The Strange Attraction/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
I
One fine dawn in the beginning of the following January the Diana ran out of the mouth of the Wairoa into the gray flat expanses of the Kaipara Harbour that stretched away in all directions into blurred horizons. Dane sat alone on the stern seat, wearing a light tweed coat over his old navy suit, for though there were already indications that the day would be hot, the night damp still lingered on the river and a chill came off the sea. He was hatless, and the little breeze made by the launch stirred his hair. He looked weary, for he had been up all night, but his skin had a healthy tan upon it, and his eyes had the light of a man bent upon a promising pilgrimage.
He looked away towards the heads where three timber vessels lay, black shapes against the tan cliffs, waiting for the tugs that would take them out over the dangerous bar. In the world of low shores and fleeting fog there was not a sign of another moving thing. As he turned the Diana round a sand-bank towards land again, heading for the rather uninteresting shore that lay between the mouths of two rivers, the gorgeous fan of crimson that had formed in the east burst through a bank of low-lying leaden clouds, stretched itself out into boundless space, and lost itself in a diffused glow in the pale luminousness of the clear ether above. Dane looked up at it, enjoying the idea that he had the picture to himself.
He peered ahead into the little cabin where Valerie lay asleep between two possum rugs, debating as to whether he should wake her to see it. But he decided to let her sleep on. Then he turned the Diana into the mouth of the Otamatea River, the Wairoa’s neighbouring waterway.
This dawn journey was the beginning of a honeymoon planned since Valerie’s recovery from the election. Having given way in the larger issue by consenting to go through the ceremony, Valerie demanded that she have her own way about some things connected with it. She would never have agreed to marry Dane in any ordinary fashion. The affair had to be served up to her as romance and adventure, as far as possible removed from the vulgar eyes of the world and the dull ways of convention. She would have in connection with it none of the trappings of the social world. She had no time to arrange for a trousseau. She refused an engagement ring, and swore she would never wear the wedding badge of servitude. Dane was astonished to find in all this how deeply the wordy paraphernalia of a conventional set had antagonized her, and amused to see, as he continually reminded her, that she gave it a significance it did not deserve. However, he let her talk. Without saying anything about it, he ordered clothes for her from Sydney, for he demanded that love be adorned in fine raiment. And he gave in to her in the end on the matter of having the marriage kept secret as long as she chose. They had had considerable argument about this.
“I wish to go on as I should if we did not have the ceremony, Dane. I want to stay on the paper. I want to go on earning my own living. I can’t sit about in your house doing nothing. I should be bored to death in a month. At least that’s how I feel now. Of course, in three months’ time I may be feeling differently. But now I want the work. I don’t want love to become a habit. It will be so wonderful to come to you for those week-ends.”
“Yes, it will. But it won’t help to keep the secret.”
“Well, let’s see how long we can keep it. There’s going to be a row, of course. But I’ve promised you that when the row comes, if it’s going to hurt you, I shall tell. I don’t care whether dad helped you or not, I don’t see what that has to do with us, or our private lives. If he ever presumes to talk morals to us I’ll tell him something that will shut him up.”
“Sh! You everlasting spitfire! Have it your own way. What I care about is that you love me, and of course you must love me in your own way. But I don’t mind telling you I intend to change you a little.”
She had looked at him with a smile. “I have a suspicion that you will change me far more than I shall change you. Love has done all it can to you, and I’m just beginning with it. I have no idea what it will do to me.”
“I don’t think love has done all it can to me,” he had replied softly. There are things about it I have never had, and I’m hoping you can give them to me.”
But so far he had not been able to move her out of her determination to go back to her work on the paper. It was not only that she wanted to be occupied, to be getting ahead towards a career, but she wanted to earn her own money. She had never mentioned the subject of finance to Dane. She had not the faintest idea whether he meant to give her an allowance or intermittent presents of cash, and until he did so she would never have brought up the subject. But her economic freedom, the thing for which she had fought and bled, was something she would never give up to anybody.
The lovers had laid elaborate plans to cover their marriage and disappearance. It was quite easy for Dane, whose ties were casual and whose correspondence was irregular. He departed for Auckland in the middle of December, gave the paper for which he wrote his real address in confidence, but told men he chanced to meet that he was heading for the South Island and a summer about the Otago Sounds, gave a Wellington address for his mail, which was to be redirected from there back to the Otamatea, and then he doubled by devious ways back on his tracks to his home, and began a series of night journeys to prepare the camp he had visioned in his mind.
Valerie’s intriguing had involved two reliable friends, Viva and Ned Landon, who, as luck would have it, were wandering in the Far North above the Hokianga harbour out of the reach of telegrams and regular mails. She gave out that she was to go with them on a riding and walking tour, and so it was that when Bob saw her off one morning in the direction of Tangiteroria he had no suspicion that she would get no further than the old mission station. He only wondered if Dane too were up in the North somewhere. Valerie had arranged for her mail to go to the Bay of Islands and to be redirected from there to the Otamatea. And she had taken the extra precaution of telling her family that she was too tired to write letters and that they could expect news when they got it.
II
Dane had at least had his own way about the choice of a spot. Valerie had begged merely that it be somewhere by the sea. And he had chosen a place he had discovered the summer before while cruising about the two beautiful rivers that run with the Wairoa into the Kaipara harbour on the northern side, chosen it not only for the sake of its own beauty, but because it was within easy reach of the one man he could trust to perform the ceremony and keep it quiet.
“Are you sure of him?” Valerie had asked doubtfully.
“I would trust David Bruce with anything, even as a private person. And as a Justice of the Peace he is like a lawyer or a priest. They call him Strong Box up there because they say he knows some strange secrets, and because nothing you ever put into him comes out till you take it out yourself.”
And Valerie was very glad long before December was over that she could leave all the details to Dane and simply be prepared like a child to be surprised and delighted with each day as it came along.
