Deadham Hard Part 44

And because brother and sister, notwithstanding diversities of upbringing and of station, were alike children of the open rather than of cities, born to experiment, to travel and to seafaring round this ever-spinning globe, they instinctively took note of the extensive, keen though sun-gilded prospect--before breaking silence and giving voice to the emotion which possessed them--and, in so doing, found refreshment and a brave cleansing to their souls.

Still holding Faircloth's hand, and still silent, her shoulder touching his now and again in walking, Damaris went down the sloping path, h.o.a.ry lichen-stained head-and-foot stones set in the vivid churchyard gra.s.s--as yet unbleached by the cold of winter--on either side. The sense of his strength, of the fine unblemished vigour of his young manhood, here close beside her--so strangely her possession and portion of her natural inalienable heritage--filled her with confident security and with a restful, wondering calm. So that the shame publicly put on her to shed its bitterness, her horror of the watching crowd departed, fading out into unreality. Though still shaken, still quivering inwardly from the ordeal of the past hour, she already viewed that shame and horror as but accidents to be lived down and disregarded, by no means as essential elements in the adventurous and precious whole. Presently they would altogether lose their power to wound and to distress her, while this freedom and the closer union, gained by means of them, continued immutable and fixed.

It followed that, when in opening the churchyard gate and holding it back for her to pa.s.s, Faircloth perforce let go her hand and, the spell of contact severed, found himself constrained to speak at last, saying:

"You know you have done a mighty splendid, dangerous thing--no less than burned your boats--and that in the heat of generous impulse, blind, perhaps--I can't but fear so--to the heavy cost."

Damaris could interrupt him, with quick, sweet defiance:

"But there is no cost!"

And, to drive home the sincerity of her disclaimer, and further rea.s.sure him, she took his hand again and held it for an instant close against her bosom, tears and laughter together present in her eyes.

"Ah! you beautiful dear, you beautiful dear," Faircloth cried, brokenly, as in pain, somewhat indeed beside himself. "Before G.o.d, I come near blessing that blatant young fool and pharisee of a parson since he has brought me to this."

Then he put her a little way from him, penetrated by fear lest the white love which--in all honour and reverence--he was bound to hold her in, should flush ever so faintly, red.

"For, after all, it is up to me," he said, more to himself than to her, "to make very sure there isn't, and never--by G.o.d's mercy--shall be, any cost."

And with that--for the avoidance of the congregation, now streaming rather tumultuously out of church--they went on across the village green, hissed at by slow waddling, hard-eyed, most conceited geese, to the lane which leads down to the causeway and warren skirting the river-bank.

CHAPTER IV

WHEREIN MISS FELICIA VERITY CONCLUSIVELY SHOWS WHAT SPIRIT SHE IS OF

Her attraction consisted in her transparency, in the eager simplicity with which she cast her home-made nets and set her innocuous springes.

To-day Miss Felicia was out to wing the Angel of Peace, and crowd that celestial messenger into the arms of Damaris and Theresa Bilson collectively and severally. Such was the major interest of the hour. But, for Miss Felicia the oncoming of middle-age by no means condemned the lesser pleasures of life to nullity. Hence the minor interest of the hour centred in debate as to whether or not the thermometer justified her wearing a coat of dark blue silk and cloth, heavily trimmed with ruchings and pa.s.s.e.m.e.nterie, reaching to her feet. A somewhat sumptuous garment this, given her by Sir Charles and Damaris last winter in Madrid. She fancied herself in it greatly, both for the sake of the dear donors, and because the cut of it was clever, disguising the over-narrowness of her maypole-like figure and giving her a becoming breadth and fulness.

She decided in favour of the coveted splendour; and at about a quarter-past twelve strolled along the carriage-drive on her way to the goose green and the village street. There, or thereabouts, unless her plot lamentably miscarried, she expected to meet her niece and that niece's ex-governess-companion, herded in amicable converse by the pinioned Angel of Peace. Her devious and discursive mind fluttered to and fro, meanwhile, over a number of but loosely connected subjects.

