"You're not crying, dearest witch, are you?" he asked her.
"Yes, I am," Damaris said. "What else is there left for me to do?—Everyone I care for I seem to make unhappy. Everything I do goes wrong. Everything I touch gets broken and spoilt somehow."
"Endless tragedies of little green jade elephants?" he gently bantered her.
"Yes—endless. For now I have hurt you. You are trying to be good and like your usual self to me; but that doesn't take me in. I know all through me I have hurt you—quite dreadfully badly—though I never, never meant to, and haven't an idea how or why."
This was hardly comforting news to Carteret. He attempted no disclaimer; while she, after fumbling rather helplessly at the breast-pocket of her jacket, at last produced a folded letter and held it out to him.
"Whether it's treacherous or not, I am obliged to tell you," she said, with pathetic desperation. "For I can't bear any more. I can't but try my best to keep you, Colonel Sahib. And now you are hurt, I can only keep you by making you understand—just everything. You may still think me wrong; but anyhow my wrongness will be towards somebody else, not towards you.—So please read this, and don't skip, because every word helps to explain. Read it right through before you ask me any questions—that's more fair all round.—If you go across there—under the lamp, I mean—there still is light enough, I think, for you to be able to see."
And Carteret, thus admonished—partly to pacify her, partly to satisfy a very vital curiosity which stirred in him to compass the length, breadth, and height of this queer business, learn the truth and so set certain vague and agitating fears at rest—did as Damaris bade him. Standing in the conflicting gaslight and moonlight, the haunted quiet of the small hours broken only by the trample and wash of the sea, he read Darcy Faircloth's letter from its unconventional opening, to its equally unconventional closing paragraph.
"Now my holiday is over and I will close down till next Christmas night—unless miracles happen meanwhile—so good-bye—Here is a boatload of my lads coming alongside, roaring with song and as drunk as lords.—God bless you. In spirit I once again kiss your dear feet"—
Carteret straightened himself up with a jerk. Looked at Damaris sitting very still, a little sunk together, as in weariness or dejection upon the stone bench. His eyes blazed fierce, for once, with questions he burned yet dreaded to ask. But on second thoughts—they arrived to him swiftly—he restrained his impatience and his tongue. Mastering his heat he looked down at the sheet of note-paper again. He would obey Damaris, absorb the contents of this extraordinary document, the facts it conveyed both explicitly and implicitly, to the last word before he spoke.
Happily the remaining words were few. "Your brother," he read, "till death and after"—followed by a name and date.