Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

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Horror of a crowd, which watches the infliction of some signal disgrace,
tormented her imagination, moreover, to the temporary breaking of her
spirit. Whether that crowd was, in the main, hostile or sympathetic
mattered nothing. The fact that it silently sat there, silently observed,
made every member of it, for the time, her enemy. Even the trusted
servants just behind, comfortable comely Mary, soft Mrs. Cooper, the
devoted Patch, were hateful to her as the rest. Their very loyalty--which
she for no instant doubted--went only to fill the cup of her humiliation
to the brim.

Reginald Sawyer's voice continued; but what he said now she neither heard
nor cared. Her martyrdom could hardly suffer augmentation, the whole
world seemed against her, she set apart, pilloried.--But not alone.
Faircloth was set apart, pilloried, also. And remembering this, her
courage revived. The horror of the crowd lifted. For herself she could
not fight; but for him she could fight, with strength and conviction, out
of the greatness of her love for him, out of her recognition that the
ignominy inflicted upon him was more bitter, more cruel, than any
inflicted upon her. For those who dare, in a moment the worst can turn
best.--She would make play with the freedom which this breach of
convention, of social reticence, of moral discretion, conferred upon her.
The preacher had gone far in demolition. She would go as far, and
further, in construction, in restitution. Would openly acknowledge the
bond which joined Faircloth to her and to her people, by openly claiming
his protection now, in this hour of her disgrace and supreme dismay. She
would offer no excuse, no apology. Only there should be no more attempted
concealment or evasion of the truth on her part, no furtiveness in his
and her relation. Once and for all she would make her declaration, cry it
from the house-top in fearless yet tender pride.

Damaris stood up, conspicuous in her red dress amid that rather drab
assembly as a leaping flame. She turned about, fronting the perplexed and
agitated congregation, her head carried high, her face austere for all
its youthful softness, an heroic quality, something, indeed, superlative
and grandiose in her bearing and expression, causing a shrinking in those
who saw her and a certain sense of awe.

Her eyes sought Faircloth again. Found him, and unfalteringly spoke with
him, bidding him claim her as she, claimed him, bidding him come. Which
bidding he obeyed; and that at the same rather splendid level of
sentiment, worthily sustaining her abounding faith in him. For a touch of
the heroic and superlative was present in his bearing and expression,
also, as he came up the church between the well-filled pews--these
tenanted, to left and right, by some who figured in his daily life,
figured in his earliest recollections, by others, newcomers, to him, even
by sight, barely known; yet each and all, irrespective of age, rank, and
position, affecting his outlook and mental atmosphere in some particular,
as every human personality does and must, with whom one's life, ever so
transiently, is thrown. Had he had time to consider them, this cloud of
witnesses might have proved disturbing even to his masterful will and
steady nerve. But he had not time. There was for him--so perfectly--the
single object, the one searching yet lovely call to answer, the one act
to be performed.

Reaching the front pew upon the gospel side, Darcy Faircloth took
Damaris' outstretched hand. He looked her in the eyes, his own
worshipful, ablaze at once with a great joy and a great anger; and then
led her back, down the length of the aisle, through the west door into
the liberty of the sunshine and the crisp northerly wind outside.

Standing here, the houses and trees of the village lay below them. The
whole glinting expanse of the Haven was visible right up to the town of
Marychurch gathered about its long-backed Abbey, whose tower, tall and in
effect almost spectral, showed against the purple ridges of forest and
moorland beyond. Over the salt marsh in the valley, a flock of plovers
dipped and wheeled, their backs and wide flapping wings black, till, in
turning, their breasts and undersides flashed into snow and pearl.

And because brother and sister, notwithstanding diversities of upbringing
and of station, were alike children of the open rather than of cities,
born to experiment, to travel and to seafaring round this ever-spinning
globe, they instinctively took note of the extensive, keen though
sun-gilded prospect--before breaking silence and giving voice to the
emotion which possessed them--and, in so doing, found refreshment and a
brave cleansing to their souls.

Still holding Faircloth's hand, and still silent, her shoulder touching
his now and again in walking, Damaris went down the sloping path, hoary
lichen-stained head-and-foot stones set in the vivid churchyard grass--as
yet unbleached by the cold of winter--on either side. The sense of his
strength, of the fine unblemished vigour of his young manhood, here
close beside her--so strangely her possession and portion of her natural
inalienable heritage--filled her with confident security and with a
restful, wondering calm. So that the shame publicly put on her to shed
its bitterness, her horror of the watching crowd departed, fading out
into unreality. Though still shaken, still quivering inwardly from the
ordeal of the past hour, she already viewed that shame and horror as but
accidents to be lived down and disregarded, by no means as essential
elements in the adventurous and precious whole. Presently they would
altogether lose their power to wound and to distress her, while this
freedom and the closer union, gained by means of them, continued
immutable and fixed.

