A	»	B	»	C	»	D	»	E
F	»	G	»	H	»	I	»	J
K	»	L	»	M	»	N	»	O
P	»		R	»	S	»		T
U	»		V	»	W	»		Z

Grenville Kleiser - "The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10)"

Julia Pardoe - "The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3)"

S. A. Ferrall - "A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America"

Various - "The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction"

Layoffs at Random House, Simon & Schuster
Moreover Technologies - Premier purveyor of real-time news and RSS feeds from across the Web

Citigroup Cuts Estimates and Price Target on Amazon.com (AMZN) Due To Flat Online Retail Growth
Ad - Get Info for Book Publishing from 14 search engines in 1.

Farewell To Okada In PortHarcourt
'Yes, Virginia, book publishing is NOT recession proof,' said Patricia Schroeder, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Publishers. 'It's sad day.' At Random House, the country's largest general trade publisher, the man who

Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

L >> Lucas Malet >> Deadham Hard




Small wonder the place stirred Damaris' spirit of enquiry and adventure!
She wanted to go there, to examine, to learn how people lived cut off
from the mainland for hours twice every day and night. But her early
attempts at investigation met with prompt discouragement from both her
nurse and her aunt, Felicia Verity. And Damaris was not of the
disposition which plots, wheedles, and teases to obtain what it wants;
still less screams for the desired object until for very weariness
resistance yields. Either she submitted without murmuring or fearlessly
defied authority. In the present case she relinquished hope and purpose
obediently, while inwardly longing for exploration, of her "darling
little island" all the more.

But authority was not perhaps altogether unjustified of its decision, for
the inhabitants of the spot so engaging to Damaris' imagination were a
close corporation, a race of sailors and fishermen and, so said rumour,
somewhat rough customers at that. They lived according to their own
traditions and unwritten laws, entertained a lordly contempt for
wage-earning labourers and landsmen, and, save when money was likely to
pass, were grudging of hospitality even to persons of quality setting
foot within their coasts.

To their reprehensible tendencies in this last respect the Miss Minetts
could bear painful witness, as--with hushed voices and entreaties the
sorry tale might "go no further"--they more than once confided to Theresa
Bilson. For one Saturday afternoon--unknown to the vicar--being zealous
in the admonishing of recalcitrant church-goers and rounding up of
possible Sunday-school recruits, they crossed to the island at low tide;
and in their best district visitor manner--too often a sparkling blend of
condescension and familiarity, warranted to irritate--severally demanded
entrance to the first two of the black cottages.--The Inn they avoided.
Refined gentlewomen can hardly be expected, even in the interests of
religion, to risk pollution by visiting a common tavern, more
particularly when a company of half-grown lads and blue jerseyed men--who
may, of course, have been carousing within--hangs about its morally
malodorous door.

Of precisely what followed their attempted violation of the privacy of
those two cottages, even the Miss Minetts themselves could subsequently
give no very coherent account. They only knew that some half-hour later,
with petticoats raised to a height gravely imperilling decency, they
splashed landward across the causeway--now ankle-deep in water--while the
lads congregated before the Inn laughed boisterously, the men turned away
with a guffaw, dogs of disgracefully mixed parentage yelped, and the
elder female members of the Proud and Sclanders families flung phrases
lamentably subversive of gentility after their retreating figures from
the foreshore.

