She was confronted moreover by the unpleasant fact that it grew late. Soon the dusk would fall, its coming hastened by the mist, now settling into a steady drizzle of rain precursor of a dark and early night. To hunt any longer would be useless. She must give it up. Yet her maidenly pride, her sense of what is seemly and becoming, revolted from exposing herself to Timothy Proud's coarse leering glances or even—should he by luck be her waterman—to Jennifer's more respectful curiosity, dishevelled and but half-dressed as she was. And then the actual distance to be traversed appeared to her dishearteningly great. For she was weary—quite abominably weary now she came to think of it. Her feet were bruised and blistered. They ached. Her throat ached too, and she shivered. Cold, though it was, she must wait a minute or two and rest before attempting the ascent of the slope.
Damaris sat down, pulling her skirts as low as they would come over her bare legs, and clasping her hands round her knees, bowed, huddled together to gain, if it might be, some sensation of warmth. For a little she thought of that only—warmth—her mind otherwise a blank. But soon the consuming sadness of the place in the waning light penetrated her imagination, penetrated, indeed, her whole being. Only a few hours ago she had danced here, in ecstasy born of the sunshine, the colour, the apparently inexhaustible beauty of things uncreated by, and independent of, the will and work of man. Contrast that scene, and the radiant emotion evoked by it, with this? Which was real, the enduring revelation? Was this truth; the other no more than mirage—an exquisite dissembling and lovely lie?
Such thoughts are hardly wholesome at eighteen—hardly wholesome perhaps at any age, if life is to be lived sweetly, with honest profit to one's own soul and to the souls of others. Yet remembering back, down the dim avenues of childhood, Damaris knew she did not formulate the question, entertain the suspicion, for the first time. Only, until now, it had stayed in the vague, a shapeless nightmare horror, past which she could force herself to run with shut eyes. It didn't jump out of the vague, thank goodness, and bar her passage. But now no running or shutting of eyes availed. It had jumped out. She stared at it, and, in all its undermining power of discouragement, it stared back.—What if the deepest thing, the thing which alone lasted, the thing which, therefore, you were bound in the end to accept, to submit to, was just darkness, sorrow, loneliness of worn body and shrinking spirit, by the shore of a cold, dumb, and tenantless, limitless sea—what then?
From which undesirable abyss of speculation she was aroused by the sound of her own name—"Damaris Verity, hey—Damaris Verity"—shouted, not roughly though in tones of urgent command, from above and behind her on the crest of the Bar. Along with it came the rattle of shifting shingle under a strong active tread.
Hearing which the young girl's senses and faculties alike sprang to attention. She rose from her dejected attitude, stood up and faced round, forgetful of aches and weariness and of woeful ultimate questionings, while in glad surprise her heart went out to meet and welcome the—to her—best beloved being in this, no longer, sorry world.
For even thus, at some fifty yards distant through the blur of falling rain, the figure presented to her gaze, in height, build, and fashion of moving, was delightfully familiar, as were the tones of the voice which had hailed her—if in not quite equal degree the manner of that hail. Some change in his plans must have taken place, or some letter miscarried advising her of her father's earlier return. Finding her out he had come to look for her.—This was perfectly as it should be. Had Colonel Carteret come home with him, she wondered. And then there flashed through her, with a singular vividness, recollection of another, long, long ago escapade—when as a still almost baby child she had stepped off alone, in daring experiment, and fallen asleep, in the open as to-day. But in surroundings how amazingly different!—A place of fountains, cypresses and palms, she curled up in a black marble chair, set throne fashion, upon a platform of blood red sandstone, an age-old Oriental garden outstretched below. Colonel Carteret—"the man with the blue eyes" as she always had called him—awakened her, bringing an adorable and, as it proved in the sequel, a tragic birthday gift.—Tragic because to it might, actually if indirectly, be traced the breaking up of her childhood's home in the stately Indian pleasure palace of the Sultan-i-bagh at Bhutpur, her separation from her father and exile—as she had counted it—to Europe.
It is among the doubtful privileges of highly sensitized natures, such as Damaris', that, in hours of crisis, vision and pre-vision go hand in hand. As there flashed through her remembrance of that earlier sleep in the open, there flashed through her also conviction that history would still further repeat itself. Now, as then, the incident of sleep preluded the receipt of a gift, adorable perhaps, yet freighted with far-reaching consequences to herself and her future. Of just what that gift might consist she had no idea; but of its approach she felt as certain as of the approach of the man swinging down through the rain over the rattling pebbles. And her gladness of welcome declined somewhat. She could have cried off, begged for postponement. For she was very tired, after all. She didn't want anything now, anything which—however delightful in itself—demanded effort, demanded even the exertion of being very pleased. She shied away, in short. And then commendably rallied her forces, resolute not to be found unworthy or ungrateful.
"Yes—come. I am here," she called in response to that lately heard calling of her name, desiring to make an act of faith whereby to assure herself she was indeed ready, and assure her hearer of her readiness to accept the impending gift.
"I am here," she began again to affirm, but stopped abruptly, the words choking in her throat.
For, as with decreasing distance the figure grew distinct, she saw, to her blank amazement, not Sir Charles Verity, her father, as she expected, but the blue reefer jacket, peaked cap, and handsome bearded face of Darcy Faircloth, the young merchant sea-captain, emerge from the blur of the wet. And the revulsion of feeling was so sharp, the shock at once so staggering and intimate—as summing up all the last ten days confused experience—that Damaris could not control herself. She turned away with a wail of distress, threw out her hands, and then, covering her eyes with them, bowed her head.
The young man came forward and stood near her; but an appreciable time elapsed before he spoke. When he presently did so, his voice reached her as again singularly familiar in tone, though strange in diction and in accent.
"I'm sorry if I startled you," he began, "but I hailed you just now, and you told me to come.—I concluded you meant what you said. Not, I'm afraid, that your giving your permission or withholding it would have made much difference in the upshot. Timothy Proud let on, in my hearing, that he set you across the river soon after two o'clock, and that there'd been no call for the ferry since. So I took one of my own boats and just came over to look for you—in case you might have met with some mishap or strayed among the sand-hills and couldn't find your"—
Thus far he spoke with studied calm and restraint. But here, as though struck by a fresh and very objectionable idea, he broke out:
"Nothing has happened has it? No cowardly brute has interfered with you or upset you? Dear God alive, don't tell me I'm too late, don't tell me that."
Upon Damaris this sudden, though to her unaccountable, violence and heat acted as a cordial. She raised her head, pushing back the damp hair from her forehead, and displaying a proud if strained and weary face.
"No," she said, "of course not. Who would venture to be rude to me? I have not seen anyone all the afternoon—until now, when you came. And," she added by way of further explanation—she didn't want to be ungracious or unkind, but she did want, in justice to herself, to have this understood—"in the distance I didn't recognize you. I mistook you for someone else"—
"Who else?" he took her up, and with a queer flicker—if of a smile, then one with a keenish edge to it—in his eyes and about his mouth.
"For my father," Damaris answered. "It was a stupid mistake, because he is away staying in Norfolk for partridge shooting, and I have not any real reason to expect him home for several days yet."