It followed that, when in opening the churchyard gate and holding it back
for her to pass, Faircloth perforce let go her hand and, the spell of
contact severed, found himself constrained to speak at last, saying:

"You know you have done a mighty splendid, dangerous thing--no less than
burned your boats--and that in the heat of generous impulse, blind,
perhaps--I can't but fear so--to the heavy cost."

Damaris could interrupt him, with quick, sweet defiance:

"But there is no cost!"

And, to drive home the sincerity of her disclaimer, and further reassure
him, she took his hand again and held it for an instant close against her
bosom, tears and laughter together present in her eyes.

"Ah! you beautiful dear, you beautiful dear," Faircloth cried, brokenly,
as in pain, somewhat indeed beside himself. "Before God, I come near
blessing that blatant young fool and pharisee of a parson since he has
brought me to this."

Then he put her a little way from him, penetrated by fear lest the white
love which--in all honour and reverence--he was bound to hold her in,
should flush ever so faintly, red.

"For, after all, it is up to me," he said, more to himself than to her,
"to make very sure there isn't, and never--by God's mercy--shall be,
any cost."

And with that--for the avoidance of the congregation, now streaming
rather tumultuously out of church--they went on across the village green,
hissed at by slow waddling, hard-eyed, most conceited geese, to the lane
which leads down to the causeway and warren skirting the river-bank.

CHAPTER IV

WHEREIN MISS FELICIA VERITY CONCLUSIVELY SHOWS WHAT SPIRIT SHE IS OF

Her attraction consisted in her transparency, in the eager simplicity
with which she cast her home-made nets and set her innocuous springes.
To-day Miss Felicia was out to wing the Angel of Peace, and crowd that
celestial messenger into the arms of Damaris and Theresa Bilson
collectively and severally. Such was the major interest of the hour. But,
for Miss Felicia the oncoming of middle-age by no means condemned the
lesser pleasures of life to nullity. Hence the minor interest of the hour
centred in debate as to whether or not the thermometer justified her
wearing a coat of dark blue silk and cloth, heavily trimmed with ruchings
and passementerie, reaching to her feet. A somewhat sumptuous garment
this, given her by Sir Charles and Damaris last winter in Madrid. She
fancied herself in it greatly, both for the sake of the dear donors, and
because the cut of it was clever, disguising the over-narrowness of her
maypole-like figure and giving her a becoming breadth and fulness.

She decided in favour of the coveted splendour; and at about a
quarter-past twelve strolled along the carriage-drive on her way to the
goose green and the village street. There, or thereabouts, unless her
plot lamentably miscarried, she expected to meet her niece and that
niece's ex-governess-companion, herded in amicable converse by the
pinioned Angel of Peace. Her devious and discursive mind fluttered to and
fro, meanwhile, over a number of but loosely connected subjects.

Of precisely what, upon a certain memorable occasion, had taken place
between her brother, Sir Charles, and poor Theresa--causing the latter
to send up urgent signals of distress to which she, Miss Felicia,
instantly responded--she still was ignorant. Theresa had, she feared,
been just a wee bit flighty, leaving Damaris unattended while herself
mildly gadding. But such dereliction of duty was insufficient to account
for the arbitrary fashion in which she had been sent about her business,
literally--the word wasn't pretty--chucked out! Miss Felicia always
suspected there must be _something_, she would say _worse_--it sounded
harsh--but something _more_ than merely that. Her interpretations of
peculiar conduct were liable to run in terms of the heart. Had Theresa,
poor thing, by chance formed a hopeless attachment?--Hopeless, of course,
almost ludicrously so; yet what more natural, more comprehensible,
Charles being who and what he was? Not that he would, in the faintest
degree, lend himself to such misplaced affection. Of that he was
incapable. The bare idea was grotesque. He, of course, was guiltless.
But, assuming there _was_ a feeling on Theresa's side, wasn't she equally
guiltless? She could not help being fascinated.--Thus Miss Felicia was
bound to acquit both. Alike they left the court without a stain on their
respective characters.

Not for worlds would she ever dream of worrying Charles by attempting to
reintroduce poor Theresa to his notice. But with Damaris it was
different. The idea that any persons of her acquaintance were at sixes
and sevens, on bad terms, when, with a little good will on their part
and tactful effort upon hers, they might be on pleasant ones was to her
actively afflicting. To drop an old friend, or even one not
conspicuously friendly if bound to you by associations and habit,
appeared to her an offence against corporate humanity, an actual however
fractional lowering of the temperature of universal charity. The loss to
one was a loss to all--in some sort. Therefore did she run to adjust, to
smooth, to palliate.

