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THE HISTORY
OF
SIR RICHARD CALMADY
A Romance
By
Lucas Malet
NEW YORK
Dodd, Mead & Company
1901
_Copyright_, 1901
BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
THE CAXTON PRESS
NEW YORK.
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE CLOWN
CHAP. PAGE
I. Acquainting the Reader with a Fair Domain
and the Maker Thereof 1
II. Giving the Very Earliest Information
Obtainable of the Hero of this Book 7
III. Touching Matters Clerical and Controversial 19
IV. Raising Problems which it is the Purpose
of this History to Resolve 25
V. In which Julius March Beholds the Vision
of the New Life 34
VI. Accident or Destiny, According to Your Humour 44
VII. Mrs. William Ormiston Sacrifices a Wine-glass
to Fate 57
VIII. Enter a Child of Promise 69
IX. In which Katherine Calmady Looks on Her Son 76
X. The Birds of the Air Take Their Breakfast 84
BOOK II
THE BREAKING OF DREAMS
I. Recording some Aspects of a Small Pilgrim's Progress 93
II. In which Our Hero Improves His Acquaintance
with Many Things--Himself Included 104
III. Concerning that which, Thank God, Happens
Almost Every Day 117
IV. Which Smells very Vilely of the Stable 128
V. In which Dickie is Introduced to a Little Dancer
with Blush-roses in Her Hat 140
VI. Dealing with a Physician of the Body and a
Physician of the Soul 149
VII. An Attempt to Make the Best of It 159
VIII. Telling, Incidentally, of a Broken-down Postboy
and a Country Fair 169
BOOK III
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
I. In which Our Hero's World Grows Sensibly Wider 181
II. Telling How Dickie's Soul was Somewhat Sick, and
How He Met Fair Women on the Confines of a Wood 186
III. In which Richard Confirms One Judgment and
Reverses Another 195
IV. Julius March Bears Testimony 203
V. Telling How Queen Mary's Crystal Ball Came to Fall
on the Gallery Floor 215
VI. In which Dickie Tries to Ride Away from His Own
Shadow, with Such Success as Might Have Been
Anticipated 231
VII. Wherein the Reader is Courteously Invited to
Improve His Acquaintance with Certain Persons
of Quality 240
VIII. Richard Puts His Hand to a Plough from which There
is no Turning Back 252
IX. Which Touches Incidentally on Matters of Finance 264
X. Mr. Ludovic Quayle Among the Prophets 280
XI. Containing Samples Both of Earthly and Heavenly Love 289
BOOK IV
A SLIP BETWIXT CUP AND LIP
I. Lady Louisa Barking Traces the Finger of Providence 302
II. Telling How Vanity Fair Made Acquaintance with
Richard Calmady 314
III. In which Katherine Tries to Nail Up the Weather-glass
to Set Fair 324
IV. A Lesson Upon the Eleventh Commandment--"Parents
Obey Your Children" 337
V. Iphigenia 350
VI. In which Honoria St. Quentin Takes the Field 362
VII. Recording the Astonishing Valour Displayed by a
Certain Small Mouse in a Corner 375
VIII. A Manifestation of the Spirit 386
IX. In which Dickie Shakes Hands with the Devil 397
BOOK V
RAKE'S PROGRESS
I. In which the Reader is Courteously Entreated to
Grow Older by the Space of Some Four Years, and
to Sail Southward Ho! Away 417
II. Wherein Time is Discovered to Have Worked Changes 429
III. Helen de Vallorbes Apprehends Vexatious Complications 438
IV. "Mater Admirabilis" 447
V. Exit Camp 455
VI. In which M. Paul Destournelle Has the Bad Taste to
Threaten to Upset the Apple-cart 469
VII. Splendide Mendax 479
VIII. Helen de Vallorbes Learns Her Rival's Name 490
IX. Concerning that Daughter of Cupid and Psyche Whom
Men Call Voluptas 506
X. The Abomination of Desolation 511
XI. In which Dickie Goes to the End of the World and
Looks Over the Wall 526
BOOK VI
THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH
I. Miss St. Quentin Bears Witness to the Faith that
is in Her 544
II. Telling How, Once Again, Katherine Calmady Looked
on Her Son 555
III. Concerning a Spirit in Prison 566
IV. Dealing with Matters of Hearsay and Matters
of Sport 575
V. Telling How Dickie Came to Untie a Certain Tag
of Rusty, Black Ribbon 588
VI. A Litany of the Sacred Heart 600
VII. Wherein Two Enemies are Seen to Cry Quits 611
VIII. Concerning the Brotherhood Founded by Richard
Calmady, and Other Matters of Some Interest 628
IX. Telling How Ludovic Quayle and Honoria St. Quentin
Watched the Trout Rise in the Long Water 639
X. Concerning a Day of Honest Warfare and a Sunset
Harbinger Not of the Night But of the Dawn 655
XI. In which Richard Calmady Bids the Long-suffering
Reader Farewell 679
The History of Sir Richard Calmady
BOOK I
THE CLOWN
CHAPTER I
ACQUAINTING THE READER WITH A FAIR DOMAIN AND THE MAKER THEREOF
In that fortunate hour of English history, when the cruel sights and
haunting insecurities of the Middle Ages had passed away, and while, as
yet, the fanatic zeal of Puritanism had not cast its blighting shadow
over all merry and pleasant things, it seemed good to one Denzil
Calmady, esquire, to build himself a stately red-brick and freestone
house upon the southern verge of the great plateau of moorland which
ranges northward to the confines of Windsor Forest and eastward to the
Surrey Hills. And this he did in no vainglorious spirit, with purpose
of exalting himself above the county gentlemen, his neighbours, and
showing how far better lined his pockets were than theirs. Rather did
he do it from an honest love of all that is ingenious and comely, and
as the natural outgrowth of an inquiring and philosophic mind. For
Denzil Calmady, like so many another son of that happy age, was
something more than a mere wealthy country squire, breeder of beef and
brewer of ale. He was a courtier and traveler; and, if tradition speaks
truly, a poet who could praise his mistress's many charms, or wittily
resent her caprices, in well-turned verse. He was a patron of art,
having brought back ivories and bronzes from Italy, pictures and china
from the Low Countries, and enamels from France. He was a student, and
collected the many rare and handsome leather-bound volumes telling of
curious arts, obscure speculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages,
and adventures, which still constitute the almost unique value of the
Brockhurst library. He might claim to be a man of science, moreover--of
that delectable old-world science which has no narrow-minded quarrel
with miracle or prodigy, wherein angel and demon mingle freely, lending
a hand unchallenged to complicate the operations both of nature and of
grace--a science which, even yet, in perfect good faith, busied itself
with the mysteries of the Rosy Cross, mixed strange ingredients into a
possible Elixir of Life, ran far afield in search for the Philosopher's
Stone, gathered herbs for the confection of simples during auspicious
phases of the moon, and beheld in comet and meteor awful forewarnings
of public calamity or of Divine Wrath.
From all of which it may be premised that when, like the wise king, of
old, in Jerusalem, Denzil Calmady "builded him houses, made him gardens
and orchards, and planted trees in them of all kind of fruits"; when he
"made him pools of water to water therewith the wood that bringeth
forth trees"; when he "gathered silver and gold and the treasure of
provinces," and got him singers, and players of musical instruments,
and "the delights of the sons of men,"--he did so that, having tried
and sifted all these things, he might, by the exercise of a ripe and
untrammeled judgment, decide what amongst them is illusory and but as a
passing show, and what--be it never so small a remnant--has in it the
promise of eternal subsistence, and therefore of vital worth; and that,
having so decided and thus gained an even mind, he might prepare
serenely to take leave of the life he had dared so largely to live.
Commencing his labours at Brockhurst during the closing years of the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, Denzil Calmady completed them in 1611 with a
royal house-warming. For the space of a week, during the autumn of that
year,--the last autumn, as it unhappily proved, that graceful and
scholarly prince was fated to see,--Henry, Prince of Wales,
condescended to be his guest. He was entertained at Brockhurst--as
contemporary records inform the curious--with "much feastinge and many
joyous masques and gallant pastimes," including "a great slayinge of
deer and divers beastes and fowl in the woods and coverts thereunto
adjacent." It is added, with unconscious irony, that his host, being a
"true lover of all wild creatures, had caused a fine bear-pit to be
digged beyond the outer garden wall to the west." And that, on the
Sunday afternoon of the Prince's visit, there "was held a most mighty
baitinge," to witness which "many noble gentlemen of the neighbourhood
did visit Brockhurst and lay there two nights."
Later it is reported of Denzil Calmady, who was an excellent
churchman,--suspected even, notwithstanding his little turn for
philosophy, of a greater leaning towards the old Mass-Book than towards
the modern Book of Common Prayer,--that he notably assisted Laud, then
Bishop of St. David's, in respect of certain delicate diplomacies. Laud
proved not ungrateful to his friend; who, in due time, was honoured
with one of King James's newly instituted baronetcies, not to mention
some few score seedling Scotchfirs, which, taking kindly to the light
moorland soil, increased and multiplied exceedingly and sowed
themselves broadcast over the face of the surrounding country.
And, save for the vigorous upgrowth of those same fir trees, and for
the fact that bears and bear-pit had long given place to race-horses
and to a great square of stable buildings in the hollow lying back from
the main road across the park, Brockhurst was substantially the same in
the year of grace 1842, when this truthful history actually opens, as
it had been when Sir Denzil's workmen set the last tier of bricks of
the last twisted chimney-stack in its place. The grand, simple masses
of the house--Gothic in its main lines, but with much of Renaissance
work in its details--still lent themselves to the same broad effects of
light and shadow, as it crowned the southern and western sloping
hillside amid its red-walled gardens and pepper-pot summer-houses, its
gleaming ponds and watercourses, its hawthorn dotted paddocks; its
ancient avenues of elm, of lime, and oak. The same panelings and
tapestries clothed the walls of its spacious rooms and passages; the
same quaint treasures adorned its fine Italian cabinets; the same air
of large and generous comfort pervaded it. As the child of true lovers
is said to bear through life, in a certain glad beauty of person and of
nature, witness to the glad hour of its conception, so Brockhurst, on
through the accumulating years, still bore witness to the fortunate
historic hour in which it was planned.
Yet, since in all things material and mortal there is always a little
spot of darkness, a germ of canker, at least the echo of a cry of
fear--lest life being too sweet, man should grow proud to the point of
forgetting he is, after all, but a pawn upon the board, but the sport
and plaything of destiny and the vast purposes of God--all was not
quite well with Brockhurst. At a given moment of time, the diabolic
element had of necessity obtruded itself. And, in the chronicles of
this delightful dwelling-place, even as in those of Eden itself, the
angels are proven not to have had things altogether their own gracious
way.
The pierced stone parapet, which runs round three sides of the house,
and constitutes, architecturally, one of its most noteworthy features,
is broken in the centre of the north front by a tall, stepped and
sharply pointed gable, flanked on either hand by slender, four-sided
pinnacles. From the niche in the said gable, arrayed in sugar-loaf hat,
full doublet and trunk hose, his head a trifle bent so that the tip of
his pointed beard rests on the pleatings of his marble ruff, a
carpenter's rule in his right hand, Sir Denzil Calmady gazes
meditatively down. Delicate, coral-like tendrils of the Virginian
creeper, which covers the house walls, and strays over the bay windows
of the Long Gallery below, twine themselves yearly about his ankles and
his square-toed shoes. The swallows yearly attempt to fix their gray,
mud nests against the flutings of the scallop-shell canopy sheltering
his bowed head; and are yearly ejected by cautious gardeners armed with
imposing array of ladders and conscious of no little inward reluctance
to face the dangers of so aerial a height.
And here, it may not be unfitting to make further mention of that same
little spot of darkness, germ of canker, echo of the cry of fear, that
had come to mar the fair records of Brockhurst For very certain it was
that among the varying scenes, moving merry or majestic, upon which Sir
Denzil had looked down during the two and a quarter centuries of his
sojourn in the lofty niche of the northern gable, there was one his
eyes had never yet rested upon--one matter, and that a very vital one,
to which had he applied his carpenter's rule the measure of it must
have proved persistently and grievously short.
Along the straight walks, across the smooth lawns, and beside the
brilliant flower-borders of the formal gardens, he had seen generations
of babies toddle and stagger, with gurglings of delight, as they
clutched at glancing bird or butterfly far out of reach. He had seen
healthy, clean-limbed, boisterous lads and dainty, little maidens laugh
and play, quarrel, kiss, and be friends again. He had seen ardent
lovers--in glowing June twilights, while the nightingales shouted from
the laurels, or from the coppices in the park below--driven to the most
desperate straits, to visions of cold poison, of horse-pistols, of
immediate enlistment, or the consoling arms of Betty the housemaid, by
the coquetries of some young lady captivating in powder and patches, or
arrayed in the high-waisted, agreeably-revealing costume which our
grandmothers judged it not improper to wear in their youth. He had seen
husband and wife, too, wandering hand in hand at first, tenderly
hopeful and elate. And then, sometimes, as the years lengthened,--they
growing somewhat sated with the ease of their high estate,--he had seen
them hand in hand no longer, waxing cold and indifferent, debating
even, at moments, reproachfully whether they might not have invested
the capital of their affections to better advantage elsewhere.
All this and much more Sir Denzil had seen, and doubtless measured, for
all that he appears so immovably calm and apart. But that which he had
never yet seen was a man of his name and race, full of years and
honours, come slowly forth from the stately house to sun himself,
morning or evening, in the comfortable shelter of the high, red-brick,
rose-grown garden walls. Looking the while, with the pensive
resignation of old age, at the goodly, wide-spreading prospect. Smiling
again over old jokes, warming again over old stories of prowess with
horse and hound, or rod and gun. Feeling the eyes moisten again at the
memory of old loves, and of those far-away first embraces which seemed
to open the gates of paradise and create the world anew; at
remembrances of old hopes too, which proved still-born, and of old
distresses, which often enough proved still-born likewise,--the whole
of these simplified now, sanctified, the tumult of them stilled, along
with the hot, young blood which went to make them, by the kindly torpor
of increasing age and the approaching footsteps of greatly reconciling
Death.
For Sir Denzil's male descendants, one and all,--so says tradition, so
say too the written and printed family records, the fine monuments in
the chancel of Sandyfield Church, and more than one tombstone in the
yew-shaded church-yard,--have displayed a disquieting incapacity for
living to the permitted "threescore years and ten," let alone
fourscore, and dying decently, in ordinary, commonplace fashion, in
their beds. Mention is made of casualties surprising in number and
variety; and not always, it must be owned, to the moral credit of those
who suffered them. It is told how Sir Thomas, grandson of Sir Denzil,
died miserably of gangrene, caused by a tear in the arm from the antler
of a wounded buck. How his nephew Zachary--who succeeded him--was
stabbed during a drunken brawl in an eating-house in the Strand. How
the brother of the said Zachary, a gallant young soldier, was killed at
the battle of Ramillies in 1706. Dueling, lightning during a summer
storm, even the blue-brown waters of the Brockhurst Lake in turn claim
a victim. Later it is told how a second Sir Denzil, after hard fighting
to save his purse, was shot by highwaymen on Bagshot Heath, when riding
with a couple of servants--not notably distinguished, as it would
appear, for personal valour--from Brockhurst up to town.
Lastly comes Courtney Calmady, who, living in excellent repute until
close upon sixty, seemed destined by Providence to break the evil chain
of the family fate. But he too goes the way of all flesh, suddenly
enough, after a long run with the hounds, owing to the opening of a
wound, received when he was little more than a lad, at the taking of
Frenchtown under General Proctor, during the second American war. So he
too died, and they buried him with much honest mourning, as befitted so
kindly and honourable a gentleman; and his son Richard--of whom more
hereafter--reigned in his stead.
CHAPTER II
GIVING THE VERY EARLIEST INFORMATION OBTAINABLE OF THE HERO OF THIS
BOOK
It happened in this way, towards the end of August, 1842.
In the gray of the summer evening, as the sunset faded and the twilight
gathered, spreading itself tenderly over the pastures and
corn-fields,--over the purple-green glooms of the fir forest--over the
open moors, whose surface is scored for miles by the turf-slane of the
cottager and squatter--over the clear brown streams that trickle out of
the pink and emerald mosses of the peat-bogs, and gain volume and
vigour as they sparkle away by woodside, and green-lane, and village
street--and over those secret, bosky places, in the heart of the great
common-lands, where the smooth, white stems and glossy foliage of the
self-sown hollies spring up between the roots of the beech trees, where
plovers cry, and stoat and weazel lurk and scamper, while the old
poacher's lean, ill-favoured, rusty-coloured lurcher picks up a
shrieking hare, and where wandering bands of gypsies--those lithe,
onyx-eyed children of the magic East--still pitch their dirty, little,
fungus-like tents around the camp-fire,--as the sunset died and the
twilight thus softly widened and deepened, Lady Calmady found herself,
for the first time during all the long summer day, alone.
For though no royal personage had graced the occasion with his
presence, nor had bears suffered martyrdom to promote questionably
amiable mirth, Brockhurst, during the past week, had witnessed a series
of festivities hardly inferior to those which marked Sir Denzil's
historic house-warming. Young Sir Richard Calmady had brought home his
bride, and it was but fitting the whole countryside should see her. So
all and sundry received generous entertainment according to their
degree.--Labourers, tenants, school-children. Weary old-age from
Pennygreen poorhouse taking its pleasure of cakes and ale half
suspiciously in the broad sunshine. The leading shopkeepers of
Westchurch and their humbler brethren from Farley Row. All the country
gentry too. Lord and Lady Fallowfeild and a goodly company from Whitney
Park, Lord Denier and a large contingent from Grimshott Place, the
Cathcarts of Newlands, and many more persons of undoubted
consequence--specially perhaps in their own eyes.
Not to mention a small army of local clergy--who ever display a
touching alacrity in attending festivals, even those of a secular
character--with camp-followers, in the form of wives and families,
galore.
And now, at last, all was over,--balls, sports, theatricals,
dinners,--the last in the case of the labourers, with the unlovely
adjunct of an ox roasted whole. Even the final garden-party, designed
to include such persons as it was, socially speaking, a trifle
difficult to place--Image, owner of the big Shotover brewery, for
instance, who was shouldering his way so vigorously towards fortune and
a seat on the bench of magistrates; the younger members of the firm of
Goteway & Fox, Solicitors of Westchurch; Goodall, the Methodist miller
from Parson's Holt, and certain sporting yeoman farmers with their
comely womankind--even this final entertainment, with all its small
triumphs and heart-burnings, flutterings of youthful inexperience,
aspirations, condescensions, had gone, like the rest of the week's
junketings, to swell the sum of things accomplished, of all that which
is past and done with, and will never come again.
Fully an hour ago, Dr. Knott, "under plea of waiting cases, had hitched
his ungainly, thick-set figure into his high gig.
"Plenty of fine folks, eh, Timothy?" he said to the ferret-faced groom
beside him, as he gathered up the reins; and the brown mare, knowing
the hand on her mouth, laid herself out to her work. "Handsome young
couple as anybody need wish to see. Not much business doing there for
me, I fancy, unless it lies in the nursery line."
"Say those Brockhurst folks mostly dies airly, though," remarked
Timothy, with praiseworthy effort at professional encouragement.
"Eh! so you've heard that story too, have you?"--and John Knott drew
the lash gently across the hollow of the mare's back.
"This 'ere Sir Richard's the third baronet I've a-seen, and I bean't so
very old neither."
The doctor looked down at the spare little man with a certain snarling
affection, as he said:--"Oh no! I'm not kept awake o' nights by the
fear of losing you, Timothy. Your serviceable old carcass'll hang
together for a good while yet."--Then his rough eyebrows drew into a
line and he stared thoughtfully down the long space of the clean gravel
road under the meeting branches of the lime trees.
The Whitney _char a bancs_ had driven off but a few minutes later, to
the admiration of all beholders; yet not, it must be admitted, without
a measure of inward perturbation on the part of that noble charioteer,
Lord Fallowfeild. Her Ladyship was constitutionally timid, and he was
none too sure of the behaviour of his leaders in face of the string of
very miscellaneous vehicles waiting to take up. However, the
illustrious party happily got off without any occasion for Lady
Fallowfeild's screaming. Then the ardour of departure became universal,
and in broken procession the many carriages, phaetons, gigs, traps,
pony-chaises streamed away from Brockhurst House, north, south, east
and west.
Lady Calmady had bidden her guests farewell at the side-door opening on
to the terrace, before they passed through the house to the main
entrance in the south front. Last to go, as he had been first to come,
was that worthy person, Thomas Caryll, the rector of Sandyfield. Mild,
white-haired, deficient in chin, he had a natural leaning towards women
in general, and towards those of the upper classes in particular.
Katherine Calmady's radiant youth, her courtesy, her undeniable air of
distinction, and a certain gracious gaiety which belonged to her, had,
combined with unaccustomed indulgence in claret cup, gone far to turn
the good man's head during the afternoon. Regardless of the slightly
flustered remonstrances of his wife and daughters, he lingered,
expending himself in innocently confused compliment, supplemented by
prophecies regarding the blessings destined to descend upon Brockhurst
and the mother parish of Sandyfield in virtue of Lady Calmady's advent.
But at length he also was gone. Katherine waited, her eyes full of
laughter, until Mr. Caryll's footsteps died away on the stone quarries
of the great hall within. Then she gently drew the heavy door to, and
stepped out on to the centre of the terrace. The grass slopes of the
park--dotted with thorn trees and beds of bracken,--the lime avenue
running along the ridge of the hill, the ragged edge of the fir forest
to the east, and the mass of the house, all these were softened to a
vagueness--as the landscape in a dream--by the deepening twilight. An
immense repose pervaded the whole scene. It affected Katherine to a
certain seriousness. Her social excitements and responsibilities, the
undoubted success that had attended her maiden essay as hostess during
the past week, shrank to trivial proportions. Another order of emotion
arose in her. She became sensible of a necessity to take counsel with
herself.
She moved slowly along the terrace; paused in the arcaded garden-hall
at the end of it--the carven stone benches and tables of which showed
somewhat ghostly in the dimness--to put off her bonnet and push back
the lace scarf from her shoulders. An increasing solemnity was upon
her. There were things to think of, things deep and strange. She must
needs place them, make an effort, anyhow, to do so. And, in face of
this necessity, came an instinct to rid herself of all small impeding
conventionalities, even in the matter of dress. For there was in
Katherine that inherent desire of harmony with her surroundings, that
natural sense of fitness, which--given certain technical
aptitudes--goes to make a great dramatic artist. But, since in her
case, such technical aptitudes were either non-existent, or wholly in
abeyance, it followed that, save in nice questions of private honour,
she was quite the least self-conscious and self-critical of human
beings. Now, as she passed out under the archway on to the square lawn
of the troco-ground, bare-headed, in her pale dress, a sweet
seriousness filling all her mind, even as the sweet summer twilight
filled all the valley and veiled the gleaming surface of the Long Water
far below, she felt wholly in sympathy with the aspect and sentiment of
the place. Indeed it appeared to her, just then, that the four months
of her marriage, the five months of her engagement, even the twenty-two
years which made up all the sum of her earthly living, were a prelude
merely to the present hour and to that which lay immediately ahead.
Yet the prelude had, in truth, been a pretty enough piece of music.
Katharine's experience had but few black patches in it as yet.
Furnished with a fair and healthy body, with fine breeding, with a
character in which the pride and grit of her North Country ancestry was
tempered by the poetic instincts and quick wit which came to her with
her mother's Irish blood, Katherine Ormiston started as well furnished
as most to play the great game that all are bound to play, whether they
will or no, with fate. Mrs. Ormiston, still young and beloved, had died
in bringing this, her only daughter, into the world; and her husband
had looked somewhat coldly upon the poor baby in consequence. There was
an almost misanthropic vein in the autocratic land-owner and
iron-master. He had three sons already, and therefore found but little
use for this woman-child. So, while pluming himself on his clear
judgment and unswerving reason, he resented, most unreasonably, her
birth, since it took his wife from him. Such is the irony of things,
forever touching man on the raw, proving his weakness in that he holds
his strongest point! In point of fact, however, Katherine suffered but
slightly from the poor welcome that greeted her advent in the gray,
many-towered house upon the Yorkshire coast. For her great-aunt, Mrs.
St. Quentin, speedily gathered the small creature into her still
beautiful arms, and lavished upon it both tenderness and wealth,
along--as it grew to a companionable age--with the wisdom of a mind
ripened by wide acquaintance with men and with public affairs. Mrs. St.
Quentin--famous in Dublin, London, Paris, as a beauty and a wit--had
passed her early womanhood amid the tumult of great events. She had
witnessed the horrors of the Terror, the splendid amazements of the
First Empire; and could still count among her friends and
correspondents, politicians and literary men of no mean standing. A
legend obtains that Lord Byron sighed for her--and in vain. For, as
Katherine came to know later, this woman had loved once, daringly,
finally, yet without scandal--though the name of him whom she loved
(and who loved her) was not, it must be owned, St. Quentin. And perhaps
it was just this, this hidden and somewhat tragic romance, which kept
her so young, so fresh; kept her unworldly, though moving so freely in
the world; had given her that exquisite sense of relative values and
that knowledge of the heart, which leads, as the divine Plato has
testified, to the highest and most reconciling philosophy.
Thus, the delicately brilliant old lady and the radiant young lady
lived together delightfully enough, spending their winters in Paris in
a pretty apartment in the rue de Rennes--shared with one Mademoiselle
de Mirancourt, whose friendship with Mrs. St. Quentin dated from their
schooldays at the convent of the Sacre Coeur. Spring and autumn found
Katherine and her great-aunt in London. While, in summer, there was
always a long visit to Ormiston Castle, looking out from the cliff edge
upon the restless North Sea. Lovers came in due course. For over and
above its own shapeliness--which surely was reason enough--Katherine's
hand was well worth winning from the worldly point of view. She would
have money; and Mrs. St. Quentin's influence would count for much in
the case of a great-nephew-by-marriage who aspired to a parliamentary
or diplomatic career. But the lovers also went, for Katherine asked a
great deal--not so much of them, perhaps, as of herself. She had taken
an idea, somehow, that marriage, to be in the least satisfactory, must
be based on love; and that love worth the name is an essentially
two-sided business. Indirectly the girl had learnt much on this
difficult subject from her great-aunt; and with characteristic
directness had agreed with herself to wait till her heart was touched,
if she waited a lifetime--though of exactly in what either her heart,
or the touching of it, consisted she was deliciously innocent as yet.
And then, in the summer of 1841, Sir Richard Calmady came to Ormiston.
He and her brother Roger had been at Eton together. Katherine
remembered him, years ago, as a well-bred and courteously contemptuous
schoolboy, upon whose superior mind, small female creatures--busy about
dolls, and victims of the athletic restrictions imposed by
petticoats--made but slight impression. Latterly Sir Richard's name had
come to be one to conjure with in racing circles, thanks to the
performances of certain horses bred and trained at the Brockhurst
stables; though some critics, it is true, deplored his tendency to
neglect the older and more legitimate sport of flat-racing in favour of
steeple-chasing. It was said he aspired to rival the long list of
victories achieved by Mr. Elmore's Gaylad and Lottery, and the
successes of Peter Simple the famous gray. This much Katherine had
heard of him from her brother. And having her haughty turns--as what
charming woman has not?--set him down as probably a rough sort of
person, notwithstanding his wealth and good connections, a kind of
gentleman jockey, upon whom it would be easy to take a measure of
pretty revenge for his boyish indifference to her existence. But the
meeting, and the young man, alike, turned out quite other than she had
anticipated. For she found a person as well furnished in all polite and
social arts as herself, with no flavour of the stable about him. She
had reckoned on one whose scholarship would carry him no further than a
few stock quotations from Horace, and whose knowledge of art would
begin and end with a portrait of himself presented by the members of a
local hunt. And it was a little surprising--possibly a little
mortifying to her--to hear him talking over obscure passages in
Spencer's _Faerie Queene_ with Mrs. St. Quentin, before the end of the
dinner, and nicely apprising the relative merits of the water-colour
sketches by Turner, that hung on either side the drawing-room
fireplace.
Nor did Katherine's surprises end here. An unaccountable something was
taking place within her, that opened up a whole new range of emotion.
She, the least moody of young women, had strange fluctuations of
temper, finding herself buoyantly happy one hour, the next pensive,
filled with timidity and self-distrust--not to mention the little fits
of gusty anger, and purposeless jealousy which took her, hurting her
pride shrewdly. She grew anxiously solicitous as to her personal
appearance. This dress would not please her nor that. The image of her
charming oval face and well-set head ceased to satisfy her. Surely a
woman's hair should be either positively blond or black, not this
indeterminate brown, with warm lights in it? She feared her mouth was
not small enough, the lips too full and curved for prettiness. She
wished her eyes less given to change, under their dark lashes, from
clear gray-blue to a nameless colour like the gloom of the pools of a
woodland stream, as her feelings changed from gladness to distress. She
feared her complexion was too bright, and then not bright enough. And,
all the while, a certain shame possessed her that she should care at
all about such trivial matters; for life had grown suddenly larger and
more august. Books she had read, faces she had watched a hundred times,
the vast horizon looking eastward over the unquiet sea, all these
gained a new value and meaning which at once enthralled and agitated
her thought.
Sir Richard Calmady stayed a fortnight at Ormiston. And the two ladies
crossed to Paris earlier, that autumn, than was their custom. Katherine
was not in her usual good health, and Mrs. St. Quentin desired change
of air and scene on her account. She took Mademoiselle de Mirancourt
into her confidence, hinting at causes for her restlessness and wayward
little humours unacknowledged by the girl herself. Then the two elder
women wrapped Katherine about with an atmosphere of--if
possible--deeper tenderness than before; mingling sentiment with their
gaiety, and gaiety with their sentiment, and the delicate respect which
refrains from question with both.
One keenly bright October afternoon Richard Calmady called in the rue
de Rennes. It appeared he had come to Paris with the intention of
remaining there for an indefinite period. He called again and yet
again, making himself charming--a touch of deference tempering his
natural suavity--alike to his hostesses and to such of their guests as
he happened to meet. It was the fashion of fifty years ago to conduct
affairs, even those of the heart, with a dignified absence of
precipitation. The weeks passed, while Sir Richard became increasingly
welcome in some of the very best houses in Paris.--And Katherine? It
must be owned Katherine was not without some heartaches, which she
proudly tried to deny to herself and conceal from others. But
eventually--it was on the morning after the ball at the British
Embassy--the man spoke and the maid answered, and the old order
changed, giving place to new in the daily life of the pretty apartment
of the rue de Rennes.
About five months later the marriage took place in London; and Sir
Richard and Lady Calmady started forth on a wedding journey of the
old-fashioned type. They traveled up the Rhine, and posted, all in the
delicious, early summer weather, through Northern Italy, as far as
Florence. They returned by Paris. And there, Mrs. St. Quentin
watching--in almost painful anxiety--to see how it fared with her
recovered darling, was wholly satisfied, and gave thanks. For she
perceived that, in this case, at least, marriage was no legal,
conventional connection leaving the heart emptier than it found it--the
bartering of precious freedom for a joyless bondage, an obligation,
weary in the present, and hopeless of alleviation in the future, save
by the reaching of that far-distant, heavenly country, concerning which
it is comfortably assured us "that there they neither marry nor are
given in marriage." For the Katherine who came back to her was at once
the same, and yet another, Katherine--one who carried her head more
proudly and stepped as though she was mistress of the whole fair earth,
but whose merry wit had lost its little edge of sarcasm, whose sympathy
was quicker and more instinctive, whose voice had taken fuller and more
caressing tones, and in whose sweet eyes sat a steady content good to
see. And then, suddenly, Mrs. St. Quentin began to feel her age as she
had never, consciously, felt it before; and to be very willing to fold
her hands and recite her _Nunc Dimittis_. For, in looking on the faces
of the bride and bridegroom, she had looked once again on the face of
Love itself, and had stood within the court of the temple of that
Uranian Venus whose unsullied glory is secure here and hereafter, since
to her it is given to discover to her worshippers the innermost secret
of existence, thereby fencing them forever against the plagues of
change, delusion, and decay. Love began gently to loosen the cords of
life, and to draw Lucia St. Quentin home--home to that dear
dwelling-place which, as we fondly trust--since God Himself is Love--is
reserved for all true lovers beyond the grave and Gates of Death. Thus
one flower falls as another opens; and to-day, however sweet, is only
won across the corpse of yesterday.
And it was some perception of just this--the ceaseless push of event
following on event, the ceaseless push of the yet unborn struggling to
force the doors of life--which moved Katherine to seriousness, as she
stood alone on the smooth expanse of the troco-ground, in the soft,
all-covering twilight, at the close of the day's hospitality.
On her right the house, and its delicate twisted chimneys, showed dark
against the fading rose of the western sky. The air, rich with the
fragrance of the red-walled gardens behind her,--with the scent of
jasmine, heliotrope and clove carnations, ladies-lilies and
mignonette,--was stirred, now and again, by wandering winds, cool from
the spaces of the open moors. While, as the last roll of departing
wheels died out along the avenues, the voices of the woodland began to
reassert themselves. Wild-fowl called from the alder-fringed Long
Water. Night-hawks churred as they beat on noiseless wings above the
beds of bramble and bracken. A cock pheasant made a most admired stir
and keckling in seeing his wife and brood to roost on the branches of
one of King James's age-old Scotch firs.
And this sense of nature coming back to claim her own, to make known
her eternal supremacy, now that the fret of man's little pleasuring had
past, was very grateful to Katherine Calmady. Her soul cried out to be
free, for a time, to contemplate, to fully apprehend and measure its
own happiness. It needed to stand aside, so that the love given, and
all given with that love--even these matters of house and gardens, of
men-servants and maid-servants, of broad acres, all the poetry, in
short, of great possessions--might be seen in perspective. For
Katherine had that necessity--in part intellectual, in part practical,
and common to all who possess a gift for rule--to resist the confusing
importunity of detail, and to grasp intelligently the whole, which
alone gives to detail coherence and purpose. Her mind was not
one--perhaps unhappily--which is contented to merely play with bricks,
but demands the plan of the building into which those bricks should
grow. And she wanted, just now, to lay hold of the plan of the fair
building of her own life. And to this end the solitude, the evening
quiet, the restful unrest of the forest and its wild creatures should
surely have ministered? She moved forward and sat on the broad stone
balustrade which, topping the buttressed masonry that supports it above
the long downward grass slope of the park, encloses the troco-ground on
the south.
The landscape lay drowned in the mystery of the summer night. And
Katherine, looking out into it, tried to think clearly, tried to range
the many new experiences of the last months and to reckon with them.
But her brain refused to work obediently to her will. She felt
strangely hurried for all the surrounding quiet.
One train of thought, which she had been busy enough by day and
honestly sleepy enough at night, to keep at arm's length during this
time of home-coming and entertaining, now invaded and possessed her
mind--filling it at once with a new and overwhelming movement of
tenderness, yet for all her high courage with a certain fear. She cried
out for a little space of waiting, a little space in which to take
breath. She wanted to pause, here in the fulness of her content. But no
pause was granted her. She was so happy, she asked nothing more. But
something more was forced upon her. And so it happened that, in
realising the ceaseless push of event on event, the ceaseless dying of
dear to-day in the service of unborn to-morrow, her gentle seriousness
touched on regret.
How long she remained lost in such pensive reflections Lady Calmady
could not have said. Suddenly the terrace door slammed. A moment later
a man's footsteps echoed across the flags of the garden-hall.
"Katherine," Richard Calmady called, somewhat imperatively, "Katherine,
are you there?"
She turned and stood watching him as he came rapidly across the turf.
"Yes, I am here," she cried. "Do you want me?"
"Do I want you?" he answered curtly. "Don't I always want you?"
A little sob rose in her throat--she knew not why--for, hearing the
tone of his voice, her sadness was strangely assuaged.
"I could not find you," he went on. "And I got into an absurd state of
panic--sent Roger in one direction, and Julius in another, to look for
you."
"Whereupon Roger, probably, posted down to the stables, and Julius up
to the chapel to search. Where the heart dwells there the feet follow.
Meanwhile, you came straight here and found me yourself."
"I might have known I should do that."
The importunate thought returned upon Katherine and with it a touch of
her late melancholy.
"Ah! one knows nothing for certain when one is frightened," she said.
She moved closer to him, holding out her hand. "Here," she continued,
"you are a little too shadowy, too unsubstantial, in this light, Dick.
I would rather make more sure of your presence."
Richard Calmady laughed very gently. Then the two stood silent, looking
out over the dim valley, hand in hand. The scent of the gardens was
about them. Moving lights showed through the many windows of the great
house. The waterfowl called sleepily. The churring of the night-hawks
was continuous, soothing as the hum of a spinning-wheel. Somewhere,
away in the Warren, a fox barked. In the eastern sky, the young moon
began to climb above the ragged edge of the firs. When they spoke again
it was very simply, in broken sentences, as children speak. The poetry
of their relation to one another and the scene about them were too full
of meaning, too lovely, to call for polish of rhetoric, or pointing by
epigram.
"Tell me," Katherine said, "were you satisfied? Did I entertain your
people prettily?"
"Prettily? You entertained them as they had never been entertained
before--like a queen--and they knew it. But why did you stay out here
alone?"
"To think--and to look at Brockhurst."
"Yes, it's worth looking at now," he said. "It was like a body wanting
a soul till you came."
"But you loved it?" Katherine reasoned.
"Oh yes! because I believed the soul would come some day. Brockhurst,
and the horses, and the books, all helped to make the time pass while I
was waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"Why for you, of course, you dear, silly sweet. Haven't I always been
waiting for you--just precisely and wholly you, nothing more or
less--all through my life, all through all conceivable and
inconceivable lives, since before the world began?"
Katharine's breath came with a fluttering sigh. She let her head fall
back against his shoulder. Her eyes closed involuntarily. She loved
these fond exaggerations--as what woman does not who has had the good
fortune to hear them? They pierced her with a delicious pain;
and--perhaps therefore, perhaps not unwisely--she believed them true.
"Are you tired?" he asked presently.
Katherine looked up smiling, and shook her head.
"Not too tired to be up early to-morrow morning and come out with me to
see the horses galloped? Sultan will give you no trouble. He is
well-seasoned and merely looks on at things in general with intelligent
interest, goes like a lamb and stands like a rock."
While her husband was speaking Katherine straightened herself up, and
moved a little from him though still holding his hand. Her languor
passed, and her eyes grew large and black.
"I think, perhaps, I had better not go to-morrow, Dick," she said
slowly.
"Ah! you are tired, you poor dear. No wonder, after the week's work you
have had. Another day will do just as well. Only I want you to come out
sometimes in the first blush of the morning, before the day has had
time to grow commonplace, while the gossamers are still hung with dew,
and the mists are in hollows, and the horses are heady from the fresh
air and the light. You will like it all, Kitty. It is rather inspiring.
But it will keep. To-morrow I'll let you rest in peace."
"Oh no! it is not that," Katherine said quickly. The importunate
thought was upon her again, clamouring, not only to be recognised, but
fairly owned to and permitted to pass the doors of speech. And a
certain modesty made her shrink from this. To know something in the
secret of your own heart, or to tell it, thereby making it a hard
concrete fact, outside yourself, over which, in a sense, you cease to
have control, are two such very different matters! Katherine trembled
on the edge of her confession, though that to be confessed was, after
all, but the natural crown of her love.
"I think I ought not to ride now--for a time, Dick." All the blood
rushed into her face and throat, and then ebbed, leaving her very white
in the growing darkness.--"You have given me a child," she said.
CHAPTER III
TOUCHING MATTERS CLERICAL AND CONTROVERSIAL
Brockhurst had rarely appeared more blessed by spacious sunshine and
stately cheerfulness than during the remaining weeks of that summer. A
spirit of unclouded serenity possessed the place, both indoors and out.
If rain fell, it was only at night. And this, as so much else, Julius
March noted duly in his diary.
For that was the period of elaborate private chronicles, when persons
of intelligence and position still took themselves, their doings and
their emotions with most admired seriousness. Natural science, the
great leveler, had hardly stepped in as yet. Therefore it was, that
already, Julius's diary ran into many stout manuscript volumes; each in
turn soberly but richly bound, with silver clasp and lock complete, so
soon as its final page was written. Begun when he first went up to
Oxford, some thirteen years earlier, it formed an intimate history of
the influences of the Tractarian Movement upon a scholarly mind and
delicately spiritual nature. At the commencement of his Oxford career
he had come into close relations with some of the leaders of the
movement. And the conception of an historic church, endowed with mystic
powers--conveyed through an unbroken line of priests from the age of
the apostles--the orderly round of vigil, fast, and festival, the
secret, introspective joys of penance and confession, the fascinations
of the strictly religious life, as set before him in eloquent public
discourse or persuasive private conversation,--had combined to kindle
an imagination very insufficiently satisfied by the lean spiritual
meats offered it during an Evangelical childhood and youth. Julius
yielded himself up to his instructors with passionate self-abandon. He
took orders, and remained on at Oxford--being a fellow of his
college--working earnestly for the cause he had so at heart. Eventually
he became a member of the select band of disciples that dwelt,
uncomfortably, supported by visions of reactionary reform at once
austere and beneficent, in the range of disused stable buildings at
Littlemore.
Of the storm and stress of this religious war, its triumphs, its
defeats, its many agitations, Julius's diaries told with a deep, if
chastened, enthusiasm. His was a singularly pure nature, unmoved by the
primitive desires which usually inflame young blood. Ideas heated him;
while the lust of the eye and the pride of life left him almost
scornfully cold. He strove earnestly, of course, to bring the flesh
into subjection to the spirit; which was, calmly considered, a slight
waste of time, since the said flesh showed the least possible
inclination of revolt. The earlier diaries contain pathetic
exaggerations of the slightest indiscretion. Innocent and virtuous
persons have ever been prone to such little manias of self-accusation!
Later, the flesh did assert itself, though in a hardly licentious
manner. Oxford fogs and damp, along with plain living and high
thinking, acting upon a constitution naturally far from robust,
produced a commonplace but most disabling nemesis in the form of colds,
coughs, and chronic asthma. Julius did not greatly care. He was in that
exalted frame of mind in which martyrdom, even by phthisis or bronchial
affections, is immeasurably preferable to no martyrdom at all. Perhaps
fortunately his relations, and even his Oxford friends, took a quite
other view of the matter, and insisted upon his using all legitimate
means to prolong his life.
Julius left Oxford with intense regret. It was the Holy City of the
Tractarian Movement; and at this moment the progress of that Movement
was the one thing worth living for, if live indeed he must. He went
forth bewailing his exile and enforced idleness, as a man bewails the
loss of the love of his youth. For a time he traveled in Italy and in
the south of France. On his return to England he went to stay with his
friend and cousin, Sir Richard Calmady. Brockhurst House had always
been extremely congenial to him. Its suites of handsome rooms, the
inlaid marble chimneypieces of which reach up to the frieze of the
heavily moulded ceilings, its wide passages and stairways, their carved
balusters and newel-posts, the treasures of its library--now
overflowing the capacity of the two rooms originally designed for them,
and filling ranges of bookcases between the bay windows of the Long
Gallery running the whole length of the first floor from east to
west,--the chapel in the southern wing, its richly furnished altar and
the glories of its famous, stained-glass windows, all these were very
grateful to his taste. While the light, dry, upland air and near
neighbourhood of the fir forest eased the physical discomforts from
which, at times, he still suffered shrewdly.
He found the atmosphere of the place both soothing and steadying. And
of precisely this he stood sorely in need just now. For it must be
admitted that a change had come over the spirit of Julius March's great
ecclesiastical dream. Absence from Oxford and foreign travel had tended
at once to widen and modify his thought. He had seen the Tractarian
Movement from a distance, in due perspective. He had also seen
Catholicism at close quarters. He had realised that the logical
consequence of the teaching of the former could be nothing less than
unqualified submission to the latter. On his return to England he
learned that more than one of his Oxford friends was arriving,
reluctantly, at the same conclusion. Then there arose within him the
fiercest struggle his gentle nature had ever yet known. He was torn by
the desire to go forward, risking all, with those whom he reverenced;
yet was restrained by a sense of honour. For there was in Julius a
strain of obstinate, almost fanatic, loyalty. To the Anglican Church he
had pledged himself. Through her ministry he had received illumination.
To the work of her awakening he had given all his young enthusiasm. How
then could he desert her? Her rites might be maimed. The scandal of
schism might tarnish her fair fame. Accusations of sloth and
lukewarmness might not unjustly be preferred against her. All this he
admitted; and it was very characteristic of the man that, just because
he did admit it, he remained within her fold.
Yet the decision was dislocating to all his thought, even as the
struggle had been. It left him bruised. It cruelly shook his
self-confidence. For he was not one of those persons upon whom the
shipwreck of long-cherished hopes and purposes have a stimulating
effect, filling them merely with a buoyant satisfaction at the
opportunity afforded them of beginning all over again! Julius was
oppressed by the sense of a great failure. The diaries of this period
are but sorrowful reading. He believed he should go softly all his
days; and, from a certain point of view, in this he was right.
And it was here that Sir Richard Calmady intervened. He had watched his
cousin's struggle, had accepted its reality, sympathising, through
friendship rather than through moral or intellectual agreement. For he
was one of those fortunate mortals who, while possessing a strong sense
of God, have but small necessity to define Him. Many of Julius's
keenest agonies appeared to him subjective, a matter of words and
phrases. Yet he respected them, out of the sincere regard he bore the
man who suffered them. He did more. He tried a practical remedy.
Modestly, as one asking rather than conferring a favour, he invited
Julius to remain at Brockhurst, on a fair stipend, as domestic chaplain
and librarian.
"In the fulness of your generosity towards me you are creating a costly
sinecure," Julius had remonstrated.
"Not in the least. I am selfishly trying to secure myself a most
welcome companion, by asking you to undertake a very modest cure of
souls and to catalogue my books, when you might be filling some
important post and qualifying for a bishopric."
Julius had shaken his head sadly enough. "The high places of the Church
are not for me," he said. "Neither are her great adventures."
Thus did Julius March, somewhat broken both in health and spirit,
become a carpet-priest. The trumpet blasts of controversy reached him
as echoes merely, while his days passed in peaceful, if pensive
monotony. He read prayers morning and evening to the assembled
household in the chapel; reduced the confusion of the library shelves,
doing a fair amount of study, both secular and theological, during the
process; rode with his cousin on fine afternoons to distant farms, by
high-banked lanes in the lowland, or across the open moors; visited the
lodges, or the keepers' and gardeners' cottages within the limits of
the park, on foot. Now and again he took a service, or preached a
sermon, for good Mr. Caryll of Sandyfield, in whose amiable mind
instinctive admiration of those, even distantly, related to persons of
wealth and position jostled an equally instinctive terror of Mr.
March's "well-known Romanising tendencies." And in that there was,
surely, a touch of the irony of fate! Lastly, Julius did his utmost to
exercise an influence for good over the twenty and odd boys at the
racing stables--an unpromising generation at best, the majority of
whom, he feared, accepted his efforts for their moral and spiritual
welfare with the same somewhat brutish philosophy with which they
accepted Tom Chifney, the trainer's, rough-and-ready system of
discipline, and the thousand and one vagaries of the fine-limbed,
queer-tempered horses which were at once the glory and torment of their
young lives.
Things had gone on thus for rather more than a year, when Richard
Calmady married. Julius was perhaps inclined, beforehand, to underrate
the importance of that event. He was singularly innocent, so far, of
the whole question of woman. He had no sisters. At Oxford he had lived
exclusively among men, while the Tractarian Movement had offered a
sufficient outlet to all his emotion. The severe and exquisite verses
of the "Lyra Apostolica" fitly expressed the passions of his heart. To
the Church, at once his mother and his mistress, he had wholly given
his first love. He had gone so far, indeed, in a rapture of devotion
one Easter day, during the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, as to
impose upon himself a vow of livelong chastity. This he did--let it be
added--without either the sanction or knowledge of his spiritual
advisers. The vow, therefore, remained unwitnessed and unratified, but
he held it inviolable nevertheless. And it lay but lightly upon him,
joyfully almost--rather as a ridding of himself of possible
perturbations and obsessions, than as an act of most austere
self-renunciation. In his ignorance he merely went forward with an
increased freedom of spirit. All of which is set down, not without
underlying pathos, in the diary of that date.
And that freedom of spirit remained by him, notwithstanding his altered
circumstances. It even served--indirectly, since none knew the fact of
his self-dedication save himself--as a basis of pleasant intercourse
with the women of his own social standing whom he now met. It served
him thus in respect of Lady Calmady, who accepted him as a member of
her new household with charming kindliness, treating him with a gentle
solicitude born of pity for his far from robust health and for the
mental struggles which she understood him to have passed through.
Many persons, it must be owned, described Julius as remarkably ugly.
But he did not strike Katherine thus. His heavy black hair, beardless
face and sallow skin--rendered dull and colourless, his features
thickened, though not actually scarred, by smallpox, which he had had
as a child,--his sensitive mouth, and the questioning expression of his
short-sighted brown eyes, reminded her of a fifteenth-century
Florentine portrait that had always challenged her attention when she
passed it in the vestibule of a certain obscure, yet aristocratic,
Parisian hotel, on the left bank--well understood--of the Seine.
The man of the portrait was narrow-chested, clothed in black. So was
Julius March. He had long-fingered, finely shaped hands. So had Julius.
He gave her the impression of a person endowed with a capacity of
prolonged and silent self-sacrifice. So did Julius. She wondered about
his story. For Julius, at least--little as she or he then suspected
it--the deepest places of the story still lay ahead.
CHAPTER IV
RAISING PROBLEMS WHICH IT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS HISTORY TO RESOLVE
It was not without a movement of inward thanksgiving that, the
festivities connected with Sir Richard and Lady Calmady's home-coming
being over, Julius March returned to his labours in the Brockhurst
library. Humanity at first hand, whatever its social standing or its
pursuits, was, in truth, always slightly agitating to him. He felt more
at home when dealing with conclusions than with the data that go to
build up those conclusions, with the thoughts of men printed and bound,
than with the urgent raw material from which those thoughts arise.
Revelation, authority--these were still his watchwords; and in face of
them even the harmless spectacle of a country neighbourhood at play,
let alone the spectacle of the human comedy generally, is singularly
confusing.
He sought the soothing companionship of books with even heightened
relief one fair morning some three weeks later. For Mrs. St. Quentin
and Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had arrived at Brockhurst the day
previously, and Julius had been sensible of certain perturbations of
mind in meeting these two ladies, one of whom was a devout Catholic by
inheritance and personal conviction; while the other, though nominally
a member of his own communion, was known to temper her religion with a
wide, if refined, philosophy. Conversation had drifted towards serious
subjects in the course of the evening, and Mrs. St. Quentin had
admitted, with a playful deprecation of her dear friend's rigid
religious attitude, that no one creed, no one system, offered an
adequate solution of the infinite mystery and complexity of life--as
she knew it. The serene adherence of one charming and experienced woman
to an authority which he had rejected, the almost equally serene
indifference on the part of the other to the revelation he held as
absolute and final, troubled Julius. Small wonder then, that early,
after a solitary breakfast, he retired upon the society of the odd
volumes cluttering the shelves of the Long Gallery, that he sorted,
arranged, catalogued, grateful for that dulling of thought which
mechanical labour brings with it.
