
those the lights of a ship?"

"Yes," he answered--"creeping westward--bound for Toulon, most likely, or
possibly for Marseilles."

And he would have moved forward. But Damaris unaccountably lingered.
Carteret waited a good three to four minutes to suit her convenience; but
the delay told on him. The night and hour down here by the shore, on the
confines of the silent town, were too full of poetry, too full of
suggestion, of the fine-drawn excitement of things which had been and
might not impossibly again be. It was dangerous to loiter, and in such
company, though waves might beat out a constant reminder with merciless
pertinacity upon the beach.

"Come, dear witch, come," he at last urged her. "We still have more than
a mile to go and a pretty stiff hill to climb. It grows late, you will be
abominably tired to-morrow. Why this fascination for a passing steamer,
probably some unromantic, villainously dirty old tramp too, you would not
condescend to look at by daylight."

"Because,"--Damaris began. She came nearer to him, her expression
strangely agitated.--"Oh! Colonel Sahib, if I could only be sure it
wasn't treacherous to tell you!"

"Tell me what? One of the many things it would never occur to you to
confide to Mrs. Frayling?" he said, trying to treat her evident emotion
lightly, to laugh it off.

"To Henrietta? Of course not. It would be unpardonable, hateful to tell
Henrietta."

She flushed, her face looking, for the moment, dark from excess of
colour.

"You are the only person I could possibly tell."

Carteret moved aside a few steps. He too felt strangely agitated. Wild
ideas, ideas of unholy aspect, presented themselves to him--ideas, again,
beyond words entrancing and sweet. He fought with both alike, honestly,
manfully. Returned and took Damaris' hand quietly, gently in both his.

"Look here, dear witch," he said, "all this evening a--to me--unknown
spirit has possessed you. You haven't been like yourself. You have made
me a little anxious, a little alarmed on your account."

"Oh! it isn't only this evening," she caught him up. "It has been going
on for weeks."

"So I have seen--and that is not good for you, isn't for your happiness.
So, if I am--as you say--the only person you care to acquaint with this
matter, had not you better tell me here and now? Better worry yourself no
more with mysteries about it, but let us, once and for all, have the
thing out?"

"I should be thankful," Damaris said simply, looking him in the eyes--"if
I could be sure I wasn't sacrificing some one else--their pride I
mean--their--their honour."

For a few seconds Carteret paused, meeting her grave and luminous
glance. Then:

"I think you may risk it," he said. "I promise you this some-one-else's
honour shall be sacred to me as my own. Without your direct request no
word of what you choose to tell me will ever pass my lips."

"Ah! I'm very sure of that,"--Her smile, her voice bore transparent
testimony to a faith which went, somewhat giddily, not only to her
hearer's heart but to his head. "It isn't a question of your repeating
anything; but of your thinking differently of some one you care for very
much--and who is almost as dependent on you, Colonel Sahib, as I am
myself. At least I fear you might.--Oh! I am so perplexed, I'm in such
a maze," she said. "I've nothing to go on in all this, and I turn it
over and over in my mind to no purpose till my head aches. You see I
can't make out whether this--the thing which began it all and happened
oh! long ago--is extraordinary--one which you--and most people like
you--in your position, I mean--would consider very wrong and
disgraceful; or whether it often happens and is just accepted, taken for
granted, only not talked about."

Carteret felt cold all down his spine. For what, in God's name, could
this supremely dear and--as he watched her grave and sweetly troubled
countenance--supremely lovely child, be driving at?

"And I care so dreadfully much," she went on. "It is the story of the
darling little green jade elephant over again--like its being broken and
spoilt. Only now I'm grown up I don't give in and let it make me ill.
There was a time even of that--of illness, I mean--at first just before
you came to The Hard last autumn. But I wouldn't suffer it, I would not
let the illness go on. I got over that. But then a second crisis occurred
soon after we came here; and I thought Henrietta's kindness opened a way
out. So I rushed about whenever and wherever she invited me to rush. But
as I told you this evening--just before we had our two dances, you
remember."

"Am I likely to forget!" Carteret murmured under his breath.

