Deadham Hard Part 33

The path climbed steeply through the pine wood. Damaris' hand grew heavy on Carteret's arm. Once she stumbled, and clung to him in recovering her footing, thereby sending an electric current tingling through his nerves again.

"He did what was painful, you mean, and for my sake?"

"Say rather gave up something very much the reverse of painful,"

Carteret answered, his voice not altogether under control, so that it struck away, loud and jarring, between the still ranks of the tree-trunks to right and left.

"Which is harder?"

"Which is much harder--immeasurably, incalculably harder, dearest witch."

After a s.p.a.ce of silence, wherein the pines, lightly stirred by some fugitive up-draught off the sea, murmured dusky secrets in the vault of interlacing branches overhead, Carteret spoke again. He had his voice under control now. Yet, to Damaris' hearing, his utterance was permeated by an urgency and gravity almost awe-inspiring, here in the loneliness and obscurity of the wood. She went in sudden questioning, incomprehensible fear of the dear man with the blue eyes. His arm was steady beneath her hand, supporting her. His care and protection sensibly encircled her, yet he seemed to her thousands of miles away, speaking from out some depth of knowledge and of reality which hopelessly transcended her experience. She felt strangely diffident, strangely ignorant. Felt, though she had no name for it, the mystical empire, mystical terror of s.e.x as s.e.x.

"The night of the breaking of the monsoon, of those riotings and fires at Bhutpur, your father bartered his birthright, in a certain particular, against your restoration to health. The exact nature of that renunciation I cannot explain to you. The whole transaction lies beyond the range of ordinary endeavour; and savours of the transcendental--or the superst.i.tious, if you please to take it that way. But call it by what name you will, his extravagant gamble with the Lords of Life and Death worked, apparently. For you got well; and you have stayed well, dear witch--thanks to those same Lords of Life and Death, whose favour your father attempted to buy with this act of personal sacrifice. He was willing to pay a price most men would consider prohibitive to secure your recovery. And, with an unswerving sense of honour, he has gone on paying, until that which, at the start, must have amounted to pretty severe discipline has crystallized into habit. What you tell me of this young man, Darcy Faircloth's history, goes, indirectly, to strengthen my admiration for your father's self-denying ordinance, both in proposing and in maintaining this strange payment."

There--it was finished, his special pleading. Carteret felt unfeignedly glad. He was unaccustomed to put forth such elaborate expositions, more particularly of a delicate nature and therefore offering much to avoid as well as much to state.

"So you are bound to play a straight game with him--dear child. Believe me he deserves it, is finely worthy of it. Be open with him. Show him your letter. Ask his permission--if you have sufficient courage. Your courage is the measure of the sincerity of your desire in this business.

Do you follow me?"

"Yes--but I shall distress him," Damaris mournfully argued.

She was bewildered, and in her bewilderment held to the immediate and obvious.

"Less than by shutting him out from your confidence, by keeping him at arm's length."

"Neglecting him?"

"Ah! so that rankles still, does it? Yes, neglecting him just a trifle, perhaps."

"But the neglect is over--indeed, it is over and utterly done with."

And in the ardour of her disclaimer, Damaris pressed against Carteret, her face upturned and, since she too was tall, very close to his.

"Just because it is over and done with I begged you to bring me back with you to-night. I wanted to make a clean break with all the frivolities, while everything was quite clear to me. I wanted, while I still belonged to you, Colonel Sahib, through our so beautifully dancing together twice"--

"G.o.d in Heaven!" Carteret said under his breath. For what a past-master in the art of the torturer is your white souled maiden at moments!

"To go right away from all that rus.h.i.+ng about worldliness--I don't blame Henrietta--she has been sweet to me--but it is worldliness, rather, isn't it?--and to be true to him again and true to myself. I wanted to return to my allegiance. You believe me, don't you? You made me see, Colonel Sahib, you brought my foolishness home to me--Oh! yes, I owe you endless grat.i.tude and thanks. But I was uneasy already. I needed a wholesome shove, and you gave it. And now you deliver a much-needed supplementary shove--one to my courage. I obey you, Colonel Sahib, without question or reservation--not on the chance of getting what I long for; but because you have convinced me of what is right. I will tell him--tell my father--all about everything--to-morrow."

"It is now to-morrow--and, with the night, many dreams have packed up their traps and fled."