Charles was away--it so neatly happened--and Theresa Bilson here, not, it
must be owned, altogether without Miss Felicia's connivance. If darling
Damaris still was possessed of a hatchet she must clearly be given, this
opportunity to bury it. To have that weapon safe underground would be,
from every point of view, so very much nicer.

At this point in her meditations beneath the trees bordering the carriage
drive, their bare tops swaying in the breeze and bright sunshine, Miss
Felicia fell to contrasting the present exhilarating morning with that
dismally rainy one, just over three years ago, when--regardless of her
sister, Mrs. Cowden's remonstrances--she had come here from Paulton Lacy
in response to Theresa's signals of distress. Just at the elbow of the
drive, so she remembered, she had met a quite astonishingly good-looking
young man, brown-gold bearded, his sou'wester and oilskins shining with
wet. She vaguely recalled some talk about him with her brother, Sir
Charles, afterwards during luncheon.--What was it?--Oh! yes, of course,
it was he who had rescued Damaris when she was lost out on the Bar, and
brought her home down the tide-river by boat. She had often wanted to
know more about him, for he struck her at the time as quite out of the
common, quite remarkably attractive. But on the only occasion since when
she had mentioned the subject, Damaris drew in her horns and became
curiously uncommunicative. It was all connected, of course, with the dear
girl's illness and the disagreeable episode of Theresa's dismissal.--How
all the more satisfactory, then, that the Theresa business, in any case,
was at this very hour in process of being set right! Miss Felicia had
advised Theresa how to act--to speak to Damaris quite naturally and
affectionately, taking her good-will for granted. Damaris would be
charming to her, she felt convinced.

Felicia Verity held the fronts of her long blue coat together, since the
wind sported with them rather roughly, and went forward with her quick,
wavering gait.

It was a pity Damaris did not marry she sometimes felt. Of course,
Charles would miss her quite terribly. Their love for one another was so
delightful, so really unique. On his account she was glad.--And yet--with
a sigh, while the colour in her thin cheeks heightened a little--lacking
marriage a woman's life is rather incomplete. Not that she herself had
reason for complaint, with all the affection showered upon her! The last
two years, in particular, had been abundantly blessed thanks to Charles
and Damaris. She admired them, dear people, with all her warm heart and
felt very grateful to them.

Here it should be registered, in passing, that the resilience of Felicia
Verity's inherent good-breeding saved her gratitude from any charge of
grovelling, as it saved her many enthusiasms from any charge of
sloppiness. Both, if exaggerated, still stood squarely, even gallantly
upon their feet.

Her mind switched back to the ever fertile question of the married and
the single state. She often wondered why Charles never espoused a second
wife. He would have liked a son surely? But then, were it possible to
find a fault in him, it would be that of a little coldness, a little
loftiness in his attitude towards women. He was too far above them in
intellect and experience, she supposed, and through all the remarkable
military commands he had held, administrative posts he had occupied,
quite to come down to their level. In some ways Damaris was very like
him--clever, lofty too at moments. Possibly this accounted for her
apparent indifference to affairs of the heart and to lovers. Anyhow, she
had ample time before her still in relation to all that.

Miss Felicia passed into the road. About fifty yards distant she saw the
servants--Mary, Mrs. Cooper and Patch--standing close together in a
quaint, solemn, little bunch. The two small Patches circled round the
said bunch, patiently expectant, not being admitted evidently to whatever
deliberations their elders and betters had in hand.

Felicia Verity's relations with the servants were invariably excellent.
Yet, finding them in mufti, outside the boundaries of her brother's
demesne thus, she was conscious of a certain modesty, hesitating alike to
intrude upon their confabulations and to pass onward without a trifle
amiable of talk. She advanced, smiling, nodded to the two women, then--

"A delicious day, isn't it, Patch?" she said, adding, for lack of a more
pertinent remark--"What kind of sermon did the new curate, Mr. Sawyer,
give you?--A good one, I hope?"

A pause followed this guileless question, during which Mary looked on the
ground, Mrs. Cooper murmured: "Oh! dear, oh, dear!" under her breath, and
Patch swallowed visibly before finding voice to reply:

"One, I regret to say, ma'am, he never ought to have preached."

"Poor young man!" she laughed it off. "You're a terribly severe critic,
I'm afraid, Patch. Probably he was nervous."

"And reason enough. You might think Satan himself stood at his elbow, the
wicked things he said."