But fate was malicious, and elected to make a sport of Julius this
morning. Unexpectedly importunate human drama obtruded itself, the deep
places of the story--such as, in the innocence of his ascetic
refinement, he had never dreamed of--began to reveal themselves.
He had climbed the wide, carpeted steps of the library ladder and
seated himself on the topmost one, at right angles to a topmost shelf
the contents of which he proposed to investigate, duster and note-book
in hand. The vast perspective of the gallery lengthened out before him,
cool, faint-tinted, full of a diffused and silvery light. The
self-coloured, unpainted paneling of the walls and bookcases--but one
shade warmer in tone than that of the stone mullions and transomes of
the lofty windows--gave an indescribable delicacy of effect to the
atmosphere of the room. Through the many-paned, leaded lights of the
eastern bay, the sunshine--misty, full of dancing notes--streamed in
obliquely, bringing into quaint prominence of light and shadow a very
miscellaneous collection of objects.--A marble Buddha, benign of
aspect, his right hand raised in blessing, seated, cross-legged upon
the many-petalled lotus. A pair of cavalier's jack-boots, standing just
below, most truculent and ungainly of foot-gear, wooden, hinged,
leather-covered. A trophy of Polynesian spears, shields, and canoe
paddles. A bronze Antinous, seductive of bearing and dainty of limb,
but roughened by green rust. A collection of old sporting prints,
softly coloured, covering a bare space of wall, beneath a moose skull,
from the broad flat antlers of which hung a pair of Canadian
snow-shoes. Along the inside wall of the great room, placed at regular
intervals, were consol tables bearing tall oriental jars and huge bowls
of fine porcelain, filled with potpourri; so that the scent of dried
rose leaves, bay, verbena, and many spices impregnated the air. The
place was, in short, a museum. Whatever of strange, grotesque, and
curious, Calmadys of past generations had collected in their
wanderings, by land and sea, found lodgment here. It was a home of
half-forgotten histories, of valorous deeds grown dim through the lapse
of years; a harbour of refuge for derelict gods, derelict weapons,
derelict volumes, derelict instruments which had once discoursed sweet
enough music, but the fashion of which had now passed away. The
somewhat obsolete sentiment of the place harmonised with the thin,
silvery light and the thin sweetness of spices and dead roses which
pervaded it. It seemed to smile, as with the pitying tolerance of the
benign image of Buddha, at the heat and flame, the untempered scarlet
and purple of the fleeting procession of individual lives, that had
ministered to its furnishing. For how much vigorous endeavour, now over
and done with, never to be recalled, had indeed gone to supply the
furnishing of that room!--And, after all, is not the most any human
creature dare hope for the more or less dusty corner of some museum
shelf at last? The passion of the heart testified to by some battered
trinket, the sweat of the brain by some maggot-eaten manuscript, the
agony of death, at best, by some round shot turned up by the
ploughshare? And how shall any one dare complain of this, since have
not empires before now only been saved from oblivion by a few buried
potsherds, and whole races of mankind by childish picture-scratchings
on a reindeer bone? _Tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse._ The
individual--his arts, his possessions, his religion, his
civilisation--is always as an envelope, merely, to be torn asunder and
cast away. Nothing subsists, nothing endures but life itself, endlessly
self-renewed, endlessly one, through the endless divergencies of its
manifestations. And, as Julius March was to find, hide from it, deny
it, strive to elude it as we may, the recognition of just that is bound
to grip us sooner or later and hold us with a fearful and dominating
power from which there is no escape.
Meanwhile, his occupation was tranquil enough, comfortably remote, as
it seemed, from all such profound and disquieting matters. For the top
shelf proved not very prolific of interest; and one book after another,
examined and rejected as worthless, was dropped--with a reproachful
flutter of pages and final thud--into the capacious paper-basket
standing on the floor below. Then, at the far end of the said shelf, he
came unexpectedly upon a collection of those quaint chap-books which
commanded so wide a circulation during the eighteenth century.
Julius, with the true bibliophile's interest in all originals, examined
his find carefully. The tattered and dogs-eared, little volumes,
coarsely printed and embellished by a number of rough, square woodcuts,
had, he knew, a distinct value. He soon perceived that they formed a
very representative selection. He glanced at _The famous History of Guy
of Warwick_; at that of _Sir Bevis of Southampton_; at _Joaks upon
Joaks_, a lively work regarding the manners and customs of the
aristocracy at the period of the Restoration; at the record of the
amazing adventures of that lusty serving-wench _Long Meg of
Westminster_; and at that refreshing piece of comedy known as _Merry
Tales concerning the Sayings and Doings of the Wise Men of Gotham_.
Finally, hidden behind the outstanding frame of the bookcase, he
discovered four tiny volumes tied together with a rusty, black ribbon.
A heavy coating of dust lay upon them. A large spider, moreover, darted
from behind them. Dust clung unpleasantly to its hairy and ill-favoured
person. It was a matter of principle with Julius never to take life;
yet instinctively he drew back his hand from the book in disgust.
"_Araignee du matin, chagrin_," he said, involuntarily, while he
watched the insect make good its escape over the top of the bookcase.
Then he flicked uneasily at the little parcel with his duster, causing
a cloud of gray atoms to float up and out into the room. Julius was
perhaps absurdly open to impressions. It took him some seconds to
recover from his sense of repulsion and to untie the rusty ribbon
around the little books. They proved all to be ragged and imperfect
copies of the same work. The woodcuts in them were splotched with crude
colour. The title-page was printed in assorted type--here a line of
Roman capitals, there one in italics or old English letters. The
inscription, consequently, was difficult to decipher, causing him to
hold the tattered page very close to his short-sighted eyes. It ran
thus--
"Setting forth a true and particular account of the dealings of
Sir Thomas Calmady with the forester's daughter and the bloody
death of her only child. To which is added her prophecy and curse."
Julius had been standing, so as to reach the length of the shelf. Now
he sat down on the top step of the ladder again. A whole rush of
memories came upon him. He remembered vaguely how, long ago, in his
childhood, he had heard legends of this same curse. Staying here at
Brockhurst, as a baby-child with his mother, maids had hinted at it,
gossiping over the nursery fire at night; and his mind, irresistibly
attracted, even then, by the supernatural, had been filled at once by
desperate curiosity and by panic fear. He paused, thinking back,
singularly moved, as one on the edge of the satisfaction of
long-desired knowledge, yet slightly self-contemptuous, both of his own
emotion and of the rather vulgar means by which that knowledge promised
to be obtained.
The shafts of sunshine fell more obliquely across the eastern end of
the gallery. Benign Buddha had passed into shadow; while a painting by
Murillo, standing on an easel near by caught the light, starting into
arresting reality. It represented a hideous and misshapen dwarf,
holding a couple of graceful greyhounds in a leash--an unhappy creature
who had made sport for the household of some Castilian grandee, and
whose gorgeous garments were ingeniously designed to emphasise the
physical degradation of his contorted body. This painting, appearing to
Julius too painful for habitual contemplation, had, at his request,
been removed from his study down-stairs to its present station. Just
now he fancied it looked forth at him queerly insistent. At this
distance he could distinguish little more than a flare of scarlet and
cloth-of-gold, and the white of the hounds' flanks and bellies under
the strong sunlight. But he knew the picture in all its details; and
was oppressed by the remembrance of tragic eyes in a brutal face, eyes
that protested dumbly against cruelty inflicted by nature and by
mankind alike. He, Julius, was not, so he feared, quite guiltless in
this matter. For had there not been a savour of cruelty in his ejection
of the portrait of this unhappy being from his peaceful study?
And thinking of this his discomfort augmented. He was assailed by an
unreasoning nervousness of something malign, something sinister, about
to befall or to become known to him.
"_Araignee du matin, chagrin_," he repeated involuntarily.
He laid the four little chap-books back hastily behind the outstanding
woodwork of the bookshelf, descended the steps, walked the length of
the gallery, and leaning against one of the stone mullions of the
great, eastern bay window looked out of the wide, open casement.
The prospect was, indeed, reassuring enough. The softly green square of
the troco-ground, the brilliant beds and borders of the brick-walled
gardens, the gray flags of the great terrace--its rows of little orange
trees, heavy with flower and fruit, set in blue painted tubs--lay below
him in a blaze of August sunshine. From the direction of the Long Water
in the valley, Richard Calmady rode up, between the thorn trees and the
beds of bracken, across the turf slopes of the park. It was a joy to
see him ride. The rider and horse were one, in vigour and in the repose
which comes of vigour--a something classic in the natural beauty and
sympathy of rider and of horse. Half-way up the slope Richard swerved,
turned towards the house, sat looking up, hat in hand, while Katherine
stood at the edge of the terrace looking down, speaking with him. The
warm breeze fluttered her full muslin skirts, rose and white, and the
white lace of her parasol. The rich tones of her voice and the ring of
her laughter came up to Julius, as he leant against the stone mullion,
along with the droning of innumerable bees, and the cooing of the
pink-footed pigeons--that bowed to one another, spreading their tails,
drooping their wings amorously, upon the broad, gray string-course
running along the house front just beneath. Mademoiselle de Mirancourt,
a small, neat, gray and black figure, was beside Katherine, and, now
and again, he heard the pretty staccato of her foreign speech. Then
Richard Calmady rode onward, turning half round in the saddle, looking
up for a moment at the woman he loved. His horse broke into a canter,
bearing him swiftly in and out of the shadow of the glistening, domed
oaks and ancient, stag-headed, Spanish chestnuts which crowned the
ascent, and on down the long, softly-shaded vista of the lime avenue.
While Camp, the bulldog, who had lain panting in the bracken, streaked
like a white flash up the hillside in pursuit of his well-beloved
master.
And Julius March moved away from the open window with a sigh. Yet what,
after all, of malign or sinister was perceptible, conceivable even, in
respect of this glorious morning and these happy people--unless, as he
reflected, something of pathos is of necessity ever resident in all
beauty, all happiness, the world being sinful, and existence so
prolific of pain and melancholy happenings? So he went back, climbed
the library steps again, and taking the little bundle of chap-books
from their dusty resting-place, set himself, in a somewhat penitential
spirit, to master their contents. If the occupation was distasteful to
him, the more wholesome to pursue it! So, supplying the deficiencies of
torn or defaced pages by reference to another of the copies, he arrived
by degrees at a clear understanding of the whole matter. The story was
set forth in rhyming doggerel. The poet was not blessed with a gift of
melody or of style. Absence of scansion tortured the ear. Coarseness of
diction offended the taste. And yet, as he read on, Julius reluctantly
admitted that the cruel tale gained credibility and moral force from
the very homeliness of the language in which it was chronicled.
Thus Julius learned how, during the closing years of the Commonwealth,
the young royalist gentleman, Sir Thomas Calmady, dwelling in enforced
seclusion at Brockhurst, relieved the tedium of country life by
indulgence in divers amours. He was large-hearted, apparently, and
could not see a comely face without attempting intimate acquaintance
with the possessor of it. Among other damsels distinguished by his
attentions was his head forester's handsome daughter, whom, under
reiterated promise of marriage, he seduced. In due time she bore him a
child, ideally beautiful, according to the poet of the chap-book,
blessed with "red-gold hair and eyes of blue," and many charms of
infantile healthfulness. And yet, notwithstanding the noble looks of
her little son, the forester's daughter still remained unwed. For just
now came the Restoration, and along with it a notable change in the
outlook of Sir Thomas Calmady and many another lusty young gallant,
since the event in question not only restored Charles the Second to the
arms of his devoted subjects, but restored such loyal gentlemen to the
by no means too strait-laced society of town and court. Thence, some
few years later, Sir Thomas--amiably willing in all things to oblige
his royal master--brought home a bride, whose rank and wealth,
according to the censorious chap-book, were extensively in excess of
her youth and virtue.
Julius lingered a little in contemplation of the quaint wood-cut
representing the arrival of this lady at Brockhurst. Clothed in a
bottle-green bodice--very generously _decolletee_, her head adorned by
a portentous erection of coronet and feathers, a sanguine dab of colour
on her cheek, she craned a skinny neck out of the window of the family
coach. Apparently she was engaged in directing the movements of
persons--presumably footmen--clad in canary-coloured coats and armed
with long staves. With these last, they treated a female figure in blue
to, as it seemed, sadly rough usage. And the context informed Julius,
in jingling verse, how that poor Hagar, the forester's daughter,
inconveniently defiant of custom and of common sense, had stoutly
refused to be cast forth into the social wilderness, along with her
small Ishmael and a few pounds sterling as price of her honour and
content, until she had stood face to face with Sarah, the safely
church-wed, if none too reputable, wife. It informed him, further, how
the said small Ishmael--whether alarmed by the violence of my lady's
men-servants, or wanting merely, childlike, to welcome his returning
father--ran to the coach door and clambered on the step; whence, thanks
to a vicious thrust--so declares the chap-book--from "the painted
Jezebel within," he fell, while the horses plunging forward caused the
near hind wheel of the heavy, lumbering vehicle to pass over his legs,
almost severing them from his body just above the knee.
Thereupon--and here the homely language of the gutter poet rose to a
level of rude eloquence--the outraged mother, holding the mangled and
dying child in her arms, cursed the man who had brought this ruin upon
her. Cursed him and his descendants, to the sixth and seventh
generations, good and bad alike. Declaring, moreover, that as judgment
on his perfidy and lust, no owner of Brockhurst should reach the life
limit set by the Psalmist, and die quiet and Christianly in his bed,
until a somewhat portentous event should have taken place--namely,
until, as the jingling rhyme set forth:--
"--a fatherless babe to the birth shall have come,
Of brother or sister shall he have none,
But red-gold hair and eyes of blue
And a foot that will never know stocking or shoe.
If he opens his purse to the lamenter's cry,
Then the woe shall lift and be laid for aye."
Julius March, his spare, black figure crouched together, sat on the top
step of the library ladder musing. His first movement had been one of
refined and contemptuous disgust. Sensuality and the tragedies
engendered by it were so wholly foreign to his nature and mental
outlook, that it was difficult to him to reckon with them seriously and
admit the very actual and permanent part which they play and always
have played in the great drama of human life. It distressed, it, in a
sense, annoyed him that the legend of Brockhurst, which had caused him
elaborate imaginative terrors during his childhood, should belong to
this gross and vulgar order of history. Yet indubitably--as he
reluctantly admitted--each owner of Brockhurst had very certainly found
death in the midst of life, and that according to some rather brutal
and bloody pattern. This might, of course, be judged the result of
merest coincidence. Had he leisure and opportunity to search them out,
he could find, no doubt, plausible explanation of the majority of
cases. Only that fact of persistent violence, persistent accident, did
remain. It stared him in the face, so to speak, defiant of denial. And
the deduction, consequent upon it, stared him in the face likewise. He
was constrained to confess that the first clause of the deeply wronged
mother's prediction had found ample fulfilment.--Julius paused, shifted
his position uneasily, somewhat fearful of the conclusions of his own
reasoning.
For how about the second clause of that same prediction? How about the
advent of that strange child of promise, who preordained in his own
flesh to bear the last and heaviest stroke at the hands of retributive
justice, should, rightly bearing it, bring salvation both to himself
and to his race? Behind the coarse and illiterate presentiment of the
chap-book, Julius began dimly to apprehend a somewhat majestic moral
and spiritual tragedy, a tragedy of vicarious suffering crowned by
triumphant emancipation. Thus has God, as he reflected with a
self-condemnatory emotion of humility, chosen the base things of the
world and those which are despised--yea, and the things which are not,
to bring to nought the things which are.--His heart, hungry of all
martyrdom, all saintly doings, went forth to welcome the idea. But
then, he asked himself almost awed, in this sceptical, rationalistic
age, are such semi-miraculous moral examples still possible? And
answered, with strong exultation--as one finding practical
justification of a long, though silently, cherished conviction--yes,
that even now, nineteen centuries after the death of that divine Saving
Victim to whose service he had devoted his life and the joys of his
manhood, such nobly sad and strange happenings may still be.
And even while he thus answered, his eyes were drawn involuntarily to
the portrait of the unsightly dwarf, painted by Velasquez. The broad
shaft of sunlight had crept backward, away from it, leaving the canvas
unobtrusive, no longer harshly evident either in violence of colour or
grotesqueness of form. It had become part of the great whole, merely
modulated to gracious harmony with the divers objects surrounding it,
and like them softly overlaid by a diffused and silvery light.
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH JULIUS MARCH BEHOLDS THE VISION OF THE NEW LIFE
He was aroused from these austere, yet, to him, inspiring reflections
by the click of an opening door and the sound of women's voices.
Mademoiselle de Mirancourt paused on the threshold, one hand raised in
quick admiration, the other resting on Lady Calmady's arm.
"But this is superb," she cried gaily. "Your charming King Richard,
_Coeur d' Or_, has given you a veritable palace to inhabit!"
"Ah yes! King Richard has indeed given me a palace to live in. But,
better still, he has given me his dear heart of gold in which to hide
the life of my heart forever and a day."
Katherine's words came triumphantly, more as song than as speech. She
caught the elder woman's upraised hand gently and kissed it, looking
her, meanwhile, full in the face.--"I am happy, very, very happy, best
and dearest," she said. "And it is so delicious to be happy."
"Ah, my child, my beautiful child," Mademoiselle de Mirancourt cried.
There were tears in her pretty, patient eyes. For if youth finds age
pathetic with the obvious pathos of spent body and of tired mind which
has ceased to greatly hope, how far more deeply pathetic does age, from
out its sad and settled wisdom, find poor gallant youth and all its
still unbroken trust in the beneficence of destiny, its unbroken faith
in the enchantments of earth!
Meanwhile, Julius March--product as he was of an arbitrary system of
thought and training, and by so much divorced from the natural
instincts of youth and age alike, the confident joy of the one, the
mature acquiescence of the other--in overhearing this brief
conversation suffered embarrassment amounting almost to shame. For not
only Katherine's words, but the vital gladness of her voice, the sweet
exuberance of her manner as she bent, in all her spotless bravery of
white and rose, above the elder woman's hand and kissed it, came to him
as a revelation before which he shrank with a certain fearful modesty.
Julius had read of love in the poets, of course; but, in actual fact,
he had never wooed a woman, nor heard from any woman's lips the
language of intimate devotion. The cold embraces of the Church--a
church, as he too often feared, rendered barren by schism and
heresy--were the only embraces he had ever suffered. Things read of and
things seen, moreover, are singularly different in power. And so he
trembled now at the mystery of human love, actual and concrete, here
close beside him. He was, indeed, moved to the point of losing his
habitual suavity of demeanour. He rose hastily and descended the
library steps, forgetful of the handful of chap-books, which fell in
tattered and dusty confusion upon the floor.
Katherine looked round. Until now she had been unobservant of his
presence, innocent of other audience than the old friend, to whom it
was fitting enough to confide dear secrets. For an instant she
hesitated, embarrassed too, her pride touched to annoyance, at having
laid bare the treasures of her heart thus unwittingly. She was tempted
to retreat through the still open door, into the library, and leave the
review of the Long Gallery and its many relics to a more convenient
season. But it was not Katherine's habit to run away, least of all from
the consequences of her own actions. And her sense of justice compelled
her to admit that, in this case, the indiscretion--if indiscretion
indeed there was--lay with her, in not having seen poor Julius; rather
than with him, in having overheard her little outburst. So she called
to him in friendly greeting, and came swiftly towards him down the
length of the great room.
And Julius stood waiting for her, leaning against the frame of the
library ladder; a spare, black figure, notably at variance with the
broad glory of sunshine and colour reigning out of doors.
His usually quick instinct of courtesy was in abeyance, shaken, as he
still was, and confused by the revelation that had just come to him. He
looked at Lady Calmady with a new and agitated understanding. She made
so fair a picture that he could only gaze dumbly at it. Tall in fact,
Katherine was rendered taller by the manner--careless of passing
fashion--in which her hair was dressed. The warm, brown mass of it,
rolled up and back from her forehead, showed all the perfect oval of
her face. Tender, lovely, smiling, her blue-brown eyes soft and
lustrous, with a certain wondering serenity in their depths, there was
yet something majestic about Katherine Calmady. No poor or unworthy
line marred the nobility of her face or figure. The dark, arched
eyebrows, the well-chiselled and slightly aquiline nose, the firm chin
and throat, the shapely hands, all denoted harmony and completeness of
development, and promised a reserve of strength, ready to encounter and
overcome if danger were to be met. Years afterwards, the remembrance of
Katherine as he just then saw her would return upon Julius, as
prophetic of much. Quailing in spirit, still reluctant, in his
asceticism, to comprehend and reckon with her personality in the
fulness of its present manifestation, he answered her at random, and
with none of the pause and playful evasiveness usual to his speech.
"I am very glad we have found you," Katherine said frankly. "I was
afraid, by the fact of your not coming to breakfast, that you were
overtired. We talked late last night. Did we weary you too much?"
"Existence in itself is vexatiously wearisome at times--at least to
feeble persons, like myself."
Katherine's smile faded. She looked at him with charming solicitude.
"Ah! you are not well," she declared. "Go out and enjoy the sunshine.
Leave all those stupid books. Go," she repeated, "order one of the
horses. Go and meet Richard. He has gone over to look at the new lodge.
You could ride all the way through the east woods in the cool. See, I
will put these tidy."
And, as she spoke, Katherine stooped to pick up the scattered
chap-books from the ground. But, in the last few moments, while looking
at her, yet further understanding had overtaken Julius March. Not only
the mystery of human love, but the mystery of dawning motherhood had
come close to him. And he put Lady Calmady aside with a determination
of authority somewhat surprising.
"No, no, pardon me! They are dusty, they will soil your hands. You must
not touch those books," he said.
Katherine straightened herself up. Her face was slightly flushed, her
expression full of kindly amusement.
"Dear Julius, you are very imperative. Surely I may make my hands
dirty, once in a way, in a good cause? They will wash, you know, just
as well as your own, after all."
"A thousand times better. Still, I will ask you not to touch those
books. I have valid reasons. For one, an evil beast in the form of a
spider has dwelt among them. I disturbed it and it fled, looking as
though it had grown old in trespasses and sins. It seemed to me a thing
of ill omen."
He tried to steady himself, to treat the matter lightly. Yet his speech
struck Katherine as hurried and anxious, out of all proportion to the
matter in hand.
"Poor thing--and you killed it? Yet it couldn't help being ugly, I
suppose," she answered, not without a touch of malice.
Julius was on his knees, his long, thin fingers gathering up the
tattered pages, ranging them into a bundle, tying them together with
the tag of rusty, black ribbon aforesaid. For an unreasoning, fierce
desire was upon him--very alien to his usual gentle attitude of
mind--to shield this beautiful woman from all acquaintance with the
foul story set forth in those little books. To shield her, indeed, from
more than merely that.--For a vague presentiment possessed him that she
might, in some mysterious way, be intimately involved in the final
developments of that same story which, though august, were so full of
suffering, so profoundly sad. Meanwhile, in his excitement, he replied
less to her gently mocking question than to the importunities of his
own thought.
"No," he said, "I let it go. I begin to fear it is useless to attempt
to take short-cuts to the extinction of what is evil. It does not
cease, but merely changes its form. Unwillingly I have learned that. No
violent death is possible to things evil."
Julius rose to his feet.
"They must go on," he continued, "till, in the merciful providence of
God, their term is reached, till their power is exhausted, till they
have worn themselves out."
Lady Calmady turned and moved thoughtfully towards the far end of the
room, where the sunshine still slanted in through the open casements of
the bay window, and where the delicate, little spinster lady stood
awaiting her. Amorous pigeons cooed below on the string-course. Bees
droned sleepily against the glass.
"But," she said, in gentle remonstrance, "that is a rather terrible
doctrine, Julius. Surely it is not quite just; for it would seem to
leave us almost hopelessly at the mercy of the wrong-doing of others."
"Yes, but are we not, just that--all of us at the mercy of the
wrong-doing of others?--The courageous forever suffering for the
cowardly, the wise for the ignorant and brutish, the just for the
unjust? Is not this, perhaps, the very deepest lesson of our religion?"
"Oh no, no!" Katherine cried incredulously. "There is something at once
deeper and more comforting than that. Remember, in the beginning, when
God created all things and reviewed His handiwork, He pronounced it
very good."
Julius was recovering his suavity. The little packet of chap-books
rested safely in the pocket of his coat.
"But that was a long time ago," he said, smiling.
They reached the bay window. Katherine took her old friend's hand once
again and laid it caressingly upon her arm.
"Pardon me for keeping you waiting, dearest," she said. "Julius is in
fault. He will argue with me about the date of the creation, and that
takes time. He declares it was so long ago that everything has had time
to grow very old and go very wrong. But, indeed, he is mistaken. Agree
with me, tell him he is mistaken! The world is deliciously young yet.
It was only made a little over twenty-two years ago. I must know, for I
came into it then. And I found it all as new as I was myself, and a
thousand times prettier--quite adorably gay, adorably fresh."
Katherine's voice sank, grew fuller in tone. She gazed out over the
brilliant garden to the woodland shimmering in the noontide heat. Then
she looked at Julius March, her eyes and lips eloquent with joyous
conviction.
"Indeed, I think, God makes His whole creation over again for each one
of us, it is so beautiful. As in the beginning, so now," she said;
"behold it is very good--ah yes! who can doubt that--it is very good!"
"Amen. To you may it ever so continue," Julius murmured, bowing his
head.
That evening there was a dinner party at Brockhurst. Lord Denier
brought his handsome second wife. She was a Hellard, and took the judge
_faute de mieux_, so said the wicked world, rather late in life. The
Cathcarts of Newlands and their daughter Mary came; and Roger Ormiston
too, who, being off duty, had run down from London for a few days'
partridge shooting, bringing with him his cousin Colonel St.
Quentin--invalided home, to his own immense chagrin, in the midst of
the Afghan war. On the terrace, after dinner, for the night was warm
enough for the whole company to take coffee out of doors, Lady
Calmady--incited thereunto by her brother--had persuaded Mary Cathcart
to sing, accompanying herself on her guitar. The girl's musical gifts
were of no extraordinary order; but her young contralto was true and
sweet. The charm of the hour and the place, moreover, was calculated to
heighten the effect of the Jacobite songs and old-world love ditties
which she selected.
Roger Ormiston unquestionably found her performance sufficiently
moving. But then the girl's frank manner, her warm, gipsy-like
colouring, and the way in which she could sit a horse, moved him also;
had done so, indeed, ever since he first saw her, as quite a child,
some eight or nine years ago, on one of his earliest visits to
Brockhurst, fighting a half-broken, Welsh pony that refused at a grip
by the roadside. The little maiden, her face pale, for once, from
concentration of purpose, had forced the pony over the grip. Then,
slipping out of the saddle, she coaxed and kissed the rough, unruly,
little beast, with tears of apology for the hard usage to which she had
been obliged to subject it. So stout, yet so tender, a heart, struck
Roger as an excellent thing in woman. And now, listening to the full,
rounded notes and thrumming of the guitar strings, in the evening quiet
under the stars, he wished, remorsefully, that he had never been guilty
of any pleasant sins, that his record was cleaner, his tastes less
expensive; that he was a better fellow all round, in short, than he
was, because, then, perhaps----
And Julius March, too, found the singing somewhat agitating, though to
him the personality of the singer was of small account. Another
personality, and a train of feeling evoked by certain new aspects of
it, had pursued him all the day long. Katherine, mindful of her
somewhat outspoken divergence of opinion from his, in the morning, had
been particularly thoughtful of his pleasure and entertainment. At
dinner she directed the conversation upon subjects interesting to him,
and had thereby made him talk more unreservedly than was his wont. Not
even the most saintly of human beings is wholly indifferent to social
success. Julius was conscious of a stirring of the blood, of a subdued
excitement. These sensations were pleasurable. But his training had
taught him to distrust pleasurable sensations as too often the
offspring of very questionable parentage. And, while Mary Cathcart's
voice still breathed upon the fragrant night air, he, standing on the
outskirts of the listening company, slipped away unperceived.
His study, a long narrow room occupying, with his bedroom, the ground
floor of the chapel wing of the house, struck chill as he entered it.
Above the range of pigeon-holes and little drawers, forming the back of
the writing-table, two candles burned on either side of a bronze
_pieta_, which Julius had brought back with him from Rome. On the broad
slab of the table below were the many quires of foolscap forming the
library catalogue, neatly numbered and lettered; while his diary lay
open upon the blotting-pad, ready for the chronicle of the past day.
Beside it was the packet of chap-books, still tied together with their
tag of rusty ribbon.
It was Julius March's habit to exchange his coat for a cassock in the
privacy of his study. He did so now, and knotted a black cord about his
waist. Let no one underrate the sustaining power of costume, whether it
take the form of ballet-skirt or monk's frock. Human nature is but a
weak thing at best, and needs outward and visible signs, not only to
support its faith in its deity, but even its faith in its own poor
self! Of persons of sensitive temperament and limited experience, such
as Julius, this is particularly true. Putting off his secular garment,
as a rule, he could put off secular thoughts as well. Beneath the
severe and scanty folds of the cassock there was small space for
remembrance of the pomp and glory of this perishing world. At least he
hoped so. To-night, importuned as he had been by scenes and emotions
quite other than ecclesiastical, Julius literally sought refuge in his
cassock. It represented "port after stormy seas"--home, after travel in
lands altogether foreign.
He took St. Augustine's _De Civitate Dei_ from its place in the book
shelves lining one side of the room. There should be peace in the soul,
surely, emancipation from questioning of transitory things in reading
of the City of God? But, alas, his attention strayed. That sense of
subdued excitement was upon him yet. He thought of the conversation at
dinner, of brilliant speeches he might have made, of the encouragement
of Katherine's smiling eyes and sympathetic speech, of the scene in the
gallery that morning, of Mary Cathcart's old-time love ditties. The
City of God was far off. All these were things very near at hand.
Notwithstanding the scanty folds of the cassock, they importuned him
still.
Pained at his own lack of poise and seriousness, Julius returned the
volume of St. Augustine to its place, and, sitting down at the
writing-table prepared to chronicle the day's events. Perhaps by
putting a statement of them on paper he could rid himself of their all
too potent influence. But his thought was tumultuous, words refused to
come in proper order and sequence; and Julius abhorred that erasures
should mar the symmetry of his pages. Impatiently he pushed the diary
from him. Clearly it, like the City of God, was destined to wait.
The guests had departed. He had heard the distant calling of voices in
friendly farewell, the rumble of departing wheels. The night was very
soft and mild. He would go out and walk the gray flags of the terrace,
till this unworthy restlessness gave place to reason and calm.
Passing along the narrow passage, he opened the door on to the
garden-hall. And there paused. The hall itself, and the inner side of
the carven arches of the arcade were in dense shadow. Beyond stretched
the terrace bathed in moonlight, which glittered on the polished leaves
of the little orange trees, on the leaded panes of the many windows,
and strangely transmuted the colours of the range of pot-flowers massed
beneath them along the base of the house. It was a fairy world upon
which Julius looked forth. Nor did it need suitable inhabitants. Pacing
slowly down the centre of the terrace came Richard and Katherine
Calmady, hand in hand. Tall, graceful, strong in the perfection of
their youth and their great devotion, amid that ethereal brightness,
they seemed as two heroic figures--immortal, fairy lovers moving
through the lovely wonder of that fairy-land. As they drew near,
Katherine stopped, leant--with a superb abandon--back against her
husband, resting her hand on his shoulder, drew his arm around her
waist for support, drew his face down to her upturned face until their
lips met, while the moonlight played upon the jewels on her bare arms
and neck and gleamed softly on the surface of her white, satin dress.
To true lovers the longest kiss is all too sadly short--a thing brief
almost in proportion to its sweetness. But to Julius March, watching
from the blackness of the doorway, it seemed a whole eternity before
Richard Calmady raised his head. Then Julius turned and fled down the
passage and back into the chill study, where the candles burned on
either side the image of the Virgin Mother cradling the dead Christ
upon her knee.
Gentle persons, breaking from the lines of self-restraint, run to a
curious violence in emotion. All day long, shrink from it, ignore it,
as he might, a moral storm had been brewing. Now it broke. Not from
those two lovers did Julius turn thus in amazement and terror; but from
just that from which it is impossible for any one to turn in actual
fact--namely from himself. He was appalled by the narrowness of his own
past outlook; appalled by the splendour of that heritage which, by his
own act, he had forfeited. The cassock ceased, indeed, to be a refuge,
the welcome livery of home and rest. It had become a prison-suit, a
badge of slavery, against which his whole being rebelled. For the
moment--happily violence is short-lived, only for a very little while
do even the gentlest persons "see red"--asceticism appeared to him as a
blasphemy against the order of nature and of nature's God. His vow of
perpetual chastity, made with so passionate an enthusiasm, for the
moment appeared to him an act of absolutely monstrous vanity and
self-conceit. In his stupid ignorance he had tried to be wiser than his
Maker, preferring the ordinances of man, to the glad and merciful
purposes of God. In so doing had he not, only too possibly, committed
the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost?
Poor Julius, his thought had indeed run almost humorously mad! Yet it
was characteristic of the man that the breaking of his self-imposed
bonds never occurred to him. Made in ignorance, unwitnessed though his
vow might be, it remained inviolable. He never, even in this most
heated hour of his trial, doubted that.
Stretching out his arms, he clenched his hands in anguish of spirit.
The sacerdotal pride, the subjective joys of self-consecration, the
mental luxury of feeling himself different from others, singled out,
set apart,--all the Pharisee, in short, in Julius March,--was sick to
death. He had supposed he was living to God--and now it appeared to him
he had lived only to himself. He had trusted God too little, had come
near reckoning the great natural laws--which, after all, must be of
God's ordering--common and unclean. Katherine was right. The eternal
purpose is joy, not sorrow; youth and health, not age and decay;
thankful acceptance, not fastidious rejection and fear. Katherine--yes,
Katherine--and there the young man's wild tirade stopped----
He flung himself down in front of the writing-table, leaning his elbows
on it, pressing his face upon his folded arms. For in good truth, what
did it all amount to? Not outraged laws of nature, not sins against the
Holy Ghost; but just simply this, that the common fate had overtaken
him. He loved a woman, and in so loving had, at last, found himself.
The most vital experiences are beyond language. When Julius looked up,
his eyes rested upon the bronze _pieta_, age-old witness to the
sanctity of motherhood and of suffering alike. His face was wet with
tears. He was faint and weak; yet a certain calm had come to him. He no
longer quarreled--though his attitude towards them was greatly
changed--either with his priestly calling or his rashly made vow. Not
as sources of pride did he now regard them; but as searching discipline
to be borne humbly and faithfully, to the honour--as he prayed--both of
earthly and heavenly love. He loved Katherine, but he loved her husband
and that with the fulness of a loyal and equal friendship. And so no
taint was upon his love, of this he felt certain. Indeed, he asked
nothing better than that things might continue as they were at
Brockhurst; and that he might continue to warm his hands a little--only
a little--in the dear sunshine of Richard and Katherine Calmady's
perfect love.
As Julius rose his knees gave under him. He rested both hands heavily
on the table, looked down, saw the unsightly packet of dirty
chap-books. Again, and almost with a cry, he prayed that things might
continue as they were at Brockhurst.
"Give peace in my time, oh Lord!" he said. Then he wrapped up the
little bundle carefully, sealed and labelled it, and locked it away in
one of the table-drawers.
Thus, kneeling before the image of the stricken Mother and the dead
Christ, did Julius March behold the Vision of the New Life. But the
page of his diary, on which surely a matter of so great importance
should have been duly chronicled, remains to this day a blank.
CHAPTER VI
ACCIDENT OR DESTINY, ACCORDING TO YOUR HUMOUR
On the 18th of October that year, St. Luke's day, a man died, and this
was the manner of his passing.
There was nothing more to be done. Dr. Knott had gone out of the red
drawing-room on the ground floor into the tapestry-hung dining-room
next door, which struck cold as the small hours drew on towards the
dawn. And Julius March, after reciting the prayer in which the Anglican
Church commends the souls of her departing children to the merciful
keeping of the God who gave them, had followed him. The doctor was
acutely distressed. He hated to lose a patient. He also hated to feel
emotion. It made him angry. Moreover, he was intolerant of the presence
of the clergy and of their ministrations in sick rooms. He greeted poor
Julius rather snarlingly.
"So your work's through as well as mine," he said. "No disrespect to
your cloth, Mr. March, but I'm not altogether sorry. I dare say I'm a
bit of a heathen; but I can't help fancying the dying know more of
death and the way to meet it, than any of us can teach them."
A group of men-servants stood about the open door, at the further end
of the room, with Iles, the steward, and Mr. Tom Chifney, the trainer
from the racing stables. The latter advanced a little and, clearing his
throat, inquired huskily--
"No hope at all, doctor?"
"Hope?" he returned impatiently.--The lamp on the great bare
dining-table burned low, and John Knott's wide mouth, conical skull and
thick, ungainly person looked ogreish, almost brutal in the uncertain
light.--"There never was a grain of hope from the first, except in Sir
Richard's fine constitution. He is as sound as only a clean-living man
of thirty can be.--I wish there were a few more like him, though your
beastly diseases do put money into my pocket.--That offered us a bare
chance, and we were bound to act on that chance"--his loose lips worked
into a bitterly humorous smile--"and torture him. Well, I've seen a
good many men under the knife before now, and I tell you I never saw
one who bore himself better. Men and horses alike, it's breeding that
tells when it comes to the push. You know that, eh, Chifney?"
In the red drawing-room, where the drama of this sad night centred,
Roger Ormiston had dropped into a chair by the fireside, his head sunk
on his chest and his hands thrust into his pockets. He was very tired,
very miserable. A shocking thing had happened, and, in some degree, he
held himself responsible for that happening. For was it not he who had
been so besotted with the Clown, and keen about its training? Therefore
the young man cursed himself, after the manner of his kind; and cursed
his luck, in that, if this thing was to happen, it had not happened to
him instead of to Richard Calmady.
Mrs. Denny, the housekeeper, had retired to a straight-backed chair
stationed against the wall. She sat there, waiting till the next call
should come for her skilful nursing, upright, her hands folded upon her
silk apron, her attitude a model of discreet and self-respecting
repose. Mrs. Denny knew her place, and had a considerable capacity for
letting other persons know theirs. She ruled the large household with
unruffled calm. But, to-night, even her powers of self-control were
heavily taxed; and though she carried her head high, she could not help
tears coursing slowly down her cheeks, and falling sadly to the
detriment of the goffered frills of her white, lawn cross-over.
And Richard Calmady, meanwhile, lay still and very fairly peaceful upon
the narrow camp-bed in the middle of the room. He had lain there, save
during one hour,--the memory of which haunted Katherine with hideous
and sickening persistence,--ever since Tom Chifney, the head-lad from
the stables, and a couple of grooms had carried him in, on a hurdle,
from the steeple-chase course four days ago.
The crimson-covered chairs and sofas, and other furniture of the large
square room, had been pushed back against the walls in a sort of
orderly confusion, leaving a broad passageway between the doors at
either end, and a wide vacant space round the bed. At the head of this
stood a high, double-shelved what-not, bearing medicine bottles, cups,
basins, rolled bandages, dressings of rag and lint, a spirit-lamp over
which simmered a vessel containing vinegar, and a couple of shaded
candles in a tall, branched, silver candlestick. The light from these
fell, in intersecting circles, upon the white bed, upon the man's
brown, close curled hair, upon his handsome face--drawn and sharpened
by suffering--and its rather ghastly three days' growth of beard.
It fell, too, upon Katherine, as she sat facing her husband, the side
of her large easy-chair drawn up parallel to the side of the bed.
Silently, unlooked for, as a thief in the night, the end of Katherine's
fair world had come. There had been no time for forethought or
preparation. At one step she had been called upon to pass from the
triumph to the terror of mortal life. But she was a valiant creature;
and her natural courage was reinforced by the greatness of her love.
She met the blow standing, her brain clear, her mind strong to help.
Only once had she faltered--during the hideous hour when she waited,
pacing the dining-room in the dusk, four evenings back. For, after
consultation with Dr. Jewsbury and Mr. Thoms of Westchurch, John Knott
had told her--with a gentleness and delicacy a little surprising in so
hard-bitten a man--that, owing to the shattered condition of the bone,
amputation of the right leg was imperative. He added that, only too
probably, the left would have eventually to go too. They must operate,
he said, and operate immediately. Katherine had pleaded to be present;
but Dr. Knott was obdurate.
"My dear lady, you don't know what you ask," he said. "As you love him,
let him be. If you are there it will just double the strain. He'd
suffer for you as well as himself. Believe me he will be far best
alone."
It must be remembered that in 1842 anaesthetics had not robbed the
operating-room of half its horrors. The victim went to execution
wide-awake, with no mercy of deadened senses and dulled brain. And so
Katherine had paced the dining-room, hearing at intervals, through the
closed doors, the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, fearing she
heard more and worse sounds than those. They were hurting him, sorely,
sorely, dismembering and disfiguring the dear, living body which she
loved. A tempest of unutterable woe swept over her. Breaking fiercely
away from her brother and Denny--who strove to comfort her--she beat
her poor, lovely head against the wall. But that, so far, had been her
one moment of weakness. Since then she had fought steadily, with a
certain lofty cheerfulness, for the life she so desired to save. The
horror of the second operation had been spared her; but only because it
might but too probably hasten, rather than retard, the approaching
footsteps of death. Mortification had set in, in the bruised and
mangled limb forty-eight hours ago. And now the scent of death was in
the air. The awful presence drew very near. Yet only when doctor and
priest alike rose and went, when her brother moved away, and even the
faithful housekeeper stepped back from the bedside, did Katherine's
mind really grasp the truth. Her well-beloved lay dying; and human
tenderness, human skill, be they never so great, ceased to avail.
She was worn by the long vigil. Her face was colourless. Yet perhaps
Katherine's beauty had never been more rare and sweet than as she sat
there, leaning a little forward in the eagerness of her watchfulness.
The dark circles about her eyes made them look very large and sombre.
The corners of her mouth turned down and her under-lip quivered now and
then, giving her expression a childlike piteousness of appeal. There
was no trace of disorder in her appearance. Her white dressing-gown and
all its pretty ribbons and laces were spotlessly fresh. Her hair was
carefully dressed as usual--high at the back, showing the nape of her
neck, her little ears, and the noble poise of her head. Katherine was
not one of those women who appear to imagine that slovenliness is the
proper exponent of sorrow.
Still, for all her high courage, as the truth came home to her, her
spirit began to falter for the second time. It is comparatively easy to
endure while there is something to be done; but it is almost
intolerable, specially to the young when life is strong in them, merely
to sit by and wait. Katherine's overwrought nerves began to play cruel
tricks upon her, carrying her back in imagination to that other hideous
hour of waiting, in the dining-room, four evenings ago. Again she
seemed to hear the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, and those
worse things--the stifled groan of one in the extremity of physical
anguish, and the grate of a saw. These maddened her with pity, almost
with rage. She feared that now, as then, she might lose her
self-mastery and do some wild and desperate thing. She tried to keep
her attention fixed on the quick irregular rise and fall of the linen
sheet expressing the broad, full curve of the young man's chest, as he
lay flat on his back, his eyes closed, but whether in sleep or in
unconsciousness she did not know. As long as the sheet rose and fell he
was alive at all events, still with her. But she was too exhausted for
any sustained effort of will; and her glance wandered back to, and
followed with agonised comprehension, the formless, motionless
elevation and depression of that same sheet towards the foot of the
bed.
The air of the room seemed to grow more oppressive, the silence to
deepen, and with it the terrible tension of her mind increased.
Suddenly she started to her feet. The logs burning in the grate had
fallen together with a crash, sending a rush of ruddy flame and an
innumerable army of hurrying sparks up the wide chimney. All the
mouldings of the ceiling--all the crossing bars and sinuous lines of
the richly-worked pattern, all the depending bosses and roses of it,
all the foliations of the deep cornice--sprang into bold relief,
outlined, splashed, and stained with living scarlet. And this universal
redness of carpet, curtains, furniture, and now of ceiling, even of
white-draped bed, suggested to Katherine's distracted fancy another
thing--unseen, yet known during her other hour of waiting--namely
blood.
Roused by the crash of the falling logs and the rustle of Katherine's
garments as she sprang up, Richard Calmady opened his eyes. For a few
seconds his glance wavered in vague distress and perplexity. Then as
fuller consciousness returned of how it all was with him, with a slight
lifting of the eyebrows his glance steadied upon Katherine and he
smiled.
"Ah! my poor Kitty," he whispered, "it takes a long time, doesn't it,
this business of dying?"
Katherine's evil fancies vanished. As soon as the demand for action
came she grew calm and sane. The ceiling and sheets were white again
and her mind was clear.
"Are you easy, my dearest?" she asked; "in less pain?"
"No," he said, "no, I'm not in pain. But everything seems to sink away
from me, and I float right out. It's all dream and mist--except--except
just now your face."
Katherine's lips quivered too much for speech. She moved swiftly across
to the what-not at the head of the bed. If he did not suffer, there
could be no selfishness, surely, in trying to keep death at bay for a
little space yet? But, alas, with what grotesquely paltry and
inadequate weapons are all--even the most gallant--reduced to fighting
death at the last! Here, on the one hand, a half wine-glass of
champagne in a china feeding-cup, with a teapot-like spout to it, or a
few spoonfuls of jelly, backed by the passion of a woman's heart. And,
on the other hand, ranged against this pitiful display of absurdly
limited resources,--as the hosts of the Philistines against the little
army of Israel,--resistless laws of nature, incalculably far-reaching
forces, physical and spiritual, the interminable progression of cause
and effect.
Denny joined Lady Calmady at the table. The two women held brief
consultation. Then the housekeeper went round to the farther side of
the bed, and slipping her arm under the pillows gently raised Richard's
head and shoulders, while Katherine kneeling beside him held the spout
of the feeding-cup to his lips.
"Must I? I don't think I can manage it," he said, drawing away slightly
and closing his eyes.
But Katherine persisted.
"Oh! try to drink it," she pleaded, "never mind how little--only try.
Help me to keep you here just as long as I can."
The young man's glance steadied on to her once again, and his eyes and
lips smiled the same faint, wholly gracious smile.
"All right, my beloved," he said. "A little higher, Denny, please."
Not without painful effort and a choking contraction of the throat, he
swallowed a few drops. But the greater part of the draught spilt out
sideways, and would have dribbled down on to the pillows had not
Katherine held her handkerchief to his mouth.
Ormiston, who had been standing at the foot of the bed in the hope of
rendering some assistance, ground his teeth together with a
half-audible imprecation, and went slowly over to the fireplace again.
He had supposed himself as miserable as he well could be before. But
this incident of the feeding-cup was the climax, somehow. It struck him
as an intolerable humiliation and outrage that Richard Calmady,
splendid fellow as he was, gifted, high-bred gentleman, should, of all
men, come to this sorry pass! He was filled with impotent fury. And was
it this pass, indeed, he asked himself, to which every human creature
must needs come one day? Would he, Roger Ormiston, one day, find
himself thus weak and broken; his body--now so lively a source of
various enjoyment--degraded into a pest-house, a mere dwelling-place of
suffering and corruption? The young man gripped the high, narrow
mantel-shelf with both hands and pressed his forehead down between
them. He really had not the nerve to watch what was going forward over
there any longer. It was too painful. It knocked all the manhood out of
him. But for very shame, before those two calm, devoted women, he would
have broken down and wept.
Presently Richard's voice reached him, feeble yet uncomplaining.
"I am so sorry, but you see it's no use, Kitty. The machinery won't
work. Let me lie flat again, Denny, please. That's better, thanks."
Then after a few moments of laboured breathing, he added--
"You mustn't trouble any more, it only disappoints you. We have just
got to submit to fact, my beloved, I've taken my last fence."
Ormiston's shoulders heaved convulsively as he leaned his forehead
against the cold, marble edge of the chimneypiece. His brother-in-law's
words brought the whole dreadful picture up before him. Oh! that cursed
slip and fall, that struggling, plunging, frenzied horse! And how the
horse had plunged and struggled, good God! It seemed as though Chifney,
the grooms, all of them, would never get hold of it or draw Richard out
from beneath the pounding hoofs. And then Ormiston went over his own
share in the business again, lamenting, blaming himself. Yet what more
natural, after all, than that he should have set his affections on the
Clown? Chifney believed in the horse too--a five-year-old brother of
Touchstone, resembling, in his black-brown skin and intelligent,
white-reach face, that celebrated horse; and inheriting--less enviable
distinction--the high shoulders and withers of his sire Camel. If the
Clown did not make a name, Captain Ormiston had sworn, by all the gods
of sport, he would never judge a horse again. And, heaven help us, was
this the ghastly way the Clown's name was to be made then?
The room grew very quiet again, save for a strange gurgling, rattling
sound Richard Calmady made, at times, in breathing. Mrs. Denny had
retired beyond the circle of firelight. And Katherine, having drawn her
chair a little further forward, so that the foot of the bed might be
out of sight, sat holding her husband's hand, softly caressing his
wrist and palm with her finger-tips. Soon the slow movement of her
fingers ceased, while she felt, in quick fear, for the fluttering,
intermittent pulse. Richard's breathing had become more difficult. He
moved his head restlessly and plucked at the sheet with his right hand.
It was a little more than flesh and blood could bear.
Katherine called to him softly under her breath,--"Richard, Dick, my
darling."
"All right, I'm coming."
He opened his eyes wide, as in sudden terror.
"Oh! I say though, what's happened? Where am I?"
Katherine leant down, kissed his hand, caressed it.
"Here, my dearest," she said, "at home, at Brockhurst, with me."
"Ah yes!" he said, "of course, I remember, I'm dying." He waited a
little space, and then, turning his head on the pillow so as to have a
better view of her, spoke again:--"I was floating right out--the
under-tow had got me--it was sucking me down into the deep sea of mist
and dreams. I was so nearly gone--and you brought me back."
"But I wanted you so--I wanted you so," Katherine cried, smitten with
sudden contrition. "I could not help it. Do you mind?"
"You silly sweet, could I ever mind coming back to you?" he asked
wistfully. "Don't you suppose I would much rather stay here at
Brockhurst, at home, with you--than sink away into the unknown?"
"Ah! my dear," she said, swaying herself to and fro in the misery of
tearless grief.
"And yet I have no call to complain," he went on. "I have had thirty
years of life and health. It is not a small thing to have seen the sun,
and to have rejoiced in one's youth. And I have had you"--his face
hardened and his breath came short--"you, most enchanting of women."
"My dear, my dear!" Katherine cried, again bowing her head.
"God has been so good to me here that--I hope it is not presumptuous--I
can't be much afraid of what is to follow. The best argument for what
will be, is what has been. Don't you think so?"
"But you go and I stay," she said. "If I could only go too, go with
you."