Modesty and mortification alike forbade the outraged ladies reporting the
episode to Dr. Horniblow in extenso. But they succeeded in giving Miss
Bilson a sufficiently lurid account of it to make "the darling little
island," in as far as her charge, Damaris, was concerned, more than ever
taboo. Their request that the story might "go no further" she interpreted
with the elasticity usually accorded to such requests; and proceeded, at
the first opportunity, to retail the whole shocking occurrence to her
pupil as an example of the ingratitude and insubordination of the common
people. For Theresa was nothing if not conservative and aristocratic.
From such august anachronisms as the divine right of kings and the Stuart
succession, down to humble bobbing of curtseys and pulling of forelocks
in to-day's village street, she held a permanent brief for the classes as
against the masses. Unluckily the Miss Minetts' hasty and watery
withdrawal, with upgathered skirts, across the causeway had appealed to
Damaris' sense of comedy rather than of tragedy.--She didn't want to be
unkind, but you shouldn't interfere; and if you insisted on interfering
you must accept whatever followed. The two ladies in question were richly
addicted to interfering she had reason to think.--And then they must have
looked so wonderfully funny scuttling thus!

The picture remained by her as a thing of permanent mirth. So it was
hardly surprising, in face of the dominant direction of her thoughts
to-night, that, when the Miss Minetts' name punctuated Theresa's
discourse recurrent as a cuckoo-cry, remembrance of their merrily
inglorious retirement from the region of Faircloth's Inn should present
itself. Whereupon Damaris' serious mood was lightened as by sudden
sunshine, and she laughed.

Hearing which infectiously gay but quite unexpected sound, Miss Bilson
stopped dead in the middle both of a nectarine and a sentence.

"What is the matter, Damaris?" she exclaimed. "I was explaining our
difficulty in securing sufficient conveyances for some of our party to
and from Marychurch station. I really do not see any cause for amusement
in what I said."

"There wasn't anything amusing, dear Billy, I'm sure there wasn't,"
Damaris returned, the corners of her mouth still quivering and her eyes
very bright. "I beg your pardon. I'm afraid I wasn't quite attending. I
was thinking of something else. You were speaking about the carriage
horses, weren't you? Yes."

But Theresa turned sulky. She had been posing, planing in mid-air around
the fair castles hope and ambition are reported to build there. Her fat
little feet were well off the floor, and that outbreak of laughter let
her down with a bump. She lost her head, lost her temper and her
opportunity along with it, and fell into useless scolding.

"You are extremely inconsequent and childish sometimes, Damaris," she
said. "I find it most trying when I attempt to talk to you upon practical
subjects, really pressing subjects, and you either cannot or will not
concentrate. What can you expect in the future when you are thrown more
on your own resources, and have not me--for instance--always to depend
upon, if you moon through life like this? It must lead to great
discomfort not only for yourself but for others. Pray be warned in time."

Damaris turned in her chair at the head of the table. A station not
unconnected, in Theresa's mind, with the internal ordering of those same
air-built castles, and consistently if furtively coveted by her. To Sir
Charles's chair at the bottom of the table, she dared not aspire, so
during his absence reluctantly retained her accustomed place at the side.

"You need not wait any longer, Mary," Damaris said, over her shoulder.

"Why?" Theresa began fussily, as the two maids left the room.

"Why?" Damaris took her up. "Because I prefer our being alone during
the remainder of this conversation. I understand that you want to ask
me about something to do with this excursion to Harchester. What is
it, please?"

"My dear Damaris," the other protested, startled and scenting unexpected
danger, "really your manner"--

"And yours.--Both perhaps would bear improvement. But that is by the way.
What is it, please, you want?"

"Really you assert yourself"--

"And you forget yourself--before the servants, too, I do not like it at
all. You should be more careful."

"Damaris," she cried aghast, confounded to the verge of tears--"Damaris!"

"Yes--I am giving you my full attention. Pray let us be practical," the
young girl said, sitting up tall and straight in the shaded lamp-light,
the white dinner-table spread with gleaming glass and silver, fine china,
fruit and flowers before her, the soft gloom of the long low room behind,
all tender hint of childhood banished from her countenance, and her eyes
bright now not with laughter but with battle. "Pray let us finish with
the subject of the choir treat. Then we shall be free to talk about more
interesting things."

Miss Bilson waved her hands hysterically.

