Deadham Hard Part 28

Mrs. Frayling's afternoon party pa.s.sed off to admiration. But this by no means exhausted her social activities. Rather did it stimulate them; so that, with Damaris' amus.e.m.e.nt as their ostensible object and excuse, they multiplied exceedingly. Henrietta was in her native element. Not for years had she enjoyed herself so much. This chaperonage, this vicarious motherhood, was rich in opportunity. She flung wide her nets, even to the enmeshing of recruits from other larger centres, Cannes, Antibes and Nice. This more ambitious phase developed later. Immediately our chronicle may address itself to the initial Thursday, which, for our nymph-like maiden, saw the birth of certain illusions destined to all too lengthy a span of life.

Luncheon at the villa--or as Henrietta preferred it called, The Pavilion--set in the grounds of the Hotel de la Plage and dependent for service upon that house--was served at mid-day. This left a considerable interval before the advent of the expected guests. Mrs. Frayling refused to dedicate it to continuous conversation, as unduly tiring both for Damaris and for herself. They must reserve their energies, must keep fresh. Marshall Wace was, therefore, bidden to provide peaceful entertainment, read aloud--presently, perhaps, sing to them at such time as digestion--bad for the voice when in process--might be supposed complete. The young man obeyed, armed with Tennyson's _Maud_ and a volume of selected lyrics.

His performance fairly started General Frayling furtively vanished in search of a mild _siesta_. It inflated his uxorious breast with pride to have his Henrietta shine in hospitality thus. But his lean shanks wearied, keeping time to the giddy music. Wistfully he feared he must be going downhill, wasn't altogether the man he used to be, since he found the business of pleasure so exhaustingly strenuous. And that was beastly unfair to his lovely wife--wouldn't do, would not do at all, by Gad!

Therefore did he vanish into a diminutive and rather stuffy smoking-room, under the stairs, unfasten his nankeen waistcoat, unfasten his collar-stud, doze and finally, a little anxiously, sleep.

Whatever Marshall Wace's diffidence in ordinary intercourse, it effectually disappeared so soon as he began to declaim or to recite. The histrionic in him declared itself, rising dominant. Given a character to impersonate, big swelling words to say, fine sentiments to enunciate, he changed to the required colour chameleon-like. You forgot--at least the feminine portion of his audience, almost without exception, forgot--that his round light-brown eyes stared uncomfortably much; that his nose, thin at the root and starting with handsome aquiline promise, ended in a foolish b.u.t.ton-tip. Forgot that his lips were straight and compressed, wanting in generous curves and in tenderness--an actor's mouth, constructed merely for speech. Forgot the harsh quality of the triangular redness on either cheek, fixed and feverish. Ceased to remark how the angle of the jaw stood away from and beyond the sinewy, meagre neck, or note the rise and fall of Adam's apple so prominent in his throat.--No longer were annoyed by the effeminate character of the hands, their retracted nails and pink, upturned finger-tips, offering so queer a contrast to the rather inordinate size of his feet.

For the voice rarely failed to influence its hearers, to carry you indeed a little out of yourself by its variety of intonation, its fire and fervour, its languishing modulations, broken pauses, yearning melancholy of effect. The part of the neurotic hero of the--then--Laureate's poem, that somewhat pinch-beck Victorian Hamlet, suited our young friend, moreover, down to the ground. It offered sympathetic expression to his own nature and temperament; so that he wooed, scoffed, blasphemed, orated, drowned in salt seas of envy and self-pity, with a simulation of sincerity as convincing to others as consolatory to himself.