"The rushing about has not proved a success. I thought it would help to
stifle certain longings and keep me nearer to my father--more at one with
him. But it didn't, it made me neglect him. You see--you see"--the words
were dragged from her, as by active suffering and distress of mind--"I
had to choose between him and another person. One cannot serve two
masters. I choose him. His claim was the strongest in duty. And I love to
see him satisfied and peaceful. He always ranked first in everything I
felt and did ever since I can remember; and I so want him to stay first.
But I have been pulled two ways, and seem to have got all astray somehow
lately. I haven't been really true to myself any more than to him--only
frivolous and busy about silly pleasures."

"Don't let the frivolity burden your precious conscience," Carteret
comfortably told her, touched by the pathos of her self-reproach. For her
sincerity was surely, just now, unimpeachable and she a rare creature
indeed! Love, he could less than ever banish; but surely he might utterly
banish distrust and fear?--"As frivolity goes, dear witch, and greed of
pleasure, yours have been innocent enough both in amount and in quality,
heaven knows!"

"I should like to believe so--but all that's relative, isn't it? The real
wrongness of what you do, depends upon the level of rightness you start
from, I mean."

"Insatiable casuist!" Carteret tenderly laughed at her.

And with that, by common though unspoken consent, they walked
onward again.

Even while so doing, however, both were sensible that this resumption of
their homeward journey marked a period in, rather than the conclusion of,
their conversation. Some outside compelling force--so in any case it
appeared to Carteret--encompassed them. It was useless to turn and
double, indulge in gently playful digression. That force would inevitably
make them face the innermost of their own thought, their own emotion, in
the end. In obedience to which unwelcome conviction, Carteret presently
brought himself to ask her:

"And about this other person--for we have wandered a bit from the point
at issue, haven't we?--whose interests as I gather clash, for some
reason, with those of your father, and whose pride and honour you are so
jealously anxious to safeguard."

"His pride, yes," Damaris said quickly, her head high, a warmth in her
tone. "His honour is perfectly secure, in my opinion."

"Whose honour is in danger then?--Dear witch, forgive me, but don't you
see the implication?"

Damaris looked around at him with unfathomable eyes. Her lips parted, yet
she made no answer.

After a pause Carteret spoke again, and, to his own hearing, his voice
sounded hoarse as that of the tideless sea upon the beach yonder.

"Do you mean me to understand that the conflict between your father's
interests and those of this other person--this other man's--arise from
the fact that you love him?"

"Yes," Damaris calmly declared.

"Love him,"--having gone thus far Carteret refused to spare himself. He
turned the knife in the wound--"Love him to the point of marriage?"

There, the word was said. Almost unconsciously he walked onward without
giving time for her reply.--He moistened his lips, weren't they dry as a
cinder? He measured the height to which hope had borne him, to-night, by
the shock, the positive agony of his existing fall. At the young girl,
_svelte_ and graceful, beside him, he could not look; but kept his eyes
fixed on the mass of the wooded promontory, dark and solid against the
more luminous tones of water and of sky, some half-mile distant. Set high
upon the further slope of it, from here invisible, the Grand Hotel
fronted--as he knew--the eastward trending coast. Carteret wished the
distance less, since he craved the shelter of that friendly yellow-washed
caravanserai. He would be mortally thankful to find himself back there,
and alone, the door of his bachelor quarters shut--away from the beat of
the waves, away from the subtle glory of this Venus-ridden moon now
drawing down to her setting. Away, above all, from Damaris--delivered
from the enchantments and perturbations, both physical and moral, her
delicious neighbourhood provoked.

But from that fond neighbourhood, as he suddenly became aware, he was in
some sort delivered already. For she stopped dead, with a strange choking
cry; and stood solitary, as it even seemed forsaken, upon the wide grey
whiteness of the asphalt of the esplanade. Behind her a line of
lamps--pale burning under the moonlight--curved, in perspective, with the
curving of the bay right away to the lighthouse. On her left the crowded
houses of the sleeping town, slashed here and there with sharp edged
shadows, receded, growing indistinct among gardens and groves. The
scene, as setting to this single figure, affected him profoundly, taken
in conjunction with that singular cry. He retraced the few steps dividing
him from her.

"Marriage?" she almost wailed, putting out her hands as though to prevent
his approach. "No--no--never in life, Colonel Sahib. You quite dreadfully
misunderstand."

"Do I?" Carteret said, greatly taken aback, while, whether he would
or no, unholy ideas again flitted through his mind maliciously
assailing him.

