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Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

L >> Lucas Malet >> Deadham Hard




"Not a chance," Damaris repeated.

Once convalescence initiated, youth speedily regains its elasticity; and
Aunt Felicia with her feathers ruffled, Aunt Felicia upon the warpath
thus, presented a novel spectacle meriting observation. Evidently she and
Henrietta had badly clashed!--A nice little demon of diversion stirred
within Damaris. For the first time for many days she felt amused.

"Excessively clever," Miss Felicia continued.

--Without doubt the dear thing was finely worked up!--

"And, though I hardly like to make such accusation, none too scrupulous
in her methods. She leads you on with a number of irrelevant comments
and questions, until you find she's extracted from you a whole host of
things you never meant to say. She is far too inquisitive--too
possessive."

Miss Felicia ended on an almost violent note.

"Yes, Henrietta has a tiresome little habit of having been there first,"
Damaris said, a touch of weariness in her tone remembering past
encounters.

Miss Felicia, caught by that warning tone, patted her niece's rather
undiscoverable knee--undiscoverable because still covered by a heavy
fur-lined driving coat--lovingly, excitedly.

"If you choose to believe her, darling," she cried, "which I, for one,
emphatically don't."

Following which ardent profession of faith, or rather of scepticism, Miss
Felicia attempted to treat the subject broadly. She soared to
mountain-tops of social and psychological astuteness; but only to make
hasty return upon her gentler self, deny her strictures, and snatch at
the skirts of vanishing Christian charity.

"Men aren't so easily led away," she hopefully declared. "Nor can I think
Mrs. Frayling so irresistible to each and all as she wishes one to
imagine. She must magnify the number and, still more, the permanence of
her conquests. No doubt she has been very much admired. I know she was
lovely. I saw her once ages ago, at Tullingworth. Dearest Charles," the
words came softly, as though her lips hesitated to pronounce them in so
trivial a connection--"asked me to call on her as I was staying in the
neighbourhood. She had a different surname then, by the way, I remember."

"Henrietta has had four in all--counting in her maiden name, I mean."

"Exactly," Miss Felicia argued, "and that, no doubt, does prejudice me a
little against her. I suppose it is wrong, but when a woman marries so
often one can't help feeling as if she ended by not being married at
all--a mere change of partners, don't you know, which does seem rather
shocking. It suggests such an absence of deep feeling.--Poor thing, I
dare say that is just her nature; still it doesn't attract me. In fact
it gives me a creep.--But I quite own she is pretty still, and
extraordinarily well dressed--only too well dressed, don't you know, that
is for the country.--More tea, darling. Yes, Mrs. Cooper's scones are
particularly good this afternoon.--I wish I liked her better, Mrs.
Frayling, I mean, because she evidently intends to be here a lot in
future. She expressed the warmest affection for you. She was very
possessive about you, more I felt than she'd any real right to be. That,
I'm afraid, put my back up--that and one or two other things. She and
General Frayling think of settling in Stourmouth for good, if Mr. Wace is
appointed to the Deadham curacy."

"The curacy here?" Damaris echoed, a rather lurid light breaking
in on her.

Miss Felicia's glance was of timid, slightly distressed, enquiry.

"Yes," she said, "Mr. Wace has applied for the curacy. He and General
Frayling were to have an interview with Canon Horniblow this afternoon.
They dropped Mrs. Frayling here on their way to the vicarage, and sent
the fly back for her. She talked a great deal about Mr. Wace and his
immense wish to come here. She gave me to understand it was his one
object to"--

The speaker broke off, raised her thin, long-fingered hands to her
forehead.

"I don't know," she said, "but really I feel perhaps, darling, it is
better to warn you. She implied--oh! she did it very cleverly, really, in
a way charmingly--but she implied that things had gone very hard with Mr.
Wace that winter at St. Augustin, and that all he went through has
remarkably developed and strengthened his character--that it, in fact,
was what determined him to take Holy Orders. His difficulties melted
before his real need for the support of religion. It would have all been
most touching if one had heard a story of such devotion from anyone
but--but her, about anyone but him--under the circumstances, poor young
man--because--darling--well, because of you."

"Of me?" Damaris stiffened.

"Yes--that is just the point. Mrs. Frayling left me in no doubt. She was
determined to make me understand just what Mr. Wace's attitude had been
towards you--and that it is still unchanged."

