“I speak not of that,” said Damaris, “but of their aims, of the mainspring of their actions — in short, their loyalty and devotion to the ideal. Do you scorn that, sir?”
He met her glance quite calmly. “No, ma’am, I do not,” said he.
“Then,” she cried, warmed a little by the argument upon which she was embarked — and the subject was one very near to her poor, wounded heart these days— “then, surely, you must scorn the others, these mere helots.”
“Such as myself?” said he, no shadow of offence in tone or voice. “Believe me, did I do so I should change my ways. I think that it is possible to respect both.”
Again she measured him with those cool, appraising eyes. She judged him to be good and clean; honest he had already proved himself by the very frankness of his admissions in the face of a scorn that she had scarce attempted to dissemble. She considered his firm mouth and steely eyes, the very poise of his head and uprightness of his carriage, and from it all she gathered intuitively a sense that he was true metal — a man to be relied upon, a man to whom the weak and the oppressed would turn by very instinct, a man who would never hurt the honour of a fellow-man, a man in whom a woman might place her trust.
Because her intuitions showed her all this in him, she desired to understand a point of view that seemed to contradict it all; perhaps she even thought to combat his views, to reveal to him the unworthiness in his aims which was all so clear to her.
“I cannot think,” answered she, “I cannot think that respect is due to one who makes a trade of that which should be the expression of profound convictions. Life is surely as sacred a gift as honour, and to adventure it for gold cannot be other than unworthy. If war must be, if men must fight, surely it should be in defence of liberty, of right, of high ideals. Surely there is naught else can justify the risk of life; and to risk life from any other mainspring must be at least a little — base.”
She would have added more, but meeting his glance again, seeing him so calm and so entirely unruffled, the ghost of a smile hovering upon his tight lips, she checked. A wave of colour swept across her face. “Forgive me,” she begged, “if I have said more than I should. After all, I think I am not so much reproving — to which, indeed, I have no shadow of right — as seeking information.”
He laughed gently, on that deep musical note of his. “Indeed, I am relieved,” said he. “For I began to fear you lacked for charity in your judgment.”
“Indeed, yes,” put in Evelyn, who perceived at last a chance of intervention. “And particularly now that you are come to offer your sword to your own country.”
“Nay, but that is worse,” he exclaimed. “It is to say that I see the error of my ways, and am come to mend them?”
“And is’t not so?” she asked.
“Why, no,” said he. But it was to Damaris that he seemed to speak. “It is that I lack employment elsewhere.”
He found her troubled eyes regarding him with less of scorn than pity now, and it was that glance he answered when he said: “And yet I do not say that if I found a cause that were worth serving for its own sake I should be slow to serve it, perhaps even to my loss.”
“I think you would,” said Evelyn, those questing, provoking eyes of hers enveloping him in their regard.
He bowed somewhat formally in acknowledgment. “Meanwhile,” said he, “I must beware the seduction of this enchanted garden ere its magic prove the undoing of a wandering mercenary.”
A liveried groom approached them through the trees, and Evelyn, who was the first to see him, announced his coming, and its object.
“Here is Gibbs, sweet cousin,” said she, “to inquire if you will ride the nag you bade him saddle.”
She conceived that at last she would be rid of Damaris and would have the Captain entirely to herself. From this you are not to gather that the captain, per se, was of any account to her. He was of account in that he was a male, and so, thought she, a proper person to burn incense on the altar of her little vanity; further he was of account that she might make good upon him her challenge to her cousin — a challenge which at the moment was proving a source of considerable alarm to her.
But it so chanced that the Captain had not come forth in jack-boots and spurs to saunter all the morning in a garden. He too was minded to ride, as he now announced.
“And so, Miss Kynaston,” he ended, addressing Damaris, “if you will suffer me to be your escort, you may repay me by acting as my guide over a countryside with which I am unacquainted. You see that in all things I am true to my mercenary’s character.”
She hesitated a moment, whereupon he bowed submissively, as to a refusal.