"No--no--I never wish to mention it again. I am too deeply hurt by your
behaviour to me, Damaris--your sarcasm.--Of course," she added, "I see I
must withdraw my offer. It will cause the greatest inconvenience and
disappointment; but for that I cannot hold myself responsible, though it
will be most painful and embarrassing to me after the kind appreciation I
have received. Still I must withdraw it"--

"Withdraw what offer?"

"Why the offer I was explaining to you just now, when you ordered the
maids out of the room. You really cannot deny that you heard what I said,
Damaris, because you mentioned the carriage horses yourself."

Theresa sipped some water. She was recovering if not her temper, yet her
grasp on the main issue. She wanted, so desperately, to achieve her
purpose and, incidentally, to continue to play, both for her own benefit
and that of the parish, her self-elected role of Lady Bountiful, of
"official representative of The Hard"--as Dr. Horniblow by a quite
innocent if ill-timed flourish of speech had unfortunately put it.

"The conveyances in the village are insufficient to take the whole party
to the station," she continued. "An extra brake can be had at the Stag's
Head in Mary church; but a pair of horses must be sent in to-morrow
afternoon to bring it over here. I saw"--she hesitated a moment--"I
really could see no objection to Patch taking our horses in to fetch the
brake, and driving a contingent to the station in it next morning."

"And meeting the train at night, I suppose?" Damaris said calmly.

"Of course," Theresa answered, thus unconsciously declaring herself a
rank outsider, and rushing blindly upon her fate.

For what thoroughbred member of the equestrian order does not know that
next--and even that not always--to the ladies of his family and,
possibly, the key of his cellar, an Englishman's stable is sacrosanct?
Dispose of anything he owns rather than his horses. To attempt touching
them is, indeed, to stretch out your hand against the Ark of the Covenant
and risk prompt withering of that impious limb. Yet poor Theresa
blundered on.

"I told the vicar that, Sir Charles being from home, I felt I might make
the offer myself, seeing how much it would simplify the arrangements and
how very little work Patch has when you and I are alone here. It is a
pity there is not time to obtain Sir Charles's sanction. That would be
more proper, of course, more satisfactory. But under the circumstances it
need not, I think, be regarded as an insuperable objection. I told the
Miss Minetts and the vicar"--

Here Miss Bilson blushed, applying fork and spoon, in coy confusion, to
the remains of the nectarine upon her plate.

"I told them," she repeated, "knowing Sir Charles as well as I do, I felt
I might safely assure them of that."

In Damaris, meanwhile, anger gradually gave place to far more complex
emotions. She sat well back in her chair, and clasped her hands firmly in
her flowered Pompadour-muslin lap. Her eyes looked enormous as she kept
them fixed gravely and steadily upon the speaker. For extraordinary ideas
and perceptions concerning the said speaker crowded into her young head.
She did not like them at all. She shrank from dwelling upon or following
them put. They, indeed, made her hot and uncomfortable all over. Had
Theresa Bilson taken leave of her senses, or was she, Damaris, herself in
fault--a harbourer of nasty thoughts? Consciously she felt to grow older,
to grow up. And she did not like that either; for the grown-up world, to
which Theresa acted just now as doorkeeper, struck her as an ugly and
vulgar-minded place. She saw her ex-governess from a new angle--a more
illuminating than agreeable one, at which she no longer figured as
pitiful, her little assumptions and sillinesses calling for the
chivalrous forbearance of persons more happily placed; but as actively
impertinent, an usurper of authority and privileges altogether outside
her office and her scope. She was greedy--not a pretty word yet a true
one, covering both her manner of eating and her speech. Registering which
facts Damaris was sensible of almost physical repulsion, as from
something obscurely gross. Hence it followed that Theresa must, somehow,
be stopped, made to see her own present unpleasantness, saved from
herself in short--to which end it became Damaris' duty to unfurl the flag
of revolt.