"But in this deceptive light," Faircloth took her up again, while—as she could not help observing—that flicker became more pronounced. It seemed silently to laugh and to mock.—"Oh! to be sure that accounts for your mistake as to my identity. One sees how it might very well come about."
He took off his cap, and threw back his head looking up into the low wet sky.
"At night all cats are grey, aren't they," he went on, "little ones as well as big? And it's close on night now, thanks to this dirty weather. So close on it, that—though personally I'm in no hurry—I ought to get you back to The Hard, or there'll be a regular hue and cry after you—rightly and probably too, if your servants and people have any notion of their duty."
"I am quite ready," Damaris said.
She strove to show a brave front, to keep up appearances; but she felt helpless and weak, curiously confused by and unequal to dealing with this masterful stranger—who yet, somehow did not seem like a stranger. Precisely in this was the root of her confusion, of her inability to deal with him.
"But hardly as you are," he commented, on her announcement she was ready. "Let me help to put on your shoes and stockings for you first." And this he said so gently and courteously, that Damaris' lips began to quiver, very feminine and youthful shame at the indignity of her present plight laying hold on her.
"I can't find them," she pitifully declared. "I have looked and looked, but I can't find them anywhere. I left my things just here. Can anyone have stolen them while I was out at the end of the Bar? It is so mysterious and so dreadfully tiresome. I should have gone home long ago, before the rain began, if I could have found them."
And with that, the whole little story—childish or idyllic as you please—of sunshine and colour, of beguiling birds beguiling sea, of sleep, and uneasy awakening when the cloud-bank rising westward devoured the fair face of heaven, of mist and fruitless seeking, even some word of the fear which forever sits behind and peeps over the shoulder of all wonder and all beauty, got itself—not without eloquent passages—quickly yet gravely told. For the young man appeared to derive considerable pleasure from listening, from watching her and from questioning her too—still, gently and courteously though closely, as if each detail were of interest and of value.
"And now you know all about it, Captain Faircloth," Damaris said in conclusion, essaying to laugh at her own discomfiture. "And I am very tired, so if you will be kind enough to row me across the ferry, I shall be grateful to you, and glad, please, to go home at once."
"By all means," he answered. "Only, you know, I can't very well let you cut your feet to pieces on these cruel stones, so I am just going to carry you up over the Bar"—
"No—no—I can perfectly well walk. I mean to walk—see," she cried.
And started courageously up the rough ascent, only to slip, after a few paces, and to stagger. For as soon as she attempted to move, she felt herself not only weak, but oddly faint and giddy. She lurched forward, and to avoid falling instinctively clutched at her companion's outstretched hand. Exactly what passed between the young man and young girl in that hand-clasp—the first contact they had had of one another—it might seem far-reached and fantastic to affirm; yet that it steadied not only Damaris' trembling limbs, but her trembling and over-wrought spirit, is beyond question. For it was kind and more than kind—tender, and that with the tenderness of right and usage rather than of sentimental response to a passing sentimental appeal.
"There, there," he said, "what's the use of working to keep up this little farce any longer? Just give in—you can't put off doing so in the end. Why not at once, then, accept defeat and spare both yourself and me pain? You are no more fit to walk, than you are fit to fly—to fly away from me!—That's what you want, isn't it? Ah! that flight will come, no doubt, all in good time.—But meanwhile, be sensible. Put your left arm round my neck—like this, yes. Then—just a little hoist, and, if you'll not worry but keep still, nothing's easier."
As he spoke, Faircloth stooped, lightly and with no apparent exertion lifting her high, so that—she clasping his neck as instructed—the main weight of her body rested upon his shoulder. With his right arm he held her just above the waist, his left arm below her knees cradling her.
"Now rest quiet," he said. "Know you are safe and think only of comfortable things—among them this one, if you care to, that for once in my life I am content."
Yet over such yielding and treacherous ground, upward to the crown of the ridge and downward to the river, progress could not be otherwise than slow. Twilight, and that of the dreariest and least penetrable, overtook them before Faircloth, still carrying the white-clothed figure, reached the jetty. Here, at the bottom of the wooden steps he set Damaris down, led her up them and handed her into the boat—tied up to, and the tide being at the flood, now little below the level of the staging.
Throughout their singular journey—save for briefest question and answer about her well-being at the commencement of it—the two had kept silence, as though conscious Faircloth's assertion of contentment struck a chord any resolution of which might imperil the simplicity of their relation. Thus far that relation showed a noble freedom from embarrassment. It might have continued to do so but for a hazardous assumption on his part.
When first placing Damaris in the stern of the boat, the young man stripped off his jacket and, regardless of her vaguely expressed protest, wrapped it round her feet. It held the living warmth of his body; and, chilled, dazed, and spent, as Damaris was, that warmth curiously soothed her, until the ink-black boat floating upon the brimming, hardly less inky, water faded from her knowledge and sight. She drooped together, passing into a state more comparable to coma than to natural slumber, her will in abeyance, thought and imagination borne under by the immensity of her fatigue.
As Faircloth, meanwhile, pulled clear of the outstanding piles of the jetty, he heard voices and saw lights moving down by the ferry on the opposite shore. But these, and any invitation they might imply, he ignored. If the hue and cry after Damaris, which he had prophesied, were already afoot, he intended to keep clear of it, studiously to give it the slip. To this end, once in the fairway of the river he headed the boat downstream, rowing strongly though cautiously for some minutes, careful to avoid all plunge of the oars, all swish of them or drip. Then, the lights now hidden by the higher level and scrub of the warren, he sat motionless letting the boat drift on the seaward setting current.
The fine rain fell without sound. It shut out either bank creating a singular impression of solitude and isolation, and of endlessness too. There seemed no reason why it should ever cease. And this delusion of permanence, the enclosing soft-clinging darkness served to heighten. The passage of time itself seemed arrested—to-morrow becoming an abstraction, remote and improbable, which could, with impunity, be left out of the count. With this fantastic state of things, Faircloth had no quarrel. Though impatient of inaction, as a rule definite and autocratic enough, he really wasn't aware of having any particular use for to-morrow. Content still held sway. He was satisfied, profoundly, yet dreamingly, satisfied by an achievement long proposed, long waited for, the door upon which had opened to-day by the merest accident—if anything can justly be called accident, which he inclined to believe it could not.
He had appointed, it should be added, a limit in respect of that achievement, which he forbade himself to pass; and it was his habit very rigidly to obey his own orders, however little disposed he might be to obey those of other people. He had received, as he owned, more than he could reasonably have expected, good measure pressed down and running over. The limit was now reached. He should practise restraint—leave the whole, affair where it stood. But the effect of this darkness, and of drifting, drifting, over the black water in the fine soundless rain, with its illusion of permanence, and of the extinction of to-morrow—and the retributions and adjustments in which to-morrow is so frequently and inconveniently fertile—enervated him, rendering him a comparatively easy prey to impulse, should impulse chance to be stirred by some adventitious circumstance. The Devil, it may be presumed, is very much on the watch for such weakenings of moral fibre, ready to pounce, at the very shortest notice, and make unholy play with them!
