Golden dishes

Chapter One

AMARIS PACKE crouched W the black fur rug in front of the library fire, hold¬ ing out cold hands to the blaze. It was as much mental as bodily chill which made her shiver, for the shadow of death lay upon the old square house which had once stood in the country, but about whose stout walls the stretching tentacles of London had now stolen.

Isolated in its encircling garden Greystones stur¬ dily resisted the inevitable advance of Suburbia. Damaris often wished that it did not. It sometimes seemed to her that if she listened hard enough she could hear the sound of a wave of humanity from the sea of life beating against its high glass-crowned walls, seeking vainly for admission.

Miss Charlotte Packe, her autocratic great-aunt, to whom in a moment of foolish impulse she con¬ fided this idea, had called it disgusting.

“Wave of humanity, indeed. I’m surprised at you, Damaris. Much you’d enjoy a wave of humanity if it poured over you. The mere idea sickens me.”

“It doesn’t sicken me, Aunt Charlotte. Life is life and has got to be lived. We can’t shut out people always.”

“We shall as long as I am alive,” retorted Miss Packe, with a flicker of fire in the piercing black eyes which lent a surprising vitality to the wrinkled waxen-yellow face.

And now Aunt Charlotte Packe lay dying upstairs in the great four-post bed out of which she had not slept for forty years. All her life long she had ruled those about her with a rod of iron. Now she wielded the sternest autocracy of all, the sceptre of one who is about to die.

Over Damaris she had held almost undisputed sway ever since that black unforgettable day, eight¬ een years ago, when Miss Packe had swooped like an eagle upon the old house, Paraded, and borne the dazed child of fourteen away from the confusion and disorganization consequent upon the sudden deaths of its master and mistress.

With a little shiver Damaris saw again the vision of her father’s rigid body being borne in from the hunting-field. In her ears still rang her mother’s cry of anguish. Like a bright ray across the dark¬ ness came a vivid memory of her step-brother, Roland Waring, whom she adored with all the pas¬ sion of a sensitive child: the comforting clasp of his hand, the solace of what they both called his “bear’s hugs.”

But Roland, to whom her mother had left Paradell (which had been her own property) had sold the old place and gone to study art in Paris. Roland, her hero, had married a girl student as poor as him¬ self, and now wandered through the world with the little daughter she had left him.

Oh, if only she could buy back Paradell and make a home there for him and his child! But what would Ludlow say to that hidden dream of years? Damaris flushed rosily as she realized that for the moment she had forgotten her lover, Ludlow Tempest. He was at the back of her thoughts always, colouring the grey monotony of her days. How was it that he had slipped into oblivion even for an instant?

“My dearest! You know you’re always there— always!” she breathed in passionate apology, kiss¬ ing the gold signet ring which she wore in tacit defiance of Miss Packe’s disapproval.

“No penniless scribblers for my niece,” the old lady had declared with spirit. “Come to me when you’ve earned enough to support a wife, young man, and we’ll begin to talk about things then. Till that day keep your distance.”

Tempest would have urged Damaris there and then to throw in her lot with him had he not been painfully conscious that he was earning barely enough to support himself, much less a wife. Damaris’s father, Edgar Packe, had lost his all in dis¬ astrous speculation. Her mother had had nothing to bequeath except the encumbered acres of Paradell, which naturally went to her son.

“Altogether an impecunious crowd,” mused Dama¬ ris, her blue eyes fixed upon the orange flames that danced about the burning logs. “If only I could earn some money—but who would employ an un¬ trained woman of thirty-two? Oh, if only I had my youth over again, if only I had a little money of my own to enable me to train for something! As it is,” she shrugged her shoulders hopelessly, “I am that hideous thing, a penniless parasite. . . . No, no!” Pride made quick protest. “At least I earn my keep from Aunt Charlotte. No paid companion would do for her what I do, could give her what I give her. And now she’s dying. Leaving this dull, comfortable life, and going—where? Out—some¬ where—alone.”

The February twilight thickened without. The wind had risen and now whined uneasily about the old house. Damaris started as the door opened sud¬ denly behind her to admit Benson, the parlour-maid, whose white face, cap and apron gleamed against the darkness of the hall outside.

“Postman’s just been, miss, and left this parcel for you.” She held out a flat packet.