Of precisely what, upon a certain memorable occasion, had taken place between her brother, Sir Charles, and poor Theresa--causing the latter to send up urgent signals of distress to which she, Miss Felicia, instantly responded--she still was ignorant. Theresa had, she feared, been just a wee bit flighty, leaving Damaris unattended while herself mildly gadding. But such dereliction of duty was insufficient to account for the arbitrary fashion in which she had been sent about her business, literally--the word wasn't pretty--chucked out! Miss Felicia always suspected there must be _something_, she would say _worse_--it sounded harsh--but something _more_ than merely that. Her interpretations of peculiar conduct were liable to run in terms of the heart. Had Theresa, poor thing, by chance formed a hopeless attachment?--Hopeless, of course, almost ludicrously so; yet what more natural, more comprehensible, Charles being who and what he was? Not that he would, in the faintest degree, lend himself to such misplaced affection. Of that he was incapable. The bare idea was grotesque. He, of course, was guiltless.

But, a.s.suming there _was_ a feeling on Theresa's side, wasn't she equally guiltless? She could not help being fascinated.--Thus Miss Felicia was bound to acquit both. Alike they left the court without a stain on their respective characters.

Not for worlds would she ever dream of worrying Charles by attempting to reintroduce poor Theresa to his notice. But with Damaris it was different. The idea that any persons of her acquaintance were at sixes and sevens, on bad terms, when, with a little good will on their part and tactful effort upon hers, they might be on pleasant ones was to her actively afflicting. To drop an old friend, or even one not conspicuously friendly if bound to you by a.s.sociations and habit, appeared to her an offence against corporate humanity, an actual however fractional lowering of the temperature of universal charity. The loss to one was a loss to all--in some sort. Therefore did she run to adjust, to smooth, to palliate.

Charles was away--it so neatly happened--and Theresa Bilson here, not, it must be owned, altogether without Miss Felicia's connivance. If darling Damaris still was possessed of a hatchet she must clearly be given, this opportunity to bury it. To have that weapon safe underground would be, from every point of view, so very much nicer.

At this point in her meditations beneath the trees bordering the carriage drive, their bare tops swaying in the breeze and bright sunshine, Miss Felicia fell to contrasting the present exhilarating morning with that dismally rainy one, just over three years ago, when--regardless of her sister, Mrs. Cowden's remonstrances--she had come here from Paulton Lacy in response to Theresa's signals of distress. Just at the elbow of the drive, so she remembered, she had met a quite astonishingly good-looking young man, brown-gold bearded, his sou'wester and oilskins shining with wet. She vaguely recalled some talk about him with her brother, Sir Charles, afterwards during luncheon.--What was it?--Oh! yes, of course, it was he who had rescued Damaris when she was lost out on the Bar, and brought her home down the tide-river by boat. She had often wanted to know more about him, for he struck her at the time as quite out of the common, quite remarkably attractive. But on the only occasion since when she had mentioned the subject, Damaris drew in her horns and became curiously uncommunicative. It was all connected, of course, with the dear girl's illness and the disagreeable episode of Theresa's dismissal.--How all the more satisfactory, then, that the Theresa business, in any case, was at this very hour in process of being set right! Miss Felicia had advised Theresa how to act--to speak to Damaris quite naturally and affectionately, taking her good-will for granted. Damaris would be charming to her, she felt convinced.

Felicia Verity held the fronts of her long blue coat together, since the wind sported with them rather roughly, and went forward with her quick, wavering gait.

It was a pity Damaris did not marry she sometimes felt. Of course, Charles would miss her quite terribly. Their love for one another was so delightful, so really unique. On his account she was glad.--And yet--with a sigh, while the colour in her thin cheeks heightened a little--lacking marriage a woman's life is rather incomplete. Not that she herself had reason for complaint, with all the affection showered upon her! The last two years, in particular, had been abundantly blessed thanks to Charles and Damaris. She admired them, dear people, with all her warm heart and felt very grateful to them.

Here it should be registered, in pa.s.sing, that the resilience of Felicia Verity's inherent good-breeding saved her grat.i.tude from any charge of grovelling, as it saved her many enthusiasms from any charge of sloppiness. Both, if exaggerated, still stood squarely, even gallantly upon their feet.

Her mind switched back to the ever fertile question of the married and the single state. She often wondered why Charles never espoused a second wife. He would have liked a son surely? But then, were it possible to find a fault in him, it would be that of a little coldness, a little loftiness in his att.i.tude towards women. He was too far above them in intellect and experience, she supposed, and through all the remarkable military commands he had held, administrative posts he had occupied, quite to come down to their level. In some ways Damaris was very like him--clever, lofty too at moments. Possibly this accounted for her apparent indifference to affairs of the heart and to lovers. Anyhow, she had ample time before her still in relation to all that.