And Damaris, being unlearned in the curious arts of the theatre, listened wide-eyed, spellbound, until flicked by the swishing skirts of fict.i.tious emotion into genuine, yet covert, excitement. As the reading progressed Henrietta Frayling's presence increasingly sank into unimportance. More and more did the poem a.s.sume a personal character, of which, if the reader were hero, she--Damaris--became heroine. Marshall Wace seemed to read not to, but definitely at her; so that during more than one ardent pa.s.sage, she felt herself go hot all over, as though alone with him, an acknowledged object of his adoring, despairing declarations. This she shrank from, yet--it must be owned--found stirring, strangely and not altogether unpleasantly agitating. For was not this _protege_ of Henrietta's--whom the latter implored her to encourage and treat kindly--something of a genius? Capable of sudden and amazing transformation, talking to you with a modesty and deference agreeably greater than that of most young men of his age; then, on an instant, changing at will, and extraordinarily voicing the acc.u.mulated wrongs, joys and sorrows of universal humanity? Could Henrietta, who usually spoke of him in tones of commiseration, not to say of patronage, be aware how remarkable he really was? Damaris wondered; regarding him, meanwhile, with innocent respect and admiration. For how tremendously much he must have experienced, how greatly he must have suffered to be able to portray drama, express profound emotion thus! That the actor's art is but glorified make-believe, the actor himself too often hollow as a drum, though loud sounding as one, never for an instant occurred to her. How should it?

Therefore when Mrs. Frayling--recollecting certain mysteries of the toilet which required attention before the arrival of her expected guests--brought the performance to an abrupt termination, Damaris felt a little taken aback, a little put about, as though someone should be guilty of talking millinery in church.

For--"Splendid, my dear Marshall, splendid," the lady softly yet emphatically interrupted him. "To-day you really surpa.s.s yourself. I never heard you read better, and I hate to be compelled to call a halt.

But time has flown--look."

And she pointed to the blue and gold Sevres clock upon the mantelpiece.

"Miss Verity is an inspiring auditor," he said, none best pleased at being thus arbitrarily arrested in midcourse. "For whatever merit my reading may have possessed, your thanks are due to her rather than to me, Cousin Henrietta."

He spoke to the elder woman. He looked at the younger. With a nervous yet ponderous movement--it was Marshall Wace's misfortune always to take up more room than by rights belonged to his height and bulk--he got on to his feet. Inattentively let drop the volume of poems upon a neighbouring table, to the lively danger of two empty coffee cups.

The cups rattled. "Pray be careful," Mrs. Frayling admonished him with some sharpness. The performance had been prolonged. Not without intention had she effaced herself. But, by both performance and effacement, she had been not a little bored, having a natural liking for the limelight. She, therefore, hit out--to regret her indiscretion the next moment.

"Nothing--nothing," she prettily added. "I beg your pardon, Marshall, but I quite thought those cups would fall off the table--So stupid of me."

The fixed red widened, painfully inundating the young man's countenance.

He was infuriated by his own awkwardness. Humiliated by Mrs. Frayling's warning, of which her subsequent apology failed to mitigate the disgrace.

And that this should occur just in the hour of satisfied vanity, of agreeable success--and before Damaris! In her eyes he must be miserably disqualified henceforth.

But his misfortunes worked to quite other ends than he antic.i.p.ated. For Damaris came nearer, her expression gravely earnest as appealing to him not to mind, not to let these things vex him.

"I have never heard anyone read so beautifully," she told him. "You make the words come alive so that one sees the whole story happening. It is wonderful. I shall always remember this afternoon because of your reading--and shall long to hear you again--often, I know, long for that."

Wace bowed. This innocent enthusiasm was extremely a.s.suaging to his wounded self-esteem.

"You have but to ask me, Miss Verity. I shall be only too honoured, too happy to read to you whenever you have leisure and inclination to listen."

But here Mrs. Frayling put her arm round Damaris' waist, affectionately, laughingly, and drew her towards the door.

"Come, come, darling child--don't be too complimentary or Marshall will grow unbearably conceited.--You'll put on flannels, by the way, Marshall, won't you?" she added as an after-thought.

"I shall not play tennis this afternoon," he answered, his nose in the air. "There will be plenty for a change of setts without me. I am not good enough for Binning and his two young aristocrats, and I don't choose to make sport for the Philistines by an exhibition of my inept.i.tude. I have no pretentious to being an athlete."

"Nonsense, Marshall, nonsense," she took him up quickly, conscious his reply was not in the best taste. "You wilfully underrate yourself."

Then later, as, still entwined, she conducted Damaris upstairs to her bed-chamber.

"There you have the position in a nutsh.e.l.l," she said. "Still am I not right? For hasn't he charm, poor dear fellow, so very much cleverness--so really gifted isn't he?"