“For me, Benson?” Damaris’s tone quickened. Parcels by post rarely came her way.

“Yes, miss. Shall I light the gas? It’s a bit earlier than usual, but it’s so dark tonight.” The girl’s face bore that curious look of excited appre¬ hension which is so often seen in the households of those who are about to die.

“Please, Benson.”

When the lights were lit and the curtains drawn Damaris drew a breath of relief. The commonplace action seemed to restore a fleeting sense of nor¬ mality.

Eagerly she scanned the address. It was printed in small capitals. The stamps were Italian and bore a blurred postmark which she could not decipher.

With an absurd sense of wrong-doing she cut the string . . . Aunt Charlotte always insisted upon the meticulous untying of every knot. . . .

Her fingers trembled with excitement as she un¬ wrapped brown paper, tissue paper, a shielding length of cardboard, more tissue paper, and finally a water-colour drawing.

It was a rough sketch of a young girl’s head. A l great plait of tawny hair fell on either side of a squarish vivid little face, brown as a hazel-nut. Grey-green eyes set with a slight tilt asked an eternal question at which the widely curving red lips seemed to mock. Nature had adroitly set two brown moles as beauty-spots on the left cheek near eye and chin; yet withal the face was arrest¬ ing rather than beautiful, provocative rather than lovable.

Damaris, gazing, did not know whether it at¬ tracted or repelled her, until her eyes fell on the legend—“Tory”—splashed in black letters across one corner. Then repulsion faded, quenched in a warm rush of feeling.

“Tory! Little Victoria—Roland’s child! Some¬ how I had never pictured her like that! There’s something elfin, something of the woodland about her! She’s not a bit like Roland. She must take after her mother. What a pity! Roland is so handsome! Ah, there’s a letter.”

With quickened pulses she stooped to pick up a folded paper from the floor. It bore neither address nor date, but plunged at once into the heart of the matter, as was Roland’s way.

“Damaris, descendant of the importunate widow,

“Here is the portrait of my Tory for which you have incessantly plagued me! It is one of halfa-dozen sketches I made for a proper picture of her, and is absurdly like the creature. I fear I’ve ideal¬ ized her nose a little, but what matter? You ask me why she never writes to you. It’s probably because she can’t spell. But what does that matter either? Spelling is a mere convention, after all, and when Tory is forced to it she does it handsomely. There is no skimpiness about my daugh¬ ter’s spelling. She is generous enough to add a handful of superfluous letters to most words, but I wouldn’t change her for the most perfect speller in the world. After many months of wandering, our shoes being irrevocably worn out, we have per¬ force halted in a chestnut wood on the side of Lake Mergozzo, a tiny gem set at the foot of the moun¬ tains that beam benignantly upon Lake Maggiore beyond. We both love roast chestnuts, fortunately, and when the summer comes the leaves ought to make us charming tunics, if a trifle prickly. Before then, though, I hope to have a picture in the Paris Salon, when Tory and I will crack a fiasco of the least sour Chianti we can find, and dance through the wood ‘with vine-leaves in our hair.’ Our shack is called the Villa Mariana, which is far too grand a name. Tory and I have christened it Villino Gobbo, which means Little Villa Hunchback, as one shoul¬ der is distinctly higher than the other and its left eye (or window if you prefer it) has a decided squint.

“Tory would send you a kiss if she ever kissed anybody but me—which she doesn’t, and I send a bear’s hug—(do you remember the bear’s hugs at Paradell? Poor lost Paradell!) from the Villino Gobbo and your dauber brother,

“Roland.”

Damaris smiled, sighed and frowned as she read this epistle.

“Madder than ever,” she murmured, “but dearer than ever too! Not a word of sense from beginning to end, but oh, how dreadfully poor they seem to be! How long is it since I heard from Roland? Over six months. They were in Spain then, and sounded more opulent. What a life for a girl! If only I could help them! Tory—why, Tory must be six¬ teen. The very age when a girl most needs a woman near her. Would she let me love her, I wonder? I could love her, I do love her almost as much as Roland. Oh, if I could only buy back Paraded, how happy we could all be together there—Ludlow and I, and Roland and Tory!”

For all her thirty-two years Damaris was still too unsophisticated to doubt the success of such a quix¬ otic scheme. The mossy walls of Greystones had narrowed her horizon mentally as well as physically. Yet even at the moment misgiving faintly touched her.