“It was presumptuous in me to proffer even for payment a service which I had not first ascertained to be desired,” he said. “Ladies, I am your obedient, grateful servant.”
He swept them both a bow, and was turning to depart, when Damaris stayed him.
“You are very quick, sir, to suppose me churlish.”
Evelyn’s eyes were sparkling angrily, and Damaris observed it, but was not deterred. It were a gross discourtesy to a guest to allow him to depart thus. “I shall be glad to ride with you, sir,” she smiled, “upon the terms you name.”
What time the furious and humiliated Evelyn — for humiliated she felt herself by the turn events were taking — was inveighing to her sympathetic mother against the shameless wiles of Damaris and her brazen conduct towards the other sex, Damaris and the Captain rode through the green lanes of Surrey attended by the groom Gibbs, who followed at a respectful distance.
It proved a fruitful ride for both of them, and for Damaris even more than for him. She drew him into talk of himself, of his travels, the countries he had seen and the many services in which his mercenary’s sword had been engaged. And he talked frankly and entertainingly. The absence of that boastfulness of exploits so usual in his kind went far to impress her favourably, confirming much of the judgment of him which already she had formed.
That ride did much to heal the bruises that her gentle heart had taken a week ago. In the Captain’s company she seemed to be regaining something of that buoyancy which but yesterday she fancied had left her for all time.
The image of Pauncefort faded in her mind to a proper insignificance. She drew a parallel between him and this man beside her, and she seemed to discover that if once she had set his lordship upon a pedestal and gone near to worshipping him, it was because in the seclusion in which her youth had been passed it had been hers never to meet a real man.
But at the root of all was that foolish compact she had made with Evelyn, which she had so keenly regretted and to which that very morning she had sought to set an end. Had she but done so, how differently must she now be feeling, with what suspicions, with what convictions of unworthy motives in him must she now be regarding the frank and pleasant comradeship of this soldier of fortune; how the regard he had been quick to show her must have but served to increase the bitterness she had been carrying in her heart — a bitterness of which, all being as it was, he was gradually and surely effacing all trace.
She rejoiced now in that compact — rejoiced as only one who had been through her torment of disillusion could rejoice. What matter that its ultimate disclosure must be attended by some loss of dignity? Here was one who was a self-proclaimed mercenary, a man whose life was dedicated to Fortune’s service. In such a one the pursuit of the wealthy heiress Damaris Hollinstone was the thing to be expected. How potent then must have been the magnet that had drawn him as completely from her whom he believed to be that person as though she had never been in existence.
The fact is that Captain Gaynor had come into the life of Damaris Hollinstone in an hour of crisis. Coming then, the flattery of his obvious preference and regard, which in another season — whether he believed her to be Damaris or Evelyn — would have been to her a very trifling matter, was now a flattery most sweet and healing.
By the time they reached Priory Close again, Damaris was
actually grateful in her heart to Evelyn for the deception that earlier had vexed her. And she was as reluctant now as earlier she had been eager, to set a term to it.
Chapter 7. EVELYN’S CONSCIENCE
It is to be feared that in the week that ensued the real aims of Captain Gaynor’s visit to England engaged his attention but indifferently. The spell of the garden was upon him, or else the spell of one of its most constant inhabitants. The brook that wandered through it became to him symbolical of the Lethean waters. Oblivious of past and future, he lived but in the present like any lotus-eater, and if there was a thing to vex him in those brief, happy summer days it was the consideration of the character — truthful in much and in much else untruthful, as we know — in which necessity had demanded that he should appear to Damaris. Yet, when all is said, it did not seem that he must suffer for it at her hands; notwithstanding her betrayal of scorn when he had first divulged it to her, yet he observed that she did not on that account avoid him. But he was not to know that it was on that very account that his society was welcome and that she admitted him to her confidence.
Meanwhile the deception on the score of identities continued to be practised upon him, though more than once it had gone very near to shipwreck at the hands of servants and in other almost inevitable ways. But it was Evelyn who steered it clear in every shallow, compelled to it for all the reluctance and vexation that had now come upon her. For she found the tables most ludicrously turned.
