Deadham Hard Part 39

Which, among her many fibs, may rank amongst her most impudent and full-fed, though by no means her last.

Here, the door opened behind her. Henrietta turned alertly, hailing any interruption which--her bolt being shot--might facilitate her retreat from a now most embarra.s.sing situation. After all she had planted more than one seed, which might fruitfully grow, so at that she could leave matters.--The interruption, however, took a form for which she was unprepared. To her intense disgust her nerves played her false. She gave the oddest little stifled squeak as she met Charles Verity's glance, fixed upon her in cool, slightly ironic scrutiny.

Some persons very sensibly bring their mental atmosphere along with them.

You are compelled to breathe it whether you like or not. The atmosphere Charles Verity brought with him, at this juncture, was too masculine, intellectually too abstract yet too keenly critical, for comfortable absorption by Henrietta's lungs. Her self-complacency shrivelled in it.

She felt but a mean and pitiful creature, especially in her recent treatment of Damaris. It was a nasty moment, the more difficult to surmount because of that wretchedly betraying squeak. Fury against herself gingered her up to action. She must be the first to speak.

"Ah! how delightful to see you," she said, a little over-playing the part--"though only for an instant. I was in the act of bidding Damaris farewell. As it is I have scandalously outstayed my leave; but we had a thousand and one things, hadn't we, to say to one another."

She smiled upon both father and daughter with graceful deprecation.

"_Au, revoir_, darling child--we must manage to meet somehow, just once more before I take my family north"--

And still talking, new lavender dress, trinkets, faint fragrance and all, she pa.s.sed out on to the corridor accompanied by Sir Charles Verity.

CHAPTER XIII

WHICH RECOUNTS A TAKING OF SANCTUARY

Left alone Damaris sat down on the window-seat, within the shelter of the wooden shutters which interposed a green barred coolness between her and the brilliant world without. That those two, her father and Henrietta Frayling, should thus step off together, the small, softly crisp, feminine figure beside the tall, fine-drawn and--in a way--magnificent masculine one, troubled her. Yet she made no attempt to accompany or to follow them. Her head ached. Her mind and soul ached too. She felt spent and giddy, as from chasing round and round in an ever-shifting circle some tormenting, cleverly lovely thing which perpetually eluded her.

Which thing, finally, floated out of the door there, drawing a personage unmeasurably its superior, away with it, and leaving her--Damaris--deserted.

Leaving, moreover, every subject on which its nimble tongue had lighted, damaged by that contact--at loose ends, frayed and ravelled, its inwove pattern just slightly discoloured and defaced. The patterned fabric of Damaris' thought and inner life had not been spared, but suffered disfigurement along with the rest. She felt humiliated, felt unworthy.

The ingenious torments of a false conscience gnawed her. Her better judgment p.r.o.nounced that conscience veritably false; or would, as she believed, so p.r.o.nounce later when she had time to get a true perspective.

But, just now, she could only lamentably, childishly, cry out against injustice. For wasn't Henrietta mainly responsible for the character of her intercourse with Marshall Wace? Hadn't Henrietta repeatedly entreated her to see much of him, be kind to him?--Wishing, even in her present rebellion to be quite fair, she acknowledged that she had enjoyed his singing and reading; that she had felt pleased at his eagerness to confide his troubles to her and talk confidentially about himself. She not unwillingly accepted a mission towards him, stimulated thereto by Henrietta's plaudits and thanks.

And--and Colonel Carteret? For now somehow she no longer, even in thought, could call him by her old name for him, "the dear man with the blue eyes."--Could it be true, as Henrietta intimated, that he went through life throwing the handkerchief first to one woman and then to another? That there was no real constancy or security in his affections, but all was lightly come and lightly go with him?

How her poor head ached! She held it in both hands and closed her eyes.--She would not think any more about Colonel Carteret. To do so made her temples throb and raised the lump, which is a precursor of tears, in her throat.