Richard Calmady raised himself in the bed, looked hard at her, spoke as
a man in the fulness of his strength.
"Do you mean that? Would you come with me if you could--come through
the deep sea of mist and dreams, to whatever lies beyond?"
For all answer Katherine bent lower, her face suddenly radiant,
notwithstanding its pallor. Sorrow was still so new a companion to her
that she would dare the most desperate adventures to rid herself of its
hateful presence. Her reason and moral sense were in abeyance, only her
poor heart spoke. She laid hold of her husband's hands and clasped them
about her throat.
"Let us go together, take me," she prayed. "I love you, I will not be
left. Closer, Dick, closer."
"Thank God! I am strong enough even yet," he said fiercely, while his
jaw set, and his grasp tightened somewhat dangerously upon her throat.
Katherine looked into his eyes and laughed. The blood was tingling
through her veins.
"Ah! dear love," she panted, "if you knew how delicious it is to be a
little hurt!"
But her ecstasy was short-lived, as ecstasy usually is. Richard Calmady
unclasped his hands and dropped back against the pillows, putting her
away from him with a certain authority.
"My beloved one, do not tempt me," he said, "we must remember the
child. The devil of jealousy is very great, even when one lies, as I do
now, more than half dead." He turned his head away, and his voice
shook. "Ten years hence, twenty years hence, you will be as
beautiful--more so, very likely--than ever. Other men will see you, and
I----"
"You will be just what you were and always have been to me," Katherine
interrupted. "I love you, and shall love."
She answered bravely, taking his hand again and caressing it, while he
looked round and smiled at her. But she grew curiously cold. She
shivered, and had a difficulty in controling her speech. Her new
companion, Sorrow, refused to be tricked and to leave her, and the
breath of sorrow is as sharp as a wind blowing over ice.
"You have made me perfectly content," Richard Calmady said presently.
"There is nothing I would have changed. No hour of day--or night--ah,
my God! my God!--which I could ask to have otherwise." He paused,
fighting a sob which rose in his throat. "Still you are quite
young----"
"So much the worse for me," Katherine said.
"Oh! I don't know about that," he put in quietly. "Anyhow, remember
that you are free, absolutely and unconditionally free. I hold a man a
cur who, in dying, tries to bind the woman he loves."
Katherine shivered. Despair had possession of her.
"Why reason about it?" she asked. "Don't you see that to be bound is
the only comfort I shall have left?"
"My poor darling," Richard Calmady almost groaned.
His own helplessness to help her cut him to the quick. Wealth, and an
inherent graciousness of disposition, had always made it so simple to
be of service and of comfort to those about him. It was so natural to
rule, to decide, to alleviate, to give little trouble to others and
take a good deal of trouble on their behalf, that his present and final
incapacity in any measure to shield even Katherine, the woman he
worshipped, amazed him. Not pain, not bodily disfigurement,--though he
recoiled, as every sane being must, from these,--not death itself,
tried his spirit so bitterly as his own uselessness. All the pleasant,
kindly activities of common intercourse were over. He was removed alike
from good deeds and from bad. He had ceased to have part or lot in the
affairs of living men. The desolation of impotence was upon him.
For a little time he lay very still, looking up at the firelight
playing upon the mouldings of the ceiling, trying to reconcile himself
to this. His mind was clear, yet, except when actually speaking, he
found it difficult to keep his attention fixed. Images, sensations
began to chase each other across his mental field of vision; and his
thought, though definite as to detail, grew increasingly broken and
incoherent, small matters in unseemly fashion jostling great. He
wondered concerning those first steps of the disembodied spirit, when
it has crossed the threshold of death; and then, incontinently, he
passed to certain time-honoured jokes and impertinent follies at Eton,
over which he, and Roger and Major St. Quentin had laughed a hundred
times. They amused him greatly even yet. But he could not linger with
them. He was troubled about the attics of the new lodge, now in
building at the entrance to the east woods. The windows were too small,
and he disliked that blind north gable. There were letters to be
answered too. Lord Fallowfeild wanted to know about something--he could
not remember what--Fallowfeild's inquiries had a habit of being vague.
And through all these things--serious or trivial--a terrible yearning
over Katherine and her baby--the new, little, human life which was his
own life, and which yet he would never know or see. And through all
these things also, the perpetual, heavy ache of those severed nerves
and muscles, flitting pains in the limb of which, though it was gone,
he had not ceased to be aware.--He dozed off, and mortal weakness
closed down on him, floating him out and out into vague spaces. And
then suddenly, once more, he felt a horse under him and gripped it with
his knees. He was riding, riding, whole and vigorous, with the summer
wind in his face, across vast, flowering pastures towards a great light
on the far horizon, which streamed forth, as he knew, from the throne
of Almighty God.
Choking, with the harsh rattle in his throat, he awoke to the actual
and immediate--to the familiar square room and its crimson furnishings,
to Katherine's sweet, pale face and the touch of her caressing fingers,
to some one standing beside her, whom he did not immediately recognise.
It was Roger--Roger worn with watching, grown curiously older. But a
certain exhilaration, born of that strange ride, remained by Richard
Calmady. Both ache of body and distress of mind had abated. He felt a
lightness of spirit; an eagerness, as of one setting forth on a
promised journey, who--not unlovingly, yet with something of
haste--makes his dispositions before he starts.
"Look here, darling," he said, "you'll let the stables go on just as
usual. Chifney will take over the whole management of them. You can
trust him implicitly. And--that is you, Roger, isn't it?--you'll keep
an eye on things, won't you, so that Kitty shall have no bother? I
should like to know nothing was changed at the stables. They've been a
great hobby of mine, and if--if the baby is a boy, he may take after me
and care for them. Make him ride straight, Roger. And teach him to care
for sport for its own sake, dear old man, as a gentleman should, not
for the money that may come out of it."
He waited, struggling for breath, then his hand closed on Katherine's.
"I must go," he said. "You'll call the boy after me, Kitty, won't you?
I want there to be another Richard Calmady. My life has been very
happy, so, please God, the name will bring luck."
A spasm took him, and he tried convulsively to push off the sheet.
Katherine was down on her knees, her right arm under his head, while
with her left hand she stripped the bedclothes away from his chest and
bared his throat.
"Denny, Denny!" she cried, "come--tell me--is this death?"
And Ormiston, impelled by an impulse he could hardly have explained,
crossed the room, dragged back the heavy curtains, and flung one of the
casements wide open.
The soft light of autumn dawn flowed in through the great mullioned
window, quenching the redness of fire and candles, spreading, dim and
ghostly, over the white dress and bowed head of the woman, over the
narrow bed and the form of the maimed and dying man. The freshness of
the morning air, laden with the soothing murmur of the fir forest
swaying in the breath of a mild westerly breeze, laden too with the
moist fragrance of the moorland, of dewy grass, of withered bracken and
fallen leaves, flowed in also, cleansing the tainted atmosphere of the
room. While, from the springy turf of the green ride--which runs
eastward, parallel to the lime avenue--came the thud and suck of hoofs
and the voices of the stable boys, as they rode the long string of
dancing, snorting race-horses out to the training ground for their
morning exercise.
Richard Calmady opened his eyes wide.
"Ah, it's daylight!" he cried, in accents of joyfulness. "I am glad.
Kiss me, my beloved, kiss me.--You dear--yes, once more. I have had
such a queer night. I dreamt I had been fearfully knocked about
somehow, and was crippled, and in pain. It is good to wake, and find
you, and know I'm all right after all. God keep you, my dearest, you
and the boy. I am longing to see him--but not just now--let Denny bring
him later. And tell them to send Chifney word I shall not be out to see
the gallops this morning. I really believe those dreams half frightened
me. I feel so absurdly used up. And then--Kitty, where are you?--put
your arms round me and I'll go to sleep again."
He smiled at her quite naturally and stroked her cheek.
"My sweet, your face is all wet and cold!" he said. "Make Richard a
good boy. After all that is what matters most--Julius will help you----
Ah! look at the sunrise--why--why----"
An extraordinary change passed over him. To Katherine it seemed like
the upward leap of a livid flame. Then his head fell back and his jaw
dropped.
CHAPTER VII
MRS. WILLIAM ORMISTON SACRIFICES A WINE-GLASS TO FATE
Mrs. St. Quentin's health became increasingly fragile that autumn; and
the weight of the sorrow which had fallen upon Brockhurst bowed her to
the earth. Her desire was to go to Lady Calmady, wrap her about with
tenderness and strengthen her in patience. But, though the spirit was
willing, the flesh was weak. Daily she assured Mademoiselle de
Mirancourt that she was better, that she would be able to start for
England in the course of the next week. Yet day after day, week after
week passed by, and still the two ladies lingered in the pretty
apartment of the rue de Rennes. Day by day, and week by week, moreover,
the elder lady grew more feeble, left her bed later in the morning,
sought it earlier at night, finally resigned the attempt to leave it at
all. The keepers of Lucia St. Quentin's house of life trembled,
desire--even of gentle ministries--began to fail, the sound of the
grinding was low. Yet neither she, nor her lifelong friend, nor her
doctor, nor the few intimate acquaintances who were still privileged to
visit her, admitted that she would never go forth on that journey to
England at all; but only on that quite other journey,--upon which
Richard Calmady had already set forth in the fulness of his
manhood,--and upon which, the manifold uncertainties of human existence
notwithstanding, we are, each one of us, so perfectly certain to set
forth at last. Silently they agreed with her to treat her increasing
weakness with delicate stoicism, to speak of it--if at all--merely as a
passing indisposition, so allowing no dreary, lamentable element to
obtrude itself. Sad Mrs. St. Quentin might be, bitterly sad at heart,
perplexed by the rather incomprehensible dealings of God with man. Yet,
to the end, she would remain charming, gently gay even, both out of
consideration for others and a fine self-respect, since she held it the
mark of a cowardly and ignoble nature to let anything squalid appear in
her attitude towards grief, old age, or death.
But Brockhurst she would never see again. The way was too great for
her. And so it came about that when Lady Calmady's child was born,
towards the end of the following March, no more staid and responsible
woman creature of her family was at hand to support her than that
lively, young lady, her brother, William Ormiston's wife.
Meanwhile, the parish of Sandyfield rejoiced. Thomas Caryll, the
rector, had caused the church bells to be rung immediately on receipt
of the good news; while he selected, as text for his Sunday morning
sermon, those words, usually reserved to another and somewhat greater
advent--"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." Good Mr.
Caryll was innocent of the remotest intention of profanity. But his
outlook was circumscribed, his desire to please abnormally large, and
his sense of relative values slight. While that Lady Calmady should
give birth to a son and heir was, after all, a matter of no small
moment--locally considered at all events.
Brockhurst House rejoiced also, yet it did so not without a measure of
trembling. For there had been twenty-four hours of acute anxiety
regarding Katherine Calmady. And even now, on the evening of the second
day, although Dr. Knott declared himself satisfied both as to her
condition and that of the baby, an air of mystery surrounded the large
state-bedroom,--where she lay, white and languid, slowly feeling her
way back to the ordinary conditions of existence,--and the nursery next
door. Mrs. Denny, who had taken possession by right divine of long and
devoted service, not only did not encourage, but positively repulsed
visitors. Her ladyship must not be disturbed. She, the nurse, the baby,
in turn, were sleeping. According to Denny the god of sleep reigned
supreme in those stately, white-paneled chambers, looking away, across
the valley and the long lines of the elm avenue, to the faint blue of
the chalk downs rising against the southern sky.
John Knott had driven over, for the second time that day, in the windy
March sunset. He fell in very readily with Mrs. Ormiston's suggestion
that he should remain to dinner. That young lady's spirits were
sensibly on the rise. It is true that she had wept copiously at
intervals while her sister-in-law's life appeared to be in
danger--keeping at the same time as far from the sick room as the ample
limits of Brockhurst House allowed, and wishing herself a thousand and
one times safe back in Paris, where her devoted and obedient husband
occupied a subordinate post at the English Embassy. But Mrs. Ormiston's
tears were as easily staunched as set flowing. And now, in her capacity
of hostess, with three gentlemen--or rather "two and a half, for you
can't," as she remarked, "count a brother-in-law for a whole one"--as
audience, she felt remarkably cheerful. She had been over to Newlands
during the afternoon, and insisted on Mary Cathcart returning with
her--Mrs. Ormiston was a Desmolyns. The Cathcarts are distantly
connected with that family. And, when the girl had protested that this
was hardly a suitable moment for a visit to Brockhurst, Charlotte
Ormiston had replied, with that hint of a brogue which gave her ready
speech its almost rollicking character:--
"But, my dear child, propriety demands it. I depart myself to-morrow.
And now that we're recovering our tone I daren't be left with such a
houseful of men on my hands any longer. While we were tearing our hair
over poor Kitty's possible demise, and agonising as to the uncertain
sex of the baby, it did not matter. But now even that dear creature,
Saint Julius, is beginning to pick up, and looks less as if his diet
was mouldy peas and his favourite plaything a cat-o'-nine-tails.
Scourge?--Yes, of course, but it's all the same in the application of
the instrument, you know. And then in your secret soul, Mary dear," she
added, not unkindly, "there's no denying it's far from obnoxious to you
to spend a trifle of time in the society of Roger."
Mrs. Ormiston carried her point. It may be stated, in passing, that
this sprightly, young matron was brilliantly pretty, though her facial
angle might be deemed too acute, leaving somewhat to be desired in the
matter of forehead and of chin. She was plump, graceful, and neat
waisted. Her skin was exquisitely white and fine, and a charming colour
flushed her cheeks under excitement. Her hair was always untidy, her
hairpins displaying abnormal activity in respect of escape and
independent action. Her eyes were round and very prominent, suggestive
of highly-polished, brown agates. She was not the least shy or averse
to attracting attention. She laughed much, and practised, as prelude to
her laughter, an impudently, coquettish, little stare. And finally, as
he sat on her right at dinner, her rattling talk and lightness of
calibre generally struck John Knott as rather cynically inadequate to
the demands made by her present position. Not that he underrated her
good nature or was insensible to her personal attractions. But the
doctor was in search of an able coadjutor just then, blessed with a
steady brain and a tongue skilled in tender diplomacies. For there were
trying things to be said and done, and he needed a woman of a fine
spirit to do and say them aright.
"Head like an eft," he said to himself, as course followed course, and,
while bandying compliments with her, he watched and listened. "As soon
set a harlequin to lead a forlorn hope. Well it's to be trusted her
husband's some use for her--that's more than I have anyhow, so the
sooner we see her off the premises the better. Suppose I shall have to
fall back on Ormiston. Bit of a rake, I expect, though in looks he is
so curiously like that beautiful, innocent, young thing upstairs.
Wonder how he'll take it? No mistake, it's a facer!"
Dr. Knott settled himself back squarely in his chair and pushed his
cheese-plate away from him, while his shaggy eyebrows drew together as
he fixed his eyes on the young man at the head of the table.
"A facer!" he repeated to himself. "Yes, the ancients knew what they
were about in these awkward matters. The modern conscience is
disastrously anaemic."
Although it looks on to the terrace, the dining-room at Brockhurst is
among the least cheerful of the living rooms. The tapestry with which
it is hung--representing French hunting scenes, each panel set in a
broad border pattern of birds, fruits and leaves, interspersed with
classic urns and medallions--is worked in neutral tints of brown, blue,
and gray. The chimneypiece, reaching the whole height of the wall, is
of liver-coloured marble. At the period in question, it was still the
fashion to dine at the modestly early hour of six; and, the spring
evenings being long, the curtains had been left undrawn, so that the
dying daylight without and the lamplight within contended rather
mournfully for mastery, while a wild, southeasterly wind, breaking in
gusts against the house front, sobbed at the casements and made a loose
pane, here and there, click and rattle.
And it was in the midst of a notably heavy gust, when dessert had been
served and the servants had left the room, that Captain Ormiston leaned
across the table and addressed his sister-in-law.
The young soldier had been somewhat gloomy and silent during dinner. He
was vaguely anxious about Lady Calmady. The news of Mrs. St. Quentin
was critical, and he cherished a very true affection for his
great-aunt. Had she not been his confidant ever since his first term at
Eton? Had she not, moreover, helped him on several occasions when
creditors displayed an incomprehensibly foolish pertinacity regarding
payment for goods supplied? He was burdened, too, by a prospective
sense of his own uncommon righteousness. For, during the past five
months, while he had been on leave at Brockhurst, assisting Katherine
to master the details of the very various business of the estate,
Ormiston had revised his position and decided on heroic measures of
reform. He would rid himself of debt, forswear expensive London habits,
and those many pleasant iniquities which every great city offers
liberally to such handsome, fine gentlemen as himself. He actually
proposed, just so soon as Katherine could conveniently spare him, to
decline from the splendid inactivity of the Guards, upon the hard work
of some line regiment under orders for foreign service. Ormiston was
quite affected by contemplation of his own good resolutions. He
appeared to himself in a really pathetic light. He would like to have
told Mary Cathcart all about it and have claimed her sympathy and
admiration. But then, she was just precisely the person he could not
tell, until the said resolutions had, in a degree at all events, passed
into accomplished fact! For--as not infrequently happens--it was not so
much a case of being off with the old love before being on with the
new; as being off with the intermediate loves, before being on with the
old one again. To announce his estimable future, was, by implication at
all events, to confess a not wholly estimable past. And so Roger
Ormiston, sitting that night at dinner beside the object of his best
and most honest affections, proved but poor company; and roused
himself, not without effort, to say to his sister-in-law:--
"It's about time to perform the ceremony of the evening, isn't it,
Ella, and drink that small boy's health?"
"By all manner of means. I'm all for the observance of ancient forms
and ceremonies. You can never be sure how much mayn't lie at the bottom
of them, and it's best to be on the safe side of the unseen powers.
You'll agree to that now, Mr. March, won't you?"--She took a grape skin
from between her neat teeth and flicked it out on to her plate.--"So,
for myself," she went on, "I curtsy nine times to the new moon, though
the repeated genuflexion is perniciously likely to give me the
backache; touch my hat in passing to the magpies; wish when I behold a
piebald; and bless my neighbour devoutly if he sneezes."
At the commencement of this harangue she met her brother-in-law's
rather depreciative scrutiny with her bold little stare--in his present
mood Ormiston found her vivacity tedious, though he was usually willing
enough to laugh at her extravagancies--then she whipped Julius in with
a side glance, and concluded with her round eyes set on Dr. Knott's
rough-hewn and weather-beaten countenance.
"I'm afraid you are disgracefully superstitious, Mrs. Ormiston," the
latter remarked.
She was a feather-headed chatterbox, he reflected; but her chatter
served to occupy the time. And the doctor was by no means anxious the
time should pass too rapidly. He felt slightly self-contemptuous; but
in good truth he would be glad to put away some few glasses of sound
port before administering the aforementioned facer to Captain Ormiston.
"Superstitious?" she returned. "Well I trust my superstition is not
chronic, but nicely intermittent like all the rest of my many virtues.
Charity begins at home, you know, and I would not like to keep any of
the poor, dear creatures on guard too long for fear of tiring them out.
But I give every one of them a turn, Dr. Knott, I assure you."
"And that's more than most of us do," he said, smiling rather savagely.
"The majority of my acquaintance have a handsome power of
self-restraint in the practice of virtue."
"And I'm the happy exception! Well, now that's an altogether pretty
speech," Mrs. Ormiston cried, laughing. "But to return to the matter in
hand, to this hero of a baby---- I dote on babies, Dr. Knott. I've one
of my own of six months old, and she's a charming child I assure you."
"I don't doubt that for an instant, having the honour of knowing her
mother. Couldn't be otherwise than charming if she tried," the doctor
said, reaching out his hand again to the decanter.
Mrs. Ormiston treated him to her little stare, and then looked round
the table, putting up one plump, bare arm as she pushed in a couple of
hairpins.
"Ah! but she's a real jewel of a child," she said audaciously. "She's
the comfort of my social existence. For she doesn't resemble me in the
least, and therefore my reputation's everlastingly safe, thanks to her.
Why, before the calumniating thought has had time to arise in your
mind, one look in that child's face will dissipate it, she's so
entirely the image of her father."
There was a momentary silence, but for the sobbing of the gale and
rattling of the casements. Then Captain Ormiston broke into a rather
loud laugh. Even if they sail near the wind, you must stand by the
women of your family.
"Come, that will do, I think, Ella," he said. "You won't beat that
triumphant bull in a hurry."
"But, my dear boy, so she is. Even at her present tender age, she's the
living picture of your brother William."
"Oh! poor William," Roger said hastily.
He turned to Mary Cathcart. The girl had blushed up to the roots of her
crisp, black hair. She did not clearly understand the other woman's
speech, nor did she wish to do so. She was admirably pure-minded. But
like all truly pure-minded persons, she carried a touchstone that made
her recoil, directly and instinctively, from that which was of doubtful
quality. The twinkle in Dr. Knott's gray eyes, as he sipped his port,
still more the tone of Roger Ormiston's laugh, she did understand
somehow. And this last jarred upon her cruelly. It opened the
flood-gates of doubt which Mary--like so many another woman in respect
of the man she loves--had striven very valiantly to keep shut. All
manner of hints as to his indiscretions, all manner of half-told tales
as to his debts, his extravagance, which rumour had conveyed to her
unwilling ears, seemed suddenly to gather weight and probability,
viewed in the moral light--so to speak--of that laugh. Great loves
mature and deepen under the action of sorrow and the necessity to
forgive; yet it is a shrewdly bitter moment, when the heart of either
man or woman first admits that the god of its idolatry has, after all,
feet of but very common clay. Her head erect, her eyes moist, Mary
turned to Julius March and asked him of the welfare of a certain
labourer's family that had lately migrated from Newlands to Sandyfield.
But Ormiston's voice broke in upon the inquiries with a determination
to claim her attention.
"Miss Cathcart," he said, "forgive my interrupting you. I can tell you
more about the Spratleys than March can. They're all right. Iles has
taken the man on as carter at the home-farm, and given the eldest boy a
job with the woodmen. I told him to do what he could for them as you
said you were interested in them. And now, please, I want you to drink
my small nephew's health."
The girl pushed forward her wine-glass without speaking; and as he
filled it Ormiston added in a lower tone:--
"He, at all events, unlike some of his relations, is guiltless of
foolish words or foolish actions. I don't pretend to share Ella's
superstitions, but some people's good wishes are very well worth
having."
Unwillingly Mary Cathcart raised her eyes. Her head was still carried a
little high and her cheeks were still glowing. Her god might not be of
pure gold throughout--such gods rarely are unfortunately--yet she was
aware she still found him a very worshipful kind of deity.
"Very well worth having," he repeated. "And so I should like that poor
little chap to have your good wishes, Miss Cathcart. Wish him all
manner of nice things, for his mother's sake as well as his own.
There's been a pretty bad run of luck here lately, and it's time it
changed. Wish him better fortune than his forefathers. I'm not
superstitious, as I say, but Richard Calmady's death scared one a
little. Five minutes beforehand it seemed so utterly improbable. And
then one began to wonder if there could be any truth in the old legend.
And that was ugly, you know."
Dr. Knott glanced at the speaker sharply.--"Oh! that occurred to you,
did it?" he said.
"Bless me! why, it occurred to everybody," Ormiston answered
impatiently. "Some idiot raked the story up, and it was canvassed from
one end of the county to the other last autumn till it made me fairly
sick."
"Poor boy!" cried Mrs. Ormiston, "and what is this wonderful story that
so nauseates him, Dr. Knott?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you," the doctor answered slowly. A nervous
movement on the part of Julius March had attracted his attention. "I
have never managed to get hold of the story as a whole, but I should
like to do so uncommonly."
Julius pushed back his chair, and groped hurriedly for the dinner
napkin which had slipped to the ground from his knees. The subject of
the conversation agitated him. The untidy, little chap-books, tied
together with the tag of rusty ribbon, had lain undisturbed in the
drawer of his library table ever since the--to him--very memorable
evening, when, kneeling before the image of the stricken Mother and the
dead Christ, he had found the man's heart under the priest's cassock
and awakened to newness of life. Much had happened since then; and
Julius had ranged himself, accepting, open-eyed, the sorrows and
alleviations of the fate he had created for himself. But to-night he
was tired. The mental and emotional strain of the last few days had
been considerable. Moreover, John Knott's presence always affected him.
The two men stood, indeed, at opposing poles of thought--the one
spiritual and ideal, the other material and realistic. And, though he
struggled against the influence, the doctor's rather brutal common
sense and large knowledge of physical causes, gained a painful
ascendency over his mind at close quarters. Knott, it must be owned,
was slightly merciless to his clerical acquaintances. He loved to bait
them, to impale them on the horns of some moral or theological dilemma.
And it was partly with this purpose of harrying and worrying, that he
continued now:--
"Yes, Mrs. Ormiston, I should like to hear the story just as much as
you would. And--it strikes me, if he pleased, Mr. March could tell it
to us. Suppose you ask him to!"
Promptly the young lady fell upon Julius, regardless of Ormiston's
hardly concealed displeasure.
"Oh! you bad man, what are you doing," she cried, "trying to conceal
thrilling family legends from the nearest relatives? Tell us all about
it, if you know, as Dr. Knott declares you do. I dote on terrifying
stories--don't you, Mary?--that send the cold shivers all down my back.
And if they deal with the history of my nearest and dearest, why,
there's an added charm to them. Now, Mr. March, we're all attention.
Stand and deliver, and make it all just as bad as you can."
"I am afraid I am not an effective _improvisatore_" he replied; "and
the subject, if you will pardon my saying so, seems to me too intimate
for mirth. A curse is supposed to rest on this place. The owners of
Brockhurst die young and by violent means."
"We know that already, and look to you to tell us something more, Mr.
March," Dr. Knott said dryly.
Julius was slightly nettled at the elder man's tone and manner. He
answered with an accentuation of his usual refinement of enunciation
and suavity of manner.
"There is a term to the curse, a saviour who, according to the old
prediction, has the power, should he also have the will, to remove it
altogether."
"Oh, really, is that so! And when does this saviour put in an
appearance?" the doctor asked again.
"That is not revealed."
Julius would very gladly have said nothing further. But Dr. Knott's
expression was curiously intent and compelling, as he sat fingering the
stem of his wine-glass. All the ideality of Julius's nature rose in
protest against the half-sneering rationalism he seemed to read in that
expression. Mrs. Ormiston, who had an hereditary racial appreciation of
anything approaching a fight, turned her round eyes first on one
speaker and then on the other provokingly, inciting them to more
declared hostilities, while she bit her lips in her effort to avoid
spoiling sport by untimely laughter or speech.
"But unhappily," Julius proceeded, yielding under protest to these
opposing forces, "the saviour comes in so questionable a shape, that I
fear, whenever the appointed time may be, his appearance will only be
welcomed by the discerning few."
"That's a pity," Dr. Knott said. He paused a minute, passed his hand
across his mouth. "Still, if we are to believe the Bible, and other
so-called, sacred histories, it's been the way of saviours from the
beginning to try the faith of ordinary mortals by presenting themselves
under rather queer disguises." He paused again, drawing in his wide
lips, moistening them with his tongue. "But since you evidently know
all about it, Mr. March, may I make bold to inquire in what special
form of fancy dress the saviour in question is reported as likely to
present himself?"
"He comes as a child of the house," Julius answered, with dignity. "A
child who in person--if I understand the wording of the prophecy
aright--is half angel, half monster."
John Knott opened his mouth as though to give passage to some very
forcible exclamation. Thought better of it and brought his jaws
together with a kind of grind. His heavy figure seemed to hunch itself
up as in the recoil from a blow.
"Curious," he said quietly. Yet Julius, looking at him, could have
fancied that his weather-beaten face went a trifle pale.
But Mrs. Ormiston, in the interests of a possible fight, had contained
herself just as long as was possible. Now she clapped her hands, and
broke into a little scream of laughter.
"That's just the most magnificently romantic thing I ever heard," she
cried. "Come now, this requires further investigation. What's our baby
like, Dr. Knott? I've seen nothing but an indistinguishable mass of
shawls and flannels. Have we, by chance, got an angelic monstrosity
up-stairs without being aware of it?"
"Charlotte!" Roger Ormiston called out sternly. The young man looked
positively dangerous. "This conversation has gone quite far enough. I
agree with March, it may all be stuff and nonsense, not worth a second
thought, still it isn't a thing to joke about."
"Very well, dear boy, be soothed then," she returned, making a little
grimace and putting her head on one side coquettishly. "I'll be as
solemn as nine owls. But you must excuse a momentary excitement. It's
all news to me, you know. I'd no notion Katherine had married into such
a remarkable family. I'm bound to learn a little more. Do you believe
it's possible at all, Dr. Knott, now tell me?"
"The fulfilment of prophecy is rather a wide and burning question to
embark on," he said. "With Captain Ormiston's leave, I think we'd
better go back to the point we started from and drink the little
gentleman's health. I have my patient to see again, and it is getting
rather late."
The lady addressed, laughed, held up her glass, and stared round the
table with a fine air of bravado, looking remarkably pretty.
"Fire away, Roger, dear fellow," she said. "We're loaded, and ready."
Thus admonished, Ormiston raised his glass too. But his temper was not
of the sweetest, just then; he spoke forcedly.
"Here's to the boy," he said; "good luck, and good health, and," he
added hastily, "please God he'll be a comfort to his mother."
"Amen," Julius said softly.
Dr. Knott contemplated the contents of his glass, for a moment, whether
critically or absently it would have been difficult to decide. But all
the harshness had gone out of his face, and his loose lips worked into
a smile pathetic in quality.
"To the baby.--And I venture to add a clause to your invocation of that
heartless jade, Dame Fortune. May he never lack good courage and good
friends. He will need both."
Julius March set down his wine untasted. He had received a very
disagreeable impression.
"Come, come, it appears to me, we are paying these honours in a most
lugubrious spirit," Mrs. Ormiston broke in. "I wish the baby a long
life and a merry one, in defiance of all prophecies and traditions
belonging to his paternal ancestry. Go on, Mr. March, you're shamefully
neglecting your duty. No heel taps."
She threw back her head showing the whole of her white throat, drained
her glass and then flung it over her shoulder. It fell on the black,
polished boards, beyond the edge of the carpet, shivered into a hundred
pieces, that lay glittering, like scattered diamonds in the lamplight.
For the day had died altogether. Fleets of dark, straggling cloud
chased each other across spaces of pallid sky, against the earthward
edge of which dusky tree-tops strained and writhed in the force of the
tearing gale.
Ella Ormiston rose laughing from her place at table.
"That's the correct form," she said, "it ensures the fulfilment of the
wish. You ought all to have cast away your glasses regardless of
expense. Come, Mary, we will remove ourselves. Mind and bid me good-bye
before you go, Dr. Knott, and report on Lady Calmady. It's probably the
last time you'll have the felicity of seeing me. I'm off at cockcrow
to-morrow morning."
CHAPTER VIII
ENTER A CHILD OF PROMISE
After closing the door behind the two ladies, Ormiston paused by the
near window and gazed out into the night. The dinner had been, in his
opinion, far from a success. He feared his relation to Mary Cathcart
had retrograded rather than progressed. He wished his sister-in-law
would be more correct in speech and behaviour. Then he held the
conversation had been in bad taste. The doctor should have abstained
from pressing Julius with questions. He assured himself, again, that
the story was not worth a moment's serious consideration; yet he
resented its discussion. Such discussion seemed to him to tread hard on
the heels of impertinence to his sister, to her husband's memory, and
to this boy, born to so excellent a position and so great wealth. And
the worst of it was, that like a fool, he had started the subject
himself!
"The wind's rising," he remarked at last. "You'll have a rough drive
home, Knott."
"It won't be the first one. And my beauty's of the kind which takes a
lot of spoiling."
The answer did not please the young man. He sauntered across the room
and dropped into his chair, with a slightly insolent demeanour.
"All the same, don't let me detain you," he said, "if you prefer seeing
Lady Calmady at once and getting off."
"You don't detain me," Dr. Knott answered. "I'm afraid that it's just
the other way about, and that I must detain you, Captain Ormiston, and
that on rather unpleasant business."
Julius March had risen to his feet. "You--you have no fresh cause for
anxiety about Lady Calmady?" he said hurriedly.
The doctor glanced up at the tall, spare, black figure and dark,
sensitive face with a half-sneering, half-pitying smile.
"Oh no, no!" he replied; "Lady Calmady's going on splendidly. And it is
to guard, just as far as we can, against cause for anxiety later, that
I want to speak to Captain Ormiston now. We've got to be prepared for
certain contingencies. Don't you go, Mr. March. You may as well hear
what I've to say. It will interest you particularly, I fancy, after one
or two things you have told us to-night!"
"Sit down, Julius, please."--Ormiston would have liked to maintain that
same insolence of demeanour, but it gave before an apprehension of
serious issues. He looked hard at the doctor, cudgeling his brains as
to what the latter's enigmatic speech might mean--divined, put the idea
away as inadmissible, returned to it, then said angrily:--"There's
nothing wrong with the child, of course?"
Dr. Knott turned his chair sideways to the table and shaded his face
with his thick, square hand.
"Well, that depends on what you call wrong," he slowly replied.
"It's not ill?" Ormiston said.
"The baby's as well as you or I--better, in fact, than I am, for I am
confoundedly touched up with gout. Bear that in mind, Captain
Ormiston--that the child is well, I mean, not that I am gouty. I want
you to definitely remember that, you and Mr. March."
"Well, then, what on earth is the matter?" Ormiston asked sharply. "You
don't mean to imply it is injured in any way, deformed?"
Dr. Knott let his hand drop on the table. He nodded his head. Ormiston
perceived, and it moved him strangely, that the doctor's eyes were wet.
"Not deformed," he answered. "Technically you can hardly call it that,
but maimed."
"Badly?"
"Well, that's a matter of opinion. You or I should think it bad enough,
I fancy, if we found ourselves in the same boat." He settled himself
back in his chair.--"You had better understand it quite clearly," he
continued, "at least as clearly as I can put it to you. There comes a
point where I cannot explain the facts but only state them. You have
heard of spontaneous amputation?"
Across Ormiston's mind came the remembrance of a litter of puppies he
had seen in the sanctum of the veterinary surgeon of his regiment. A
lump rose in his throat.
"Yes, go on," he said.
"It is a thing that does not happen once in most men's experience. I
have only seen one case before in all my practice and that was nothing
very serious. This is an extraordinary example. I need not remind you
of Sir Richard Calmady's accident and the subsequent operation?"
"Of course not--go on," Ormiston repeated.
"In both cases the leg is gone from here," the doctor continued, laying
the edge of his palm across the thigh immediately above the knee. "The
foot is there--that is the amazing part of it--and, as far as I can
see, is well formed and of the normal size; but so embedded in the
stump that I cannot discover whether the ankle-joint and bones of the
lower leg exist in a contracted form or not."
Ormiston poured himself out a glass of port. His hand shook so that the
lip of the decanter chattered against the lip of the glass. He gulped
down the wine and, getting up, walked the length of the room and back
again.
"God in heaven," he murmured, "how horrible! Poor Kitty, how utterly
horrible!--Poor Kitty."
For the baby, in his own fine completeness, he had as yet no feeling
but one of repulsion.
"Can nothing be done, Knott?" he asked at last.
"Obviously nothing."
"And it will live?"
"Oh! bless you, yes! It'll live fast enough if I know a healthy infant
when I see one. And I ought to know 'em by now. I've brought them into
the world by dozens for my sins."
"Will it be able to walk?"
"Umph--well--shuffle," the doctor answered, smiling savagely to keep
back the tears.
The young man leaned his elbows on the table, and rested his head on
his hands. All this shocked him inexpressibly--shocked him almost to
the point of physical illness. Strong as he was he could have fainted,
just then, had he yielded by ever so little. And this was the boy whom
they had so longed for then! The child on whom they had set such fond
hopes, who was to be the pride of his young mother, and restore the so
rudely shaken balance of her life! This was the boy who should go to
Eton, and into some crack regiment, who should ride straight, who was
heir to great possessions!
"The saviour has come, you see, Mr. March, in as thorough-paced a
disguise as ever saviour did yet," John Knott said cynically.
"He had better never have come at all!" Ormiston put in fiercely, from
behind his hands.
"Yes--very likely--I believe I agree," the doctor answered. "Only it
remains that he has come, is feeding, growing, stretching, and
bellowing too, like a young bull-calf, when anything doesn't suit him.
He is here, very much here, I tell you. And so we have just got to
consider how to make the best of him, both for his own sake and for
Lady Calmady's. And you must understand he is a splendid, little
animal, clean skinned and strong, as you would expect, being the child
of two such fine young people. He is beautiful,--I am old-fashioned
enough, perhaps scientific enough, to put a good deal of faith in that
notion,--beautiful as a child only can be who is born of the passion of
true lovers."
He paused, looking somewhat mockingly at Julius.
"Yes, love is an incalculably great, natural force," he continued. "It
comes uncommonly near working miracles at times, unconscious and rather
deplorable miracles. In this case it has worked strangely against
itself--at once for irreparable injury and for perfection. For the
child is perfect, is superb, but for the one thing."
"Does my sister know?" Ormiston asked hoarsely.
"Not yet; and, as long as we can keep the truth from her, she had
better not know. We must get her a little stronger, if we can, first.
That woman, Mrs. Denny, is worth her weight in gold, and her weight's
not inconsiderable. She has her wits about her, and has contrived to
meet all difficulties so far."
Ormiston sat in the same dejected attitude.
"But my sister is bound to know before long."
"Of course. When she is a bit better, she'll want to have the baby to
play with, dress and undress it and see what the queer little being is
made of. It's a way young mothers have, and a very pretty way too. If
we keep the child from her she will grow suspicious, and take means to
find out for herself, and that won't do. It must not be. I won't be
responsible for the consequences. So as soon as she asks a definite
question, she must have a definite answer."
The young man looked up quickly.
"And who is to give the answer?" he said.
"Well, it rests chiefly with you to decide that. Clearly she ought not
to hear this thing from a servant. It is too serious. It needs to be
well told--the whole kept at a high level, if you understand me. Give
Lady Calmady a great part and she will play it nobly. Let this come
upon her from a mean, wet-nurse, hospital-ward sort of level, and it
may break her. What we have to do is to keep up her pluck. Remember we
are only at the beginning of this business yet. In all probability
there are many years ahead. Therefore this announcement must come to
Lady Calmady from an educated person, from an equal, from somebody who
can see all round it. Mrs. Ormiston tells me she leaves here to-morrow
morning?"
"Mrs. Ormiston is out of the question anyhow," Roger exclaimed rather
bitterly.
Here Julius March, who had so far been silent, spoke; and in speaking
showed what manner of spirit he was of. The doctor agitated him,
treated him, moreover, with scant courtesy. But Julius put this aside.
He could afford to forget himself in his desire for any possible
mitigation of the blow which must fall on Katherine Calmady. And,
listening to his talk, he had, in the last quarter of an hour, gained
conviction not only of this man's ability, but of his humanity, of his
possession of the peculiar gentleness which so often, mercifully, goes
along with unusual strength. As the coarse-looking hand could soothe,
touching delicately, so the hard intellect and rough tongue could, he
believed, modulate themselves to very consoling and inspiring
tenderness of thought and speech.
"We have you, Dr. Knott," he said. "No one, I think, could better break
this terrible sorrow to Lady Calmady, than yourself."
"Thank you--you are generous, Mr. March," the other answered cordially;
adding to himself,--"Got to revise my opinion of the black coat. Didn't
quite deserve that after the way you've badgered him, eh, John Knott?"
He shrugged his big shoulders a little shamefacedly.
"Of course, I'd do my best," he continued. "But you see ten to one I
shan't be here at the moment. As it is I have neglected lingering
sicknesses and sudden deaths, hysterical girls, croupy children, broken
legs, and all the other pretty little amusements of a rather large
practice, waiting for me. Suppose I happen to be twenty miles away on
the far side of Westchurch, or seeing after some of Lady Fallowfeild's
numerous progeny engaged in teething or measles? Lady Calmady might be
kept waiting, and we cannot afford to have her kept waiting in this
crisis."
"I wish to God my aunt, Mrs. St. Quentin, was here!" Ormiston
exclaimed. "But she is not, and won't be, alas."
"Well, then, who remains?"
As the doctor spoke he pressed his fingers against the edge of the
table, leaned forward, and looked keenly at Ormiston. He was extremely
ugly just then, ugly as the weather-worn gargoyle on some mediaeval
church tower; but his eyes were curiously compelling.
"Good heavens! you don't mean that I've got to tell her!" Ormiston
cried.
He rose hurriedly, thrust his hands into his pockets, and walked a
little unsteadily across to the window, crunching the shining pieces of
Mrs. Ormiston's sacrificial wine-glass under foot. Outside the night
was very wild. In the colourless sky stars reeled among the fleets of
racing cloud. The wind hissed up the grass slopes and shouted among the
great trees crowning the ridge of the hill. The prospect was not
calculated to encourage. Ormiston turned his back on it. But hardly
more encouraging was the sombre, gray-blue-walled room. The vision of
all that often returned to him afterwards in very different scenes--the
tall lamps, the two men, so strangely dissimilar in appearance and
temperament, sitting on either side the dinner-table with its fine
linen and silver, wines and fruits, waiting silently for him to speak.
"I can't tell her," he said, "I can't. Damn it all, I tell you, Knott,
I daren't. Think what it will be to her! Think of being told that about
your own child!" Ormiston lost control of himself. He spoke violently.
"I'm so awfully fond of her and proud of her," he went on. "She's
behaved so splendidly ever since Richard's death, laid hold of all the
business, never spared herself, been so able and so just. And now the
baby coming, and being a boy, seemed to be a sort of let up, a reward
to her for all her goodness. To tell her this horrible thing will be
like doing her some hideous wrong. If her heart has to be broken, in
common charity don't ask me to break it."
There was a pause. He came back to the table and stood behind Julius
March's chair.
"It's asking me to be hangman to my own sister," he said.
"Yes, I know it is a confoundedly nasty piece of work. And it's rough
on you, very rough. Only, you see, this hanging has to be put
through--there's the nuisance. And it is just a question whether your
hand won't be the lightest after all."
Again silence obtained, but for the rush and sob of the gale against
the great house.
"What do you say, Julius?" Ormiston demanded at last.
"I suppose our only thought is for Katherine--for Lady Calmady?" he
said. "And in that case I agree with Dr. Knott."
Roger took another turn to the window, stood there awhile struggling
with his natural desire to escape from so painful an embassy.
"Very well, if you are not here, Knott, I undertake to tell her," he
said at last. "Please God, she mayn't turn against me altogether for
bringing her such news. I'll be on hand for the next few days, and--you
must explain to Denny that I am to be sent for whenever I am wanted.
That's all,--I suppose we may as well go now, mayn't we?"
Julius knelt at the faldstool, without the altar rails of the chapel,
till the light showed faintly through the grisaille of the
stained-glass windows and outlined the spires and carven canopies of
the stalls. At first his prayers were definite, petitions for mercy and
grace to be outpoured on the fair, young mother and her, seemingly, so
cruelly afflicted child; on himself, too, that he might be permitted to
stay here, and serve her through the difficult future. If she had been
sacred before, Katherine was rendered doubly sacred to him now. He
bowed himself, in reverential awe, before the thought of her martyrdom.
How would her proud and naturally joyous spirit bear the bitter pains
of it? Would it make, eventually, for evil or for good? And then--the
ascetic within him asserting itself, notwithstanding the widening of
outlook produced by the awakening of his heart--he was overtaken by a
great horror of that which we call matter; by a revolt against the
body, and those torments and shames, mental, moral, and physical, which
the body brings along with it. Surely the dualists were right? It was
unregenerate, a thing, if made by God, yet wholly fallen away from Him
and given over to evil, this fleshly envelope wherein the human soul is
seated, and which, even in the womb, may be infected by disease or
rendered hideous by mutilation? Then, as the languor of his long vigil
overcame him, he passed into an ecstatic contemplation of the state of
that same soul after death, clothed with a garment of incorruptible and
enduring beauty, dwelling in clear, luminous spaces, worshipping among
the ranks of the redeemed, beholding its Lord God face to face.
John Knott, meanwhile, after driving home beneath the reeling stars,
through the roar of the forest and shriek of the wind across the open
moors, found an urgent summons awaiting him. He spent the remainder of
that night, not in dreams of paradise and of spirits redeemed from the
thraldom of the flesh, but in increasing the population of this
astonishing planet, by assisting to deliver a scrofulous, half-witted
shrieking servant-girl of twins--illegitimate--in the fusty atmosphere
of a cottage garret, right up under the rat-eaten thatch.
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH KATHERINE CALMADY LOOKS ON HER SON
More than a week elapsed before Ormiston was called upon to redeem his
promise. For Lady Calmady's convalescence was slow. An apathy held her,
which was tranquillising rather than tedious. She was glad to lie still
and rest. She found it very soothing to be shut away from the many
obligations of active life for a while; to watch the sunlight, on fair
days, shift from east by south to west, across the warm fragrant room;
to see the changing clouds in the delicate spring sky, and the
slow-dying crimson and violet of the sunset; to hear the sudden hurry
of falling rain, the subdued voices of the women in the adjoining
nursery, and, sometimes, the lusty protestations of her baby when--as
John Knott had put it--"things didn't suit him." She felt a little
jealous of the comely, young wet-nurse, a little desirous to be more
intimately acquainted with this small, new Richard Calmady, on whom all
her hopes for the future were set. But immediately she was very
submissive to the restrictions laid by Denny and the doctor upon her
intercourse with the child. She only stood on the threshold of
motherhood as yet. While the inevitable exhaustion, following on the
excitement of her spring and summer of joy, her autumn of bitter
sorrow, and her winter of hard work, asserted itself now that she had
time and opportunity for rest.
The hangings and coverlet of the great, ebony, half-tester bed were
lined with rose silk, and worked, with many coloured worsteds on a
white ground, in the elaborate Persian pattern so popular among
industrious ladies of leisure in the reign of good Queen Anne. It may
be questioned whether the parable, wrought out with such patience of
innumerable stitches, was closely comprehensible or sympathetic to the
said ladies; since a particularly wide interval, both of philosophy and
practice, would seem to divide the temper of the early eighteenth
century from that of the mystic East. Still the parable was there,
plain to whoso could read it; and not perhaps, rather pathetically,
without its modern application.
The Powers of Evil, in the form of a Leopard, pursue the soul of man,
symbolised by a Hart, through the Forest of This Life. In the midst of
that same forest stands an airy, domed pavilion, in which--if so be it
have strength and fleetness to reach it--the panting, hunted creature
may, for a time, find security and repose. Above this resting-place the
trees of the forest interlace their spreading branches, loaded with
amazing leaves and fruit; while companies of rainbow-hued birds,
standing very upright upon nothing in particular, entertain themselves
by holding singularly indigestible looking cherries and mulberries in
their yellow beaks.
And so, Katherine, resting in dreamy quiet within the shade of the
embroidered curtains, was even as the Hart pasturing in temporary
security before the quaint pavilion. The mark of her bereavement was
upon her sensibly still--would be so until the end. Often in the night,
when Denny had at last left her, she would wake suddenly and stretch
her arms out across the vacant space of the wide bed, calling softly to
the beloved one who could give no answer; and then recollecting, would
sob herself again to sleep. Often too, as Ormiston's step sounded
through the Chapel-Room when he came to pay her those short, frequent
visits, bringing the clean freshness of the outer air along with him,
Katherine would look up in a wondering gladness, cheating herself for
an instant with unreasoning delight--look up, only to know her sorrow,
and feel the knife turn in the wound. Nevertheless these days made, in
the main, for peace and healing. On more than one occasion she
petitioned that Julius March should come and read to her, choosing, as
the book he should read from, Spencer's _Faerie Queene_. He obeyed, in
manner calm, in spirit deeply moved. Katherine spoke little. But her
charm was great, as she lay, her eyes changeful in colour as a moorland
stream, listening to those intricate stanzas, in which the large hope,
the pride of honourable deeds, the virtue, the patriotism, the
masculine fearlessness, the ideality, the fantastic imagination, of the
English Renaissance so nobly finds voice. They comforted her mind, set
by instinct and training to welcome all splendid adventures of romance,
of nature, and of faith. They carried her back, in dear remembrance, to
the perplexing and enchanting discoveries which Richard Calmady's visit
to Ormiston Castle--the many-towered, gray house looking eastward
across the unquiet sea--had brought to her. And specially did they
recall to her that first evening--even yet she grew hot as she thought
of it--when the supposed gentleman-jockey, whom she had purposed
treating with gay and reducing indifference, proved not only fine
scholar and fine gentleman, but absolute and indisputable master of her
heart.
Dr. Knott came to see her, too, almost daily--rough, tender-hearted,
humorous, dependable, never losing sight, in his intercourse with her,
of the matter in hand, of the thing which immediately is.
Thus did these three men, each according to his nature and capacity,
strive to guard the poor Hart, pasturing before the quaint pavilion,
set--for its passing refreshment--in the midst of the Forest of This
Life, and to keep, just so long as was possible, the pursuing Leopard
at bay. Nevertheless the Leopard gained, despite of their faithful
guardianship--which was inevitable, the case standing as it did.
For one bright afternoon, about three o'clock, Mrs. Denny arrived in
the gun-room, where Ormiston sat smoking, while talking over with
Julius the turf-cutting claims of certain squatters on Spendle
Flats---arrived, not to summon the latter to further readings of the
great Elizabethan poet, but to say to the former:--
"Will you please come at once, sir? Her ladyship is sitting up. She is
a little difficult about the baby--only, you know, sir, if I can say it
with all respect, in her pretty, teasing way. But I am afraid she must
be told."
And Roger rose and went--sick at heart. He would rather have faced an
enemy's battery, vomiting out shot and shell, than gone up the broad,
stately staircase, and by the silent, sunny passageways, to that
fragrant, white-paneled room.
On the stands and tables were bowls full of clear-coloured spring
flowers--early primrose, jonquil, and narcissus. A wood-fire burned
upon the blue-and-white tiled hearth. And on the sofa, drawn up at
right angles to it, Katherine sat, wrapped in a gray, silk
dressing-gown bordered with soft, white fur. She flushed slightly as
her brother came in, and spoke to him with an air of playful apology.
"I really don't know why you should have been dragged up here, just
now, dear old man," she said. "It is some fancy of Denny's. I'm afraid
in the excess of her devotion she makes me rather a nuisance to you.
And now, not contented with fussing about me, she has taken to being
absurdly mysterious about the baby----"
She stopped abruptly. Something in the young man's expression and
bearing impressed her, causing her to stretch out her hands to him in
swift fear and entreaty.
"Oh, Roger!" she cried, "Roger--what is it?"
And he told her, repeating, with but a few omissions, the statement
made to him by the doctor ten days ago. He dared not look at her while
he spoke, lest seeing her should unnerve him altogether.
Katherine was very still. She made no outcry. Yet her very stillness
seemed to him the more ominous, and the horror of the recital grew upon
him. His voice sounded to him unnaturally loud and harsh in the
surrounding quiet. Once her silken draperies gave a shuddering
rustle--that was all.