The young girl arrived at this conclusion in a spirit of rather pathetic
seriousness. It is far from easy, at eighteen, to control tongue and
temper to the extent of joining battle with your elders in calm and
dignified sort. To lay about you in a rage is easy enough. But rage is
tiresomely liable to defeat its own object and make you make a fool of
yourself. Any unfurling of the flag would be useless, and worse than
useless, unless it heralded victory sure and complete--Damaris realized
this. So she kept a brave front, although her pulse quickened and she had
a bad little empty feeling around her heart.

Fortunately, however, for her side of the campaign, Theresa--emboldened
by recapitulation of her late boastings at the Miss Minetts'
tea-table--hastened to put a gilded dome to her own indiscretion and
offence. For nothing would do but Damaris must accompany her on this
choir treat! She declared herself really compelled to press the point. It
offered such an excellent opportunity of acquiring archaeological
knowledge--had not the Dean most kindly promised to conduct the party
round the Cathedral himself and deliver a short lecture _en route_?--and
of friendly social intercourse, both of which would be very advantageous
to Damaris. As she was without any engagement for the day clearly neither
should be missed. Of course, everyone understood how unsuitable it would
be to ask Sir Charles to patronize parish excursions and events.--Here
Miss Bilson became lyrical, speaking with gasping breath and glowing
face, of "a call to exalted spheres of action, of great Proconsuls,
Empire Builders, Pillars of the State."--Naturally you hesitated to
intrude on the time and attention of such a distinguished person--that in
point of fact was her main reason for disposing of the matter of the
carriage horses herself. How could she trouble Sir Charles with such a
homely detail?--But Damaris' case, needless to remark, was very
different. At her age it was invidious to be too exclusive. Miss Felicia
Verity felt--so she, Theresa, was certain--that it was a pity Damaris did
not make more friends in the village now she was out of the schoolroom.
May and Doris Horniblow were sweet girls and highly educated. They, of
course, were going. And Captain Taylor, she understood would bring his
daughter, Louisa--who was home for a few days before the opening of term
at the Tillingworth High School where she was second mistress.

"It is always well to realize the attainments of young people of your own
age, even if they are not in quite the same social grade as yourself.
Your going would give pleasure too. It will be taken as a compliment to
the vicar and the Church--may really, in a sense, be called patriotic
since an acknowledgment of the duty we owe, individually, to the local
community of which we form part. And then," she added, naively giving
herself away at the last, "of course, if you go over to the station in
the brake Patch cannot make any difficulties about driving it."

Here Theresa stayed the torrent of her eloquence and looked up, to find
Damaris' eyes fixed upon her in incredulous wonder.

"Have you nothing to say, dear, in answer to my proposition?" she
enquired, with a suddenly anxious, edgy little laugh.

"I am afraid I have a lot to say, some of which you won't like."

"How so?" Theresa cried, still playfully. "You must see how natural and
reasonable my suggestion is." Then becoming admonitory. "You should learn
to think a little more of others.--It is a bad habit to offer opposition
simply for opposition's sake."

"I do not oppose you for the mere pleasure of opposing," Damaris began,
determined her voice should not shake. "But I'm sorry to say, I can't
agree to the horses being used to draw a loaded brake. I could not ask
Patch. He would refuse and be quite right in refusing. It's not their
work--nor his work either."

She leaned forward, trying to speak civilly and gently.

"There are some things you don't quite understand about the stables, or
about the servants--the things which can't be done, which it's impossible
to ask.--No,--wait, please--please let me finish"--

For between astonishment, chagrin, and an inarticulate struggle to
protest, Miss Bilson's complexion was becoming almost apoplectic and her
poor fat little cheeks positively convulsed.

"I dislike saying such disagreeable things to you, but it can't be
avoided. It would be cowardly of me not to tell you the truth.--You shall
have the brougham the day after to-morrow, and I'll write to Miss Minett
in the morning, and tell her you will call for her and her sister, on
your way to Marychurch, and that you will bring them back at night. I
will give Patch his orders myself, so that there may be no confusion. And
I will subscribe a pound to the expenses of the choir treat. That is all
I can promise in the way of help."