When Dane had gone some three miles up the Otamatea River, between the bare and wind-swept wastes about the harbour, he turned the nose of the Diana round a grass-covered headland on his right and let her run on her momentum into a little bay, a perfect arch of white sand, that sloped gently into clear water above a hard sandy bottom, a shore as different as it could be from the steep, soft banks of the muddy Wairoa. On a flat that curved with the bay’s sweep were the remains of an old house, long since tumbled into a heap of ruins, and lichen-spotted and overgrown with convolvulus, honeysuckle and degenerated grape-vines. About it, planted as three sides of a square, the open ends reaching to within a yard or two of the beach, were the double lines of poplars which the early settlers in these parts seem to have regarded as some kind of talisman, for they planted them so frequently. Within this square and all about the ruins there flourished an old garden open to the sun and wind. Dane had picked moss roses there the summer before, and had lain down to sleep with the fragrance of sweet briar in his nostrils. There were hydrangea bushes, mottled out of their original clear blue by the bees, geraniums in wild profusion, and the traces of violets and jonquil leaves turning brown in the coarse grass.
On the edge of all this and a mere jump from the sand Dane had pitched two tents, had made a stone fireplace, and had collected a fine pile of wood. Beyond the camp, near the further end of the bay’s curve, was a clump of green bush and fern in a little gully which sheltered the spring that had beguiled the early missionary into settling here. This spring ran into the river on the inside of a rocky point that curved about to make a perfect landing-place and shelter for boats. The Diana and the rowing boat Dane had hired could lie there unseen by people passing on the river, and he had been anxious to hide his launch, in which he had run about the rivers a good deal. Beyond the square of poplars, trailing in a straggly fashion up the slope, was a moss-grown orchard of fig and peach and apple trees, stunted now with the swirl of the westerly winds that curled over the bare hilltop behind, but still capable of bearing fruit that was good to the taste.
In spite of its openness to the wind and sky and its position on the river, the place was remote. The nearest habitation was a fish-tinning factory two miles further up, and beyond that were Maori settlements long before one came to those of the whites. The lovers had little to fear from the curiosity of picnickers or fishers, as no one would land in a place where tents showed prior possession. Dane thought he had found the best thing available, and he felt very happy as the sun came up on this delectable abode of little birds and sweet scents. The place was alive with the twittering of sparrows and yellowhammers, and a delicate fragrance from the briars drifted out from the shore. The river was so still when the launch came to rest that the poplars, caught by the sun, were reflected in the bay.
Throwing off his coat Dane moved along to the cabin, crept in and woke Valerie with kisses on her lips.
She roused herself regretfully out of her heavy sleep. “Oh, did you have to wake me?” she asked pathetically.
“You shall go straight to bed again and sleep all day if you want to. But come on and look.”
Weary as she was she knew this incurable romanticist of hers had something to show her, and that if she did not take it properly she would spoil his day. She rubbed her eyes and stretched herself, crawled out and got to her feet. Then she came to full awakeness in a moment. Never had he given her a hint of the tents, which she saw even before she took in the beauty of their setting. She ran her eyes over the whole place before she turned to him.
“You’ve just got everything I love,” she said hoarsely, and sat down on a seat to feast her eyes upon it.
“You really like it?”
“Oh, Dane, how could I help but like it? How do you find such lovely places?”
Pleased he went back to the engine, and ran the launch into the shelter at the end of the bay, where they transferred their things into the rowing boat. Valerie could hardly do her share of helping, so excited was she now with the charm of this retreat, with the prospect of a whole month with him, and when they had finally got all their stuff landed and he took her with the pride of a child to see how he had fixed things up inside she was overcome with delight. She turned with trembling lips and threw her arms about him, and stood close against him very still.
He rubbed his cheek against hers, understanding that she felt something she could not put into words, and then he kissed her face very lightly, and brought her back to a mood that was less intense.
III
“Valerie, I hope that in your three days’ sleep you have at least dreamed of the solemn step we are to take in the morning.”
She laughed delightedly.
“You are certainly consistent in your eccentricity,” he went on lazily. “I have never heard of a person before who snored away her last days of freedom.”
“Oh, Dane, do I really snore?”
“Would it be as serious as all that if you did?”
“Dane, I firmly believe that snores have broken up as many happy homes as any other cause. I simply could not live in a house with a man who snored. If I snore, something has got to be done about it.”
“Well, you don’t, dear, so the ship won’t go to pieces on that rock. But by God! you can sleep. I didn’t realize a person of your age could be so tired.”
“Poor old dear, it’s been awfully dull for you. And you have been a perfect saint. But you won’t have to be a disembodied spirit much longer. I shall be rested in a day or two.”
“I haven’t been suffering, my child. I’ve had poems piecing themselves together in my head, poems to you and the camp. I’ve been quite happy.”
Dane lounged on a rug and cushions against the stern seat of the launch, his arms clasped above his head, and Valerie sat in one of her favourite attitudes with her chin on her knees beside him. They were in a little creek near a Maori settlement, where they had come to hear the native band that played on fine nights. They had been still for over an hour listening to it. A moon waxing to the full crept up over tree tops and now shone down upon them.
They had been out on the river only at night so far, not only because it was pleasanter, but because Dane was very anxious not to be seen, and there was more traffic than he had expected. But it had been no hardship to stay in the cool little gully near the tents by day, especially for Valerie, who could hardly stay awake long enough to eat. She had slumped indeed quite badly, and Dane had seen that she must have emotional as well as physical rest, and putting aside his own temporary desires to climb hills or make love to her he had set himself to get her well again.
As she had to be three days in the neighbourhood before the ceremony could be performed, Dane was still teasing her about it. He looked up at her now with a whimsical smile, and reaching up for her hand drew it down against his cheek.
“Need any moral support for to-morrow?” he asked lightly.
Her eyes gleamed down at him. “I wasn’t thinking about it,” she retorted.
“What then?”
“I was just wondering why people can’t keep themselves at a pitch of happiness. Why we can’t be like this always, what it is that comes on and changes things. It seems to me that if you and I always had a boat and the moon and a fine night we ought always to feel as happy as we are now.”