At last it was over. At last he dared to look at her. The colour and
youthful roundness had gone out of her face. It was gray as her dress,
fixed and rigid as a marble mask. Ormiston was overcome with a
consuming pity for her and with a violence of self-hatred. Hangman, and
to his own sister--in truth, it seemed to him to have come to that! He
knelt down in front of her, laying hold of both her knees.
"Kitty, can you ever forgive me for telling you this?" he asked
hoarsely.
Even in this extremity Katherine's inherent sweetness asserted itself.
She would have smiled, but her frozen lips refused. Her eyelids
quivered a little and closed.
"I have nothing to forgive you, dear," she said. "Indeed, it is good of
you to tell me, since--since so it is."
She put her hands upon his shoulders, gripping them fast, and bowed her
head. The little flames crackled, dancing among the pine logs and the
silk of her dress rustled as her bosom rose and fell.
"It won't make you ill again?" Roger asked anxiously.
Katherine shook her head.
"Oh, no!" she said, "I have no more time for illness. This is a thing
to cure, as a cautery cures--to burn away all idleness and
self-indulgent, sick room fancies. See, I am strong, I am well."
She stood up, her hands slipping down from Ormiston's shoulders and
steadying themselves on his hands as he too rose. Her face was still
ashen, but purpose and decision had come into her eyes.
"Do this for me," she said, almost imperiously. "Go to Denny, tell her
to bring me the baby. She is to leave him with me. And tell her, as she
loves both him and me,--as she values her place here at
Brockhurst,--she is not to speak."
As he looked at her Ormiston turned cold. She was terrible just then.
"Katherine," he said quickly, "what on earth are you going to do?"
"No harm to my baby in any case--you need not be alarmed. I am quite to
be trusted. Only I cannot be reasoned with or opposed, still less
condoled with or comforted, yet. I want my baby, and I must have him,
here, alone, the doors shut--locked if I please." Her lips gave, the
corners of her mouth dropped. And watching her Ormiston swore a little
under his breath. "We have something to say to each other, the baby and
I," she went on, "which no one else may hear. So do what I ask you,
Roger. And come back--I may want you--in about an hour, if I do not
send for you before."
Alone with her child, Lady Calmady moved slowly across and bolted both
the nursery and the chapel-room doors. Then she drew a low stool up in
front of the fire and sat down, laying the infant upon her lap. It was
a delicious, dimpled creature, with a quantity of silky golden-brown
hair, that curled in a tiny crest along the top of its head. It was but
half awake yet, the rounded cheeks pink with the comfort of food and
slumber. And as the beautiful, young mother, bending that set, ashen
face of hers above it, laid the child upon her knees, it stretched,
clenching soft baby fists and rubbing them into its blue eyes.
Katherine unwrapped the shawls, and took off one small garment after
another--delicate gossamer-like things of fine flannel, lawn and lace,
such as women's fingers linger over in the making with tender joy. Once
her resolution failed her. She wrapped the half-dressed child in its
white shawls again, rose from her place and walked over to the sunny
window, carrying it in the hollow of her arm--it staring up, meanwhile,
with the strange wonder of baby eyes, and cooing, as though holding
communication with gracious presences haunting the moulded ceiling
above. Katherine gazed at it for a few seconds. But the little
creature's serene content, its absolute unconsciousness of its own evil
fortune, pained her too greatly. She went back, sat down on the stool
again, and completed the task she had set herself.
Then, the baby lying stark naked on her lap, she studied the fair,
little face, the penciled eyebrows and fringed eyelids,--dark like her
own,--the firm, rounded arms, the rosy-palmed hands, their dainty
fingers and finger-nails, the well-proportioned and well-nourished
body, without smallest mark or blemish upon it, sound, wholesome, and
complete. All these she studied long and carefully, while the dancing
glow of the firelight played over the child's delicate flesh, and it
extended its little arms in the pleasant warmth, holding them up, as in
act of adoration, towards those gracious unseen presences, still,
apparently, hovering above the flood of instreaming sunshine against
the ceiling overhead. Lastly she turned her eyes, with almost dreadful
courage, upon the mutilated, malformed limbs, upon the feet--set right
up where the knee should have been, thus dwarfing the child by a fourth
of his height. She observed them, handled, felt them. And as she did
so, her mother-love, which, until now, had been but a part and
consequence--since the child was his gift, the crown and outcome of
their passion, his and hers--of the great love she bore her husband,
became distinct from that, an emotion by itself, heretofore unimagined,
pervasive of all her being. It had none of the sweet self-abandon, the
dear enchantments, the harmonising sense of safety and repose which
that earlier passion had. This was altogether different in character,
and made quite other demands on mind and heart. For it was fierce,
watchful, anxious, violent with primitive instinct; the roots of it
planted far back in that unthinkable remoteness of time, when the
fertile womb of the great earth mother began to bring forth the first
blind, simple forms of those countless generations of living creatures
which, slowly differentiating themselves, slowly developing, have
peopled this planet from that immeasurable past to the present hour.
Love between man and woman must be forever young, even as Eros, Cupid,
Krishna, are forever youthful gods. But mother-love is of necessity
mature, majestic, ancient from the stamp of primal experience which is
upon it.
And so, at this juncture, realising that which her motherhood meant,
her immaturity, her girlhood fell away from Katherine Calmady. Her life
and the purpose of it moved forward on another plane.
She bent down and solemnly kissed the unlovely, shortened limbs, not
once or twice, but many times, yielding herself up with an almost
voluptuous intensity to her own emotion. She clasped her hands about
her knees, so that the child might be enclosed, overshadowed, embraced
on all sides by the living defenses of its mother's love. Alone there,
with no witnesses, she brooded over it, crooned to it, caressed it with
an insatiable hunger of tenderness.
"And yet, my poor pretty, if we had both died, you and I, ten days
ago," she murmured, "how far better. For what will you say to me when
you grow older--to me who have brought you, without any asking or will
of yours, into a world in which you must always be at so cruel a
disadvantage? How will you bear it all when you come to face it for
yourself, and I can no longer shield you and hide you away as I can do
now? Will you have fortitude to endure, or will you become sour,
vindictive, misanthropic, envious? Will you curse the hour of your
birth?"
Katherine bowed her proud head still lower.
"Ah! don't do that, my darling," she prayed in piteous entreaty, "don't
do that. For I will share all your trouble, do share it even now,
beforehand, foreseeing it, while you still lie smiling unknowing of
your own distress. I shall live through it many times, by day and
night, while you live through it only once. And so you must be
forbearing towards me, my dear one, when you come----"
She broke off abruptly, her hands fell at her sides, and she sat
rigidly upright, her lips parted, staring blankly at the dancing
flames.
In repeating Dr. Knott's statement Ormiston had purposely abstained
from all mention of Richard Calmady's accident and its tragic sequel.
He could not bring himself to speak to Katherine of that. Until now,
dominated by the rush of her emotion, she had only recognised the bare
terrible fact of the baby's crippled condition, without attempting to
account for it. But, now, suddenly the truth presented itself to her.
She understood that she was herself, in a sense, accountable--that the
greatness of her love for the father had maimed the child.
As she realised the profound irony of the position, a blackness of
misery fell upon Katherine. And then, since she was of a strong,
undaunted spirit, an immense anger possessed her, a revolt against
nature which could work such wanton injury, and against God, who, being
all-powerful, could sit by and permit it so to work. All the
foundations of faith and reverence were, for the time being, shaken to
the very base.
She gathered the naked baby up against her bosom, rocking herself to
and fro in a paroxysm of rebellious grief.
"God is unjust!" she cried aloud. "He takes pleasure in fooling us. God
is unjust!"
CHAPTER X
THE BIRDS OF THE AIR TAKE THEIR BREAKFAST
Ormiston's first sensation on reentering his sister's room was one of
very sensible relief. For Katherine leaned back against the pink
brocade cushions in the corner of the sofa, with the baby sleeping
peacefully in her arms. Her colour was more normal too, her features
less mask-like and set. The cloud which had shadowed the young man's
mind for nearly a fortnight lifted. She knew; therefore, he argued, the
worst must be over. It was an immense gain that this thing was fairly
said. Yet, as he came nearer and sat down on the sofa beside her,
Ormiston, who was a keen observer, both of horses and women, became
aware of a subtle change in Katherine. He was struck--he had never
noticed it before--by her likeness to her--and his--father, whose
stern, high-bred, clean-shaven face and rather inaccessible bearing and
manner impressed his son, even to this day, as somewhat alarming.
People were careful not to trifle with old Mr. Ormiston. His will was
absolute in his own house, with his tenants, and in the great
iron-works--almost a town in itself--which fed his fine fortune. While
from his equals--even from his fellow-members of that not over-reverent
or easily impressible body, the House of Commons--he required and
received a degree of deference such as men yield only to an unusually
powerful character. And there was now just such underlying energy in
Katherine's expression. Her eyes were dark, as a clear midnight sky is
dark, her beautiful lips compressed, but with concentration of purpose,
not with weakness of sorrow. The force of her motherhood had awakened
in Katherine a latent, titanic element. Like "Prometheus Bound,"
chained to the rock, torn, her spirit remained unquelled. For good or
evil--as the event should prove--she defied the gods.
And something of all this--though he would have worded it very
differently in the vernacular of passing fashion--Ormiston perceived.
She was unbroken by that which had occurred, and for this he was
thankful. But she was another woman to her who had greeted him in
pretty apology an hour ago. Yet, even recognising this, her first words
produced in him a shock of surprise.
"Is that horse, the Clown, still at the stables?" she asked.
Ormiston thrust his hands into his pockets; and sitting on the edge of
the sofa with his knees apart, stared down at the carpet. The mention
of the Clown always cut him, and raised in him a remorseful anger. Yes
she was like his father, going straight to the point, he thought. And,
in this case, the point was acutely painful to him personally.
Ormiston's moral courage had been severely taxed, and he had a fair
share of the selfishness common to man. It was all very well, but he
wished to goodness she had chosen some other subject than this. Yet he
must answer.
"Yes," he said; "Willy Taylor has been leading the gallops for the
two-year-olds on him for the last month."--He paused. "What about the
Clown?"
"Only that I should be glad if you would tell Chifney he must find some
other horse to lead the gallops."
Ormiston turned his head.
"I see--you wish the horse sold," he said, over his shoulder.
Katherine looked down at the sleeping baby, its round head, crowned by
that delicious crest of silky hair, cuddled in against her breast. Then
she looked in her brother's eyes full and steadily.
"No," she answered. "I don't want it sold, I want it shot, by you,
here, to-night."
"By Jove!" the young man exclaimed, rising hastily and standing in
front of her.
Katherine gazed up at him, and held the child a little closer to her
breast.
"I have been alone with my baby. Don't you suppose I see how it has
come about?" she asked.
"Oh, damn it all!" Ormiston cried. "I prayed, at least, you might be
spared thinking of that."
He flung himself down on the sofa again--while the baby clenching its
tiny fist, stretched and murmured in its sleep--and bowed himself
together, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.
"I'm at the bottom of it. It's all my fault," he said. "I am haunted by
the thought of that day and night, for if ever one man loved another I
loved Richard. And yet if I hadn't been so cursedly keen about the
horse all this might never have happened. Oh! if you only knew how
often I've wished myself dead since that ghastly morning. You must hate
me, Kitty. You've cause enough. Yet how the deuce could I foresee what
would come about?"
For the moment Katherine's expression softened. She laid her left hand
very gently on his bowed head.
"I could never hate you, dear old man," she said. "You are innocent of
Richard's death. But this last thing is different." Her voice became
fuller and deeper in tone. "And whether I am equally innocent of his
child's disfigurement, God only knows--if there is a God, which
perhaps, just now, I had better doubt, lest I should blaspheme too
loudly, hoping my bitter words might reach His hearing."
Yet further disturbed in the completeness of it's comfort, as it would
seem, by the seriousness of her voice, the baby's mouth puckered. It
began to fret. Katherine rose and stood rocking it, soothing it--a
queenly young figure in her clinging gray and white draperies, which
the instreaming sunshine touched, as she moved, to a delicate warmth of
colour.
"Hush, my pretty lamb," she crooned--and then softly yet fiercely to
Ormiston, "You understand, I wish it. The Clown is to be shot."
"Very well," he answered.
"Sleep--what troubles you, my precious," she went on. "I want it done,
now, at once.--Hush, baby, hush.--The sun shall not go down upon my
wrath, because my wrath shall be somewhat appeased before the sunset."
Katherine swayed with a rhythmic motion, holding the baby a little away
from her in her outstretched arms.
"Tell Chifney to bring the horse up to the square lawn, here, right in
front of the house.--Hush, my kitty sweet.--He is to bring the horse
himself. None of the stable boys or helpers are to come. It is not to
be an entertainment, but an execution. I wish it done quietly."
"Very well," Ormiston repeated. He hesitated, strong protest rising to
his lips, which he could not quite bring himself to utter. Katherine,
the courage and tragedy of her anger, dominated him as she moved to and
fro in the sunshine soothing her child.
"You know it's a valuable horse," he remarked, at last, tentatively.
"So much the better. You do not suppose I should care to take that
which costs me nothing? I am quite willing to pay.--Sleep, my pet,
so--is that better?--I do not propose to defraud--hush, baby darling,
hush--Richard's son of any part of his inheritance. Tell Chifney to
name a price for the Clown, an outside price. He shall have a cheque
to-morrow, which he is to enter with the rest of the stable
accounts.--Now go, please. We understand each other clearly, and it is
growing late.--Poor honey love, what vexes you?--You will shoot the
Clown, here, before sunset. And, Roger, it must lie where it falls
to-night. Let some of the men come early to-morrow, with a float. It is
to go to the kennels."
Ormiston got up, shaking his shoulders as though to rid himself of some
encumbering weight. He crossed to the fireplace and kicked the logs
together.
"I don't half like it," he said. "I tell you I don't. It seems such a
cold-blooded butchery. I can't tell if it's wrong or right. It seems
merciless. And it is so unlike you, Kitty, to be merciless."
He turned to her as he spoke, and Katherine--her head erect, her eyes
full of the sombre fire of her profound alienation and revolt--drew her
hand slowly down over the fine lawn and lace of the baby's long white
robe, and held it flat against the soles of the child's hidden feet.
"Look at this," she said. "Remember, too, that the delight of my life
has gone from me, and that I am young yet. The years will be many--and
Richard is dead. Has much mercy been shown to me, do you think?"
And the young man seeing her, knowing the absolute sincerity of her
speech, felt a lump rise in his throat. After all, when you have acted
hangman to your own sister, as he reasoned, it is but a small matter to
act slaughterman to a horse.
"Very well," he answered, huskily enough. "It shall be as you wish,
Kitty. Only go back to the sofa, and stay there, please. If I think you
are watching, I can't be quite sure of myself. Something may go wrong,
and we don't want a scene which will make talk. This is a business
which should be got through as quickly and decently as possible."
The sun was but five minutes high, and no longer brightened the
southern house front, though it spread a ruddy splendour over the
western range of gables, and lingered about the stacks of slender
twisted chimneys, and cast long slanting shadows across the lawns and
carriage drives, before Lady Calmady's waiting drew to a close. From
the near trees of the elm avenue, and from the wood overhanging the
pond below the terraced kitchen gardens, came the singing of blackbirds
and thrushes--whether raised as evening hymn in praise of their
Creator, or as love-song each to his mate, who shall say? Possibly as
both, since in simple minds--and that assuredly is matter for
thankfulness--earthly and heavenly affections are bounded by no harsh
dividing line. The chorus of song found its way in at the windows of
Katherine's room--fresh as the spring flowers which filled it, innocent
of hatred and wrong as the face of the now placid baby, his soft cheeks
flushed with slumber, as he nestled in against his mother's bosom.
Indeed a long time had passed. Twice Denny had looked in and, seeing
that quiet reigned, had noiselessly withdrawn. For Katherine, still
physically weak, drained, moreover, by the greatness of her recent
emotion, her senses lulled to rest by the warm contact and even
breathing of the child, had sunk away into a dreamless sleep.
The questioning neigh of a stallion, a scuffle of horse hoofs,
footsteps approaching round the corner of the house, passing across the
broad graveled carriage sweep and on to the turf, aroused her. And
these sounds were so natural, full of vigorous outdoor life and the
wholesome gladness of it, that for a moment she came near repentance of
her purpose. But then feeling, as he rested on her arm, her baby's
shortened, malformed limbs, and thinking of her well-beloved dying,
maimed and spent, in the fulness of his manhood, her face took on that
ashen pallor again and all relenting left her. There was a satisfaction
of wild justice in the act about to be consummated. And Katherine
raised herself from the pink brocade cushions, and sat erect, her lips
parted in stern excitement, her forehead contracted in the effort to
hear, her eyes fixed on the wide, carven, ebony bed and its embroidered
hangings. The poor Hart had, indeed, ceased to pasture in reposeful
security before the quaint pavilion, set--for its passing
refreshment--in the midst of the Forest of This Life. Now it fled,
desperate, by crooked tangled ways, over rocks, through briars, while
Care, the Leopard, followed hard behind.
First Roger Ormiston's voice reached her in brief direction, and the
trainer's in equally brief reply. The horse neighed again--a sound
strident and virile, the challenge of a creature of perfect muscle, hot
desire, and proud, quick-coursing blood. Afterwards, an instant's
pause, and Chifney's voice again,--"So-ho--my beauty--take it
easy--steady there, steady, good lad," and the slap of his open hand on
the horse's shoulder straightening it carefully into place. While
behind and below all this, in sweet incongruous undertone of
uncontrollable joy, arose the carolling of the blackbirds and thrushes
praising, according to their humble powers, God, life, and love.
Finally, as climax of the drama, the sharp report of a pistol, ringing
out in shattering disturbance of the peace of the fair spring evening,
followed by a dead silence, the birds all scared and dumb--a silence so
dead, that Katherine Calmady held her breath, almost awed by it, while
the hissing and crackling of the little flames upon the hearth seemed
to obtrude as an indecent clamour. This lasted a few seconds. Then the
noise of a plunging struggle and the muffled thud of something falling
heavily upon the turf.--
Dr. Knott had been up all night, but his patient, Lord Denier's second
coachman, would pull through right enough; so he started on his
homeward journey in a complacent frame of mind. He reckoned it would
save him a couple of miles, let alone the long hill from Farley Row up
to Spendle Flats, if on his way back from Grimshott he went by
Brockhurst House. It is stretching a point, he admitted, to drive under
even your neighbour's back windows at five o'clock in the morning. But
the doctor being himself in an unusually amiable attitude, was inclined
to accredit others with a like share of good temper. Moreover, the
natural man in him cried increasingly loudly for food and bed.
John Knott was not given to sentimental rhapsodies over the beauties of
nature. Like other beauties she had her dirty enough moods, he thought.
Still, in his own half-snarling fashion, he dearly loved this forest
country in which he had been born and bred, while he was too keen a
sportsman to be unobservant of any aspect of wind and weather, any
movement of bird or beast. With the collar of his long drab
driving-coat turned up about his ears, and the stem of a well-coloured
meerschaum pipe between his teeth, he sat huddled together in the high,
swinging gig, with Timothy, the weazel-faced, old groom by his side,
while the drama of the opening day unfolded itself before his somewhat
critical gaze. He noted that it would be fine, though windy. In the
valley, over the Long Water, spread beds of close, white mist. The blue
of the upper sky was crossed by curved windows of flaky, opalescent
cloud. In the east, above the dusky rim of the fir woods on the edge of
the high-lying tableland, stretched a blinding blaze of rose-saffron,
shading through amber into pale primrose colour above. The massive
house front, and the walls fencing the three sides of the square
enclosure before it, with the sexagonal, pepper-pot summer-houses at
either corner, looked pale and unsubstantial in that diffused,
unearthly light. At the head of the elm avenue, passing through the
high, wrought-iron gates and along the carriage drive which skirts the
said enclosure,--the great, square grass plot on the right hand, the
red wall of the kitchen gardens on the left,--Dr. Knott had the reins
nearly jerked out of his hand. The mare started and swerved, grazing
the off wheel against the brickwork, and stopped, her head in the air,
her ears pricked, her nostrils dilated showing the red.
"Hullo, old girl, what's up? Seen a ghost?" he said, drawing the whip
quietly across the hollow of her back.
But the mare only braced herself more stiffly, refusing to move, while
she trembled and broke into a sudden sweat. The doctor was interested
and looked about him. He would first find the cause of her queer
behaviour, and give her a good dressing down afterwards if she deserved
it.
The smooth, slightly up-sloping lawn was powdered with innumerable
dewdrops. In the centre of it, neck outstretched, the fine legs doubled
awkwardly together, the hind quarters and barrel rising, as it lay on
its side, in an unshapely lump, gray from the drenching dew, was a dead
horse. Along the top of the further wall a smart and audacious party of
jackdaws had stationed themselves, with much ruffling of gray, neck
feathers impudent squeakings and chatter. While a pair of carrion crows
hopped slowly and heavily about the carcass, flapping up with a stroke
or two of their broad wings in sudden suspicion, then settling down
again nearer than before.
"Go to her head, Timothy, and get her by as quietly as you can. I'll be
after you in a minute, but I'm bound to see what the dickens they've
been up to here."
As he spoke Dr. Knott hitched himself down from off the gig. He was
cramped with sitting, and moved forward awkwardly, his footsteps
leaving a track of dark irregular patches upon the damp grass. As he
approached, the jackdaws flung themselves gleefully upward from the
wall, the sun glinting on their glossy plumage as they circled and
sailed away across the park. But the crow who had just begun work in
earnest, stood his ground, notwithstanding the warning croak of his
more timid mate. He grasped the horse's skull with his claws, and tore
away greedily at the fine skin about the eye-socket with his strong,
black beak.
"How's this, my fine gentleman, in too much of a hurry this morning to
wait for the flavour to get into your meat?" John Knott said, as the
bird rose sullenly at last. "Got a small hungry family at home, I
suppose, crying 'give, give.' Well, that's taught better men than you,
before now, not to be too nice, but to snatch at pretty well anything
they can get."
He came close and stood looking meditatively down at the dead
race-horse--recognised its long, white-reach face, the colour and make
of it, while his loose lips worked with a contemptuous yet pitying
smile.
"So that's the way my lady's taken it, has she?" he said presently. "On
the whole I don't know that I'm sorry. In some cases much benefit
unquestionably is derivable from letting blood. This shows she doesn't
mean to go under if I know her; and that's a mercy, for that poor
little beggar, the baby's sake."
He turned and contemplated the stately facade of the house. The ranges
of windows, blind with closed shutters and drawn curtains, in the early
sunshine gave off their many panes a broad dazzle of white light.
"Poor little beggar," he repeated, "with his forty thousand a year and
all the rest of it. Such a race to run and yet so badly handicapped!"
He stooped down, examined the horse, found the mark of the bullet.
"Contradictory beings, though, these dear women," he went on. "So
fanciful and delicate, so sensitive you're afraid to lay a finger on
them. So unselfish, too, some of them, they seem too good for this old
rough and tumble of a world. And yet touch 'em home, and they'll show
an unscrupulous savagery of which we coarse brutes of men should be
more than half ashamed. God Almighty made a little more than He
bargained for when He made woman. She must have surprised Him pretty
shrewdly, one would think, now and then since the days of the apple and
the snake."
He moved away up the carriage drive, following Timothy, the sweating,
straining mare, and swinging gig. The carrion crow flapped back, with a
croak, and dropped on the horse's skull again. Hearing that bodeful
sound the doctor paused a moment, knocking the ashes out of his pipe,
and looking round at the bird at its ugly work, set as foreground to
that pure glory of the sunrise, and the vast noble landscape, misty
valley, dewy grassland, far ranging hillside crowned with wood.
"The old story," he muttered, "always repeating itself. And it strikes
one as rather a wasteful, clumsy contrivance, at times. Life forever
feeding on death--death forever breeding life."
Thus ended the Clown, own brother to Touchstone, of merry name and
mournful memory, paying the penalty of wholly involuntary
transgressions. From which ending another era dated at Brockhurst, the
most notable events of which it is the purpose of the ensuing pages
duly to set forth.
BOOK II
THE BREAKING OF DREAMS
CHAPTER I
RECORDING SOME ASPECTS OF A SMALL PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, says the comfortable proverb.
Which would appear to be but another manner of declaring that the law
of compensation works permanently in human affairs. All quantities,
material and immaterial alike, are, of necessity, stable; therefore the
loss or defect of one participant must--indirectly, no doubt, yet very
surely--make for the gain of some other. As of old, so now, the blood
of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.
Julius March would, how gladly, have been among the martyrs! But the
lot fell otherwise. And--always admitting the harshness of the
limitations he had imposed on himself--the martyrdom of those he held
dearest, did, in fact, work to secure him a measure of content that had
otherwise been unattainable. The twelve years following the birth of
Lady Calmady's child were the most fruitful of his life. He filled a
post no other person could have filled; one which, while satisfying his
religious sense and priestly ideal of detachment, appeased the cravings
of his heart and developed the practical man in him. The contemplative
and introspective attitude was balanced by an active and objective one.
For he continued to live under his dear lady's roof, seeing her daily
and serving her in many matters. He watched her, admiring her clear yet
charitable judgment and her prudence in business. He bowed in reverence
before her perfect singleness of purpose. He was almost appalled,
apprehending, now and then, the secret abysses of her womanhood, the
immensity of her self-devotion, the swing of her nature from quick,
sensitive shrinking to almost impious pride. Man is the outcome of the
eternal common sense; woman that of some moment of divine folly.
Meanwhile the ways of true love are many; and Julius March, thus
watching his dear lady, discovered, as other elect souls have
discovered before him, that the way of chastity and silence,
notwithstanding its very constant heartache, is by no means among the
least sweet. The entries in his diaries of this period are
intermittent, concise, and brief--naturally enough, since the central
figure of Julius's mental picture had ceased, happily for him, to be
himself.
And not only Katherine's sorrows, but the unselfish action of another
woman went to make Julius March's position at Brockhurst tenable. A few
days after Ormiston's momentous interview with his sister, news came of
Mrs. St. Quentin's death. She had passed hence peacefully in her sleep.
Knowledge of the facts of poor, little Dickie Calmady's ill-fortune had
been spared her. For it would be more satisfactory--so Mademoiselle de
Mirancourt had remarked, not without a shade of irony--that if Lucia
St. Quentin must learn the sad fact at all, she should do so where _le
bon Dieu_ Himself would be at hand to explain matters, and so, in a
degree, set them right.
Early in April Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had gathered together her
most precious possessions and closed the pretty apartment in the rue de
Rennes. It had been a happy halting-place on the journey of life. It
was haunted by well-beloved ghosts. It cost not a little to bid it, the
neighbouring church of the St. Germain des Pres, where she had so long
worshipped, and her little _coterie_ of intimate friends, farewell. Yet
she set forth, taking with her Henriette, the hard-featured, old,
Breton maid, and _Monsieur Pouf_, the gray, Persian cat,--he protesting
plaintively from within a large Manilla basket,--and thus accompanied,
made pilgrimage to Brockhurst. And when Katherine, all the lost joys of
her girlhood assailing her at sight of her lifelong friend, had broken
down for once, and, laying her beautiful head on the elder woman's
shoulder, had sobbed out a question as to when this visit must end,
Marie de Mirancourt had answered--
"That, most dear one, is precisely as you shall see fit to decide. It
need not end till I myself end, if you so please."
And when Katherine, greatly comforted yet fearing to be over-greedy of
comfort, had reasoned with her, reminding her of the difference of
climate, the different habits of living in that gay, little Paris home
and this great English country house; reminding her, further, of her so
often and fondly expressed desire to retire from the world while yet in
the complete possession of her powers and prepare for the inevitable
close within the calm and sacred precincts of the convent--the other
replied almost gaily--
"Ah, my child! I have still a naughty little spirit of experiment in me
which defiles the barbarities of your climate. While as to the convent,
it has beckoned so long--let it beckon still! It called first when my
_fiance_ died,--God rest his soul,--worn out by the hardships he
endured in the war of La Vendee and I put from me forever all thought
of marriage. But then my mother, an emigrant here in London, claimed
all my care. It called me again when she departed, dear saintly being.
But then there were my brother's sons--orphaned by the guillotine--to
place. And when I had established them honourably, our beloved Lucia
turned to me, with her many enchantments and exquisite tragedy of the
heart. And, now, in my old age I come to you--whom I receive from her
as a welcome legacy--to remain just so long as I am not a burden to
you. Second childhood and first should understand one another. We will
play delightful games together, the dear baby and I. So let the convent
beckon. For the convent is perhaps, after all, but an impatient
grasping at the rest of paradise, before that rest is fairly earned. I
have a good hope that, after all, we give ourselves most acceptably to
God in thus giving ourselves to His human creatures."
Thus did Marie de Mirancourt, for love's sake, condemn herself to
exile, thereby rendering possible--among other things--Julius's
continued residence at Brockhurst. For Captain Ormiston had held true
to his resolve of scorning the delights of idleness, the smiles of
ladies more kind than wise, and all those other pleasant iniquities to
which idleness inclines the young and full-blooded, of bidding farewell
to London and Windsor, and proceeding to "live laborious days" in some
far country. He had offered to remain indefinitely with Katherine if
she needed him. But she refused. Let him be faithful to the noble
profession of arms and make a name for himself therein.
"Brockhurst has ceased to be a place for a soldier," she said. "Leave
it to women and priests!" And then, repenting of the bitterness of her
speech, she added:--"Really there is not more work than I can manage,
with Julius to help me at times. Iles is a good servant if a little
tediously pompous, and Chifney must see to the stables."--Lady Calmady
paused, and her face grew hard. But for her husband's dying request,
she would have sold every horse in the stud, razed the great square of
buildings to the ground and made the site of it a dunghill. "Work is a
drug to deaden thought. So it is a kindness to let me have plenty of
it, dear old man. And I fear, even when the labour of each day is done,
and Dickie is safe asleep,--poor darling,--I shall still have more than
enough of time for thought, for asking those questions to which there
seems no answer, and for desires, vain as they are persistent, that
things were somehow, anyhow, other than they are!"
Therefore it came about that a singular quiet settled down on
Brockhurst--a quiet of waiting, of pause, rather than of
accomplishment. But Julius March, for reasons aforesaid, and
Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, in virtue of her unclouded faith in the
teachings of her Church,--which assures its members of the beneficent
purpose working behind all the sad seeming of this world,--alike
rejoiced in that. A change of occupations and of interests came
naturally with the change of the seasons, with the time to sow and
reap, to plant saplings, to fell timber, to fence, to cut copsing, to
build or rebuild, to receive rents or remit them, to listen to many
appeals, to readjust differences, to feed game or to shoot it, to
bestow charity of meat and fuel, to haul ice in winter to the ice-house
from the lake. But beyond all this there was little going or coming at
Brockhurst. The magnates of the countryside called at decent intervals,
and at decent intervals Lady Calmady returned their civilities. But
having ceased to entertain, she refused to receive entertainment. She
shut herself away in somewhat jealous seclusion, defiant of possibly
curious glances and pitying tongues. Before long her neighbours,
therefore, came to raise their eyebrows a little in speaking of her,
and to utter discreet regrets that Lady Calmady, though handsome and
charming when you saw her, was so very eccentric, adding--"Of course
every one knows there is something very uncomfortable about the little
boy!" Then would follow confidences as to the disastrous results of
popish influences and Romanising tendencies; and an openly expressed
conviction--more especially on the part of ladies blessed with
daughters of marriageable age--that it would have been so very much
better for many people if the late Sir Richard Calmady had looked
nearer home for a bride.
But these comments did not affect Katherine. In point of fact they
rarely reached her ears. Alone among her neighbours, Mary Cathcart, of
the crisp, black hair and gipsy-like complexion, was still admitted to
some intimacy of intercourse. And the girl was far too loyal either to
bring in gossip or to carry it out. Brockhurst held the romance of her
heart. And, notwithstanding the earnest wooing--as the years went
on--of more than one very eligible gentleman, Brockhurst continued to
hold it.
Meanwhile the somewhat quaint fixed star around which this whole system
of planets, large and small, very really revolved, shone forth upon
them all with a cheerful enough light. For Dickie by no means belied
the promise of his babyhood. He was a beautiful and healthy little boy,
with a charming brilliance of colouring, warm and solid in tone. He had
his mother's changeful eyes, though the blue of them was brighter than
hers had now come to be. He had her dark eyebrows and eyelashes too,
and her finely curved lips. While he bore likeness to his father in the
straight, square-tipped nose and the close-fitting cap of bright, brown
hair with golden stains in it, growing low in short curling locks on
the broad forehead and the nape of the neck--expressing the shape of
the head very definitely, and giving it something of antique nobility
and grace.
And the little lad's appearance afforded, in these pleasant early days
at all events, fair index to his temperament. He was gay-natured,
affectionate, intelligent, full of a lively yet courteous curiosity,
easily moved to laughter, almost inconveniently fearless and
experimental; while his occasional thunderbursts of passion cleared off
quickly into sunshine and blue sky again. For as yet the burden of
deformity rested upon him very lightly. He associated hardly at all
with other children, and had but scant occasion to measure his poor
powers of locomotion against their normal ones. Lady Fallowfeild it is
true, in obedience to suggestions on the part of her kindly lord and
master, offered tentatively to import a carriage load--little Ludovic
Quayle was just the same age as Dickie--from the Whitney nurseries to
spend the day.
"Good fellow, Calmady. I liked Calmady," Lord Fallowfeild had said to
her. His conversation, it may be observed, was nothing if not
interjectional. "Pretty woman, Lady Calmady---terrible thing for her
being left as she is. Always shall regret Calmady. Very sorry for her.
Always have been sorry for a pretty woman in trouble. Ought to see
something of her, my dear. The two estates join, and, as I always have
said, it's a duty to support your own class. Can't expect the masses to
respect you unless you show them you're prepared to stand by your own
class. Just take some of the children over to see Lady Calmady. Pretty
children, do her good to see them. Rode uncommonly straight did
Calmady. Terribly upsetting thing his funeral. Never shall forget it.
Always did like Calmady--good fellow, Calmady. Nasty thing his death."
But Katherine's pen was fertile in excuses to avoid the invasion from
Whitney. Lady Fallowfeild's small brains and large domestic complacency
were too trying to her. And that noble lady, it must be owned, was
secretly not a little glad to have her advances thus firmly, though
gently, repulsed. For she was alarmed at Lady Calmady's reported
acquaintance with foreign lands and with books; added to which her
simple mind harboured much grisly though vague terror concerning the
Roman Church. Picture all her brood of little Quayles incontinently
converted into little monks and nuns with shaven heads! How such sudden
conversion could be accomplished Lady Fallowfeild did not presume to
explain. It sufficed her that "everybody always said Papists were so
dreadfully clever and unscrupulous you never could tell what they might
not do next."
Once, when Dickie was about six years old, Colonel St. Quentin brought
his young wife and two little girls to stay at Brockhurst. Katherine
had a great regard for her cousin, yet the visit was never repeated. On
the flat poor Dick could manage fairly well, his strangely shod feet
traveling laboriously along in effort after rapidity; his hands hastily
outstretched now and again to lay hold of door-jamb or table-edge,
since his balance was none of the securest. But in that delightfully
varied journey from the nursery, by way of his mother's bed-room, the
Chapel-Room next door, the broad stair-head,--with its carven
balusters, shiny oak flooring, and fine landscapes by Claude and
Hobbema,--the state drawing-room and libraries, to that America of his
childish dreams, that country of magnificent distances and large
possibility of discovery, the Long Gallery, he was speedily distanced
by the three-year-old Betty, let alone her six-year-old sister Honoria,
a tall, slim, little maiden, daintily high-bred of face and fleet of
foot as a hind. This was bad enough. But the stairways afforded yet
more afflicting experiences--the descent of even the widest and
shallowest flights presented matter of insuperable difficulty; while
the ascent was only to be achieved by recourse to all-fours, against
the ignominy of which mode of progression Dickie's soul revolted. And
so the little boy concluded that he did not care much about little
girls; and confided to his devoted play-fellow Clara--Mrs. Denny's
niece and sometime second still-room maid, now promoted, on account of
her many engaging qualities, to be Dickie's special attendant--that:--
"They went so quick, they always left him behind, and it was not nice
to be left behind, and it was very rude of them to do it; didn't Clara
think so?"
And Clara, as in duty and affection bound, not without additional
testimony in a certain dimness of her pretty, honest, brown eyes, did
indeed very much think so. It followed, therefore, that Dickie saw the
St. Quentin family drive away, nurses and luggage complete, quite
unmoved. And returned with satisfaction and renewed self-confidence to
the exclusive society of all those dear grown-up people--gentle and
simple--who were never guilty of leaving him behind; to that of Camp,
the old, white bulldog, and young Camp, his son and heir, who, if they
so far forgot themselves as to run away, invariably ran back again and
apologised, fawning upon him and pushing their broad, ugly, kindly
muzzles into his hands; and to that of _Monsieur Pouf_, the gray
Persian cat, who, far from going too quickly, displayed such majestic
deliberation of movement and admirable dignity of waving fluffed tail,
that it required much patient coaxing on Dickie's part ever to make him
leave his cushion by the fire and go at all.
But, with the above-mentioned exception, the little boy's self-content
suffered but slight disturbance. He took himself very much for granted.
He was very curious of outside things, very much amused. Moreover, he
was king of a far from contemptible kingdom; and in the blessed
ignorance of childhood--that finds pride and honour in things which a
wider and sadder knowledge often proves far from glad or glorious--it
appeared to him not unnatural that a king should differ, even to the
point of some slightly impeding disabilities, from the rank and file of
his obedient and devoted subjects. For Dickie, happily for him, was as
yet given over to that wholly pleasant vanity, the aristocratic idea.
The rough justice of democracy, and the harsh breaking of all purely
personal and individualistic dreams that comes along with it, for him,
was not just yet.
And Richard's continued and undismayed acquiescence in his physical
misfortune was fostered, indirectly, by the captivating poetry of myth
and legend with which his mind was fed. He had an insatiable appetite
for stories, and Mademoiselle de Mirancourt was an untiring
_raconteuse_. On Sunday afternoons upon the terrace, when the park lay
bathed in drowsy sunshine and sapphire shadows haunted the under edge
of the great woods, the pretty old lady--her eyes shining with gentle
laughter, for Marie de Mirancourt's faith had reached the very perfect
stage in which the soul dares play, even as lovers play, with that it
holds most sacred--would tell Dickie--the fairy tales of her Church.
Would tell him of blessed St. Francis and of Poverty, his sweet, sad
bride; of his sermon to the birds dwelling in the oak groves along
Tiber valley; of the mystic stigmata, marking as with nail prints his
hands and feet, and of that indomitable love towards all creatures,
which found alike in the sun in heaven and the heavy-laden ass,
brothers and friends. Or she would tell him of that man of mighty
strength and stature, St. Christopher, who, in the stormy
darkness,--yielding to its reiterated entreaties,--set forth to bear
the little child across the wind-swept ford. How he staggered in
midstream, amazed and terrified under the awful weight of that,
apparently so light, burden; to learn, on struggling ashore at last,
that he had borne upon his shoulder no mortal infant, but the whole
world and the eternal maker of it, Christ Himself.
These and many another wonder tale of Christian miracle did she tell to
Dickie--he squatting on a rug beside her, resting his curly head
against her knees, while the pink-footed pigeons hurried hither and
thither, picking up the handfuls of barley he scattered on the flags,
and the peacocks sunned themselves with a certain worldly and
disdainful grace on the hand-rails of the gray balustrades, and young
Camp, after some wild skirmish in search of sport, flung himself down
panting, his tongue lolling out of his grinning jaws, by the boy's
side.
And Katherine, putting aside her cares as regent of Dickie's kingdom
and the sorrow that lay so chill against her heart, would tell him
stories too, but of a different order of sentiment and of thought. For
Katherine was young yet, and her stories were gallant--since her own
spirit was very brave--or merry, because it delighted her to hear the
boy laugh. And often, as he grew a little older, she would sit with her
arm round him, in the keen, winter twilights before the lamps were lit,
on the broad cushioned bench of the oriel window in the Chapel-Room.
Outside, the stars grew in number and brightness as the dusk deepened.
Within, the firelight played over the white-paneled walls, revealing
fitfully the handsome faces of former Calmadys--short-lived, passing
hence all unsated with the desperate joys of living--painted by Vandyke
and Sir Peter Lely, or by Romney and Sir Joshua. Then she would tell
him not only of Aladdin, of Cinderella, and time-honoured
Puss-in-Boots, but of Merlin the great enchanter, and of King Arthur
and his company of noble knights. And of the loves of Sigurd the
Niblung and Brunhilda the wise and terrible queen, and of their
lifelong sorrow, and of the fateful treasure of fairy gold which lies
buried beneath the rushing waters of the Rhine. Or she would tell him
of those cold, clear, far-off times in the northern sojourning places
of our race--tell him of the cow Audhumla, alone in the vast plain at
the very beginning of things, licking the stones crusted over with hoar
frost and salt, till, on the third day, there sprung from them a
warrior named Bur, the father of Boer, the father of Odin, who is the
father of all the gods. She would tell him of wicked Loki too, the
deceiver and cunning plotter against the peace of heaven. And of his
three evil children--here Dickie would, for what reason he knew not,
always feel his mother hold him more closely, while her voice took a
deeper tone--Fenrir the wolf, who, when Thor sought to bind him, bit
off the brave god's right hand; and Joermungand the Midgard serpent,
who, tail in mouth, circles the world; and Hela, the pale queen, who
reigns in Niflheim over the dim kingdoms of the dead. And of Baldur the
bright shining god, joy of Asgard, slain in error by Hoeder his blind
twin-brother; for whom all things on earth--save one--weep, and will
weep, till in the last days he comes again. And of All-Father Odin
himself, plucking out his right eye and bartering it for a draught of
wisdom-giving water from Mirmir's magic well. Again, she would tell him
of the End--which it must be owned frightened Dickie a little, so that
he would stroke her cheek, and say softly, "But, mummy, you really are
sure, aren't you, it won't happen for a good while yet?"--Of Ragnaroek,
the Twilight of the Gods; of the Fimbul winter, and cheerless sun and
hurrying, blood-red moon, and all the direful signs which must needs go
before the last great battle between good and evil.
And through all of these stories, of Christian and heathen origin
alike, Richard began dimly, almost unconsciously, to trace, recurrent
as a strain of austere music, the idea--very common to ages less soft
and fastidious than our own--of payment in self-restraint and labour,
or in actual bodily pain, loss, or disablement, for all good gained and
knowledge won.
He found the same idea again when, under the teaching of Julius March,
he began reading history, and when his little skill in Greek and Latin
carried him as far as the easier passages of the classic poets. Dick
was a very apt, if somewhat erratic and inaccurate, scholar. His
insatiable curiosity drove him forward. He scurried, in childish
fashion by all shortcuts available, to get at the heart of the
matter--a habit of mind detestable to pedants, since to them the letter
is the main object, not the spirit. Happily Julius was ceasing to be a
pedant, even in matters ecclesiastical. He loved the little boy, the
mingled charm and pathos of whose personality held him as with a spell.
With untiring patience he answered, to the best of his ability,
Dickie's endless questions, of how and why. And, perhaps, he learned
even more than he taught, under this fire of cross-examination. He had
never come intimately in contact with a child's mind before; and
Dickie's daring speculations and suggestions opened up very surprising
vistas at times. The boy was a born adventurer; a gaily audacious
sceptic moreover, notwithstanding his large swallow for romance, until
his own morsel of reason and sense of dramatic fitness were satisfied.
And so, having once apprehended that idea of payment, he searched for
justification of it instinctively in all he saw and read. He found it
again in the immortal story of the siege of Troy, and in the long
wanderings and manifold trials of that most experimental of
philosophers, the great Ulysses. He found it too in more modern and
more authentic history--in the lives of Galileo and Columbus, of Sir
Walter Raleigh and many another hero and heroine, of whom, because of
some unusual excellence of spirit or attainment, their fellow-men, and,
as it would seem, the very gods themselves, have grown jealous, not
enduring to witness a beauty rivalling or surpassing their own.
The idea was all confused as yet, coloured by childish fancies,
instinctive merely, not realised. Yet it occupied a very actual place
in the little boy's mind. He lingered over it silently, caressing it,
returning to it again and again in half-frightened delight. It lent a
fascination, somewhat morbid perhaps, to all ill-favoured and unsightly
creatures--to blind worms and slow-moving toads; to trapped cats and
dusty, disabled, winter flies; to a winged sea-gull, property of
Bushnell, one of the under-gardeners, that paced, picking up loathsome
living in the matter of slugs and snails, about the cabbage beds, all
the tragedy of its lost power of flight and of the freedom of the sea
in its wild, pale eyes.
It further provoked Dickie to expend all his not inconsiderable gift of
draughtsmanship, in the production of long processions of half-human
monsters of a grotesque and essentially uncomfortable character. He
scribbled these upon all available pieces of paper, including the
fly-leaves of Todhunter's Arithmetic, and of his Latin and Greek
primers. In an evil hour, for the tidiness of his school-books, he came
across the ballad of "Aiken-Drum," with its rather terrible mixture of
humour, realism, and the supernatural. From thenceforth for some
weeks--though he adroitly avoided giving any direct account of the
origin of these grisly imaginative freaks--many margins were adorned,
or rather defaced, by fancy portraits of that "foul and stalwart
ghaist" the Brownie of Badnock.
So did Dickie dwell, through all his childhood and the early years of
youth, in the dear land of dreams, petted, considered, sheltered with
perhaps almost cruel kindness, from the keen winds of truth that blow
forever across the world. Which winds, while causing all to suffer and
bringing death to the weak and fearful, to the lovers of lies and the
makers of them, go in the end to strengthen the strong who dare face
them, and fortify these in the acceptance of the only knowledge really
worth having--namely, the knowledge that romance is no exclusive
property of the past, or eternal life of the future, but that both
these are here immediately and actually for whoso has eyes to see and
courage to possess.
The fairest dreams are true. Yet it is so ordered that to know that we
must awake from them. And the awakening is an ugly process enough, too
often. When Dickie was about thirteen, the awakening began for him. It
came in time-honoured forms--those of horses and of a woman.
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH OUR HERO IMPROVES HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH MANY THINGS--HIMSELF
INCLUDED
It came about in this wise. Roger Ormiston was expected at Brockhurst,
after an absence of some years. He had served with distinction in the
Sikh war; and had seen fighting on a grand scale in the battles of
Sobraon and Chillianwallah. Later, the restless genius of travel had
taken hold on him, leading him far eastward into China, and northward
across the Himalayan snows. He had dwelt among strange peoples and
looked on strange gods. He had hunted strange beasts, moreover, and
learnt their polity and their ways. He had seen the bewildering
fecundity of nature in the tropic jungle, and her barren and terrible
beauty in the out-stretch of the naked desert. And the thought of all
this set Dickie's imagination on fire. The return of Roger Ormiston
was, to him, as the return of the mighty Ulysses himself.
For a change was coming over the boy. He began to weary of fable and
cry out for fact. He had just entered his fourteenth year. He was
growing fast; and, but for that dwarfing deformity, would have been
unusually tall, graceful and well-proportioned. But along with this
increase of stature had come a listlessness and languor which troubled
Lady Calmady. The boy was sweet-tempered enough, had his hours, indeed,
of overflowing fun and high spirits. Still he was restless and tired
easily of each occupation in turn. He developed a disquieting relish
for solitude; and took to camping-out on one of the broad window-seats
of the Long Gallery, in company with volumes of Captain Cook's and
Hakluyt's voyages, old-time histories of sport and natural history; not
to mention Robinson Crusoe and the merry but doubtfully decent pages of
Geoffrey Gambado. And his mother noted, not without a sinking of the
heart, that the window-seat, which in his solitary moods Dickie most
frequented, was precisely that one of the eastern bay which
commanded--beyond the smooth, green expanse and red walls of the
troco-ground--a good view of the grass ride, running parallel with the
lime avenue, along which the horses from the racing stables were taken
out and back, morning and evening, to the galloping ground. Then fears
began to assail Katherine that the boy's childhood, the content and
repose of it, were nearly past. Small wonder that her heart should
sink!
On the day of her brother's return, Katherine, after rather anxious
search, so found Richard. He was standing on the book-strewn
window-seat. He had pushed open the tall narrow casement and leaned
out. The April afternoon was fitfully bright. A rainbow spanned the
landscape, from the Long Water in the valley to the edge of the forest
crowning the table-land. Here and there showers of rain fell, showing
white against huge masses of purple cloud piled up along the horizon.
And as Katherine drew near, threading her way carefully between the
Chinese cabinets, oriental jars, and many quaint treasures furnishing
the end of the great room, she saw that, along the grass ride, some
twenty race-horses, came streeling homeward in single file--a long line
of brown, chestnut, black, and of the raw yellows and scarlets of
horse-clothing against the delicate green of springing turf and opening
leaves. Beside them, clad in pepper-and-salt mixture, breeches and
gaiters complete, Mr. Chifney pricked forward soberly on his handsome
gray cob. The boys called to one another now and then, admonished a
fretful horse breaking away from the string. One of them whistled
shrilly a few bars of that then popular but undistinguished tune, "Pop
goes the weazel." And Richard craned far out, steadying himself against
the stone mullion on either side with uplifted hands, heedless alike of
his mother's presence and of the heavy drops of rain which splattered
in at the open casement.
"Dickie, Dickie," Katherine called, in swift anxiety. "Be careful. You
will fall."
She came close, putting her arm round him. "You reckless darling," she
went on; "don't you see how dangerous the least slip would be?"
The boy straightened himself and looked round at her. His blue eyes
were alight. All the fitful brightness, all the wistful charm of the
April evening was in his face.
"But it's the only place where I can see them, and they're such
beauties," he said. "And I want to see them so much. You know we always
miss them somehow, mummy, when we go out."
Katherine was off her guard. Three separate strains of feeling
influenced her just then. First, her growing recognition of the change
in Richard, of that passing away of childhood which could not but make
for difficulty and, in a sense, for pain. Secondly, the natural
excitement of her brother's homecoming, disturbing the monotony of her
daily life, bringing, along with very actual joy, memories of a past,
well-beloved yet gone beyond recall. Lastly, the practical and
immediate fear that Dickie had come uncommonly near tumbling
incontinently out of the window. And so, being moved, she held the boy
tightly and answered rather at random, thereby provoking fate.
"Yes, my dearest, I know we always miss them somehow when we go out. It
is best so. But do pray be more careful with these high windows."
"Oh! I'm all right--I'm careful enough." His glance had gone back to
where the last of the horses passed out of sight behind the red wall of
the gardens. "But why is it best so? Ah! they're gone!" he exclaimed.
Katherine sat down on the window-seat, and Richard, clinging on to the
window-ledge, while she still held him, lowered himself into a sitting
position beside her.
"Thank you, mummy," he said. And the words cut her. They came so often
in each day, and always with the same little touch of civil dignity.