To Faircloth's ruminative eyes, the paleness in the stern of the boat, indicating Damaris Verity's drooping figure, altered slightly in outline. Whereupon he shipped the oars skillfully and quietly, and going aft knelt down in front of her. Her feet were stretched out as, bowed together, she sat on the low seat. His jacket had slipped away exposing them to the weather, and the young man laying his hands on them felt them cold as in death. He held them, chafed them, trying to restore some degree of circulation. Finally, moved by a great upwelling of tenderness and of pity, and reckoning her, since she gave no sign, to be asleep, he bent down and put his lips to them.
But immediately the girl's hands were upon his shoulders.
"What are you doing, oh! what are you doing?" she cried.
"Kissing your feet."
Then the Devil, no doubt, flicking him, he let go restraint, disobeyed his own orders, raised his head, and looking at her as in the enfolding obscurity she leaned over him, said:
"And, if it comes to that, who in all the round world has a better right than I, your brother, to kiss your feet?"
For some, to him, intolerable and interminable seconds, Faircloth waited after he had shot his bolt. The water whispered and chuckled against the boat's sides in lazy undertones, as it floated down the sluggish stream. Beyond this there was neither sound nor movement. More than ever might time be figured to stand still. His companion's hands continued to rest upon his shoulders. Her ghostly, dimly discerned face was so near his own that he could feel, now and again, her breath upon his forehead; but she was silent. As yet he did not repent of his cruelty. The impulse which dictated it had not spent itself. Nevertheless this suspense tried him. He grew impatient.
"Damaris," he said, at last, "speak to me."
"How can I speak to you when I don't understand," she answered gravely. "Either you lie—which I should be sorry to accuse you of doing—or you tell me a very terrible thing, if, that is, I at all comprehend what you say.—Are you not the son of Mrs. Faircloth, who lives at the inn out by the black cottages?"
"Yes, Lesbia Faircloth is my mother. And I ask for no better. She has squandered love upon me—squandered money, upon me too; but wisely and cleverly, with results. Still—" he paused—"well, it takes two, doesn't it, to make a man? One isn't one's mother's son only."
"But Mrs. Faircloth is a widow," Damaris reasoned, in wondering directness. "I have heard people speak of her husband. She was married."
"But not to my father. Do you ask for proofs—just think a minute. Whom did you mistake me for when I called you and came down over the Bar in the dusk?"
"No—no—" she protested trembling exceedingly. "That is not possible.How could such a thing happen?"
"As such things mostly do happen. It is not the first case, nor will it by a long way, I reckon, be the last. They were young, and—mayn't we allow—they were beautiful. That's often a good deal to do with these accidents. They met and, God help them, they loved."
"No—no—" Damaris cried again.
Yet she kept her hands on Faircloth's shoulders, clinging to him in the excessive travail of her innocent spirit—though he racked her—for sympathy and for help.
"For whom, after all, did you take me?" he repeated. "If there wasn't considerable cause it would be incredible you should make such a mistake. Can you deny that I am hall-marked, that the fact of my parentage is written large in my flesh?"
He felt her eyes fixed on him, painfully straining to see him through the rain and darkness; and, when she spoke again, he knew she knew that he did not lie.
"But wasn't it wrong" she said.
"I suppose so. Only as it gave me life and as I love life I'm hardly the person to deliver an unbiased opinion on that point."
"Then you are not sad, you are not angry?" Damaris presently and rather unexpectedly asked.
"Yes—at times both, but not often or for long together. As I tell you I love life—love it too well to torment myself much about the manner of my coming by it. It might show more refinement of feeling perhaps to hang my head and let a certain ugly word blast my prospects. But I don't happen to see the business that way. On the contrary I hope to get every ounce of advantage out of it I can—use it as a spur rather than a hobble. And I love my profession too. It gives you room and opportunity. I am waiting now for my first ship, my first command. That's a fine thing and a strong one. For your first ship is as a bride to you, and your first command makes you as a king among men. Oh! on a small scale I grant; but, as far as it reaches, your authority is absolute. On board your own ship you are master with a vengeance—if you like. And I do like."
Faircloth said the last few words softly, but with a weight of meaning not to be misunderstood. He bent down, once more, chafed Damaris' feet and wrapped his jacket carefully round them.
"And, while you and I are alone together, there is something—as we've spoken so freely—which I want to tell you, so that there may be no misconception about me or about what I want.—As men in my rank of life go, I am well off. Rich—again on a small scale; but with means sufficient to meet all my needs. I'm not a spend-thrift by nature, luckily. And I have amply enough not only to hold my own in my profession and win through, but to procure myself the pleasures and amusements I happen to fancy. I want you to remember that, please. Tell me is it quite clear to you?"
"Yes," Damaris said, "you have made it quite clear."
Yet for the first time he jarred on her, as with a more than superficial difference of breeding and of class. This mention of money offended her taste, seeming to lower the level upon which their extraordinary and—to her—terrible conversation had thus far moved. It hurt her with another kind of hurting—not magnificent, not absorbing, but just common. That in speaking of money he was protecting himself, proudly self-guarding his own honour and that of his mother, Lesbia Faircloth, never, in her innocence of what is mean and mercenary, occurred to Damaris.
So she took her hands off his shoulders and clasped them in her lap. Clasped them with all her poor strength, striving even in this extreme, to maintain some measure of calm and of dignity. She must hold out, she told herself, just simply by force of will hold out, till she was away from him. After that, chaos—for thoughts, discoveries, apprehensions of possibilities in human intercourse hitherto undreamed of, were marshalled round her in close formation shoulder to shoulder. They only waited. An instant's yielding on her part, and they would be on to her, crushing down and in, making her brain reel, her mind stagger under their stifling crowded assault.
"Go back and row," she said, at once imploring and imperious. "Row quickly. I am very tired. I am cold. I want to be at home—to be in my own place."
Theresa Bilson bustled upstairs. Barring the absence of the extra brake, which had caused—and for this she could not be sorry since didn't it justify her "attitude" towards her recalcitrant ex-pupil?—some inconvenient overcrowding in transit to and from the station, and barring the rain, which set in between five and six o'clock, the expedition to Harchester passed off with considerableéclat. Such, in any case, was Theresa's opinion, she herself having figured conspicuously in the foreground. During the inspection of the Cathedral the Dean paid her quite marked attention; thanks, in part, to her historical and archaeological knowledge—of which she made the most, and to her connection with the Verity family—of which she made the most also. In precisely what that connection might consist, the learned and timid old gentleman, being very deaf and rather near-sighted, failed to gather. He determined, however, to be on the safe side.
"Our genial Archdeacon," he said, "and his distinguished kinsman, SirCharles? Ah! yes—yes—indeed—to be sure—with the greatest pleasure."
And he motioned the blushing Theresa to fall into step with him, and withDr. Horniblow, at the head of the Deadham procession.
The afterglow of that triumphal progress irradiated her consciousness still, when—after depositing the Miss Minetts upon their own doorstep, with playful last words recalling the day's mild jokes and rallyings—she drove on to The Hard to find the household there in a state of sombre and most admired confusion.
Thus to arrive home in possession of a fine bag of news, only to discover an opposition and far finer bag ready awaiting you may well prove trying to the most high-souled and amiable of temper. By this time, between success and fatigue, Theresa could not be justly described as either high-souled or sweet tempered. She was at once inflated and on edge, and consequently hotly indignant, as though the unfairest march possible had been stolen upon her.
