"Very good, Sir Charles."

And during this conversation, Felicia felt keenly distressed and perplexed. It made her miserable to think evil of anyone--particularly an old and trusted servant. But from the moment of her arrival Hordle's manner had seemed so very strange. Of course it was horrid even to suspect such a thing; but was it possible that he over-indulged sometimes, that he, in plain English, drank? Poor dear Charles--if he knew it, what an additional worry! It really was too deplorable.--Anyway she could alleviate his worries to a certain extent by carrying Theresa off. She would do so at once.--Was there an evening train from Stourmouth, which stopped at Paulton Halt? Well--if there wasn't she must get out at Marychurch, and drive from there. She only trusted she would be in time to dress for dinner. Harriet was such a stickler for etiquette.

From all which it may be deduced that the confessions, made to Miss Verity to-day, had this in common with those habitually heard by her--that the point of the story had been rather carefully left out.

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH DAMARIS RECEIVES INFORMATION OF THE LOST SHOES AND STOCKINGS--a.s.sUMPTION OF THE G.o.d-HEAD

As Darcy Faircloth prophesied, the wild weather lasted throughout that week. Then, the rain having rained itself out, the wind backed and the skies cleared. But all to a different mode and rhythm. A cold white sun shone out of a cold blue sky, diapered, to the north above the indigo and umber moorland and forest, with perspectives of tenuous silken-white cloud. Land and sky were alike washed clean, to a starkness and nakedness calling for warm clothing out of doors, and well-stoked fires within.

At the beginning of the next week, invited by that thin glinting sunshine--beneath which the sea still ran high, in long, hollow-backed waves, brokenly foam-capped and swirling--Damaris came forth from her retreat, sufficiently convalescent to take up the ordinary routine of life again. But this, also, to a changed mode and rhythm, having its source in causes more recondite and subtle than any matter of fair or foul weather.

To begin with she had, in the past week, crossed a certain bridge there is no going back over for whoso, of her s.e.x, is handicapped or favoured--in mid-nineteenth century the handicap rather than the favour counted even more heavily than it does to-day, though even to-day, as some of us know to our cost, it still counts not a little!--by possession of rarer intelligence, more lively moral and spiritual perceptions, than those possessed by the great average of her countrymen or countrywomen.

Damaris' crossing of that bridge--to carry on the figure--affected her thought of, and relation to everyone and everything with which she now came in contact. She had crossed other bridges on her eighteen years'

journey from infancy upwards; but, compared with this last, they had been but airy fantastic structures, fashioned of hardly more substantial stuff than dreams are made of.--Thus, anyhow, it appeared to her as she lay resting in her pink-and-white curtained bed, watching the loose rose-sprays tremble against the rain-spattered window-panes.--For this last bridge was built of the living stones of fact, of deeds actually done; and, just because it was so built, for one of her perceptions and temperament, no recrossing of it could be possible.

So much to begin with.--To go on with, even before Dr. McCabe granted her permission to emerge from retirement, all manner of practical matters claimed her attention; and that not unwholesomely, as it proved in the sequel. For with the incontinent vanishing of Theresa Bilson into s.p.a.ce, or,--more accurately--into the very comfortable lodgings provided for her by Miss Verity in Stourmouth, the mantle of the ex-governess-companion's domestic responsibilities automatically descended upon her ex-pupil. The said vanishing was reported to Damaris by Mary, on the day subsequent to its occurrence, not without signs of hardly repressed jubilation. For "Egypt," in this case represented by the Deadham Hard servants' hall, was unfeignedly "glad at her departing."

"A good riddance, I call it--and we all know the rest of that saying,"

Mrs. Cooper remarked to an audience of Hordle and Mary Fisher, reinforced by the Napoleonic Patch and his wife--who happened to have looked in from the stables after supper--some freedom of speech being permissible, thanks to the under-servants' relegation to the kitchen.

"I never could see she was any cla.s.s myself. But the airs and graces she'd give herself! You'll never persuade me she wasn't sweet on the master. That was at the back of all her dressings up, and flouncings and fidgetings. The impidence of it!--You may well say so, Mrs. Patch. But the conceit of some people pa.s.ses understanding. To be Lady Verity, if you please, that was what she was after. To my dying day I shall believe it. Don't tell me!"

Mary's announcement of the event was couched in sober terms, shorn of such fine flowers of suggestion and comment. Yet it breathed an unmistakable satisfaction, which, to Damaris' contrition, found instant echo in her own heart. She ought, she knew, to feel distressed at poor Theresa's vanishing--only she didn't and couldn't. As an inherent consequence of the afore-chronicled bridge-crossing, Theresa was more than ever out of the picture. To listen to her chatterings, to evade her questionings would, under existing circ.u.mstances, amount to a daily trial from which the young girl felt thankful to escape. For Damaris entertained a conviction the circ.u.mstances in question would call for fort.i.tude and resource of an order unknown, alike in their sternness and their liberality of idea, to Theresa's narrowly High Anglican and academic standards of thought and conduct. She therefore ascertained from her informant that Miss Verity had been as actively instrumental in the vanishing--had, to be explicit, taken "Miss Bilson, and all her luggage (such a collection!) except two disgraceful old tin boxes which were to be forwarded by the carrier, away with her in her own Marychurch fly."--And at this Damaris left the business willingly enough, secure that if tender-hearted Aunt Felicia was party to the removal, it would very surely be effected with due regard to appearances and as slight damage to "feelings" as could well be.