"It has nothing to do with that sort of loving. It belongs to something
much more beautifully part of oneself--something of one's very, very own,
right from the very beginning."

"Indeed!" he said, sullenly, even roughly, his habitual mansuetude giving
way before this--for so he could not but take it--contemptuous flinging
of his immense tenderness, his patient, unswerving devotion, back in his
face. "Then very certainly I must plead guilty to not understanding, or
if you prefer it--for we needn't add to our other discomforts by
quarrelling about the extra syllable--of misunderstanding. In my
ignorance, I confess I imagined the love, which finds its crown and seal
of sanctity in marriage, can be--and sometimes quite magnificently
is--the most beautiful thing a man has to give or a woman to receive."

Damaris stared at him, her face blank with wonder.

Set at regular intervals between the tall blue-grey painted lamp
standards, for the greater enjoyment of visitors and natives, stone
benches, of a fine antique pattern, adorn St. Augustin's esplanade. Our
much-perplexed maiden turned away wearily and sat down upon the nearest
of these. She held up her head, bravely essaying to maintain an air of
composure and dignity; but her shoulders soon not imperceptibly quivered,
while, try hard as she might, setting her teeth and holding her breath,
small plaintive noises threatened betrayal of her tearful state.

Carteret, quite irrespective of the prescience common to all true lovers
where the beloved object's welfare is concerned, possessed unusually
quick and observant hearing. Those small plaintive noises speedily
reached him and pierced him as he stood staring gloomily out to sea.
Whereupon he bottled up his pain, shut down his natural and admirably
infrequent anger, and came over to the stone bench.

"You're not crying, dearest witch, are you?" he asked her.

"Yes, I am," Damaris said. "What else is there left for me to
do?--Everyone I care for I seem to make unhappy. Everything I do goes
wrong. Everything I touch gets broken and spoilt somehow."

"Endless tragedies of little green jade elephants?" he gently
bantered her.

"Yes--endless. For now I have hurt you. You are trying to be good and
like your usual self to me; but that doesn't take me in. I know all
through me I have hurt you--quite dreadfully badly--though I never, never
meant to, and haven't an idea how or why."

This was hardly comforting news to Carteret. He attempted no disclaimer;
while she, after fumbling rather helplessly at the breast-pocket of her
jacket, at last produced a folded letter and held it out to him.

"Whether it's treacherous or not, I am obliged to tell you," she said,
with pathetic desperation. "For I can't bear any more. I can't but try my
best to keep you, Colonel Sahib. And now you are hurt, I can only keep
you by making you understand--just everything. You may still think me
wrong; but anyhow my wrongness will be towards somebody else, not towards
you.--So please read this, and don't skip, because every word helps to
explain. Read it right through before you ask me any questions--that's
more fair all round.--If you go across there--under the lamp, I
mean--there still is light enough, I think, for you to be able to see."

And Carteret, thus admonished--partly to pacify her, partly to satisfy a
very vital curiosity which stirred in him to compass the length, breadth,
and height of this queer business, learn the truth and so set certain
vague and agitating fears at rest--did as Damaris bade him. Standing in
the conflicting gaslight and moonlight, the haunted quiet of the small
hours broken only by the trample and wash of the sea, he read Darcy
Faircloth's letter from its unconventional opening, to its equally
unconventional closing paragraph.

"Now my holiday is over and I will close down till next Christmas
night--unless miracles happen meanwhile--so good-bye--Here is a boatload
of my lads coming alongside, roaring with song and as drunk as
lords.--God bless you. In spirit I once again kiss your dear feet"--

Carteret straightened himself up with a jerk. Looked at Damaris sitting
very still, a little sunk together, as in weariness or dejection upon the
stone bench. His eyes blazed fierce, for once, with questions he burned
yet dreaded to ask. But on second thoughts--they arrived to him
swiftly--he restrained his impatience and his tongue. Mastering his heat
he looked down at the sheet of note-paper again. He would obey Damaris,
absorb the contents of this extraordinary document, the facts it conveyed
both explicitly and implicitly, to the last word before he spoke.

Happily the remaining words were few. "Your brother," he read, "till
death and after"--followed by a name and date.

