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Deadham Hard by Lucas Malet

L >> Lucas Malet >> Deadham Hard




The birds led her eastward, up channel, to the half-mile distant nose of
the Bar, round which the rivers, released at last from their narrow
channel, sweep out into Marychurch Bay. Here, on a sudden, they took
wing, and Damaris looking after them, bade them an unwilling farewell,
for their innocent society had been sweet. And with that she became aware
she was really quite tired and would be glad to rest awhile, the
afternoon being young yet, before turning homeward. The longer she stayed
the more hope there was of finding Jennifer at the ferry; and more than
ever, the glamour of her wild hour of Nature worship still upon her, did
she recoil from any sort of association with foul old Timothy Proud.

Therefore she went up across the moist gleaming levels to the
tide-line, and picking her way carefully among the black jumble of
seaweed and sea-litter which marked it, sat down in a fan-shaped
depression in the dry, clean, blown sand some few paces above. The
sunshine covered it making it warm to her bare feet. The feel and blond
colour of it brought to mind her reading of this morning--a passage in
Eoethen telling of the striking of camp at dawn, the desert waiting to
claim its own again and obliterate, with a single gesture, all sign or
token of the passing sojourn of man. Clasping her hands behind her
head, Damaris lay back, the warm sand all around her, giving beneath
her weight, fitted itself into the curves of her body and limbs--only
it visible and the soft blue of the sky above. For a little while she
rested open-eyed in the bright silent stillness, and then, unknowing of
the exact moment of surrender, she stretched with a fluttering sigh,
turned on her side and dreamlessly slept.

And, while she thus slept, two events took place eminently germane to the
further unfolding of this history.--The weather changed, and the local
degenerate, Abram Sclanders' half-idiot son--the poor "lippity-lop" who,
according to Jennifer, had far better been "put away quiet-like at
birth"--committed theft.

Of the first event, Damaris gradually became sensible, before her actual
awakening. She grew restless, her bed of sand seeming robbed of comfort,
bleak and uneasy, so that she started up, presently, into a sitting
position, rubbing her eyes with her fists baby-fashion, unable for the
minute to imagine how or why she came to be lying like this out on the
Bar, hatless, shoe and stockingless. Looking about her, still in
questioning bewilderment, she observed that in the south-west a great
bank of cloud had risen. It blotted out the sun, deadening all colour.
The opaline haze, turned to a dull falling mist, closed down and in,
covering the sand-hills and the dark mass of Stone Horse Head and even
blurring the long straight lines of the sandbank and nearer shingle. The
sea had risen, but noiselessly, creeping up and up towards her, no line
of white marking the edge of its slothful oncoming.

Damaris stood up, pulling her white jersey--the surface of it already
furred with moisture--low over her hips. For she felt shivery, and the
air was thick and chill to breathe causing a tightness in her throat.

"The glory has departed, very much departed, so I had best make haste to
depart also," she told herself; but told herself gallantly, smiling at
her own strange plight in a spirit of adventure, discovering in it the
excitement of novel experience.

She picked her way over the shingle and black sea litter of high-water
mark, and started to run along the narrow strip between it and the
advancing tide. To run would circulate her blood, warm her through and
keep her gallant humour up; still she had to own she found this heavy
going, for her feet were numb and the sand seemed to pluck at and weigh
them down. Her run slackened to a walk. Then she ventured a yard or two
out into the shallow water, hoping there to meet with firmer foothold;
but here it proved altogether too cold. She had the misfortune, moreover,
to tread on the top end of a razor shell, buried upright, which cut the
skin making her limp from pain and sharpness of smarting. So perforce,
she took to the deep blown sand again above high-water mark, and ploughed
along slowly enough in growing weariness and discomfort.

Never, surely, was any half-mile so long as this between the place of her
farewell to the mottled stilt-legged birds and subsequent sleeping, and
the place where she left her hat and shoes and stockings! In the dimness
and chill of the falling mist, it seemed to lengthen and lengthen to an
altogether incomprehensible extent. Time and again she stopped and
scanned the ground immediately before her, certain she should see there
those so lightly discarded and now so earnestly desired items of
clothing. Once in possession of them she would simply scurry home. For
visions of warm, dry pretty garments, of Mary's, comely ministering
presence, of tea, of lamp-light and--yes, she would allow herself that
culminating luxury--of a fine log fire in the long sitting-room,
presented themselves to her imagination in most alluring sequence--the
spirit of adventure, meanwhile, as must be owned, beginning to sing small
and hang a diminished head.

