Deadham Hard Part 29

And from such p.r.i.c.kings he sensibly suffered to-night, as he leaned his shoulder against the iron pillar of the verandah at the Hotel de la Plage, and looked down into the _claire obscure_ of the moonlit gardens, while over the polished floor of the big room at his back, the rhythmical tread of the dancers' feet kept time to the music of piano and sweet wailing strings.--For that a change showed increasingly evident in Damaris he could not disguise from himself. In precisely what that change consisted it was not easy to say. He discovered it more in an att.i.tude of mind and atmosphere than in outward action or even in words said. But she was not quite the same as the grave and steadfast young creature who had asked his help for her father, and indirectly for herself, in the moist chill of the November twilight at The Hard--and who, receiving promise of such help, had darted away over the drenched lawn in company with the wildly gambolling cats alternately pursuing and pursued. Nor was she quite the same as when he had walked with her, through the resounding Paris streets, to pay her devoirs to her former guardians and teachers at the convent school; and, later returning, had spoken to her of the safety of religion, the high worth of the doctrine and practice of a definite historic creed.

Her relation to her father appeared--and this pained Carteret--to lack its old intimacy, its intensity of consideration and tenderness. Her interest in the child of his brain, his belated literary experiment, was less sustained and spontaneous. How could it flourish in its former proportions when she was so much away, so often absent from morning till night?--Not without leave though, for she scrupulously asked permission before answering Henrietta's gay call and taking part in that lady's junketings and jaunts. Sir Charles never refused the requested permission; but, while granting it, did he not tend to retreat into his former sardonic humour, fall into long silences, become inaccessible again and remote? The book went forward; yet, more than once recently, Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly delivered of the admirable volume were not he--Carteret--permanently at hand to act midwife. An unpleasant idea pursued him that Sir Charles went, in some strange fas.h.i.+on, in fear of Damaris, of her criticism, her judgment. Yet fear seemed a hatefully strong and ugly word to employ as between a father and daughter so straitly, heretofore, bound to one another in love.

And then--there lay the heart of the worry, proving him only too likely a graceless jealous middle-age curmudgeon, a senile sentimentalist, thus did he upbraidingly mock himself--were there not signs of Damaris developing into a rather thorough paced coquette? She accepted the homage offered her with avidity, with many small airs and graces--_a la_ Henrietta--of a quite novel sort. Old General Frayling--poor pathetic old warrior--was her slave. Peregrine Ditton, Harry Ellice, even the cleric Binning--let alone the permanently self-conscious, att.i.tudinizing Wace--with other newer acquaintances, English and foreign, ran at her heels. And she let them run, bless her, even encouraged their running by turns of naughty disdain and waywardness. She was fatal to boys--that was in the natural course of things. And fatal to those considerably older than boys--perhaps--

The music flew faster and faster--stopped with a shriek and a crash.

Laughing, talking, the dancers streamed out of the hot brightly lighted room into the soft peace, the delicate phantasy of the colourless moonlight.

Carteret drew back, flattening himself against the iron pillar in the shadow, as they pa.s.sed down the steps into the garden below; the women's pale airy forms and the men's dark ones, pacing the s.h.i.+ning paths in groups and couples, between the flower-beds, under the flat-headed pines, the s.h.a.ggy-stemmed palms and towering eucalyptus, in and out ma.s.sed banks of blossoming shrubs and dwarf hedges of monthly roses.

Midway in the light-hearted procession came Damaris, Peregrine Ditton on one side of her, Harry Ellice on the other. Leaving the main alley, the trio turned along a path, running parallel to the verandah, which opened into a circle surrounding the stone basin of a tinkling fountain, immediately below Colonel Carteret's post of solitary observation.

Damaris carried the demi-train of her white satin gown over her arm, thereby revealing a wealth of lace frilled petticoat, from beneath which the toes of her high-heeled, white satin shoes stepped with a pretty measured tread. The two boys, leaning a little towards one another, talked across her, their voices slightly raised in argument, not to say dispute.

