Damaris

“ The garden stretched vacant, as before, right away to the battery, in the elusive twilight, a sky of smoked crystal—through which stars began to show faintly, points of cold blurred light—above the gloom of the ilex trees to the west, and in the south, above the indistinguishable sea, the slender moon hanging upright, silver and sickle-shaped.
Thus far Damaris' entire consciousness had resided in and been limited to her auditory sense; concentration being too absorbed and intense to allow room for reasoning, still less for scepticism or even astonishment. ”

“ Damaris spoke more to break the spell which seemed to hold her than to know the end of the walk across the sand. Bewitched by the moon and the terrific power of old Egypt, she would have followed the man blindly, fearing no hurt, even into the inner-most sanctuary which, hewn out of the rock itself, lies at the extreme end of the temple. ”

“ Damaris replied. “And if He leads me by His fountains above, I shall know that He, the Source of all the fountains, is with thee here. I am leaving thee in no parched desert land. How else could there be ‘no hunger nor thirst’ for me, there?”
“But the City of God,” Ethne resumed, with tearful pleading, “is building also on earth; thou wilt not leave us too soon for the one above? Hast thou not said that our Rome is a city not only of the fountains, but of the steps? Stay with us! stay with us yet a little while, and help our feebler feet to climb.” ”

“ While that fugitive and unlawful indulgence of the flesh not only begot flesh, but spirit,—a living soul, henceforth and eternally to be numbered among the imperishable generations of the tragic and marvellous children of men.
Then, aware something stirred close to him, Charles Verity looked up sharply, turning his head; to find Damaris—raised on one elbow planted among the pillows—holding aside the dimity curtain and gazing wonderingly yet contentedly in his face. ”

“ For since, by all ruling of loyalty and dignity, the wall of partition was ordained to stand, wasn't it safer to remind both himself and Damaris, at times, of its presence? He must keep his feet on the floor, good God—keep them very squarely on the floor—for otherwise, wasn't it possible to conceive of their skirting the edge of unnamable abysses? In furtherance of that so necessary soberness of outlook he now went on speaking. ”

“ Damaris would be charming to her, she felt convinced.
Felicia Verity held the fronts of her long blue coat together, since the wind sported with them rather roughly, and went forward with her quick, wavering gait.
It was a pity Damaris did not marry she sometimes felt. Of course, Charles would miss her quite terribly. Their love for one another was so delightful, so really unique. On his account she was glad.—And yet—with a sigh, while the colour in her thin cheeks heightened a little—lacking marriage a woman's life is rather incomplete. ”

“ Lights twinkled in the windows of the black cottages, upon the Island, and in those of Faircloth's inn. The sky flamed orange and crimson behind the sand-hills and Stone Horse Head. The air carried the tang of coming frost. Upon the hard gravel of the drive, the wheels of the dog-cart grated and the horse's hoofs rang loud.
Another Damaris came home to the Damaris who had set forth—a Damaris rested, refreshed, invigorated, no longer a passive but an active agent. Nevertheless, our poor maiden suffered some reaction on re-entering the house. ”

“ Damaris' lips quivered the least bit.
"Why have you turned perverse and doubting? Isn't it because they interest me, above and beyond anything, beautifully interest me, that I am here?—It would have been very easy to stay away, if I hadn't wanted—as I do want—to be able to fancy you from morning until night, to know where you sit, know just what you first see when in the grey of the morning you first wake." ”

“ Therefore I find no fault with Damaris, upon this rather fateful evening, in that she clothed herself in a maize-coloured silk gown flowered in faint amber and faint pink. Cut in the piece from shoulder to hem, according to a then prevailing fashion, it moulded bosom, waist and haunches, spreading away into a demi-train behind. The high Medici collar of old lace, at the back of the square décolletage, conferred dignity; the hanging lace of the elbow sleeves a lightness. ”

