Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

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"Thanks--so I supposed," Sir Charles Verity calmly said.

He stretched himself, falling into a less constrained and careful
posture. Leaned his elbow on the chair-arm, his chin in the hollow of his
hand, crossed the right leg over the left.

"Twenty-four hours will give me time for all which is of vital
importance. The rest must, and no doubt perfectly will, arrange
itself.--Oh! I'll obey you within reasonable limits, McCabe. I have no
craving to hurry the inevitable conclusion. These last hours possess
considerable significance and charm--an impressiveness even, which it
would be folly to thrust aside or waste."

Once more he looked up, his tone and expression devoid now of all
bitterness.

"I propose to savour their pleasant qualities to the full. So make
yourself easy, my good fellow," he continued with an admirable
friendliness. "Go and get your breakfast. Heaven knows you've most
thoroughly earned it, and a morning pipe of peace afterwards.--The bell
upon the small table?--Yes--oh, yes--and Hordle within earshot. I've
everything I require; and, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, shall be
glad enough of a respite from this course of food and drink, potions and
poultices--remedial to the delinquent flesh no doubt, but a notable
weariness to the-spirit.--And, see here, report to the two ladies, my
sister and--and Damaris, that you leave me in excellent case, free of
discomfort, resting for a time before girding up my loins to meet the
labours of the day."

Charles Verity closed his eyes in intimation of dismissal, anxious to be
alone the better to reckon with that deeper, final loneliness which
confronted him just now in all its relentless logic.

For, though his mind remained lucid, self-realized and observant, his
control of its action and direction was incomplete owing to bodily
fatigue. Hence it lay open to assault, at the mercy of a thousand and one
crowding thoughts and perceptions. And over these he desired to gain
ascendency--to drive, rather than be driven by them. The epic of his
three-score years, from its dim, illusive start to this dramatic and
inexorable finish--but instantly disclosed to him in the reluctant
admissions of the good-hearted Irish doctor--flung by at a double, in
coloured yet incoherent progression, so to speak, now marching to
triumphant blare of trumpet, now to roll of muffled drum. Which
incoherence came in great measure of the inalienable duality of his own
nature--passion and austerity, arrogance and self-doubt, love--surpassing
most men's capacity of loving--and a defacing strain of cruelty,
delivering stroke and counter-stroke. From all such tumult he earnestly
sought to be delivered; since not the thing accomplished--whether for
fame, for praise or for remorse--not, in short, what has been, but what
was, and still more what must soon be, did he need, at this juncture,
dispassionately to contemplate.

That sharp-toothed disappointment gnawed him, is undeniable, when he
thought of the culminating gift of happy fortune, royally satisfying to
ambition, as unexpectedly offered him as, through his own unlooked-for
and tragic disability, it was unexpectedly withdrawn. But disappointment
failed to vex him long. A more wonderful journey than any possible
earthly one, a more majestic adventure than that of any oriental
proconsulship, awaited him. For no less a person than Death issued the
order--an order there is no disobeying. He must saddle up therefore, bid
farewell, and ride away.

Nor did he flinch from that ride with Death, the black captain, as
escort, any more than, during the past night, he had flinched under the
grip of mortal pain. For some persons the call to endurance brings actual
pleasure--of a grim heroic kind. It did so to Charles Verity. And not
only this conscious exercise of fortitude, this pride of bearing bodily
anguish, but a strange curiosity worked to sustain him. The novelty of
the experience, in both cases, excited and held his interest, continued
to exercise it and to hold.

Now, as in solitude his mental atmosphere acquired serenity and
poise--the authority of the past declining--this matter of death
increasingly engrossed him. For it trenches on paradox, surely, that the
one absolutely certain event in every human career is also the most
unexplored and practically incredible.--An everyday occurrence, a
commonplace, concerning which there remains nothing new, nothing
original, to be written, sung or said; yet a mystery still inviolate,
aching with the alarm of the undiscovered, the unpenetrated, to each
individual, summoned to accept its empire! He had sent others to their
death. Now his own turn came and he found it, however calmly considered,
a rather astounding business. An ending or a beginning?--Useless, after
all, to speculate. The worst feature of it, not improbably, this same
preliminary loneliness, this stripping naked, no smallest comfort left
you of human companionship, or even of humble material keepsake from out
the multitude of your familiar possessions here in the dear accustomed
human scene.