No--she couldn't follow Henrietta's statements and arguments either way.

They were self-contradictory. Still, whose ever the fault, that the young man Wace should be unhappy on her account, should think she--Damaris--had behaved heartlessly to him, was quite dreadful. Humiliating too--false conscience again gnawing. Had she really contracted a debt towards him, which she--in his opinion and Henrietta's--tried to repudiate? She seemed to hear it, the rich impa.s.sioned voice, and hear it with a new comprehension. Was "caring in _that_ way" what it had striven to tell her; and had she, incomparably dense in missing its meaning, appeared to sanction the message and to draw him on? Other people understood--so at least Henrietta implied; while she, remaining deaf, had rather cruelly misled him. Ought she not to do something to make up? Yet what could she do?--It had never occurred to her that--that--

She held her head tight. Held it on, as with piteous humour she told herself, since she seemed in high danger of altogether losing it.--Must she believe herself inordinately stupid, or was she made differently to everybody else? For, as she now suspected, most people are constantly occupied, are quite immensely busy about "caring in _that_ way." And she shrank from it; actively and angrily disliked it. She felt smirched, felt all dealings as between men and women made suspect, rendered ugly, almost degraded by the fact--if fact it was--of that kind of caring and excited feelings it induces, lurking just below the surface, ready to dart out.--And this not quite honestly either. The whole matter savoured of hypocrisy, since the feelings disguised themselves in beautiful sounds, beautiful words, clothing their unseemliness with the n.o.ble panoply of poetry and art, masquerading in wholesome garments of innocent good-comradeship.

--A grind of wheels on the gravel below. Henrietta's neat limpid accents and Charles Verity's grave ones. The flourish and crack of a whip and scrambling start of the little chestnut horses. The rhythmical beat of their quick even trot and thin tinkle of their collar bells receding into the distance.

These sounds to our sorrowfully perplexed maiden opened fresh fields of uneasy speculation. For those diverse accents--the speakers being unseen--heard thus in conjunction, seized on and laboured her imagination. Throughout the past months of frequent meeting, Damaris had never quite understood her father's att.i.tude towards Henrietta Frayling.

It was marked by reserve; yet a reserve based, as she somehow divined, upon an uncommon degree of former intimacy. Judging from remarks let drop now and again by Henrietta, they knew, or rather had known, one another very well indeed. This bore out Damaris' own childhood's recollections; though in these last she was aware of lacunae, of gaps, of s.p.a.ces unbridged by any coherent sequence of remembered events. A dazzling and delicious image, the idol of her baby adoration--thus did memory paint that earlier Henrietta. Surrounding circ.u.mstances remained shadowy. She could not recall them even in respect of herself, still less in respect of her father. So that question, as to the past, ruled the present. What had parted them, and how did they to-day envisage one another? She could not make out. Had never, indeed, attempted seriously to make out, shying from such investigation as disloyal and, in a way, irreverent. Now investigation was forced on her. Her mind worked independent of her will, so that she could neither prevent or arrest it. Sir Charles showed himself scrupulously attentive and courteous to General Frayling. He offered no spoken objection to her a.s.sociation with Henrietta. Yet an unexplained element did remain. Subtlely, but perceptibly, it permeated both her father's and Henrietta's speech and bearing. She, Damaris, was always conscious of a certain constraint beneath their calm and apparently easy talk. Was their relation one of friendship or of covert enmity?--Or did these, just perceptible, peculiarities of it betoken something deeper and closer still?

Suspicion once kindled spreads like a conflagration.--Damaris' hands dropped, a dead weight, into her lap. She sat, strained yet inert, as though listening to catch the inner significance of her own unformulated question, her eyes wide and troubled, her lips apart. For might it not be that they had once--long ago--in the princely, Eastern pleasure palace of her childhood--cared in _that_ way?