The courtesy of Richard's recognition of help given, failed to comfort
her for the fact that help was so constantly required. Lady Calmady's
sense of rebellion arose and waxed strong whenever she heard those
thanks.
"Mother," he went on, "I want to ask you something. You won't mind?"
"Do I ever mind you questioning me?" Yet she felt a certain tightening
about her heart.
"Ah, but this is different! I've wanted to for a long while, but I did
not know if I ought--and yet I did not quite like to ask Auntie Marie
or Julius. And, of course, one doesn't speak to the servants about
anything of that sort."
Richard's curly head went up with a fine, little air of pride as he
said the last few words. His mother smiled at him. There was no doubt
as to her son's breeding.
"Well, what then?" she said.
"I want to know--you're sure you don't mind--why you dislike the
horses, and never go to the stables or take me there? If the horses are
wrong, why do we keep them? And if they're not wrong, why, mother,
don't you see, we may enjoy them, mayn't we?"
He flushed, looking up at her, spoke coaxingly, merrily, a trifle
embarrassed by his own temerity, yet keen to prove his point and
acquire possession of this so coveted joy.
Katherine hesitated. She was tempted to put aside his question with
some playful excuse. And yet, where was the use? The question must
inevitably be answered one day; and Katherine, as had been said, was
moved just now, dumbness of long habit somewhat melted. Perhaps this
was the appointed time. She drew her arm from around the boy and took
both his hands in hers.
"My dearest," she said, "our keeping the horses is not wrong. But--one
of the horses killed your father."
Richard's lips parted. His eyes searched hers.
"But how?" he asked presently.
"He was trying it at a fence, and it came down with him--and trampled
him."
There was a pause. At last the boy asked rather breathlessly: "Was he
killed then, mother, at once?"
It had been Katharine's intention to state the facts simply, gravely,
and without emotion. But to speak of these things, after so long
silence, proved more trying than she had anticipated. The scene in the
red drawing-room, the long agony of waiting and of farewell rose up
before her after all these years with a vividness and poignancy that
refused to be gain-said.
"No," she answered, "he lived four days. He spoke to me of many things
he wished to do. And--I have done them all, I think. He spoke to me of
you----" Katherine closed her eyes. "The boy might care for the
stables. The boy must ride straight." For the moment she could not look
at Richard, knowing that which she must see. The irony of those
remembered words appeared too great.--"But he suffered," she went on
brokenly, "he suffered--ah! my dear----"
"Mummy, darling mummy, don't look like that!" Dickie cried. He wrenched
his hands from her grasp and threw his arms impulsively about her neck.
"Don't--it hurts me. And--and, after all," he added, reasoningly,
consolingly, "it wasn't one of these horses, you know. They've never
done anybody any harm. It was an accident. There must always be
accidents sometimes, mustn't there? And then, you see, it all happened
long, long ago. It must have, for I don't remember anything about it.
It must have happened when I was a baby."
"Alas, no," Katherine exclaimed, wrung by the pathos of his innocent
egoism; "it happened even before then, my dearest, before you were
born."
With the unconscious arrogance of childhood, Richard had, so far, taken
his mother's devotion very much as a matter of course. He had never
doubted that he was, and always had been, the inevitable centre of all
her interests. So now, her words and her bearing, bringing--in as far
as he grasped them--the revelation of aspects of her life quite
independent of his all-important, little self, staggered him. For the
first time poor Dickie realised that even one's own mother, be she
never so devoted, is not her child's exclusive and wholly private
property, but has a separate existence, joys and sorrows apart.
Instinctively he took his arms from about her neck and backed away into
the angle of the window-seat, regarding her with serious and somewhat
startled attention. And, doing so, he for the first time realised
consciously something more, namely, the greatness of her beauty.
For the years had dealt kindly with Katherine Calmady. Not the great
sorrows of life, or its great sacrifices, but fretfulness, ignoble
worries, sordid cares, are that which draw lines upon a woman's face
and harshen her features. At six and thirty Lady Calmady's skin was
smooth and delicate, her colour, still clear and softly bright. Her
hair, though somewhat darker than of old, was abundant. Still she wore
it rolled up and back from her forehead, showing the perfect oval of
her face. Her eyes, too, were darker; and the expression of them had
become profound--the eyes of one who has looked on things which may not
be told and has chosen her part. Her bosom had become a little fuller;
but the long, inward curve of her figure below it to the round and
shapely waist, and the poise of her rather small hips, was lithe and
free as ever. While there was that enchanting freshness about her which
is more than the mere freshness of youth or of physical health--which
would seem, indeed, to be the peculiar dowry of those women who, having
once known love in all its completeness and its strength, of choice
live ever afterwards in perfect chastity of act and thought.
And a perception not only of the grace of her person, as she sat
sideways on the window-seat in her close-fitting, gray gown, with its
frilled lace collar and ruffles at the wrists, came to Richard now. He
perceived something of this more intimate and subtle charm which
belonged to her. He was enthralled by the clear sweetness, as of dewy
grass newly turned by the scythe, which always clung about her, and by
the whispering of her silken garments when she moved. A sudden
reverence for her came upon him, as though, behind her gracious and so
familiar figure, he apprehended that which belonged to a region
superior, almost divine. And then he was seized--it is too often the
fate of worshippers--with jealousy of that past of hers of which he had
been, until now, ignorant. And yet another emotion shook him, for, in
thus realising and differentiating her personality, he had grown
vividly, almost painfully, conscious of his own.
He turned away, laying his cheek against the stone window-ledge, while
the drops of a passing scud of rain beat in on his hot face.
"Then--then my father never saw me," he exclaimed vehemently. And,
after a moment's pause, added, "I am glad of that--very glad."
"Ah! But, my dearest," Lady Calmady cried, bewildered and aghast, "you
don't know what you are saying--think."
Richard kept his face to the splashing rain.
"I don't want to say anything wrong; but," he repeated, "I am glad."
He turned to her, his lips quivering a little, and a desolate
expression in his eyes, which told Katherine, with only too bitter
assurance, that his childhood and the repose of it were indeed over and
gone.
She held out her arms to him in silent invitation, and drew the dear
curly head on to her bosom.
"You're not displeased with me, mummy?"
"Does this seem as if I was displeased?" she asked.
Then they sat silent once more, Katherine swaying a little as she held
him, soothing him almost as in his baby days.
"I won't lean out of the window again," he said presently, with a sigh
of comfort. "I promise that."
"There's a darling. But I am afraid we must go. Uncle Roger will be
here soon."
The boy raised his head.
"Mother," he said quickly, "will you send Clara, please, to put away
these books? And may I have Winter to fetch me? I--I'm tired. If you
don't mind? I don't care to walk."
Yet, since happily at thirteen Richard's moods were still as many and
changeful as the aspects of that same April day, he enjoyed some
royally unclouded hours before he--most unwillingly--retired to bed
that night. For on close acquaintance the great Ulysses proved a very
satisfactory hero. Roger Ormiston's character had consolidated. It was
to some purpose that he had put away the pleasant follies of his youth.
He looked out now with a coolness and patience, born of wide experience,
upon men and upon affairs. He had ceased to lose either his temper or
his head. Acquiescing with undismayed and cheerful common sense in
the fact that life, as we know it, is but a sorry business, and that
rough things must of necessity be done and suffered every day, he had
developed an active--though far from morbidly sentimental--compassion
for the individual, man and beast alike. Not that Colonel Ormiston
formulated all that, still less held forth upon it. He was content, as
is so many another Englishman, to be a dumb and practical philosopher--for
which those who have lived with philosophers of the eloquent sort will
unquestionably give thanks, knowing, to their sorrow, how often
handsome speech is but a cloak to hide incapacity of honest doing.
And so, after dinner, under plea of an imperative need of cigars,
Ormiston had borne Dickie off to the Gun-Room; and there, in the
intervals of questioning him a little about his tastes and occupations,
had told him stories many and great. For he wanted to get hold of the
boy and judge of what stuff he was made. Like all sound and
healthy-minded men he had an inherent suspicion of the abnormal. He
could not but fear that persons unusually constituted in body must be
the victims of some corresponding crookedness of spirit. But as the
evening drew on he became easy on this point. Whatever Richard's
physical infirmity, his nature was wholesome enough. Therefore when, at
close upon ten o'clock, Lady Calmady arrived in person to insist that
Dickie must go, there and then, straight to bed, she found a pleasant
scene awaiting her.
The square room was gay with lamplight and firelight, which brought
into strong relief the pictures of famous horses and trophies of
old-time weapons--matchlocks, basket-handled swords, and neat
silver-hilted rapiers, prettiest of toys with which to pink your
man--that decorated its white-paneled walls.
Ormiston stood with his back to the fire, one heel on the fender, his
broad shoulders resting against the high chimneypiece, his head bent
forward as he looked down, in steady yet kindly scrutiny, at the boy.
His face was tanned by the sun and wind of the long sea voyage--people
still came home from India by the Cape--till his hair and moustache
showed pale against his bronzed skin. And to Richard, listening and
watching from the deep armchair drawn up at right angles to the hearth,
he appeared as a veritable demigod, master of the secrets of life and
death--beheld, moreover, through an atmosphere of fragrant tobacco
smoke, curiously intoxicating to unaccustomed nostrils. Dickie had
tucked himself into as small a space as possible, to make room for
young Camp, who lay outstretched beside him. The bull-dog's great
underhung jaw and pendulous, wrinkled cheeks rested on the arm of the
chair, as he stared and blinked rather sullenly at the fire--moved and
choked a little, slipping off unwillingly to sleep, to wake with a
start, to stare and blink once more. The embroidered _couvre-pieds_,
which Dickie had spread across him, gathering the top edge of it up
under the front of his Eton jacket, offered luxurious bedding. But Camp
was a typical conservative, slow-witted, stubborn against the ingress
of a new idea. This tall, somewhat masterful stranger must prove
himself a good man and true--according to bull-dog understanding of
those terms--before he could hope to gain entrance to that faithful,
though narrow heart.
Ormiston meanwhile, finely contemptuous of canine criticism, greeted
his sister cheerily.
"You're bound to give us a little law to-night, Kitty," he said,
holding out his hand to her. "We won't break rules and indulge in
unbridled license as to late hours again, will we, Dick? But, you see,
we've both been doing a good deal, one way and another, since we last
met, and there were arrears of conversation to make up."--He smiled
very charmingly at Lady Calmady, and his fingers closed firmly on her
hand.--"We've been getting on famously, notwithstanding our long
separation." He looked down at Richard again. "Fast friends, already,
and mean to remain so, don't we, old chap?"
Thereupon Lady Calmady's soul received much comfort. Her pride was
always on the alert, fiercely sensitive concerning Richard. And the joy
of this meeting had, till now, an edge of jealous anxiety to it. If
Roger did not take to the boy, then--deeply though she loved him--Roger
must go. For the same elements were constant in Katherine Calmady. Not
all the discipline of thirteen years had tamed the hot blood in her
which made her order out the Clown for execution. But as Ormiston
spoke, her face softened, her eyes grew luminous and smiled back at him
with an exquisite gladness. The soft gloom of her black velvet dress
emphasised the warm, golden whiteness of her bare shoulders and arms.
Ormiston seeing her just then, understanding something of the drama of
her thought, was moved from his habitual cool indifference of bearing.
"Katherine," he said, "do you know you take one rather by surprise.
Upon my word you're more beautiful than ever."
And Richard's clear voice rang out eagerly from the depths of the big
chair--
"Yes--yes--isn't she, Uncle Roger--isn't she--delicious?"
The man's smile broadened almost to laughter.
"You young monkey," he said very gently; "so you have discovered that
fact already, have you? Well, so much the better. It's a safe basis to
start from; don't you think so, Kitty?"
But Lady Calmady drew away her hand. The blood had rushed into her face
and neck. Her beauty, now, for so long, had seemed a negligible
quantity, a thing that had outlasted its need and use--since he who had
so rejoiced in it was dead. What is the value of ever so royal a crown
when the throne it represents has fallen to ruin? And yet, being very
much a woman, those words of praise came altogether sweetly to
Katherine from the lips of her brother and her son. She moved away,
embarrassed, not quite mistress of herself, sat down on the arm of
Richard's chair, leaned across him and patted the bull-dog--who raised
his heavy head with a grunt, and slapped Dickie smartly in the stomach
with his tail, by way of welcome.
"You dear foolish creatures," she said, "pray talk of something more
profitable. I am growing old, and, in some ways, I am rather thankful
for it. All the same, Dickie, darling, you positively must and shall go
to bed."
But Colonel Ormiston interrupted her. He spoke with a trace of
hesitation, turning to the fireplace and flicking the ash off the end
of his cigar.
"By the bye, Katherine, how's Mary Cathcart? Have you seen her lately?"
"Yes, last week."
"Then she's not gone the way of all flesh and married?"
"No," Lady Calmady answered. She bent a little lower, tracing out the
lines on the dog's wrinkled forehead with her finger. "Several men have
asked her to marry. But there is only one man in the world, I fancy,
whom Mary would ever care to marry--poor Camp, did I tickle you?--and
he, I believe, has not asked her yet."
"Ah! there," Ormiston exclaimed quickly, "you are mistaken."
"Am I?" Katherine said. "I have great faith in Mary. I suppose she was
too wise to accept even him, being not wholly convinced of his love."
Lady Calmady raised her eyes. Ormiston looked very keenly at her. And
Richard, watching them, felt his breath come rather short with
excitement, for he understood that his mother was speaking in riddles.
He observed, moreover, that Colonel Ormiston's face had grown pale for
all its sunburn.
"And so," Katherine went on, "I think the man in question had better be
quite sure of his own heart before he offers it to Mary Cathcart
again."
Ormiston flung his half-smoked cigar into the fire. He came and stood
in front of Richard.
"Look here, old chap," he said, "what do you say to our driving over to
Newlands to-morrow? You can set me right if I've forgotten any of the
turns in the road, you know. And you and Miss Cathcart are great chums,
aren't you?"
"Mother, may I go?" the boy asked.
Lady Calmady kissed his forehead.
"Yes, my dearest," she said. "I will trust you and Uncle Roger to take
care of each other for once. You may go."
The immediate consequence of all which was, that Richard went to bed
that night with a brain rather dangerously active and eyes rather
dangerously bright. So that when sleep at last visited him, it came
burdened with dreams, in which the many impressions and emotions of the
day took altogether too lively a part, causing him to turn restlessly
to and fro, and throw his arms out wide over the cool linen sheets and
pillow.
For there was new element in Dickie's dreams to-night:--namely, a
recurrent distress of helplessness and incapacity of movement, and
therefore of escape, in the presence of some on-coming multitudinous
terror. He was haunted, moreover, by a certain stanza of the ballad of
Chevy Chase. It had given him a peculiar feeling, sickening yet
fascinating, ever since he could remember first to have read it, a
feeling which caused him to dread reading it beforehand, yet made him
turn back to it again and again. And to-night, sometimes Richard was
himself, sometimes his personality seemed merged in that of
Witherington, the crippled fighting-man, of whose maiming and deadly
courage that stanza tells. And the battle was long and fierce, as from
out a background of steeple-shaped, honey-combed rocks and sparse trees
with large golden leaves--like those on the panels of the great,
lacquered cabinets in the Long Gallery--innumerable hordes of fanatic
Chinamen poured down on him, a hideous bedizenment of vermilion
war-devils painted on their blue tunics and banners and shields. And
he, Richard,--or was it he, Witherington?--alone facing them all,--they
countless in number, always changing yet always the same. From under
their hard, upturned hats, a peacock feather erect in each, the cruel,
oblique-eyed, impassive faces stared at him. They pressed him back and
back against the base of a seven-storied pagoda, the wind bells of
which jangled far above him from the angles of its tiers of fluted
roofs. And the sky was black and polished. Yet it was broad, glaring
daylight, every object fearfully distinct. And he was fixed there,
unable to get away because--yes, of course, he was Witherington, so
there was no need of further explanation of that inability of escape.
And still, at the same time, he could see Chifney on the handsome gray
cob, trotting soberly along the green ride, beside the long string of
race-horses coming home from exercise. The young leaves were fragile
and green now, not sparse and metallic, and the April rain splashed in
his face. He tried to call out to Tom Chifney, but the words died in
his throat. If they would only put him on one of those horses! He knew
he could ride, and so be safe and free. He called again. That time his
voice came. They must hear. Were they not his own servants, after all,
and his own horses--or would be soon, when he was grown up? But neither
the trainer, nor the boys so much as turned their heads; and the living
ribbon of brown and chestnut swept on and away out of sight. No one
would heed him, no one would hearken to his cry.
Once his mother and some man, whom he knew yet did not know, passed by
him hand in hand. She wore a white dress, and smiled with a look of
ineffable content. Her companion was tall, gracious in bearing and
movement, but unsubstantial, a luminous shadow merely. Richard could
not see his face. Yet he knew the man was of near kin to him. And to
them he tried to speak. But it was useless. For now he was not Richard
any more. He was not even Witherington, the crippled fighting-man of
the Chevy Chase ballad. He was--he was the winged sea-gull, with wild,
pale eyes, hiding--abject yet fierce--among the vegetable beds in the
Brockhurst kitchen-gardens, and picking up loathsome provender of
snails and slugs. Roger Ormiston, calm, able, kindly, yet just a trifle
insolent, cigar in mouth, sauntered up and looked at the bird, and it
crawled away among the cabbages ignominiously, covered with the shame
of its incompleteness and its fallen estate.
And then from out the honey-combed rocks, under the black, polished
sky, the blue tunicked Chinamen swept down on Richard again with the
maddening horror of infinite number. They crushed in upon him, nearer
and nearer, pressing him back against the wall of that evil pagoda. The
air was hot and musky with their breath and thick with the muffled roar
of their countless footsteps. And they came right in on him, trampling
him down, suffocating, choking him with the heat of them and the dead
weight.
Shouting aloud--as it seemed to him--in angry terror, the boy woke. He
sat up trembling, wet with perspiration, bewildered by the struggle and
the wild phantasmagoria of his dream. He pulled open the neck of his
nightshirt, leaned his head against the cool brass rail of the back of
the bedstead, while he listened with growing relief to the rumble of
the wind in the chimney, and the swish of the rain against the
casements, and watched the narrow line of light under the door of his
mother's room.
Yes, he was Richard Calmady, after all, here in his own sheltered
world, among those who had loved and served him all his life. Nothing
hurtful could reach him here, nothing of which he need be afraid. There
was no real meaning in that ugly dream.
And then Dickie paused a moment, still sitting up in the warm darkness,
pressing his hands down on the mattress on either side to keep himself
from slipping. For involuntarily he recalled the feeling which had
prompted his declaration that he was glad his father had never seen
him; recalled his unwillingness to walk, lest he should meet Ormiston
unexpectedly; recalled the instinct which, even during that glorious
time in the Gun-Room, had impelled him to keep the embroidered
_couvre-pieds_ carefully over his legs and feet. And, recalling these
things, poor Dickie arrived at conclusions regarding himself which he
had happily avoided arriving at before. For they were harsh
conclusions, causing him to cower down in the bed, and bury his face in
the pillows to stifle the sound of the tearing sobs which would come.
Alas! was there not only too real a meaning in that same ugly dream and
that shifting of personality? He understood, while his body quivered
with the anguish of it, that he had more in common with, and was
nearer, far nearer, to the maimed fighting-man of the old ballad, even
to the poor seagull robbed of its power of flight, than to all those
dear people whose business in life it seemed to pet and amuse him, and
to minister to his every want--to the handsome soldier uncle, whose
home-coming had so excited him, to Julius March, his indulgent tutor,
to Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, his delightful companion, to Clara, his
obedient playfellow, to brown-eyed Mary Cathcart, and even to his
lovely mother herself!
Thus did the bitter winds of truth, which blow forever across the
world, first touch Richard Calmady, cutting his poor boyish pride as
with a whip. But he was very young. And the young, mercifully, know no
such word as the inevitable; so that the wind of truth is ever tempered
for them--the first smart of it over--by the sunshine of ignorant and
unlimited hope.
CHAPTER III
CONCERNING THAT WHICH, THANK GOD, HAPPENS ALMOST EVERY DAY
The merry spring sky was clear, save in the south where a vast
perspective of dappled cloud lay against it, leaving winding rivers of
blue here and there, as does ribbed sand for the incoming tide. As the
white gate of the inner park--the gray unpainted palings ranging far
away to right and left--swung to behind them, and Henry the groom,
after a smart run, clambered up into his place again beside Camp on the
back seat of the double dog-cart, Richard's spirits rose. Straight
ahead stretched out the long vista of that peculiar glory of
Brockhurst, its avenue of Scotch firs. The trunks of them, rough-barked
and purple below, red, smooth and glistering above, shot up some thirty
odd feet--straight as the pillars of an ancient temple--before the
branches, sweeping outward and downward, met, making a whispering,
living canopy overhead, through which the sunshine fell in tremulous
shafts, upon the shining coats and gleaming harness of the horses, upon
Ormiston's clear-cut, bronzed face and upright figure, and upon the
even, straw-coloured gravel of the road. The said road is raised by
about three feet above the level of the land on either side. On the
left, the self-sown firs grow in close ranks. The ground below them is
bare but for tussocks of coarse grass and ruddy beds of fallen fir
needles. On the right, the fir wood is broken by coppices of
silver-stemmed birches, and spaces of heather--that shows a
purple-brown against the gray of the reindeer moss out of which it
springs. Tits swung and frolicked among the tree-tops, and a jay flew
off noisily with a flash of azure wing-coverts and volley of harsh
discordant cries.
The rapid movement, the moist, pungent odour of the woodland, the
rhythmical trot of the horses, the rattle of the splinter-bar chains as
the traces slackened going downhill, above all the presence of the man
beside him, were pleasantly stimulating to Richard Calmady. The boy was
still a prey to much innocent enthusiasm. It appeared to him, watching
Ormiston's handling of the reins and whip, there was nothing this man
could not do, and do skilfully, yet all with the same easy unconcern.
Indeed, the present position was so agreeable to him that Dickie's
spirits would have risen to an unusual height, but for a certain
chastening of the flesh in the shape of the occasional pressure of a
broad strap against his middle, which brought him unwelcome remembrance
of recent discoveries it was his earnest desire to ignore, still better
to forget.
For just at starting there had been a rather bad moment. Winter, having
settled him on the seat of the dog-cart, was preparing to tuck him in
with many rugs, when Ormiston said--
"Look here, dear old chap, I've been thinking about this, and upon my
word you don't seem to me very safe. You see this is a different matter
to your donkey-chair, or the pony-carriage. There's no protection at
the side, and if the horses shied or anything--well, you'd be in the
road. And I can't afford to spill you the first time we go out
together, or there'd be a speedy end of all our fun."
Richard tried to emulate his uncle's cool indifference, and take the
broad strap as a matter of course. But he was glad the tongue of the
buckle slipped so directly into place; and that Henry's attention was
engaged with the near horse, which fretted at standing; and that
Leonard, the footman, was busy making Camp jump up at the back; and
that his mother, who had been watching him from the lowest of the wide
steps, turned away and went up to the flight to join Julius March
standing under the gray arcade. As the horses sprang forward,
clattering the little pebbles of the drive against the body of the
carriage, and swung away round the angle of the house, Katherine came
swiftly down the steps again smiling, kissing her hand to him. Still,
the strap hurt--not poor Dickie's somewhat ill-balanced body, to which
in truth it lent an agreeable sense of security, but his, just then,
all too sensitive mind. So that, notwithstanding a fine assumption of
gaiety, as he kissed his hand in return, he found the dear vision of
his mother somewhat blurred by foolish tears which he had resolutely to
wink away.
But now that disquieting incident was left nearly ten minutes behind.
The last park gate and its cluster of mellow-tinted thatched cottages
was past. Not only out-of-doors and all the natural exhilaration of it,
but the spectacle of the world beyond the precincts of the park--into
which world he, in point of fact, so rarely penetrated--wooed him to
interest and enjoyment. To Dickie, whose life through his mother's
jealous tenderness and his own physical infirmity had been so
singularly circumscribed, there was an element, slightly pathetic, of
discovery and adventure in this ordinary afternoon drive.
He did not want to talk. He was too busy simply seeing, everything food
for those young eyes and brain so greedy of incident and of beauty. He
sat upright and stared at the passing show.--At the deep lane, its
banks starred with primroses growing in the hollows of the gnarled
roots of oaks and ash trees. At Sandyfield rectory, deep-roofed,
bow-windowed, the red walls and tiles of it half smothered in ivy and
coton-easter. At the low, squat-towered, Georgian church, standing in
its acre of close-packed graveyard, which is shadowed by yew trees and
by the clump of three enormous Scotch firs in the rectory garden
adjoining. At the Church Farm, just beyond--a square white house, the
slated roofs of it running up steeply to a central block of chimneys,
it having, in consequence, somewhat the effect of a monster
extinguisher. At the rows of pale, wheat stacks, raised on granite
straddles; at the prosperous barns, yards, and stables, built of wood
on brick foundations, that surround it, presenting a mass of rich,
solid colour and of noisy, crowded, animal life. At the fields, plough
and pasture, marked out by long lines of hedgerow trees, broken by
coppices--these dashed with tenderest green--stretching up and back to
the dark purple-blue range of the moorland. At scattered cottages, over
the gates of whose gardens gay with daffodils and polyanthus, groups of
little girls and babies, in flopping sunbonnets and scanty lilac
pinafores, stared back at the passing carriage, and then bobbed the
accustomed curtsy. In the said groups were no boys, save of infant
years. The boys were away shepherding, or to plough, or bird-minding.
For as yet education was free indeed--in the sense that you were free
to take it, or leave it, as suited your pocket and your fancy.
Richard stared too at the pleasant, furze-dotted commons, spinning away
to right and left as the horses trotted sharply onward--commons whereon
meditative donkeys endured rather than enjoyed existence, after the
manner of their kind; and prodigiously large families of yellow-gray
goslings streeled after the flocks of white geese, across spaces of
fresh sprung grass around shallow ponds, in which the blue and dapple
of the sky was reflected. He stared at Sandyfield village too--a
straight street of detached houses, very diverse in colour and in
shape, standing back, for the most part, amid small orchards and
gardens that slope gently up from the brook, which last, backed, here
by a row of fine elms, there by one of Lombardy poplars, borders the
road. Three or four shops, modest in size as they are ambitious in the
variety of objects offered for sale in them, advance their windows
boldly. So does the yellow-washed inn, the Calmady arms displayed upon
its swinging sign-board. A miller's tented waggon, all powdery with
flour, and its team of six horses, brave with brass harness and bells,
a timber-carriage, and a couple of spring-carts, were drawn up on the
half-moon of gravel before the porch; while, from out the open door,
came a sound of voices and odour of many pipes and much stale beer.
And Richard had uninterrupted leisure to bestow on all this seeing, for
his companion, Colonel Ormiston, was preoccupied and silent. Once or
twice he looked down at the boy as though suddenly remembering his
presence and inquired if he was "all right." But it was not until they
had crossed the long, white-railed bridge, at the end of Sandyfield
street--which spans not only the little brown river overhung by
black-stemmed alders, but a bit of marsh, reminiscent of the ancient
ford, lush with water grasses, beds of king-cups, and broad-leaved
docks--not until then did Colonel Ormiston make sustained effort at
conversation. Beyond the bridge the road forks.
"Left to Newlands, isn't it?" he asked sharply.
Then, as the carriage swept round the turn, he woke up from his long
reverie; waking Richard up also, from his long dream of mere seeing, to
human drama but dimly apprehended close there at his side.
"Oh, well, well!" the man exclaimed, throwing back his head in sharp
impatience, as a horse will against the restraint of the bearing-rein.
He raised his eyebrows, while his lips set in a smile the reverse of
gay. Then he looked down at Richard again, an unwonted softness in his
expression.
"Been happy?" he said. "Enjoyed your drive? That's right. You
understand the art of being really good company, Dick."
"What's that?"
"Allowing other people to be just as bad company as they like."
"I--I don't see how you could be bad company," Dickie said, flushing at
the audacity of his little compliment.
"Don't you, dear old chap? Well, that's very nice of you. All the same,
I find, at times, I can be precious bad company to myself."
"Oh! but I don't see how," the boy argued, his enthusiasm protesting
against all possibility of default in the object of it. Richard wanted
to keep his hands down,--unconsciousness, if only assumed, told for
personal dignity--but in the agitation of protest, spite of himself, he
laid hold of the top edge of that same chastening strap. "It must be so
awfully jolly to be like you--able to do everything and go everywhere.
There must be such a lot to think about."
The softness was still upon Ormiston's face. "Such a lot?" he said. "A
jolly lot too much, believe me, very often, Dick."
He looked away up the copse-bordered road, over the ears of the
trotting horses.
"You've read the story of Blue Beard and that unpleasant locked-up room
of his, where the poor little wives hung all of a row? Well, I'm sorry
to say, Dick, most men when they come to my age have a room of that
sort. It's an inhospitable place. One doesn't invite one's friends to
dine and smoke there. At least no gentleman does. I've met one or two
persons who set the door open and rather gloried in inviting
inspection--but they were blackguards and cads. They don't count. Still
each of us is obliged to go in there sometimes himself. I tell you it's
anything but lively. I've been in there just now."
The dappled cloud creeping upward from the southern horizon veiled the
sun, the light of which grew pale and thin. The scent of the larch
wood, on the right, hung in the air. Richard's eyes were wide with
inquiry. His mind suffered growing-pains, as young minds of any
intellectual and poetic worth needs must. The possibility of moral
experience, incalculable in extent as that golden-gray outspread of
creeping, increasing vapour overhead, presented itself to him. The
vastness of life touched him to fear. He struggled to find a limit,
clothing his effort in childish realism of statement.
"But in that locked-up room, Uncle Roger, you can't have dead
women--dead wives."
Ormiston laughed quietly.
"You hit out pretty straight from the shoulder, master Dick," he said.
"Happily I can reassure you on one point. All manner of things are hung
up in there--some ugly--almost all ugly, now, to my eyes, though some
of them had charming ways with them once upon a time. But, I give you
my word, neither ugly nor charming, dead nor alive, are there any
wives."
The boy considered a moment, then said stoutly, "I wouldn't go in there
again. I'd lock the door and throw away the key."
"Wait till your time comes! You'll find that is precisely what you
can't do."
"Then I'd fetch them out, once and for all, and bury them."
The carriage had turned in at the lodge gate. Soon a long, low, white
house and range of domed conservatories came into view.
"Heroic remedies!" Ormiston remarked, amused at the boy's vehemence.
"But no doubt they do succeed now and then. To tell you the truth,
Dick, I have been thinking of something of the kind myself. Only I'm
afraid I shall need somebody to help me in carrying out so extensive a
funeral."
"Anybody would be glad enough to help you," Richard declared, with a
strong emphasis on the pronoun.
"Ah! but the bother is anybody can't help one. Only one person in all
this great rough and tumble of a world can really help one. And often
one finds out who that person is a little bit too late. However, here
we are. Perhaps we shall know more about it all in the next half hour,
if these good people are at home."
In point of fact the good people in question were not at home.
Ormiston, holding reins and whip in one hand, felt for his card-case.
"So we've had our journey for nothing you see, Dick," he said.
And to Richard the words sounded regretful. Moreover, the drama of this
expedition seemed to him shorn of its climax. He knew there should be
something more, and pushed for it.
"You haven't asked for Mary," he said. "And I thought we came on
purpose to see Mary. She won't like us to go away like this. Do ask."
Colonel Ormiston's expression altered, hardened. And Richard, in his
present hypersensitive state, remembered the cool scrutiny bestowed on
the winged sea-gull of his dream last night. This man had seemed so
near him just now, while they talked. Suddenly he became remote again,
all understanding of him shut away by that slight insolence of bearing.
Still he did as Richard prayed him. Miss Cathcart was at home. She had
just come in from riding.
"Tell her Sir Richard Calmady is here, and would like, if he may, to
see her."
Without waiting for a reply, Ormiston unbuckled that same chastening
strap silently, quickly. He got down and, coming round to the farther
side of the carriage, lifted Richard out; while Camp, who had jumped
off the back seat, stood yawning, whining a little, shaking his heavy
head and wagging his tail in welcome on the door-step. With the
bull-dog close at his heels, Ormiston carried the boy into the house.
The inner doors were open, and, up the long, narrow, pleasantly
fresh-tinted drawing-room, Mary Cathcart came to meet them. The folds
of her habit were gathered up in one hand. In the other she carried a
bunch of long-stalked, yellow and scarlet tulips. Her strong, supple
figure stood out against the young green of the lawns and shrubberies,
seen through the French windows behind her. She walked carefully, with
a certain deliberation, thanks to her narrow habit and top-boots. The
young lady carried her thirty-one years bravely. Her irregular features
and large mouth had always been open to criticism. But her teeth, when
her lips parted, were white and even, and her brown eyes frankly honest
as ever.
"Why, Dickie dear, it is simply glorious to have you and Camp paying
visits on your own account."--Her speech broke into a little cry, while
her fingers closed so tightly on the tulips that the brittle stalks
snapped, and the gay-coloured bells of them hung limply, some falling
on to the carpet about her feet. "Roger--Colonel Ormiston--I didn't
know you were home--were here!" Her voice was uncontrollably glad.
Still carrying the boy, Ormiston stood before her, observing her
keenly. But he was no longer remote. His insolence, which, after all,
may have been chiefly self-protective, had vanished.
"I'm very sorry--I mean for those poor tulips. I came to pay my
respects to Mr. and Mrs. Cathcart, and not finding them was preparing
to drive humbly home again. But----" Certainly she carried her years
well. She looked absurdly young. The brown and rose-red of her
complexion was clear as that of the little maiden who had fought with,
and overcome, and kissed the rough Welsh pony refusing the grip by the
roadside long ago. The hint of a moustache emphasised the upturned
corners of her mouth--but that was rather captivating. Her eyes danced,
under eyelids which fluttered for the moment. She was not beautiful,
not a woman to make men run mad. Yet the comeliness of her body, and
the spirit to which that body served as index, was so unmistakably
healthful, so sincere, that surely no sane man, once gathering her into
his arms, need ask a better blessing.--"But," Ormiston went on, still
watching her, "nothing would satisfy Dick but he must see you. With
many injunctions regarding his safety, Katherine made him over to me
for the afternoon. I'm on duty, you see. Where he goes, I'm bound to go
also--even to the destruction of your poor tulips."
Miss Cathcart made no direct answer.
"Sit here, Dickie," she said, pointing to a sofa.
"But you don't really mind our coming in, do you?" he asked, rather
anxiously.
The young lady placed herself beside him, drew his hand on to her knee,
patted it gently.
"Mind? No; on the whole, I don't think I do mind very much. In fact, I
think I should probably have minded very much more if you had gone away
without asking for me."
"There, I told you so, Uncle Roger," the boy said triumphantly. Camp
had jumped up on to the sofa too. He put his arm comfortably around the
dog's neck. It was as well to acquire support on both sides, for the
surface of the glazed chintz was slippery, inconveniently unsustaining
to his equilibrium. "It's an awfully long time since I've seen Mary,"
he continued, "more than three weeks."
"Yes, an awfully long time," Ormiston echoed, "more than six years."
"Dear Dickie," she said; "how pretty of you! Do you always keep count
of my visits?"
"Of course I do. They were about the best things that ever happened,
till Uncle Roger came home."
Forgetting herself, Mary Cathcart raised her eyes to Ormiston's in
appeal. The boy's little declaration stirred all the latent motherhood
in her. His fortunes at once passed so very far beyond, and fell so far
short of, the ordinary lot. She wondered whether, and could not but
trust that, this old friend and newcomer was not too self-centred, too
hardened by ability and success to appreciate the intimate pathos of
the position. Ormiston read and answered her thought.
"Oh! we are going to do something to change all that," he said
confidently. "We are going to enlarge our borders a bit; aren't we,
Dick? Only, I think, we should manage matters much better if Miss
Cathcart would help us, don't you?"
Richard remembering the locked-up room of evil contents and that
proposal of inclusive funeral rites, gave this utterance a wholly
individual application. His face grew bright with intelligence. But,
greatly restraining himself, he refrained from speech. All that had
been revealed to him in confidence, and so his honour was engaged to
silence.
Ormiston pulled forward a chair and sat down by him, leaning forward,
his hands clasped about one knee, while he gazed at the tulips
scattered on the floor.
"So tell Miss Cathcart we all want her to come over to Brockhurst just
as often as she can," he continued, "and help us to make the wheels go
round a little faster. Tell her we've grown very old, and discreet, and
respectable, and that we are absolutely incapable of doing or saying
anything foolish or naughty, which she would object to--and----"
But Richard could restrain himself no longer. "Why don't you tell her
yourself, Uncle Roger?"
"Because, my dear old chap, a burnt child fears the fire. I tried to
tell Miss Cathcart something once, long ago. She mayn't remember----"
"She does remember," Mary said quietly, looking down at Richard's hand
and patting it as it lay on her lap.
"But she stopped me dead," Ormiston went on. "It was quite right of
her. She gave the most admirable reasons for stopping me. Would you
care to hear them?"
"Oh! don't, pray don't," Mary murmured. "It is not generous."
"Pardon me, your reasons were absolutely just--true in substance and in
fact. You said I was a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift, and
so----"
"I was odious," she broke in. "I was a self-righteous little
Pharisee--forgive me----"
"Why--there's nothing to forgive. You spoke the truth."
"I don't believe it," Richard cried, in vehement protest.
"Dickie, you're a darling," Mary Cathcart said.
Colonel Ormiston left off nursing his knee, and leaned a little further
forward.
"Well then, will you come over to Brockhurst very often, and help us to
make the wheels go round, and cheer us all up, and do us no end of
good, though--I am a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift? You see I
run through the list of my titles again to make sure this transaction
is fair and square and above-board."
A silence followed, which appeared to Richard protracted to the point
of agitation. He became almost distressingly conscious of the man's
still, bronzed, resolute face on the one hand, of the woman's mobile,
vivid, yet equally resolute face on the other, divining far more to be
at stake than he had clear knowledge of. Tired and excited, his
impatience touched on anger.
"Say yes, Mary," he cried impulsively, "say yes. I don't see how
anybody can want to refuse Uncle Roger anything."
Miss Cathcart's eyes grew moist. She turned and kissed the boy.
"I don't think--perhaps--Dickie, that I quite see either," she answered
very gently.
"Mary, you know what you've just said?" Ormiston's tone was stern. "You
understand this little comedy? It means business. This time you've got
to go the whole hog or none."
She looked straight at him, and drew her breath in a long half-laughing
sigh.
"Oh, dear me! what a plague of a hurry you are in!" she said.
"Well--then--then--I suppose I must--it is hardly a graceful
expression, but it is of your choosing, not of mine--I suppose I must
go the whole hog."
Roger Ormiston rose, treading the fallen tulips under foot. And
Richard, watching him, beheld that which called to his remembrance, not
the hopeless and impotent battle under the black polished sky of his
last night's dream, but the gallant stories he had heard, earlier last
night, of the battles of Sobraon and Chillianwallah, of the swift
dangers of sport, and large daring of travel. Here he beheld--so it
seemed to his boyish thought--the aspect of a born conqueror, of the
man who can serve and wait long for the good he desires, and who
winning it, lays hold of it with fearless might. And this, while
causing Richard an exquisite delight of admiration, caused him also a
longing to share those splendid powers so passionate that it amounted
to actual pain.
Mary Cathcart's hand slid from under his hand. She too rose to her
feet.
"Then you have actually cared for me all along, all these years,"
Ormiston declared in fierce joy.
"Of course--who else could I care for? And--and--you've loved me,
Roger, all the while?"
And Ormiston answered "Yes,"--speaking the truth, though with a
difference. There had been interludes that had contributed somewhat
freely to the peopling of that same locked-up room. But it is possible
for a man to love many times, yet always love one woman best.
All this, however, Dickie did not know. He only knew they dazzled
him--the man triumphantly strong, the woman so bravely glad. He could
not watch them any longer. He went hot all over, and his heart beat. He
felt strangely desolate too. They were far away from him in thought, in
fact, though so close by. Dickie shut his eyes, put his arms round the
bull-dog, pressed his face hard against the faithful beast's shoulder;
while Camp, stretching his short neck to the uttermost, nuzzled against
him and essayed to lick his cheek.
Thus did Richard Calmady gain yet further knowledge of things as they
are.
CHAPTER IV
WHICH SMELLS VERY VILELY OF THE STABLE
April softened into May, and the hawthorns were in blossom before
Richard passed any other very note-worthy milestone on the road of
personal development. Then, greatly tempted, he committed a venial sin;
received prompt and coarse chastisement; and, by means of the said
chastisement, as is the merciful way of the Eternal Justice, found
unhoped of emancipation.
It happened thus. As the spring days grew warm Mademoiselle de
Mirancourt failed somewhat. The darkness and penetrating chill of the
English winter tried her, and this year her recuperative powers seemed
sadly deficient. A fuller tide of life had pulsed through Brockhurst
since Colonel Ormiston's arrival. The old stillness was departing, the
old order changing. With that change Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had no
quarrel, since, to her serene faith, all that came must, of necessity,
come through a divine ordering and in conformity to a divine plan. Yet
this more of activity and of movement strained her. The weekly drive
over to Westchurch, to hear mass at the humble Catholic chapel tucked
away in a side street, sorely taxed her strength. She returned
fortified, her soul ravished by that heavenly love, which, in pure and
innocent natures, bears such gracious kinship to earthly love. Yet in
body she was outworn and weary. On such occasions she would rally
Julius March, not without a touch of malice, saying:--
"Ah! _tres cher ami_, had you only followed the ever blessed footsteps
of those dear Oxford friends of yours and entered the fold of the true
Church, what fatigue might you not now spare me--let alone the
incalculable advantages to your own poor, charming, fatally darkened
soul!"
While Julius--who, though no less devout than of yore, was happily less
fastidiously sensitive--would reply:--
"But, dearest lady, had I followed the footsteps of my Oxford friends,
remember I should not be at Brockhurst at all."
"Clearly, then, everything is well ordered," she would say, folding her
fragile hands upon her embroidery frame, "since it is altogether
impossible we could do without you. Yet I regret for your soul. It is
so capable of receiving illumination. You English--even the most
finished among you--remain really deplorably stubborn, and nevertheless
it is my fate perpetually to set my affections upon one or other of
you."
It followed that Katherine devoted much of her time to Mademoiselle de
Mirancourt, walked slowly beside her up and down the sunny, garden
paths sheltered by the high, red walls whereon the clematis and jasmine
began to show for flower; or took her for quiet, little drives within
the precincts of the park. They spoke much of Lucia St. Quentin, of
Katherine's girlhood, and of those pleasant days in Paris long ago. And
this brought soothing and comfort, not only to the old lady, but to the
young lady also--and of soothing and comfort the latter stood in need
just now.
For it is harsh discipline even to a noble woman, whose life is still
strong in her, to stand by and see another woman but a few years her
junior entering on those joys which she has lost,--marriage, probably
motherhood as well. Roger Ormiston's and Mary Cathcart's love-making
was restrained and dignified. But the very calm of their attitude
implied a security of happiness passing all need of advertisement. And
Katherine was very far from grudging them this. She was not envious,
still less jealous. She did not want to take anything of theirs; but
she wanted, she sorely wanted, her own again. A word, a look, a certain
quickness of quiet laughter, would pierce her with recollection. Once
for her too, below the commonplaces of daily detail, flowed that same
magic river of delight. But the springs of it had gone dry. Therefore
it was a relief to be alone with Mademoiselle de Mirancourt--virgin and
saint--and to speak with her of the days before she had sounded the
lovely depths of that same magic flood--days when she had known of its
existence only by the mirage, born of the dazzle of its waters, which
plays over the innocent vacant spaces of a young girl's mind.
It was a relief even, though of sterner quality, to go into the red
drawing-room on the ground floor and pace there, her hands clasped
behind her, her proud head bowed, by the half hour together. If
personal joy is dead past resurrection, there is bitter satisfaction in
realising to the full personal pain. The room was duly swept, dusted,
casements set open to welcome breeze and sunshine, fires lighted in the
grate. But no one ever sat there. It knew no cheerfulness of social
intercourse. The crimson curtains and covers had become faded. They
were not renewed. The furniture, save for the absence of the narrow
bed, stood in precisely the same order as on the night when Sir Richard
Calmady died. It was pushed back against the walls. And in the wide
empty way between the two doors, Katherine paced, saturating all her
being with thoughts of that which was, and must remain, wholly and
inalienably her own--namely, her immense distress.
And in this she took the more comfort, because something else, until
now appearing wholly her own, was slipping a little away from her.
Dickie's health had improved notably in the last few weeks. His
listlessness had vanished, while his cheeks showed a wholesome warmth
of colour. But his cry was ever. "Mother, Uncle Roger's going to such a
place. He says he'll take me. I can go, can't I?" Or, "Mother, Mary's
going to do such a thing. She says she'll show me how. She may, mayn't
she?" And Katherine's answer was always "Yes." She grudged the boy none
of his new-found pleasures, rejoiced indeed to see him interested and
gay. Yet to watch the new broom, which sweeps so clean, is rarely
exhilarating to those that have swept diligently with the old one. The
nest had held her precious fledgling so safely till now; and this
fluttering of wings, eager for flight, troubled her somewhat. Not only
was Dickie's readiness to be away from her a trifle hard to bear; but
she knew that disappointment, of a certainty, lay in wait for him, and
that each effort towards wider action would but reveal to him how
circumscribed his powers actually were.
Meanwhile, however, Richard enjoyed himself recklessly, almost
feverishly, in the attempt to disprove the teaching of that ugly dream,
and keep truth at bay. There had been further drives, and the
excitement of witnessing a forest fire--only too frequent in the
Brockhurst country when the sap is up, and the easterly wind and May
sun have scorched all moisture from the surface of the moorland. He and
Mary had bumped over fir roots and scuttled down bridle-paths in the
pony-carriage, to avoid the rush of flame and smoke; had skirmished
round at a hand gallop, in search of recruits to reinforce Ormiston,
and Iles, and a small army of beaters, battling against the blazing
line that threatened destruction to the fir avenue. Now and again, with
a mighty roar, which sent Dickie's heart into his mouth, great tongues
of flame, clear as topaz and ruby in the steady sunshine, would leap
upwards, converting a whole tall fir into a tree of fire, while the
beaters running back, grimed with smoke and sweat, took a moment's
breathing-space in the open.
There had been more peaceful pastimes as well--several days' fishing,
enchanting beyond the power of language to describe. The clear
trout-stream meandering through the rich water-meadows; the herds of
cattle standing knee-deep in the grass, lazily chewing the cud and
switching their tails at the cloud of flies; the birds and wild
creatures haunting the streamside; the long dreamy hours of gentle
sport, had opened up to Dickie a whole new world of romance. His
donkey-chair had been left at the yellow-washed mill beneath the grove
of silvery-leaved, ever-rustling, balsam poplars. And thence, while
Ormiston and Mary sauntered slowly on ahead, the men--Winter in mufti,
oblivious of plate-cleaning and cellarage, and the onerous duties of
his high estate, Stamp, the water-bailiff, and Moorcock, one of the
under-keepers--had carried him across the great green levels. Winter
was an old and tried friend, and it was somewhat diverting to behold
him in this novel aspect, affable and chatty with inferiors,
displaying, moreover, unexpected knowledge in the mysteries of the
angler's craft. The other two men--sharp-featured, their faces ruddy as
summer apples, merry-eyed, clad in velveteen coats, that bulged about
the pockets, and wrinkled leather gaiters reaching halfway up the
thigh--charmed Richard, when his first shyness was passed. They were
eager to please him. Their talk was racy. Their laughter ready and
sincere. Did not Stamp point out to him a water-ouzel, with impudently
jerking tail, dipping and wading in the shallows of the stream? Did not
Moorcock find him a water-rail's nest, hidden in a tuft of reeds and
grass, with ten, yellowish, speckled eggs in it? And did not both men
pluck him handfuls of cowslips, of tawny-pink avens, and of mottled,
snake-headed fritillaries, and stow them away in the fishing-baskets
above the load of silver-and-red spotted trout?
Mary had protested Dickie could throw a fly, if he had a light enough
rod. And not only did he throw a fly, but at the fourth or fifth cast a
fish rose, and he played it--with skirling reel and much advice and
most complimentary excitement on the part of the whole good
company--and brought it skilfully within range of Stamp's landing-net.
Never surely was trout spawned that begot such bliss in the heart of an
angler! As, with panting sides and open gills, this three-quarter-pound
treasure of treasures flopped about on the sunny stream bank all the
hereditary instinct of sport spoke up clearly in Dickie. The boy--such
is youthful masculine human nature--believed he understood at last why
the world was made! At dressing-time he had his sacred fish carried on
a plate up to his room to show Clara; and, but for strong remonstrance
on the part of that devoted handmaiden, would have kept it by his
bedside all night, so as to assure himself at intervals, by sense of
touch--let alone that of smell--of the adorable fact of its veritable
existence.
But all this, inspiring though it was, served but as prelude to a more
profoundly coveted acquaintance--that with the racing-stable. For it
was after this last that Dickie still supremely longed--the more so, it
is to be feared, because it was, if not explicitly, yet implicitly
forbidden. A spirit of defiance had entered into him. Being granted the
inch, he was disposed to take the ell. And this, not in conscious
opposition to his mother's will; but in protest, not uncourageous,
against the limitations imposed on him by physical misfortune. The
boy's blood was up, and consequently, with greater pluck than
discretion, he struggled against the intimate, inalienable enemy that
so marred his fate. And it was this not ignoble effort which culminated
in disobedience.
For driving back one afternoon, later than usual,--Ormiston had met
them, and Mary and he had taken a by-path home through the woods,--the
pony-carriage, turned along the high level road beside the lake, going
eastward, just as the string of race-horses, coming home from exercise,
passed along it coming west. Richard was driving, Chaplin, the second
coachman, sitting in the dickey at the back of the low carriage. He
checked the pony, and his eyes took in the whole scene--the blue-brown
expanse of the lake dotted with water-fowl, on the one hand, the
immense blue-brown landscape on the other, ranging away to the faint
line of the chalk downs in the south; the downward slope of the park,
to the great square of red stable buildings in the hollow; the horses
coming slowly towards him in single file. Cawing rooks streamed back
from the fallow-fields across the valley. Thrushes and blackbirds
carolled. A wren, in the bramble brake close by, broke into sharp sweet
song. The recurrent ring of an axe came from somewhere away in the fir
plantations, and the strident rasping of a saw from the wood-yard in
the beech grove near the house.
Richard stared at that oncoming procession. Half-way between him and
the foremost of the horses the tan ride branched off, and wound down
the hillside to the stables. The boy set his teeth. He arrived at a
desperate decision,--touched up the pony, drove on.
Chaplin leaned forward, addressing him, over the back of the seat.
"Better wait here, hadn't we, Sir Richard? They'll turn off in a
minute."
Richard did not look round. He tried to answer coldly, but his voice
shook.
"I know. That's why I am going on."