The gates of death open. You pass them. They close behind you. And what
then?--The whole hierarchy of heaven, the whole company of your
forerunners thither--beloved and honoured on earth--may be gathered to
hail the homing soul within those amazing portals; or it may drop, as a
stone into a well, down the blank nothingness of the abyss.--Of all
gambles invented by God, man or devil--so he told himself--this daily,
hourly gamble of individual dissolution is the biggest. Man's heart
refuses the horror of extinction, while his intellect holds the question
in suspense. We hope. We believe. From of old fair promises have been
made us; and, granted the gift of faith, hope and belief neighbour upon
assurance. But certainty is denied. No mortal, still clothed in flesh,
has known, nor--the accumulated science of the ages notwithstanding--does
know, actually and exactly, that which awaits it.

Thus, anyhow, in the still, tender brightness of the autumn morning,
while Nature and men alike pursued their normal activities and
occupations, did this singular matter appear to Charles Verity--he,
himself, arbitrarily cut off from all such activities and occupations
in the very moment of high fruition. Had death been a less eminent
affair, or less imminent, the sarcasm of his position might have seemed
gross to the point of insult. But, the longer he envisaged it, the more
did the enduring enigma and its accompanying uncertainty allure. Not as
victim, but rather as conqueror of the final terror, did he begin to
regard himself.

Meanwhile, though reason continued to hold the balance even between
things positively known and things imagined only and hoped for, the
god-ward impulse strengthened in him. Not by conscious or convincing
argument from within, but by all-powerful compulsion from without, was
his thought borne onward and upward to increasing confidence. So that he
asked himself--as so many another, still unwearied, still enamoured of
attainment, has asked in like case--whether impending divorce of soul and
body may not confer freedom of a wider range and nobler quality, powers
more varied and august than the mind, circumscribed by conditions of time
and sense, has yet conception of?

To him such development seemed possible--certainly. Probable?--Ah, well,
perhaps--perhaps. Which brought him back to his former contention, that
its inherent loneliness constitutes the bitterest sting of death.
Smiling, he quoted the ancient, divinely tender saying: "There is a child
in each one of us which cries at the dark."

While, in swift reaction, he yearned towards battle where amid the
fierce and bloody glory of the fight, souls of heroes troop forth
together, shouting, into everlasting day or--sceptical reason shaking a
sadly sage head once again--into everlasting night.

He stretched out his hand instinctively for the bell on the little table
at his elbow. Hordle answered his summons, grey of countenance from
alarm, anxiety, and broken rest.

"Let Miss Damaris know I shall be glad to see her when she is free to
come to me," he said.

And here, although our damsel's reputation for courage and resource may,
thereby, sustain some damage, I am constrained to state that while in the
sick-room Miss Felicia shone, Damaris gave off but a vacillating and
ineffective light.

Imagination is by no means invariably beneficent. The very liveliness of
the perceptions which it engenders may intimidate and incapacitate. Upon
Damaris imagination practised this mischief. Becoming, for the time, that
upon which she looked, sharing every pang and even embroidering the
context, she weakened, in some sort, to the level of the actual sufferer,
helpless almost as he through the drench of overwhelming sympathy. She
had been taken, poor child, at so villainous a disadvantage. Without
preparation or warning--save of the most casual and inadequate--her
humour wayward, she a trifle piqued, fancying her pretty clothes, her
pretty looks, excited, both by the brilliant prospect presented by the
Indian appointment and by her delicate passage of arms with Carteret, she
was compelled of a sudden to witness the bodily torment of a human being,
not only by her beloved beyond all others, but reverenced also. The
impression she received was of outrage, almost of blasphemy. The cruelty
of life lay uncovered, naked and open to her appalled and revolted
consciousness. She received a moral, in addition to a physical shock,
utterly confounding in its crudity, its primitive violence.

The ravage of pain can be, in great measure, surmounted and concealed;
but that baser thing, functional disturbance--in this case present as
heart spasm, threatening suffocation, with consequent agonized and
uncontrollable struggle for breath--defies concealment. This
manifestation horrified Damaris. The more so that, being unacquainted
with the sorry spectacle of disease, her father, under the deforming
stress of it, appeared to her as a stranger almost--inaccessible to
affection, hideously removed from her and remote. His person and
character, to her distracted observation, were altered beyond recognition
except during intervals, poignant to the verge of heart-break, when
passing ease restored his habitual dignity and grace.