Miss Felicia pa.s.sed into the road. About fifty yards distant she saw the servants--Mary, Mrs. Cooper and Patch--standing close together in a quaint, solemn, little bunch. The two small Patches circled round the said bunch, patiently expectant, not being admitted evidently to whatever deliberations their elders and betters had in hand.

Felicia Verity's relations with the servants were invariably excellent.

Yet, finding them in mufti, outside the boundaries of her brother's demesne thus, she was conscious of a certain modesty, hesitating alike to intrude upon their confabulations and to pa.s.s onward without a trifle amiable of talk. She advanced, smiling, nodded to the two women, then--

"A delicious day, isn't it, Patch?" she said, adding, for lack of a more pertinent remark--"What kind of sermon did the new curate, Mr. Sawyer, give you?--A good one, I hope?"

A pause followed this guileless question, during which Mary looked on the ground, Mrs. Cooper murmured: "Oh! dear, oh, dear!" under her breath, and Patch swallowed visibly before finding voice to reply:

"One, I regret to say, ma'am, he never ought to have preached."

"Poor young man!" she laughed it off. "You're a terribly severe critic, I'm afraid, Patch. Probably he was nervous."

"And reason enough. You might think Satan himself stood at his elbow, the wicked things he said."

This statement, coming from the mild and cow-like Mrs. Cooper, caused Felicia Verity the liveliest surprise. She glanced enquiringly from one to the other of the little group, reading constraint and hardly repressed excitement in the countenance of each. Their aspect and behaviour struck her, in fact, as singular to the point of alarm.

"Mary," she asked, a trifle breathlessly, "has anything happened? Where is Miss Damaris?"

"Hadn't she got back to The Hard, ma'am, before you came out?"

"No--why should she? You and the other servants always reach home first."

"Miss Damaris went out before the rest," Mrs. Cooper broke forth in dolorous widowed accents. "And no wonder, pore dear young lady, was it, Mr. Patch? My heart bled for her, ma'am, that it did."

Miss Felicia, gentle and eager, so pathetically resembling yet not resembling her famous brother, grew autocratic, stern as him almost, for once.

"And you allowed Miss Damaris to leave church alone--she felt unwell, I suppose--none of you accompanied her? I don't understand it at all," she said.

"Young Captain Faircloth went out with Miss Damaris. She wished it, ma'am," Mary declared, heated and resentful at the unmerited rebuke. "She as good as called to him to come and take her out of church. It wasn't for us to interfere, so we held back."

"Captain Faircloth? But this becomes more and more extraordinary! Who is Captain Faircloth?"

"Ah! there you touch it, you must excuse my saying, ma'am." Mrs.

Cooper gasped.

But at this juncture, Patch, rising to the height of masculine responsibility, flung himself gallantly--and how unwillingly--into the breach. He was wounded in his respect and respectability alike, wounded for the honour of the family whom he had so long and faithfully served.

He was fairly cut to the quick--while these three females merely darkened judgment by talking all at cross purposes and all at once. Never had the solid, honest coachman found himself in a tighter or, for that matter, in anything like so tight a place. But, looking in the direction of the village, black of clothing, heavy of walk and figure, he espied, as he trusted, approaching help.

"If you please, ma'am," he said, touching his black bowler as he spoke, "I see Canon Horniblow coming along the road. I think it would be more suitable for him to give you an account of what has pa.s.sed.

He'll know how to put it with--with the least unpleasantness to all parties. It isn't our place--Mrs. Cooper's, Mary's, or mine--if you'll pardon my making so free with my opinion, to mention any more of what's took place."

Felicia Verity, now thoroughly frightened, darted forward. The fronts of her blue coat again flew apart, and that rich garment stood out in a prodigious frill around and behind her from the waist, as she leaned on the wind, almost running in her agitation and haste.

"My dear Canon," she cried, "I am in such anxiety. I learn something has happened to my niece, who I had come to meet. Our good servants are so distractingly mysterious. They refer me to you. Pray relieve my uncertainty and suspense."

But, even while she spoke, Miss Felicia's anxiety deepened, for the kindly, easy-going clergyman appeared to suffer, like the servants, from some uncommon shock. His large fleshy nose and somewhat pendulous cheeks were a mottled, purplish red. Anger and deprecation struggled in his glance.