"I call it rotten mean to bag my dance like that, I tell you.--Go away?--No I swear I won't go away, won't budge one blessed inch unless Miss Verity actually orders me to. If my dance was stolen, all the more reason I should have her to talk to now as a sort of make-up. So you just clear out, if you please, my good chap, and leave the field to your elders and betters. Remove your superfluous carca.s.s till further notice.--Vamoose, my son, do you hear?"

This excitedly from Peregrine Ditton. They reached the fountain. Damaris stayed her measured walk, and stood gazing at the jet of water in its uprush and myriad sparkling fall. Ellice answered chaffingly yet with an underlying growl; and the dispute threatened to wax warm. But the girl heeded neither disputant, her attention rapt in watching the play of the falling water.

Throughout the evening she had easily been chief centre of attraction, besieged by partners. And those not only her present rival attendants or Marshall Wace; but by Mrs. Frayling's various importations, plus Mr.

Alban t.i.therage--a fat, smart and very forthcoming young London stock-broker, lately established, in company of a pretty, silly, phthisis-stricken wife, at the Grand Hotel. Very much mistress of herself, Damaris had danced straight through the programme with an air of almost defiant vivacity. Now, as it seemed, her mood had changed and sobered. For presently Colonel Carteret saw her bosom heave, while she fetched a long sigh and, raising her head, glanced upwards, her great eyes searching the shadowed s.p.a.ce of the verandah.

The cool lunar brightness flooded her upturned face, her bare neck and arms, the glittering folds of her satin gown. She was exceedingly fair to look upon just now. For an appreciable length of time her glance met Carteret's and held it; giving him--though the least neurotic of men, calm of body and of mind--a strange sensation as of contact with an electric current which tingled through every nerve and vein. And this, although he perceived that, dazzled by the moonlight, she either did not see or quite failed to recognize him. An expression of disappointment, akin, so he read it, to hope defeated, crossed her face. She lowered her eyes, and moved slowly forward along the path, the boys on either side her. Again Peregrine Ditton took up his tale--in softened accents though still as one sorely injured and whose temper consequently inclines not unjustly to the volcanic.

"Upon my honour, I think you might have given me just a minute's law, Miss Verity," he protested. "It was no fault of mine being late. Maud Callowgas kept me toddling to the most unconscionable extent. First she wanted an ice, and then a tumbler of lemon squash; and then she lost her fan, or pretended she did, and expected me to hunt for the beastly thing.

I give you my word I was as rude as sin, in hope of shaking her off; but she didn't, or wouldn't, see what I was driving at. There was no getting away from her. I tell you she sticks like a burr, that girl, once she lays hold of you. Octopuses aren't in it. Her power of adhesion is something utterly frantic "--

Here Ellice cut in with a doubtless scathing though, to Carteret, inaudible remark, at which Damaris laughed outright; and the fresh young voices trailed away in the distance alternately mocking and remonstrant.

As he listened, still conscious of contact with that surprising electric current, Carteret found himself taking stock of his own forty-nine years with swift and lively repugnance. To accept the sum of them, and the limitations and restrictions that sum is currently supposed to entail, proved just now astonis.h.i.+ngly difficult. Damaris, as beheld in the fantastic loveliness of the moonlight, her searching, unseeing eyes meeting and dwelling upon his own, the look of disappointment and defeat crossing her sweetly serious countenance, wrought upon him begetting a dangerous madness in his blood. That it was dangerous and a madness, and therefore promptly to be mastered and ejected, he would not permit himself an instant's doubt. Yet it very shrewdly plagued him, daring even to advance specious arguments upon its own behalf.

For, when he came to consider matters, was he not in perfect health, more sound and fit than many a man but half his age? And were not his fortunes just now at a specially happy turn, his sister, Mrs. Dreydel, having lately been blessed with a windfall, in the shape of yearly income, which--did he so choose--relieved him of much expenditure on her account. Her eldest son had received his commission. The three younger boys had done well as to scholars.h.i.+ps thereby materially reducing the cost of their education. Never had he, Carteret, been so free to consult his private desires; and never, as he knew too profoundly well, had his desires taken so definite and delicious a form. Nevertheless it remained a madness to be mastered, to be ejected.--His last thought, as his first, p.r.o.nounced it that.