Supported by her mother, she had taxed Damaris with unmaidenliness of conduct when on the second morning of the Captain’s visit her cousin had made her appearance dressed again for riding.
Quite calmly had Damaris stood to listen to Evelyn’s denunciation. She had wasted upon it no shadow of indignation. Conscious in her own mind that her conduct was above criticism, conscious no less of the true mainsprings of the criticism that was offered, she received it with the contempt it merited, met it with a bantering defiance that revealed how swiftly now she was recovering her habitual spirit.
“Why, Evelyn,” she protested, “I am doing no more than you have forced upon me.”
“Forced upon you? I?” cried Evelyn, round eyes staring.
“Did you not insist that you would be Damaris Hollinstone and that I should be Evelyn Kynaston? As the supposed daughter of his host, the Captain has a right to look for certain attentions from me in my father’s absence. To withhold them were to be neglectful of the common duties of hospitality, and I would not be that for Sir John’s sake.”
“Why, that is true now,” purred Lady Kynaston. “Yes, that is very true. I have always said that hospitality is the duty of an English lady.”
Evelyn almost choked with anger. “I think,” said she, “that the sooner we resume our proper identities the better will it be.”
Alarm leapt in the soul of Damaris — this Damaris who had been so reluctant to lend herself to the duplicity, who had considered it unworthy and undignified. But her face remained calm, her eyes even smiled.
“’Tis what I have always held, and I am glad that at last you agree with me. I shall leave you, then, to enlighten the Captain.”
“Why not enlighten him yourself?”
“Because I am sure it will become you better. Let us consider now what you shall say. You will tell him that misliking such admiration as you have observed bestowed upon your cousin Damaris, but being persuaded that this was a tribute entirely to her fortune, you induced her to—”
“Am I mad, d’ye think?” cried Evelyn, with an angry stamp of her satin-clad foot.
“Well, then, say what you please; but be very sure that such is the construction which he must place upon anything that you tell him. There is not room for any other.”
“I think you wish the deception to continue,” Evelyn announced.
“I am indifferent,” answered Damaris. “You have forced me into a part, and I must play it until you relieve me of it again. Throughout I have been entirely passive. Never so much as once have I addressed you as ‘Damaris’ to aid the deception.”
“What deceit!” exclaimed the scandalised Evelyn. “What unworthy quibbles! You have aided it by your silence.”
“So much I admit, and by your leave, Evelyn, my dear, I will continue in silence.”
“From the first I disapproved of it,” sighed Lady Kynaston. “You see in what a difficulty it has placed you.”
“I understand,” said Evelyn slowly. Her cheeks were burning, as were her eyes. “Oh, I understand you!”
“I gravely doubt it,” answered Damaris.
But Evelyn laughed her confidence and her scorn. Judging all women’s natures by her own, conceiving that the admiration shown by the other sex must be the mainspring of every woman’s being as it was of hers, she fancied that she held the explanation of her cousin’s indifference on the score of the revelation to be made. Damaris, having won the Captain’s regard in the character of Evelyn Kynaston, was confident of holding it still more securely as Miss Hollinstone the heiress. Thus Evelyn judged, and judging thus her anger increased. It increased further at the reflection that there was no way out of the situation she had herself created save that which Damaris indicated. She even exaggerated the matter, for she was not true-sighted. In no way, she thought, could the explanation, when it came, be hurtful or humiliating to Damaris; but it might, it must be humiliating to herself. Finding that the weapons she had hitherto employed were shivered in her hands, she turned to snatch fresh and more formidable ones.
“You are forgetting Lord Pauncefort,” she said tartly.
“I am endeavouring to do so,” Damaris admitted, though in a fuller sense.
Evelyn stared. “You confess it!” she exclaimed. “Mother, you hear her! Oh, never could I have believed you so shameless, Damaris, so lost to all sense of what you owe yourself. Never!”