“ The dishonour and humiliation of Rome had lowered the already ebbing tide of life. His gaze had always been one of wistful yearning towards the past; but towards the close he learned to see that the past lives on in the heavenly future.
After his death the palace on the Aventine became simply a group of homes for the suffering and the destitute. And so by a natural Divine classification, not of like with like, but with unlike, Damaris gathered around her all kinds of suffering and need, the various needs supplying and helping each other: the aged watching the tottering steps of the young ”

“ There was a yell of pain as the alien backed hastily into the arms of a lusty youth who had continuously besought Damaris, to allow him "ter put it acrorst ther blighter's h'ugly mug," and a cry of delight as Damaris ran to the old lady's side and, squeezing the pup in one arm, made the sweetest little reverence in the pretty continental way before she excitedly wrung her god-mother's hand. ”

“ She looked at Damaris, who, with over-bright eyes, laughed whole-heartedly at the feeble joke. "Do change your mind, Damaris. The guide is Yussuf, the very best, you know. Besides, we might see the lion."
"All right," said Damaris, tucking the jasmine into the belt of her white dress, which she had never done before. "I'll come. Twenty pairs of donkeys climbing up a hill will be an awfully funny sight,—don't you think so, Mr. Lumlough?"
She smiled across at Mr. Lumlough, who was thereupon transported to the portals of the seventh heaven with a piece of toast and marmalade in his right hand. ”

“ But later, far into the night, Damaris stood at her window, with her arms round the bulldog's neck.
"You're the only one who really loves me, Well-Well. Everybody else run away and leaves me. I'm—I'm, so unhappy!"
Tears stood in the big eyes as she flung out her arms and cried in a sudden passionate intensity, "Marraine! Marraine! I want you—I want you! If you loved me, you would come to me, because I want you so!" ”

“ Taking stock of him thus, from the corner of the sofa, imagination, intelligence, affections alike actively in play, Damaris' colour rose, her pulse quickened, and her great eyes grew wide, finely and softly gay.
Faircloth moved. Turned his head. Met her eyes, and looking into them his face blanched perceptibly under its couche of sunburn.
"Damaris," he said, "Damaris, what has happened?—Stop though, you needn't tell me. I know. We've found one another—haven't we?—Found one another more in the silence than in the talking.—Queer, things should work that way! But it puts a seal on fact. ”

“ As to the impending parochial invasion of Harchester—during the earlier stages of dinner Damaris hardly gave it a second thought, being still under the empire of impressions very far removed from anything in the nature of choir treats. She still beheld the fiery glare of an expiring sunset, and against the ensuing pallor of sea and sky a leaden-hued human, figure strangely, almost portentously evident. That it appeared noble in pose and in outline, even beautiful, she could not deny. But that somehow it frightened her, she could equally little deny. ”

“ Such, out of doors, was the home world which received Damaris after those many months of continental travel, on the eve of her twenty-first birthday. To pass from the dynamic to the static mode must be always something of an embarrassment and trial, especially to the young with whom sensation is almost disconcertingly direct and lively. ”

“ GIBBON. Next morning, with her chaperon's energetic daughters, Damaris found herself one of the herd foregathered on the Nile bank preparatory to the excursion to the Valley of the Kings, and later in the afternoon by mountain path over the ridge to that marvel of antiquity the Terrace-Temple of Deir el-Bahari.
"I don't want to go, Janie dear," she said, the preceding night, whilst the devoted maid wielded strong-bristled brushes on the burnished short-cropped hair.
"Better go, dearie. One must be polite, even if the heart breaks." ”

“ Immediately, however, Damaris' disposition to defy established convention and routine took the mildest and apparently most innocuous form—merely the making, by herself, of a little expedition which, accompanied by others, she had made a hundred times before. From the terrace she went down the flight of steps, built into the width of the sea-wall, whence a tall wrought-iron gate opens direct upon the foreshore. ”