“But, you blessed idiot, we don’t always have the boat and the moon and the fine night.”
“I don’t see it. I don’t understand why we get tired of a fine thing.”
“Well, my dear, isn’t that the whole damned puzzle? You could not play the Moonlight Sonata over and over again all day long and all night without growing to hate it. You’d fatigue your sense of hearing till it drove you mad. That’s what life does to us. We look at the beautiful thing and don’t see it any more because we have looked at it too closely or too long. What was once a revelation becomes a commonplace. But what can we do about it? Some of us do try to avert disaster by having all the variety we can in life, by contrasting one thing with another.”
She looked away from him for a minute and then she turned and slid down beside him.
“I know something that will never be commonplace,” she said softly, looking intently into his face.
“Thank you, dear. That was charmingly said.”
“Dane, you’re a lovely person. I wish—I hope ———” Her voice broke.
“Taken as meant, dear,” he said lightly.
“Oh, I’m so happy, and it seems unnatural, it’s just all so beautiful here with you.”
“Cheer up, dear. It won’t last. It’s blowing up for rain, and we shall have to sit in the tents, and cook by the kerosene stove, and it smells horribly.”
She laughed. “But you said if it rained we could go fishing out on the flats.”
“That’s true, we can.”
“Well then, that’s a poor disaster to threaten me with.” She lay happily down beside him and yawned.
“Good Lord. You’re going to sleep again,” he said. “We’ll go home.”
But Valerie had almost slept herself out, and when something startled her in the night, some bird or small animal about the tent, she found herself unable to drop off to sleep again. She lay looking at the pattern of the poplar trees like a fretwork on the moonlit roof. It was so still outside that she could hear fish jumping in the bay and Dane’s steady breathing in the cot beside her. She drew herself up and looked across at the black head against the pillow. She was glad to be able to look at him like that in the soft light without his knowing. She wondered as she had done several times how far his looks affected her, for she knew well enough she was crazy about them. She loved to move her fingers about in his hair, to feast her eyes upon the beauty of his straight and sensitive features, and to catch and hold as long as she could the expressions that crept out of his eyes and played about them. She understood well enough why women had gone mad about him. And she was beginning to understand why none of them had stuck to him.
Women did not stick to men they could neither dominate nor understand, she thought, the kind of women he had probably known, that was. She herself was determined not to try to dominate him, even where she thought she might do it, and she knew now that she was probably no nearer understanding him than the others. But at least she meant to try. That he was a creature of strange idealisms, contradictory impulses, desperate despairs, and fierce protests against divisions in himself she knew. She did not suppose she could fight his battles for him, save him from his weaknesses, but at least she was determined now to ignore them as long as possible. She had simply ceased to think of the things that had worried her a few weeks back, the possibility that he took drugs, his lapses into drinking.
As she looked at him he turned a little in his sleep and threw his arm across his face. It gave him the air of fighting off some invisible enemy. It seemed to her a characteristic attitude. He was so often fighting invisible enemies. And that gave to his eyes the light that she had sometimes seen flash across them, the light of one who has come victorious out of a battle. And she knew that was why his face was so different in expression from that of her father. Her father did not fight.
She grew sentimental about him as she sat there, saw him again as the boy left behind in hotels, lonely and forlorn, trying to puzzle out the strange things that he saw about him, pictured his erratic and undisciplined youth, his sensitiveness and fastidiousness at war with the coarseness and ruthlessness in the world about him, thought over the probability that his early sex experience had been soiled by the selfishness of women older than himself, as she knew his wife had been. Tears came to her eyes as she remembered how life had hurt him. She wanted to get out of her cot then and there and put her arms round him and swear that that was the one thing she would never do. She did not in that moment perceive that it was the one thing she would inevitably do because they loved each other.
IV
David Bruce’s face lit up when they walked into his office to be married the next morning. Every Justice of the Peace in the North could tell a tale of at least one strange pair who had descended upon him pleading for secrecy. Sometimes he knew the parties, but usually he did not, for they came from other places. But Bruce knew well who were his merry suppliants for silence. He had not told Dane, and he did not dream of telling either of them, that Davenport Carr happened to be his own lawyer, and that he guessed some of the fuss that might follow this marriage. All that concerned him was that they were of age and of sound mind. And as they stood before him, both dressed in white flannels as if they were about to play a game of tennis, he thought he had never seen a more engaging pair of human beings.
Valerie looked up at him and thought at once that since she had to go through with this stupid affair it was nice to have someone with the humorous eyes that Bruce had to manage it. And she was still more attracted to him when he spoke. She felt he was, as Dane had said, a man with a wide knowledge of good and evil, and a mind that nothing could take unawares. He smilingly reassured her as to the secrecy of this objectionable transaction. Nobody ever asked to see the register, he said. He mightn’t marry anyone again for six months, as most people preferred the church. It was possible to over-look a record in one quarter and to remember it at a later date. One took risks in the interest of the personal equation. His manager, Bob Hargraves, who would have to witness the ceremony, could be trusted not to tell even his wife.
Immediately after the ceremony Valerie took off the ring that Dane had remembered to buy in Auckland, and as she signed the register she could not resist her little fling.
“To think that this is all that stands between morality and immorality in the eyes of this crazy world, and that I’m supposed to respect the people who believe it is! My God! It’s unbelievable. Three minutes’ rigmarole to do a thing that it takes courts and lawyers and witnesses weeks of beastly mess and tangle to undo! It’s beyond me. And I vowed I’d never go through it.” She turned to Dane almost resentfully. “I hope you’re proud of the surrender.”
“If I thought it was that I should commence divorce proceedings to-morrow,” he retorted. “I could live with anything but a surrender.”
David Bruce stood by his window to watch them go along to the Diana. He felt he would like to know how they got on.
“How many years do you give those two?” asked Bob, with a grin on his face.
“Bob, I don’t think time will matter very much in this case. They care more about the quality of life than the length of it—those two.”