But on a sudden, raising her eyes from their persistent search, Damaris
realized she must have missed and already passed the spot. For she was
close upon the tract of sand-hills--a picture of desolation in the sullen
murk, the winding hollows between their pale formless elevations bearing
a harsh growth of neutral tinted sword-like grasses.

She had come too far by a quarter of a mile at least, so she judged, and
must turn her face eastward again and laboriously plough her way back.
But the return journey was crowned with no better success than the
outward one. Carefully, methodically she quartered the beach; but simply
her things weren't there, had vanished, leaving neither token or trace.

She was confronted moreover by the unpleasant fact that it grew late.
Soon the dusk would fall, its coming hastened by the mist, now settling
into a steady drizzle of rain precursor of a dark and early night. To
hunt any longer would be useless. She must give it up. Yet her maidenly
pride, her sense of what is seemly and becoming, revolted from exposing
herself to Timothy Proud's coarse leering glances or even--should he by
luck be her waterman--to Jennifer's more respectful curiosity,
dishevelled and but half-dressed as she was. And then the actual distance
to be traversed appeared to her dishearteningly great. For she was
weary--quite abominably weary now she came to think of it. Her feet were
bruised and blistered. They ached. Her throat ached too, and she
shivered. Cold, though it was, she must wait a minute or two and rest
before attempting the ascent of the slope.

Damaris sat down, pulling her skirts as low as they would come over her
bare legs, and clasping her hands round her knees, bowed, huddled
together to gain, if it might be, some sensation of warmth. For a little
she thought of that only--warmth--her mind otherwise a blank. But soon
the consuming sadness of the place in the waning light penetrated her
imagination, penetrated, indeed, her whole being. Only a few hours ago
she had danced here, in ecstasy born of the sunshine, the colour, the
apparently inexhaustible beauty of things uncreated by, and independent
of, the will and work of man. Contrast that scene, and the radiant
emotion evoked by it, with this? Which was real, the enduring revelation?
Was this truth; the other no more than mirage--an exquisite dissembling
and lovely lie?

Such thoughts are hardly wholesome at eighteen--hardly wholesome perhaps
at any age, if life is to be lived sweetly, with honest profit to one's
own soul and to the souls of others. Yet remembering back, down the dim
avenues of childhood, Damaris knew she did not formulate the question,
entertain the suspicion, for the first time. Only, until now, it had
stayed in the vague, a shapeless nightmare horror, past which she could
force herself to run with shut eyes. It didn't jump out of the vague,
thank goodness, and bar her passage. But now no running or shutting of
eyes availed. It had jumped out. She stared at it, and, in all its
undermining power of discouragement, it stared back.--What if the deepest
thing, the thing which alone lasted, the thing which, therefore, you
were bound in the end to accept, to submit to, was just darkness, sorrow,
loneliness of worn body and shrinking spirit, by the shore of a cold,
dumb, and tenantless, limitless sea--what then?

From which undesirable abyss of speculation she was aroused by the sound
of her own name--"Damaris Verity, hey--Damaris Verity"--shouted, not
roughly though in tones of urgent command, from above and behind her on
the crest of the Bar. Along with it came the rattle of shifting shingle
under a strong active tread.

Hearing which the young girl's senses and faculties alike sprang to
attention. She rose from her dejected attitude, stood up and faced round,
forgetful of aches and weariness and of woeful ultimate questionings,
while in glad surprise her heart went out to meet and welcome the--to
her--best beloved being in this, no longer, sorry world.

For even thus, at some fifty yards distant through the blur of falling
rain, the figure presented to her gaze, in height, build, and fashion of
moving, was delightfully familiar, as were the tones of the voice which
had hailed her--if in not quite equal degree the manner of that hail.
Some change in his plans must have taken place, or some letter miscarried
advising her of her father's earlier return. Finding her out he had come
to look for her.--This was perfectly as it should be. Had Colonel
Carteret come home with him, she wondered. And then there flashed through
her, with a singular vividness, recollection of another, long, long ago
escapade--when as a still almost baby child she had stepped off alone, in
daring experiment, and fallen asleep, in the open as to-day. But in
surroundings how amazingly different!--A place of fountains, cypresses
and palms, she curled up in a black marble chair, set throne fashion,
upon a platform of blood red sandstone, an age-old Oriental garden
outstretched below. Colonel Carteret--"the man with the blue eyes" as she
always had called him--awakened her, bringing an adorable and, as it
proved in the sequel, a tragic birthday gift.--Tragic because to it
might, actually if indirectly, be traced the breaking up of her
childhood's home in the stately Indian pleasure palace of the
Sultan-i-bagh at Bhutpur, her separation from her father and exile--as
she had counted it--to Europe.