"But--but--Damaris, think of the position in which you place me! I cannot
be thrust aside thus. I will not submit. It is so humiliating, so--so--I
offered the horses. I told the vicar he might consider it settled about
the extra brake"--

"I know. That was a mistake. You had no right to make such an offer."

For justice must take its course. Theresa must be saved from herself.
Still her implacable young saviour, in proportion as victory appeared
assured, began to feel sad. For it grew increasingly plain that Theresa
was not of the stuff of which warriors, any more than saints, are made.
Stand up to her and she collapsed like a pricked bubble.--So little was
left, a scum of colourless soap suds, in which very certainly there is no
fight. Again she showed a pitiful being, inviting chivalrous forbearance.

"You are very hard," she lamented, "and you are always inclined to side
with the servants against me. You seem to take pleasure in undermining
my influence, while I am so ready and anxious to devote myself to you.
You know there is nothing, nothing I would not do for you and--and for
Sir Charles."

Theresa choked, coughed, holding her handkerchief to her eyes.

"And what reward do I meet with?" she asked brokenly. "At every turn I am
thwarted. But you must give way in this case, Damaris. Positively you
must. I cannot allow myself to be publicly discredited through your
self-will. I promised the horses for the extra brake. The offer was made
and accepted--accepted, you understand, actually accepted. What will the
vicar say if the arrangement is upset? What will every one think?"

Damaris pushed her chair back from the table and rose to her
feet.--Forbearance wore threadbare under accusation and complaint. No,
Theresa was not only a little too abject, but a little too disingenuous,
thereby putting herself beyond the pale of rightful sympathy. Even while
she protested devotion, self looked out seeking personal advantage. And
that devotion, in itself, shocked Damaris' sense of fitness where it
involved her father. It wasn't Theresa's place to talk of devotion
towards him!

Moreover the young girl began to feel profoundly impatient of all this to
do and bother. For wasn't the whole affair, very much of a storm in a
teacup, petty, paltry, quite unworthy of prolonged discussion such as
this? She certainly thought so, in her youthful fervour and inexperience;
while--the push of awakening womanhood giving new colour and richness
to her conception of life--nature cried out for a certain extravagance in
heroism, in largeness of action of aspiration. She was athirst for noble
horizons, in love with beauty, with the magnificence of things, seen and
unseen alike. In love with superb objectives even if only to be reached
through a measure of suffering, and--searching, arresting, though the
thought was to her--possibly through peril of death.

In such moods there is small room for a Bilson regime and outlook. A
flavour of scorn marked her tone as she answered at last:

"Oh, you can lay the blame on me--or rather tell the truth, which amounts
to the same thing. Say that, my father being away, I refused my consent
to the horses being taken out. Say you appealed to me but I was
hopelessly obstinate. It is very simple."




CHAPTER III

A SAMPLING OF FREEDOM


When two persons, living under the same roof, have the misfortune to fall
out a hundred and one small ways are ready to hand for the infliction of
moral torment. The weak, it may be added, are not only far more addicted
to such inflictings than the strong, but far more resourceful in their
execution. Theresa Bilson's conduct may furnish a pertinent example.

