Deadham Hard Part 30

"The deuce they do!" Ditton exploded, turning scarlet. With a c.o.c.ked eye and a jaunty movement of the head Mr. t.i.therage shot out his right shirt cuff, and pointed a stout forefinger at certain hieroglyphics inscribed on its glossy surface.

"Your name, Miss Verity, and written with an indelible pencil, to the permanent embellishment of my best party-going linen and witness to your infidelity."

"I can only repeat I am dreadfully sorry," Damaris said, with a becoming air of concern, "if the confusion has arisen through my fault. But"--

She appealed to Carteret.

"They always were your dances, weren't they?"

"Without doubt," he affirmed.

Amusedly and very kindly he smiled upon the angry boy and portly young man, although the beat of his pulse was accelerated and his throat felt queerly dry.

"I am sure you understand how impossible it is for me to release Miss Verity from her promise," he said courteously. "Would you willingly do so yourselves, were the positions reversed and either of you happy enough to stand in my shoes at this moment?"

t.i.therage gave a fat good-tempered laugh.

"By George, you have me there, Colonel. Under such A1 circ.u.mstances catch me making way for a stranger! Not if I know it."

With which he attempted jovially to put his arm through that of his companion in misfortune and lead Ditton away. But the latter flung off from him with a petulant, half-smothered oath; and, his back very straight, his walk very deliberate, pushed through the cheerfully discoursing throng into the ball-room.

Damaris turned about, resting her hands on the top of the iron bal.u.s.trade again and gazed out to sea. Her breath came with a catch in it.

"Colonel Sahib," she said, proudly if just a trifle brokenly, "are you angry?"

"Angry?--good Lord!"

Then recovering control of senses and of sense--"But, dear witch," he asked her--"since when, if I may venture to enquire, have you become an adept in the fine art of--well--lying?"

Damaris looked around, her face irradiated by laughter.

"And you played up, oh! so beautifully quick! I was a teeny bit afraid you might fail me. For the idea came all of a minute, there wasn't time to warn you. And that was fortunate perhaps--for me. You might have had scruples. And I was obliged to do it. After talking about the things which really matter, I couldn't dance with that vulgar little man again--or with those jealous boys. They had an idiotic quarrel, actual quarrel, down in the garden. It displeased me. I told them so, and left them, and came here to find you--because of the fountain and the sort of home-sickness it gave me."

Between laughing and crying, Damaris held out her hands, the white moonlight covering her.

"Oh! I am tired of rushing about," she said. "Come and dance with me--it's nonsense to tell me you can't dance, and that you've forgotten how, because you have danced once this evening already--with Henrietta. I watched you and you dance better than anybody."

"With Henrietta--that's rather a different matter!"

"I should hope it was," Damaris took him up naughtily. "But dance with me, and then, then please take me home. Yes," as he tried to speak. "I know I had arranged to stay the night at the Pavilion. But I'll find some excuse to make to Henrietta--Haven't you just told me I'm proficient in lying?--You were going to walk back? Why shouldn't I walk with you? I won't be five minutes changing into my day clothes. It would be so fascinating down on the sh.o.r.e road at night. And I should get quiet all inside of me. I am tired of rushing about, Colonel Sahib, it hasn't been a success."

She stopped breathless, her hands pressed over her lace and satin swathed bosom.

"Now come and dance,--oh! so beautifully, please, come and dance."

CHAPTER VII

TELLING HOW DAMARIS DISCOVERED THE TRUE NATURE OF A CERTAIN SECRET TO THE DEAR MAN WITH THE BLUE EYES

The beat of a tideless sea, upon the sh.o.r.e, is at once unrestful and monotonous; in this only too closely resembling the beat of the human heart, when the glory of youth has departed. The splendid energy of the flow and grateful easing of the ebb alike are denied it. Foul or fair, shine or storm, it pounds and pounds--as a thing chained--without relief of advance or of recession, always at the same level, always in the same place.

Suspicion of this cheerless truth was borne in upon Carteret as--bare-headed, his overcoat upon his arm, the night being singularly mild and clement--he walked with Damaris through the streets of the silent town. The dwellers in St. Augustin, both virtuous or otherwise, had very effectually retired to their beds behind drawn curtains, closed shutters, locked doors, and gave no sign. Vacancy reigned, bringing in its train an effect of suspense and eeriness, causing both our friends involuntarily to listen, with slightly strained hearing, for sounds which did not come. Once a cat, nimble and thin, streaked out of a cavernous side-alley across the pallor of the pavement and cobbled roadway, to be swallowed up in a black split--knife narrow, as it seemed--between the blank house fronts opposite. And once, as they turned into the open s.p.a.ce of the Grand Place--unreal and stark with its spidery framework of stalls, set up ready for to-morrow's market, under the budding plane trees--they encountered a tired gendarme making his round, picturesque of aspect in _kepi_ and flowing cloak. His footsteps brisked up, as he met and treated them to a discreetly sympathetic and intelligent observation, only to lag again wearily as soon as they had pa.s.sed.