It is among the doubtful privileges of highly sensitized natures, such as
Damaris', that, in hours of crisis, vision and pre-vision go hand in
hand. As there flashed through her remembrance of that earlier sleep in
the open, there flashed through her also conviction that history would
still further repeat itself. Now, as then, the incident of sleep preluded
the receipt of a gift, adorable perhaps, yet freighted with far-reaching
consequences to herself and her future. Of just what that gift might
consist she had no idea; but of its approach she felt as certain as of
the approach of the man swinging down through the rain over the rattling
pebbles. And her gladness of welcome declined somewhat. She could have
cried off, begged for postponement. For she was very tired, after all.
She didn't want anything now, anything which--however delightful in
itself--demanded effort, demanded even the exertion of being very
pleased. She shied away, in short. And then commendably rallied her
forces, resolute not to be found unworthy or ungrateful.

"Yes--come. I am here," she called in response to that lately heard
calling of her name, desiring to make an act of faith whereby to assure
herself she was indeed ready, and assure her hearer of her readiness to
accept the impending gift.

"I am here," she began again to affirm, but stopped abruptly, the words
choking in her throat.

For, as with decreasing distance the figure grew distinct, she saw, to
her blank amazement, not Sir Charles Verity, her father, as she expected,
but the blue reefer jacket, peaked cap, and handsome bearded face of
Darcy Faircloth, the young merchant sea-captain, emerge from the blur of
the wet. And the revulsion of feeling was so sharp, the shock at once so
staggering and intimate--as summing up all the last ten days confused
experience--that Damaris could not control herself. She turned away with
a wail of distress, threw out her hands, and then, covering her eyes with
them, bowed her head.

The young man came forward and stood near her; but an appreciable time
elapsed before he spoke. When he presently did so, his voice reached
her as again singularly familiar in tone, though strange in diction and
in accent.

"I'm sorry if I startled you," he began, "but I hailed you just now, and
you told me to come.--I concluded you meant what you said. Not, I'm
afraid, that your giving your permission or withholding it would have
made much difference in the upshot. Timothy Proud let on, in my hearing,
that he set you across the river soon after two o'clock, and that there'd
been no call for the ferry since. So I took one of my own boats and just
came over to look for you--in case you might have met with some mishap or
strayed among the sand-hills and couldn't find your"--

Thus far he spoke with studied calm and restraint. But here, as though
struck by a fresh and very objectionable idea, he broke out:

"Nothing has happened has it? No cowardly brute has interfered with
you or upset you? Dear God alive, don't tell me I'm too late, don't
tell me that."

Upon Damaris this sudden, though to her unaccountable, violence and heat
acted as a cordial. She raised her head, pushing back the damp hair from
her forehead, and displaying a proud if strained and weary face.

"No," she said, "of course not. Who would venture to be rude to me? I
have not seen anyone all the afternoon--until now, when you came. And,"
she added by way of further explanation--she didn't want to be ungracious
or unkind, but she did want, in justice to herself, to have this
understood--"in the distance I didn't recognize you. I mistook you for
someone else"--

"Who else?" he took her up, and with a queer flicker--if of a smile, then
one with a keenish edge to it--in his eyes and about his mouth.

"For my father," Damaris answered. "It was a stupid mistake, because he
is away staying in Norfolk for partridge shooting, and I have not any
real reason to expect him home for several days yet."

"But in this deceptive light," Faircloth took her up again, while--as she
could not help observing--that flicker became more pronounced. It seemed
silently to laugh and to mock.--"Oh! to be sure that accounts for your
mistake as to my identity. One sees how it might very well come about."

He took off his cap, and threw back his head looking up into the
low wet sky.