She bustled upstairs, and crossing the landing turned into the schoolroom passage—a long, lamp-lit vista, hung with old Chinese wall-paper, the running pattern of buds and flowers, large out of all proportion to the bridges, palms, pagodas and groups of little purple and blue-clad men and women disposed, in dwindling perspective, upon its once white surface. Half-way along the passage, their backs towards her, Mary and Mrs. Cooper, the cook—a fair, mild middle-aged, and cow-like person, of ample proportions—stood conversing in smothered tones.
"And it's my belief he's been and told her, or anyhow that she guesses, pore dear young lady," the latter, with upraised hands, lamented.
Theresa just caught these strange words. Caught too, Mary's hurried rejoinder—"For mercy's sake, Mrs. Cooper, not a hint of that to any living soul"—before the two women, sensible of the swish and patter of her self-important entry, turned and moved forward to meet, or—could it be?—to intercept her. Their faces bore a singular expression, in Mrs. Cooper's case of sloppy, in Mary's of stern yet vivid alarm. Deeply engaged though she was with her private grievance, Miss Bilson could not but observe this. It made her nervous.
"What is the meaning," she began, her voice shrill with agitation, "of the extraordinary story about Miss Damaris which Laura reports to me? Someone is evidently very much in fault."
"Please don't speak quite so loud, Miss," Mary firmly admonished her. "I've just got Miss Damaris quieted off to sleep, and if she's roused up again, I won't answer for what mayn't happen."
"But what has happened? I insist upon knowing," Theresa declared, in growing offence and agitation.
"Ah! that's just what we should be thankful enough to have you tell us, Miss," Mrs. Cooper chimed in with heavy and reproachful emphasis upon the pronouns.
To even the mild and cow-like revenge is sweet. Though honestly distressed and scared, the speaker entertained a most consoling conviction she was at this moment getting even with Theresa Bilson and cleverly paying off old scores.
"The pore dear young lady's caught her death as likely as not, out there across the river in the wet, let alone some sneaking rascal making off with her stockings and shoes. When I saw her little naked feet, all blue with the cold, it made my heart bleed, regularly bleed, it did. I could only give thanks her Nanna, pore Mrs. Watson, who worshipped the very ground Miss Damaris trod on, was spared living to see that afflicting sight."
Then with a change of tone exasperating—as it was designed to be—to one, at least, of her hearers, she added:
"I'll have that soup ready against Miss Damaris wakes, Mary, in case she should fancy it. Just touch the bell, will you, and I'll bring it up myself. It's not suitable to give either of the girls a chance for prying. They're a deal too curious as it is. And I'm only too pleased to watch with you, turn and turn about, as I told you, whenever you feel to require a rest. Lizzie will have to see to the cooking anyhow—except what's wanted for Miss Damaris. I couldn't put my mind into kitchen work to-night, not if you paid me ever so."
And on large flat feet she moved away towards the back-staircase, leading down to the offices from the far end of the passage, leaving an odour of pastry behind her and of cloves.
"To think of what to-morrow may bring, ah! dear me," she murmured as she went.
During the ten minutes or so which immediately followed Theresa Bilson boxed the compass in respect of sensations, the needle, as may be noted, invariably quivering back to the same point—namely, righteous anger against Damaris. For was not that high-spirited maiden's imperviousness to influence and defiance of authority—her, Theresa's, influence and authority—the mainspring of all this disastrous complication? Theresa found it convenient to believe so, and whip herself up to almost frantic determination in that belief. It was so perfectly clear. All the more clear because her informant, Mary, evidently did not share her belief. Mary's account of to-day's most vexatious transactions betrayed partizanship and prejudice, such as might be expected from an uneducated person, offering—as Theresa assured herself—a pertinent example of the workings of "the servant mind." Nevertheless uneasy suspicion dogged her, a haunting though unformulated dread that other persons—one person above all others—might endorse Mary's prejudices rather than her own, so reasonably based, conviction.
"If only Mr. Patch had been in there'd have been somebody to depend on," the woman told her, recounting the anxious search after vanished Damaris. "But he'd driven into Marychurch of course, starting ever so early because of the parcels he had your orders to call for at the several shops, before meeting the train. And the gardeners had left work on account of the wet; so we'd nobody to send to make enquiries anywhere except Tolling, and that feather-head Alfred, who you can't trust half a minute out of your sight." Here she paused in her narrative and made a move, adroitly driving Theresa Bilson before her out on to the landing, thus putting a greater distance between that tormented spinster and the neighbourhood of Damaris' bed-chamber. Her handsome brown eyes held the light of battle and her colour was high. She straightened a chair, standing against the wall at the stair-head, with a neatly professional hand in passing.
"Mrs. Cooper and I were fairly wild waiting down on the sea-wall with the lantern, thinking of drowning and—worse,—when"—she glanced sharply at her companion and, lowering her eyes altered the position of the chair by a couple of inches—"when Captain Faircloth's boat came up beside the breakwater and he carried Miss Damaris ashore and across the garden."
"Stop"—Theresa broke in—"I do not follow you. Faircloth, Captain Faircloth? You are not, I earnestly hope, speaking of the owner of that low public-house on the island?"
"Yes—him," Mary returned grimly, her eyes still lowered.
"And do you mean me to understand that this young man carried Miss Damaris—actually carried her"—Miss Bilson choked and cleared her throat with a foolish little crowing sound—"carried her all the way into the house—in his arms?"
"Yes, in his arms, Miss. How else would you have had him carry her?—And, as gentle and careful as any woman could, too—into the house and right upstairs here"—pointing along the passage as if veritably beholding the scene once more—"and into her own bedroom."
"How shocking. How extremely improper!"
Theresa beat her fat little hands hysterically together. She credited herself with emotions of the most praiseworthy and purest; ignorant that the picture conjured up before her provoked obscure physical jealousies, obscure stirrings of latent unsatisfied passion. More than ever, surely, did the needle quiver back to that fixed point of most righteous anger.
"Such—such a proceeding cannot have been necessary. It ought not to have been permitted. Why did not Miss Damaris walk?"
"Because she was in a dead faint, and we'd all the trouble in life to bring her round."
"Indeed," she said, and that rather nastily. "I am sorry, but I cannot but believe Miss Damaris might have made an effort to walk—with your assistance and that of Cooper, had you offered it. As I remarked at first, someone is evidently very much to blame. The whole matter must be thoroughly sifted out, of course. I am disappointed, for I had great confidence in you and Cooper—two old servants who might really have been expected to possess some idea of the—the respect due to their master's daughter. What will Sir Charles say when he hears of this objectionable incident?"
"That's just what Mrs. Cooper and I are wondering, Miss," Mary took her up with so much meaning that Miss Bilson inwardly quailed, sensible of having committed a rather egregious blunder. This she made efforts to repair by sheering off hurriedly on another tack.
"Not that I shall trouble Sir Charles with the matter, unless circumstances arise which compel me to do so—as a duty. My great object, of course, is at all times to spare him any domestic annoyance."
She began pulling off her gloves, a new pair and tight. Her hands were moist and the glove-fingers stuck, rendering their removal lengthy and difficult.