“Well, why not?” she said defiantly. She rose and looked at her face in the big gilt-framed mirror which hung over the chimney-piece. Blue eyes looked back at her from a face incongruously young and rosy in its mist of silvery hair. Skin and com¬ plexion were clear and youthful still, but her hair had turned to its present greyness before she was twenty-one.

There was something distinctly attractive in the bizarre combination: May and December in odd juxtaposition: but Damaris could not see it.

Her thoughts swung back to her lover.

“Why did he choose me?” she mused. “I wasn’t half as pretty as most of the girls at Mrs. Blaikie’s party.”

Yet even on the thought she knew that beauty had had but little to do with their mutual attraction. She remembered the wild leap her heart had given as Tempest’s grey eyes looked into her blue ones, the sudden knowledge that something inexplicable had happened, the excitement that thrilled her days, the glamour of the stolen meetings which had cul¬ minated in an engagement while yet the inner self of each was as a sealed book to the other.

The door opened once more. Damaris started and swerved round from the mirror. It was Benson, again, pale and breathless this time.

“Please, miss, the mistress is awake and the nurse says she would like to see you.”

“Oh! . . . I’ll go immediately.” Fled were thoughts of brother and lover, swamped in the immi¬ nence of the contact from which every fibre of Damaris Packe shrank.

Death, who had smitten the ruddy boisterousness of her kindly father to a cold and pallid silence, who had frozen her merry, laughing mother to the sem¬ blance of a beautiful statue; Death, the mysterious force, was coming here, to this warm familiar house; drawing nearer, nearer still, on swift relentless feet. And she had to face his coming once more, with all its bewildering pageantry, its grim and ghastly stag¬ ing. Aunt Charlotte—oh, she couldn’t, she couldn’t!

Damaris covered her face with her hands, unheed¬ ing Benson’s frankly curious gaze, fighting with all her might against old recurrent terrors. In a mo¬ ment she had got grip of herself again, but when she uncovered her face it was completely drained of colour.

“Lor, miss, don’t take on so,” cried Benson, on a kindly impulse. “It’s natural for the old to go. It’s only-”

But Damaris had left the room while still she had the power to move her reluctant limbs.

Chapter Two

ISS PACKE was no sloven. Even in the face of Death she insisted upon pre¬ senting as good a front to the world she was leaving as she had done throughout a long monotonous life. Lace lappets framed a face as yellow as they, falling richly upon the purple satin wrapper which enfolded the shrunken frame. Some fine diamonds flashed upon the clawlike hands with which she motioned to Damaris.

“Come here, Damaris. I’m not going to bite you even if I am dying,” piped a thin voice from the great bed. “Give me some cordial, nurse. I want to speak to my great-niece.”

The neat-capped nurse moved forward and half filled a medicine-glass with a deep red liquid. Even as such trivialities will seize upon the mind at in¬ appropriate moments Damaris could not help notic¬ ing the colour effect of the crimson cordial and the purple gown against the white pillows gleaming from the dusk of the canopied bed, which looked cavern¬ ous in the shaded light of the sick-room.

Miss Packe sipped from the medicine-glass, and closed her eyes as the nurse wiped her lips with a fine lawn handkerchief.

To Damaris it seemed as if the light of her Aunt Charlotte’s life had been blown out. The wrinkled face on the pillow looked like a death-mask. Con- 9 flicting emotions warred within her: pity, sadness, unreasoning terror.

The black eyes opened suddenly, bringing life back to the waxen face. It was Aunt Charlotte once more, as she had been for many months. Damaris felt her tremors subside.

“You must have got your hair from your mother’s family,” said Miss Packe for about the one hun¬ dredth time. “No Packe ever turned grey at oneand-twenty.”

“No, Aunt Charlotte,” returned Damaris with the patience of years. The familiar lapped about her soothingly. She wondered how she could have been so foolish.

“Go away, nurse. Drat the woman, why doesn’t she go when I tell her?” Already the old voice rang stronger.

“I’m going, Miss Packe. I only waited to make up the fire.” The nurse, hastily summoned on the previous evening, felt no human bond between her and her troublesome case. She went swiftly out of the room, closing the door behind her.

