Deadham Hard Part 34

Affairs had reached the above point about ten days after Henrietta's party and Damaris' midnight walk with Colonel Carteret by the sh.o.r.e of the sounding sea. General Frayling, though mending, was still possessed of a golden complexion and a temperature slightly above the normal, while his dutiful wife, still self-immured, was in close attendance, when an event occurred which occasioned her considerable speculation and perplexity.

It came about thus. At her request Marshall Wace walked up to the station early that morning, to secure the English papers on their arrival by the mail train from Paris. After a quite unnecessarily long interval, in Henrietta's opinion, he returned with an irritable expression and fl.u.s.tered manner. Such, at least, was the impression she received on his joining her in the wide airy corridor outside the General's sick-chamber.

"I thought you were never coming back," she greeted him. "What has detained you?"

"The Paris train was late," he returned. "And--wait an instant, Cousin Henrietta. I want to speak to you. Yes, I am hot and tired, and I am put out--I don't deny it."

"Why?" Henrietta asked him indifferently.

Her own temper was not at its brightest and best. The office of ministering angel had begun most woefully to pall on her. What if this illness betokened a break up of health on the part of General Frayling?

Bath chairs, hot bottles, air-cushions, pap-like meals and such kindred unlovelinesses loomed large ahead! That was the worst of marrying an old, or anyhow an oldish, man. You never could tell how soon the natural order of things might be reversed, and you obliged to wait hand and foot on him, instead of his waiting hand and foot on you. Henrietta felt fretful.

Her looking-gla.s.s presented a depressing reflection of fine lines and sharpened features. If she should wilt under this prolonged obligation of nursing, her years openly advertise their number, and she grow faded, _pa.s.see_, a woman who visibly has outlived her prime? She could have shaken the insufficiently dying General in his bed! Yes, insufficiently dying--for, in heaven's name, let him make up his mind and that speedily--get well and make himself useful, or veritably and finally depart before, for the preservation of her good looks, it was too late.

"I met Sir Charles Verity at the station," Wace went on. "He was coming out of the first cla.s.s _salle d'attente_. He stopped and spoke to me, enquired for cousin Fred; but his manner was peculiar, autocratic to a degree. He made me feel in the way, feel that he was annoyed at my being there and wanted to get rid of me."

"Imagination, my dear Marshall. In all probability he wasn't thinking about you one way or the other, but merely about his own affairs, his own--as Carteret reports--remarkably clever book.--But why, I wonder, was he at the station so early?"

Henrietta stood turning the folded newspaper about and idly scanning the head-lines, while the wind, entering by the open cas.e.m.e.nts at the end of the corridor, lifted and fluttered the light blue gauze scarf she wore round her shoulders over her white frilled morning gown.

"He didn't tell me," the large, soft, very hot young man said. "You may call it imagination, Cousin Henrietta; but I can't. I am positive his manner was intentional. He meant to snub me, by intimating of how slight account I am in his estimation. It was exceedingly galling. I do not want to employ a vulgar expression--but he looked down his nose at me as if I was beneath contempt. You know that insolent, arrogant way of his?"

"Oh, la-la!" Henrietta cried. "Don't be so childish!"--Though she did in point of fact know the said way perfectly well and admired it. Once upon a time hadn't Sir Charles, indeed, rather superbly practised it in her--Henrietta's--defence?

She sighed; while her temper took a nasty turn towards her yellow-faced, apologetic little General, waiting patiently for sight of the English newspapers, under the veil of mosquito netting in his little bed. Even in his roaring forties--had his forties ever roared though?--she doubted it--not to save his life could he ever have looked down his nose at an offending fellow-man like that.--Ah! Charles Verity--Charles Verity!--Her heart misgave her that she had been too precipitate in this third marriage. If she had waited?--

"Of course, with my wretchedly short sight, I may have been mistaken,"

Wace continued, pointedly ignoring her interruption, "but I am almost convinced I recognized Colonel Carteret and Miss Verity--Damaris--through the open door, on the other side of the _salle d'attente,_ in the crowd on the platform about to take their places in the train from Cannes, which had just come in."