There followed wonderful days and wonderful nights for the lovers. For a week the weather was hot and fine, and they began the day with a plunge right out of bed into their little bay. Then after their housekeeping was done he retired into the cooler tent to write, and Valerie either read or walked about the hills or went off rowing to limber up her limbs, stiffened by long months of sitting. If she returned before he was out calling for her she kept very still. After their lunch they played in the bay or dozed in hammocks in the gully till it was time for tea, and then, as the day became cooler and they felt energetic, they would get ready for a night picnic, an excursion up the river, or a long walk over the slopes to the harbour.
At first Dane had insisted on doing most of the work, and she had been convulsed the first time she saw him clean the frying-pan. She tried to see him back in his own setting at the old station, where, except for the care of the Diana, he never did a stroke of work. She watched him here doing the washing up, shaking the matting on the ground floor, airing the bedding, as he did in the first days while she was so tired, as if it were some other man who had taken possession of him. But it was love that had taken possession of him, that had made him more velvety and less nervous than she had ever seen him, and that had made him come alive.
It did rain, and the kerosene stove did smell, but it would have taken more than such material trials to depress them. Nor did they get bored with the living at close quarters, because they knew how to be quiet and how to let each other alone. And because the open air life made them both sleepy it was possible for them, highly strung though they were, to share the same tent at night.
As they packed up Valerie felt the month had been the most beautiful thing she had ever known and because she felt that she was the more enraged at what happened soon after they got back.
V
About the time the lovers went to the Otamatea there began to leak out in Auckland rumours concerning their friendship. As usual no one knew where the nods and suggestions and shrugs of the shoulders began, whether they arose out of the visits of Dargaville people to relatives in the city or from hints in letters. But by devious ways they got to the Lorrimer family and so to the Carrs. At the first breath Doris Lorrimer had written to Bob for the truth of the matter, and he had replied at once with a loyally positive statement that it was all nonsense, and that he ought to know. But this had no effect on the rumours.
Davenport Carr was worried. He was ready to excuse any wildness, any independence on the part of his daughter except the one unpardonable sin, that of getting mixed up publicly with the wrong man. And from his point of view Dane was the wrong man, much as he admired him. And like most fathers he made the mistake of thinking that his daughter had never got beyond the age of sixteen. He was annoyed at the rumours for two other reasons—he regarded Dane’s association with Valerie as a breach of a code and an act of treachery, and he had recently made the acquaintance of a rich Englishman of family and personality who he thought would make a splendid husband for her. He had not supposed he could choose her husband for her, but he did not believe any woman knew her own mind so well that a little clever manœuvring would not turn her in another direction. And it must be said for him that he had had little demonstration to the contrary.
The last week in January he took his yacht to the Bay of Islands intending to pick up Valerie and the Landons and bring them home by the coast. As luck would have it, the day before the Landons returned from the North Carr ran into the driver who had taken them on the first stage of their wanderings, and learned from him that no Miss Carr had gone with them, nor had she been seen anywhere in the neighbourhood. Then he went to the post-office, where he was well known, and on the plea of urgent necessity to get at his daughter learned the illuminating fact that her mail was being readdressed to the Otamatea. He returned to Auckland that night in a very bad temper, and telegraphed to Bob to find out when Valerie would be back on the paper. Learning that it was only to be a few days he waited. His next source of information was Roger Benton into whom he ran two days later in the club to which they both belonged. They dined together, and Davenport Carr led the talk back to the election, the News and the work done by Dane Barrington. A few cleverly worded questions which Roger tried to evade told Carr all he wanted to know.
VI
As Dane lay reading in his hammock the Wednesday afternoon of the following week his chained dogs set up a fierce growling on the other side of the house, and Lee glided to his side.
“A strange man coming in,” he said.
“Well, stop him at once, Lee. Say I’m away. Miss Carr will be here any minute. So get him out somehow. Threaten him with the dogs if he won't go.”
He lay on in the hammock for a few minutes, and then exceedingly annoyed he got up to see who it was who had had the cheek to defy the notice at the gate. He walked into the study and was astonished to see Davenport Carr talking angrily to Lee.
The boy had met the stranger near the front steps. He was no respecter of persons where his obedience was concerned.
“Meester Barrington not home. You please to go away,” he said.
Davenport Carr looked down coolly enough at him. He had no intention of getting angry with a servant.
“I happen to know he is home. And I’m Miss Carr’s father. You go and tell him who it is.”
“It no good, Meester Carr. He away.” And Lee looked meaningly at the dogs.
That look made Davenport Carr suddenly furious, but he made an effort to control himself.
“It’s no use your telling me he’s away. And even if he is I’m going to wait till he comes back. You needn’t look at those dogs again, you damned little fool.”
“You mistake,” said Lee, with great dignity. “Meester Barrington away, gone to town.”
At that moment Dane came through the front door. “Thank you, Lee,” he said, very quietly, and the boy much relieved, but not at all embarrassed, disappeared inside.
The two men looked at one another for a minute.
“I say, Carr, whatever you may have come to say to me, I’ll thank you not to insult my servants.” His cool voice still further irritated his visitor.
“Damn it, Barrington, he had the cheek to threaten me with those dogs.”
“I told him to, but without knowing who it was who had come past the notice on my gate. I don’t allow people in here unless I ask them. But I’m not in hiding, and if you had let me know you were coming I should have come down for you in my launch.”
“Oh, you would, would you?” Davenport Carr struggled for control. He knew it was useless to be angry, but something about Dane’s manner nettled him, threw him into the wrong mood for this interview.
“Why, certainly. May I ask why you doubt it? And will you please come in.”
Carr followed him. He was vaguely aware of the atmosphere of the study he was passing through, and more vividly aware of the peace and comfort of the verandah, the beauty of the shrubs and bush heavy with the sensuousness of the afternoon warmth, the panel of sunny river framed in the leafy ravine, and the curiosity of a fantail that flitted about the verandah posts.
He had an unpleasant feeling even then that he was in the wrong, that he should never have come. The quiet assurance with which Dane indicated a chair was not lost upon him. But he made no move to take it.