Then the tears which, what with tiredness and the labour pains of her many conflicting emotions, had threatened more than once to-day, came into their own. She wept quietly, noiselessly, the tears running down her cheeks unchecked and unheeded. For there was no escape. Turn where she would, join hands with whom she would in all good faith and innocence, this thing reared its head and, evilly alluring looked at her. Now it set its claim upon her well-beloved Sultan-i-bagh--and what scene could in truth be more sympathetic to its display? She felt the breath of high romance. Imagination played strange tricks with her. She could feel, she could picture, a drama of rare quality with those two figures as protagonists. It dazzled while wounding her. She remembered Faircloth's words, spoken on that evening of fateful disclosure when knowledge of things as they are first raped her happy ignorance, while the boat drifted through the shrouding darkness of rain upon the inky waters of the tide-river.--"They were young," he had said, "and mayn't we allow they were beautiful? They met and, G.o.d help them, they loved."

The statement covered this case, also, to a nicety. It explained everything. But what an explanation, leaving her, Damaris, doubly orphaned and desolate! For the first case, that of which Faircloth actually had spoken, brought her royal, if secret compensation in the brotherhood and sisterhood it made known. But this second case brought nothing, save a sense of being tricked and defrauded, the victim of a conspiracy of silence. For nothing, as it now appeared, was really her own, nor had really belonged to her. "Some one," so she phrased it in the incoherence of her pain, "had always been there before her." What she supposed her exclusive property was only second-hand, had been already owned by others. They let her play at being first in the field, original and sole proprietress, because it saved them trouble by keeping her quiet and amused. But all the while they knew better and must have smiled at her possessive antics once her silly back was turned. And here Damaris lost sight of reasonable proportion and measure, exaggerating wildly, her pride and self-respect cut to the quick.

It was thus, in the full flood of mystification and resentment, Charles Verity found her when presently he returned. Sensible of something very much amiss, since she stayed within the shadow of the closed shutters, silent and motionless, he crossed the room and stood before her looking down searchingly into her upturned face. Stubborn in her misery, she met his glance with mutinous, and hard, if misty, eyes.

"Weeping, my dear? Is the occasion worth it? Has Mrs. Frayling then taken so profound a hold?" he asked, his tone mocking, chiding her yet very gently.

Damaris hedged. To expose the root of her trouble became impossible under the coercion of that gently bantering tone.

"It's not Henrietta's going; but that I no longer mind her going."

"A lost illusion--yes?" he said.

"I can't trust her. She--she isn't kind."

"Eh?" he said. "So you too have made that illuminating little discovery.

I supposed it would be only a matter of time. But you read character, my dear, more quickly than I do. What it has taken you months to discover, took me years."

His frankness, the unqualified directness of his response, though startling, stimulated her daring.

"Then--then you don't really like Henrietta?" she found audacity enough to say.

"Ah! there you rush too headlong to conclusions," he reasoned, still with that same frankness of tone. "She is an ingenious, unique creature, towards whom one's sentiments are ingenious and unique in their turn. I admire her, although--for you are right there--she is neither invariably trustworthy nor invariably kind. Admire her ungrudgingly, now I no longer ask of her what she hasn't it in her to give. Limit your demand and you limit the risks of disappointment--a piece of wisdom easier to enunciate than to apply."

Lean, graceful, commanding under the cloak of his present gentle humour, Charles Verity sat down on the faded red cushion beside Damaris, and laid one arm along the window-ledge behind her. He did not touch her; being careful in the matter of caresses, reverent of her person, chary of claiming parental privileges unasked.

"In the making of Henrietta Frayling," he went on, "by some accident soul was left out. She hasn't any. She does not know it. Let us hope she never will know it, for it is too late now for the omission to be rectified."

"Are you laughing at me?" Damaris asked, still stubborn, though his presence enclosed her with an at once a.s.suaging and authoritative charm.