Henrietta ceased to scan the head-lines or deplore her matrimonial precipitation.

"Carteret and Damaris alone and together?" she exclaimed with raised eyebrows.

"Yes, and it occurred to me that I there touched upon the explanation, in part at least, of Sir Charles Verity's offensive manner. He had been to see them off and was, for some reason, unwilling that we--you and I, cousin Henrietta--should know of their journey."

Even in private life, at the very head-waters and source of her intrigues and her scheming, Henrietta cleverly maintained an effect of secrecy. She showed herself an adept in the fine art of outflanking incautious intruders. Never did she wholly reveal herself or her purposes; but reserved for her own use convenient run-holes, down which she could escape from even the most intimate of her co-adjutors and employees. If masterly in advance, she showed even more masterly in retreat; and that too often at the expense of her fellow intriguers. Without scruple she deserted them, when personal safety or personal reputation suggested the wisdom of so doing. Though herself perplexed and suspicious, she now rounded on Wace, taking a high tone with him.

"But why, my dear Marshall, why?" she enquired, "should Sir Charles object to our--as you put it--_knowing_? That seems to me an entirely gratuitous a.s.sumption on your part. In all probability Mary Ellice and the boys were on the platform too, only you didn't happen to catch sight of them. And, in any case, our friends at the Grand Hotel are not accountable to us for their comings and goings. They are free agents, and it does really strike me as just a little gossipy to keep such a very sharp eye upon their movements.--Don't be furious with me"--

Henrietta permitted herself to reach up and pat the young man on the shoulder, playfully, restrainingly. An extraordinarily familiar proceeding on her part, marking the strength of her determination to avoid any approach to a quarrel, since she openly denounced and detested all those demonstrations, as between friends and relations, which come under the generic t.i.tle of "pawing."

"No, pray don't be furious with me," she repeated. "I quite appreciate how sensitive you naturally must be upon the subject of Damaris."

"You have given me encouragement, cousin Henrietta"--this resentfully.

"And why not? Don't be disingenuous, my dear Marshall. I have given you something much more solid than mere encouragement, namely active help, opportunity. In the right direction, to the right person, I have repeatedly praised you. But the prize, in this case, is to him who has address and perseverance to win it. You possess signal advantages through your artistic tastes, your music, your reciting. But I have never disguised from you--now honestly, have I?--there were obstacles and even prejudices to be overcome."

"Sir Charles despises me."

"But his daughter gives ample proof that she does not. And--you don't propose to marry Sir Charles, do you?"

Henrietta laughed a trifle shrilly. The tone of that laugh pierced her hearer's armour of egoism. He stared at her in interrogative surprise--observing which she hastened to retreat down a run-hole.

"Ah!" she cried, "it is really a little too bad to tease you, Marshall.

But one can't but be tempted to do so at moments. You take everything so terribly _au grand serieux_, my young friend."

"You mean to convey that I am ponderous?"

"Well--perhaps--just a shade," she archly agreed. "And of ponderosity you must make an effort to cure yourself.--Mind, though a fault, I consider it one on the right side--in the connection, that is, which we have just now been discussing. When a girl has as much intelligence as--we needn't name names, need we?--she resents perpetual chaff and piffle. They bore her--seem to her a flagrant waste of time. Her mind tends to scorn delights and live laborious days--a tendency which rectifies itself later as a rule. All the same in avoiding frivolity, one must not rush to the other extreme and be heavy in hand. A happy mien in this as in all things, my dear Marshall."

"I cannot so far degrade myself as to be an opportunist," he returned sententiously.

"Yet the opportunist arrives; and to arrive is the main thing, after all--at least I imagine so.--Now I really cannot stay here any longer giving you priceless advice; but must take the General his newspapers.--By the way, did Sir Charles say anything about coming to see him this afternoon?"

As she asked the question Henrietta ran her eye down over the announcements in the Court Circular. Marshall replied in the negative.