From the moment of emerging from her bed-chamber, next morning, she
adopted an attitude which she maintained until she regained the chaste
seclusion of that apartment at night. During no instant of the
intervening hours did she lapse from studied speechlessness unless
directly addressed, nor depart from an air of virtuous resignation to
injustice and injury--quite exquisitely provoking to the onlooker. Twice
during the morning Damaris, upon entering the schoolroom, discovered her
in tears, which she proceeded to wipe away, furtively, with the greatest
ostentation.--Dramatic effect, on the second occasion was, however,
marred by the fact that she was engaged in retrimming a white chip hat,
encircled by a garland of artificial dog-roses, blue glass grapes and
assorted foliage--an occupation somewhat ill-adapted to tragedy. In
addition to making her ex-pupil--against whom they were mainly
directed--first miserable and then naughtily defiant by these manoeuvres,
she alienated any sympathy which her red-rimmed eyelids and dolorous
aspect might otherwise have engendered in the younger and less critical
members of the establishment, by sending Alfred, the hall-boy, up to the
vicarage with a note and instructions to wait for an answer, at the very
moment when every domestic ordinance demanded his absorption in the
cleaning of knives and of boots. Being but human, Alfred naturally
embraced the heaven-sent chance of dawdling, passing the time of day with
various cronies, and rapturously assisting to hound a couple of wild,
sweating and snorting steers along the dusty lane, behind the churchyard,
to Butcher Cleave's slaughter-house: with the consequence that his menial
duties devolved upon Laura and Lizzie, who, supported by the heads of
their respective departments, combined to "give him the what for," in no
measured terms upon his eventual and very tardy return.

It is not too much to say that, by luncheon time Theresa--whether
wilfully or not--had succeeded in setting the entire household by the
ears; while any inclinations towards peace-making, with which Damaris
might have begun the day, were effectively dissipated, leaving her
strengthened and confirmed in revolt. Around the stables, and the
proposed indignity put upon Patch and the horses, this wretched quarrel
centred so--as at once a vote of confidence and declaration of
independence--to the stables Damaris finally went and ordered the
dog-cart at three o'clock. For she would drive, and drive, throughout the
course of this gilded September afternoon. Drive far away from foolishly
officious and disingenuous Theresa, far from Deadham, so tiresome just
now in its irruption of tea-parties and treats. She would behold peaceful
inland horizons, taste the freedom of spirit and the content which the
long, smooth buff-coloured roads, leading to unknown towns and unvisited
country-side, so deliciously give.

She stood at the front door, in blue linen gown, white knitted jersey and
white sailor hat, buttoning her tan doeskin driving-gloves, a gallant,
gravely valiant young creature, beautifully unbroken as yet by any real
assent to the manifold foulness of life--her faith in the nobility of
human nature and human destiny still finely intact. And that was just
where her revolt against poor Theresa Bilson came in. For Theresa broke
the accepted law, being ignoble; and thereby spoiled the fair pattern,
showed as a blot.--Not that she meant to trouble any more about Theresa
just now. She was out simply to enjoy, to see and feel, rather than
reason, analyse or think. So she settled herself on the sloping
high-cushioned seat, bracing her feet against the driving iron, while
Mary, reaching up, tucked the dust-rug neatly about her skirts.
Patch--whose looks and figure unmistakably declared his
calling--short-legged and stocky, inclining to corpulence yet nimble on
his feet, clean shaven, Napoleonic of countenance, passed reins and whip
into her hands as Tolling, the groom, let go the horse's head.

The girl squared her shoulders a little, and the soft colour deepened in
her cheeks, as she swung the dog-cart down the drive and out of the
entrance gate into the road--here a green-roofed tunnel, branches meeting
overhead, thickly carpeted with dry sand blown inward from the beach--and
on past the whitewashed cottages, red brick and grey stone houses of
Deadham village, their gardens pleasant with flowers, and with apple and
pear trees weighted down by fruit. Past the vicarage and church, standing
apart on a little grass-grown monticule, backed by a row of elms, which
amid their dark foliage showed here and there a single bough of
verdigris-green or lemon-yellow--first harbingers of autumn. Into the
open now, small rough fields dotted with thorn bushes and bramble-brakes
on the one side; and on the other the shining waters of the Haven.
Through the hamlet of Lampit, the rear of whose dilapidated sheds and
dwellings abut on reed-beds and stretches of unsightly slime and ooze. A
desolate spot, bleak and wind-swept in winter, and even under blue skies,
as to-day basking in sunshine, degraded by poverty and dirt.