Deadham Hard | Page 9

delicate junction of opal-tinted sea with opal-tinted sky.
Whereupon Tom became convicted of the agreeable certainty that no
disappointment awaited him. His expectations were about to receive
generous fulfilment. This visit would prove well worth while. So
absorbed, indeed, was he in watching the man whom he supposed--and
rightly--to be his host, that he failed to notice one of the ladies rise
from the tea-table and advance across the lawn, until her youthful
white-clad form was close upon him, threading its way between the
glowing geranium beds.
Then--"You are my cousin, Thomas Verity?" the girl asked, with a
grave air of ceremony.
"Yes--and you--you are my cousin Damaris," he answered as he felt
clumsily, being taken unaware in more respects than one, and, for all
his ready adaptability, being unable to keep a note of surprise out of his
voice and glance.

He had known of the existence of this little cousin, having heard--on
occasion--vaguely irritated family mention of her birth at a time when
the flame of the Mutiny still burned fiercely in the Punjab and in Oudh.
To be born under such very accentuated circumstances could, in the
eyes of every normal Verity, hardly fail to argue a certain obtrusiveness
and absence of good taste. He had heard, moreover, disapproving
allusions to the extravagant affection Sir Charles Verity was said to
lavish upon this fruit of a somewhat obscure marriage--his only
surviving child. But the said family talk, in Tom's case, had gone in at
one ear and out at the other--as the talk of the elder generation mostly
does, and will, when the younger generation is solidly and
wholesomely convinced of the overwhelming importance of its own
personal affairs. Consequently, in coming to Deadham Hard, Tom had
thought of this little cousin--in as far as it occurred to him to think of
her at all--as a child in the schoolroom who, beyond a trifle of
good-natured notice at odd moments, would not enter into the count or
matter at all. Now, awakening to the fact of her proximity, he awoke to
the further fact that, with one exception, she mattered more than
anything or anybody else present.
She was, in truth, young--he had been quite right there. Yet, like the
room in the doorway of which he still lingered, like the man standing
on the terrace walk--to whose tall figure the serene immensities of sea
and sky acted as back-cloth and setting--she imposed herself. Whether
she was pretty or plain, Tom was just now incapable of judging. He
only knew that her eyes were wonderful. He never remembered to have
seen such eyes--clear, dark blue-grey with fine shading of eyelash on
the lower as well as the upper lid. Unquestionably they surpassed all
ordinary standards of prettiness. Were glorious, yet curiously
embarrassing; too in their seriousness, their intent impartial
scrutiny--under which last, to his lively vexation, the young man felt
himself redden.
And this, considering his superiority in age, sex, and acquirements, was
not only absurd but unfair somehow. For did not he, as a rule, get on
charmingly well with women, gentle and simple, old and young, alike?
Had he not an ingratiating, playfully flirtatious way with them in which

he trusted? But flirtatiousness, even of the mildest description, would
not do here. Instinctively he recognized that. It would not pay at all--in
this stage of the acquaintance, at all events. He fell back on civil
speeches; and these rather laboured ones, being himself rather
discountenanced.
"It is extremely kind of you and Sir Charles to take me on trust like
this," he began. "Believe me I am very grateful. Under ordinary
circumstances I should never have dreamed of proposing myself. But I
am going out to India for the first time--sailing in the Penang the day
after to-morrow. And, as I should be so near here at Southampton, it
was, I own, a great temptation to ask if I might come for a night. I
felt--my father felt--what a privilege it would be for me, a really
tremendous piece of luck, to meet Sir Charles before I started. Such a
rare and memorable send off for me, you know!"
"We were very glad you should propose yourself," Damaris answered,
still with her grave air of ceremony.
"Awfully good of you, I'm sure," the young man murmured.--No, she
didn't stare. He could not honestly call it staring. It was too calm, too
impersonal, too reserved for that. She looked, with a view to arriving at
conclusions regarding him. And he didn't enjoy the process--not in the
least.
"My father is still interested in everything connected with India," she
went on. "He will like to talk to you. We have people with us this
afternoon whom he could not very well leave, or he would have driven
into Marychurch