Thus, while Miss Felicia and Carteret--with Hordle and Mary Fisher as
assistants--ministered to his needs in as far as ministration was
possible, she stood aside, consumed by misery, voluntarily effacing
herself. Backed away even against the wall, out of range of the
lamp-light, stricken, shuddering, and mute. Upon Dr. McCabe's arrival and
assumption of command, Carteret, finding himself at liberty to note her
piteous state, led her out into the passage and then to the long
drawing-room, with gentle authority. There for a half-hour or more--to
him sadly and strangely sweet--he sat beside her, while the tears
silently coursed down her cheeks, letting her poor proud head rest
against his shoulder, his arm supporting her gracious young body still
clothed in all the bravery of her flowered silken sunshine dress.

Later, Mary bringing more favourable news of Sir Charles--pain and
suffocation having yielded for the time being to McCabe's
treatment--Carteret persuaded her to go upstairs and let the said Mary
put her to bed. Once there she slept the sleep of exhaustion, fatigue and
sorrow mercifully acting as a soporific, her capacity for further thought
or feeling literally worn out.

During that session in the drawing-room Damaris, to his thankfulness, had
asked no questions of him. All she demanded child-like, in her extremity,
had been the comfort and security of human contact. And this he gave her
simply, ungrudgingly, with a high purity of understanding, guiltless of
any shadow of embarrassment or any after-thought. Their lighter, somewhat
enigmatic relation of the earlier evening was extinguished, swamped by
the catastrophe of Charles Verity's illness. Exactly in how far she
gauged the gravity of that illness and its only too likely result, or
merely wept, unnerved by the distressing outward aspect of it, Carteret
could not determine. But he divined, and rightly, that she was in process
of ranging herself, at least subconsciously, with a new and terrible
experience which, could she learn the lesson of it aright would temper
her nature to worthy issues.

Hence, with a peculiar and tender interest, he watched her when, coming
down in the morning, he found her already in the dining-room, the
pleasant amenities of a well-ordered, hospitable house and household
abundantly evident.

Whatever the tragic occurrences of the last twelve hours, domestic
discipline was in no respect relaxed. The atmosphere of the room
distilled a morning freshness. Furniture and flooring shone with polish,
a log fire, tipped by dancing flames, burned in the low wide grate. Upon
the side-table, between the westward facing windows, a row of silver
chafing-dishes gave agreeable promise of varied meats; as did the tea and
coffee service, arrayed before Damaris, of grateful beverage. While she
herself looked trim, and finished in white silk shirt and russet-red
suit, her toilet bearing no sign of indifference or of haste.

That her complexion matched her shirt in colour--or rather in all absence
of it--that her face was thin, its contours hardened, her eyebrows drawn
into a little frown, her eyes enormous, sombre and clouded as with
meditative thought, increased, in Carteret's estimation, assurance of her
regained self-mastery and composure. Nor did a reticence in her manner
displease him.

"I have persuaded Aunt Felicia to breakfast upstairs," she told him. "Dr.
McCabe sends me word he--my father--wishes to rest for the present, so I
engaged Aunt Felicia to rest too. She was wonderful."

Damaris' voice shook slightly, as did her hand lifting the coffee-pot.

"She stayed up all night. So did you, I'm afraid, didn't you,
Colonel Sahib?"

"Oh, for me that was nothing. A bath, a change, and ten minutes out there
on the battery watching the sun come up over the sea," Carteret said. "So
don't waste compassion on me. I'm as fit as a fiddle and in no wise
deserve it."

"Ah! but you and Aunt Felicia did stay," she repeated, her hands still
rather tremulously busy with coffee-pot and milk jug. "You were faithful
and I no better than a shirker. I fell through, miserably lost myself,
which was selfish, contemptible. I am ashamed. Only I was so startled. I
never really knew before such--such things could be.--Forgive me, Colonel
Sahib. I have been to Aunt Felicia and asked her forgiveness
already.--And don't think too meanly of me, please. The shirking is over
and done with for always. You may trust me it never will happen again--my
losing myself as I did last night, I mean."

In making this appeal for leniency, her eyes met Carteret's fairly for
the first time; and he read in them, not without admiration and a twinge
of pain, both the height of her new-born, determined valour and the depth
of her established distress.