Unconsciously, pushed by this stress of rather turbulent sensations, Carteret walked the length of the verandah and drew up in the full glare of the moonlight. From here he could see the curve of the sh.o.r.e; and, beyond the quay and esplanade and last scattered houses of the little town, the lighthouse marking the tip of the western horn of the bay. He could hear the soft stealthy plunge and following rush of the sea up the white shelving beach. Could hear also--less soothing sound--through the open windows of the drawing-room of the Pavilion, just across the garden, Marshall Wace singing, with all the impa.s.sioned fervour of his rich and well-trained baritone, a ballad, then much in vogue, ent.i.tled "The Lost Chord." The words, to Carteret's thinking, were futile, meaning anything, everything, or nothing, according to your private interpretation of them.

But as to the fine quality and emotional appeal of the voice there could not be two opinions, as it palpitated thus in the mild night air. Was Damaris Verity a member of the singer's devout audience? Were her hands among those which now enthusiastically applauded the conclusion of the song? Under his breath, slowly, gently but most comprehensively, Carteret swore. And felt all the better for that impious exercise, even amused at this primitive expression of his moral and sentimental disturbance, and so on the high-road, as he fondly imagined, to capture his habitual att.i.tude of charity and tolerance once again. But heaven had further trial of his fort.i.tude and magnanimity, not to say his good honest horse sense, in store to-night.

For, as the clapping of hands died down, the whisper of a woman's dress, upon the asphalt of the verandah just behind him, caught his ear, and Damaris came rapidly towards him.

"So you are here after all, dear Colonel Sahib," she cried. "I felt you were when I was down there looking at the fountain. It sort of pulled at me with remindings of you ages and ages ago, in the gardens of the club at Bhutpur--when you brought me a present--a darling little green jade elephant in a sandalwood box, as a birthday gift from Henrietta. Later there was a terrible tragedy. An odious little boy broke my elephant, on purpose, and broke my heart along with it."

Carteret made a determined effort over himself, taking her up lightly.

"But not altogether past mending, dear witch--judging by existing appearances."

"Ah! I'm none so sure of that," Damaris answered him back with a pretty quickness--"if it hadn't been for you. For I was very ill, when you came again to the Sultan-i-bagh--don't you remember?--the night of the riots and great fires in the Civil Lines and Cantonments, just at the breaking of the monsoon."

"Yes, I remember," he said.

And wondered to himself--thereby gaining ease and a measure of tranquillity, inasmuch as he thought of another man's plight rather than of his own--whether Damaris had knowledge of other occurrences, not unallied to tragedy, which had marked that same night of threatened mutiny and ma.s.sacre and of bellowing tempest, not least among them a vow made by her father, Charles Verity, and made for her sake.

"The whole story comes back in pictures," she went on, "whenever I look at fountains playing, because of the water-jets in the ca.n.a.l in the Bhutpur club garden where you gave me Henrietta's present. You see it all dates from then. And it came back to me specially clearly just now, partly because I felt lonely--"

"Lonely?--How lonely," he smilingly interjected, "with a goodly youth as a protector on either hand?"

"Yes--lonely," Damaris repeated, ignoring the allusion to her devoted if irascible escort. "Dance music always makes one rather sad--don't you think so? It seems to ache with everything one wants and hasn't got; and the ache goes on.--I turned homesick for--for India, and for my green jade elephant I used to love so dreadfully much.--I've all that is left of him, still wrapped in the same rice paper in the same sandalwood box you brought him in, put away with my best treasures in my own room at The Hard."

She came nearer, stood beside him, bending down a little as she rested her hands on the top of the iron bal.u.s.trade of the verandah, while her eyes followed the curve of the bay to where the lighthouse rose, a black column with flas.h.i.+ng headpiece, above the soft glitter of the moonlit sea.

"And homesick, Colonel Sahib, for you," she said.

"For me?" he exclaimed almost involuntarily, roughly startled out of his partially recovered tranquillity and ease.

