“It is growing late, mother,” said the dark lady from her corner of the chaise, “and Captain Gaynor, no doubt, will be in haste to arrive.”
“Where one may journey so pleasantly,” said the Captain, as courtesy dictated, “there can be no haste to arrive anywhere.”
“La!” said the fair Damaris, and laughed. “Yet indeed, mother, you are detaining him,” she added. And Captain Gaynor, reflecting that the child had indeed been as a daughter to Lady Kynaston, found the mode of address a proper and pretty tribute.
Expressing herself in tritely caustic terms upon the pertness of the age and the deplorable lack of deference to elders, her ladyship none the less acted upon the hints of her daughter and her niece, and permitted the Captain to assist her into the chaise once more. Captain Gaynor followed her, and took his seat beside her. The steps were raised, the door closed, and once more the carriage lurched drunkenly along.
By her whom he had assumed to be Damaris the Captain was invited to relate the details of his adventure. He responded to the invitation, but in doing so it was to Lady Kynaston and her daughter that he chiefly addressed himself.
In this he obeyed the somewhat peremptory dictates of his sense of honour. After what had passed between himself and Pauncefort, he felt that the greatest circumspection was incumbent upon him. In no case could he have looked upon Miss Hollinstone as a conquest to be attempted, knowing her betrothed to another. But since she had been the subject of a game; since he must look upon her as upon a stake for which he had played and which he had lost, it was as if a wall had been set up between them, as if she had become in some still more emphatic manner the property of another, which he should be no better than a thief did he attempt to filch.
Reclining in the chaise when his tale was done, and considering his position, what time the ladies chattered of highwaymen, the perils of the Heath and his own singular address in turning the tables upon one who had held him at such disadvantage, the Captain’s thoughts strayed again to the matter of that game. A swift judge of character, he found much in that fair face and in that too perfect rosebud mouth to be deplored. If at some time in his life a man must think of mating, let him then mate with one who will be prepared to give as well as to receive. So held the Captain. And this Damaris, he judged to be of those who cannot give because they possess nothing of their own. Being one who seeks upon the surface some indication of what may lie below, the Captain was not merely left indifferent by the girl’s undoubted winsomeness, but he found in it something that actually repelled him. That fair exterior he at first accounted a false lure. But this impression he soon corrected as too harsh; falseness implies at least some activity of personality; and here was one whom he judged to be entirely passive. He likened her, at length, to the camellia — and was well pleased with the image — perfect and graceful in shape and colouring, yet exhaling nothing and wilting to the touch.
These swift deductions and the consequent slight aversion which the child inspired in him, led him naturally enough to wonder what course he would have taken had be won that game which he had played. Would he have claimed the stakes? He thought of his master, waiting patiently in Rome, subsisting almost upon the charity of strangers, and he concluded that had he won he must have sought to pouch his winnings for the sake of that king to whom he owed all sacrifices. But on the whole he was content that this particular sacrifice had not been imposed upon him by the cards. Perhaps he was also relieved because, that game being lost by him, he found the task of abiding by its issue an easy one to discharge.
There was, then, no reluctance on his part. But he opined that, further, there must not even be the semblance of it; and to that end he adopted now the course that must be his during his sojourn at Priory Close. He addressed himself almost entirely to Lady Kynaston and her daughter. As he looked at the latter, he could not refrain from contrasting her with Miss Hollinstone entirely to Miss Hollinstone’s disadvantage. He considered this pale, thoughtful face, with its liquid brown eyes that were gentle to the point of wistfulness, he observed the sensitiveness of the lips, the nobility of the brow, and he caught himself thinking that had this been Damaris —
In the fading daylight they rumbled over a great bridge, which spanned the river below the thundering waters of a weir, and soon thereafter the wheel-ploughed roads gave place to cobbles; houses loomed on either hand; they were entering the town of Chertsey.