This statement, coming from the mild and cow-like Mrs. Cooper, caused
Felicia Verity the liveliest surprise. She glanced enquiringly from one
to the other of the little group, reading constraint and hardly repressed
excitement in the countenance of each. Their aspect and behaviour struck
her, in fact, as singular to the point of alarm.

"Mary," she asked, a trifle breathlessly, "has anything happened? Where
is Miss Damaris?"

"Hadn't she got back to The Hard, ma'am, before you came out?"

"No--why should she? You and the other servants always reach home first."

"Miss Damaris went out before the rest," Mrs. Cooper broke forth in
dolorous widowed accents. "And no wonder, pore dear young lady, was it,
Mr. Patch? My heart bled for her, ma'am, that it did."

Miss Felicia, gentle and eager, so pathetically resembling yet not
resembling her famous brother, grew autocratic, stern as him
almost, for once.

"And you allowed Miss Damaris to leave church alone--she felt unwell,
I suppose--none of you accompanied her? I don't understand it at
all," she said.

"Young Captain Faircloth went out with Miss Damaris. She wished it,
ma'am," Mary declared, heated and resentful at the unmerited rebuke. "She
as good as called to him to come and take her out of church. It wasn't
for us to interfere, so we held back."

"Captain Faircloth? But this becomes more and more extraordinary! Who is
Captain Faircloth?"

"Ah! there you touch it, you must excuse my saying, ma'am." Mrs.
Cooper gasped.

But at this juncture, Patch, rising to the height of masculine
responsibility, flung himself gallantly--and how unwillingly--into the
breach. He was wounded in his respect and respectability alike, wounded
for the honour of the family whom he had so long and faithfully served.
He was fairly cut to the quick--while these three females merely darkened
judgment by talking all at cross purposes and all at once. Never had the
solid, honest coachman found himself in a tighter or, for that matter, in
anything like so tight a place. But, looking in the direction of the
village, black of clothing, heavy of walk and figure, he espied, as he
trusted, approaching help.

"If you please, ma'am," he said, touching his black bowler as he
spoke, "I see Canon Horniblow coming along the road. I think it would
be more suitable for him to give you an account of what has passed.
He'll know how to put it with--with the least unpleasantness to all
parties. It isn't our place--Mrs. Cooper's, Mary's, or mine--if you'll
pardon my making so free with my opinion, to mention any more of
what's took place."

Felicia Verity, now thoroughly frightened, darted forward. The fronts of
her blue coat again flew apart, and that rich garment stood out in a
prodigious frill around and behind her from the waist, as she leaned on
the wind, almost running in her agitation and haste.

"My dear Canon," she cried, "I am in such anxiety. I learn something has
happened to my niece, who I had come to meet. Our good servants are so
distractingly mysterious. They refer me to you. Pray relieve my
uncertainty and suspense."

But, even while she spoke, Miss Felicia's anxiety deepened, for the
kindly, easy-going clergyman appeared to suffer, like the servants, from
some uncommon shock. His large fleshy nose and somewhat pendulous
cheeks were a mottled, purplish red. Anger and deprecation struggled in
his glance.

"I was on my way to The Hard," he began, "to express my regrets--offer my
apologies would hardly be too strong a phrase--to your niece, Miss
Verity, and to yourself. For I felt compelled, without any delay, to
dissociate myself from the intemperate procedure of my colleague--of my
curate. He has used, or rather misused, his official position, has
grievously misused the privileges of the pulpit--the pulpit of our parish
church--to attack the reputation of private individuals and resuscitate
long-buried scandals."

The speaker was, unquestionably, greatly distressed. Miss Felicia,
though more than ever bewildered, felt for him warmly. It pained her
excessively to observe how his large hands clasped and unclasped, how
his loose lips worked.

"Let me assure you," he went on, "though I trust that is superfluous--"

"I am certain it is, dear Dr. Horniblow," she feelingly declared.

"Thanks," he replied. "You are most kind, most indulgent to me, Miss
Verity.--Superfluous, I would say, to assure you that my colleague
adopted this deplorable course without my knowledge or sanction. He
sprang it on me like a bomb-shell. As a Christian my conscience, as a
gentleman my sense of fair play, condemns his action."

"Yes--yes--I sympathize.--I am convinced you are incapable of any
indiscretion, any unkindness, in the pulpit or out of it. But why, my
dear Canon, apologize to us? How can this unfortunate sermon affect me or
my niece? How can the scandal you hint at in any respect concern us?"