There was a silence save for the cawing of the rooks, ring of the axe,
and grinding of wheels on the gravel. Chaplin, responsible, correct,
over five-and-thirty, and fully intending to succeed old Mr. Wenham,
the head coachman, on the latter's impending retirement from active
service, went very red in the face.
"Excuse me, but I have my orders, Sir Richard," he said.
Dickie still looked straight ahead.
"Very well," he answered, "then perhaps you'd better get out and walk
on home."
"You know I'm bound not to leave you, sir," the man said.
Dickie laughed a little in uncontrollable excitement. He was close to
them now. The leading horse was just moving off the main road, its
shadow lying long across the turf. How was it possible to give way with
the prize within reach?--"You can go or stay Chaplin, as you please. I
mean to speak to Chifney. I--I mean to see the stables."
"It's as much as my place is worth, sir."
"Oh! bother your place!" the boy cried impetuously.--Dear heart alive,
how fine they were as they filed by! That chestnut filly, clean made as
a deer, her ears laid back as she reached at the bit; and the brown,
just behind her--"I mean, I mean you needn't be afraid, Chaplin--I'll
speak to her ladyship. I'll arrange all that. Go to the pony's head."
At the end of the long string of horses came the trainer--a
square-built, short-necked man, sanguine complexioned and clean shaven.
Of hair, indeed, Mr. Chifney could only boast a rim of carroty-gray
stubble under the rim of the back of his hard hat. His right eye had
suffered damage, and the pupil of it was white and viscous. His lips
were straight and purplish in colour. He raised his hat and would have
followed on down the slope, but Dickie called to him.
As he rode up an unwonted expression came over Mr. Chifney's shrewd,
hard-favoured face. He took off his hat and sat there, bare-headed in
the sunshine, looking down at the boy, his hand on his hip.
"Good-day, Sir Richard," he said. "Anything I can do for you?"
"Yes, yes," Dickie stammered, all his soul in his eyes, his cheeks
aflame, "you can do just what I want most. Take me down, Chifney, and
show me the horses."
Here Chaplin coughed discreetly behind his hand. But that proved of
small avail, save possibly in the way of provocation. For socially
between the racing and house stables was a great gulf fixed; and Mr.
Chifney could hardly be expected to recognise the existence of a man in
livery standing at a pony's head, still less to accept direction from
such a person. Servants must be kept in their place--impudent, lazy
enough lot anyhow, bless you! On his feet the trainer had been known to
decline to moments of weakness. But in the saddle, a good horse under
him, he possessed unlimited belief in his own judgment, fearing neither
man, devil, nor even his own meek-faced wife with pink ribbons in her
cap. Moreover, he felt such heart as he had go out strangely to the
beautiful, eager boy gazing up at him.
"Nothing 'ud give me greater pleasure in life, Sir Richard," he said,
"if you're free to come. We've waited a long time, a precious long
time, sir, for you to come down and take a look at your horses."
"I'd have been to see them sooner. I'd have given anything to see them.
I've never had the chance, somehow."
Chifney pursed up his lips, and surveyed the distant landscape with a
very meaning glance. "I dare say not, Sir Richard. But better late than
never, you know; and so, if you are free to come----"
Again Chaplin coughed.
"Free to come? Of course I am free to come," Dickie asserted, his pride
touched to arrogance. And Mr. Chifney looked at him, an approving
twinkle in his sound eye.
"I agree, Sir Richard. Quite right, sir, you're free, of course."
Stolen waters are sweet, says the proverb. And to Richard Calmady, his
not wholly legitimate experience of the next hour was sweet indeed. For
there remains rich harvest of poetry in all sport worth the name, let
squeamish and sentimental persons declaim against it as they may.
Strength and endurance, disregard of suffering have a permanent appeal
and value, even in their coarsest manifestations. No doubt the noble
gentlemen of the neighbourhood, who "lay at Brockhurst two nights" on
the occasion of Sir Denzil's historic house-warming, to witness the
mighty bear-baiting, were sensible of something more in that somewhat
disgusting exhibition, than the mere gratification of brutal instincts,
the mere savage relish for wounds and pain and blood. And to Sir
Denzil's latest descendant the first sight of the training-stable--as
the pony-carriage came to a standstill alongside the grass plot in the
centre of the great, graveled square--offered very definite and
stirring poetry of a kind.
On three sides the quadrangle was shut in by one-storied, brick
buildings, the woodwork of doors and windows immaculate with white
paint. Behind, over the wide archway,--closed fortress-like by heavy
doors at night,--were the head-lad's and helpers' quarters. On either
side, forge and weighing-room, saddler's and doctor's shop. To right
and left a range of stable doors, with round swing-lights between each;
and, above these, the windows of hay and straw lofts and of the boys'
dormitories. In front were the dining-rooms and kitchens, and the
trainer's house--a square clock tower, carrying an ornate gilt vane,
rising from the cluster of red roofs. Twenty years had weathered the
raw of brick walls, and painted the tiling with all manner of orange
and rusty-coloured lichens; yet the whole place was admirably spick and
span, free of litter. Many cats, as Dickie noted, meditated in sunny
corners, or prowled in the open with truly official composure. Over all
stretched a square of bluest sky, crossed by a skein of
homeward-wending rooks. While above the roofs, on either side the
archway, the high-lying lands of the park showed up, broken, here and
there, by clumps of trees.
Mr. Chifney slipped out of the saddle.--"Here boy, take my horse," he
shouted to a little fellow hurrying across the yard. "I'm heartily glad
to see you, Sir Richard," he went on. "Now, if you care, as your
father's son can't very well be off caring, for horses----"
"If I care!" echoed Dickie, his eyes following the graceful chestnut
filly as she was led in over the threshold of her stable.
"I like that. That'll do. Chip of the old block after all," the trainer
said, with evident relish. "Well then, since you do care for horses as
you ought to, Sir Richard, we'll just make you free of this
establishment. About the most first-class private establishment in
England, sir, though I say it that have run the concern pretty well
single-handed for the best part of the last fifteen years--make you
free of it right away, sir. And, look you, when you've got hold, don't
you leave hold."
"No, I won't," Dickie said stoutly.
Mr. Chifney was in a condition of singular emotion, as he wrapped
Richard's rug about him and bore him away into the stables. He even
went so far as to swear a little under his breath; and Chifney was a
very fairly clean-mouthed man, unless members of his team of twenty and
odd naughty boys got up to some devilry with their charges. He carried
Richard as tenderly as could any woman, while he tramped from stall to
stall, loose-box to loose-box, praising his racers, calling attention
to their points, recounting past prowess, or prophesying future
victories.
And the record was a fine one; for good luck had clung to the
masterless stable, as Lady Calmady's bank-books and ledgers could
testify.
"Vinedresser by Red Burgundy out of Valeria--won two races at the
Newmarket Spring Meeting the year before last. Lamed himself somehow in
the horse-box coming back--did nothing for eighteen months--hope to
enter him for some of the autumn events."--Then later:--"Sahara, by
North African out of Sally-in-our-Alley. Beautiful mare? I believe you,
Sir Richard. Why she won the Oaks for you. Jack White was up. Pretty a
race as ever I witnessed, and cleverly ridden. Like to go up to her in
the stall? She's as quiet as a lamb. Catch hold of her head, boy."
And so Dick found himself seated on the edge of the manger, the
trainer's arm round him, and the historic Sahara snuffing at his jacket
pockets.
Then they crossed the quadrangle to inspect the colts and fillies,
where glories still lay ahead.
"Verdigris by Copper King out of Valeria again. And if he doesn't make
a name I'll never judge another horse, sir. Strain of the old
Touchstone blood there. Rather ugly? Yes, they're often a bit ugly that
lot, but devilish good uns to go. You ask Miss Cathcart about them.
Never met a lady who'd as much knowledge as she has of a horse. The
Baby, by Punch out of Lady Bountiful. Not much good, I'm afraid. No
grip, you see, too contracted in the hoofs. Chloroform by Sawbones out
of sister to Castinette."
And so forth, an endless repetition of genealogies, comments, anecdotes
to which Dickie lent most attentive ear. He was keen to learn, his
attention was on the stretch. He was in process of initiation, and
every moment of the sacred rites came to him with power and value. Yet
it must be owned that he found the lessening of the strain on his
memory and attention not wholly unwelcome when Mr. Chifney, sitting
beside him on the big, white-painted cornbin opposite Diplomacy's
loose-box, began to tell him of the old times when he--a little fellow
of eight to ten years of age--had been among the boys in his cousin,
Sam Chifney's famous stable at Newmarket. Of the long, weary traveling
before the days of railways, when the horses were walked by highroad
and country lane, ankle deep in mud, from Newmarket to Epsom; and after
victory or defeat, walked by slow stages all the way home again. Of
how, later, he had migrated to Doncaster; but, not liking the
"Yorkshire tykes," had got taken on in some well-known stables upon the
Berkshire downs.
"And it was there, Sir Richard," he said, "I met your father, and we
fancied each other from the first. And he asked me to come to him.
These stables were just building then. And here I've been ever since."
Mr. Chifney stared down at the clean red quarries of the stable floor,
and tapped his neat gaiters with the switch he held in his hand.
"Rum places, racing stables," he went on, meditatively; "and a lot of
rum things go on in 'em, one way and another, as you'll come to know.
And it ain't the easiest thing going, I tell you, to keep your hands
clean. Ungrateful business a trainer's, Sir Richard--wearing
business--shortens a man's temper and makes him old before his time.
Out by four o'clock on summer mornings, minding your cattle and keeping
your eye on those shirking blackguards of boys. No real rest, sir, day
or night. Wearing business--studying all the meetings and entering your
horses where you've reason to reckon they've most chance. And if your
horse wins, the jockey gets all the praise and the petting. And if it
fails the trainer gets all the blame. Yes, it's wearing work. But,
confound it all, sir," he broke out hotly, "there's nothing like it on
the face of God's earth. Horses--horses--horses--why the very smell of
the bedding's sweeter than a bunch of roses. Love 'em? I believe you.
And you'll love 'em too before you've done."
He turned and gripped Dickie hard by the shoulder.
"For we'll make a thorough-paced sportsman of you yet, Sir Richard," he
said, "God bless you--danged if we don't."
Which assertion Mr. Chifney repeated at frequent intervals over his
grog that evening, as he sat, not in the smart dining-room hung round
with portraits of Vinedresser and Sahara and other equine notabilities,
but in the snug, little, back parlour looking out on to the yard. Mrs.
Chifney was a gentle, pious woman, with whom her husband's profession
went somewhat against the grain. She would have preferred a nice
grocery, or other respectable, uneventful business in a country town,
and dissipation in the form of prayer rather than of race-meetings. But
as a slender, slightly self-righteous, young maiden she had fallen very
honestly and completely in love with Tom Chifney. So there was nothing
for it but to marry him and regard the horses as her appointed cross.
She nursed the boys when they were sick or injured, intervened fairly
successfully between their poor, little backs and her husband's
all-too-ready ash stick; and assisted Julius March in promoting their
spiritual welfare, even while deploring that the latter put his faith
in forms and ceremonies rather than in saving grace. Upon the trainer
himself she exercised a gently repressive influence.
"We won't swear, Mr. Chifney," she remarked mildly now.
"Swear! It's enough to make the whole bench of bishops swear to see
that lad."
"I did see him," Mrs. Chifney observed.
"Yes, out of window. But you didn't carry him round, and hear him
talk--knowledgeable talk as you could ask from one of his age. And
watch his face--as like as two peas to his father's."
"But her ladyship's eyes," put in Mrs. Chifney.
"I don't know whose eyes they are, but I know he can use 'em. It was as
pretty as a picture to see how he took it all."
Chifney tossed off the remainder of his tumbler of brandy and water at
a gulp.
"Swear," he repeated, "I could find it in my heart to swear like hell.
But I can find it in my heart to do more than that. I can forgive her
ladyship. By all that's----"
"Thomas, forgiveness and oaths don't go suitably together."
"Well, but I can though, and I tell you, I do," he said solemnly. "I
forgive her.--Shoot the Clown! by G--! I beg your pardon, Maria;--but
upon my soul, once or twice, when I had him in my arms to-day, I felt I
could have understood it if she'd had every horse shot that stood in
the stable."
He held the tumbler up against the lamp. But it was quite empty.
"Uncommon glad she didn't though, poor lady, all the same," he added,
parenthetically, as he set it down on the table again. "What do you
say, Maria--about time we toddled off to bed?"
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH DICKIE IS INTRODUCED TO A LITTLE DANCER WITH BLUSH-ROSES IN
HER HAT
"Her ladyship's inquired for you more than once, sir." This from Winter
meeting the pony-carriage and the returning prodigal at the bottom of
the steps.
The sun was low. Across the square lawn--whereon the Clown had found
death some thirteen years before--peacocks led home their hens and
chicks to roost within the two sexagonal, pepper-pot summer-houses that
fill in the angles of the red-walled enclosure. The pea-fowl stepped
mincingly, high-shouldered, their heads carried low, their long necks
undulating with a self-conscious grace. Dickie's imagination was aglow
like that rose-red sunset sky. The virile sentiment of all just heard
and seen, and the exultation of admitted ownership were upon him. He
felt older, stronger, more secure of himself than ever before. He
proposed to go straight to his mother and confess. In his present mood
he entertained no fear but that she would understand.
"Is Lady Calmady alone?" he asked.
"Mr. and Mrs. Cathcart are with her, Sir Richard." Winter leant down,
loosening the rug. His usual, undemonstrative speech took on a
loftiness of tone. "Mrs. William Ormiston and her daughter have driven
over with Mrs. Cathcart."--The butler was not without remembrance of
that dinner on the day following Dickie's birth. Socially he had never
considered Lady Calmady's sister-in-law quite up to the Brockhurst
level.
Richard leaned back, watching the mincing peacocks. It was so fair here
out of doors. The scent of the may hung in the air. The flame of the
sunset bathed the facade of the stately house. No doubt it would be
interesting to see new people, new relations; but he really cared to
see no one just now, except his mother. From her he wanted to receive
absolution, so that, his conscience relieved of the burden of his
disobedience, he might revel to the full in the thought of the
inheritance upon which--so it seemed to him--he had to-day entered.
Still, in his present humour, Dickie's sense of _noblesse oblige_ was
strong.
"I suppose I've got to go in and help entertain everybody," he
remarked.
"Her ladyship'll think something's wrong, Sir Richard, and be anxious
if you stay away."
The boy held out his arms. "All right then, Winter," he said.
Here Chaplin again gave that admonitory cough. Richard, his face
hardening to slight scorn, looked at him over the butler's shoulder.
"Oh! You need not be uneasy, Chaplin. When I say I'll do a thing, I
don't forget."
Which brief speech caused the butler to reflect, as he bore the boy
across the hall and up-stairs, that Sir Richard was coming to have an
uncommonly high manner about him, at times, considering his age.
An unwonted loudness of conversation filled the Chapel-Room. It was
filled also by the rose-red light of the sunset streaming in through
the curve of the oriel-window. This confused and dazzled Richard
slightly, entering upon it from the silence and sober clearness of the
stair-head. A shrill note of laughter.--Mr. Cathcart's voice saying, "I
felt it incumbent upon me to object, Lady Calmady. I spoke very plainly
to Fallowfeild."--Julius March's delicately refined tones, "I am afraid
spirituality is somewhat deficient in that case."--Then the high
flute-like notes of a child, rising clearly above the general murmur,
"_Ah! enfin--le voila, Maman. C'est bien lui, n'est-ce pas?_" And with
that, Richard was aware of a sudden hush falling upon the assembled
company. He was sensible every one watched him as Winter carried him
across the room and set him down in the long, low armchair near the
fireplace. Poor Dickie's self-consciousness, which had been so
agreeably in abeyance, returned upon him, and a red, not of the sunset,
dyed his face. But he carried his head proudly. He thought of Chifney
and the horses. He refused to be abashed.
And Ormiston, breaking the silence, called to him cheerily:--
"Hello, old chap, what have you been up to? You gave Mary and me the
slip."
"I know I did," the boy answered bravely. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Cathcart?"
as the latter nodded and smiled to him--a large, gentle, comfortable
lady, uncertain in outline, thanks to voluminous draperies of black
silk and black lace. "How d'ye do, sir?" this to Mr. Cathcart--a tall,
neatly-made man, but for a slight roundness of the shoulders. Seeing
him, there remained no doubt as to whence Mary inherited her large
mouth; but matter for thankfulness that she had avoided further
inheritance. For Mr. Cathcart was notably plain. Small eyes and snub
nose, long lower jaw, and gray forward-curled whiskers rendered his
appearance unfortunately simian. He suggested a caricature; but one,
let it be added, of a person undeniably well-bred.
"My darling, you are very late," Katherine said. Her back was towards
her guests as she stooped down arranging the embroidered rug across
Dickie's feet and legs. Laying his hand on her wrist he squeezed it
closely for a moment.
"I--I'll tell you all about that presently, mummy, when they're gone.
I've been enjoying myself awfully--you won't mind?"
Katherine smiled. But, looking up at her, it appeared to Richard that
her face was very white, her eyes very large and dark, and that she was
very tall and, somehow, very splendid just then. And this fed his
fearlessness, fed his young pride, even as, though in a more subtle and
exquisite manner, his late experience of the racing-stable had fed
them. His mother moved away and took up her interrupted conversation
with Mr. Cathcart regarding the delinquencies of Lord Fallowfeild.
Richard looked coolly round the room.
Every one was there--Julius, Mary, Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, while
away in the oriel-window Roger Ormiston stood talking to a pretty,
plump, very much dressed lady, who chattered, laughed, stared, with
surprising vivacity. As Dickie looked at her she stared back at him
through a pair of gold eye-glasses. Against her knee, that rosy light
bathing her graceful, little figure, leant a girl about Dickie's own
age. She wore a pale pink and blue frock, short and outstanding in the
skirts. She also wore a broad-brimmed, white hat, with, a garland of
blush-roses around the crown of it. The little girl did not stare. She
contemplated Richard languidly, yet with sustained attention. Her
attitude and bearing were attractive. Richard wanted to see her close,
to talk to her. But to call and ask her to come to him was awkward. And
to go to her--the boy grew a little hot again--was more awkward still.
Mrs. Ormiston dropped her gold eye-glasses into her lap.
"It really is ten thousand pities when these things happen in the wrong
rank of life," she said. "Rightly placed they might be so profitable."
"For goodness sake, be careful, Ella," Ormiston put in quickly.
"Oh! My dear creature, don't be nervous. Everybody's attending to
everybody else, and if they did hear they wouldn't understand. I'm one
of the fortunate persons who are supposed never to talk sense and so I
can say what I like." Mrs. Ormiston gave her shrill little laugh. "Oh!
there are consolations, depend upon it, in a well-sustained reputation
for folly!"
The laugh jarred on Richard. He decided that he did not quite like his
aunt Charlotte Ormiston. All the same he wished the charming, little
girl would come to him.
"But to return. It's a waste. To some poor family it might have been a
perfect fortune. And I hate waste. Perhaps you have never discovered
that?"
Ormiston let his glance rest on the somewhat showy figure.
"I doubt if William has discovered it either," he remarked.
"Oh! as to your poor brother William, heaven only knows what he has or
has not discovered!--Now, Helen, this conversation becomes undesirable.
You've asked innumerable questions about your cousin. Go and make
acquaintance with him. I'm the best of mothers of course, but, at
times, I really can do quite well without you."
Now surely this was a day of good fortune, for again Dickie had his
desire. And a most surprisingly pretty, little desire it
proved--seductive even, deliciously finished in person and in manner.
The boy gazed at the girl's small hands and small, daintily shod feet,
at the small, lovely, pink and white face set in a cloud of
golden-brown hair, at the innocent, blue eyes, at the mouth with
upturned corners to it. Richard was not of age to remark the eyes were
rather light in colour, the lips rather thin. The exquisite refinement
of the girl's whole person delighted him. She was delicate as a
miniature, as a figure carved in ivory. She was like his Uncle Roger,
when she was silent and still. She was like--oh, poor Dick!--some
bright glancing, small, saucy bird when she spoke and her voice had
those clear, flute tones in it.
"Since you did not come to me, I had to come to you," she said. "I have
wanted so much to see you. I had heard about you at home, in Paris."
"Heard about me?" Dickie repeated, flattered and surprised. "But won't
you sit down. Look--that little chair. I can reach it."
And leaning sideways he stretched out his hand. But his finger-tips
barely touched the top rail. Richard flushed. "I'm awfully sorry," he
said, "but I am afraid--it isn't heavy--I must let you get it
yourself."
The girl, who had watched him intently, her hands clasped, gave a
little sigh. Then the corners of her mouth turned up as she smiled. A
delightful dimple showed in her right cheek.
"But, of course," she replied, "I will get it."
She settled herself beside him, folded her hands, crossed her feet,
exposing a long length of fine, open-work, silk stocking.
"I desired enormously to see you," she continued. "But when you came in
I grew shy. It is so with one sometimes."
"You should use your influence, Lady Calmady," Mr. Cathcart was saying.
"Unquestionably the condition of the workhouse is far from
satisfactory. And Fallowfeild is too lenient. That _laisser-aller_
policy of his threatens to land us in serious difficulties. The place
is insanitary, and the food is unnecessarily poor. I am not an advocate
for extravagance, but I cannot bear to see discomfort which might be
avoided. Fallowfeild is the most kind-hearted of men, but he has a
fatal habit of believing what people tell him. And those workhouse
officials have got round him. The whole matter ought to be subjected to
the strictest investigation."
"It is very nice of you to have wanted so much to see me," Dickie said.
His eyes were softly bright.
"Oh! but one always wants to see those who are talked about. It is a
privilege to have them for one's relations."
"But--but--I'm not talked about?" the boy put in, somewhat startled.
"But certainly. You are so rich. You have this superb _chateau_. You
are"--she put her head on one side with a pretty, saucy, birdlike
movement--"_enfin_," she said, "I had the greatest curiosity to make
your acquaintance. I shall tell all my young friends at the convent
about this visit. I promised them that, as soon as mamma said we should
probably come here. The good sisters also are interested. I shall
recount a whole history of this beautiful castle, and of you, and
your----"
She paused, clasped her hands, looking away at her mother, then
sideways at Richard, bowing her little person backwards and forwards,
laughing softly all the while. And her laughing face was
extraordinarily pretty under the shade of her broad-brimmed hat.
"It is a great misfortune we stay so short a time," she continued. "I
shall not see the half of all that I wish to see."
Then an heroic plan of action occurred to Richard. The daring
engendered by his recent act of disobedience was still active in him.
He was in the humour to attempt the impossible. He longed, moreover, to
give this delectable little person pleasure. He was willing even to
sacrifice a measure of personal dignity in her service.
"Oh! but if you care so much, I--I will show you the house," he said.
"Will you?" she cried. "You and I alone together. But that is precisely
what I want. It would be ravishing."
Poor Dickie's heart misgave him slightly; but he summoned all his
resolution. He threw off the concealing rug.
"I--I walk very slowly, I'm afraid," he said rather huskily, looking up
at her, while in his expression appeal mingled pathetically with
defiant pride.
"But, so much the better," she replied. "We shall be the longer
together. I shall have the more to observe, to recount."
She was on her feet. She hovered round him, birdlike, intent on his
every movement.
Meanwhile the sound of conversation rose continuous. Lady Calmady,
calling to Julius, had moved away to the great writing-table in the
farther window. Together they searched among a pile of papers for a
letter of Dr. Knott's embodying his scheme of the new hospital at
Westchurch. Mr. Cathcart stood by, expounding his views on the subject.
"Of course a considerable income can be derived from letters of
recommendation," he was saying, "in-patient and out-patient tickets.
The clergy come in there. They cannot be expected to give large
donations. It would be unreasonable to expect that of them."
Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, Mrs. Cathcart, and Mary had drawn their
chairs together. The two elder ladies spoke with a subdued enthusiasm,
discussing pleasant details of the approaching wedding, which promised
the younger lady so glad a future. Mrs. Ormiston chattered; while
Ormiston, listening to her, gazed away down the green length of the elm
avenue, beyond the square lawn and pepper-pot summer-houses, and pitied
men who made such mistakes in the matter of matrimony as his brother
William obviously had. The rose of the sunset faded in the west. Bats
began to flit forth, hawking against the still warm house-walls for
flies.
And so, unobserved, Dickie slipped out of the security of his armchair,
and rose to that sadly deficient full height of his. He was nervous,
and this rendered his balance more than ever uncertain. He shuffled
forward, steadying himself by a piece of furniture here and there in
passing, until he reached the wide open space before the door on to the
stair-head. And it required some fortitude to cross this space, for
here was nothing to lay hold of for support.
Little Helen Ormiston had kept close beside him so far. Now she drew
back, leaving him alone. Leaning against a table, she watched his
laborious progress. Then a fit of uncontrollable laughter took her. She
flew half-way across to the oriel-window, her voice ringing out clear
and gay, though broken by bursts of irrepressible merriment.
"_Regardez, regardez donc, Maman! Ma bonne m'avait dit qu'il etait un
avorton, et que ce serait tres amusant de le voir. Elle m'a conseiller
de lui faire marcher_."
She darted back, and clapping her hands upon the bosom of her charming
frock, danced, literally danced and pirouetted around poor Dickie.
"_Moi, je ne comprenais pas ce que c'etait qu'un avorton_," she
continued rapidly. "_Mais je comprends parfaitement maintenant. C'est
un monstre, n'est-ce pas, Maman_?"
She threw back her head, her white throat convulsed by laughter.
"_Ah! mon Dieu, qu'il est drole_!" she cried.
Silence fell on the whole room, for sight and words alike were
paralysing in their grotesque cruelty. Ormiston was the first to speak.
He laid his hand somewhat roughly on his sister-in-law's shoulder.
"For God's sake, stop this, Ella," he said. "Take the girl away. Little
brute," he added, under his breath, as he went hastily across to poor
Dick.
But Lady Calmady had been beforehand with him. She swept across the
room, flinging aside the dainty, dancing figure as she passed. All the
primitive fierceness, the savage tenderness of her motherhood surged up
within her. Katherine was in the humour to kill just then, had killing
been possible. She was magnificently regardless of consequences,
regardless of conventionalities, regardless of every obligation save
that of sheltering her child. She cowered down over Richard, putting
her arms about him, knew--without question or answer--that he had heard
and understood. Then gathering him up against her, she stood upright,
facing them all, brother, sister, old and tried friends, a terrible
expression in her eyes, the boy's face pressed down upon her shoulder.
For the moment she appeared alienated from, and at war with, even
Julius, even Marie de Mirancourt. No love, however faithful, could
reach her. She was alone, unapproachable, in her immense anger and
immense sense of outrage.
"I will ask you to go," she said to her sister-in-law,--"to go and take
your daughter with you, and to enter this house no more."
Mrs. Ormiston did not reply. Even her chatter was for the moment
stilled. She pressed a handkerchief against the little dancer's
forehead, and it was stained with blood.
"Ah! she is a wicked woman!" wailed the child. "She has hurt me. She
threw me against the table. _Maman quel malheur ca se verra. Il y aura
certainement une cicatrice_!"
"Nonsense," Ormiston said harshly. "It's nothing, Kitty, the merest
scratch."
"Yes, my dear, we will have the carriage at once,"--this from Mr.
Cathcart to his wife. The incident, from all points of view, shocked
his sense of decency. Immediate retirement became his sole object.
Lady Calmady moved away, carrying the boy. She trembled a little. He
was heavy. Moreover, she sickened at the sight of blood. But little
Helen Ormiston caught at her dress, looked up at her.
"I hate you," she said, hissing the words out with concentrated passion
between her pretty even teeth. "You have spoilt me. I will hate you
always, when I grow up. I will never forget."
Alone in the great state-bedroom next door, a long time elapsed before
either Richard or Katherine spoke. The boy leaned back against the sofa
cushions, holding his mother's hand. The casements stood wide open, and
little winds laden with the scent of the hawthorns in the park wandered
in, gently stirring the curtains of the ebony bed, so that the trees of
the Forest of This Life thereon embroidered appeared somewhat
mournfully to wave their branches, while the Hart fled forward and the
Leopard, relentless in perpetual pursuit, followed close behind. There
was a crunching of wheels on the gravel, a sound of hurried farewells.
Then in a minute or two more the evening quiet held its own again.
Suddenly Dickie flung himself down across Katherine's lap, his poor
body shaken by a tempest of weeping.
"Mother, I can't bear it--I can't bear it," he sobbed. "Tell me, does
everybody do that?"
"Do what, my own precious?" she said, calm from very excess of sorrow.
Later she would weep too in the dark, lying lonely in the cold comfort
of that stately bed.
"Laugh at me, mother, mock at me?" and his voice, for all that he tried
to control it, tore at his throat and rose almost to a shriek.
CHAPTER VI
DEALING WITH A PHYSICIAN OF THE BODY AND A PHYSICIAN OF THE SOUL
History repeats itself, and to Katherine just now came most unwelcome
example of such repetition. She had foreseen that some such crisis must
arise as had arisen. Yet when it arose, the crisis proved none the less
agonising because of that foreknowledge. Two strains of feeling
struggled within her. A blinding sorrow for her child, a fear of and
shame at her own violence of anger. Katherine's mind was of an
uncompromising honesty. She knew that her instinct had, for a space at
least, been murderous. She knew that, given equal provocation, it would
be murderous again.
And this was, after all, but the active, objective aspect of the
matter. The passive and subjective aspect showed danger also. In her
extremity Katherine's soul cried out for God--for the sure
resting-place only to be found by conscious union of the individual
with the eternal will. But such repose was denied her. For her anger
against God, even while thus earnestly desiring Him, was even more
profound than her anger against man. The passion of those terrible
early days when her child's evil fortune first became known to
her--held in abeyance all these years by constant employment and the
many duties incident to her position--returned upon her in its first
force. To believe God is not, leaves the poor human soul homeless,
sadly desolate, barren in labour as is a slave. But the sorrow of such
belief is as a trifle beside the hideous fear that God is careless and
unjust, that virtue is but a fond imagination of all-too-noble human
hearts, that the everlasting purpose is not good but evil continually.
And, haunted by such fears, Katherine once again sat in outer darkness.
All gracious things appeared to her as illusions; all gentle delights
but as passing anodynes with which, in his misery, man weakly tries to
deaden the pain of existence for a little space. She suffered a
profound discouragement.
And so it seemed to her but as part of the cruel whole when history
repeated itself yet further, and Dr. Knott, pausing at the door of
Richard's bedroom, turned and said to her:--
"It will be better, you know, Lady Calmady, to let him face it alone.
He'll feel it less without you. Winter can give me all the assistance I
want." Then he added, a queer smile playing about his loose
lips:--"Don't be afraid. I'll handle him very gently. Probably I shan't
hurt him at all--certainly not much."
"Ah!" Katherine said, under her breath.
"You see it is done by his own wish," John Knott went on.
"I know," she answered.
She respected and trusted this man, entertained for him,
notwithstanding his harsh speech and uncouth exterior, something akin
to affection. Yet remembering the part he had played in the fate of the
father, it was very dreadful to her that he should touch the child. And
Dr. Knott read her thought. He did not resent it. It was all natural
enough! From his heart he was sorry for her, and would have spared her
had that been possible. But he discriminated very clearly between
primary and secondary issues, never sacrificing, as do feeble and
sentimental persons, the former to the latter. In this case the boy had
a right to the stage, and so the mother must stand in the wings. John
Knott possessed a keen sense of values in the human drama which the
exigencies of his profession so perpetually presented to him. He waited
quietly, his hand on the door-handle, looking at Katherine from under
his rough eyebrows, silently opposing his will to hers.
Suddenly she turned away with an impatient gesture.
"I will not come with you," she said.
"You are right."
"But--but--do you think you can really do anything to help him, to make
him happier?" Katherine asked, a desperation in the tones of her voice.
"Happier? Yes, in the long run, because certainty of whatever kind,
even certainty of failure, makes eventually for peace of mind."
"That is a hard saying."
"This is a hard world." Dr. Knott looked down at the floor, shrugging
his unwieldy shoulders. "The sooner we learn to accept that fact the
better, Lady Calmady. I know it is sharp discipline, but it saves time
and money, let alone disappointment.--Now as to all these elaborate
contrivances I've brought down from London, they're the very best of
their kind. But I am bound to own the most ingenious of such
arrangements are but clumsy remedies for natural deficiency. Man hasn't
discovered how to make over his own body yet, and never will. The
Almighty will always have the whip-hand of us when it comes to dealing
with flesh and blood. All the same we've got to try these legs and
things----"
Katherine winced, pressing her lips together. It was brutal, surely, to
speak so plainly? But John Knott went on quietly, commiserating her
inwardly, yet unswerving in common sense.
"Try 'em every one, and so convince Sir Richard one way or the other.
This is a turning-point. So far his general health has been remarkably
good, and we've just got to set our minds to keeping it good. He must
not fret if we can help it. If he frets, instead of developing into the
sane, manly fellow he should, he may turn peevish, Lady Calmady, and
grow up a morbid, neurotic lad, the victim of all manner of brain-sick
fancies--become envious, spiteful, a misery to others and to himself."
"It is necessary to say all this?" Katherine asked loftily.
Dr. Knott's eyes looked very straight into hers, and there were tears
in them.
"Indeed, I believe it is," he replied, "or, trust me, I wouldn't say
it. I take no pleasure in giving pain at this time of day, whether
mental or physical. All I want is to spare pain. But one must sacrifice
the present to the future, at times, you know--use the knife to save
the limb. Now I must go to my patient. It isn't fair to keep him
waiting any longer. I'll be as quick as I can. I suppose I shall find
you here when I've finished?"
As he opened the door Dr. Knott's heavy person showed in all its
ungainliness against the brightness of sunlight flooding Dickie's room.
And to Katherine he seemed hideous just then--inexorable in his great
common sense, in the dead weight of his personality and of his will, as
some power of nature. He was to her the incarnation of things as they
are,--not things as they should be, not things as she so passionately
desired they might be. He represented rationalism as against miracle,
intellect as against imagination, the bitter philosophy of experience
as against that for which all mortals so persistently cry out--namely,
the all-consoling promise of extravagant hope. As with chains he bound
her down to fact. Right home on her he pressed the utter futility of
juggling with the actual. From the harsh truth that, neither in matters
practical nor spiritual is any redemption without shedding of blood he
permitted her no escape.
And all this Katherine's clear brain recognised and admitted, even
while her poor heart only rebelled the more madly. To be convinced is
not to be reconciled. And so she turned away from that closed door in a
veritable tempest of feeling, and went out into the Chapel-Room. It was
safer, her mind and heart thus working, to put a space between herself
and that closed door.
Just then Julius March crossed the room, coming in from the stair-head.
The austere lines of his cassock emphasised the height and emaciation
of his figure. His appearance offered a marked contrast to that of the
man with whom Katherine had just parted. His occupation offered a
marked contrast also. He carried a gold chalice and paten, and his head
was bowed reverentially above the sacred vessels. His eyes were
downcast, and the dull pallor of his face and his long thin hands was
very noticeable. He did not look round, but passed silently, still as a
dream, into the chapel. Katherine paced the width of the great room,
turned and paced back and forth again some half-dozen times, before he
emerged from the chapel door. In her present humour she did not want
him, yet she resented his abstraction. The physician of the soul, like
the physician of the body, appeared to her lamentably devoid of power
to sustain and give comfort at the present juncture.
This, it so happened, was one of those days when the mystic joy of his
priestly office held Julius March forcibly. He had ministered to
others, and his own soul was satisfied. His expression was exalted, his
short-sighted eyes were alive with inward light. Tired and worn, there
was still a remarkable suavity in his bearing. He had come forth from
the holy of holies, and the vision beheld there dwelt with him yet.
Meanwhile, brooding storm sat on Katherine's brow, on her lips, dwelt
in her every movement. And something of this Julius perceived, for his
devotion to her was intact, as was his self-abnegation. Throughout all
these years he had never sought to approach her more closely. His
attitude had remained as delicately scrupulous, untouched by
worldliness, or by the baser part of passion, as in the first hour of
the discovery of his love. Her near presence gave him exquisite
pleasure; but, save when she needed his assistance in some practical
matter, he refused to indulge himself by passing much time in her
society. Abstinence still remained his rule of life. But just now,
strong with the mystic strength of his late ministrations, and
perceiving her troubled state, he permitted himself to remain and pace
beside her.
"You have been out all day?" Katherine said.
"Yes, I stayed on to the end with Rebecca Light. They sent for me early
this morning. She passed away very peacefully in that little attic at
the new lodge looking out into the green heart of the woods."
"Ah! It's simple enough to die," Katherine said, "being old. The
difficult thing is to live, being still young."
"Has my absence been inconvenient? Have you wanted me?" Julius
asked.--Those quiet hours spent in the humble death-chamber suddenly
appeared to him as an act of possible selfishness.
"Oh no!" she answered bitterly. "Why should I want you? Have I not sent
Roger and Mary away? Am I not secretly glad dear Marie de Mirancourt is
just sufficiently poorly to remain in her room? When the real need
comes--one learns that among all the other merciless lessons--one is
best by oneself."
For a while, only the whisper of Lady Calmady's skirts, the soft, even
tread of feet upon the thick carpet. Then she said, almost sharply:--
"Dr. Knott is with Richard."
"Ah! I understand," Julius murmured.
But Lady Calmady took up his words with a certain heat.
"No, you do not understand. You none of you understand, and that is why
I am better by myself. Mary and Roger in their happiness, dear Marie in
her saintly resignation, and you"--Katherine turned her head, smiled at
him in lovely scorn--"you, my dear Julius, of all men, what should you
know of the bitter pains of motherhood, you who are too good to be
quite human, you who regard this world merely as the antichamber of
paradise, you, whose whole affection is set on your Church--your
God--how should you understand? Between my experience and yours there
is a very wide interval. How can you know what I suffer--you who have
never loved."
Under the stress of her excitement Katherine's pace quickened. The
whisper of her skirts grew to a soft rush. Julius kept beside her. His
head was bent reverently, even as over the sacred vessels he had so
lately carried.
"I too have loved," he said at last.
Katherine stopped short, and looked at him incredulously.
"Really, Julius?" she said.
Raising his head, he looked back at her. This avowal gave him a strange
sense of completeness and mastery. So he allowed his eyes to meet
Katherine's, he allowed himself to reckon with her grace and beauty.
"Very really," he answered.
"But when?"
"Long ago--and always."
"Ah!" she said. Her expression had changed. Brooding storm no longer
sat on her brow and lips. She was touched. For the moment the weight of
her personal distress was lifted. Dickie and Dr. Knott together in that
bedchamber, experimenting with unlovely, mechanical devices for aiding
locomotion and concealing the humiliation of deformity, were almost
forgotten. To those who have once loved, love must always supremely
appeal. Julius appeared to her in a new aspect. She felt she had done
him injustice. She placed her hand on his arm with a movement of
apology and tenderness. And the man grew faint, trembled, feeling her
hand; seeing it lie white and fair on the sleeve of his black cassock.
Since childhood it was the first, the solitary caress he had received.
"Pardon me, dear Julius," she said. "I must have pained you at times,
but I did not know this. I always supposed you coldly indifferent to
those histories of the heart which mean so much to some of us; supposed
your religion held you wholly, and that you pitied us as the wise pity
the foolish, standing above them, looking down. Richard told me many
things about you, before he brought me home here, but he never told me
this."
"Richard never knew it," he answered, smiling. Her perfect
unconsciousness at once calmed and pained him. He had kept his secret,
all these years, only too well.
Katherine turned and began to pace again, her hands clasped behind her
back.
"But, tell me--tell me," she said. "You can trust me, you know. I will
never speak of this unless you speak. But if I knew, it would bring us
nearer together, and that would be comforting, perhaps, to us both.
Tell me, what happened? Did she know, and did she love you? She must
have loved you, I think. Then what separated you? Did she die?"
"No, thank God, she did not die," Julius said. He paused. He longed to
gain the relief of fuller confession, yet feared to betray himself. "I
believe she loved me truly as a friend--and that was sufficient."
"Oh no, no!" Katherine cried. "Do not decline upon sophistries. That is
never sufficient."
"In one sense, yes--in another sense, no," Julius said. "It was thus. I
loved her exactly as she was. Had she loved me as I loved her she would
have become other than she was."
"Ah! but surely you are too ingenious, too fastidious." Katherine's
voice took tones of delicate remonstrance and pleading. "That would be
your danger, in such a case. _Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien_, and you
would always risk sacrificing the real to the ideal. I am sorry. I
would like you to have tasted the fulness of life. Even though the days
of perfect joy are very few, it is well to have had them----"
She threw back her head, her eyebrows drew together, and her face
darkened somewhat.
"Yes, it is well to have had them, though the memory of them cuts one
to the very quick."--Then her manner changed again, gaining a touch of
gaiety. "Really I am very unselfish in wishing all this otherwise," she
said, "for it would have been a sore trial to part with you. I cannot
imagine Brockhurst without you. I should have been in great straits
deprived of my friend and counselor. And yet, I would like you to have
been very happy, dear Julius."
Their pacing had just brought them to the arched doorway of the chapel.
Katherine stopped, and raising her arm leaned her hand against the
stone jamb of it above her head.
"See," she went on, "I want to be truly unselfish. I know how generous
you are. Perhaps you remain here out of all too great kindness towards
my poor Dick and me. You mustn't do that, Julius. You say she is still
living. Consider--is it too late?"
Was it indeed too late? All the frustrated manhood cried aloud in
Julius March. He covered his face with his hands. His carefully
restrained imagination ran riot, presenting enchantments.
And Katherine, watching him, found herself strangely moved. For it was
very startling to see this so familiar figure under so unfamiliar an
aspect--to see Julius March, her everyday companion and assistant, his
reticence, his priestly aloofness, his mild and courtly calm, swept
under by a tide of personal emotion. Lady Calmady was drawn to him by
deepened sympathy. Yet regret arose in her that this man proved to be,
after all, but as other men. She was vaguely disappointed, having
derived more security than she had quite realised from his apparent
detachment and impassibility. And, as an indirect consequence, her
revolt against God suffered access of bitterness. For not only was
He--to her seeing--callous regarding the fate of the many, but He
failed to support those few most devoted to His cause. In the hour of
their trial He was careless even of His own elect.
"Ah! I think it is indeed by no means too late!" she exclaimed.
Julius March let his hands drop at his sides. He gazed at her and her
expression was of wistful mockery--compassionate rather than ironical.
Then he looked away down the length of the chapel. In the warm
afternoon light, the solid and rich brown of the arcaded stalls on
either hand, emphasised the harmonious radiance of the great east
window, a radiance as of clear jewels.--Ranks of kneeling saints, the
gold of whose orioles rose in an upward curve to the majestic image of
the Christ in the central light--a Christ risen and glorified,
enthroned, His feet shining forever upon heaven's sapphire floor.
Before the altar hung three silver-gilt lamps of Italian workmanship,
in the crimson cup of each of which it had so long been Julius's
pleasure to keep the tongue of flame constantly alive. The habits of a
lifetime are not hastily set aside. Gazing on these things, his normal
attitude returned to him. Not that which he essentially was but that
which, by long and careful training of every thought, every faculty, he
had become, authoritatively claimed him. His eyes fell from
contemplation of the glories of the window to that of the long,
straight folds of the cassock which clothed him. It was hardly the garb
in which a man goes forth to woo! Then he looked at Lady Calmady--she
altogether seductive in her innocence and in her wistful mockery as she
leaned against the jamb of the door.
"You are mistaken, dear Katherine," he said. "It has always been too
late."
"But why--why--if she is free to listen?"
"Because I am not free to speak."
Julius smiled at her. His suavity had returned, and along with it a
dignity of bearing not observable before.
"Let us walk," he said. And then:--"After all I have given you a very
mutilated account of this matter. Soon after I took orders, before I
had ever seen the very noble, to me perfect, woman who unconsciously
revealed to me the glory of human love, I had dedicated my life, and
all my powers--poor enough, I fear--of mind and body to the service of
the Church. I was ambitious in those days. Ambition is dead, killed by
the knowledge of my own shortcomings. I have proved an unprofitable
servant--for which may God in His great mercy forgive me. But, while my
faith in myself has withered, my faith in Him has come to maturity. I
have learned to think very differently on many subjects, and to
perceive that our Heavenly Father's purposes regarding us are more
generous, more far-reaching, more august, than in my youthful ignorance
I had ever dreamed. All things are lawful in His sight. Nothing is
common or unclean--if we have once rightly apprehended Him, and He
dwells in us. And yet--yet, a vow once made is binding. We may not do
evil to gain however great a good."
Katherine listened in silence. The words came with the power of
immutable conviction. She could not believe, yet she was glad to have
him believe.
"And that vow precludes marriage?" she said at last.
"It does," Julius answered.
For a time they paced again in silence. Then Lady Calmady spoke, a
delicate intimacy and affection in her manner, while once more, for a
moment, she let her hand rest on his arm.
"So Brockhurst keeps you--I keep you, dear Julius, to the last?"
"Yes, if you will, to the very last."
"I am thankful for that," she said. "You must forgive me if in the past
I have been inconsiderate at times. I am afraid the constant struggle,
which certain circumstances of necessity create, tends to make me harsh
and imperious. I carry a trouble, which calls aloud for redress,
forever in my arms. They ache with the burden of it. And there is no
redress. And the trouble grows stronger alas. Its voice--so dear, yet
so dreaded--grows louder, till it deafens me to all other sounds. The
music of this once beautiful world becomes faint. Only angry discord
remains. And I become selfish. I am the victim of a fixed idea. I
become heedless of the suffering of those about me. And you, my poor
Julius, must have suffered very much!"
"Now, less than ever before," he answered. But even as he spoke,
Katherine was struck by his pallor, by the drawn look of his features
and languor of his bearing.
"Ah, you have fasted all day!" she cried.
"What matter?" he said, smiling. "The body surely can sustain a trifle
of hunger, if the soul and spirit are fed. I have feasted royally
to-day in that respect. I am strangely at ease. As to baser sort of
food, what wonder if I forgot?"
The door of Dickie's bedchamber opened, letting in long shafts of
sunlight, and Dr. Knott came slowly forward. His aspect was savage.
Even his philosophy had been not wholly proof against the pathos of his
patient's case. It irritated him to fall from his usual relentlessness
of common sense into a melting mood. He took refuge in sarcasm,
desirous to detect weakness in others, since he was, unwillingly, so
disagreeably conscious of it in himself.
"Well, we're through with our business, Lady Calmady," he said. "Eh!
Mr. March, what's wrong with you? Putty-coloured skin and shortness of
breath. A little less prayer and a little more physical exercise is
what you want. Successful, Lady Calmady?--Umph--I'm afraid the less
said about that the better. Sir Richard will talk it out with you
himself. Upset? Yes, I don't deny he is a little upset--and, like a
fool, I'm upset too. You can go to him now, Lady Calmady. Keep him
cheerful, please, and give him his head as much as you can."
John Knott watched her as she moved away. He shrugged his shoulders and
thrust his hands into his breeches' pockets.
"She's going to hear what she won't much relish, poor thing," he said.
"But I can't help that. One man's meat is another man's poison; and my
affair is with the boy's meat, even if it should be of a kind to turn
his mother's stomach. He shall have just all the chance I can get him,
poor little chap. And now, Mr. March, I propose to prescribe for you,
for you look uncommonly like taking a short-cut to heaven, and, if I
know anything about this house, you've got your work cut out for you
here below for a long time to come. Through with this business? Pooh!
we've only taken a preliminary canter as yet. That boy's out of the
common in more ways than one, and, cripple or no cripple, he's bound to
lead you all a pretty lively dance before he's done."
CHAPTER VII
AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE THE BEST OF IT
The day had been hot, though the summer was but young. A wealth of
steady sunlight bathed the western front of the house. All was notably
still, save for a droning of bees, a sound of wood-chopping, voices now
and again, and the squeak of a wheelbarrow away in the gardens.
Richard lay on his back upon the bed. He had drawn the blue embroidered
coverlet up about his waist; but his silk shirt was thrown open,
exposing his neck and chest. His arms were flung up and out across the
pillow on either side his gold-brown, close-curled head. As his mother
entered he turned his face towards the open window. There was vigour
and distinction in the profile--in the straight nose, full chin, and
strong line of the lower jaw, in the round, firm throat, and small ear
set close against the head. The muscles of his neck and arms were well
developed. Seen thus, lying in the quiet glow of the afternoon
sunshine, all possibility of physical disgrace seemed far enough from
Richard Calmady. He might indeed, not unfitly, have been compared to
one of those nobly graceful lads, who, upon the frieze of some Greek
temple, set forth forever the perfect pattern of temperance and high
courage, of youth and health.
As Katherine sat down beside the bed, Richard thrust out his left hand.
She took it in both hers, held and stroked the palm of it. But for a
time she could not trust herself to speak. For she saw that,
notwithstanding the resolute set of his lips, his breath caught in
short quick sobs and that his eyelashes were glued in points by late
shed tears. And seeing this, Katherine's motherhood arose and
confronted her with something of reproach. It seemed to her she had
been guilty of disloyalty in permitting her thought to be beguiled even
for the brief space of her conversation with Julius March. She felt
humbled, a little in Dickie's debt, since she had not realised to the
uttermost each separate moment of his trial as each of those moments
passed.
"My darling, I am afraid Dr. Knott has hurt you very much," she said at
last.
"Oh! I don't know. I suppose he did hurt. He pulled me about awfully,
but I didn't mind that. I told him to keep on till he made sure,"
Richard answered huskily, still turning his face from her. "But none of
those beastly legs and things fitted. He could not fix them so that I
could use them. It was horrid. They only made me more helpless than
before. You see--my--my feet are in the way."
The last words came to Katherine as a shock. The boy had never spoken
openly of his deformity, and in thus speaking he appeared to her to
rend asunder the last of those veils with which she had earnestly
striven to conceal the disgrace of it from him. She remained very
still, bracing herself to bear--the while slowly stroking his hand.
Suddenly the strong, young fingers closed hard on hers. Richard turned
his head.
"Mother," he said, "the doctor can't do anything for me. It's no use.
We've just got to let it be."
He set his teeth, choking a little, and drew the back of his right hand
across his eyes.
"It's awfully stupid; but somehow I never knew I should mind so much.
I--I never did mind much till just lately. It began--the minding, I
mean--the day Uncle Roger came home. It was the way he looked at me,
and hearing about things he'd done. And I had a beastly dream that
night. And it's all grown worse since."
He paused a minute, making a strong effort to speak steadily.
"I suppose it's silly to mind. I ought to be accustomed to it by this
time. I've never known anything else. But I never thought of all it
meant and--and--how it looked to other people till Helen was here and
wanted me to show her the house. I--I supposed every one would take it
for granted, as you all do here at home. And then I'd a hope Dr. Knott
might find a way to hide it and so help me. But--but he can't. That
hope's quite gone."
"My own darling," Katherine murmured.