The Captain had desired to be set down at the “Giant’s Head” — the hostelry where his servant awaited him with the baggage, that he might give the fellow his commands. So the chaise came to a standstill before the inn, and stood there some five minutes, what time the Captain went within.
Now it happens that those were five as momentous minutes as any that he had spent that day. They completed for Fate the work which her agent, the highwayman, had begun on Hownslow Heath.
In her corner of the chaise the golden-headed child sat brooding with an ill-humoured droop in the lines of her pretty mouth. If there was in life an influence to which every nerve and thread of her was sensitive, that influence was the interest she excited in the male. The attraction of the other sex seemed to be the very mainspring of her being, and where she failed entirely of this, her natural object, the failure fretted her, leaving her vanity raw and aching, her little spirit bitter. She was accustomed to see her cousin reap the greater harvest of such interest, but she was not inured to it, although she accounted that for this an explanation existed which nowise reflected upon herself. But never yet in all her experience had she failed more signally than on the present occasion; never had she seen a man more entirely absorbed by her demure cousin than this Captain Gaynor, never one who had treated herself with such utter, such almost calculated disregard.
With burning cheeks and quivering lips, like a whipped child, she huddled herself miserably in her corner. Twice she had addressed the Captain, and he had scarce answered her, so intent was he upon her cousin. It was, she vowed, not to be borne. He was an insufferable boor. When he alighted at the inn at Chertsey she exploded — not noisily, but with a quiet, stinging scorn that she knew how to employ upon occasion.
“Heigho!” she sighed. “I do thank heaven, Damaris, that when I am wooed ‘twill be for myself and not my money-bags.”
And by this speech you learn of the misapprehension under which Captain Gaynor had laboured as to the respective identities of the two girls — a misapprehension buttressed by the circumstance that both girls addressed Lady Kynaston alike as “mother.”
The pale face of Damaris showed ghostly almost in the deepening gloom. A shadow crossed it.
“How unkind in you, Evelyn,” was her gentle rebuke. “And it is an unkindness of which you never weary. Is it not enough that I know I am wooed and won for what I have?” she inquired, and there was an oddly bitter note in the question, arguing a conviction acquired in suffering. “Do you consider that to be so enviable an estate that you must for ever be reminding me of it?”
“My dear!” purred lady Kynaston to soothe her, “Evelyn is heedless, no more.”
“It were kinder to be less,” said Damaris. But Evelyn’s little laugh was sharp and unpleasant.
“La!” said she. “You will for ever be misapprehending me. ’Twas not to Lord Pauncefort that I referred, but to this Captain Gaynor, who is an ensample of all the others.”
“What have I done?” cried Damaris.
“’Tis not what you have done, my dear; ’tis what your fortune does for you. That is why I am thankful to be as I am.”
“I have always said,” put in the inconsequent Lady Kynaston, “that we all have a deal more to be thankful for than we are aware.” The good, dull woman scented no quarrel here. ’Twas not by hints that facts were to be brought to the notice of her ladyship.
“Evelyn, I do not understand you,” said Damaris. Miss Kynaston moved petulantly. She sat forward, so that a shaft of light coming from one of the windows of the inn threw the golden head and winsome face in
to sharp relief against the gloom of that interior, and revealed the bitter lines in which the perfect — the all too perfect — mouth was set.
“The man had no eyes save for you,” she sneered. You see, she was not subtle.
“Should that be my fault even were it true?” quoth Damaris, and she put out a hand to take her cousin’s, in her sweet desire to conciliate. But Evelyn was quick to avoid the contact.
“Nay,” she answered, “not your fault. ’Tis what I am saying. ’Tis the fault of other things; the penalty of being so great an heiress.”
“I have always said that there is no station in life but has its penalties, my dears,” murmured Lady Kynaston, still all unconscious of the duel that was being fought there under her very nose.
And now Damaris answered as she would not have answered — for her nature was all compounded of gentleness — but that she was stung to it by this persistent gibe, and yet more by Evelyn’s avoidance of her hand. More, that gibe had wounded her as only truth can wound; for she had more than cause to perceive the truth of it, and her gentle soul was all raw from a cruel humiliation lately suffered, as presently you shall learn.