"But we needn't be sorry for that," Damaris declared, in prettily rising confidence. "The truth is going to be better than the dreams, isn't it?"

"For you, yes--with all my heart, I hope."

"But for you--why not for you?" she cried, smitten by anxiety regarding him and by swift tenderness.

They had reached the end of the upward climbing path, and stepped from the semi-darkness of the wood into the greater clarity of the gravel terrace in front of the hotel. Far below unseen waves again beat upon the beach. The sound reached them faintly. The dome of the sky, thick sown with stars, appeared prodigious in expanse and in height. It dwarfed the block of hotel buildings upon the right. Dwarfed all visible things, the whole earth, indeed, which it so sensibly enclosed. Dwarfed also, and that to the point of desolation, the purposes and activities of individual human lives. How could these count, what could they matter in presence of the countless worlds swinging, there, through the illimitable fields of s.p.a.ce?

To Carteret this thought, or rather this sensation, of human insignificance brought a measure of stoic consolation. He lifted Damaris'

hand off his arm, and held it, while he said, smiling at her:

"For me--yes, of course. Why not? For me too, dearest witch, truth is a.s.suredly the most profitable bedfellow."

Then, as she shrank, drawing away a little, startled by the crudeness of the expression:

"I enjoyed our two dances," he told her, "and I shall enjoy taking you to Ma.r.s.eilles and making Faircloth's acquaintance, if our little scheme works out successfully--if it is sanctioned, permitted. After that--other things being equal--I think I ought to break camp and journey back to England, to look after my property and my sister's affairs. I have gadded long enough. It is time to get into harness--such harness as claims me in these all too easy-going days. And now you must really go indoors without further delay, and go to bed. May the four angels of pious tradition stand at the four corners of it, to keep you safe in body, soul and spirit. Sleep the sleep of innocence and wake radiant and refreshed."

"Ah! but you're sad--you are sad," Damaris cried, her lips quivering.

"Can't I do anything?--I would do so much, would love so much--beyond anything--to make you unsad."

The man with the blue eyes shook his head.

"Impossible, alas! Your intervention, in this case, is finally ruled out, my sweet lamb," he affectionately, but conclusively said.

CHAPTER IX

WHICH FEATURES VARIOUS PERSONS WITH WHOM THE READER IS ALREADY ACQUAINTED

Some are born great, some attain greatness, and some have it thrust upon them to the lively embarra.s.sment of their humble and retiring little souls. To his own notable surprise, General Frayling, on the morning following his wife's Cinderella dance, awoke to find himself the centre of interest in the life of the pretty pavilion situated in the grounds of the Hotel de la Plage. He owed this unaccustomed ascendency to physical rather than moral or intellectual causes, being possessed of a temperature, the complexion of the proverbial guinea, and violent pains in his loins and his back.

These anxious symptoms developed--one cannot but feel rather unjustly--as the consequence of his own politeness, his amenity of manner, and the patient attentions he paid on the previous evening to one of his wife's guests. He had sat altogether too long for personal comfort in a draughty corner of the hotel garden, with Mrs. Callowgas. Affected by the poetic influences of moon, stars, and sea, affected also conceivably by pagan amorous influences, naughtily emanating from the neighbouring Venus Temple--whose elegant tapering columns adorn the facade of the local Mairie--Mrs. Callowgas became extensively reminiscent of her dear dead Lord Bishop. Protracted anecdotes of visitations and confirmation tours, excerpts from his sermons, speeches and charges, arch revelations of his diurnal and nocturnal conversation and habits--the latter tedious to the point of tears when not slightly immodest--poured from her widowed lips.

The good lady overflowed. She frankly babbled. General Frayling listened, outwardly interested and civil, inwardly deploring that he had omitted to put on a waistcoat back-lined with flannel--waxing momentarily more conscious, also, that the iron--of the hard cold slats composing the seat of his garden chair--if not entering into his soul, was actively entering a less august and more material portion of his being through the slack of his thin evening trousers. He endured both tedium and bodily suffering with the fort.i.tude of a saint and martyr; but next morning revealed him victim of a violent chill demanding medical aid.

The native local pract.i.tioner was reported mono-lingual, and of small scientific reputation; while our General though fluent in vituperative Hindustani, and fairly articulate in Arabic, could lay no claim to proficiency in the French language. Hence probable deadlock between doctor and patient. Henrietta acted promptly, foreseeing danger of jaundice or worse; and bade Marshall Wace telegraph to Cannes for an English physician. As a nurse she was capable if somewhat unsympathetic--illness and death being foreign to her personal programme.