"Yes, please say that!" he cried, looking up eagerly. "I am your
darling, mother, aren't I, just the same? Dr. Knott said something
about you just now. He's an awfully fine old chap. I like him. He
talked to me for a long time after we'd sent Winter away, and he was
ever so kind. And he told me it was bad for you too, you know--for both
of us. I'm afraid I had not thought much about that before. I've been
thinking about it since. And I began to be afraid that--that I might be
a nuisance,--that you might be ashamed of me, later, when I am grown
up, since I've always got to be like this, you see."
The boy's voice broke.
"Mother, mother, you'll never despise me, who ever does, will you?" he
sobbed.
And it seemed to Lady Calmady that now she must have touched bottom in
this tragedy. There could surely be no further to go? It was well that
her mood was soft; that for a little while she had ceased to be under
the dominion of her so sadly fixed idea. In talking with Julius March
she had been reminded how constant a quantity is sorrow; how real,
notwithstanding their silence, are many griefs; how strong is human
patience. And this indirectly had fortified her. Wrung with anguish for
the boy, she yet was calm. She knelt down by the bedside and put her
arms round him.
"Most precious one--listen," she said. "You must never ask me such a
question again. I am your mother--you cannot measure all that implies,
and so you cannot measure the pain your question causes me. Only you
must believe, because I tell it you, that your mother's love will never
grow old or wear thin. It is always there, always fresh, always ready.
In utter security you can come back to it again and again. It is like
one of those clear springs in the secret places of the deep woods--you
know them--which bubble up forever. Drink, often as you may, however
heavy the drought or shrunken the streams elsewhere, those springs
remain full to the very lip."--Her tone changed, taking a tender
playfulness. "Why, my Dickie, you are the light of my eyes, my darling,
the one thing which makes me still care to live. You are your father's
gift to me. And so every kiss you give me, every pretty word you say to
me, is treasured up for his, as well as for your own, dear sake."
She leaned back, laid her head on the pillow beside his, cheek to
cheek. Katherine was a young woman still--young enough to have moments
of delicate shyness in the presence of her son. She could not look at
him now as she spoke.
"You know, dearest, if I could take your bodily misfortune upon me,
here, directly, and give you my wholeness, I would do it more readily,
with greater thankfulness and delight than I have ever done anything
in----"
But Richard raised his hand and laid it, almost violently, upon her
mouth.
"Oh stop, mother, stop!" he cried. "Don't--it's too dreadful to think
of."
He flung away, and lay at as far a distance as the width of the bed
would allow, gazing at her in angry protest.
"You can't do that. But you don't suppose I'd let you do it even if you
could," he said fiercely. Then he turned his face to the sunny western
window again. "I like to know that you're beautiful anyhow, mother,
all--all over," he said.
There followed a long silence between them. Lady Calmady still knelt by
the bedside. But she drew herself up, rested her elbows on the bed and
clasped her hands under her chin. And as she knelt there something of
proud comfort came to her. For so long she had sickened, fearing the
hour when Richard should begin clearly to gauge the extent of his own
ill-luck; yet, now the first shock of plain speech over, she
experienced relief. For the future they could be honest, she and
he,--so she thought,--and speak heart to heart. Moreover, in his so
bitter distress, it was to her--not to Mary, his good comrade, not to
Roger Ormiston, the Ulysses of his fancy--that the boy had turned. He
was given back to her, and she was greatly gladdened by that. She was
gladdened too by Richard's last speech, by his angry and immediate
repudiation of the bare mention of any personal gain which should touch
her with loss. Katherine's eyes kindled as she knelt there watching her
son. For it was very much to find him chivalrous, hotly sensitive of
her beauty and the claims of her womanhood. In instinct, in thought, in
word, he had shown himself a very gallant, high-bred gentleman--child
though he was. And this gave Katherine not only proud comfort in the
present, but cheered the future with hope.
"Look here, Dickie, darling," she said softly at last, "tell me a
little more about your talk with Dr. Knott."
"Oh! he was awfully kind," Richard answered, turning towards her again,
while his face brightened. "He said some awfully jolly things to me."
The boy put out his hand and began playing with the bracelets on
Katherine's wrists. He kept his eyes fixed on them as he fingered them.
"He told me I was very strong and well made--except, of course, for it.
And that I was not to imagine myself ill or invalidy, because I'm
really less ill than most people, you know. And--he said--you won't
think me foolish, mother, if I tell you?--he said I was a very handsome
fellow."
Richard glanced up quickly, while his colour deepened.
"Am I really handsome?" he asked.
Katherine smiled at him.
"Yes, you are very handsome, Dickie. You have always been that. You
were a beautiful baby, a beautiful little child. And now, every day you
grow more like your father. I can't quite talk about him, my dear--but
ask Uncle Roger, ask Marie de Mirancourt what he was when she knew him
first."
The boy's face flashed back her smile, as the sea does the sunlight.
"Oh! I say, but that's good news," he said. He lay quite still on his
back for a little while, thinking about it.
"That seems to give one a shove, you know," he remarked presently. Then
he fell to playing with her bracelets again. "After all, I've got a
good many shoves to-day, mother. Dr. Knott's a regular champion shover.
He told me about a number of people he'd known who had got smashed up
somehow, or who'd always had something wrong, you know--and how they'd
put a good face on it and hadn't let it interfere, but had done things
just the same. And he told me I'd just got to be plucky--he knew I
could if I tried--and not let it interfere either. He told me I mustn't
be soft, or lazy, because doing things is more difficult for me than
for other people. But that I'd just got to put my back into it, and go
in and win. And I told him I would--and you'll help me, mummy, won't
you?"
"Yes, darling, yes," Lady Calmady said.
"I want to begin at once," he went on hurriedly, looking hard at the
bracelets. "I shouldn't like to be unkind to her, mother, but do you
think Clara would give me up? I don't need a nurse now. It's rather
silly. May one of the men-servants valet me? I should like Winter best,
because he's been here always, and I shouldn't feel shy with him. Would
it bore you awfully to speak about that now, so that he might begin
to-night?"
Lady Calmady's brave smile grew a trifle sad. The boy was less
completely given back to her than she had fondly supposed. This day was
after all to introduce a new order. And the woman always pays. She was
to pay for that advance, so was the devoted handmaiden, Clara. Still
the boy must have his way--were it even towards a merely imagined good.
"Very well, dearest, I will settle it," she answered.
"You won't mind, though, mother?"
Katherine stroked the short curly hair back from his forehead.
"I don't mind anything that promises to make you happier, Dickie," she
said. "What else did you and Dr. Knott settle--anything else?"
Richard waited, then he turned on his elbow and looked full and very
earnestly at her.
"Yes, mother, we did settle something more. And something that I'm
afraid you won't like. But it would make me happier than anything
else--it would make all the difference that--that can be made, you
know."
He paused, his expression very firm though his lips quivered.
"Dr. Knott wants me to ride."
Katherine drew back, stood up straight, threw out her hands as though
to keep off some actual and tangible object of offense.
"Not that, Richard," she cried. "Anything in the world rather than
that."
He looked at her imploringly, yet with a certain determination, for the
child was dying fast in him and the forceful desires and intentions of
youth growing.
"Don't say I mustn't, mother. Pray, pray don't, because----"
He left the sentence unfinished, overtaken by the old habit of
obedience, yet he did not lower his eyes.
But Lady Calmady made no response. For the moment she was outraged to
the point of standing apart, even from her child. For a moment, even
motherhood went down before purely personal feeling--and this, by the
irony of circumstance, immediately after motherhood had made supreme
confession of immutability. But remembering her husband's death,
remembering the source of all her child's misfortune, it appeared to
her indecent, a wanton insult to all her past suffering, that such a
proposition should be made to her. And, in a flash of cruelly vivid
perception, she knew how the boy would look on a horse, the grotesque,
to the vulgar, wholly absurd spectacle he must, notwithstanding his
beauty, necessarily present. For a moment the completeness of love
failed before pride touched to the very quick.
"But, how can you ride?" she said. "My poor child, think--how is it
possible?"
Richard sat upright, pressing his hands down on the bedclothes on
either side to steady himself. The colour rushed over his face and
throat.
"It is possible, mother," he answered resolutely, "or Dr. Knott would
never have talked about it. He couldn't have been so unkind. He drew me
the plan of a saddle. He said I was to show it to Uncle Roger to-night.
Of course it won't be easy at first, but I don't care about that. And
Chifney would teach me. I know he would. He said the other day he'd
make a sportsman of me yet."
"When did you talk with Chifney?" Lady Calmady spoke very quietly, but
there was that in her tone which came near frightening the boy. It
required all his daring to answer honestly and at once.
"I talked to him the day Aunt Ella and Helen were here. I--I went down
to the stables with him and saw all the horses."
"Then either you or he did very wrong," Lady Calmady remarked.
"It was my fault, mother, all my fault. Chifney would have ridden on,
but I stopped him. Chaplin tried to prevent me. I--I told him to mind
his own business. I meant to go. I--I saw all the horses, and they were
splendid," he added, enthusiasm gaining over fear. "I saw the stables,
and the weighing-room, and everything. I never enjoyed myself so much
before. I told Chaplin I would tell you, because he ought not to be
blamed, you know. I did mean to tell you directly I came in. But all
those people were here."--Richard's face darkened. "And you remember
what happened? That put everything else out of my head."
A pause. Then he said: "Are you very angry?"
Katherine made no reply. She moved away round the foot of the bed and
stood at the sunny window in silence. Bitterness of hot humiliation
possessed her. Heretofore, whatever her trial, she had been mistress of
the situation; she had reigned a queen-mother, her authority
undisputed. And now it appeared her kingdom was in revolt, conspiracy
was rife. Richard's will and hers were in conflict; and Richard's will
must eventually obtain, since he would eventually be master. Already
courtiers bowed to that will. All this was in her mind. And a wounding
of feeling, far deeper and more intimate than this,--since Katherine's
nobility of character was great and the worldly aspect, the greed of
personal power and undisputed rule, could not affect her for long. It
wounded her, as a slight upon the memory of the man she had so wholly
loved, that this first conflict between Richard and herself should turn
on the question of horses and the racing-stable. The irony of the
position appeared unpardonable. And then, the vision of poor
Richard--her darling, whom she had striven so jealously to shield ever
since the day, over thirteen years ago, when undressing her baby she
had first looked upon its malformed limbs--Richard riding forth for all
the staring, mocking world to see, again arose before her.
Thinking of all this, Katherine gazed out over the stately home
scene--grass plot and gardens, woodland and distant landscape, rich in
the golden splendour of steady sunshine--with smarting eyes and a sense
of impotent misery that wrapped her about as a burning garment. The boy
was beginning to go his own way. And his way was not hers. And those
she had trusted were disloyal, helping him to go it. Alone, in
retirement, she had borne her great trouble with tremendous courage.
But how should she bear it under changed conditions, amid publicity,
gossip, comment?
Dickie, meanwhile, had let himself drop back against the pillows. He
set his teeth and waited. It was hard. An opportunity of escape from
the galling restraints of his infirmity had been presented to him, and
his mother--his mother after promise given, after the sympathy of a
lifetime; his mother, in whom he trusted absolutely--was unwilling he
should accept it! As he lay there all the desperate longing for freedom
and activity that had developed in him of late--all the passion for
sport, for that primitive, half-savage manner of life, that intimate,
if somewhat brutal, relation to nature, to wild creatures and to the
beasts whom man by centuries of usage has broken to his service, which
is the special heritage of Englishmen of gentle blood--sprang up in
Richard, strong, all compelling. He must have his part in all this. He
would not be denied. He cried out to her imperiously:--
"Mother, speak to me! I haven't done anything really wrong. I've a
right to do what any other boy has--as far as I can get it. Don't you
see riding is just the one thing to--to make up--to make a man of me?
Don't you see that?"
He sat bolt upright, stretching out his arms to her in fierce appeal,
while the level sunshine touched his bright hair and wildly eager face.
"Mummy, mummy darling, don't you see? Try to see. You can't want to
take away my one chance!"
Katherine turned at that reiterated cry, and her heart melted within
her. The boy was her own, bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh. From
her he had life. From her he had also lifelong disgrace and
deprivation. Was there anything then, which, he asking, she could
refuse to give? She cast herself on her knees beside the bed again and
buried her face in the sheet.
"My precious one," she sobbed, "forgive me. I am ashamed, for I have
been both harsh and weak. I said I would help you, and then directly I
fail you. Forgive me."
And the boy was amazed, speechless at first, seeing her broken thus;
shamed in his turn by the humility of her attitude. To his young
chivalry it was as an impiety to look upon her tears.
"Please don't cry, mother," he entreated tremulously, a childlike
simplicity of manner taking him. "Don't cry--it is dreadful. I never
saw you cry before."--Then, after a pause, he added: "And--never mind
about my riding. I don't so very much care about it--really, I don't
believe I do--after all."
At that dear lie Katherine raised her bowed head, a wonderful sweetness
in her tear-stained face, tender laughter upon her lips. She drew the
boy's hands on to her shoulders, clasped her hands across his extended
arms, and kissed him upon the mouth.
"No, no, my beloved, you shall ride," she said. "You shall have your
saddle--twenty thousand saddles if you want them. We will talk to Uncle
Roger and Chifney to-night. All shall be as you wish."
"But you're not angry, mother, any more?" he asked, a little bewildered
by her change of tone and by the passion of her lovely looks and
speech.
Katherine shook her head, and still that tender laughter curved her
lips.
"No, I am never going to be angry any more--with you at least, Dick. I
must learn to be plucky too. A pair of us, Dickie, trying to keep up
one another's pluck! Only let us go forward hand in hand, you and I,
and then, however desperate our doings, I at least shall be content."
CHAPTER VIII
TELLING, INCIDENTALLY, OF A BROKEN-DOWN POSTBOY AND A COUNTRY FAIR
The Brockhurst-mail phaeton waited, in the shade of the three large
sycamores, before Appleyard's shop at Farley Row. A groom stood stiff
and straight at the horses' heads. While upon the high driving-seat, a
trifle excited by the suddenness of his elevation, sat Richard. He held
the reins in his right hand, and stretched his left to get the cramp
out of his fingers. His arms ached--there was no question about it. He
had never driven a pair before, and the horses needed a lot of driving.
For the wind was gusty, piling up heavy masses of black-purple
rain-cloud in the southeast. It made the horses skittish and unsteady,
and Dickie found it was just all he could do to hold them, so that
Chifney's reiterated admonition, "Keep 'em well in hand, Sir Richard,"
had been not wholly easy to obey.
From out the open shop-door came mingled odour of new leather and of
horse clothing. Within Mr. Chifney delivered himself of certain orders;
while Appleyard--a small, fair man, thin of nose, a spot of violent
colour on either cheek-bone--skipped before him goat-like, in a fury of
complacent intelligence. For it was not every day so notable a
personage as the Brockhurst trainer crossed his threshold. To Josiah
Appleyard, indeed--not to mention his two apprentices stretching eyes
and ears from the back-shop, to catch any chance word of Mr. Chifney's
conversation--it appeared as though the gods very really condescended
to visit the habitations of men. While Mrs. Appleyard, peeping from
behind the wire blind of the parlour, had--as she afterwards repeatedly
declared--"felt her insides turn right over," when she saw the carriage
draw up. The conversation was prolonged and low toned. For the order
was of a peculiar and confidential character, demanding much
explanation on the one part, much application on the other. It was an
order, in short, wholly flattering to the self-esteem of the saddler,
both as tribute to his social discretion and his technical skill. Thus
did Josiah skip goat-like, being glad.
Meanwhile, Richard Calmady waited without, resting his aching arms,
gazing down the wide, dusty street, his senses lulled by the flutter of
the sycamore leaves overhead. The said street offered but small matter
of interest. For Farley Row is one of those dead-alive little towns on
the borders of the forest land, across which progress, even at the time
in question, 1856, had written Ichabod in capital letters. During the
early years of the century some sixty odd coaches, plying upon the
London and Portsmouth road, would stop to change horses at the White
Lion in the course of each twenty-four hours. That was the golden age
of the Row. Horns twanged, heavy wheels rumbled, steaming teams were
led away, with drooping heads, into the spacious inn yard, and fresh
horses stepped out cheerily to take their place between the traces. The
next stage across Spendle Flats was known as a risky one. Legends of
Claude Duval and his fellow-highwaymen still haunt the woods and moors
that top the long hill going northward. And the passengers by those
sixty coaches were wont to recover themselves from terrors escaped, or
fortify themselves against terrors to come, by plentiful libations at
the bar of the handsome red-brick inn. The house did a roaring trade.
But now the traffic upon the great road had assumed a local and
altogether undemonstrative character. The coaches had fallen into
lumber, the spanking teams had each and all made their squalid last
journey to the knacker's; and the once famous Gentlemen of the Road had
long lain at rest in mother earth's lap--sleeping there none the less
peacefully because the necks of many of them had suffered a nasty rick
from the hangman's rope, and because the hard-trodden pavement of the
prison-yard covered them.
The fine stables of the White Lion stood tenantless, now, from year's
end to year's end. Rats scampered, and bats squeaked in unlovely
ardours of courtship, about the ranges of empty stalls and cobweb-hung
rafters. Yet one ghost from out the golden age haunted the place
still--a lean, withered, bandy-legged, little stick of a man, arrayed
in frayed and tarnished splendour of sky-blue waist-jacket, silver
lace, and jack-boots of which the soles and upper leathers threatened
speedy and final divorce. In all weathers this bit of human
wreckage--Jackie Deeds by name--might be seen wandering aimlessly about
the vacant yard, or seated upon the bench beside the portico of the
silent, bow-windowed inn, pulling at a, too often empty, clay-pipe and
spitting automatically.
Over Richard, tender-hearted as yet towards all creatures whom nature
or fortune had treated cavalierly, the decrepit postboy exercised a
fascination. One day, when driving through the Row with Mary Cathcart,
he had succeeded in establishing relations with Jackie Deeds through
the medium of a half-crown. And now, as he waited beneath the rustling
sycamores, it was with a sensation of quick, yet half-shy, pleasure,
that he saw the disreputable figure lurch out of the inn yard, stand
for a minute shading eyes with hand while making observations, and then
hobble across the street, touching the peak of a battered, black-velvet
cap as it advanced.
"Be 'e come to zee the show, sir?" the old man coughed out, peering
with dim, blear eyes up into the boy's fresh face.
"No, we've come about something from Appleyard's. I--I didn't know
there was a show."
"Oh! bain't there though, Sir Richard! I tell 'e there be a prime sight
of a show. There be monkeys down town, and dorgs what dances on their
'inder legs, and gurt iron cages chock full er wild beastises, by what
they tells me."
Dickie, feeling anxiously in his pockets for some coin of sufficient
size to be worthy of Mr. Deeds' acceptance, ejaculated involuntarily:--"Oh!
are there? I'd give anything to see them."
"Sixpence 'ud do most er they 'ere shows, I expect. The wild beastises
'ud run into a shilling may be."--The old postboy made a joyless,
creaking sound, bearing but slightest affinity to laughter. "But you
'ud see your way round more'n a shilling, Sir Richard. A terrible,
rich, young gentleman, by what they tells me."
Something a trifle malicious obtained in this attempt at jocosity,
causing Dickie to bend down rather hastily over the wheel, and thrust
his offering into the crumpled, shaky hands.
"There," he said. "Oh! it's nothing. I'm so pleased you--you don't
mind. Where do you say this show is?"
"Gor a'mighty bless 'e, sir," the old man whimpered, with a change of
tone. "'Tain't every day poor old Jackie Deeds runs across a rich,
young gentleman as ull give him 'arf a crown. Times is bad, mortal
bad--couldn't be much wuss."
"I'm so sorry," Richard answered. He felt apologetic, as though in some
manner responsible for the decay of the coaching system and his
companion's fallen estate.
"Mortal bad, couldn't be no wuss."
"I'm very sorry. But about the show--where is it please?" the boy asked
again, a little anxious to change the subject.
"Oh! that there show. 'Tain't much of a show neither, by what they
tells me."
Mr. Deeds spoke with sudden irritability. Uplifted by the possession of
a half crown, he became contemptuous of the present, jealous of the
past when such coin was more plentiful with him.
"Not much of a show," he repeated. "The young uns ull crack up most
anything as comes along. But that's their stoopidness. Never zeed
nothing better. Law bless 'e, this ain't a patch on the shows I've a'
zeen in my day. Cock-fightings, and fellows--wi' a lot er money laid on
'em by the gentry too--a-pounding of each other till there weren't an
inch above the belt of 'em as weren't bloody. And the Irish giant, and
dwarfs 'ad over from France. They tell me most Frencheys's made that
way. Ole Boney 'isself wasn't much of a one to look at. And I can mind
a calf wi' two 'eads-'ud eat wi' both mouths at once, and all the food
'ud go down into the same belly. And a man wi' no arms, never 'ad none,
by what they used to tell me----"
"Ah!" Richard exclaimed quickly.
"No, never 'ad none, and yet 'ud play the drum wi' 'is toes and fire
off a horse pistol. Lor, you would 'er laughed to 'av zeen 'im. 'E made
fine sport for the folks 'e did."
Jackie Deeds had recovered his good-humour. He peered up into the boy's
face again maliciously, and broke into cheerless, creaking merriment.
"Gor a'mighty 'as 'is jokes too," he said. "I'm thinking, by the curous
made creeturs 'e sends along sometimes."
"Chifney," Richard called imperatively. "Chifney, are you nearly ready?
We ought to get home. There's a storm coming up."
"Well, we shall get that matter of the saddle done right enough, Sir
Richard," the trainer remarked presently, as the carriage bowled up the
street. "Don't be too free with the whip, sir.--Steady, steady
there.--Mind the donkey-cart.--Bear away to the right. Don't let 'em
get above themselves. Excuse me, Sir Richard."
He leaned forward and laid both hands quietly on the reins.
"Look here, sir," he said, "I think you'd better let Henry lead the
horses past all this variety business."
The end of the street was reached. On either hand small red or white
houses trend away in a broken line along the edge of a flat, grass
common, backed by plantations of pollarded oak trees. In the
foreground, fringing the broad roadway, were booths, tents, and vans.
And the staring colours of these last, raw reds and yellows, the blue
smoke beating down from their little stove-pipe chimneys, the dirty
white of tent flaps and awnings, stood out harshly in a flare of stormy
sunlight against the solid green of the oaks and uprolling masses of
black-purple cloud.
Here indeed was the show. But to Richard Calmady's eyes it lacked
disappointingly in attraction. His nerves were somewhat a-quiver. All
the course detail, all the unlovely foundations, of the business of
pleasure were rather distressingly obvious to his sight. A
merry-go-round was in full activity--wooden horses and most unseaworthy
boats describing a jerky circle to the squeaking of tin whistles and
purposeless thrumpings of a drum. Close by a crop-eared lurcher, tied
beneath one of the vans, dragged choking at his chain and barked
himself frantic under the stones and teasing of a knot of idle boys. A
half-tipsy slut of a woman threatened a child, who, in soiled tights
and spangles, crouched against the muddy hind-wheel of a wagon, tears
dribbling down his cheeks, his arm raised to ward off the impending
blow. From the menagerie--an amorphous huddle of gray tents, ranged
behind a flight of wooden steps leading up to an open gallery hung with
advertisements of the many attractions within--came the hideous
laughter of a hyena, and the sullen roar of a lion weary of the rows of
stolid English faces staring daily, hourly, between the bars of his
foul and narrow cage, heart-sick with longing for sight of the open,
starlit heaven and the white-domed, Moslem tombs amid the prickly,
desert thickets and plains of clean, hot sand. On the edge of the
encampment horses grazed--sorry beasts for the most part, galled,
broken-kneed and spavined, weary and heart-sick as the captive lion.
But weary not from idleness, as he. Weary from heavy loads and hard
traveling and scant provender. Sick of collar and whip and reiterated
curses.
About the tents and booths, across the grass, and along the roadway,
loitered a sad-coloured, country crowd. Even to the children, it took
its pleasure slowly and silently; save in the case of a hulking, young
carter in a smock-frock, who, being pretty far gone in liquor,
alternately shouted bawdy songs and offered invitation to the company
generally to come on and have its head punched.
Such were the pictures that impressed themselves upon Richard's brain
as Henry led the dancing carriage-horses up the road. And it must be
owned that from this first sight of life, as the common populations
live it, his soul revolted. Delicately nurtured, finely bred, his
sensibility accentuated by the prickings of that thorn in the flesh
which was so intimate a part of his otherwise noble heritage, the
grossness and brutality of much which most boys of his age have already
learnt to take for granted affected him to the point of loathing. And
more especially did he loathe the last picture presented to him on the
outskirts of the common. At the door of a gaudily-painted van, somewhat
apart from the rest, stood a strapping lass, tambourine in one hand,
tin mug for the holding of pennies in the other. She wore a black,
velvet bodice, rusty with age, and a blue, silk skirt of doubtful
cleanliness, looped up over a widely distended scarlet petticoat. Rows
of amber beads encircled her brown throat. She laughed and leered,
bold-eyed and coarsely alluring, at a couple of sheepish country lads
on the green below. She called to them, pointing over her shoulder with
the tin cup, to the sign-board of her show. At the painting on that
board Richard Calmady gave one glance. His lips grew thin and his face
white. He jerked at the reins, causing the horses to start and swerve.
Was it possible that, as old Jackie Deeds said, God Almighty had His
jokes too, jokes at the expense of His own creation? That in cynical
abuse of human impotence, as a wanton pastime, He sent human beings
forth into the world thus ludicrously defective? The thought was
unformulated. It amounted hardly to a thought indeed,--was but a blind
terror of insecurity, which, coursing through the boy's mind, filled
him with agonised and angry pity towards all disgraced fellow-beings,
all enslaved and captive beasts. Dimly he recognised his kinship to all
such.
Meanwhile the carriage bowled along the smooth road and up the long
hill, bordered by fir and beech plantations, which leads to Spendle
Flats. And there, in the open, the storm came down, in rolling thunder
and lashing rain. Tall, shifting, white columns chased each other madly
across the bronze expanse of the moorland. Chifney, mindful of his
charge, hurried Dickie into a greatcoat, buttoned it carefully round
him, offered to drive, almost insisted on doing so. But the boy refused
curtly. He welcomed the stinging rain, the swirling wind, the swift
glare of lightning, the ache and strain of holding the pulling horses.
The violence of it all heated his blood as with the stern passion of
battle. And under the influence of that passion his humour changed from
agonised pity to a fierce determination of conquest. He would fight, he
would come through, he would win, he would slay dragons.
Prometheus-like he would defy the gods. Again his thought was
unformulated, little more than the push of young, untamed energy
impatient of opposition. But that he could face this wild mood of
nature and control and guide these high-mettled, headstrong horses gave
him coolness and self-confidence. It yielded him assurance that there
was, after all, an immensity of distance between himself and all caged,
outworn creatures, and that the horrible example of deformity upon the
brazen-faced girl's show-board had really nothing to do with him.
Dickie's last humour was less noble than his first, it is to be feared.
But in all healthy natures, in all those in whom the love of beauty is
keen, there must be in youth strong repudiation of the brotherhood of
suffering. Time will teach a finer and deeper lesson to those that have
faith and courage to receive it; yet it is well the young should defy
sorrow, hate suffering, gallantly, however hopelessly, fight.
And the warlike instinct remained by Dickie all that evening. He was
determined to assert himself, to measure his power, to obtain. While
Winter was helping him dress for dinner he gave orders that his chair
should be placed at the bottom of the table.
"But the colonel sits there, Sir Richard."
Dickie's face did not give in the least.
"He has sat there," he answered rather shortly. "But I have spoken to
her ladyship, and in future he will sit by her. I'll go down early,
Winter. I prefer being in my place when the others come in."
It must be added that Ormiston accepted his deposition in the best
possible spirit, patting the boy on the shoulder as he passed him.
"Quite right, old chap. I like to see you there. Claim your own, and
keep it."
At which a lump rose in Dickie's throat, nearly causing him to choke
over his first spoonful of soup. But Mary Cathcart whose kind eyes saw
most things, smiled first upon her lover and then upon him, and began
talking to him of horses, as one sportsman to another. And so Dickie
speedily recovered himself, and grew eager, playing host very prettily
at his own table.
He demanded to sit up to prayers, moreover, and took his place in the
dead Richard Calmady's stall nearest the altar rails on the left. Next
him was Dr. Knott, who had come in unexpectedly just before dinner. He
had the boy a little on his mind; and, while contemptuous of his own
weakness in the matter, wanted badly to know just how he was. Lady
Calmady had begged him to stay. He could be excellent company when he
pleased. He had laid aside his roughness of manner and been excellent
company to-night. Next him was Ormiston, while the seats immediately
below were occupied by the men-servants, Winter at their head.
Opposite to Richard, across the chapel, sat Lady Calmady. The fair,
summer moonlight streaming in through the east window spread a network
of fairy jewels upon her stately, gray-clad figure and beautiful head.
Beside her was Mary Cathcart, and then came a range of dark, vacant
stalls. And below these was a long line of women-servants, ranging from
Denny, in rustling, black silk, and Clara,--alert and pretty, though a
trifle tearful,--through many grades and orders, down to the little
scullery-maid, fresh from the keeper's cottage on the Warren--homesick,
and half scared by the grand gentlemen and ladies in evening-dress, by
the strange, lovely figures in the stained-glass windows, by the great,
gold cross and flowers, and the rich altar-cloth and costly hangings
but half seen in the conflicting light of the moonbeams and quivering
candles.
John Knott was impressed by the scene too, though hardly on the same
lines as the little scullery-maid. He had long ago passed the doors of
orthodoxy and dogma. Christian church and heathen temple--could he have
had the interesting experience of entering the latter--were alike to
him. The attitude and office of the priest, the same in every age and
under every form of religion, filled him with cynical scorn. Yet he had
to own there was something inexpressibly touching in the nightly
gathering together of this great household, gentle and simple; and in
this bowing before the source of the impenetrable mystery which
surrounds and encloses the so curiously urgent and vivid consciousness
of the individual. He had to own, too, that there was something
inexpressibly touching in the tones of Julius March's voice as he read
of the young Galilean prophet "going about and doing good"--simple and
gracious record of human tenderness and pity, upon which, in the course
of centuries, the colossal fabric of the modern Christianity, Catholic
and Protestant, has been built up.
"'And great multitudes came to Him,'" read Julius, "'having with them
those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast
them down at Jesus' feet, and He healed them; insomuch that the
multitude marveled when they saw the dumb to speak, and the maimed to
be whole, and the lame to walk----'"
How simple it all sounded in that sweet, old-world story! And yet how
lamentably, in striving to accomplish just these same things, his own
far-reaching science failed!
"'The maimed to be whole, the lame to walk'"--involuntarily he looked
round at the boy beside him.
Richard leaned back in his stall, tired with the long day and its
varying emotions. His eyes were half closed, and his profile showed
pale as wax against the background of dark woodwork. His eyebrows were
drawn into a slight frown, and his face bore a peculiar expression of
reticence. Once he glanced up at the reader, as though on a sudden a
pleasant thought occurred to him. But the movement was a passing one.
He leaned back in his stall again and folded his arms, with a movement
of quiet pride, almost of contempt.
Later that night, as her custom was, Katherine opened the door of
Richard's room softly, and entering bent over his bed in the warm
dimness to give him a last look before going to rest herself. To-night
Dickie was awake. He put his arms round her coaxingly.
"Stay a little, mummy darling," he said. "I am not a bit sleepy. I want
to talk."
Katherine sat down on the edge of the bed. All the mass of her hair was
unbound, and fell in a cloud about her to the waist. Richard, leaning
on one elbow, gathered it together, held and kissed it. He was
possessed by the sense of his mother's great beauty. She seemed so
magnificently far removed from all that is coarse, spoiled, or
degraded. She seemed so superb, so exquisite a personage. So he gazed
at her, kissed her hair, and gently touched her arms, where the open
sleeves of her white dressing-gown left them bare, in reverential
ecstasy.
Katherine became almost perplexed.
"My dearest, what is it?" she asked at last.
"Oh! it's only that you're so perfect, mother," he said. "You make me
feel so safe somehow. I'm never afraid when you are there."
"Afraid of what?" she asked. A hope came upon her that he had grown
nervous of riding, and wanted her to help him to retire gracefully from
the matter. But his next words undeceived her. He threw himself back
against the pillow and clasped his hands under his head.
"That's just it," he said. "I don't know exactly what I am afraid of,
and yet I do get awfully scared at times. I suppose, mother, if one's
in a good position--the position we're in, you know--nobody can ill-use
one very much?"
Lady Calmady's eyes blazed with indignation. "Ill-use you? Who has ever
dared to hint at, to dream of such a thing, dear Richard?"
"Oh, no one--no one! Only I can't help wondering about things, you
know. And some--some people do get most awfully ill-used. I can't help
seeing that."
Katherine paused before answering. The boy did not look at her. She
spoke with quiet conviction, her eyes gazing out into the dimness of
the room.
"I know," she said, almost reluctantly. "And perhaps it is as well you
should know it too, though it is sad knowledge. People are not always
very considerate of one another. But ill-usage cannot touch you, my
dearest. You are saved by love, by position, by wealth."
"You are sure of that, mother?"
"Sure? Of course I am sure, darling," she answered. Yet even while
speaking her heart sank.
Richard remained silent for a space. Then he said, with certain
hesitancy: "Mother, tell me, it is true then that I am rich?"
"Quite true, Dick."
"But sometimes people lose their money."
Katherine smiled.--"Your money is not kept in a stocking, dearest."
"I don't suppose it is," the boy said, turning towards her. "But don't
banks break?"
"Yes, banks break. But a good many broken banks would not affect you.
It is too long a story to tell you now, Dickie, but your income is very
safe. It would almost need a revolution to ruin you. You are rich now;
and I am able to save considerable sums for you yearly."
"It's--it's awfully good of you to take so much trouble for me,
mother," he interrupted, stroking her bare arm again delicately.
To Katherine his half-shy endearments were the most delicious thing in
life--so delicious that at moments she could hardly endure them. They
made her heart too full.
"Eight years hence, when you come of age and I give account of my
stewardship, you will be very rich," she said.
Richard lay quite still, his eyes again fixed on the dimness.
"That--that's good news," he said at last, drawing a long breath. "I
saw things to-day, mother, while we were driving. It was nobody's
fault. There was a fair with a menagerie and shows at Farley Row. I
couldn't help seeing. Don't ask me about it, mother. I'd rather forget,
if I can. Only it made me understand that it is safer for any
one--well, any one like--me--don't you know, to be rich."
Richard sat up, flung his arms round her and kissed her with sudden
passion.
"Beautiful mother, honey-sweet mother," he cried, "you've told me just
everything I wanted to know. I won't be afraid any more." Then he
added, in a charming little tone of authority: "Now you mustn't stay
here any longer. You must be tired. You must go to bed and go to
sleep."
BOOK III
LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH OUR HERO'S WORLD GROWS SENSIBLY WIDER
In the autumn of 1862 Richard Calmady went up to Oxford. Not through
ostentation, but in obedience to the exigencies of the case, his going
was in a somewhat princely sort, so that the venerable city, moved from
the completeness of her scholarly and historic calm, turned her eyes,
in a flutter of quite mundane excitement, upon the newcomer. Julius
March accompanied Richard. Time and thought had moved forward; but the
towers and spires of Oxford, her fair cloisters and enchanting gardens,
her green meadows and noble elms, her rivers, Isis and Cherwell,
remained as when Julius too had been among the young and ardent of her
sons. He was greatly touched by this return to the Holy City of his
early manhood. He renewed old friendships. He reviewed the past, taking
the measure calmly of what life had promised, what it had given of
good. A pleasant house had been secured in St. Giles' Street; and a
contingent of the Brockhurst household, headed by Winter, went with the
two gentlemen, while Chaplin and a couple of grooms preceded them, in
charge of a goodly number of horse-boxes.
For that first saddle, fashioned now some six years ago by Josiah
Appleyard of Farley Row, had worked something as near a miracle as ever
yet was worked by pigskin. It was a singularly ugly saddle, running up
into a peak front and back, furnished with a complicated system of
straps and buckles and--in place of stirrups and stirrup-leathers--with
a pair of contrivances resembling old-fashioned holsters. Mary
Cathcart's brown eyes had grown moist on first beholding it. And
Colonel Ormiston had exclaimed, "Good God! Oh, well, poor dear little
chap, I suppose it's the best we can do for him." An ugly saddle--yet
had Josiah Appleyard ample reason to skip, goat-like, being glad. For,
ugly or not, it fulfilled its purpose, bringing custom to the maker and
happiness and health to the owner of it.
The boy rode fearlessly, while exercise and exertion begot in him a
certain light-heartedness and audacity good to see. The window-seat of
the Long Gallery, the book-shelves of the library, knew him but seldom
now. He was no less courteous, no less devoted to his mother, no less
in admiration of her beauty; but the young barbarian was well awake in
Dickie, and drove him out of doors, on to the moorland or into the
merry greenwood, with dog, and horse, and gun. On his well-broken pony
he shot over the golden stubble fields in autumn, brought down his
pheasants, stationed at the edge of the great coverts; went out for
long afternoons, rabbiting in the warrens and field banks, escorted by
spaniels and retrievers, and keepers carrying lithe, lemon-coloured
ferrets tied up in a bag.
Later, when he was older,--but this tried Katherine somewhat, reminding
her too keenly of another Richard Calmady and days long dead,--Winter,
a trifle reluctant at such shortening of his own virtuous slumbers,
would call Dickie and dress him, all in the gray of the summer morning;
while, at the little arched doorway in the west front, Chifney and a
groom with a led horse would await his coming, and the boy would mount
and ride away from the great, sleeping house. At such times a charm of
dewy freshness lay on grass and woodland, on hill and vale. The morning
star grew pale and vanished in the clear-flashing delight of sunrise,
as Richard rode forth to meet the string of racers; as he noted the
varying form and fortune of Rattlepate or Sweet Rosemary, of Yellow
Jacket, Morion or Light-o'-Love, over the short fragrant turf of the
gallop; as he felt the virile joy which the strength of the horses and
the pounding rush of them as they swept past him ever aroused in him.
Then he would ride on, by a short cut, to the old, red-brick
rubbing-house, crowning the rising ground on the farther side of the
lake, and wait there to see the finish, talking of professional matters
with Chifney meanwhile; or, turning his horse's head towards the wide,
distant view, sit silent, drawing near to nature and worshipping--with
the innocent gladness of a still virgin heart--in the temple of the
dawn.
Life at Oxford was set in a different key. The university city was well
disposed towards this young man of so great wealth and so strange
fortunes; and Richard was unsuspicious, and ready enough to meet
friendliness half-way. Yet it must be owned he suffered many bad
quarters of an hour. He was, at once, older in thought and younger in
practical experience than his fellow-undergraduates. He was cut off, of
necessity, from their sports. They would eat his breakfasts, drink his
wine, and show no violent objection to riding his horses. They were
considerate, almost anxiously careful of him, being generous and
good-hearted lads. And yet poor Dick was perturbed by the fear that
they were more at ease without him, that his presence acted as a slight
check upon their genial spirits and their rattling talk. And so it came
about that though his acquaintances were many, his friends were few.
Chief among the latter was Ludovic Quayle, a younger son of Lord
Fallowfeild--whom that kindly if not very intelligent nobleman had long
ago proposed to export from the Whitney to the Brockhurst nursery with
a view to the promotion of general cheerfulness. Mr. Ludovic Quayle was
a rather superfine, young gentleman, possessed of an excellent opinion
of himself, and a modest opinion of other persons--his father included.
But under his somewhat supercilious demeanour there was a vein of true
romance. He loved Richard Calmady; and neither time, nor opposing
interests, nor certain black chapters which had later to be read in the
history of life, destroyed or even weakened that love.
And so Dick, finding himself at sad disadvantage with most of the
charming young fellows about him in matters of play, turned to matters
of work, letting go the barbarian side of life for a while. In brain,
if not in body, he believed himself the equal of the best of them. His
ambition was fired by the desire of intellectual triumph. He would have
the success of the schools, since the success of the river and the
cricket-field were denied him. Not that Richard set any exaggerated
value upon academic honours. Only two things are necessary--this at
least was his code at that period--never to lapse from the instincts of
high-breeding and honour, and to see just as much of life, of men and
of affairs, as obedience to those instincts permits. Already the sense
of proportion was strong in Richard, fed perhaps by the galling sense
of personal deformity. Learning is but a part of the whole of man's
equipment, and a paltry enough part unless wisdom go along with it. But
the thirst of battle remained in Richard; and in this matter of
learning, at least, he could meet men of his own age and standing on
equal terms and overcome them in fair fight.
And so, during the last two years of his university course, he did meet
them and overcame, honours falling liberally to his share. Julius March
looked on in pleased surprise at the exploits of his former pupil.
While Ludovic Quayle, with raised eyebrows and half-tender,
half-ironical amusement relaxing the corners of his remarkably
beautiful mouth, would say:--
"Calmady, you really are a shameless glutton! How many more immortal
glories, any one of which would satisfy an ordinary man, do you propose
to swallow?"
"I suppose it's a bad year," Richard would answer. "The others can't
amount to very much, or, needless to say, I shouldn't walk over the
course."
"A charming little touch of modesty, as far as you yourself are
concerned," Ludovic answered. "But not strikingly flattering to the
others. I would rather suppose you abnormally clever, than all the rest
abnormally stupid--for, after all, you know, am I, my great self, not
among the rest?"
At which Dickie would laugh rather shamefacedly, and say:--"Oh
you!--why you know well enough you could do anything you liked if you
weren't so confoundedly lazy!"
And, meanwhile, at Brockhurst, as news arrived of these successes, Lady
Calmady's soul received comfort. Her step was light, her eyes full of
clear shining as she moved to and fro ordering the great house and
great estate. She felt repaid for the bitter pain of parting with her
darling, and sending him forth to face the curious, possibly scornful,
world of the university city. He had proved himself and won his spurs.
And this solaced her in the solitude and loneliness of her present
life. For her dear friend and companion Marie de Mirancourt had found
the final repose, before seeking that of the convent. Early one
February morning, in the second year of Richard's sojourn at Oxford,
fortified by the rites of the Church, she had passed the gates of death
peacefully, blessing and blessed. Katherine mourned for her, and would
continue to mourn with still and faithful sorrow, even while welcoming
home her young scholar, hearing the details of his past achievements
and hopes for the future, or entertaining--with all gracious
hospitality--such of his Oxford friends as he elected to invite to
Brockhurst.
It was on one of these last occasions, the young men having gone down
to the Gun-Room to smoke and discuss the day's pheasant shooting, that
Katherine had kept Julius March standing before the Chapel-Room fire,
and had looked at him, a certain wistfulness in her face.
"He is happy--don't you think, Julius?" she said. "He seems to me
really happier, more contented, than I have ever seen him since his
childhood."
"Yes, I also think that," Julius answered. "He has reason to be
contented. He has measured himself against other men and is satisfied
of his own powers."
"Every one admires him at Oxford?"
"Yes, they admire and envy him. He has been brilliantly successful."
Katherine drew herself up, clasping her hands behind her, and smiling
proudly as she mused, gazing into the crimson heart of the burning
logs. Then, after a silence, she turned suddenly to her companion.
"It is very sweet to have you here at home again, Julius," she said
gently. "I have missed you sorely since dearest Marie de Mirancourt
died. Live a little longer than I do, please. Ah! I am afraid it is no
small thing that I ask you to do for my sake, for I foresee that I
shall survive to a lamentably old age. But sacrifice yourself, Julius,
in the matter of living. Less than ever, when the shadows fall, shall I
be able to spare you."
For which words of his dear lady's, though spoken lightly, half in
jest, Julius March gave God great thanks that night.
It was about this period that two pieces of news, each proving
eventually to have much personal significance, reached Lady Calmady
from the outside world. The first took the form of a letter--a rather
pensive and tired letter--from her brother, William Ormiston, telling
her that his daughter Helen was about to marry the Comte de Vallorbes,
a young gentleman very well known both to Parisian and Neapolitan
society. The second took the form of an announcement in the _Morning
Post_, to the effect that Lady Tobemory, whose lamented death that
paper had already chronicled, had left the bulk of her not
inconsiderable fortune to her god-daughter Honoria, eldest child of
that distinguished officer General St. Quentin. In both cases Lady
Calmady wrote letters of congratulation, in the latter with very
sincere and lively pleasure. She held her cousin, General St. Quentin,
in affection for old sake's sake. Honoria she remembered as a
singularly graceful, high-bred, little maiden, fleet of foot as a
hind--too fleet of foot indeed for little Dickie's comfort of mind, and
therefore banished from the Brockhurst nursery. In the former case, her
congratulations being somewhat conventional, she added--in her own name
and that of Richard--a necklace of pearls, with a diamond clasp and
bars to it, of no mean value.
In the spring of 1865 Richard left Oxford for good, and took up his
residence once more at Brockhurst. But it was not until the autumn of
the following year, when he had reached the age of three-and-twenty,
and had already for some six months served his Queen and country in the
capacity of Justice of the Peace for the county of Southampton, that
any event occurred greatly affecting his fortunes, and therefore worthy
to set forth at large in this history.
CHAPTER II
TELLING HOW DICKIE'S SOUL WAS SOMEWHAT SICK, AND HOW HE MET FAIR WOMEN
ON THE CONFINES OF A WOOD
RICHARD CALMADY rode homeward through the autumn woods, and the aspect
of them was very lovely. But their loveliness was hectic, a loveliness
as it seemed, at all events at first sight, of death and burial, rather
than of life and hope. The sky was overcast, and a chill clung to the
stream side and haunted the hollows. The young man's humour,
unfortunately, was only too much in harmony with the more melancholy
suggestions of the scene. For Richard was by nature something of a
poet, though he but rarely wrote verses, and usually burned them as
soon as written, being scholar enough to know and feel impatient of the
"second best." And this inherent strain of poetry in him tempered the
active and practical side of his character, making wealth and position,
and all those things which the worldly-minded seek, seem of slight
value to him at times. It induced in him many and very varying moods.
It carried him back often, even now in the strength of his young
manhood, to the fine fancies and exquisite unreason of the fairy world
in which those so sadly ill-balanced footsteps of his had first been
set. To-day had proved, so far, an unlucky one, prolific of warfare
between his clear brain and all too sensitive heart. For it was the
burden of Richard's temperament--the almost inevitable result of that
ever-present thorn in the flesh--that he shrunk as a poet, even as a
woman, while as a man, and a strong one, he reasoned and fought.
It fell out on this wise. He had attended the Quarter Sessions at
Westchurch; and a certain restlessness, born of the changing seasons,
being upon him, he had ridden. His habit, when passing outside the
limits of his own property, was to drive. He became aware--and angrily
conscious his groom was aware also--that his appearance afforded a
spectacle of the liveliest interest to the passers-by; that persons of
very various age and class had stopped and turned to gaze at him; and
that, while crossing the bridge spanning the dark, oily waters of the
canal, in the industrial quarter of the pushing, wide-awake, county
town, he had been the subject of brutal comment, followed by a hoarse
laugh from the collarless throats of some dozen operatives and bargees
loitering thereupon.
The consequence was that the young man arrived in court, his eyes
rather hard and his jaw set. Rich, well-born, not undistinguished too
for his attainments, and only three and twenty, Dickie had a fine fund
of arrogance to draw upon yet. He drew upon it this morning, rather to
the confusion of his colleagues upon the bench. Mr. Cathcart, the
chairman, was already present, and stood talking with Mr. Seymour, the
rector of Farley, a shrewd, able parson of the old sporting type.
Captain Fawkes of Water End was there too; and so was Lemuel Image,
eldest son of the Mr. Image, sometime mayor of Westchurch, who has been
mentioned in the early pages of this chronicle.
In the last twenty years, supported by ever-increasing piles of
barrels, the Image family had mounted triumphantly upward in the social
scale. Lemuel, the man in question, married a poor and distant relation
of Lord Aldborough, the late lord lieutenant of the county; and had by
this, and by a rather truculent profession of high Tory politics,
secured himself a seat on the bench. He had given a fancy price, too,
for that pretty, little place, Frodsmill, the grounds of which form
such an exasperating Naboth's vineyard in the heart of the Newland's
property. Neither his person, nor his politics, nor his absence of
culture, found favour in Richard Calmady's sight. And to-day, being
somewhat on edge, the brewer's large, blustering presence and
manner--at once patronising and servile--struck him as peculiarly
odious. Image betrayed an evil tendency to emphasise his remarks by
slapping his acquaintances upon the back. He was also guilty of
supposing a defect of hearing in all persons older than, or in any
measure denied the absolute plethora of physical vigour so conspicuous
in, himself. He invariably raised his voice in addressing Richard. In
return for which graceful attention Dickie most cordially detested him.
"Image is a bit of a cad, and certainly Calmady makes no bones about
letting him know it," Captain Fawkes remarked to Mr. Seymour, as they
drove back to Farley in the latter's dog-cart. "Fortunately he has a
hide like a rhinoceros, or we should have had a regular row between
them more than once this morning. Calmady's generally charming; but I
must say, when he likes, he can be about the most insolent fellow I've
ever met, in a gentleman-like way."
"A great deal of that is simply self-protective," the clergyman
answered. "It is not difficult to see how it comes about, when you take
his circumstances into account. If I was him, God forgive me, I know I
shouldn't be half so sweet tempered. He bears it wonderfully well, all
things considered."
Nor did the disturbing incidents of the day end with the familiarities
of the loud-voiced brewer. The principal case to be tried was a
melancholy one enough--a miserable history or wayward desire, shame and
suffering, followed by a despairing course of lies and petty thieving
to help support the poor baby whose advent seemed so wholly a curse.
The young mother--a pretty, desperate creature--made no attempt at
denial. She owned she had robbed her mistress of a shilling here and
sixpence there, that she had taken now a bit of table silver and then a
garment to the pawn-shop. How could she help it? Her wages were a
trifle, since her character was damaged. Wasn't it a charity to employ
a girl like her at all, so her mistress said? And yet the child must
live. And Richard Calmady, sitting in judgment there, with those four
other gentlemen of substantial means and excellent position, sickened
as he listened to the sordid details, the relentless elementary
arguments. For the girl, awed and frightened at first, grew eloquent in
self-defense.--"She loved him"--he being a smart young fellow, who,
with excellent recommendations from Chifney, had left the Brockhurst
stables some two years before, to take service in Westchurch.--"And he
always spoke her fair. Had told her he'd marry her right enough, after
a bit--before God he would. But it would ruin his chance of first-class
places if he married yet. The gentry wouldn't take any but single men
of his age. A wife would stand in his way. And she didn't want to stand
in his way--he knew her better than that. Not but that he reckoned her
just as much his wife as any woman could be. Of course he did. What a
silly she was to trouble about it. And then when there was no hiding
any longer how it was with her, he up and awayed to London, saying he
would make a home for her there. And he kept on writing for a bit, but
he never told her where to write to him in return, so she couldn't
answer. And then his letters came seldom, and then stopped altogether,
and then--and then----"
The girl was rebuked for her much speaking, and so wasting the time of
the court. There were other cases. And Richard Calmady sickened yet
more, recognising in that a parable of perpetual application. For are
there not always other cases? The tragedy of the individual life
reaching its climax seems, to the chief actor, worthy to claim and hold
universal attention. Yet the sun never stands still in heaven, nor do
the footsteps of men tarry upon earth. No one person may take up too
much space, too much time. The movement of things is not stayed. The
single cry, however bitter, is drowned in the roar of the pushing
crowd. The individual, however keen his griefs, however heinous the
offense done him, must make way for those same other cases. This is the
everlasting law.