"You needn't tell me that, you needn't tell me that, dear witch," he
answered quickly. "I was sure of it all along. I knew it was just a phase
which would have no second edition. So put any question of shame or need
of forgiveness out of your precious head. You were rushed up against
circumstances, against a revelation, calculated to stagger the most
seasoned campaigner. You did not shirk; but it took you a little time to
get your bearings. That was all. Don't vex your sweet soul with quite
superfluous reproaches.--Sugar? Yes, and plenty of it I am afraid.--But
you, too, must eat."

And on her making some show of repugnance--

"See here, we can't afford to despise the day of small things, of minor
aids to efficiency, dearest witch," he wisely admonished her.

Whereupon, emulous to please him, bending her will to his, Damaris
humbled herself to consumption of a portion of the contents of the
chafing-dishes aforesaid. To discover that, granted a healthy subject,
sorrow queerly breeds hunger, the initial distaste for food--in the main
a sentimental one--once surmounted.

Later McCabe joined them. Recognized Damaris' attitude of valour, and
inwardly applauded it, although himself in woeful state. For he was hard
hit, badly upset. Conscious of waste of tissue, he set about to restore
it without apology or hesitation, trouble putting an edge to appetite in
his case also, and that of formidable keenness. Bitterly he grieved,
since bearing the patient, he feared very certainly to lose, an uncommon
affection. He loved Charles Verity; while, from the worldly standpoint,
his dealings with The Hard meant very much to him--made for glory, a
feather in his cap visible to all and envied by many. Minus the fine
flourish of it his position sank to obscurity. As a whist-playing,
golf-playing, club-haunting, Anglo-Indian ex-civil surgeon--and Irishman
at that--living in lodgings at Stourmouth, he commanded meagre
consideration. But as chosen medical-attendant and, in some sort,
retainer of Sir Charles Verity he ranked. The county came within his
purview. Thanks to this connection with The Hard he, on occasion, rubbed
shoulders with the locally great. Hence genuine grief for his friend was
black-bordered by the prospect of impending social and mundane loss. The
future frowned on him, view it in what terms he might. To use his own
unspoken phrase, he felt "in hellishly low water."

One point in particular just now worried him. Thus, as fish, eggs,
porridge, hot cakes, honey, and jam disappeared in succession, he opened
himself to Damaris and Carteret. A difficult subject, namely that of a
second opinion.--Let no thought of any wounding of his susceptibilities
operate against the calling in of such. He was ready and willing to meet
any fellow practitioner they might select--a Harley Street big-wig, or
Dr. Maskall, of Harchester, whose advice in respect of cardiac trouble
was wide sought.

He had, however, but just launched the question when Hordle entered and,
walking to the head of the table, addressed Damaris.

"Sir Charles desires me to say he will be glad to see you, miss, when you
are at liberty," he told her in muffled accents.

She sprang up, to pause an instant, irresolute, glancing wide-eyed
at Carteret.

He had risen too. Coming round the corner of the table, he drew back her
chair, put his hand under her elbow, went with her to the door.

"There is nothing to dread, dearest witch," he gently and quietly said.
"Have confidence in yourself. God keep you--and him.--Now you are quite
ready? That's right.--Well, then go."

Carteret waited, looking after her until, crossing the hall followed by
Hordle, she passed along the corridor out of sight. Silent, preoccupied,
he closed the door and took a turn the length of the room before resuming
his place at the opposite side of the table to McCabe, facing the light.

The doctor, who had ceased eating and half risen to his feet at the
commencement of this little scene, watched it throughout; at first
indifferent, a prey to his own worries, but soon in quickening interest,
shrewd enquiry and finally in dawning comprehension.

"Holy Mother of Mercy, so that's the lay of the land, is it?" and his
loose lips shaped themselves to a whistle, yet emitted no sound. To
obliterate all signs of which tendency to vulgar expression of
enlightenment he rubbed moustache, mouth and chin with his napkin,
studying Carteret closely meanwhile.

"In the pink of condition, by Gad--good for a liberal twenty years yet,
and more--bar accident. Indefinite postponement of the grand climacteric
in this case.--All the same a leetle, lee-tie bit dangerous, I'm
thinking, for both, if she tumbles to it."

Then aloud--"Has the poor darling girl grasped the meaning of her
father's illness do you make out, Colonel grasped the ugly
eventualities of it?"

Carteret slowly brought his glance to bear on the speaker.