She attended upon her small sick warrior a.s.siduously; thereby earning the admiration of the outsiders, and abject apologies for "being such a confounded nuisance to you, my love," from himself. Her maid, a Eurasian--by name Serafina Lousada, whom she had brought with her from Bombay a couple of years earlier, prematurely-wrinkled of skin and shrunken of figure, yet whose l.u.s.trous black eyes still held the embers of licentious fires--would readily have shared her labours. But Henrietta was at some trouble to eliminate Serafina from the sick-chamber, holding her tendencies suspect as insidiously and quite superfluously sentimental, where any male creature might be concerned.

Carteret and Sir Charles Verity, on the other hand, she encouraged with the sweetest dignity imaginable, to take turns at the bedside--and to look in upon her drawing-room, also, on their way back and forth thither.

A common object and that a philanthropic one, gives unimpeachable occasions of intimacy. These Henrietta did not neglect, though touching them with a disarming pensiveness of demeanour. The invalid was, "the thing "--the thought of him wholly paramount with her. Her anxiety might be lightened, perhaps, but by no means deleted, by the attentions of these friends of former years.--A pretty enough play throughout, as the two gentlemen silently noted, the one with kindly, the other with sardonic, humour.

Her henchman, Marshall Wace, meanwhile, Henrietta kept on the run until the triangular patch of colour, straining either prominent cheek-bone, was more than ever accentuated. There was method, we may however take it, in the direction of these apparently mad runnings, since they so incessantly landed the runner in the _salon_ of the Grand Hotel crowning the wooded headland. Damaris she refused to have with her. No--she couldn't consent to any clouding of the darling child's bright spirit by her private worries. Trouble, heaven knows, is bound to overtake each one of us more than soon enough! She--Henrietta--could endure her allotted portion of universal tribulation best in the absence of youthful witnesses.

But let Marshall carry Damaris news daily--twice daily, if needs be. Let him read with her, sing to her; so that she, charming child, should miss her poor Henrietta, and their happy meetings at the little pavilion, the less. Especially let him seek the young girl, and strive to entertain her, when Sir Charles and Colonel Carteret were engaged on their good Samaritan visits to General Frayling.

"This break in our cherished intercourse," Henrietta wrote, in one of those many Wace-borne bulletins, "grieves me more than I can express.

Permit Marshall to do all in his power to make up for this hospital incarceration of mine. Poor dear fellow, it is such a boon to him. I really crave to procure him any pleasure I can--above all the pleasure of being with you, which he values so very highly. All his best qualities show in this time of trial. He is only too faithful and wears himself to positive fiddle-strings in my service and that of the General. I send him to you, darling child, for a little change and recreation--relaxation from the strain of my husband's illness. Marshall is so sympathetic and feels for others so deeply. His is indeed a rare nature; but one which does not, alas! always quite do itself justice. I attribute this to an unfortunate upbringing rather than to any real fault in himself. So be good to him, Damaris. In being good to him--as I have said all along--you are being good to your fondly loving and, just now, sorely tried Henrietta Frayling."

All which sounded a note designed to find an echo in Damaris' generous heart. Which it did--this the more readily because, still penitent for her recent trifle of wild-oats sowing, our beloved maiden was particularly emulous of good works, the missionary spirit all agog in her. She was out to comfort, to sympathize and to sustain. Hence she doubly welcomed that high-coloured hybrid, Wace--actor, cleric, vocalist in one. Guilelessly she indulged and mothered him, overlooking his egoism, his touchiness and peevishness, his occasional defects of breeding and of taste. She permitted him, moreover, to talk without restraint upon his favourite subject--that of himself. To retail the despairs of an ailing and unhappy childhood; the thwarted aspirations of a romantic and sensitive boyhood; the doubts and disappointments of a young manhood conspicuously rich in promise, had the fates and his fellow creatures but shown themselves more intelligently sensible of his merits and his needs.

For this was the burden of his recurrent lament. Throughout life he had been misunderstood.

"But you, Miss Verity, do understand me," he almost pa.s.sionately declared, waving white effeminate hands. "Ah! a pure influence such as yours"--

Here, rather to Damaris' thankfulness, words appeared to fail him. He moved to the piano and exhaled his remaining emotion in song.