"To-morrow I shall have a thorough explanation with Miss Damaris and decide what action it is my duty to take after hearing her version of the events of this afternoon. I should prefer speaking to her to-night—"
"Miss Damaris isn't fit to talk about anything to-night."
Theresa pulled at the right-hand glove—the kid gave with a little shriek, the thumb splitting out. She was in a state of acute indecision. Could she retire from this contest without endangering her authority, without loss of prestige, or must she insist? She had no real wish to hasten to her ex-pupil's bedside. She would be glad to put off doing so, glad to wait. She was conscious of resentment rather than affection. And she felt afraid, unformulated suspicion, unformulated dread, again dogging her. That Damaris was really ill, she did not believe for an instant. Damaris had excellent health. The maids exaggerated. They delighted in making mysteries. Uneducated persons are always absurdly greedy of disaster, lugubriously credulous.—Yes, on the whole she concluded to maintain her original attitude, the attitude of yesterday and this morning; concluded it would be more telling to keep up the fiction of disgrace—because—Theresa did not care to scrutinize her own motives or analyse her own thought too closely. She was afraid, and she was jealous—jealous of Damaris' beauty, of the great love borne her by her father, jealous of the fact that a young man—hadn't she, Theresa, seen the young sea-captain once or twice in the village recently and been fluttered by his notable good looks?—had rescued the girl, and carried her home, carried her up here across the landing and along the familiar schoolroom passage, with its patterned Chinese wall-paper, gently and carefully, in his arms.
And these qualifying terms—gentle and careful—rankled to the point even of physical disturbance, so that Miss Bilson again became guilty of inelegantly choking, and clearing her throat for the second time with a foolish crowing sound.
"I will postpone my interview with Miss Damaris until after breakfast to-morrow," she said, thus leaving Mary Fisher virtually, if not admittedly, master of the field.
But long before breakfast time, in the grey and mournful autumn morning, Patch rattled the dog-cart the seven miles into Stourmouth, as fast as the black horse could travel, to fetch Damaris' old friend, the retired Indian Civil surgeon, Dr. McCabe. For, coming to herself, in the intervals of distracted fever dreams, she had asked for him, going back by instinct to the comfort of his care of her in childish illnesses long ago. Since she was ill enough, so Mary said, to need a doctor, let it be him.
"Not Mr. Cripps out of the village, or Dr. Risdon from Marychurch. I won't see them. I will not see anyone from near here. Keep them away from me," she commanded. "I know Miss Bilson will try to send for one or the other. But I won't see either. Promise you'll keep them away."
When, after his visit, Theresa Bilson, considerably flustered and offended, found McCabe breakfasting in the dining-room and offered profuse apologies for the inconvenience to which he must have been put by so early and unnecessary a call, the tender-hearted and garrulous, but choleric Irishman cut her uncommonly short.
"And would you be supposing then, that if the dear blessed child should be desirous of consulting me I wouldn't have rejoiced to come to her a thousand times as early and from ten thousand times as far?" he enquired, between large mouthfuls of kidney and fried bacon. "The scheming little pudding-faced governess creature, with a cherry nose and an envious eye to her"—he commented to himself.
"But you do not apprehend anything serious?" Theresa said stiffly—"Merely a slight chill?"
"With a temperature dancing up and down like a mad thing between a hundred and one and a hundred and three? I'm dashed if I like the looks of her at all, at all, Miss Bilson; and I am well acquainted with her constitution and her temperament. She's as delicate a piece of feminine mechanism as it's ever been my fortune to handle, and has been so from a child. Mind and body so finely interwoven that you can't touch the one without affecting the other—that is where danger comes in.—And I am glad to find she has so competent a nurse as Mary Fisher—a wholesome woman and one to put faith in. I have given my full instructions to her."
"But I"—Theresa began fussily, her face crimson.
"Oh! I don't doubt you're devotion itself; only my first consideration is my patient, and so I make free to use my own judgment in the selection of my assistants. No disrespect to you, my dear lady. You are at home in more intellectual spheres than that of the sick-room. And now," he wiped his mouth with his napkin, twinkling at her over the top of it with small blue-grey eyes, at once merry, faithful, and cunning—"I'll be bidding you good-bye till the evening. I have told Mary Fisher I'll be glad to sleep here to-night. And I'll despatch a telegram to Sir Charles on my way through the village."
"Sir Charles?" Theresa cried.
"Yes," he answered her. "I find the darling girl's illness as serious as that."
The deepest and most abiding demand of all sentient creatures, strong and weak alike, is for safety, or, that being unattainable, for a sense of safety, an illusion even of safety.
This, so universal demand, dictated, in Damaris' case, her prayer for Dr. McCabe's attendance. He belonged to the safeties of her childhood, to the securely guarded, and semi-regal state—as, looking back, she recalled it—of the years when her father held the appointment of Chief Commissioner at Bhutpur. Dr. McCabe was conversant with all that; the sole person available, at this juncture, who had lot or part in it. And, as she had foreseen—when drifting down the tide-river in the rain and darkness—once the supporting tension of Faircloth's presence removed, chaos would close in on her. It only waited due opportunity. That granted, as a tempest-driven sea it would submerge her. In the welter of the present, she clutched at the high dignities and distinctions of the past as at a lifebelt. Not vulgarly, in a spirit of self-aggrandizement; but in the simple interests of self-preservation, as a means of keeping endangered sanity afloat. For the distinctions and dignities of that period were real too, just as uncontrovertible a contribution to her knowledge of men and of things, just as vital an element in her experience, as chaos let loose on her now. The one in no degree invalidated the truth or actuality of the other.
But to keep this in mind, to remember it all the time, while imagination galloped with fever brought on by chill and exposure, and reason wandered, losing touch with plain commonsense through the moral shock she had sustained, was difficult to the point of impossibility. She needed a witness, visible and material, to the fact of those former happier conditions; and found it, quaintly enough, in the untidy person and humorous, quarrelsome, brick-dust coloured face—as much of the said face, that is, as was discoverable under the thick stiff growth of sandy hair surrounding and invading it—of the Irish doctor, as he sat by her bed, ministered to and soothed her with reverent and whimsical delicacy.
As long as he was there, her room retained its normal, pleasant and dainty aspect. All Damaris' little personal effects and treasures adorning dressing and writing-tables, the photographs and ornaments upon the mantelshelf, her books, the prints and pictures upon the walls—even the white dimity curtains and covers, trellised with small faded pink and blue roses—seemed to smile upon her, kindly and confiding. They wanted to be nice, to console and encourage her—McCabe holding them in place and in active good-will towards her, somehow, with his large freckled, hairy-backed hands. But let him go from the room, let him leave her, and they turned wicked, behaving as they had behaved throughout the past rather dreadful night and adding to the general chaos by tormenting tricks and distortions of their own.
The beloved photographs of her father, in particular, were cruel. They grew inordinately large, stepped out of their frames, and stalked to and fro in troops and companies. The charcoal drawing of him—done last year by that fine artist, James Colthurst, as a study for the portrait he was to paint—hanging between the two western windows, at right angles to her bed where she could always see it, proved the worst offender. It did not take the floor, it is true, but remained in its frame upon the wall. Yet it too came alive, and looked full at her, compelling her attention, dominating, commanding her; while, slowly, deliberately it changed, the features slightly losing their accentuation, growing youthful, softer in outline, the long drooping moustache giving place to a close-cut beard. The eyes alone stayed the same, steady, luminous, a living silence in them at once formidable and strangely sad. Finally—and this the poor child found indescribably agitating and even horrible—their silence was broken by a question. For they asked what she, Damaris, meant to say, meant to do, when he—her father, the all-powerful Commissioner Sahib of her babyhood's faith and devotion—came home here, came back?