"Because," he began, that mottling of purple increasingly deforming his
amiable face.--And there words failed him, incontinently he stuck. He
detested strong language, but--heavens and earth--how could he put it to
her, as she gazed at him with startled, candid eyes, innocent of guile as
those of a babe? Only too certainly no word had reached her of the
truth. The good man groaned in spirit for, like Patch, he found himself
in a place of quite unexampled tightness, and with no hope of shunting
the immense discomfort of it on to alien shoulders such as had been
granted the happier Patch.

"Because," he began again, only to suffer renewed agony of wordlessness.
In desperation he shifted his ground.

"You have heard, perhaps, that your niece, Miss Damaris, left the church
before the conclusion of the sermon? I do not blame her"--

He waved a fatherly hand. Miss Verity acquiesced.

"Or rather was led out by--by Captain Faircloth--a young officer in the
mercantile marine, whose abilities and successful advance in his
profession this village has every reason to respect."

He broke off.

"Let us walk on towards The Hard. Pray let us walk on.--Has no rumour
ever reached you, Miss Verity, regarding this young man?"

The wildest ideas flitted through Miss Felicia's brain.

--The figure in shiny oilskins--yet preposterous, surely?--After all, an
affair of the heart--misplaced affection--Damaris?--Did this account for
the apparent indifference?

--How intensely interesting; yet how unwise.--How--but she must keep her
own counsel. The wind, now at her back, glued the blue coat
inconveniently against and even between her legs, unceremoniously
whisking her forward.

"Rumours--oh, none," she protested.

"None?" he echoed despairingly. "Pray let us walk on."

A foolish urgency on his part this, she felt, since she was already
almost on the run.

"None that, by birth, Captain Faircloth is somewhat nearly related to
your family--to your--your brother, Sir Charles, in fact?"

There, the incubus was off his straining chest at last! He felt easier,
capable of manipulating the situation to some extent, smoothing down its
rather terrible ascerbities.

"Such connections do," he hastened to add, "as we must regretfully
admit, exist even in the highest, the most exalted circles.
Irregularities of youth, doubtlessly deeply repented of. I repeat sins
of youth, at which only the sinless--and they, alas! to the shame of my
sex are lamentably few--can be qualified to cast a stone.--You, you
follow me?"

"You mean me to understand"--

"Yes, yes--exactly so--to understand that this young man is
reputed to be"--

"Thank you, my dear Canon--thank you," Felicia Verity here interposed
quickly, yet with much simple dignity, for on a sudden she became
singularly unflurried and composed.

"I do, I believe, follow you," she continued.--"You have discharged your
difficult mission with a delicacy and consideration for which I am
grateful; but I am unequal to discussing the subject in further detail
just now.--To me, you know, my brother is above criticism. Whatever
incidents may--may belong to former years, I accept without cavil or
question, in silence--dear Dr. Horniblow--in silence. His wishes upon
this matter--should he care to confide them to me--and those of my
niece, will dictate my conduct to--towards my nephew, Captain
Faircloth.--Believe me, in all sincerity, I thank you. I am very much
indebted to you for the information you have communicated to me. It
simplifies my position. And now," she gave him her hand, "will you pardon
my asking you to leave me?"

Walking slowly--for he felt played out, pretty thoroughly done for, as he
put it, and beat--back to the vicarage and his belated Sunday dinner:--

"And of such are the Kingdom of Heaven," James Horniblow said to
himself--perhaps truly.

He also said other things, distinctly other things, in which occurred the
name of Reginald Sawyer whose days as curate of Deadham were numbered. If
he did not resign voluntarily, well then, pressure must, very certainly,
be employed to make him resign.

Meanwhile that blue-coated, virginal member of the Kingdom of Heaven
sped homeward at the top of her speed. She was conscious of immense
upheaval. Never had she felt so alive, so on the spot. The portals of
highest drama swung wide before her. She hastened to enter and pour forth
the abounding treasures of her sympathy at the feet of the actors in this
most marvellous piece. That her own part in it must be insignificant,
probably not even a speaking one, troubled her not the least. She was out
for them, not for herself. It was, also, characteristic of Miss Felicia
that she felt in nowise shocked. Not the ethical, still less the social
aspects of the drama affected her, but only its human ones. These dear
people had suffered, and she hadn't known it. They suffered still. She
enclosed them in arms of compassion.--If to the pure all things are pure,
Felicia Verity's purity at this juncture radiantly stood the test. And
that, not through puritanical shutting of the eyes or juggling with fact.
As she declared to Canon Horniblow, she accepted the incident without
question or cavil--for her brother. For herself, any possibility of
stepping off the narrow path of virtue, and exploring the alluring,
fragrant thickets disposed to left of it and to right, had never, ever so
distantly, occurred to her.

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