Deadham Hard Part 11

"But in this deceptive light," Faircloth took her up again, while--as she could not help observing--that flicker became more p.r.o.nounced. It seemed silently to laugh and to mock.--"Oh! to be sure that accounts for your mistake as to my ident.i.ty. 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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sages--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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sertion of contentment struck a chord any resolution of which might imperil the simplicity of their relation.

Thus far that relation showed a n.o.ble freedom from embarra.s.sment. It might have continued to do so but for a hazardous a.s.sumption 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 br.i.m.m.i.n.g, hardly less inky, water faded from her knowledge and sight. She drooped together, pa.s.sing 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.s; 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 advent.i.tious circ.u.mstance. 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 s.h.i.+pped 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.

"Damaris," he said, at last, "speak to me."

"How can I speak to you when I don't understand," she answered gravely.

"Either you lie--which I should be sorry to accuse you of doing--or you tell me a very terrible thing, if, that is, I at all comprehend what you say.--Are you not the son of Mrs. Faircloth, who lives at the inn out by the black cottages?"

"Yes, Lesbia Faircloth is my mother. And I ask for no better. She has squandered love upon me--squandered money, upon me too; but wisely and cleverly, with results. Still--" he paused--"well, it takes two, doesn't it, to make a man? One isn't one's mother's son only."

"But Mrs. Faircloth is a widow," Damaris reasoned, in wondering directness. "I have heard people speak of her husband. She was married."

"But not to my father. Do you ask for proofs--just think a minute. Whom did you mistake me for when I called you and came down over the Bar in the dusk?"

"No--no--" she protested trembling exceedingly. "That is not possible.

How could such a thing happen?"

"As such things mostly do happen. It is not the first case, nor will it by a long way, I reckon, be the last. They were young, and--mayn't we allow--they were beautiful. That's often a good deal to do with these accidents. They met and, G.o.d help them, they loved."

"No--no--" Damaris cried again.

Yet she kept her hands on Faircloth's shoulders, clinging to him in the excessive travail of her innocent spirit--though he racked her--for sympathy and for help.

"For whom, after all, did you take me?" he repeated. "If there wasn't considerable cause it would be incredible you should make such a mistake.

Can you deny that I am hall-marked, that the fact of my parentage is written large in my flesh?"

He felt her eyes fixed on him, painfully straining to see him through the rain and darkness; and, when she spoke again, he knew she knew that he did not lie.

"But wasn't it wrong" she said.