Damaris got up. Pulled off her driving coat, gloves and hat. Threw them
upon the seat of a chair. The act was symbolic. She felt suffocated,
impelled to rid herself of every impediment. For wasn't she confronted
with another battle--a worse one than that with the house, namely, a
battle with her long-ago baby-love, and her father's love
too--Henrietta.--Henrietta, so strangely powerful, so amazingly
persistent--Henrietta who enclosed you in arms, apparently so soft but
furnished with suckers, octopus arms adhering, never letting you go? She
had played with the idea of this intrusion of Henrietta's and its effect
upon Miss Felicia, at first as something amusing. It ceased to be
amusing. It frightened her.

"And my attitude is unchanged, too," she said presently, gravely proud.
"I didn't want to marry Marshall Wace then. I was dreadfully sorry when
Henrietta told me he cared for me. I don't want to marry him or have
him care for me one bit more now. I think it very interfering of
Henrietta to trouble you with this. It is not the moment. She might at
least have waited."

"So I felt," Miss Felicia put in. She watched her niece anxiously, as the
latter went across to the fire-place and stood, her back to the room,
looking down into the glowing logs.

For she had--or rather ought she not to have?--another communication to
make which involved the fighting of a battle on her own account, not
against Henrietta Frayling, still less against Damaris, but against
herself. It trembled on the tip of her tongue. She felt impelled, yet
sorrowed to utter it. Hence her wishes and purposes jostled one another,
being tenderly, bravely, heroically even, contradictory. In speaking she
invited the shattering of a dream of personal election to happiness--a
late blossoming happiness and hence the more entrancing, the more
pathetic. That any hope of the dream's fulfilment was fragile as glass,
lighter than gossamer, the veriest shadow of a shade, her natural
diffidence and sane sense, alike, convinced her. For this very cause, the
dream being of the sweetest and most intimate, how gladly would she have
cherished the enchanting foolishness of it a trifle longer!--Her act of
heroism would earn no applause, moreover, would pass practically
unnoticed. No one would be aware of her sacrifice. She would only gain
the satisfaction of knowing she had done the perfectly right and generous
thing by two persons who would never share that knowledge.--She
blushed.--Heaven forbid they ever should share it--and thank her.

"Mrs. Frayling--I don't want"--

Miss Felicia stopped.

"What don't you want?"--This from Damaris over her shoulder, the pause
being prolonged.

"To set you against her, darling"--

"I think," Damaris said, "I know all about Henrietta."

"She insinuates so much," Miss Felicia lamented.--"Or seems to do so. One
grows wretchedly suspicious of her meaning. Perhaps I exaggerate and
misjudge her.--She is quite confusingly adroit; but I extremely disliked
the way in which she spoke of Colonel Carteret."

Damaris bent a little forward, holding her skirt back from the scorch of
the fire, her eyes still downcast.

"How did she speak of him?"

"Oh! all she said was very indirect--but as though he had not played
quite fair with her on some occasion. And--it's odious to repeat!--as if
that was his habit with women, and with unmarried girls as well--as if he
was liable to behave in a way which placed them in a rather invidious
position while he just shuffled out of all responsibility himself. She
hinted his staying on with us here was a case in point--that it might
give people a wrong idea altogether. That, in short--at least thinking it
over I feel sure this is the impression she meant to convey to me--that
he is indulging his chronic love of philandering at your expense."

"And thereby standing in the light of serious lovers such as
Marshall Wace?"

After a moment Damaris added:

"Is that your idea of Colonel Carteret, Aunt Felicia?"

"Ah! No, indeed no," the poor lady cried, with rather anguished
sincerity. Then making a fine effort over herself:

"Least of all where you are concerned, my darling."

And she drifted hastily on to her feet. The curtains were still undrawn;
and, through the window opposite, she caught sight of a tall figure
coming up across the lawn in the frosty twilight.

"Pardon me if I run away. I've forgotten a note I meant to send to poor
little Theresa Bilson.--I must let Laura have it at once, or she mayn't
catch the postman," she said with equal rapidity and apparent
inconsequence.

As Felicia Verity passed out into the hall, at one end of the avenue of
stumpy pillars, Carteret came in at the other end through the garden
door. He halted a moment, dazzled by the warmth and light within after
the clair-obscure of the frosty dusk without, and looked round the room
before recognizing the identity of its remaining occupant. Then:

"Ah! you--dear witch," he said. "So you're home. And what of your drive?"

Damaris turned round, all of a piece. Her hands, white against the black,
the fingers slightly apart, still pressed back the skirt of her dress as
though saving it from the fire scorch, in quaintly careful childish
fashion. Her complexion was that of a child too, in its soft brightness.
And the wonder of her great eyes fairly challenged Carteret's wits.