“Why, as for Captain Gaynor,” said she, “I do not believe that he knew which was Damaris Hollinstone, which Evelyn Kynaston.”
A laugh was her cousin’s only answer — very eloquent of incredulity of so preposterous a statement.
“I can tell you, at least,” said Damaris, “that twice he addressed me as Miss Kynaston.”
“Did he so?” cried her ladyship. “’Twas an odd mistake!”
“Odd, indeed!” sneered Evelyn. If she had been hurt before, she was in torment now, until vanity came to reassure her, and confidently to assert that this was a deliberate untruth. She estimated herself highly, and she accounted preposterous and fatuous any assumption that in equality of circumstances she could fail to carry an easy victory over her cousin. This and her resentment drove her now to her outrageous proposal.
“If that be so, if he is, indeed, not clear which of us is Damaris Hollinstone, the lady of fortune, shall we” — she paused, and her voice assumed a note of slyness— “shall we convey to him the impression that I am she? — that you are just penniless Evelyn Kynaston?”
“My child, what are you saying?” broke in her mother. “You are very far from penniless; you are—”
“I speak comparatively, mother dear — as compared with Damaris here. Come, Damaris, what do you say?”
“Say?” echoed Damaris, amazement ringing in her voice. “I say that you are out of your senses, Evelyn.”
Evelyn hummed a moment through closed lips; then her scornful little laugh trilled forth again. “Heigho! I fear me you are a boaster, Damaris.”
“Evelyn!” interjected her shocked mother.
“A boaster — I?” quoth Damaris warmly.
“What else — since you dare not put your assertion to the test?”
“Dare not?” Damaris was moved to something almost approaching anger. Gentle she was; but she was also conscious of what was due to herself; and here it seemed was one who craved a lesson on that subject.
“Dare not,” Evelyn insisted, snapping.
“But, my dears, it would be so vastly confusing!” protested Lady Kynaston.
Damaris took her resolve. “‘Twill be only for a day or so,” she said. “And you must induce Sir John to countenance this pretence. ’Tis for your daughter’s good, I assure you,” she added, something grimly.
“You — you consent, then?” cried Evelyn, a little breathlessly, gripped now that the matter was to be tested, by a sudden fear of failure.
“You leave me no alternative. Be Damaris Hollinstone, then, and should you fail in the unworthy task you have in mind, never let me hear again this taunt with which you have so often wounded me.” She sank back into her corner.
Evelyn’s answer was a laugh. Her momentary fear had passed. If in addition to the beauty heaven had bestowed upon her, she had the embellishment of a fortune, there was little cause to fear that she would fail.
But at this point her mother intervened, grasping at last the drift of what was afoot and whither it might lead.
“But, my dears,” she cried, “I do not desire Captain Gaynor’s wooing of my daughter. I will not have it, Evelyn; leastways not until I know more of this gentleman. I am not sure that he is a desirable husband. He is a very gallant, handsome gentleman, to be sure, and that is something almost unusual in these days; but I understand that he is a soldier of fortune.”
“A soldier of fortune!” breathed Evelyn. “He is a soldier of fortune, and yet you would have me believe that he — But here he comes! Chut! Henceforth I am Damaris Hollinstone, mother — please remember.”
The footman opened the door of the chaise for the Captain, who ascended briskly, breathing apologies for the delay.
Chapter 5. THE WARNING
It would really seem as if Fate were determined to leave the Captain no way of escape from the situation into which she had thrust him. Her agents had been first the highwayman and then Miss Kynaston. What the acquisitiveness of the one had begun, the vanity of the other had continued. Even so, however, circumstances had not yet gone so far astray from the proper road but that a word from Sir John Kynaston must presently have set all to rights once more. But here again Fate was at hand to round off her ironic work. When the chaise bearing the Captain and the ladies arrived at Priory Close, they found Sir John, spurred and booted, on the very point of departure, summoned an hour since by a courier to the bedside of his brother who lay ill at Bath. The baronet had but waited to welcome Captain Gaynor ere he set out.