At the name he stared fairly confounded. It meant nothing whatever to
him.--That is, at first. Then, rising as a vision from out some
subconscious drift of memory, he saw the cold, low-toned colouring of
wide, smooth and lonely waters, of salt-marsh, of mud-flat and reed-bed
in the lowering light of a late autumn afternoon--a grey, stone-built
tavern, moreover, above the open door of which, painted upon a board,
that same name of Faircloth figured above information concerning divers
liquors obtainable within. Yes--remembrance grew more precise and stable.
He recalled the circumstances quite clearly now. He had seen it on his
way back from a solitary afternoon's wild fowl shooting on Marychurch
Haven; during his last visit to Deadham Hard.

So much was certain. But the name in its present connection? Carteret's
imagination shied. For, to have the existence of an illegitimate son of
your oldest and dearest friend thus suddenly thrust upon you, and that by
a young lady of the dearest friend's family, is, to say the least of it,
a considerable poser for any man. It may be noted as characteristic of
Carteret that, without hesitation, he recognized the sincerity and fine
spirit of Faircloth's letter. Characteristic, also, that having seized
the main bearings of it, his feeling was neither of cynical acquiescence,
or of covert and cynical amusement; but of vicarious humiliation, of
apology and noble pitying shame.

He came over and sat down upon the stone bench beside Damaris.

"Dear witch," he said slowly, "this, if I apprehend it aright, is a
little staggering. Forgive me--I did altogether, and I am afraid rather
crassly, misunderstand. But that I could hardly help, since no remotest
hint of this matter has ever reached me until now."

Damaris let her hand drop, palm upwards, upon the cool, slightly rough,
surface of the seat. Carteret placed the folded letter in it, and so
doing, let his hand quietly close down over hers--not in any sense as a
caress, but as assurance of a sympathy it was forbidden him, in decency
and loyalty, to speak. For a while they both remained silent. Damaris
was first to move. She put the letter back into the breast-pocket of
her jacket.

"I am glad you know, Colonel Sahib," she gravely said. "You see how
difficult it has all been."

"I see--yes"--

After a pause, the girl spoke again.

"I only came to know it myself at the end of last summer, quite by
accident. I was frightened and tried not to believe. But there was no way
of not believing. I had lost my way in the mist out on the Bar. I mistook
the one for the other--my brother, I mean, for"--

Damaris broke off, her voice failing her.

"Yes," Carteret put in gently, supportingly.

He leaned back, his arms crossed upon his breast, his head carried
slightly forward, slightly bent, as he watched the softly sparkling line
of surf, marking the edge of the plunging waves upon the sloping shore.
Vicarious shame claimed him still. He weighed man's knowledge, man's
freedom of action, man's standards of the permissible and unpermissible
as against those of this maiden, whose heart was at once so much and so
little awake.

"For my father," she presently went on. "But still I wanted to deny the
truth. I was frightened at it. For if that was true so much else--things
I had never dreamed of until then--might also be true. I wanted to get
away, somehow. But later, after I had been ill, and my father let him
come and say good-bye to me before he went to sea, I saw it all
differently, and far from wanting to get away I only longed that we
might always be together as other brothers and sisters are. But I knew
that wasn't possible. I was quite happy, especially after you came with
us, Colonel Sahib, out here. Then I had this letter and the longing grew
worse than ever. I did try to school myself into not wanting, not
longing--did silly things--frivolous things, as I told you. But I can't
stop wanting. It all came to a head, somehow to-night, with the dancing
and music, and those foolish boys quarrelling over me--and then your
showing me that--instead of being faithful to my father, I have
neglected him."

"Ah, you poor sweet dear!" Carteret said, greatly moved and
turning to her.

In response she leaned towards him, her face wan in the expiring
moonlight, yet very lovely in its pleading and guileless affection.

"And my brother is beautiful, Colonel Sahib," she declared, "not only to
look at but in his ideas. You would like him and be friends with him,
though he doesn't belong to the same world as you--indeed you would. And
he is not afraid--you know what I mean?--not afraid of being alive and
having adventures. He means to do big things--not that he has talked
boastfully to me, or been showy. Please don't imagine that. He knows
where he comes in, and doesn't pretend to be anybody or anything beyond
what he is. Only it seems to me there is a streak of something original
in him--almost of genius. He makes me feel sure he will never bungle any
chance which comes in his way. And he has time to do so much, if chances
do come"--this with a note of exultation. "His life is all before him,
you see. He is so beautifully young yet."

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