Yet whose eyes, after all, were they which thus asked? Was it not, rather the younger man, the bearded one, who claimed, and of right, an answer to that question? And upon Damaris it now dawned that these two, distinct yet interchangeable personalities—imprisoned, as by some evil magic in one picture—were in opposition, in violent and impious conflict, which conflict she was called upon, yet was powerless, to avert or to assuage.
Not once but many times—since the transformation was persistently recurrent—the girl turned her face to the wall to gain relief from the sight of it and the demand it so fearfully embodied, pressing her dry lips together lest any word should escape them. For the whole matter, as she understood it was secret, sacred too as it was agonizing. No one must guess what lay at the root of her present suffering—not even comfortable devoted Mary, nor that invaluable lifebelt, Dr. McCabe. She held the honour of both those conflicting interchangeable personalities in her hands; and, whether she were strong enough to adjust their differences or not, she must in no wise betray either of them. The latent motherhood in her cried out to protect and to shield them both, to spare them both. For in this stage of the affair, while the hallucinations of deadly fever—in a sense mercifully—confused her, its grosser aspects did not present themselves to her mind. She wandered through mazes, painful enough to tread; but far removed from the ugliness of vulgar scandal. That her sacred secret, for instance, might be no more than asecret de Polichinellesuspected by many, did not, so far, occur to her.
Believing it to be her exclusive property, therefore, she, inspired by tender cunning, strove manfully to keep it so. To that end she made play with the purely physical miseries of her indisposition.—With shivering fits and scorching flushes, cold aching limbs and burning, aching head. With the manifold distractions of errant blood which, leaving her heart empty as a turned-down glass, drummed in her ears and throbbed behind her eyeballs. These discomforts were severely real enough, in all conscience, to excuse her for being self-occupied and a trifle selfish; to justify a blank refusal to receive Theresa Bilson, or attempt to retail and discuss the events of yesterday. All she craved was quiet, to be left alone, to lie silent in the quiet light of the covered grey day.
In the earlier hours of it, silver rain showers travelled across the sea to spend themselves, tearfully, against the panes of her bedroom windows. But towards evening the cloud lifted, revealing a watery sunset, spread in timid reds and yellows behind Stone Horse Head and the curving coast-line beyond, away to Stourmouth and Barryport. The faint tentative colours struck in long glinting shafts between the trunks and branches of the stone pines and Scotch firs in the so-called Wilderness—a strip of uncultivated land within the confines of the grounds dividing the gardens from the open Warren to the West—and gleamed in at the windows, faintly dyeing the dimity hangings and embroidered linen counterpane of Damaris' bed.
Throughout the afternoon she had been less restless. So that Mary Fisher, judging her to be fairly asleep, some five minutes earlier had folded her needlework together, and, leaving the chair where she sat sewing, went softly from the room.
But that brightening of sunset disturbed Damaris, bringing her slowly awake. For a time she lay watching, though but half consciously the tinted radiance as—the trees now stirred by a little wind drawing out of the sunset—it shifted and flitted over the white surfaces. At first it pleased her idle fancy. But presently distressed her, as too thin, too chill, too restlessly unsubstantial, the veriest chippering ghost of colour and of light. It affected her with a desolating sadness as of failure; of great designs richly attempted but petering out into a pitiful nothingness; of love which aped and mimicked, being drained of all purpose and splendour of hot blood; of partings whose sorrow had lost its savour, yet which masqueraded in showy crape for a heart-break long grown stale and obsolete.
Her temperature rushed up; and she threw off the bedclothes, raising herself on her elbow, while the shafts of thin brightness wavered fitfully. Through them she saw the photographs of her father step out of their frames again, and growing very tall and spare, stalk to and fro. Other figures joined them—those of women. Her poor dear Nannie, in the plain quaker-grey cotton gown and black silk apron she used to wear, even through the breathless hot-weather days, at the Sultan-i-bagh long ago. And Henrietta Pereira, too, composed and delicately sprightly, arrayed in full flounced muslins and fine laces with an exquisiteness of high feminine grace and refinement which had enthralled her baby soul and senses, and, which held her captive by their charm even yet. A handsome, high-coloured full-breasted, Eurasian girl, whom she but dimly recollected, was there as well. And with these another—carrying very certainly no hint of things oriental about her—an English woman and of the people, in dull homely clothing, grave of aspect and of bearing; yet behind whose statuesque and sternly patient beauty a great flame seemed to quiver, offering sharp enough contrast to the frail glintings of the rain-washed sunset amid which she, just now, moved.
At sight of the last comer, Damaris started up, tense with wonder and excitement, since she knew—somehow—this final visitant belonged not to the past so much as to the present, that her power was unexhausted and would go forward to the shaping of the coming years. Which knowledge drew confirmation from what immediately followed. For, as by almost imperceptible degrees the brightness faded in the west, the figures, so mysteriously peopling the room, faded out also, until only the woman in homely garments was left. By her side stood the charcoal drawing of Sir Charles Verity from off the wall—or seemed to do so, for almost at once, Damaris saw that dreaded interchange of personality again take place. Saw the strongly marked features soften in outline, the face grow bearded yet younger by full thirty years.
Both the woman and the young man looked searchingly at her; and in the eyes of both she read the same question—what did she mean to do, what to say, when her father, the object of her adoration, came home to her, came back to Deadham Hard?
"I will do right," she cried out loud to them in answer, "Only trust me. I am so tired and it is all so difficult to believe and to understand. But I am trying to understand. I shall understand, if you will give me time and not hurry me. And, when I understand, indeed, indeed, you may trust me, whatever it costs, to do right."
Just then Mary opened the door, entering quickly, and behind her came Dr. McCabe, to find Damaris talking, talking wildly, sitting up, parched and vivid with fever, in the disordered bed.
Cross-country connections by rail were not easy to make, with the consequence that Sir Charles Verity,—Hordle, gun-cases, bags and portmanteaux, in attendance—did not reach The Hard until close upon midnight.
Hearing the brougham at last drive up, Theresa Bilson felt rapturously fluttered. Her course had been notably empty of situations and of adventure; drama, as in the case of so many ladies of her profession—the pages of fiction notwithstanding—conspicuously cold-shouldering and giving her the go-by. Now, drama, and that of richest quality might perhaps—for she admitted the existence of awkward conjunctions—be said to batter at her door. She thought of the Miss Minetts, her ever-willing audience. She thought also—as so frequently during the last, in some respects, extremely unsatisfactory twenty-four hours—of Mr. Rochester and of Jane Eyre. Not that she ranged herself with Jane socially or as to scholastic attainments. In both these, as in natural refinement, propriety and niceness of ideas, she reckoned herself easily to surpass that much canvassed heroine. The flavour of the evangelical charity-school adhered—incontestably it adhered, and that to Jane's disadvantage. No extravagance of Protestantism or of applied philanthropy, thank heaven, clouded Theresa's early record. The genius of Tractarianism had rocked her cradle, and subsequently ruled her studies with a narrowly complacent pedantry all its own. Nevertheless in moments of expansion, such as the present, she felt the parallel between her own case and that of Jane did, in certain directions, romantically hold. Fortified by thought of the Miss Minetts' agitated interest in all which might befall her, she indulged in imaginary conversations with that great proconsul, her employer—the theme of which, purged of lyrical redundancies, reduced itself to the somewhat crude announcement that "your daughter, yes, may, alas, not impossibly be taken from you; but I, Theresa, still remain."