It was twenty years since the Captain last had visited Priory Close. He had retained, however, a very vivid recollection of the house to which, as a little lad of nine, he had been taken by his father. Between his father and Sir John the very deepest friendship had existed, and Harry Gaynor himself was conscious of an inheritance in this respect, for Sir John had ever treated him with almost parental affection. Nevertheless, on no single one of the occasions of his visits to England during the last seven years (his father had followed James II to France and Harry had gone with him, his mother being dead) had Captain Gaynor set foot at Priory Close or made the acquaintance of the baronet’s lady and daughter. This had been by his own desire, and lest in the event of his apprehension and the discovery of his business Sir John should come to be implicated with him. And when Sir John had formerly pressed him to make of Priory Close his headquarters during his sojourn in England, pointing out that he would receive additional shelter from the circumstance that the baronet himself stood high above all suspicion, was a Justice of the Peace and universally accounted the most solid of Whigs, Captain Gaynor had ever made answer that these were but additional reasons why a person so very valuable to his master should not jeopardise the position which he held.
On the present occasion, however, the Captain had considered that in view of the more than ordinarily elaborate precautions he had taken and the excellent pretext upon which he was in England — a pretext which, if the worst befell, might clearly be urged to have imposed upon Sir John as much as upon any other — he was justified in accepting the hospitality which the baronet was so affectionately eager to extend to him.
Sir John received him now with a welcome of quite extraordinary warmth.
Vigour of constitution, tranquillity of conscience, clean living and abundance of exercise had marvellously preserved Sir John against the undermining work of time. In this, his sixtieth year, he had the air of a man of little more than forty. True, he inclined to portliness, but not unduly so; and being tall of body and erect of carriage this portliness seemed in him but an attribute of vigour. His blue eyes were clear, keen and unusually mirthful; it was, indeed, his eyes that were chiefly responsible for his youthful air. His skin was healthily tanned, and under the grizzled periwig which he invariably wore, his countenance was noble and genially handsome.
Esteeming Captain Gay
nor highly as he did, for qualities of whose existence in him none was better aware than Sir John Kynaston, and having no son of his own to succeed him, he had for some time nourished the secret hope that his daughter and the Captain might come to make a match between them. To the fact that upon his own merit there was no man whom Sir John would more cordially have welcomed for his son-in-law was to be added that old-time friendship between the baronet and the elder Gaynor, and the thought that such a union would for that friendship’s sake have delighted Harry Gaynor’s father had he lived.
Sir John would have built confidently upon this hope, but for one thing — his daughter herself. The one cloud in the singularly cloudless sky of his life was Evelyn. He cherished no delusions concerning her. He knew the dangerous extent of her inherent vanity, frivolity and irresponsibility Yet he loved her perhaps the more because of these very failings, with an affection that was blent with pity for infirmities.
Just so had he always loved her mother, with a love that was largely compounded of compassion for shortcomings that matrimony had revealed to him in the woman of his hasty, youthful choice. There was something almost noble in the care with which he had ever concealed from his wife the disillusion she had occasioned him. He had thrust from his sight her shortcomings. He magnified to himself her virtues of docility and simple good-nature, and sturdily he took consolation in them. To his councils, however, she was not admitted. She knew no more of the inward workings of his mind than she knew of any other man’s; she had, for instance, the same notion of his politics as had Mr Templeton and the other gentlemen into whose eyes he flung dust with the hand of calculation.
Where another might have inveighed against his wife and attached to her the blame for the shortcomings which her daughter had inherited, Sir John, with a rare fortitude and breadth of outlook, inveighed against himself alone, and neither upon wife nor daughter did he visit a fault that proceeded from his own error. Sir John, you will have gathered, was something of a philosopher.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 253