"I believe so, though she has not actually told me as much," he
said--"And now about this question of a second opinion, McCabe?"

The easily huffed Irishman accepted the reproof in the best spirit
possible, as confirming his own perspicacity.

"Quite so. Flicked him neatly on the raw, and he winced. All the same
he's a white man, a real jewel of a fellow, worthy of good fortune if the
ball's thrown his way. I wonder how long, by-the-by, this handsome game's
been a-playing?"

With which, as requested, he returned to the rival claims of Harley
Street and Harchester in respect of a consulting physician.

Carteret proved a faithful prophet, for in truth there was nothing to
dread the beloved presence once entered, as Damaris thankfully
registered.

The sun by now topped the hollies and shone into the study, flinging a
bright slanting pathway across the dim crimson, scarlet and blue of the
Turkey carpet. Charles Verity stood, in an open bay of the great window,
looking out over the garden. Seen thus, in the still sunlight, the tall
grey-clad figure possessed all its accustomed, slightly arrogant repose.
Damaris thrilled with exalted hope. For the young are slow to admit even
the verdict of fact as final. His attitude was so natural, so unstrained
and unstudied, that the message of ghostly warning yesterday evening was
surely discounted; while the subsequent terror of the night, that hideous
battle with pain and suffocation, became to her incredible, an evil dream
from which, in grateful ecstasy, she now awoke.

Her joy found expression.

"Dearest, dearest, you sent for me.--Is it to let me see you are
really better, more beautifully recovered than they told me or I
ventured to suppose?"

Her voice broke under a gladness midway between tears and laughter.

"The envious blades of Atropos' scissors have not cut the mortal thread
yet anyhow," he answered, smiling, permitting himself the classic conceit
as a screen to possible emotion. "But we won't build too much on the
clemency of Fate. How long she proposes to wait before closing her
scissors it is idle to attempt to say."

He laid his hands on Damaris' shoulders. Bent his head and kissed
her upward pouted lips--thereby hushing the loving disclaimer which
rose to them.

"So we will keep on the safe side of the event, my wise child," he
continued. "Make all our preparations and thus deny the enemy any
satisfaction of taking us unawares.--Can you write a business
letter for me?"

"A dozen, dearest, if you wish," Damaris assented eagerly. Yet that
image of the scissors stayed by her. Already her joy was sensibly
upon the wane.

"Oh! one will be sufficient, I think--quite sufficient for this morning."

Charles Verity turned his head, looking seaward through the
tranquil sunshine.

"That Indian appointment has to be suitably thanked for and--declined."

Damaris drew back a step so as to gain a clearer view of him. The
hands resting on her shoulders were oddly inert, so she fancied,
forceless and in temperature cold. Even through the thickness of cloth
jacket and silk shirt she was aware of their lifelessness and chill.
This roused rebellion in her. Her instinct was for fight. She made a
return on McCabe's suggestion regarding further advice. She would
demand a consultation, call in expert opinion. The dear man with the
blue eyes--here her white face flushed rosy--would manage all that for
her, and compel help in the form of the last word of medical science
and skill.

"Might not your letter be put off for just a few days?" she pleaded, "in
case--until"--

But Charles Verity broke in before she could finish her tender protest,
a sadness, even hint of bitterness in his tone.

"You covet this thing so much," he said. "Your heart is so set on it?"

She made haste to reassure him.--No, no not that way, not for her. How
could it signify, save on his account? She only cared because greedy of
his advancement, greedy to have him exalted--placed where he belonged, on
the summit, the apex, so that all must perceive and acknowledge his
greatness. As to herself--and the flush deepened, making her in aspect
deliciously youthful and ingenious--she confessed misgivings. Reported
her talk with Carteret concerning the subject, and the scolding received
from him thereupon.

"One more reason for writing in the sense I propose, then," her father
declared, "since it sets your over-modest doubts and qualms at rest, my
dear. That is settled."

His hands weighed on her shoulders as though he suddenly needed and
sought support.

"I will sit down," he said. "There are other matters to be discussed, and
I can, perhaps, talk more easily so."

He went the few steps across to the red chair. Sank into it. Leaned
against the pillows, bending backward, his hand pressed to his left
side. His features contracted, and his breath caught as of one spent
with running. And Damaris, watching him, again received that desolating
impression of change, of his being in spirit far removed, inaccessible
to her sympathy, a stranger. He had gone away and rather terribly left
her alone.

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