“I am glad you should have held me in such high esteem,” was the smiling answer. And then, suddenly realising the pettiness of this battle, the unworthiness of it, her manner changed and she advanced towards Evelyn with hands outheld. “Come, Evelyn dear, let us call a truce,” she besought her cousin.
“A truce?” echoed Evelyn. “A truce to what, pray?”
“To foolish, bitter words and unfriendly glances.”
“Cease, then, to deserve them,” was the ungracious answer.
A wan little smile crept into Damaris’ face, her patience inexhaustible. She turned to her aunt.
“Mother dear,” she besought her, “can you not move her to a gentler mood?”
“She means you well, dear Damaris,” was Lady Kynaston’s answer. “Hence her concern for you. I must confess that I do not think you show a proper regard for your betrothal to Lord Pauncefort. He would not be pleased did he know how you receive Captain Gaynor’s assiduous attentions.”
“How she receives them!” Evelyn apostrophised the ceiling. “O la!”
“My betrothal to Lord Pauncefort—” Damaris began, and there she checked. She could not submit herself to all the examination which her announcement must provoke; she could not suffer to parade before Evelyn’s eyes the shame that in secret she had endured, the humiliation she had borne. Since yesterday that shame had been diminished, the humiliation fading. But these feelings were strong again within her now that she came to the point of alluding to them. Therefore she paused. “Heigho!” she sighed, with a rueful smile. And upon that she moved leisurely towards the door.
“Do you intend to ride daily with Captain Gaynor?” her cousin flung after her.
“You mistake, Evelyn,” came the soft answer. “It is not a question of what I intend, nor have I any intentions in the matter. But should Captain Gaynor desire to ride daily, as the daughter of his host I am under the necessity of showing him some attention in my father’s absence. Blame none but yourself for this if you do not find it meet with your approval.” And upon that she took her departure, leaving Evelyn in a mood of which her poor mother was to appreciate the bitterness.
Saving for similar daily scenes, that week to Damaris was as happy a season as it was to Harry Gaynor. Ere it was sped, the desolation left in her soul by Lord Pauncefort’s self-revelation was changed to a glad thankfulness.
From Sir John in Bath came letters to announce that his brother’s condition, although still critical, was hopeful, and that soon he trusted to be able to return. For Captain Gaynor came a brief special note, in which the baronet gracefully regretted his continued absence at such a season and closed with a veiled reminder of his warning touching Pauncefort — a warning which roused the soldier from the dream in which he had been living to a consciousness of the perils that surrounded him, for the morrow was the day appointed for that fateful meeting at “The Worlds End.”
So when the morrow came — it was a Thursday, completing the little cycle of a week since his advent at Priory Close — he announced to the ladies that he must ride to town that afternoon; that he desired to see the Second Secretary and spur his memory on the matter that lay between them. “Your idleness, no doubt, is fretting you, sir,” said Evelyn.
“And you must find life very dull in this quiet corner of the world,” her mother added as a corollary.
“Not dull, ma’am, but too happy,” he replied. “I dare not forget that sooner or later other things — of a vastly different quality — await me.”
Damaris said nothing. As she sipped her chocolate her mind lost itself in the mazes of a dream. She was wondering whether it was the mercenary’s nature to rest contentedly, to abandon the adventurous life for one of peace. If it were not — Ah, if it were not — That was a thought she dared not pursue. She feared; her soul faltered when she had got thus far, and there she halted, content to wait.
That morning she rode forth alone — save for her groom — for the first time since the Captain’s coming. An appalling loneliness — a loneliness that was full of amazing and disquieting self-revelation — kept her company. She thought of Pauncefort that morning, and she thought of him with kindness. She owed him a debt, she discovered. For without the lesson that she had received at his lordship’s hands she would never have come by so swift a knowledge of the sterling qualities of her Captain — this mercenary who moved adventurously without ideals and whom she had begun by despising for his avowed pursuit of fortune.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 256