"At night all cats are grey, aren't they," he went on, "little ones as
well as big? And it's close on night now, thanks to this dirty weather.
So close on it, that--though personally I'm in no hurry--I ought to get
you back to The Hard, or there'll be a regular hue and cry after
you--rightly and probably too, if your servants and people have any
notion of their duty."

"I am quite ready," Damaris said.

She strove to show a brave front, to keep up appearances; but she felt
helpless and weak, curiously confused by and unequal to dealing with
this masterful stranger--who yet, somehow did not seem like a stranger.
Precisely in this was the root of her confusion, of her inability to
deal with him.

"But hardly as you are," he commented, on her announcement she was ready.
"Let me help to put on your shoes and stockings for you first." And this
he said so gently and courteously, that Damaris' lips began to quiver,
very feminine and youthful shame at the indignity of her present plight
laying hold on her.

"I can't find them," she pitifully declared. "I have looked and looked,
but I can't find them anywhere. I left my things just here. Can anyone
have stolen them while I was out at the end of the Bar? It is so
mysterious and so dreadfully tiresome. I should have gone home long ago,
before the rain began, if I could have found them."

And with that, the whole little story--childish or idyllic as you
please--of sunshine and colour, of beguiling birds beguiling sea, of
sleep, and uneasy awakening when the cloud-bank rising westward devoured
the fair face of heaven, of mist and fruitless seeking, even some word of
the fear which forever sits behind and peeps over the shoulder of all
wonder and all beauty, got itself--not without eloquent passages--quickly
yet gravely told. For the young man appeared to derive considerable
pleasure from listening, from watching her and from questioning her
too--still, gently and courteously though closely, as if each detail were
of interest and of value.

"And now you know all about it, Captain Faircloth," Damaris said in
conclusion, essaying to laugh at her own discomfiture. "And I am very
tired, so if you will be kind enough to row me across the ferry, I shall
be grateful to you, and glad, please, to go home at once."

"By all means," he answered. "Only, you know, I can't very well let you
cut your feet to pieces on these cruel stones, so I am just going to
carry you up over the Bar"--

"No--no--I can perfectly well walk. I mean to walk--see," she cried.

And started courageously up the rough ascent, only to slip, after a few
paces, and to stagger. For as soon as she attempted to move, she felt
herself not only weak, but oddly faint and giddy. She lurched forward,
and to avoid falling instinctively clutched at her companion's
outstretched hand. Exactly what passed between the young man and young
girl in that hand-clasp--the first contact they had had of one
another--it might seem far-reached and fantastic to affirm; yet that it
steadied not only Damaris' trembling limbs, but her trembling and
over-wrought spirit, is beyond question. For it was kind and more than
kind--tender, and that with the tenderness of right and usage rather than
of sentimental response to a passing sentimental appeal.

"There, there," he said, "what's the use of working to keep up this
little farce any longer? Just give in--you can't put off doing so in the
end. Why not at once, then, accept defeat and spare both yourself and me
pain? You are no more fit to walk, than you are fit to fly--to fly away
from me!--That's what you want, isn't it? Ah! that flight will come, no
doubt, all in good time.--But meanwhile, be sensible. Put your left arm
round my neck--like this, yes. Then--just a little hoist, and, if you'll
not worry but keep still, nothing's easier."

As he spoke, Faircloth stooped, lightly and with no apparent exertion
lifting her high, so that--she clasping his neck as instructed--the main
weight of her body rested upon his shoulder. With his right arm he held
her just above the waist, his left arm below her knees cradling her.

"Now rest quiet," he said. "Know you are safe and think only of
comfortable things--among them this one, if you care to, that for once in
my life I am content."

Yet over such yielding and treacherous ground, upward to the crown of the
ridge and downward to the river, progress could not be otherwise than
slow. Twilight, and that of the dreariest and least penetrable, overtook
them before Faircloth, still carrying the white-clothed figure, reached
the jetty. Here, at the bottom of the wooden steps he set Damaris down,
led her up them and handed her into the boat--tied up to, and the tide
being at the flood, now little below the level of the staging.




CHAPTER V

WHEREIN DAMARIS MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE HIDDEN WAYS OF MEN


Throughout their singular journey--save for briefest question and answer
about her well-being at the commencement of it--the two had kept silence,
as though conscious Faircloth's assertion of contentment struck a chord
any resolution of which might imperil the simplicity of their relation.
Thus far that relation showed a noble freedom from embarrassment. It
might have continued to do so but for a hazardous assumption on his part.