"Yes"--she said, looking up at him. "Isn't that quite natural, since you have stepped in so often to help me when things have gone rather wrong?--I knew you must be somewhere quite close by. I sort of felt you were there. And you were there--weren't you? Why did you hide yourself away?"

Carteret could not bring himself immediately to answer. He was perplexed, infinitely charmed, distrustful, all at once--distrustful, though for very different reasons, both of himself and of her.

"Are things, then, going rather wrong now?" he asked presently.

For he judged it wise to accept her enigmatic speech according to its most simple and obvious interpretation. By so doing he stood, moreover, to gain time; and time in his existing perplexity appeared to him of cardinal importance.

"That's just what I'm not sure about." Damaris spoke slowly, gravely, her glance again fixed upon the beacon light set for the safety of pa.s.sing s.h.i.+ps on the further horn of the bay. "If I could be sure, I should know what to do--know whether it is right to keep on as--as I am. Do you see?"

But what, at this juncture, Carteret did, in point of fact, most consciously see was the return of Henrietta Frayling's scattered guests, from the Pavilion and other less fully illuminated quarters, towards the main building of the hotel. From the improvised ball-room within chords struck on the piano and answering tuning of strings invited to the renewal of united and active festivity. In the face of consequently impending interruption he hazarded a trifle of admonition.

"Dearest witch, you elect to speak in riddles," he gently told her. "I am in the dark as to your meaning; so, if I am guilty of uttering foolishness, you must pardon me. But I own I could wish--just a bit--that, in some particulars, you wouldn't keep on--I quote your own words--as you are, or rather have been just lately."

"Why?" she asked, without moving.

"Because, to be quite honest with you, I am not altogether satisfied about your father. I am afraid he is getting back into the habit of mind we set out to cure him of, you and I, last November."

Damaris sprang to attention.

"And I haven't noticed it. I Wouldn't stop to notice it. I have been too busy about my own concerns and have neglected him."

Arrayed in her spotless virgin finery, her head carried proudly, though her eyes were sombre with self-reproach, self-accusation, and her lips quivered, she confronted Carteret. And his clean loyal soul went out to her in a poignant, an exquisite, agony of tenderness and of desire. He would have given his right hand to save her pain. Given his life gladly, just then, to secure her welfare and happiness; yet he had struck her--for her own good possibly--possibly just blindly, instinctively, in self-defence. He tried to shut down the emotion which threatened to betray him and steady on to the playfully affectionate tone of their customary intercourse; but it is to be feared the effort lacked convincingness of quality.

"No--no," he said, "you take it altogether too hard. You exaggerate, dear witch, to the point of extravagance. You have been less constantly with your father than usual--you're the delight of his life after all, as you must very well know--and inevitably he has missed you. Nothing worse than that. The damage, such as it is, can easily be repaired."

"Ah! but the damage, as you call it, starts behind all that in something else--something older, much deeper down, of which I doubt whether any lasting reparation is possible. I did try to repair it. All my going out with Henrietta, and this rus.h.i.+ng about lately, began in that trying--truly it did, Colonel Sahib. And then I suppose I got above myself--as poor Nannie used to say--and came to care for the rus.h.i.+ng about just for its own sake"--

"My dance, I believe, Miss Verity."

The speaker, Mr. Alban t.i.therage--well-groomed, rosy and self-complacent--pulled down the fronts of his white waistcoat. He inclined to distinct rotundity of person, and the garment in question, though admirable in cut, showed, what with the exertions of dancing, a d.a.m.nable tendency, as he expressed it, to "ride up."

"And my dance next afterwards, Miss Verity"--this from Peregrine Ditton, his youthful, well-bred, if somewhat choleric, countenance presenting itself over the top of the stock-broker's smooth and not conspicuously intelligent head.

Damaris looked from one to the other of these claimants for her favour, with instant and very becoming composure.

"I'm dreadfully sorry," she told them collectively, "but surely there is some mistake. Both those next dances--they are the last, I'm afraid, too, aren't they?--belong to Colonel Carteret."