“Look here, Barrington, I’ve come to talk plainly to you.”
“I understand that. And since you have chosen to come to my house I must listen to you now, and I’m ready to hear all you have to say. But will you please remember that it is my house, and that I do not allow any man to come here and behave as he pleases. I insist that you act according to my sense of hospitality or we will go out on the public road. Will you please sit down?”
Davenport Carr had never been spoken to like that in all his life, but angry as he was he recognized Dane’s right to deliver that extraordinary speech. He sat down.
Dane got into his hammock and lit a cigarette with a detachment that did not help the temper of the man who was staring at him. The minute he had seen through his study window who his unwelcome guest was he knew he was in for it and set himself to face the music. But he did not mind what he would hear half so much as he did the scene that was likely to ensue when Valerie arrived. But whatever happened he was determined to keep his own temper, to bear in mind the point of view of a father in the matter, and also the point of view of the man brought up as Carr had been.
He was no sooner in his hammock than Lee came through the door with a tray and glasses. Dane could hardly keep from showing his appreciation of the matchless behaviour of his servant, who, gliding like a spirit, placed the things on the red table, moved it near the hammock, and looked at Davenport Carr as if he saw him for the first time.
“What you have, Meester Carr, wine or whisky?” he asked, with his impassive urbanity.
“I—I—nothing. I won’t drink.” Carr stared furiously past him out into the garden. He felt he was in some conspiracy of management.
“Meester Barrington?”
“Pour out two whiskies, Lee.”
Davenport Carr gave one withering look into Dane’s insolently quiet face, and then he stared at the fantail that was now perched on a rocking twig of honeysuckle chirping impertinently at him.
When he had poured out the drinks Lee looked uncertainly at Dane.
“What is it?”
“The other?” suggested the boy. “What do I say?”
“Oh, Miss Carr? Is she here?”
“No, but she come soon, you say.”
“That’s all right, Lee. Let her come here as soon as she arrives.”
Davenport Carr tapped his feet nervously on the floor and the minute Lee had disappeared he stood up.
“Look here, Barrington, I didn’t mean to lose my temper when I came, and I didn’t come here to talk morals to you either, but I’m not going to let you insult me by your manner, especially when you know well enough why I have come.”
“I’m sorry I’ve seemed insulting, Carr. That is the last thing I wish to be under any circumstances, or to anybody. I don’t know what kind of manner you expect from me, but I’m not going to get angry just because you do.”
Dane did not move his head from his red cushions. Something about his ease and beauty fascinated his visitor even while it enraged him.
“Good God, haven’t I a right to be angry? You’ve got Valerie talked about here and in Auckland. Do you tell me you don’t know that?” He took a step nearer the hammock.
Dane’s expression did not change. “I didn’t know it, and I’m very sorry to hear it. I did my best to avoid it.”
“Oh, you did, did you? That at least is something to your credit. How long have you been living with Valerie?”
“You mean, am I living with Valerie? Well, Carr, I once heard you say that was an unfair and impertinent question outside a court of law, and that it should never any case be asked of a man, as he had no right to speak for the woman concerned. I agreed with you at the time and I still do.”
For a moment Dane thought the other man was going to strike him as he lay, but he kept still, looking him fair in in the eyes.
“Barrington, will you get out of that damned thing! I can’t talk to you while you lie there like a woman. Get up!”
“Well, if I get out of this thing we’ll go out on the road. I repeat this is my house, and you can’t dictate to me whether I shall sit or stand. And I always use this hammock when I’m out here. Now will you please say what you came to say. I’m anxious to have it over before Valerie comes, and for God’s sake, Carr, be careful what you say to her.”
“Be careful what I say to her!” The moment would have been critical for an apoplectic man. “By God, you are a grim humourist!”
“I don’t mean to be funny, I assure you. But I repeat it. You know what advice and interference do to her. They seem to give her inflammation of the brain. You see she is not a person moved merely by impulse; she has the fanaticism of strong conviction.”
“Oh, the deuce! Anyone can make a conviction out of an impulse.”
“I don’t doubt that has been your method, my dear Carr, but it is not your daughter’s. I know a thoroughbred conviction when I see it and she is full of them. I should be suspicious of your convictions and even of my own ———”
Davenport Carr swung round on his heel, stamped along the verandah to the steps and down them to relieve his feelings, and then after a minute, he stamped up again.
“Get out of that thing, Barrington,” he shouted.
But Dane turned wearily away from him with a gesture of impatience that showed his visitor what a fool he was making of himself. He dropped down into the nearest chair making a desperate effort at control.
“Won’t you have a whisky, and tell me what it is you wish to say,” said Dane, very quietly.
“I won’t drink—thanks.” Carr sat for some minutes alternately diverted and irritated by the fantail which kept squeaking at him.
“I came to appeal to you, Barrington, if you have a spark of decency left in you. You’ve lived a hot life and you know the world as well as I do. I didn’t come here to blame you for being attracted by Valerie. I wish to be fair. Benton told me he begged you to go on the paper, and I’ve no doubt that she met you half-way. And I could have overlooked—well—some secret meetings with you both thrown together up here. God knows I’ve done things I don’t care to think about. But you should never have got her talked about. That is the thing I can’t forgive. And I liked and trusted you. Now this with my daughter. You should have gone away in the beginning.”
The moderation in this impressed Dane. He had not quite expected it.
“I did, Carr. I did go away.”
“Well, you came back, then.”
“Yes, I came back.” He turned in the hammock and looked out into the garden. The light on his face arrested the other man, but he saw it as something to be taken advantage of.
“Well, if you have any respect for her, Barrington, you must see that whatever there is between you must end at once. I’m here to beg you to end it. You can’t pretend that there is anything between you that will last. If I cannot get her to leave Dargaville you must go away yourself, and then what talk there has been will die down. It is the only thing you can do now. Will you do it?”
Dane turned to look at him. “Honestly, Carr, I don’t think you have any right to ask me to do that.”
“What! Do you mean to tell me you don’t know what the result will be to her if you go on?”