“Is that door shut?”

“Yes, Aunt Charlotte.”

“Good. I want no pryers and peepers.” Miss Packe looked at her great-niece with a glint of tri¬ umph in her black eyes. “Damaris, did you ever want to be rich?”

Damaris started. Had Aunt Charlotte uncannily read her thoughts?

“Yes, Aunt Charlotte,” she admitted, reddening.

“Why? But you needn’t answer. I know you want to marry your penniless scribbler and support that worthless step-brother of yours.”

Indignant retort sprang to the girl’s lips, but she checked it to a milder: “Roland isn’t worthless.”

“What good has he ever done? Painted a few daubs that no one wants to buy, written to you once in a way when the mood took him, and left you for months without a letter when he was too selfabsorbed to write to you! Much he cares for you!”

There was sufficient truth in this indictment to have stung Damaris at another time, but now she was armoured against Miss Packe’s thrusts by Roland’s letter. . . . He had written. He had remembered her desire for Tory’s portrait. He had even gone to the trouble of painting it for her. He did care. . . . She answered only with a smile, whose confidence pricked the old woman to a sudden un¬ easiness.

“Damaris,” she said quickly, “I’m a richer woman than you imagine. I’ve left all my money to you.”

Colour flooded Damaris’s face from brow to chin. She gasped in amazement.

“Oh, Aunt Charlotte!”

How stupid she was! She seemed capable only of repeating her great-aunt’s name! But Miss Packe had never encouraged individuality. Ac¬ quiescence was all she had ever demanded of Damaris. She neither knew nor cared anything about the girl’s inner life, the secret mental proc¬ esses which went on beneath the surface of her hardly acquired calm. Miss Packe belonged to that old-fashioned school which believes that what is ignored does not exist.

She spoke again on a sharpened note.

“I’ve made you my heiress conditionally. Unless you do what I want you shan’t have a penny.”

“What do you want me to do?” asked Damaris, trying to keep her voice from trembling.

A vision of Paraded, restored, renewed, filled with happy faces and quickened to life by the sound of happy voices, of young dancing feet, flitted across her bewildered mind. Was it possible that her wild dream could really come true? Did such things ever happen?

“Only to promise to stay with me to the end and not to marry that pauper Tempest while I have breath in my body.”

“How could you think I would leave you?” Damaris began reproachfully.

“Girls do queer things for love of men. I’ll make it worth your while to stay.”

“I won’t bargain like this,” Damaris thrust in, hot and shamed. “It’s unnatural, indecent. I don’t want your money, Aunt Charlotte.”

“Nonsense! every one wants money. You can’t pretend that you haven’t been counting on mine.”

“I haven’t been counting. I never even knew that you were rich. I did hope that you might leave me .a little, but-”

She stopped, filled with a sudden choking distaste for the whole scene.

“Of course you did. So did Tempest. Very natural, too. Well, all I possess shall be yours on that one condition. Promise me that you will stay with me till I die, Damaris, and that you won’t marry Tempest until I’ve gone. Why do you hesi¬ tate? Come. Give me your word.”

Silence fell in response to this appeal, which was more like a command: a silence which grew heavy and sharp-edged as Damaris twisted her fingers together nervously and strove for words which would not come. Her unexpected outburst seemed to have drained her of speech.

“I am waiting for your promise, Damans.”

Was it a note of fear that struck shrilly through the quavering voice? It was a reasonable request enough, but some blind instinct checked the words that trembled on Damaris’s lips. . . . Aunt Char¬ lotte had been ill before. Supposing that she did not die this time. . . . Supposing that she lived on for years, binding her to another long period of bond¬ age? Could she stand it? She felt nearly at her tether’s end. . . .Yet how could she bargain with a dying woman? How could she say in actual words —“If you promise to die soon I’ll stay, if you don’t I won’t”? It would be brutal, heartless: yet that was her thought, starkly visible.

“It can’t be long now, Damaris.” Again the old woman seemed to read her thoughts. “I’m eightythree. The money will soon be yours. Then you can marry your scrubby journalist and fill your scapegrace painter’s gaping pockets. . . . My God, I grudge my carefully gathered money going like that! . . . But you shall have it, Damaris, to do what you like with. No restriction but the one.”

Damaris hesitated: shrinking, yet feeling, despite her distaste, the lure of her unfulfilled dream.