And as the girl warmly agreed:

"Ah! I am so very glad you appreciate him.--And you have yet to hear him sing! That takes one by storm, I confess--Unhappy Maud Callowgas!--But you see how frightfully on edge he is--how he turns off for no valid reason, imagines himself a failure, imagines himself out of it? In point of fact he plays a quite pa.s.sable game of tennis--and you heard what he said? These fits of depression and self-depreciation amount to being tragic. One requires endless tact to manage him and save him from himself."

Henrietta paused, sighed, sitting on the stool before her toilette table, neatly placing tortoisesh.e.l.l hairpins, patting and adjusting her bright brown hair.

"I could have bitten my tongue out for making that wretched slip about the coffee cups; but I was off my guard for once. And like all artistic people Marshall is a little absent-minded--absorbed to the point of not seeing exactly what he is doing.--Poor young man, I sometimes tremble for his future. Such a highly strung, sensitive nature amounts almost to a curse. If he got into wrong hands what mightn't the end be?--Catastrophe, for he is capable of fatal desperation. And I must own men--with the exception of my husband who is simply an angel to him--do not always understand and are not quite kind to him. He needs a wise loving woman to develop the best in him--there is so very much which is good--and to guide him."

"Well," Damaris said, and that without suspicion of irony, "dearest Henrietta, hasn't he you?"

Mrs. Frayling took up the ivory hand-gla.s.s, and sitting sideways on the dressing-stool, turned her graceful head hither and thither, to obtain the fuller view of her back hair.

"Me? But you forget, I have other claims to satisfy. I can't look after him for ever. I must find him a wife I suppose; though I really shall be rather loath to give him up. His grat.i.tude and loneliness touch me so much," she said, looking up and smiling, with a little twist in her mouth, as of playful and unwilling resignation, captivating to see.

By which cajoleries and expression of praiseworthy sentiment, Henrietta raised herself notably in Damaris' estimation--as she fully intended to do. Our maiden kissed her with silent favour; and, mysteries of the toilette completed, more closely united than ever before--that is, since the date of the elder's second advent--the two ladies, presenting the prettiest picture imaginable, went downstairs again, gaily, hand in hand.

CHAPTER VI

CARNIVAL--AND AFTER

Tall and slim, in the black and white of his evening clothes, Colonel Carteret leaned his shoulder against an iron pillar of the verandah of the Hotel de la Plage, and smoked, looking meditatively down into the moonlit garden. Through the range of brightly lighted open windows behind him came the sound of a piano and stringed instruments, a subdued babble of voices, the whisper of women's skirts, and the sliding rush of valsing feet.

To-night marked the culmination and apex of Henrietta Frayling's social effort. It was mid-March, mid-Lent--which last fact she made an excuse--after taking ecclesiastical opinion on the subject, namely, that of Herbert Binning, the Anglican chaplain--for issuing invitations to a Cinderella dance. Damaris Verity, it appeared, had never really, properly and ceremoniously "come out"--a neglect which Henrietta protested should be repaired. Positively, but very charmingly, she told Sir Charles it must. She only wished the affair could be on a larger, more worthy scale.

This was, after all, but a makeshift--the modest best she could arrange under the circ.u.mstances. But he--Sir Charles--must not refuse. It would give her such intense pleasure to have the darling child make her official _debut_ under her, Henrietta's, auspices. The hours would of necessity be early, to avoid disturbance of the non-dancing residents in the hotel. But, if the entertainment were bound to end at midnight, it could begin at a proportionately unfashionable hour. For once _table d'hote_ might surely be timed for six o'clock; and the dining-room--since it offered larger s.p.a.ce than any other apartment--be cleared, aired, and ready for dancing by a quarter-past eight.--Henrietta unquestionably had a way with her; proprietors, managers, servants alike hastening obedient to her cajoling nod.--Thanks to importations by road and rail, from other coast resorts, she reckoned to muster sixteen to twenty couples.--A rubbishing apology at best, in the matter of a "coming out" ball, for a girl of Damaris' position and deserts--no one could know that better than she, Henrietta, herself did!