When, however, a summons to the presence of the said employer actually reached her, the bounce born of imaginary conversations, showed a tendency, as is its habit, basely to desert her and soak clean away. She had promised herself a little scene, full of respectful solicitude, of sympathy discreetly offered and graciously accepted, a drawing together through the workings of mutual anxiety leading on to closer intercourse, her own breast, to put it pictorially, that on which the stricken parent should eventually and gratefully lean. But in all this she was disappointed, for Sir Charles did not linger over preliminaries. He came straight and unceremoniously to the point; and that with so cold and lofty a manner that, although flutterings remained, they parted company with all and any emotions even remotely allied to rapture.
Charles Verity stood motionless before the fire-place in the long sitting-room. He still wore a heavy frieze travelling coat, the fronts of it hanging open. His shoulders were a trifle humped up and his head bent, as he looked down at the black and buff of the tiger skin at his feet. When Theresa approached with her jerky consequential little walk—pinkly self-conscious behind her gold-rimmed glasses—he glanced at her, revealing a fiercely careworn countenance, but made no movement to shake hands with or otherwise greet her. This omission she hardly noticed, already growing abject before his magnificence—for thus did his appearance impress her—which, while claiming her enthusiastic admiration, enjoined humility rather than the sentimental expansions in which her imaginary conversations had so conspicuously abounded.
"I have seen Dr. McCabe," he began. "His report of Damaris' condition is very far from reassuring. He tells me her illness presents peculiar symptoms, and is grave out of all proportion to its apparent cause. This makes me extremely uneasy. It is impossible to question her at present. She must be spared all exertion and agitation. I have not attempted to see her yet."
He paused, while anger towards her ex-pupil waxed warm in Theresa once again. For the pause was eloquent, as his voice had been when speaking about his daughter, of a depth of underlying tenderness which filled his hearer with envy.
"I must therefore ask you, Miss Bilson," he presently went on, "to give me a detailed account of all that took place yesterday. It is important I should know exactly what occurred."
Whereat Theresa, perceiving pitfalls alike in statement and in suppression of fact, hesitated and gobbled to the near neighbourhood of positive incoherence, while admitting, and trying to avoid admitting, how inconveniently ignorant of precise details she herself was.
"Perhaps I erred in not more firmly insisting upon an immediate enquiry," she said. "But, at the time, alarm appeared so totally uncalled for. I assumed, from what was told me, and from my knowledge of the strength of Damaris' constitution, that a night's rest would fully restore her to her usual robust state of health, and so deferred my enquiry. The servants were excited and upset, so I felt their account might be misleading—all they said was so confused, so far from explicit. My position was most difficult, Sir Charles," she assured him and incidentally, also, assured herself. "I encountered most trying opposition, which made me feel it would be wiser to wait until this morning. By then, I hoped, the maids would have had time to recollect themselves and recollect what is becoming towards their superiors in the way of obedience and respect."
Charles Verity threw back his head with a movement of impatience, and looked down at her from under his eyelids—in effect weary and a little insolent.
"We seem to be at cross purposes, Miss Bilson," he said. "You do not, I think quite follow my question. I did not ask for the servants' account of the events of yesterday—whatever those events may have been—but for your own."
"Ah! it is so unfortunate, so exceedingly unfortunate," Theresa brokeout, literally wringing her hands, "but a contingency, an accident, whichI could not possibly have foreseen—I cannot but blame Damaris, SirCharles"—
"Indeed?" he said.
"No, truly I cannot but blame her for wilfulness. If she had consented—as I so affectionately urged—to join the choir treat to Harchester, this painful incident would have been spared us."
"Am I to understand that you went to Harchester, leaving my daughter here alone?"
"Her going would have given so much pleasure in the parish," Theresa pursued, dodging the question with the ingenuity of one who scents mortal danger. "Her refusal would, I knew, cause sincere disappointment. I could not bring myself to accentuate that disappointment. Not that I, of course, am of any importance save as coming from this house, as—as—in some degree your delegate, Sir Charles."
"Indeed?" he said.
"Yes, indeed," Theresa almost hysterically repeated.
For here—if anywhere—was her chance, as she recognized. Never again might she be thus near to him, alone with him—the normal routine made it wholly improbable.—And at midnight too. For the unaccustomed lateness of the hour undoubtedly added to her ferment, provoking in her obscure and novel hopes and hungers. Hence she blindly and—her action viewed from a certain angle—quite heroically precipitated herself. Heroically, because the odds were hopelessly adverse, her equipment, whether of natural or artificial, being so conspicuously slender. Her attempt had no backing in play of feature, felicity of gesture, grace of diction. The commonest little actress that ever daubed her skin with grease-paint, would have the advantage of Theresa in the thousand and one arts by which, from everlasting, woman has limed twigs for the catching of man. Her very virtues—respectability, learning, all the proprieties of her narrowly virtuous little life—counted for so much against her in the present supreme moment of her self-invented romance.
"You hardly, I dare say," she pursued—"how should you after the commanding positions you have occupied?—appreciate the feelings of the inhabitants of this quiet country parish towards you. But they have a lively sense, believe me, of the honour you confer upon them, all and severally—I am speaking of the educated classes in particular, of course—by residing among them. They admire and reverence you so much, so genuinely; and they have extended great kindness to me as a member of your household. How can I be indifferent to it? I am thankful, Sir Charles, I am grateful—the more so that I have the happiness of knowing I owe the consideration with which I am treated, in Deadham, entirely to you.—Yes, yes," she cried in rising exaltation, "I do not deny that I went to Harchester yesterday—went—Dr. Horniblow thus expressed it when inviting me—'as representing The Hard.' I was away when Damaris made this ill-judged excursion across the river to the Bar. Had she confided her intention to me, I should have used my authority and forbade her. But recently we have not been, I grieve to say, on altogether satisfactory terms, and our parting yesterday was constrained, I am afraid."
Theresa blushed and swallowed. Fortunately her sense of humour was limited; but, even so, she could not but be aware of a dangerous decline. Not only of bathos, but of vulgar bathos, from which gentility revolted, must she be the exponent, thanks to Damaris' indiscretion!