"Not in the least. I speak that which I soberly believe. Just as some ill-starred human creatures are born physically or mentally defective--deformed or idiots--so may they be born spiritually defective. Why not? My reason offers no scientific or moral objection to such a belief. In other respects she is conspicuously perfect. But, verily, she has no soul; and the qualities which--for happiness or misery--draw their life from the soul, she does not possess. Therefore she sparkles, lovely and chill as frost. Is as astute as she is cold at heart; and can, when it suits her purpose, be both false and cruel without any subsequent p.r.i.c.kings of remorse. But this very coldness and astuteness save her from misdeeds of the coa.r.s.er kind. Treacherous she has been, and, for aught I know, may on occasions still be. But, though temptation has pretty freely crossed her path, she has never been other than virtuous. She is a good woman--in the accepted, the popular sense of the word."

Silence stole down upon the room. Damaris remained motionless, leaning forward gathered close into herself, her hands still heavy in her lap.

Could she accept this statement as comfort, or must she bow under it as rebuke?

"Why," she asked at last huskily--the tears were no longer upon her cheeks but queerly in her throat, impeding utterance, "do you tell me these things?"

"To prevent you beholding lying visions, my dear, or dreaming lying dreams of what might very well have been but--G.o.d be thanked--never has been--never was.--Think a minute--remember--look."

And once more Damaris felt the breath of high romance and touched drama of rare quality, with those same two figures as protagonists, and that same Indian pleasure palace as their stage; but this time with a notable difference of sentiment and of result.

For she visualized another going of Henrietta, a flight before the dawn.

Saw, through a thick scent-drenched atmosphere, between the expiring lamp-light and broadening day, a deserted child beating its little hands, in the extremity of its impotent anguish, upon the pillows of a disordered unmade bed. Saw a man, too, worn and travel-stained from long riding throughout the night, lost to all decent dignities of self-control, savage with the animalism of frustrated pa.s.sion, rage to and fro amidst the litter of a smart woman's hurried packing, a trail of pale blue ribbon plucking at and tripping him entangled in the rowels of his spurs.

All this she saw; and knew that her father--sitting on the cushioned window-seat beside her, his legs crossed, his chin sunk on his breast--saw it also. That he, indeed, voluntarily and of set purpose made her see, transferring the living picture from his consciousness to her own. And, as she watched, each detail growing in poignancy and significance she--not all at once, but gropingly, rebelliously and only by degrees--comprehended that purpose, and the abounding love, both of herself and of justice, which dictated it. Divining the root of her trouble and the nature of her suspicion he took this strange means to dissipate them. Setting aside his natural pride, he caused her to look upon his hour of defeat and debas.e.m.e.nt, careless of himself if thereby he might mend her hurt and win her peace of mind.

Damaris was conquered. Her stubbornness went down before his sacrifice.

All the generosity in her leapt forth to meet and to acclaim the signal generosity in him--a generosity extended not only towards herself but to Henrietta Frayling as well. This last Damaris recognized as superb.--He bade her remember. And, seeing in part through her own eyes, in part through his, she penetrated more deeply into his mind, into the rich diversity and, now mastered, violence of his character, than could otherwise have been possible. She learnt him from within as well as from without. He had been terrible--so she remembered--yet beautiful in his fallen G.o.d-head. She had greatly feared him under that aspect. Later, she more than ever loved him; and that with a provenant, protective and, baby though she was, a mothering love. He was beautiful now; but no longer terrible, no longer fallen--if not the G.o.d-head, yet the fine flower of his manhood royally and very sweetly disclosed. Her whole being yearned towards him; but humbly, a note of lowliness in her appreciation, as towards something exalted, far above her in experience, in self-knowledge and self-discipline.

She was, indeed, somewhat overwhelmed, both by realization of his distinction and of her own presumption in judging him, to the point of being unable as yet to look him in the face. So she silently laid hold of his hand, drew it down from the window-ledge and round her waist.

Slipping along the cushioned seat until she rested against him, she laid her head back upon his shoulder. Testimony in words seemed superfluous after that shared consciousness, seemed impertinent even, an anti-climax from which both taste and insight recoiled.