When first placing Damaris in the stern of the boat, the young man
stripped off his jacket and, regardless of her vaguely expressed protest,
wrapped it round her feet. It held the living warmth of his body; and,
chilled, dazed, and spent, as Damaris was, that warmth curiously soothed
her, until the ink-black boat floating upon the brimming, hardly less
inky, water faded from her knowledge and sight. She drooped together,
passing into a state more comparable to coma than to natural slumber, her
will in abeyance, thought and imagination borne under by the immensity of
her fatigue.

As Faircloth, meanwhile, pulled clear of the outstanding piles of the
jetty, he heard voices and saw lights moving down by the ferry on the
opposite shore. But these, and any invitation they might imply, he
ignored. If the hue and cry after Damaris, which he had prophesied, were
already afoot, he intended to keep clear of it, studiously to give it the
slip. To this end, once in the fairway of the river he headed the boat
downstream, rowing strongly though cautiously for some minutes, careful
to avoid all plunge of the oars, all swish of them or drip. Then, the
lights now hidden by the higher level and scrub of the warren, he sat
motionless letting the boat drift on the seaward setting current.

The fine rain fell without sound. It shut out either bank creating a
singular impression of solitude and isolation, and of endlessness too.
There seemed no reason why it should ever cease. And this delusion of
permanence, the enclosing soft-clinging darkness served to heighten. The
passage of time itself seemed arrested--to-morrow becoming an
abstraction, remote and improbable, which could, with impunity, be left
out of the count. With this fantastic state of things, Faircloth had no
quarrel. Though impatient of inaction, as a rule definite and autocratic
enough, he really wasn't aware of having any particular use for
to-morrow. Content still held sway. He was satisfied, profoundly, yet
dreamingly, satisfied by an achievement long proposed, long waited for,
the door upon which had opened to-day by the merest accident--if anything
can justly be called accident, which he inclined to believe it could not.

He had appointed, it should be added, a limit in respect of that
achievement, which he forbade himself to pass; and it was his habit very
rigidly to obey his own orders, however little disposed he might be to
obey those of other people. He had received, as he owned, more than he
could reasonably have expected, good measure pressed down and running
over. The limit was now reached. He should practise restraint--leave the
whole, affair where it stood. But the effect of this darkness, and of
drifting, drifting, over the black water in the fine soundless rain, with
its illusion of permanence, and of the extinction of to-morrow--and the
retributions and adjustments in which to-morrow is so frequently and
inconveniently fertile--enervated him, rendering him a comparatively easy
prey to impulse, should impulse chance to be stirred by some adventitious
circumstance. The Devil, it may be presumed, is very much on the watch
for such weakenings of moral fibre, ready to pounce, at the very shortest
notice, and make unholy play with them!

To Faircloth's ruminative eyes, the paleness in the stern of the boat,
indicating Damaris Verity's drooping figure, altered slightly in outline.
Whereupon he shipped the oars skillfully and quietly, and going aft knelt
down in front of her. Her feet were stretched out as, bowed together, she
sat on the low seat. His jacket had slipped away exposing them to the
weather, and the young man laying his hands on them felt them cold as in
death. He held them, chafed them, trying to restore some degree of
circulation. Finally, moved by a great upwelling of tenderness and of
pity, and reckoning her, since she gave no sign, to be asleep, he bent
down and put his lips to them.

But immediately the girl's hands were upon his shoulders.

"What are you doing, oh! what are you doing?" she cried.

"Kissing your feet."

Then the Devil, no doubt, flicking him, he let go restraint, disobeyed
his own orders, raised his head, and looking at her as in the enfolding
obscurity she leaned over him, said:

"And, if it comes to that, who in all the round world has a better right
than I, your brother, to kiss your feet?"

For some, to him, intolerable and interminable seconds, Faircloth waited
after he had shot his bolt. The water whispered and chuckled against the
boat's sides in lazy undertones, as it floated down the sluggish stream.
Beyond this there was neither sound nor movement. More than ever might
time be figured to stand still. His companion's hands continued to rest
upon his shoulders. Her ghostly, dimly discerned face was so near his own
that he could feel, now and again, her breath upon his forehead; but she
was silent. As yet he did not repent of his cruelty. The impulse which
dictated it had not spent itself. Nevertheless this suspense tried him.
He grew impatient.