These were the sole creatures in St. Augustin, save themselves, visibly alive and awake. Yet whether other beings, other presences, unmaterial, imponderable, intangible, did not walk the streets along with them, is open to doubt. More than once Damaris shrank close to Carteret, startled by and apprehensive of she knew not what. For who dare say in such a place what leavings-over there may not be from times pre-Christian and remote, when mighty Rome ruled, and the ancient G.o.ds bore sway over that radiant coast? On the outskirts of St. Augustin you may visit a fine amphitheatre, still perfect save for some ruin along the upper tier of seats; and in the centre of the town, within a stone's throw of the somewhat gloomy cathedral church, may trace the airy columns and portions of the sculptured architrave of a reputed temple of Venus, worked into the facade of the munic.i.p.al buildings.

Turning out of the Grande Place by an avenue on the right, Damaris and Carteret gained the esplanade following the curve of the bay. Here a freshness of the sea pleasantly accosted them along with that unrestful, monotonous trample of waves upon the beach.

Not until they reached this stage of the homeward journey, and, setting their faces eastward, paced the pale level asphalt of this wide promenade, did any sustained effort of conversation arise. Thus far they had proffered fugitive remarks only, lapsing speedily into somewhat constrained silence. For a coldness, or shyness, might appear to have sprung up between them, oddly holding them asunder in thought and moral att.i.tude after the close a.s.sociation of the dance--a reaction from its contact so surprisingly more intimate than any they had yet experienced, from that harmonious rhythmic unity of purpose and of movement which, in dancing, alike excites emotion quasi-physical, and so alluringly serves to soothe and allay the emotion it excites.

These aspects of their a.s.sociation affected Damaris but dimly, since speaking a language of which she barely knew the alphabet. Carteret they took in a different measure. He read their direction and potency with clear understanding, the insidious provocations and satisfactions of them printed in large type. With a rush, his youth returned and troubled him.

Or was it the phantom of youth merely? His heart-beats but the beat of a tideless sea. He feared as much.--Oh, these tardy harvests, these tardy harvests--are they not to most men a plague rather than a benison, since, in honour and fine feeling, so abominably perilous to reap!

For the greater promotion of calm and of sanity he welcomed the young girl's change of dress. The powder-blue walking suit, with belted jacket and kilted skirt, brought her more within the terms of their ordinary intercourse. But the impression of the fair young body, lately so close against his own, clothed in bride-like raiment, fresh as an opening flower and vaguely fragrant, could not easily be dispelled. Strive as he might to put it from him, the impression remained recurrent. Therefore it must not be held to Carteret's discredit if his senses took part with his n.o.bler affections just now, against his considered judgment; or that he fared badly at the hands of the sea-born G.o.ddess--worshipped hero in her temple in ancient days, with music, with dance and with nameless rites of s.e.x, when the moon rode high heaven at the full, even as to-night.

Her influence was still abroad, and in his flesh Carteret shrewdly suffered it; yet neither basely nor b.e.s.t.i.a.lly, being clean of life and of spirit. He whipped himself even, with rather sorry humour, seeing, in Damaris' willingness to entrust herself thus to his sole care in the midnight loneliness, a handsomer compliment to his morals than to his manhood. How little, bless her, she knew what stuff men are made of!--therein underrating her acquaintance with fact, as her conversation presently and surprisingly proved to him.

The revelation began in all apparent innocence--for:

"I'm not ungrateful to Henrietta," Damaris said, breaking silence softly yet abruptly, as speaking to herself rather than addressing him, in apology and argument. "And I'm dreadfully sorry to have vexed her--for she was vexed with me for not staying at the Pavilion to-night, as I promised. She was really quite cross."

"She will get over that--never fear," Carteret answered off the surface.

"Still it troubles me to have vexed her. I must have seemed so unreasonable, making silly sounding excuses--because I could not explain to her why I really wanted so much to go home."

"You find a limit to the dear lady's powers of comprehension or of sympathy?" he asked, again off the surface.

"I suppose I must do so, because there are things it never occurs to one to speak of to Henrietta."

"Whole cartloads of them," Carteret comprehensively agreed.

"And yet I don't know why."

"Don't you? Well, I think I do perhaps know why; and knowing, I must confess to being not altogether sorry your confidences are restricted, dear witch, in that particular direction."

The use of the pet name, though involuntary--possibly on that very account--eased his fever. Clearly he must get back to their former relation. Rejoice in her beauty, in her sweet faith and dependence, love her--yes--he admitted the word,--but for G.o.d's sake keep the physical side out of the business. Damaris' easily-aroused loyalty, meanwhile, caught alight.

"Oh, but we've just been Henrietta's guests," she said, with a pretty mingling of appeal and rebuke--"and it seems hardly kind, does it, to find faults in her. She has been beautifully good to me all this time, ending up with this dance which she gave on purpose to please me."

"And herself also," Carteret returned.

--Yes decidedly he felt better, steadier, to the point of now trusting himself to look at his companion, notwithstanding the strange influences abroad in the magical moonlight, with his accustomed smiling, half-amused indulgence. The unremitting trample of the waves, there on the right, made for level-headedness actually if a little mercilessly--so he thought.

"I don't wish to be guilty of taking Mrs. Frayling's name in vain a second time," he went on--"you've pulled me up, and quite rightly, for doing so once already--but depend upon it, she enjoyed her ball every morsel as much as you did. In respect of the minor delights of existence, she slumbers not nor sleeps, our perenially charming and skilful Henrietta."