“I wasn’t thinking of that. I was thinking that she is twenty-six, and a free agent, and that she doesn’t care.”
Carr felt his anger mounting again.
“Doesn’t she? She will care, silly fool. She will care well enough when she comes out of the self-indulgent mess you’ve got her into.”
Try as he would Dane could not keep a shadow of a pitying smile out of his eyes. “Carr, the man was never born who could make your daughter self-indulgent. And love is not the only indulgence. You can be self-indulgent on milk and potatoes if you’re made that way. But it is a matter of being born that way. So please don’t attribute to me powers over your daughter that I don’t possess.”
Davenport Carr sprang up again. “Stop your damned philosophizing. It’s not helping your case at all. You have behaved like a cad. I can’t help saying it. You have seduced an inexperienced girl ———”
“I did not seduce Valerie, and I never seduced any girl.”
“You have had her here overnight. What the devil do you call that? And I believe you have been away with her this last month. It is ridiculous for you to pretend ———”
“I’m not pretending anything, Carr. I tell you frankly I have wished to marry her ever since the beginning of last winter.”
“What!” Valerie’s father lost the little control he now had left. “Of course you did! Your object is plain enough. Of course you’d like to marry her! Of course you’d like to get back so easily after two divorce scandals and the other mess. And a fine husband you would be for my daughter with all that hanging round your neck. By God, marriage is the one thing I will prevent if I can. I tell you that plainly. Damn you! How you can have the infernal cheek—after what I did for you—I’d believe anything after this. And you can get your business out of my hands at once, do you hear? At once. I will not be your lawyer a week longer. If you ruin my daughter, you blackguard ——— But you shall not. If you’d ever had the decency to be a parent you’d know how one feels about a child ———”
The torrent stopped abruptly for Valerie swung through the study door with a livid, quivering face, and clapped her hand on her father’s mouth with the suddenness and the appearance of a blow.
“You rotten coward, to taunt a man because he never had a child. Apologize for that at once or I will never speak to you again as long as I live.”
Davenport Carr fell back a step and Dane sprang from the hammock and snatched her riding-whip from her hand.
“For God’s sake, Val!” he exclaimed, horrified.
“Oh, I wasn’t going to hit him. Please get away, Dane. Are you going to apologize?”
“Val, I insist, please. I will not have any scene. It doesn’t matter what your father said to me. Do be reasonable ———”
“Dane, go away. I won’t be reasonable. Was he reasonable? I heard what he said to you. He called you a blackguard—you! And that brutal taunt! You damned coward!” She swung round on her startled father like an avenging fury. “You heard what I said. Apologize or I will never speak to you again after this day.”
And Davenport Carr saw a terrible look in the eyes of the child that he had come to shelter and defend, and it was a look that took small account of his eminence as a parent, and a look that made his assumptions as protector seem absurd. But in spite of all his confused anger he was big enough to see that he had said an uncalled-for thing.
“I do apologize for that, Barrington,” he said unsteadily, dropping back into the chair.
“It’s forgotten, sir.” Dane turned to Valerie, his eyes trying to hold hers with a compelling look. “Now, Valerie, please say what you have to say quietly. And you know one thing you ought to say.”
But it was unfortunate that Valerie had arrived primed as she had not been for years for a row.
VII
Bob had told her when she returned to the hotel the previous Sunday night that her father had wired to know when she would be back, and then after a little hesitation he had told her also that his sister had written about the rumours.
“Please don’t think I’m interfering. But I thought you might prefer to know.”
She did prefer to know, and was grateful to Bob and told him so. She waited to see if she would hear more and did not suppose anything would happen before she saw Dane, as she had arranged, on the Wednesday evening. It was on that day soon after the paper was out that she quite unexpectedly got the news of her father’s arrival.
Riding along from Te Koperu Doctor Steele had met the buggy from the stables, had recognized Davenport Carr as the only occupant and had seen that his nod was absent-mindedly returned, and then had begun to wonder what Carr was doing out on that road. With a presentiment that something was in the air he stopped at the News office as he occasionally did when passing at that hour of the day to get his paper. He walked in, saw Valerie sitting there with Bob, and after he had been given a copy of the News he said casually, “So your father is paying us a visit again, Miss Carr.”
He saw her face cloud and Bob look quickly at her. But Valerie didn’t pretend she had expected him.
“Why, where did you see him, Doctor? He likes to be surprising.”
“I met him on the road here driving out towards Barrington’s. Perhaps we’ll have a game to-night,” and he walked out as if he had said nothing significant.
Bob and Valerie gave one look at each other. They had not seen the buggy pass the office, nor had it, for Carr had taken a back cut.
“You’d better go after him, hadn’t you?” said Bob quietly.
And without knowing exactly what she feared she had hurried to the hotel where her horse was waiting for her, and caring nothing as to who might have seen her father, she dashed through the town in the heat in pursuit of him. And before she was half-way out she was beside herself with rage that he had come up at all to impose the outside world upon their peace. She had heard the voices directly she reached the front steps, and she stole silently into the study. They were not fighting, she was relieved to find, but the things her father was saying boiled the blood already over-heated in her veins.
And Dane saw, as he tried to calm her after her father’s apology, that he was wasting his time.
“Dane, I’ll say what I want to say and nothing else. My father came here and said what he wanted to say, and now he can listen to me.”
He turned away very hurt for here they were quarrelling for the first time. He began to pace back and forth on the verandah, growing more resentful every moment at the scene that followed, though he could not but admit the grim justice of much that Valerie said to her father, and admire the passionate eloquence with which she said it.
She stood against the hammock opposite her father, making at first an effort at control as she wiped her hot face, but after she got started she was like an over-wound spring that had been suddenly released.