Later Sir Charles referred briefly to the subject, adding:

"When you require another lady-in-waiting we will choose her ourselves, I think, rather than accept a nominee of my sister Felicia's. She is certain to have some more or less unsuitable and incapable person on hand, upon whom she ardently desires to confer benefits."

"But must I have another lady-in-waiting?" Damaris meaningly and pleadingly asked.

Charles Verity drew his hand down slowly over his flowing moustache, and smiled at her in tender amus.e.m.e.nt, as she sat up in a much lace and ribbon befrilled jacket, her hair hanging down in a heavy plait on either side the white column of her warmly white throat. Her face was refined to a transparency of colouring, even as it seemed of texture, from confinement to the house and from la.s.situde following upon fever, which, while he recognized its loveliness, caused him a pretty sharp pang. Still she looked content, as he told himself. Her glance was frank and calm, without suggestion of lurking anxiety.

Nor was she unoccupied and brooding--witness the counterpane strewn with books, with b.a.l.l.s of wool, a sock in leisurely process of knitting, and, in a hollow of it, Mustapha, the brindled cat, luxuriously sleeping curled round against her feet.

"Heaven knows I've no special craving your lady-in-waiting should find a speedy successor," he said. "But to do without one altogether might appear a rather daring experiment. Your aunts would be loud in protest."

"What matters isn't the aunts, is it, but ourselves?" Damaris quite gaily took him up.

"But wouldn't you be lonely, my dear, and would you not find it burdensome to run the house yourself?"

"No--no," she cried. "Not one bit. Anyway let me try, Commissioner Sahib. Let us be by ourselves together--beautifully by ourselves, for a time at least."

"So be it then," Charles Verity said.

And perhaps, although hardly acknowledged, in the mind of each the same consideration operated. For there remained a thing still to be done before the new order could be reckoned as fully initiated, still more fully established,--a thing which, as each knew, could be best done without witnesses; a thing which both intended should very surely be done, yet concerning which neither proposed to speak until the hour of accomplishment actually struck.

That hour, in point of fact, struck sooner than Damaris antic.i.p.ated, the sound and sight of it reaching her without prelude or opportunity of preparation. For early in the afternoon of the second day she spent downstairs, as, sitting at the writing table in the long drawing-room, she raised her eyes from contemplation of the house-keeping books spread out before her, she saw her father walking slowly up from the sea-wall across the lawn. And seeing him, for the moment, her mind carried back to that miracle of interchangeable personalities so distressingly haunting her at the beginning of her illness, when James Colthurst's charcoal sketch of her father played cruel juggler's tricks upon her. For beside him now walked a man so strangely resembling him in height, in bearing and in build that, but for the difference of clothing and the bearded face, it might be himself had the clock of his life been set back by thirty years.

Damaris' first instinct was of flight. Just as when, out on the Bar with her cousin, Tom Verity, now nearly a month ago, overcome by a foreboding of far-reaching danger she had--to the subsequent bitter wounding of her self-respect and pride--shown the white feather, ignominiously turned tail and run away, was she tempted to run away now.

For it seemed too much. It came too close, laying rough hands not only upon the deepest of her love and reverence for her father, but upon that still mysterious depth of her own nature, namely her apprehension of pa.s.sion and of s.e.x. A sacred shame, an awe as at the commission of some covert act of impiety, overcame her as she looked at the two men walking, side by side, across the moist vividly green carpet of turf in the chill white sunshine, the plain of an uneasy grey sea behind them. She wanted to hide herself, to close eyes and ears against further knowledge.

Yes--it came too close; and at the same time made her feel, as never before, isolated and desolate--as though a great gulf yawned between her and what she had always counted pre-eminently her own, most securely her property because most beloved.

She had spoken valiantly on Faircloth's behalf, had generously acted as his advocate; yet now, beholding him thus in open converse with her father, the wings of love were scorched by the flame of jealousy--not so much of the young man himself, as of a past which he stood for and in which she had no part. Therefore to run--yes, run and hide from further knowledge, further experience and revelation, to claim the privileges, since she was called on to endure the smart, of isolation.--Yet to run, as she almost directly began to reason, was not only cowardly but useless. Fact remains fact, and if she refused to accept it, range herself in line with it to-day, she in nowise negatived but merely postponed the event. If not to-day, then to-morrow she was bound to empty the cup. And she laughed at the specious half-truth which had appeared so splendid and exhilarating a discovery--the half-truth that nothing is really inevitable unless you yourself will it to be so. For this was inevitable, sooner or later unescapable, fight against it, fly from it as she might.

