Chapter 7 The Gates of Doom by Rafael Sabatini
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.
She saw Captain Gaynor again at dinner—they dined at three o'clock at Priory Close, too early by at least an hour to satisfy the mode. And from her window, discreetly hidden, she watched him ride out on his great black horse, watched his blue-coated figure along the white ribbon of road until it vanished, and so left her lonely again.
And whilst she sat alone in her chamber there, below stairs Evelyn was spurring her mother to perform what Evelyn conceived to be her mother's duty in the absence of Sir John.
"You must write to his lordship, mother," she was saying, "and inform him of what is taking place."
"Nay, now, but what is taking place?" quoth her mother querulously. She had a distaste for being drawn into situations that might afterwards require to be eased by explanation.
Evelyn shrugged impatiently. Those hungry, questing eyes of hers were very angry. "Do you need to ask me, mother?"
"Let us await your father's return, child," the mother pleaded. "He will know best. And meanwhile the Captain has gone."
"But he will return tomorrow."
"How do you know that? He may be given this appointment he is seeking, and so may return no more."
Evelyn smiled, contemptuous in her assurance that there existed at Priory Close a magnet to draw him back in spite of anything that might betide.
"Then I will write myself."
"Evelyn, I forbid you."
"My father is absent, and my mother will not use her eyes. What help have I? I hope I have a conscience. It is for Damaris' sake. What, after all, do we know of this adventurer?"
"Nay, now, you must not speak so of him," her ladyship remonstrated. "His father was your father's dearest friend. Your father loves the Captain as a son."
Evelyn looked at her mother a moment. Then she turned away and went without another word to write the following letter:
MY LORD,—My great regard for your lordship bids me delay no longer in writing to tell you that if you would not see that which you most value lost to you, you had best make haste to come to Priory Close. There is one here who is very like to steal away from you that which you cherish most in all the world. I send you this timely warning.
EVELYN KYNASTON
Having written, Evelyn paused. Within her a voice—a little mocking voice—was proclaiming that what she performed was an act of purest spite. She crimsoned and took up the sheet to tear it across. Then she paused.
"I am too sensitive," she assured herself. "Clearly it is my duty, since my mother will not. Damaris' future happiness depends on't." Which, after all, was very true.
But it was not until next morning that the letter sped to London by her messenger.