“I never heard you talk such rubbish before, and I didn’t think anyone could talk such stuff to-day. You mentioned my ruin. Why, Dane couldn’t ruin me if he tried. You can’t ruin a person who isn’t ruinable, who refuses to be ruined. Do you think I’m the Second Mrs. Tanqueray that you come out with that tosh? What about all the women you’ve been living with? Are they ruined? And me? Am I going to sit round in the dark with the blinds drawn waiting for people to call? Can you see me doing it? How can you be so ridiculous? Nothing can ruin me but my own attitude of mind. Do you hear that? And what do you think I live for? Invitations to dinner? Are they the cure for ruin? My heavens, I’d call myself ruined if I gave them the importance you do. It’s you who are being ruined, not I. When you can take away from me my Beethoven, and the stars and the sunsets and the sea, and my own thoughts and my capacity to love all the things I do love I might agree that I was ruined. And Dane is only making me love all these things the more. For heaven’s sake, don’t come here and talk such drivel to us.”
She paused for breath, and her father, who had forgotten Dane for the present, and was roused to defend himself against her, broke in with fierce irritation.
“You silly fool! Do you think you’re the first person to talk this way and to live to find out you’re wrong? You’re going to lose all your friends ———”
“There you go again, insulting good words. Friends! The people I will lose were never friends and I’ll be glad to lose them. What earthly use to me at any time are people who don’t understand? Don’t you suppose I’ve learned how few friends I have? Will you get it into your head that I don’t care a damn about Government House dinners, about meeting people in their cheapest and most stupid moods? You want to frighten me with the ostracism of a set. Why, I ostracized that set years ago myself, and the hardest thing in my life has been to get the damned thing to let go of me. It persists in coming after me. I came here to get away from it and here you come after me slinging it at me again. What in the name of reason it can do to me that I have not done to it I don’t know. And you have the cheek to say I’ll miss it. If there is one thing on earth I want, it is to miss it, to lose it forever. I wish a tidal wave would come up and sweep it off the face of the earth. Honestly, if you don’t want me to go mad, stop talking about it.”
Dane turned abruptly a few feet away so that they might not see him smile. As far as he was concerned this was beginning to be funny.
But it was not funny to Davenport Carr, now powerless against her.
“Do you know that the whole place knows you are living with Barrington?”
“It can’t know it. But it loves to feed its nasty minds on the idea. It loves to whisper about it and tell tales about it and lick its lips over it. Yes, of course it does. And just because it is like that I despise it, and won’t have anything to do with it. But if you want to know, I am living with Dane. There’s nothing extraordinary about that, is there?”
Her father half rose out of his chair and fell back again.
“You don’t mean to tell me you have come up here to talk to us about morals! Really, my dear father—but your advice is a few years too late. And when I think back over those yachting parties ———”
“Look here, Val, you can leave my morals out of this. I did not come to talk morals to either of you. I came to talk sense. You know as well as I do, unless you’re mad, that you can’t do what I did or what any man does, and there are things a man can do and things he cannot do {[longdash}}”
“Oh, yes, I remember. You told Dane he had seduced an inexperienced girl. I thank you for the compliment, but I was not an inexperienced girl.”
“What do you mean?” He stared up at her, grasping the arms of his chair.
She went on much more quietly.
“Just what I said. I was not an inexperienced girl, not by a long shot. How anyone could be an inexperienced girl after the life on that yacht of yours—well—and you were right about my being seduced—I was—but Dane was not the man. It was when I was under twenty, and it was on one of those trips of yours. The atmosphere of your yacht did rather favour seduction, you know, father. And the man was one of the dear, friendly souls prominent to-day in your set. You often have him to dinner, smiling upon mother who would refuse to meet Dane—I say, hadn’t you better have a whisky? Sit down. I have a lot more to say ———”
“Who the hell is that man?” Davenport Carr stood shaking with rage in front of her.
“Oh, my heavens! If you men could only see how funny you are about us women! Sit down, and listen to me as Dane listened to you.”
The cold contempt in her tone staggered her father. As if he were in a dream he sat down.
Dane moved up a step or two, as if he would try to stop her. But he saw it was no use. She went on remorselessly.
“I shall not tell you the name of that man. Why should I? I understand mood and impulse now better than I did then. He is a charming man, much older than I. But then, most of them were. You had very clever and persuasive friends, my dear father. I will say that for them. And I was an inexperienced girl, emotional and idealistic and trusting the men you introduced me to. And I was flattered by their attention, and I got a little drunk with it. And I did not see what they were after—all of them. And then one night this man was too much for me, for like a silly kid I thought it was a wonderful thing to have a clever man like that tell me he loved me, and I lost my head, and left the future to him—sit still ———”
“Valerie, I will not sit still! By God, I will not! I will have the name of that man—we may be asking him to dinner next week.”
“You may, indeed. That would Be one of the pleasant little contretemps of your set, one of the reasons why I despise it so heartily, even though I see the humour of it. I’m sorry it’s lost on you.”
Valerie moved to the red table, and took up one of the goblets of whisky. “Here, father!”
But he ignored it, and dropped speechless and shaking back into the chair.
She went on quietly now, and Dane stood leaning against a post listening to her. “Well, it was a tragic experience for me, for the man was such a cur afterwards. He was scared to death, was terrified lest I should tell you. He made it all so ugly. And I had no one to turn to. Can you see me telling mother—or anybody? I had such a helpful lot of relatives! And I knew then what it was to need a friend. I nearly told dear old Marie, but I thought it would worry her so. So I had to puzzle it out alone. Most of us do when we’re struggling kids. And it was awfully hard, because I saw that so many were doing the thing I had done and thought nothing of it, but I knew my one night was all wrong, and it became more and more horrid as I thought about it, and it was awful to have the man so scared and so distrustful. Oh, it made me so sick. And I could feel it all in the air about me when I went on the yacht, but I played the game and went as if nothing had ever happened to me. I had learned my lesson. That would never happen to me again. But I felt it about me and I knew you were in it too. And I began to think about it. I saw that just being sick about it and despising everybody didn’t settle it. I began to read books, and that helped me a lot. I got a different point of view. And I tried to piece you all together again, to be fair to you. And I tried to see how little you had had at home except a lot of meaningless show, and that it was no wonder you had taken refuge with women who might give you something that looked real. For I came to see that we were all after something that was real, deep down inside us, only it is so hard to know what is, especially when you’re young. And then I went after it myself. I needed something to blot out that ugly memory, something that looked beautiful to me. And I thought I was in love, and I lived with another man, before I came up here. I told Dane that. I thought it was the fine thing I wanted. But it didn’t turn out right. I wanted it too much as a refuge, I see that now. But it taught me what one must have to be fine in love, and then up here ———”
She paused, seeing Lee give a preliminary peep through the door as if to decide whether it was an appropriate moment to bring out the tea. He came forward, removed the decanter and glasses to a large table, and put the tea tray on the red one, saw that tobacco and matches were where they should be and went out.