Suddenly Miss Packe’s bony fingers shot out and clutched her wrist with a grip that tightened pain¬ fully. Her voice wheezed and broke, rising to a shrill scream.

“Damaris, don’t leave me! I’m old. I’m fright¬ ened. I’m afraid to die alone. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”

All the curbed womanhood in Damaris rose at the appeal. She put warm arms round the old woman’s trembling body. . . . How small, how frail it felt! A mere skeleton already.

“Dear Aunt Charlotte, you mustn’t be frightened. Of course I’ll stay. Just as long as you want me. I never thought of deserting you. Of course I won’t leave you.” She soothed her as one would a child, seeing, in truth, but little difference between these two extremes of life, infancy and old age.

Miss Packe clung to her with extraordinary vitality.

“You’ll stay to the end? You won’t run away and marry Tempest? Promise, Damaris.”

“I promise.”

“On your word of honour?”

“On my word of honour.”

Miss Packe gave a sigh that shook her whole frame as she relaxed her grip. Damaris laid her gently back on her pillows.

“No Packe ever broke his word,” she breathed.

“I shall not break mine, Aunt Charlotte.”

“Whatever happens?”

“Whatever happens.”

“I shan’t break mine either. You shall have the money.”

“It wasn’t for the money I promised.”

“No? Perhaps not altogether. You’ve been a good girl on the whole, though much too like your mother to please me. Tell that nurse-woman that I’ve gone to sleep. I hate to have her poking round. Don’t go far away. I may want you again at any moment.” Once more Miss Packe’s eyes brightened and flickered with the fear of death.

“Let me stay with you now.”

“No, no. I’ll send for you when I want you. Go downstairs and do something useful. There are those Dorcas things to be finished.”

“Very well, Aunt Charlotte.”

Damaris went quietly out of the room. The nurse stood by the window on the landing. She turned when she heard the opening of the door.

“Miss Packe bad?” she asked perfunctorily.

“No. She wants to sleep. Do you think—is there —will she?” Damaris stumbled for a phrase that would not sound too crude. She need not have troubled. Custom had robbed the nurse of any use for nuances.

“You never can tell when they’re as old as that. She may linger on for quite a while. On the other hand she may go off at any moment.”

Damaris shivered as she went towards the stairs. Death was a commonplace to the other woman. What was the meaning of it all? Why the beginning if this were to be the end? She thought of Miss Packe’s long withered life, a succession of dry, sap¬ less days, her capacity for joy or sorrow outlived, her one emotion fear. What good had her money been to her? What colour had it brought into her life or any others? Oh, if it were hers —when it was hers—Damaris thought, what joy she would make it bring to those she loved best!

Once more she saw the mirage of Paraded in the wood, where she and Ludlow, Roland and Tory would build up a beautiful happy life together, after all these lean years of separation and poverty.

Chapter Three

E stairs took a sharp turn to the right. As Damaris rounded the angle she came face to face with Benson, who was hurrying towards her, eager, excited.

“A gentleman to see you, miss.”

“To see me, Benson?” This was a day of hap¬ penings for Damaris Packe.

“Yes, miss. Mr. Tempest, miss. I put him in the library as there was no fire in the drawing¬ room.”

“Quite right.”

Damaris quickened her steps. What had brought Ludlow here tonight of all nights? He had not crossed the threshold of Greys tones since the day Miss Packe had practically forbidden him the house. Had he heard of the old lady’s sudden illness, and come to give her the comfort of his presence? The age of miracles was not yet past. Anything might happen upon this incredible day.

As she paused with her hand on the handle of the library door she felt as if to see him so soon would be almost more than she could bear. Then she went quietly into the room.

To the lean black-haired man, who stood on the hearth-rug with Tory Waring’s picture in his hand, she had never looked more beautiful, more desirable. The paling of her roses, the faint purple shadows beneath her eyes added but a touch of pathos to the appeal she had held for him from the very first. The real Damaris he scarcely knew, but he was not aware 16 of this. For him she had some subtle exquisite charm which set her above and apart from the ordinary woman.

He flung the sketch on a table and came towards her.

“Damaris! My dearest!”

She was in his arms, crushed against him so closely that it almost hurt. He tilted her chin, and looking down at her with a smile of triumph kissed her soft lips with a new passion.