"A poor thing but mine own," she quoted, when enlarging upon the scheme to Charles Verity. "But as at Easter we are fated to scatter, I suppose, and go our several roads with small promise of reunion, you must really be gracious, dear friend, and, for old sake's sake, give in to my desires. It's my last chance, for heaven knows how long--not impossibly for ever."

Carteret happened to be present during the above conversation. Had he not, it may be doubted whether it would ever have taken place--with this dash of affecting reminiscence in any case. Allusions to a common past were barred for excellent reasons, as between these two persons, save strictly in public. Even so it struck him as a humorous piece of audacity on the lady's part. Her effrontery touched on the colossal! But it succeeded, always had done so.--In his judgment of Henrietta, Carteret never failed to remember, being compact of chivalry and of truthfulness, that he had once on a time been a good half in love with her himself.--All the same he was not sure her close a.s.sociation with Damaris met with his approval.

That a.s.sociation had grown, Jonah's gourd-like, during the last six weeks, until, as he rather uneasily noted, the two were hardly ever apart. Luncheons, teas, picnics, excursions, succeeded one another.

Afternoons of tennis in the hotel grounds, the athletic gregarious Binning and his two pupils, Peregrine Ditton and Harry Ellice in attendance. Sometimes the latter's sister, Mary Ellice, joined the company--when Lady Hermione condescended to spare her--or the long-backed Miss Maud Callowgas. Afternoons of reading and song, too, supplied by Marshall Wace.--Carteret felt self-reproachful, yet knew his charity too often threatened to stop short of the young man Wace--though the beggar had a voice to draw tears from a stone, plague him!--At intervals, all-day expeditions were undertaken to Monte Carlo, or shopping raids upon Cannes or Nice.

Yes, verily--as he reflected--Henrietta Frayling did keep the ball rolling with truly Anglo-Indian frivolity and persistence, here in the heart of Europe! And was that altogether wholesome for Damaris? He delighted to have the beautiful young creature enjoy herself, spread her wings, take her place among the courted and acclaimed. But he prized her too highly not to be ambitious for her; and would have preferred her social education to be conducted on more dignified and authorized lines, in the great world of London, namely, or Paris. When all came to all, this was hardly good enough.

No one, he honestly admitted, trumpeted that last truth more loudly than Henrietta--at times. Nevertheless she went on and on, making the business of this rather second-rate pleasure-seeking daily of greater importance.

How could Damaris be expected to discriminate, to retain her sense of relative values, in the perpetual scrimmage, the unceasing rush? Instinct and n.o.bility of nature go an immensely long way as preservatives--thank G.o.d for that--still, where you have unsophistication, inexperience, a holy ignorance, to deal with, it is unwise to trust exclusively to their saving grace. Even the finest character is the safer--so he supposed--for some moulding and direction in its first contact with the world, if it is to come through the ordeal unscathed and unbesmirched. And to ask such moulding and direction of Henrietta Frayling was about as useful as asking a humming-bird to draw a water-cart.

He was still fond of Henrietta and derived much silent entertainment from witnessing her manoeuvres. But he was under no delusion regarding her. He considered her quite the most selfish woman of his acquaintance, though also one of the most superficially attractive. Hers was a cold, not a hot selfishness, refined to a sort of exquisiteness and never for an instant fleshly or gross. But that selfishness, in its singleness of purpose, made her curiously powerful, curiously capable of influencing persons of larger and finer spirit than herself--witness her ascendency over Charles Verity during a long period of years, and that without ever giving, or even seriously compromising, herself.

Into whoever she fixed her dainty little claws, she did it with an eye to some personal advantage. And here Carteret owned himself puzzled--for what advantage could she gain from this close a.s.sociation with Damaris?

The girl's freshness went, rather mercilessly, to show up her fading.

At times, it is true, watching her pretty alacrity of manner, hearing her caressing speech, he inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, believe her self-forgetful, her affection genuine, guiltless of design or after-thought. If so, so very much the better! He was far from grudging her redemption, specially at the hands of Damaris.--Only were things, in point of fact, working to this commendable issue? With the best will in the world to think so, he failed to rid himself of some p.r.i.c.kings of anxiety and distrust.