“ How could she trouble Sir Charles with such a homely detail?—But Damaris' case, needless to remark, was very different. At her age it was invidious to be too exclusive. Miss Felicia Verity felt—so she, Theresa, was certain—that it was a pity Damaris did not make more friends in the village now she was out of the schoolroom. May and Doris Horniblow were sweet girls and highly educated. ”

“ But Damaris, with envy rampant in her heart, had no eyes for mere man; she wanted to walk across and get near the coal-black stallion from Unayza, a district famous for its breed of large, heavy-built horses. He stood impatiently, with an occasional plunk of a hoof on the sandy stones, or nuzzled his master's sleeve, or pulled at it with his teeth, whilst two shaggy dogs of Billi lay stretched out awaiting the signal to be up and going, perhaps, in a sprint across the desert after the hosseny or red rascal of a fox which had been trapped and caged for the sole purpose of hunting. ”

“ No reek off the mud-flats, any more than over luscious garden scents, tainted the atmosphere. It was virgin as the soil of the moorland—a soil as yet untamed and unfertilized by the labour of man. And this effect of virginity, even though a trifle farouche, harsh, and barren in the perfection of its purity, appealed to Damaris' present mood. ”

“ With the departure of the great birds her surroundings seemed to lose their only element of active and conscious life. The brooding sunlit evening became oppressive, so that in the space of a moment Damaris passed from solitude, which is stimulating, to loneliness, which is only sad. Meanwhile the shadow cast by the ilex trees had grown sensibly longer, softer in outline, more transparent and finely intangible in tone, and the reek of the mud-flats more potent, according to its habit at sundown and low tide. ”

“ Hordle answered his summons, grey of countenance from alarm, anxiety, and broken rest.
"Let Miss Damaris know I shall be glad to see her when she is free to come to me," he said.
And here, although our damsel's reputation for courage and resource may, thereby, sustain some damage, I am constrained to state that while in the sick-room Miss Felicia shone, Damaris gave off but a vacillating and ineffective light.
Imagination is by no means invariably beneficent. The very liveliness of the perceptions which it engenders may intimidate and incapacitate. ”

“ I believe the character of Damaris to be in every way that of an artist. That resistance to all inherited destiny, and to all habitual surroundings, always marks out the one who is born to separate himself or herself from the common herd, and she had this very strongly. Hardy, and loving all country things and seafaring ways, as she did, there was yet always in her something which was unlike her destiny, something restless, daring, and dreamful, something which, wherever it is found, presages woe or fame. ”

“ They admired Damaris a lot, though her independence and colouring shocked them not a little. In the seclusion of the double bedroom, as they brushed or twisted their lanky locks in Hindes', they whispered about her love-affair, which had presumably gone agley, and thrilled with a distinct feeling of wrong-doing over the gossip anent the mythical Sheikh. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her influence was still abroad, and in his flesh Carteret shrewdly suffered it; yet neither basely nor bestially, being clean of life and of spirit. He whipped himself even, with rather sorry humour, seeing, in Damaris' willingness to entrust herself thus to his sole care in the midnight loneliness, a handsomer compliment to his morals than to his manhood. ”

“ Damaris declared, in prettily rising confidence. "The truth is going to be better than the dreams, isn't it?"
"For you, yes—with all my heart, I hope."
"But for you—why not for you?" she cried, smitten by anxiety regarding him and by swift tenderness.
They had reached the end of the upward climbing path, and stepped from the semi-darkness of the wood into the greater clarity of the gravel terrace in front of the hotel. Far below unseen waves again beat upon the beach. The sound reached them faintly. The dome of the sky, thick sown with stars, appeared prodigious in expanse and in height. ”

“ Registering which facts Damaris was sensible of almost physical repulsion, as from something obscurely gross. Hence it followed that Theresa must, somehow, be stopped, made to see her own present unpleasantness, saved from herself in short—to which end it became Damaris' duty to unfurl the flag of revolt.
The young girl arrived at this conclusion in a spirit of rather pathetic seriousness. It is far from easy, at eighteen, to control tongue and temper to the extent of joining battle with your elders in calm and dignified sort. ”