"A babe of a thousand years," he quoted to himself. "Does that look grow
out of a root of divine innocence, or of quite incalculable wisdom?"

"I told you if you would be patient with me I should begin again. I have
begun again, dear Colonel Sahib."

"So I perceive," he answered her.

"Is it written so large?" she asked curiously.

"Very large," he said, falling in with her humour. "And where does the
beginning lead to?"

"I wish you'd tell me.--Henrietta has begun again too."

"I know it," he said. "Our incomparable Henrietta overtook me on her way
from here to the Vicarage, and bestowed her society on me for the better
part of half an hour. She was in astonishing form."

Carteret came forward and stood on the tiger skin beside Damaris. Mrs.
Frayling's conversation had given him very furiously to think, and his
thoughts had not proved by any means exhilarating.

"Does this recrudescence of our Henrietta, her beginning again, affect
the scope and direction of your own beginning again, dearest witch?" he
presently enquired, in singularly restrained and colourless accents.

"That depends a good deal upon you--doesn't it, Colonel Sahib?" our
maiden gravely answered.

Carteret felt as though she dealt him a blow. The pain was numbing. He
could neither see, nor could he think clearly. But he traced Mrs.
Frayling's hand in this, and could have cursed her elaborately--had it
been worth while. But was anything worth while, just now? He inclined to
believe not--so called himself a doating fool. And then, though
tormented, shaken, turned his mind to making things easy for Damaris.

"Oh! I see that," he told her. "And now you have got hold of your
precious little self again and made a start, it's easy enough to manage
your affairs--in as far as they need any management of mine--from a
distance. This beginning again is triumphant. I congratulate you! You're
your own best physician. You know how to treat your case to a marvel. So
I abdicate."

"But why? Why abdicate? Do you mean go away? Then Henrietta was right.
What she said was true. I never believed her. I"--

Damaris grew tall in her shame and anger. The solemn eyes blazed.

"Yes--pray go," she said. "It's unwarrantable the way I kept you
here--the way I've made use of you. But, indeed, indeed, I am very
grateful, Colonel Sahib. I ought to have known better. But I didn't. I
have been so accustomed all my life to your help that I took it all for
granted. I never thought how much I taxed your forbearance or encroached
on your time.--That isn't quite true though. I did have scruples; but
little things you said and did put my scruples to sleep. I liked having
them put to sleep.--Now you must not let me or my business interfere any
more.--Oh! you've treated me, given to me, like a prince," she declared,
rising superior to anger and to shame, her eyes shining--"like a king.
Nobody can ever take your place or be to me what you've been. I shall
always love to think of your goodness to--to him--my father--and to
me--always--all my life."

Damaris held out her hands.

"And that's all.--Now let us say no more about this. It's difficult. It
hurts us both, I fancy, a little."

But Carteret did not take her proffered hands.

"Dear witch," he said, "we've spoken so freely that I am afraid we must
speak more freely still--even though it pains you a little perhaps, and
myself, almost certainly very much more. I love you--not as a friend, not
as an amiable elderly person should love a girl of your age.--This isn't
an affair of yesterday or the day before yesterday. You crept into my
heart on your sixth birthday--wasn't it?--when I brought you a certain
little green jade elephant from our incomparable Henrietta, and found you
asleep in a black marble chair, set on a blood-red sandstone platform,
overlooking the gardens of the club at Bhutpur. And you have never crept
out of it again--won't do so as long as body and mind hang together, or
after. It has been a song of degrees.--For years you were to me a
delicious plaything; but a plaything with a mysterious soul, after which
I felt, every now and again, in worship and awe. The plaything stage came
to an end when I was here with you before we went to Paris, four years
ago. For I found then, beyond all question of doubt, that I loved you as
a man only loves once, and as most men never love at all. I have tried
to keep this from you because I have no right to burden your youth with
my middle-age."

Carteret smiled at her.

"It has not been altogether easy to hold my peace, dearest witch," he
said. "The seven devils of desire--of which you knew nothing, bless
you"--"I'm not sure that I do know nothing," Damaris put in quietly.
She looked him over from head to heel, and the wonder of her great
eyes deepened.

"It isn't wrong?" she said, brokenly, hoarsely. "I don't think it can
be wrong?"

Then, "You will be good to my brother, to Darcy Faircloth, and let me see
him quite, quite often!"

And lastly, her lips trembling:

"It is beautiful, more beautiful than I ever knew about, to have you for
quite my own, Colonel Sahib."