His exit was followed by a curious silence. Dane stood where he had been for some minutes, with the fantail, its curiosity about the other man apparently satisfied, now flitting about his head. He looked up at it once and smiled at it. Davenport Carr sat doubled up, his head down on his clenched hands, pulverized into speechlessness. Valerie looked down at him, and her anger now expended, pity began to soften the contemptuous coldness of her face. She moved to the tea-table and sat down and began to pour the tea.
Dane turned, caught her eye, looked meaningly from her to her father and walked off towards the back of the house. Her nerves were still raw enough to be irritated by this hint. But she spoke quietly to her father.
“You’d better have some tea.”
He raised his rather distracted face and saw that they were alone.
“Do you think I can drink tea after all you’ve told me? My God my game little kid ———”
To her astonishment his shoulders shook, and his head fell again into his hands. As she had never seen him anywhere near the border of tears her first impulse was to put her arms round him. But because she could not tell exactly what was in his mind she did not move.
“For heaven’s sake, dad, buck up. I’m all right. I’m not going to have my life spoiled, you know. It was so silly of you to say that. I didn’t mean to lose my temper so badly, but you know it does make me so mad to hear all that rot. And then it made me so mad to hear what you said to Dane, as if he were to blame.”
He looked up, and seeing her as he thought softened, he leaned towards her.
“Look here, old girl, there was only one reason why I came up here. I did not come to call Barrington names, but I got mad in spite of myself, he was so damned cool. But I came to beg you to stop this. And even after all you’ve said I still do. The other things are dead and buried. But you’ll never bury this.”
“And what if I don’t, and don’t want to?”
“Oh, Dick, old girl, please listen to me. Don’t get mad again.”
“All right, go on.”
“You’re infatuated now, Dick. And you can’t see the thing in any proportion ———”
“Suppose I married him,” she interrupted.
“Oh, that would be madness. It would never last. Nothing ever did with him as far as I can make out. His relations with women are just hopeless. He’d desert you, or you would have to leave him in a year or two. Anything but that. Get away from it now and it will all blow over. You’ve got a future, my dear girl. You could marry anybody. I want you to get away from it at once, Dick. I’m going to give you a couple of thousand pounds to go to London, Europe, travel for a year or two, and get over it.”
“That’s awfully good of you, dad. But you are overlooking something. What am I to do with my moral sense? I’ve let him care for me, in fact I made him care for me, you know.”
The coldness of her tone chilled her father.
“Oh, we all think it’s our moral sense. Don’t you suppose I know something about human nature?” he said, a little impatiently. “And of course you think his heart will be broken. That’s where you women are all so silly. If Barrington told the truth he’d be the first person to be amused at that idea.”
“He might be. Indeed, I think he would. But the point of all this is that I care, that I believe he cares. I have to live with that belief for the present at least. What have you to say to that?”
“It’s just romantic nonsense. And you’ll live to see it.”
“It’s romantic indeed, dad, but it isn’t nonsense. And now that I know what you think about it it amuses me to think that Dane insisted on marrying me a month ago, really out of consideration for you, out of respect for your code—now you needn’t look like that ———”
“Married! You’re married! Why the deuce wasn’t I told this before?”
“Goodness me, what difference does it make? Do you forget what you’ve been saying about it?”
Her father gave her one look, got to his feet, took up his hat and without another word stumbled off down the steps, and went round the front of the house.
She sat still for a minute and then her lips began to quiver. She bit them into steadiness, and getting up went in to change her clothes, and bathe her hot face. She went back to the verandah dressed in white, feeling shaken now herself by the temper she had been in. Seeing no sign of Dane she whistled for him, and he came from the back of the house.
“Why, where is he?” he asked as he came up the steps.
“He’s gone.”
“Gone! My dear, you haven’t let him go, have you?” He stopped at the top of the steps looking at her.
“Oh, I told him we were married, Dane. And he got up and went without a word. It’s the only sensible thing he’s done since he came.”
A pained look flashed over his eyes. He walked to the tea-table, lifted the lid of the pot, and then rang the bell.
“Make us some fresh tea, would you please, Lee.”
Valerie stood still, stung by the fact that he was ignoring her.
Turning at the table he looked at her a little wearily. “Well, old girl, what have you gained by keeping the marriage secret? If you call this kind of thing freedom, I don’t.”
“I don’t care what you call it. He had no business to come and interfere, to call you names ———”
“Oh, forget them, please.”
“But that wasn’t the worst. He came here to bribe me—to bribe me to go away from you. He offered me the thing he knows I’ve wanted for years—tried my weakest spot—and now—and now ———”
He took a step towards her and stopped, drooping his shoulders and putting his head on one side.
“Come here, Valerie,” He said in a voice of irresistible appeal. And at the light in his eyes she felt as if she had come out of a long black tunnel into the sweet freshness of a sunlit glade.
She moved slowly to him and all her anger and resentment died down as she felt his arms close about her.
“I want you to promise me something, dear,” he said, lifting his lips from hers.
“Oh, anything.”
“Don’t be reckless.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Don’t get angry like that again. And don’t make a ghost of your father.”
“Why, I can’t help it. He is a ghost now. He made himself a ghost.”
“No, no. Let’s start him all over again as something else. I like him, you know.”
Her eyes glistened, and she was preparing to throw her arms about him when Lee came through the door with the fresh pot of tea.