Therefore she must stay, whether she liked it or not--stay, because to do otherwise was purposeless, because she couldn't help herself, because there was nowhere to run to, in short--

She heard footsteps upon the flags outside the garden door, speech, calm and restrained, of which she could not distinguish the import.

Mechanically Damaris gathered the scattered house-keeping books lying before her upon the table--baker's, butcher's, grocer's, corn-chandler's, coal-merchant's--into a tight little heap; and, folding her hands on the top of them, prayed simply, almost wordlessly, for courage to hold the balance even, to seek not her own good but the good of those two others, to do right. Then she waited.

The door opened, closed, and, after a minute's pause, one of the two men--Damaris did not know which, she could not bring herself to look--coming from between the stumpy pillars walked towards her down the half-length of the room; and bent over her, resting one hand on the back of her chair, the other on the leather inlay of the writing-table just beside the little pile of house-books.

The hand was young, sunburnt, well-shaped, the finger nails well kept.

Across the back of it a small-bodied, wide-winged sea-bird, in apparent act of flight, and the letters D.V.F. were tattooed in blue and crimson.

A gold bangle, the surface of it dented in places and engraved with j.a.panese characters, encircled the fine lean wrist. These Damaris saw, and they worked upon her strangely, awakening an emotion of almost painful tenderness, as at sight of decorations pathetically fond, playfully child-like and ingenuous. While, as he bent over her, she also became aware of a freshness, a salt sweetness as of the ocean and the great vacant s.p.a.ces where all the winds of the world blow keen and free.

"Sir Charles wrote to me," Faircloth said a little huskily. "He told me I might come and see you again and talk to you, and bid you good-bye before I go to sea. And I should have been here sooner, but that I was away at Southampton Docks, and the letter only reached me this morning. I telegraphed and started on at once. And he--Sir Charles--walked out over the warren to meet me, and brought me up here right to the door. And on the way we talked a little,--if he chose he could make the very stones speak, I think--and he said one or two things for which--I--well--I thank first Almighty G.o.d, and next to G.o.d, you--Damaris"--

This last imperatively.

"You did ask for me? You did wish to have me come to you?"

"Yes, I did wish it," she answered. "But I never knew how much until now, when he has brought you. For that is the right, the beautiful, safe way of having you come to me and to this house."

Yet, as she spoke, she lightly laid her hand over the tattooed image of the flying sea-bird, concealing it, for it moved her to the point of active suffering in its quaint prettiness fixed thus indelibly up in the warm live flesh.

At the touch of her hand Faircloth drew in his breath sharply, seeming to wince. Then, at last, Damaris looked up at him, her eyes full of questioning and startled concern.

"I didn't hurt you?" she asked, a vague idea of suffering, attached to that fanciful stigmata, troubling her.

"Hurt me--good Lord, how could you, of all people, hurt me?" he gently laughed at her. "Unless you turned me down, gave me to understand that, on second thoughts, you didn't find me up to your requirements or some mean cla.s.s devilry of that kind--of which, by the way, had I judged you capable, you may be sure I should have been uncommonly careful never to come near you again.--No, it isn't that you hurt me; but that you delight me a little overmuch, so that it isn't easy to keep quite level-headed.

There's so much to hear and to tell, and such scanty time to hear or tell it in, worse luck."

"You are obliged to go so soon?"

The flames of jealousy had effectually, it may be noted, died down in Damaris.

"Yes--we're taking on cargo for all we're worth. We are booked to sail by noon the day after to-morrow. I stretched a point in leaving at all, which won't put me in the best odour with my officers and crew, or--supposing they come to hear of it--with my owners either. I am giving my plain duty the slip; but, in this singular ease, it seemed to me, a greater duty stood back of and outweighed the plain obvious one--since it mounted to a reconstruction, a peace-making, ridding the souls of four persons of an ugly burden. I wanted the affair all settled up and straightened out before this, my maiden voyage, in command of a ship of my own. For me it is a great event, a great step forward. And, perhaps I'm over-superst.i.tious--most men of my trade are supposed to be touched that way--but I admit I rather cling to the notion of this private peace-making, this straightening out of an ancient crookedness, as a thing of good augury, a favourable omen. As such--let alone other reasons"--and he looked down at Damaris with a fine and delicate admiration--"I desired it and, out of my heart, I prize it.--Do you see?"

"Yes--indeed a thing of good augury"--she affirmed.

Yet in speaking her lips shook. For, in truth, poor child, she was hard-pressed. This intimate intercourse, alike in its simple directness and its novelty, began to wear on her to the point of physical distress.