She made no comment, hardly appearing to notice his answer. But, as she stepped lightly and delicately away down the airy corridor to the door of the sick-room, over her blue gauze draped shoulder she flung back at him--

"This confinement to the house is getting quite on my nerves. I must really allow myself a little holiday.--Take a drive to-morrow if Frederic is no worse. I will call at the Grand Hotel, I think, and see darling Damaris, just for a few minutes, myself."

Information which went far to restore her hearer's equanimity. His affairs, as he recognized, were in actively astute safe-keeping.

Marshall Wace spent the rest of the morning in the drawing-room of the villa, at the piano, composing a by no means despicable setting of Sh.e.l.ley's two marvellous stanzas, which commence:

"Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of Delight!

Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night?"

The rich baritone voice, vibrant with apparent pa.s.sion, swept out through the open windows, across the glittering garden. Miss Maud Callowgas, walking along that portion of the esplanade immediately in front of the hotel, paused in the grilling sunshine to listen. Heaven upon earth seemed to open before her pale, white-lashed eyes. If she could only ascertain what fortune she might eventually count on possessing--but Mama was so dreadfully close about everything to do with money! The Harchester bishopric was a fat one, worth from ten to fifteen thousand a year. That she knew from the odious, impudent questions asked about it by some horrible nonconformist member, in the House of Commons, just after her father's death. Surely Mama must have saved a considerable amount out of so princely an income? She had always kept down expenses at the Palace. The servants left so often because they declared they had not enough to eat.

Then through the open window of the villa embowered in roses, there amid the palms and pines--and in a falling cadence too:

"How shall ever one like me Win thee back again?"

But Maud Callowgas needed no winning, being very effectually won already, so it was superfluous thus movingly to ask the question. The mid-day sun striking through her black-and-white parasol made her feel dizzy and faint.--If only she could learn the amount of her fortune, she could let Mrs. Frayling learn the amount of it too--just casually, in the course of conversation, and then--Everyone said Mrs. Frayling was doing her best to "place" her cousin-by-marriage, to secure him a well-endowed wife.

CHAPTER X

WHICH IT IS TO BE FEARED SMELLS SOMEWHAT POWERFULLY OF BILGE WATER

Warm wind, hot sun, the confused sound and movement of a great southern port, all the traffic and trade of it, man and beast sweating in the splendid glare. Rattle of cranes, scream of winches, grind of wheels, and the bellowing of a big steamer, working her way cautiously through the packed shipping of the basin, to the blue freedom of the open sea.--Such was the scene which the boatswain and white-jacketed steward, leaning their folded arms on the bulwarks and smoking, lazily watched.

The _Forest Queen_ rode high at the quayside, having discharged much, and taken on but a moderate amount of cargo for her homeward voyage. This was already stowed. She had coaled and was bound to clear by dawn. Now she rested in idleness, most of her crew taking their pleasure ash.o.r.e, a Sabbath calm pervading her amid the strident activities going forward on every hand. The ship's dog, a curly-haired black retriever, lay on the clean deck in the sunshine stretched on his side, all four legs limp, save when, pestered beyond endurance, he whisked into a sitting position to snap at the all too numerous flies.

The boatswain--a heavily built East Anglian, born within sight of Boston Stump five-and-forty years ago, his face seamed and pitted by smallpox almost to the extinction of expression and altogether to that of eyebrows, eyelashes and continuity of beard--spat deliberately and voluminously into the oily, refuse-stained water, lapping against the ship's side over twenty feet below, and resumed a desultory conversation which for the moment had fallen dead.

"So that's the reason of his giving us h.e.l.l's delight, like he has all day, cleaning up?--Got a lady coming aboard to tea has he? If she's too fine to take us as we are, a deal better let 'er stay ash.o.r.e, in my opinion. Stuff a' nonsense all this set out, dressing up and dressing down. Vanity at the bottom of it--and who's it to take in?--For a tramp's a tramp, and a liner's a liner; and all the water in G.o.d's ocean, and all the rubbing and scrubbing on man's earth, won't convert the one into the other, bless you."