Damaris, unprepared, felt a little frightened, a little jarred. She was tired, unnerved. Life and love seemed a trifle over-exuberant in the hush of Death’s coming. She held herself back from her lover, leaning against the bar of his clasping arms with a strange sensation, half uneasiness, half security.

“Ludlow! What is it, dear? No more bad news?”

He sobered instantly. “More bad news? Why, what has happened?”

“Aunt Charlotte is very ill.”

He made an impatient movement. “She has been ill before. Don’t let us think about her now. Let me tell you what brought me here tonight.”

“Do. I’m longing to hear.” She felt that perhaps she had been lacking in sympathy and tried to quicken her tones. ... If only she did not feel so stupidly, dreadfully tired! . . . What was it that Ludlow was saying? . . . How young he looked with his hair rumpled up like that! She touched it with a tender hand.

“. . .So Burnett has given me the com¬ mission to do these articles on ‘World Unrest’ for the London Weekly , and as it means at least France,

Italy, Belgium and Spain I thought what a perfect honeymoon trip it would make.”

“Honeymoon trip!” Damaris echoed. “But, Lud¬ low-”

“But, Damaris!” He mocked her gently, taking her face between his hands and swaying it from side to side. “Isn’t it a topping idea? All my expenses are to be paid and I’m to get ten of the very best Bradbury’s for each article, which ought to pay yours and a bit over. The Registrar Johnny said he could give me a license in twenty-four hours, so there is nothing in the world to pre¬ vent us from getting married at once!”

“Married at once! Ludlow, boy, what a heavenly idea!” She forgot Aunt Charlotte for an instant in the ecstasy of the thought.

“Yes, isn’t it? Mrs. Tempest. Damaris Tem¬ pest! Sounds rather good, doesn’t it?”

“The Tempests of Paradell. . . . Ludlow Tem¬ pest, the famous author, photographed in the rose-garden at Paraded. ... By the lily-pond at Para¬ ded. . . . In the beech-tunnel at Paraded-. Only

you’d have to be looking out through one of the openings! ”

Words tumbled hotfoot from Damaris’s thronging thoughts. Her eyes shone. Her cheeks glowed.

“Sounds ad right, but why Paraded? What and where is Paraded?”

“Paraded-! ” The dream dissolved into a rain¬

bow mist as Damaris came back to earth again. “Paraded is the house where I was born, where I lived until I came here—my mother’s house in the New Forest. I want to buy it back, and live there with you and Roland and Tory.”

Tempest’s look grew quizzical. “Rather a tall order, isn’t it? Anything else? Roland’s your step¬ brother, I remember. But who’s Tory?”

“This is Tory.” Damaris slipped from his clasp and held up the sketch. “Roland’s child.”

“Oh, that’s Tory, is it? ... An attractive little Pagan, I should say, by the look of her, but rather a disturbing addition to a person’s household, I should fancy. We could have them to stay if you liked when we’ve saved enough money to make your dreams come true, but to have them to live with

us altogether-” His strongly marked black

brows rose questioningly. “However, we needn’t worry about that yet, darling. We’ve got to get to Spain first, before we can build any castles there.”

“No, Ludlow. Listen. Sit down beside me on the couch and let us talk sense. It’s not such a castle in Spain as you imagine, for—oh, it sounds horrible to talk of it, but I must tell you. Aunt Charlotte told me just now that she is a richer woman than I imagined and that she is going to leave all her money to me!”

Tempest pursed his lips for a soundless whistle. “I say! . . . How rich did you imagine her, Damaris?”

“I never thought much about it,” said Damaris frankly. “We live comfortably enough here, but Aunt Charlotte is always awfully economical about things like matches, and bits of string, and breadpuddings, and not having the gas lit till a certain hour. Ludlow—I wonder if she could have five hundred a year?”

“That doesn’t go very far nowadays. No. I should say she must have nearer to a thousand. It’s jolly decent of the old lady. A solid thousand a

year-!” The whistle came out at last. “I say,

sweetheart, we’ll send her the best mantilla we can buy in Madrid!”

Damaris flushed suddenly. “Oh, but, dearest, we can’t be married just yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because—because—I wish it didn’t sound so sordid—because she won’t leave us the money if we do.”