"You require me to give you the details, Sir Charles," she resumed, "and although it is both embarrassing and repugnant to me to do so, I obey. I fear Damaris so far forgot herself—forgot I mean what is due to her age and position—as to remove her shoes and stockings and paddle in the sea—a most unsuitable and childish occupation. While she was thus engaged her things—her shoes and stockings—appear to have been stolen. In any case she was unable to find them when tired of the amusement she came up on to the beach. Moreover she was caught in the rain. And I deeply regret to tell you—but I merely repeat what I learned from Mary Fisher and Mrs. Cooper when I returned—it was not till after dark, when the maids had become so alarmed that they despatched Tolling and Alfred to search for her, that Damaris landed from a boat at the breakwater, having been brought down the river—by—by"—
Throughout the earlier portion of her recital Charles Verity stood in the same place and same attitude staring down at the tiger skin. Twice or thrice only he raised his eyes, looking at the speaker with a flash of arrogant interrogation.
Upon one, even but moderately, versed in the secular arts of twig-liming, such flashes would have acted as an effective warning and deterrent. Not so upon Theresa. She barely noticed them, as blindly heroic, she pounded along leading her piteous forlorn hope. Her chance—her unique chance, in nowise to be missed—and, still more, those obscure hungers, fed by the excitement of this midnighttête-à-tête,rushed her forward upon the abyss; while at every sputtering sentence, whether of adulation, misplaced prudery, or thinly veiled animosity towards Damaris, she became more tedious, more frankly intolerable and ridiculous to him whose favour she so desperately sought. Under less anxious circumstances Charles Verity might have been contemptuously amused at this exhibition of futile ardour. Now it exasperated him. Yet he waited, in rather cruel patience. Presently he would demolish her, if to do so appeared worth the trouble. Meanwhile she should have her say, since incidentally he might learn something from it bearing upon the cause of Damaris' illness.
But now, when, at the climax of her narrative, Theresa—seized by a spasm of retrospective resentment and jealousy, the picture of the young man carrying the girl tenderly in his arms across the dusky lawns arising before her—choked and her voice cracked up into a bat-like squeaking, Charles Verity's self-imposed forbearance ran dry.
"I must remind you that neither my time nor capacity of listening are inexhaustible, Miss Bilson," he said to her. "May I ask you to be so good as to come to the point. By whom was Damaris rescued and brought home last night?"
"Ah! that is what I so deeply regret," Theresa quavered, still obstinately dense and struggling with the after convulsion of her choke. "I felt so shocked and annoyed on your account, Sir Charles, when the maids told me, knowing how you would disapprove such a—such an incident in connection with Damaris.—She was brought home, carried"—she paused—"carried indoors by the owner of that objectionable public-house on the island. He holds some position in the Mercantile Marine, I believe. I have seen him recently once or twice myself in the village—his name is Faircloth."
Theresa pursed up her lips as she finished speaking. The glasses of her gold pince-nez seemed to gleam aggressively in the lamp-light. The backs of the leather-bound volumes in the many book-cases gleamed also, but unaggressively, with the mellow sheen—as might fancifully be figured—of the ripe and tolerant wisdom their pages enshrined. The pearl-grey porcelain company of Chinese monsters, saints and godlings, ranged above them placid, mysteriously smiling, gleamed as well.
For a time, silence, along with these various gleamings, sensibly, even a little uncannily, held possession of the room. Then Charles Verity moved, stiffly, and for once awkwardly, all of a piece. Backed against the mantelshelf, throwing his right arm out along it sharply and heavily—careless of the safety of clock and of ornaments—as though overtaken by sudden weakness and seeking support.
"Faircloth? Of course, his name is Faircloth." he repeated absently."Yes, of course."
But whatever the nature of the weakness assailing him, it soon, apparently, passed. He stood upright, his face, perhaps, a shade more colourless and lean, but in expression fully as arrogant and formidably calm as before.
"Very well, Miss Bilson," he began. "You have now given me all the information I require, so I need detain you no longer—save to say this.—You will, if you please, consider your engagement as my daughter's companion terminated, concluded from to-night. You are free to make such arrangements as may suit you; and you will, I trust, pardon my adding that I shall be obliged by your making them without undue delay."
"You do not mean," Theresa broke out, after an interval of speechless amazement—"Sir Charles, you cannot mean that you dismiss me—that I am to leave The Hard—to—to go away?"
"I mean that I have no further occasion for your services."
Theresa waved her arms as though playing some eccentric game of ball.
"You forget the servants, the conduct of the house, Damaris' need of a chaperon, her still unfinished education—All are dependent upon me."
"Hardly dependent," he answered. "These things, I have reason to think, can safely be trusted to other hands, or be equally safely be left to take care of themselves."
"But why do you repudiate me?" she cried again, rushing upon her fate in the bitterness of her distraction. "What have I done to deserve such harshness and humiliation?"
"I gave the most precious of my possessions—Damaris—into your keeping, and—and—well—we see the result. Is it not written large enough, in all conscience, for the most illiterate to read?—So you must depart, my dear Miss Bilson, and for everyone's sake, the sooner the better. There can be no further discussion of the matter. Pray accept the fact that our interview is closed."
But Theresa, now sensible that her chance was in act of being finally ravished away from her, fell—or rose—perhaps more truly the latter—into an extraordinary sincerity and primitiveness of emotion. She cast aside nothing less than her whole personal legend, cast aside every tradition and influence hitherto so strictly governing her conduct and her thought. Unluckily the physical envelope could not so readily be got rid of. Matter retained its original mould, and that one neither seductive nor poetic.
She went down upon her fat little knees, held her fat little hands aloft as in an impassioned spontaneity of worship.
"Sir Charles," she prayed, while tears running down her full cheeks splashed upon her protuberant bosom—"Sir Charles"—
He looked at the funny, tubby, jaunty, would-be smart, kneeling figure.
"Oh! you inconceivably foolish woman," he said and turned away.
Did more than that—walked out into the hall and to his own rooms, opening off the corridor. In the offices a bell tinkled. Theresa scrambled on to her feet, just as Hordle, in response to its summons, arrived at the sitting-room door.
"Did you ring, Miss?" he asked grudgingly. Less than ever was she in favour with the servants' hall to-night.
Past intelligible utterance, Theresa merely shook her head in reply. Made a return upon herself—began to instruct him to put out the lamps in the room. Remembered that now and henceforth the right to give orders in this house was no longer hers; and broke into sobbing, the sound of which her handkerchief pressed against her mouth quite failed to stifle.
About an hour later, having bathed and changed, Sir Charles Verity made his way upstairs. Upon the landing Dr. McCabe met him.
"Better," he said, "thank the heavenly powers, decidedly better.Temperature appreciably lower, and the pulse more even. Oh! we're on theroad very handsomely to get top dog of the devil this bout, believe me,Sir Charles."
"Then go to bed, my dear fellow," the other answered. "I will take over the rest of the watch for you. You need not be afraid. I can be an admirable sick-nurse on occasion. And by the way, McCabe, something has come to my knowledge which in my opinion throws considerable light upon the symptoms that have puzzled you. Probably I shall be more sure of my facts before morning. I will explain to you later, if it should seem likely to be helpful to you in your treatment of the case. Just now, as I see it, the matter lies exclusively between me"—he smiled looking at his companion full and steadily—"between me"—he repeated, "and my only child."
All which upon the face of it might, surely, be voted encouraging enough. Yet:
"Should there be any that doubt the veritable existence of hell fire," the doctor told himself, as he subsequently and thankfully pulled on his night-shirt, "to recover them, and in double quick time, of their heresy let 'em but look in my friend Verity's eyes."—And he rounded off the sentence with an oath.