And so pained, out of tune, troubled too by smouldering fires of anger,
Richard left Westchurch and his fellow-magistrates as early as he
decently could. Avoiding the highroad leading by Newlands and through
Sandyfield village, he cut across country by field lanes and over waste
lands to Farley Row. The wide quiet of the autumn afternoon, the slight
chill in the air, were grateful to him after the noise and close
atmosphere of the court. Yet the young man strove vainly to think of
pleasant things and to regain his serenity. The girl's tear-blotted
face, the tones of her voice, haunted him. Six weeks' imprisonment. The
sentence, after all, was a light one. Yet who was he, who were those
four other well-to-do gentlemen, that they should judge her at all? How
could they measure the strength of the temptation which had beset her?
If temptation is strong enough, must not the tempted of necessity
yield? If the tempted does not yield, is that not merely proof that the
temptation was not strong enough? The whole thing appeared to him a
matter of mathematics or mechanics. Given a greater weight than it can
carry, the rope is bound to break. And then for those who have not felt
the strain to blame the rope, punish the rope! It seemed to Richard, as
he rode homeward, that human justice is too often a very comedy of
injustice. It all appeared to him so exceedingly foolish. And yet
society must be protected. Other pretty, weak, silly creatures must be
warned, by such rather brutal object lessons, not to bear bastards or
pawn their mistresses' spoons.
"'_Je ne sais pas ce que c'est que la vie eternelle, mais celle ci est
une mauvaise plaisanterie_,'" Dickie quoted to himself somewhat
bitterly.
He turned aside at Farley Row, following the narrow road that runs
behind the houses in the main street and the great, vacant stables and
outbuildings of the White Lion Inn. And here, as though the immediate
displeasures of this ill-starred day were insufficient, memory arose
and recalled other displeasures of long ago. Recalled old Jackie Deeds
lurching out of that same inn yard, empty pipe in mouth, greedy of
alms. Recalled the old postboy's ugly morsel of profanity--"God
Almighty had His jokes too." And, at that, the laughter of those
loafers upon the canal bridge saluted Richard's ears once more, as did
the loud, familiar phrases of Mr. Lemuel Image, the Westchurch brewer.
Before him the flat expanse of Clerke's Green opened out; and the turf
of it--beaded with dew which the frail sunshine of the early morning
had failed to burn up--was crossed by long tracks of darker green,
where flocks of geese had wandered over its misty surface. Here the
traveling menagerie and all the booths of the fair had been stationed.
Memory rigged up the tents once more, painted the vans in crude,
glaring colours, set drums beating and merry-go-rounds turning, pointed
a malicious finger at the sign-board of a certain show. How many times
Richard had passed this way in the intervening years, and remembered in
passing, yet thrown all hurt of remembrance from him directly and
lightly! To-day it gripped him. He put his horse into a sharp trot.
Skirting the edge of the green, he rode down a rutted cart lane--farm
buildings and well-filled rickyards on the left--and forded the
shallow, brown stream which separates the parish of Farley from that of
Sandyfield and the tithing of Brockhurst.
Ahead lay the wide, rough road, ending in a broken avenue of ancient
oaks, and bordered on either hand by a strip of waste land overgrown
with coarse grasses and low thickets of maple--which leads up to the
entrance of the Brockhurst woods. Over these hung a soft, bluish haze,
making them appear vast in extent, and upraising the dark ridge of the
fir forest, which crowns them, to mountain height against the western
sky. A covey of partridges ran up the sandy road before Richard's
horse; and, rising at last, with a long-drawn whir of wings, skimmed
the top of the bank and dropped into the pale stubble field on the
other side of it. He paused at the head of the avenue while the
keeper's wife--in lilac apron and sunbonnet--ran out to open the big,
white gate; the dogs meantime, from their kennels under the Spanish
chestnuts upon the slope behind her gabled cottage, setting up a
vociferous chorus. Thus heralded, Richard passed into the whispering,
mysterious stillness of the autumn woods.
The summer had been dry and fine, the foliage unusually rich and heavy,
all the young wood ripening well. Consequently the turn of the leaf was
very brilliant that year. The sweetly, sober, English landscape seemed
to have run mad and decked itself, as for a masquerade, in extravagant
splendours of colour. The smooth-stemmed beeches had taken on every
tint from fiery brown, through orange and amber, to verdigris green
touching latest July shoots. The round-headed oaks, practising even in
carnival time a measure of restraint, had arrayed themselves in a
hundred rich, finely-gradated tones of russet and umber. While, here
and there, a tall bird-cherry, waxing wanton, had clothed itself like
the Woman of Babylon in rose-scarlet from crown to lowest black-barked
twig. Higher up, the larch plantations rose in crowds of
butter-coloured spires. Amethystine and blood-red, white-spotted
toadstools, in little companies, pushed through the light soil on
either side the road. Trailing sprays of bramble glowed as flame. Rowan
berries hung in heavy coral bunches, and the dogwood spread itself in
sparse china-pink clusters. Only the undergrowth of crooked alders, in
swampy, low-lying places, kept its dark, purplish green; and the light
foliage of the ash waved in shadowy pallor against its knobbed and
knotted branches; and the ranks of the encircling firs retained their
solemn habit, as though in protest against the universal riot.
The stream hidden away in the hazel coppice gurgled and murmured.
Beech-masts pattered down, startling the stillness as with a sudden
dropping of thunder rain. Squirrels, disturbed in the ingathering of
their winter store, whisked up the boles of the great trees and scolded
merrily from the forks of the high branches. Shy wild things rustled
and scampered unseen through the tangled undergrowth and beds of
bracken. While that veil of bluish haze touched all the distance of the
landscape with a delicate mystery, and softly blotted the vista of each
wide shooting drive, or winding pathway, to left and right.
And as Richard rode onward, leaves gay even in death fluttering down
around him, his mood began to suffer change. He ceased to think and
began to feel merely. First came a dreamy delight in the beauty of the
scene about him. Then the sense of mystery grew upon him--of mystery,
not merely hanging in the delicate haze, but dwelling in the endless
variety of form and colour which met his eyes, of mystery inviting him
in the soft, multitudinous voices of the woodland. And as the minutes
passed this sense grew increasingly provocative, became too
increasingly elusive. The light leapt into Dickie's eyes. He smiled to
himself. He was filled with unreasoning expectation. He seemed--it was
absurd, yet very charming--to be playing hide-and-seek with some glad
secret which at any instant might be revealed to him. It murmured to
him in the brook. It scolded at him merrily with the scolding
squirrels. It startled the surrounding stillness, with the down
pattering beech-masts and fluttering of leaves. It eluded him deftly,
rustling away unseen through the green and gold of the bracken. Lastly
when, reaching the summit of the ridge of hill, he entered upon the
levels of the great table-land, it hailed him in the long-drawn sighing
of the fir forest. For a wind, suddenly awakened, swept towards him
from some far distance, neared, broke overhead, as summer waves upon a
shingly beach, died in delicious whispers, only to sweep up and break
and die again. Meanwhile the gray pall of cloud parted in the west,
disclosing spaces of faint yet clearest blue, and the declining sun,
from behind dim islands of shifting vapour, sent forth immense rays of
mild and misty light.
Richard laughed involuntarily to himself. For there was a fantastic,
curiously alluring influence in all this. It spoke to him as in
delicate persuasion. His sense of expectation intensified. He would not
ride homeward and shut himself within four walls just yet; but yield
himself to the wooing of these fair sylvan divinities; to that of the
spirit of the evening wind, of the softly shrouding haze, and of the
broadening sunlight, a little longer.
A turf-ride branches away to the left, leading along a narrow
outstanding spur of table-land to a summer-house, the prospect from
which is among the noted beauties of Brockhurst. This summer-house or
Temple, as it has come to be called, is an octagonal structure.
Round-shafted pillars rise at each projecting angle. In the recesses
between them are low stone benches, save in front where an open
colonnade gives upon the view. The roof is leaded, and surmounted by a
wooden ball and tall, three-sided spike. These last, as well as the
plastered, windowless walls are painted white. Within, the hollow of
the dome is decorated in fresco, with groups of gaily clad ladies and
their attendant cavaliers, with errant cupids, garlands of flowers,
trophies of rather impossible musical instruments, and cages full of
imprisoned, and therefore doubtless very naughty, loves. The colours
have grown faint by action of insweeping wind and weather; but this
lends a pathos to the light-hearted, highly-artificial art, emphasising
the contrast between it and its immediate surroundings.
For the Temple stands on a platform of turf at the extreme point of the
spur of table-land. The hillside, clothed with heather and bracken,
fringed lower down with a coppice of delicate birches, falls steeply
away in front and on either hand. Outstretched below, besides the
panorama of the great woods, lies all the country about Farley, on to
Westchurch, and beyond again--pasture and cornlands, scattered hamlets
and red-roofed farms half-hidden among trees, the glint of streams set
in the vivid green of water-meadows, and soft blue range behind range
of distance to that pale uprising of chalk down in the far south. Upon
the right, some quarter of a mile away, blocking the end of an avenue
of ancient Scotch firs, the eastern facade of Brockhurst House shows
planted proudly upon the long gray and red lines of the terrace.
Richard checked his horse, pausing to look for a moment at that
well-beloved home. Then musing, he let his horse go forward along the
level turf-ride. The glistering, gray dome and white columns of the
Temple standing out against the spacious prospect--the growing
brightness of this last, still chastened by the delicious autumn
haze--captivated his imagination. There was, seen thus, a simplicity
and distinction altogether classic in the lonely building. To him it
appeared not unfit shrine for the worship of that same all-pervasive
spirit of mystery, not unfit spot for the revelation of that same glad,
yet cunningly elusive secret, of which he suffered the so fond
obsession.
And so it was that when, coming abreast of the building, the sound of
young voices--women's voices--and finely modulated laughter saluted his
ear, though startled for no stranger had the right of entry to the
park, he was by no means displeased. This seemed but part of the
all-pervasive magic of this strange afternoon. Richard smiled at the
phantasies of his own mood; yet he forgot to be shy, forgot the
distressing self-consciousness which made him shrink from the
observation of strangers--specially those of the other sex. The
adventure tempted his fancy. Even familiar things had put on a new and
beguiling vesture in the last half hour, so there were miracles abroad,
perhaps. Anyhow he would satisfy himself as to the aspect of those
sweet voiced and, as yet, unseen trespassers. He let his horse go
forward slowly across the platform of turf.
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH RICHARD CONFIRMS ONE JUDGMENT AND REVERSES ANOTHER
"How magnificently your imagination gallops when it once gets agoing.
Here you are bearing away the spoils, when the siege is not yet even
begun--never will be, I venture to hope, for I doubt if this would be a
very honourable----"
The speaker broke off abruptly, as the shadow of horse and rider
lengthened upon the turf. And, during the silence which followed,
Richard Calmady received an impression at once arresting and subtly
disquieting.
A young lady, of about his own age, leaned against one of the white
pillars of the colonnade. Her attitude and costume were alike slightly
unconventional. She was unusually tall, and there was a lazy, almost
boyish indifference and grace in the pose of her supple figure and the
gallant carriage of her small head. She wore a straight, pale
gray-green jacket, into the pockets of which her hands were thrust. Her
skirt, of the same colour and material, hung in straight folds to her
feet, being innocent alike of trimming and the then prevailing fashion
of crinoline. Further, she wore a little, round matador's hat, three
black pompons planted audaciously upstanding above the left ear. Her
eyes, long in shape and set under straight, observant brows, appeared
at first sight of the same clear, light, warm brown as her hair. Her
nose was straight, rather short, and delicately square at the tip.
While her face, unlined, serenely, indeed triumphantly youthful, was
quite colourless and sufficiently thin to disclose fine values of bone
in the broad forehead and the cutting of jaw and cheek and chin.
In that silence, as she and Richard Calmady looked full at one another,
he apprehended in her a baffling element, a something untamed and
remote, a freedom of soul, that declared itself alike in the
gallantries and severities of her dress, her attitude, and all the
lines of her person. She bore relation to the glad mystery haunting the
fair autumn evening. She also bore relation to the chill haunting the
stream-side and the deep places of the woods. And her immediate action
emphasised this last likeness in his mind. When he first beheld her she
was bright, with a certain teasing insouciance. Then, for a minute,
even more, she stood at gaze, as a hind does suddenly startled on the
edge of the covert--her head raised, her face keen with inquiry. Her
expression changed, became serious, almost stern. She recoiled, as in
pain, as in an approach to fear--this strong, nymphlike creature.
"Helen," she called aloud, in tones of mingled protest and warning. And
thereupon, without more ado, she retired, nay, fled, into the
sheltering, sun-warmed interior of the Temple.
At this summons her companion, who until now had stood contemplating
the wide view from the extreme verge of the platform, wheeled round.
For an appreciable time she, too, looked at Richard Calmady, and that
haughtily enough, as though he, rather than she, was the intruder. Her
glance traveled unflinchingly down from his bare head and broad
shoulders to that pocket-like appendage--as of old-fashioned pistol
holsters--on either side his saddle. Swiftly her bearing changed. She
uttered an exclamation of unfeigned and unalloyed satisfaction--a
little joyful outcry, such as a child will make on discovery of some
lost treasure.
"Ah! it is you--you," she said, laughing softly, while she moved
forward, both hands extended. Which hand, by the same token, she
proposed to bestow on Dickie remained matter for conjecture, since in
the one she carried a parasol with a staff-like gold and tortoise-shell
handle to it, and in the other, between the first and second fingers, a
cigarette, the blue smoke of which curled upward in transparent spirals
upon the clear, still air.
As the lady of the gray-green gown retired precipitately within the
Temple, a wave of hot blood passed over Richard's body. For
notwithstanding his three-and-twenty years, his not contemptible
mastery of many matters, and that same honourable appointment of
Justice of the Peace for the county of Southampton, he was but a lad
yet, with all a lad's quickness of sensitive shame and burning
resentment. The girl's repulsion had been obvious---that instinctive
repulsion, as poor Dickie's too acute sympathies assured him, of the
whole for the maimed, of the free for the bound, of the artist for some
jarring colour or sound which mars an otherwise entrancing harmony. And
the smart of all this was, to him, doubly salted by the fact that he,
after all, was a man, his critic merely a woman. The bitter mood of the
earlier hours of the day returned upon him. He cursed himself for a
doting fool. Who was he, indeed, to seek revelation of glad secrets,
cherish fair dreams and tempt adventures?
Consequently it fell out when that other lady--she of the
cigarette--advanced thus delightfully towards him, Richard's face was
white with anger, and his lips rigid with pain--a rigidity begotten of
the determination that they should not tremble in altogether too
unmanly fashion. Sometimes it is very sad to be young. The flesh is
still very tender, so that a scratch hurts more than a sword-thrust
later. Only, let it be remembered, the scratch heals readily; while of
the sword-thrust we die, even though at the moment of receiving it we
seem not so greatly to suffer. And unquestionably as Dickie sat there,
on his handsome horse, hat in hand, looking down at the lady of the
cigarette, the hurt of that lately received scratch began quite
sensibly to lessen. For her eyes, their first unsparing scrutiny
accomplished, rested on his with a strangely flattering and engaging
insistence.
"But this is the very prettiest piece of good fortune!" she exclaimed.
"Had I arranged the whole matter to suit my own fancy it could not have
turned out more happily."
Her tone was that of convincing sincerity; while, as she spoke, the
soft colour came and went in her cheeks, and her lips parting showed
little, even teeth daintily precious as a row of pearls. The outline of
her face was remarkably pure--in shape an oval, a trifle wide in
proportion to its length. Her eyebrows were arched, the eyelids arched
also--very thin, showing the movement of the eyeballs beneath them,
drooping slightly, with a sweep of dark lashes at the outer corner. It
struck Richard that she bore a certain resemblance to his mother,
though smaller and slighter in build. Her mouth was less full, her hair
fairer--soft, glistening hair of all the many shades of heather
honey-comb, broken wax and sweet, heady liquor alike. Her hands, he
remarked, were very finished--the fingers pointed, the palms rosy. The
set of her black, velvet coat revealed the roundness of her bust. The
broad brim of her large, black hat, slightly upturned at the sides, and
with sweeping ostrich plumes as trimming to it, threw the upper part of
her charming face into soft shadow. Her heavy, dove-coloured, silk
skirts stood out stiffly from her waist, declaring its slenderness. The
few jewels she wore were of notable value. Her appearance, in fact,
spoke the last word of contemporary fashion in its most refined
application. She was a great lady, who knew the world and the worth of
it. And she was absolute mistress both of that knowledge, and of
herself--notwithstanding those outstretched hands, and outcry of
childlike pleasure,--there, perhaps, lay the exquisite flattery of this
last to her hearer! She was all this, and something more than all this.
Something for which Dickie, his heart still virgin, had no name as yet.
It was new to his experience. A something clear, simple, and natural,
as the sunlight, and yet infinitely subtle. A something ravishing, so
that you wanted to draw it very close, hold it, devour it. Yet
something you so feared, you needs must put it from you, so that, faint
with ecstasy, standing at a distance, you might bow yourself and humbly
worship. But such extravagant exercises being, in the nature of his
case, physically as well as socially inadmissible, the young man was
constrained to remain seated squarely in the saddle--that singularly
ungainly saddle, moreover, with holster-like appendages to it--while he
watched her, wholly charmed, curious and shy, carried indeed a little
out of himself, waiting for her to make further disclosures, since he
felt absurdly slow and unready of speech.
Nor was he destined to wait in vain. The fair lady appeared agreeably
ready to declare herself, and that with the finest turns of voice and
manner, with the most coercive variety of appeal, pathos, caprice, and
dignity.
"I know on the face of it I have not the smallest right to have taken
possession in this way," she continued. "It is the frankest
impertinence. But if you realised how extremely I am enjoying myself,
you could not fail to forgive me. All this park of yours, all this
nature," she turned sideways, sketching out the great view with a broad
gesture of the cigarette and graceful hand that held it, "all this is
divinely lovely. It is wiser to possess oneself of it in an illicit
manner, to defy the minor social proprieties and unblushingly to steal,
than not to possess oneself of it at all. If you are really hungry, you
know, you learn not to be too nice as to the ways and means of
acquiring sustenance."
"And you were really hungry?" Richard found himself saying, as he
feared rather blunderingly. But he wanted, so anxiously, the present to
remain the present--wanted to continue to watch her, and to hear her.
She turned his head. How then could he behave otherwise than with
stupidity?
"La! la!" she replied, laughing indulgently, and thereby enchanting him
still more; "what must your experience of life be if you suppose one
gets a full meal of divine loveliness every day in the week? For my
part, I am not troubled with any such celestial plethora, believe me. I
was ravening, I tell you, positively ravening."
"And your hunger is satisfied?" he asked, still as he feared
blunderingly, and with a queer inward movement of envy towards the wide
view she looked upon, and the glory of the sunset which dared touch her
hair.
"Satisfied?" she exclaimed. "Is one's hunger for the divinely lovely
ever satisfied? Just now I have stayed mine with the merest
mouthful--as one snatches a sandwich at a railway _buffet_. And
directly I must get into the train again, and go on with my noisy,
dusty, stifling journey. Ah! you are very fortunate to live in this
adorable and restful place; to see it in all its fine drama of changing
colour and season, year in and year out."
She dropped the end of her cigarette into a little sandy depression in
the turf, and drawing aside her silken skirts, trod out the red heart
of it neatly with her daintily shod foot. Just then the other lady, she
of the gray-green gown, came from within the shelter of the Temple, and
stood between the white pillars of the colonnade. Dick's grasp
tightened on the handle of the hunting-crop lying across his thigh.
"Am I so very fortunate?" he said, almost involuntarily.
His companion looked up, smiling, her eyes dwelling on his with a
strange effect of intimacy, wholly flattering, wholly, indeed,
distracting to common sense.
"Yes--you are fortunate," she answered, speaking slowly. "And some day,
Richard, I think you will come to know that."
Sudden comprehension, sudden recognition struck the young man--very
literally struck him a most unwelcome buffet.
"Oh! I see--I understand," he exclaimed, "you are my cousin--you are
Madame de Vallorbes."
For a moment his sense of disappointment was so keen, he was minded to
turn his horse and incontinently ride away. The misery of that episode
of his boyhood set its tooth very shrewdly in him even yet. It seemed
the most cruelly ironical turn of fate that this entrancing, this
altogether worshipful, stranger should prove to be one and the same as
the little dancer of long ago with blush-roses in her hat.
But though the colour deepened somewhat in the lady's cheeks, she did
not lower her eyes, nor did they lose their smiling importunity. A
little ardour, indeed, heightened the charm of her manner--an ardour of
delicate battle, as of one whose honour has been ever so slightly
touched.
"Certainly, I am your cousin, Helen de Vallorbes," she replied. "You
are not sorry for that, Richard, are you? At this moment I am
increasingly glad to be your cousin--though not perhaps so very
particularly glad to be Helen de Vallorbes." Then she added,
rapidly:--"We are here in England for a few weeks, my father and I.
Troublesome, distressing things had happened, and he perceived I needed
change. He brought me away. London proved a desert and a dust-heap.
There was no solace, no distraction from unpleasant thoughts to be
found there. So we telegraphed and came down last night to the kind
people at Newlands. Naturally my father wanted to see Aunt Katherine. I
desired to see her also, well understood, for I have heard so much of
her talent and her great beauty. But I knew they--the brother and
sister--would wish to speak of the past and find their happiness in
being very sad about it all. At our age--yours and mine--the sadness of
any past one may possess is a good deal too present with one still to
afford in the least consoling subject of conversation." Madame de
Vallorbes spoke with a certain vehemence. "Don't you think so,
Richard?" she demanded.
And Richard could but answer, very much out of his heart, that he did
indeed think so.
She observed him a moment, and then her tone softened. The colour
deepened yet more in her cheeks. She became at once prettily
embarrassed and prettily sincere.
"And then, to tell you quite the truth, I am a trifle afraid of Aunt
Katherine. I have always wanted to come here and to see you, but--it is
an absurd confession to make--I have been scared at the idea of meeting
Aunt Katherine, and that is the real reason why I made Honoria take
refuge with me in this lovely park of yours, instead of going on with
my father to the house. There is a legend, a thrice accursed legend in
our family,--my mother employs it even yet when she proposes to reduce
me to salutary depths of humility--that I came,--she brought me--here,
once, long ago, when I was a child, and that I was fiendishly naughty,
that I behaved odiously."
Madame de Vallorbes stretched out her hands, presenting the rosy palms
of them in the most engaging manner.
"But it can't--it can't be true," she protested. "Why, in the name of
all folly, let alone all common decency, should I behave odiously? It
is not like me. I love to please, I love to have people care for me.
And so I cannot but believe the legend is the malign invention of some
nurse or governess, whom, poor woman, I probably plagued handsomely
enough in her day, and who, in revenge, rigged up this detestable
scarecrow with which to frighten me. Then, moreover, I have not the
faintest recollection of the affair, and one generally has an only too
vivid memory of one's own sins. Surely, _mon cher cousin_, surely I am
innocent in your sight, as in my own? You do not remember the episode
either?"
Whereupon Dickie, looking down at her,--and still enchanted
notwithstanding his so sinister discovery, being first, and always a
gentleman, and secondly, though as yet unconsciously, a
lover,--proceeded to lie roundly. Lied, too, with a notable
cheerfulness, born as cheerfulness needs must be of every act of faith
and high generosity.
"I remember it? Of course not," he said. "So let the legend be
abolished henceforth and forevermore. Here, once and for all, Cousin
Helen, we combine to pull down and bury that scarecrow."
Madame de Vallorbes clapped her hands softly and laughed. And her
laughter, having the merit of being perfectly genuine--for the young
man very really pleased her fancy--was likewise very infectious.
Richard found himself laughing too, he knew not why, save that he was
glad of heart.
"And now that matter being satisfactorily disposed of, you will come to
Brockhurst often," he said. It seemed to him that a certain joyous
equality had been established between him and his divinity, both by his
repudiation of all former knowledge of her, and by their moment of
laughter. He began fearlessly to make her little offerings. "Do you
care about riding? I am afraid there is not much to amuse you at
Brockhurst; but there are always plenty of horses."
"And I adore horses."
"Do you care about racing? We've some rather pretty things in training
this year. I should like awfully to show them to you."
But here the conversation, just setting forth in so agreeable a
fashion, suffered interruption. For the other lady, she of the
gray-green gown, sauntered forward from the Temple. The carriage of her
head was gallant, her air nonchalant as ever; but her expression was
grave, and the delicate thinness of her face appeared a trifle
accentuated. She came up to Madame de Vallorbes and passed her hand
through the latter's arm caressingly.
"You know, really, Helen, we ought to go, if we are not to keep your
father and the carriage waiting."--Then she looked up with a certain
determined effort at Richard Calmady. "We promised to meet Mr. Ormiston
at the first park gate," she added in explanation. "That is nearly a
mile from here, isn't it?"
"About three-quarters--hardly that," he answered. Her eyes were not
brown, he perceived, but a clear, dim green, as the soft gloom in the
under-spaces of a grove of ilexes. They affected him as fearlessly
observant--eyes that could judge both men and things and could also
keep their own counsel.
"Will you give your mother Honoria St. Quentin's love, please," she
went on. "I stayed here with her for a couple of days the year before
last, while you were at Oxford. She was very good to me. Now, Helen,
come----"
"I shall see you again," Richard cried to the lady of the cigarette.
But his horse, which for some minutes had been increasingly fidgety,
backed away down the hillside, and he could not catch the purport of
her answer. To the lady of the gray-green gown and eyes he said nothing
at all.
CHAPTER IV
JULIUS MARCH BEARS TESTIMONY
"So you really wish me to ask them both to come, Richard?"
Lady Calmady stood on the tiger-skin before the Gun-Room hearth. Upon
the said hearth a merry, little fire of pine logs clicked and
chattered. Even here, on the dry upland, the night air had an edge to
it; while in the valleys there would be frost before morning, ripening
that same splendour of autumn foliage alike to greater glory and
swifter fall. And the snap in the air, working along with other
unwonted influences, made Katherine somewhat restless this evening. Her
eyes were dark with unspoken thought. Her voice had a ring in it. The
shimmering, black, satin dress and fine lace she wore gave a certain
magnificence to her appearance. Her whole being was vibrant. She was
rather dangerously alive. Her elder brother's unlooked-for advent had
awakened her strangely from the reserve and stately monotony of her
daily existence, had shaken even, for the moment, the completeness of
the dominion of her fixed idea. She ceased, for the moment, to sink the
whole of her personality in the maternal relationship. Memories of her
youth, passed amid the varied interests of society and of the literary
and political world of Paris and London, assailed her. All those other
Katherines, in short, whom she might have been, and who had seemed to
drop away from her, vanishing phantom-like before the uncompromising
realities of her husband's death and her child's birth, crowded about
her, importuning her with vague desires, vague regrets. The confines of
Brockhurst grew narrow, while all that which lay beyond them called to
her. She craved, almost unconsciously, a wider sphere of action. She
longed to obtain, and to lend a hand in the shaping of events and
making of history. Even the purest and most devoted among
women--possessing the doubtful blessing of a measure of intellect--are
subject to such vagrant heats, such uprisings of personal ambition,
specially during the dangerous decade when the nine-and-thirtieth year
is past.
Meanwhile Richard's answer to her question was unfortunately somewhat
over-long in coming, for the young man was sunk in meditation and
apparently oblivious of her presence. He leaned back in the long, low
armchair, his hands clasped behind his head, the embroidered rug drawn
about his waist, a venerable, yellow-edged, calf-bound volume lying
face downwards on his lap. While young Camp--young no longer, full of
years indeed beyond the allotted portion of his kind--reposed,
outstretched and snoring, on the all-too-wide space of rug and
chair-seat at his feet. And this indifference, both of man and dog,
grew irksome to Lady Calmady. She moved across the shining yellow and
black surface of the tiger-skin and straightened the bronzes of
Vinedresser and Lazy Lad standing on the high chimneypiece.
"My dear, it grows late," she said. "Let us settle this matter. If your
uncle and cousin are to come, I must send a note over to Newlands
to-morrow before breakfast. Remember I have no choice in the matter. I
leave it entirely to you. Tell me seriously what you wish."
Richard stretched himself, turning his head in the hollow of his hands,
and shrugged his shoulders slightly.
"That is exactly what I would thank you so heartily to tell me," he
answered. "Do I, or don't I seriously wish it? I give you my word,
mother, I don't know."
"Oh; but, my dearest, that is folly! You must have inclination enough,
one way or the other, to come to a decision. I was careful not to
commit myself. It is still easy not to ask them without being guilty of
any discourtesy."
"It isn't that," Richard said. "It is simply that being anything but
heroic I am trying of two evils to choose the least. I should like to
have my uncle--and Helen here immensely. But if the visit wasn't a
success I should be proportionately disappointed and vexed. So is it
worth the risk? Disappointments are sufficiently abundant anyhow. Isn't
it slightly imbecile to run a wholly gratuitous risk of adding to their
number?"
Then the fixed idea began stealthily, yet surely, to reassert its
dominion; for there was a perceptible flavour of discouragement in the
young man's speech.
"Dickie, there is nothing wrong, is there,--nothing the matter,
to-night?"
"Oh, dear no, of course not!" he answered, half closing his eyes.
"Nothing in the world's the matter."
He unclasped his hands, leaned forward and patted the bulldog lying
across the rug at his feet. "At least nothing more than usual, nothing
more than the abiding something which always has been and always will
be the matter."
"Ah, my dear!" Katherine cried softly.
"I've just been reading Burton's Anatomy here," he went on bending
down, so that his face was hidden, while he pulled the dog's soft ears.
"He assures all--whom it may concern--that 'bodily imperfections do not
a whit blemish the soul or hinder the operations of it, but rather help
and much increase it.' There, Camp, poor old man, don't start--it's
nothing worse than me. I wonder if the elaborate pains which have been
taken through generations of your ancestors to breed you into your
existing and very royal hideousness--your flattened nose and perpetual
grin, for instance--do help and much increase the operations of your
soul!"
He looked up suddenly.
"What do you think, mother?"
"I think--think, my darling," she said, "that perhaps neither you nor I
are quite ourselves to-night."
"Oh, well I've had rather a beastly day!" Richard dropped back against
the chair cushions again, clasping his hands behind his head. "Or I've
seemed to have it, which comes practically to much the same thing. I
confess I have been rather hipped lately. I suppose it's the weather.
You're not really in a hurry, mother, are you? Come and sit down."
And obediently Katherine drew forward a chair and sat beside him. Those
uprisings of vagrant desire still struggled, combating the dominion of
the fixed idea. But the struggle grew faint and fainter. And then, for
a measurable time, Richard fell silent again while she waited. Verily
there is no sharper discipline for a woman's proud spirit, than that
administered, often quite unconsciously, by the man whom she loves.
"We gave a wretched girl six weeks to-day for robbing her mistress," he
remarked at last. "It was a flagrant case, so I suppose we were
justified. In fact I don't see how we could have done otherwise. But it
went against me awfully, all the same. She has a child to support. Jim
Gould got her into trouble and deserted her, like a cowardly, young
blackguard. However, it's easy to be righteous at another person's
expense. Perhaps I should have done the same in his place. I wonder if
I should?"--
"My dear, we need hardly discuss that point, I think," Lady Calmady
said.
Richard turned his head and smiled at her.
"Poor dear mother, do I bore you? But it is so comfortable to grumble.
I know it's selfish. It's a horrid bad habit, and you ought to blow me
up for it. But then, mother, take it all round, really I don't grumble
much, do I?"
"No, no!" Katherine said quickly. "Indeed, Dickie, you don't."
"I have been awfully afraid though, lately, that I do grumble more than
I imagine," he went on, straightening his head, while his handsome
profile showed clear cut against the dancing brightness of the
firelight. "But it's almost impossible always to carry something about
with you which--which you hate, and not let it infect your attitude of
mind and, in a degree, your speech. Twenty or thirty years hence it may
prove altogether sufficient and satisfactory to know"--his lips worked,
obliging him to enunciate his words carefully--"that bodily
imperfections do not a whit blemish the soul or hinder its
operations--are, in short, an added means of grace. Think of it! Isn't
it a nice, neat, little arrangement, sort of spiritual consolation
stakes! Only I'm afraid I'm some two or three decades on the near side
of that comfortable conclusion yet, and I find----"
Richard shifted his position, letting his arms drop along the chair
arms with a little thud. He smiled again, or at all events essayed to
do so.
"In fact, I find it's beastly difficult to care a hang about your soul,
one way or another, when you clearly perceive your body's making you
the laughing-stock of half the people--why, mother, sweet dear
mother,--what is it?"
For Lady Calmady's two hands had closed down on his hand, and she bowed
herself above them as though smitten with sharp pain.
"Pray don't be distressed," he went on. "I beg your pardon. I wasn't
thinking what I was saying, I'm an ass. It's nothing I tell you but the
weather. You're all a lot too good to me and indulge me too much, and I
grow soft, and then every trifle rubs me the wrong way. I'm a regular
spoilt child--I know it and a jolly good spanking is what I deserve.
Burton, here, declares that the autumnal, like the vernal, equinox
breeds hot humours and distempers in the blood. I believe we ought to
be bled, spring and fall, like our forefathers. Look here, mother,
don't take my grumbling to heart. I tell you I'm just a little hipped
from the weather. Let's send for dear old Knott and get him to drive
out the devil with his lancet? No, no, seriously, I tell you what we
will do. It'll be good for us both. I have arrived at a decision. We'll
have Uncle William and--Helen----"
Richard had spoken very rapidly, half ashamed, trying to soothe her. He
paused on the last word. He was conscious of a singular pleasure in
pronouncing it. The perfectly finished figure of his cousin,
outstanding against the wide, misty brightness of the sunset, the scent
of the wood and moorland, the haunting suggestion of glad secrets, even
that upcurling of blue cigarette smoke, rising as the smoke of
incense--with a difference--upon the clear evening air, above all that
silent flattery of intimate and fearless glances, those gay welcoming
gestures, that merry calling, as of birds in the tree-tops, from the
spirit of youth within him to the spirit of youth so visibly and
radiantly resident in her--all this rose up before Richard. He grew
reckless, though reckless of precisely what, innocent as he was, in
fact although mature in learning, he knew not as yet. Only he turned on
his mother a face at once eager and shy, coaxing her as when in his
long-ago baby-days he had implored some petty indulgence or the gift of
some coveted toy on which his little heart was set.
"Yes, let us have them," he said. "You know Helen is very charming. You
will admire her, mother. She is as clever as she can stick, one sees
that at a glance. And she is very much _grande dame_ too--and, oh,
well, she is a whole lot of charming things! And her coming would be a
wholesome breaking up of our ordinary ways of going on. We are usually
very contented--at least, I think so--you, and dear Julius, and I, but
perhaps we are getting into a bit of a rut. Helen's society might prove
an even more efficacious method of driving out my blue-devils than
Knott's lancet or a jolly good spanking."
He laughed quietly, patting Katherine's hand, but looking away.
"And there is no denying it would be a vastly more graceful one--don't
you think so?"
Thus were smouldering fires of personal ambition quenched in Lady
Calmady, as so often before. Richard's tenderness brought her to her
knees. She hugged, with an almost voluptuous movement of passion, that
half-rejected burden of maternity, gathering it close against her heart
once more. But, along with the rapture of self-surrender, came a
thousand familiar fears and anxieties. For she had looked into Dickie's
mind, as he spoke out his grumble, and had there perceived the
existence of much which she had dreaded and to the existence of which
she had striven to blind herself.
"My darling," she said, with a certain hesitation, "I will gladly have
them if you wish it--only you remember what happened long ago when
Helen was here last?"
"Yes, I know, I was afraid you would think of that. But you can put
that aside. Helen's not the smallest recollection of it. She told me so
this afternoon."
"Told you so?" Katherine repeated.
"Yes," he said. "It was awfully sweet of her. Evidently she'd been
bullied about her unseemly behaviour when she was small, till you, and
I, and Brockhurst, had been made into a perfect bugbear. She's quite
amusingly afraid of you still. But she's no notion what really
happened. Of course she can't have, or she could not have mentioned the
subject to me." Richard shrugged his shoulders. "Obviously it would
have been impossible."
There was a pause. Lady Calmady rose. The young man spoke with
conviction, yet her anxiety was not altogether allayed.
"Impossible," he repeated. "Pretty mother don't disquiet yourself.
Trust me. To tell you the truth I have felt to-day--is it very
foolish?--that I should like some one of my own age for a little while,
as--don't you know--a playfellow."
Katherine bent down and kissed him. But mother-love is not, even in its
most self-sacrificing expression, without torments of jealousy.
"My dear, you shall have your playfellow," she said, though conscious
of a tightening of the muscles of her beautiful throat. "Good-night.
Sleep well."
She went out, closing the door behind her. The perspective of the
dimly-lighted corridor, and the great hall beyond, struck her as rather
sadly lifeless and silent. What wonder, indeed, that Richard should ask
for a companion, for something young! Love made her selfish and
cowardly she feared. She should have thought of this before. She turned
back, again opening the Gun-Room door.
Richard had raised himself. He stood on the seat of the chair,
steadying himself by one hand on the chair-back, while with the other
he pulled the rug from beneath the sleepy bull-dog.
"Wake up, you lazy old beggar," he was saying. "Get down, can't you. I
want to go to bed, and you block the way, lying there in gross comfort,
snoring. Make yourself scarce, old man. If I'd your natural advantages
in the way of locomotion, I wouldn't be so slow of using them----"
He looked up, and slipped back into a sitting position hastily.
"Oh, mother, I thought you had gone!" he exclaimed, almost sharply.
And to Katherine, overstrung as she was, the words came as a rebuke.
"My dearest, I won't keep you," she said. "I only came back to ask you
about Honoria St. Quentin."
"What about her?"
"She is staying at Newlands--the two girls are friends, I believe. She
seemed to me a fine creature when last I saw her. She knows the world,
yet struck me curiously untouched by it. She is well read, she has
ideas--some of them a little extravagant, but time will modify that.
Only her head is awake as yet, not her heart, I think. Shall I ask her
to come too?"
"So that we may wake up her heart?" Richard inquired coldly. "No
thanks, dear mother, that's, too serious an undertaking. Have her
another time, please. I saw her to-day, and, no doubt my taste is bad,
but I must confess she did not please me very much. Nor--which is more
to the point in this connection perhaps--did I please her. Would you
ring the bell, please, as you're there? I want Powell. Thanks so much.
Good-night."
Some ten minutes later Julius March, after kneeling in prayer, as his
custom was, before the divinely sorrowful and compassionate image of
the Virgin Mother and the Dead Christ, looked forth through the
many-paned study window into the clair-obscure of the windless autumn
night. He had been sensible of an unusual element in the domestic
atmosphere this evening, and had been vaguely disquieted concerning
both Katherine and Richard. It was impossible but that, as time went
on, life should become more complicated at Brockhurst, and Julius
feared his own inability to cope helpfully with such complication. He
entertained a mean opinion of himself. It appeared to him he was but an
unprofitable servant, unready, tongue-tied, lacking in resource. A
depression possessed him which he could not shake off. What had he to
show, after all, for these fifty-odd years of life granted to him? He
feared his religion had walked in silver slippers, and would so walk to
the end. Could it then, in any true and vital sense, be reckoned
religion at all? Gross sins had never exercised any attraction over
him. What virtue was there, then, in being innocent of gross sin? But
to those other sins--sins of defective moral courage in speech and
action, sins arising from over-fastidiousness--had he not yielded
freely? Was he not a spiritual valetudinarian? He feared so. Offered,
in the Eternal Mercy, endless precious opportunities of service, he had
been too weak, too timorous, too slothful, to lay hold on them. And so,
as it seemed to him very justly, to-night confession, prayer,
adoration, left him unconsoled.
Then, looking out of the many-paned window, while the shame of his
barrenness clothed him even as a garment, he beheld Lady Calmady pacing
slowly over the gray quarries of the terrace pavement. A dark,
fur-bordered mantle shrouded her tall figure from head to foot. Only
her face showed, and her hands folded stiffly high upon her bosom,
strangely pale against the blackness of her cloak. Ordinarily Julius
would have scrupled to intrude upon her lonely walk. But just now the
cry within him for human sympathy was urgent. Her near neighbourhood in
itself was very dear to him, and she might let fall some gracious word
testifying that, in her opinion at least, his life had not been wholly
vain. For very surely that which survives when all other passions are
uprooted and cast forth--survives even in the case of the true ascetic
and saint--is the unquenchable yearning for the spoken approval of
those whom we love and have loved.
And so, pushed by his poverty of self-esteem, Julius March, throwing a
plaid on over his cassock, went out and paced the gray quarries beside
Katherine Calmady.
On one hand rose the dark, rectangular masses of the house, crowned by
its stacks of slender, twisted chimneys. On the other lay the
indefinite and dusky expanse of the park and forest. The night was very
clear. The stars were innumerable--fierce, cold points of pulsing
light.--Orion's jeweled belt and sword flung wide against the
blue-black vault. Cassiopeia seated majestic in her golden chair.
Northward, above the walled gardens, the Bear pointing to the diamond
flashing of the Pole star. While across all high heaven, dusty with
incalculable myriads of worlds, stretched the awful and mysterious
highroad of the Milky-Way. The air was keen and tonic though so still.
An immense and fearless quiet seemed to hold all things--a quiet not of
sleep, but of conscious and perfect equilibrium, a harmony so sustained
and complete that to human ears it issued, of necessity, in silence.
And that silence Lady Calmady was in no haste to break. Twice she and
her companion walked the length of the terrace, and back, before she
spoke. She paused, at length, just short of the arcade of the further
garden-hall.
"This great peace of the night puts all violence of feeling to the
blush," she said. "One perceives that a thousand years are very really
as one day. That calms one--with a vengeance."
Katherine waited, looking out over the vague landscape, clasping the
fur-bordered edges of her cloak with either hand. It appeared to Julius
that both her voice and the expression of her face were touched with
irony.
"There is nothing new under the sun," she went on, "nor under the
'visiting moon,' nor under those somewhat heartless stars. Does it
occur to you, Julius, how hopelessly unoriginal we are, how we all
follow in the same beaten track? What thousands of men and women have
stood, as you and I stand now, at once calmed--as I admit that I
am--and rendered not a little homeless by the realisation of their own
insignificance in face of the sleeping earth and this brooding
immensity of space! _A quoi bon, a quoi bon?_ Why can't one learn to
harden one's poor silly heart, and just move round, stone-like, with
the great movement of things accepting fate and ceasing to struggle or
to care?"
"Just because, I think," he answered, "the converse of that same saying
is equally true. If, in material things, a thousand years are as one
day, in the things of the spirit one day is as a thousand years.
Remember the Christ crying upon the cross--'My God, My God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?' and suffering during that brief utterance the sum of
all the agony of sensible insignificance and sensible homelessness
human nature ever has borne or will bear."
"Ah, the Christ! the Christ!" Lady Calmady exclaimed, half wistfully as
it seemed to Julius March, and half impatiently. She turned and paced
the pale pavement again.
"You are too courteous, my dear friend, and cite an example august out
of all proportion to my little lament." She looked round at him as she
spoke, smiling; and in the uncertain light her smile showed tremulous,
suggestive of a nearness to tears. "Instinctively you scale
Olympus,--Calvary?--yes, but I am afraid both those heights take on an
equally and tragically mythological character to me--and would bring me
consolation from the dwelling-places of the gods. And my feet, all the
while, are very much upon the floor, alas! That is happening to me
which never yet happened to the gods, according to the orthodox
authorities. Just this--a commonplace--dear Julius, I am growing old."
Katherine drew her cloak more severely about her and moved on hastily,
her head a little bent.
"No, no, don't protest," she added, as he attempted to speak. "We can
be honest and dispense with conventional phrases, here, alone, under
the stars. I am growing old, Julius--and being, I suppose, but a vain,
doting woman, I have only discovered what that really means to-day! But
there is this excuse for me. My youth was so blessed, so--so glorious,
that it was natural I should strive to delude myself regarding its
passing away. I perceive that for years I have continued to call that a
bride-bed which was, in truth, a bier. I have struggled to keep my
youth in fancy, as I have kept the red drawing-room in fact, unaltered.
Is not all this pitifully vain and self-indulgent? I have solaced
myself with the phantom of youth. And I am old--old."
"But you are yourself, Katherine, yourself. Nothing that has been, has
ceased to be," Julius broke in, unable in the fulness of his reverent
honour of his dear lady to comprehend the meaning of her present
bitterness. "Surely the mere adding of year to year can make no so
vital difference?"
"Ah! you dear stupid creature," she cried,--"stupid, because, manlike,
you are so hopelessly sensible--it makes just all the difference in the
world. I shall grow less alert, less pliable of mind, less quick of
sympathy, less capable of adjusting myself to altered conditions, and
to entertaining new views. And, all the while, the demand upon me will
not lessen."
Katherine stopped suddenly in her swift walk. The two stood facing one
another.
"The demand will increase," she declared. "Richard is not happy."
And thereupon--since, even in the most devout and holy, the old Adam
dies extremely hard--Julius March fell a prey to very lively
irritation. While she talked of herself, bestowing unreserved
confidence upon him, he could listen gladly, forever. But if that most
welcome subject of conversation should be dropped, let her give him
that which he craved to-night, so specially--a word for himself. Let
her deal, for a little space, with his own private needs, his own
private joys and sorrows.
"Ah! Richard is not happy!" he exclaimed, his irritation finding voice.
"We reach the root of the matter. Richard is not happy. Alas, then, for
Richard's mother!"
"Are you so much surprised?" Katherine asked hotly. "Do you venture to
blame him? If so, I am afraid religion has made you rather cruel,
Julius. But that is not a new thing under the sun either. Those who
possess high spiritual consolations--unknown to the rank and file of
us--have generally displayed an inclination to take the misfortunes of
others with admirable resignation. Dearest Marie de Mirancourt was an
exception to that rule. You might do worse perhaps than learn to follow
her example."
As she finished speaking Lady Calmady turned from him rather loftily,
and prepared to move away. But even in so doing she received an
impression which tended to modify her resentful humour.
For an instant Julius March stood, a tall, thin, black figure, rigid
and shadowless upon the pallor of the gray pavement, his arms extended
wide, as once crucified, while he looked, not at her, not out into the
repose of the night-swathed landscape, but up at the silent dance of
the eternal stars in the limitless fields of space. As Katherine,
earlier in the evening, had taken up the momentarily rejected burden of
her motherhood, so Julius now, with a movement of supreme
self-surrender, took up the momentarily rejected burden of the
isolation of the religious life. Self-wounded by self-love, he had
sought comfort in the creature rather than the creator. And the
creature turned and rebuked him. It was just. Now Julius gave himself
back, bowed himself again under the dominion of his fixed idea; and, so
doing, gained, unconsciously, precisely that which he had gone forth to
seek. For Katherine, struck alike by the strange vigour, and strange
resignation, of his attitude, suffered quick fear, not only for, but of
him. His aloofness alarmed her.
"Julius! dear Julius!" she cried. "Come, let us walk. It grows cold. I
enjoy that, but it is not very safe for you. And, pardon me, dear
friend, I spoke harshly just now. I told you I was getting old. Put my
words down to the peevishness of old age then."
Katherine smiled at him with a sweet, half-playful humility. Her face
was very wan. And speech not coming immediately to him, she spoke
again.
"You have always been very patient with me. You must go on being so."
"I ask nothing better," Julius said.
Lady Calmady stopped, drew herself up, shook back her head.
"Ah! what sorry creatures we all are," she cried, rather bitterly.
"Discontented, unstable, forever kicking against the pricks, and
fighting against the inevitable. Always crying to one another, 'See how
hard this is, know how it hurts, feel the weight!' My poor darling
cries to me--that is natural enough"--Katherine paused--"and as it
should be. But I must needs run out and cry to you. In this we are like
links of an endless chain. What is the next link, Julius? To whom will
you cry in your turn?"
"The chain is not endless" he replied. "The last link of it is riveted
to the steps of the throne of God. I will make my cry there--my
threefold cry--for you, for Richard, and for myself, Katherine."
Lady Calmady had reached the arched side-door leading from the terrace
into the house. She paused, with her hand on the latch.
"Your God and I quarreled nearly four-and-twenty years ago--not when
Richard, my joy, died, but when Richard, my sorrow, was born," she
said. "I own I see no way, short of miracle, of that quarrel being made
up."
"Then a miracle will be worked," he answered.
"Ah! You forget I grow old," Katherine retorted, smiling; "so that for
miracles the time is at once too long and too short."
CHAPTER V
TELLING HOW QUEEN MARY'S CRYSTAL BALL CAME TO FALL ON THE GALLERY FLOOR
This world is unquestionably a vastly stimulating and entertaining
place if you take it aright--namely, if you recognise that it is the
creation of a profound humorist, is designed for wholly practical and
personal uses, and proceed to adapt your conduct to that knowledge in
all light-heartedness and good faith. Thus, though in less trenchant
phrase since she was still happily very young, meditated Madame de
Vallorbes, while standing in the pensive October sunshine upon the wide
flight of steps which leads down from the main entrance of Brockhurst
House. Tall, stone pinnacles alternating with seated griffins--long of
tail, fierce of beak and sharp of claw--fill in each of the many angles
of the descending stone balustrade on either hand. Behind her, the
florid, though rectangular, decoration of the house front ranged up,
storey above storey, in arcade and pilaster, heavily mullioned window,
carven plaque and string course, to pairs of matching pinnacles and
griffins--these last rampant, supporting the Calmady shield and
coat-of-arms--the quaint forms of which break the long line of the
pierced, stone parapet in the centre of the facade, and rise above the
rusty red of the low-pitched roofs, until the spires of the one and
crested heads of the other are outlined against the sky. About her feet
the pea-fowl stepped in mincing and self-conscious elegance--the cocks
with rustlings of heavy trailing quills, the hens and half-grown chicks
with squeakings and whifflings--subdued, conversational--accompanied by
the dry tap of many bills picking up the glossy grains of Indian-corn
which she let dribble slowly down upon the shallow steps from between
her pretty fingers. She had huddled a soft sable tippet about her
throat and shoulders. The skirt of her indigo-coloured, poplin dress,
turning upon the step immediately above that on which she stood, showed
some inches of rose-scarlet, silken frill lining the hem of it.
Helen de Vallorbes had a lively consciousness of her surroundings. She
enjoyed every detail of them. Enjoyed the gentle, southwesterly wind
which touched her face and stirred her bright hair, enjoyed the
plaintive, autumn song of a robin perched on a rose-grown wall, enjoyed
the impotent ferocity of the guardian griffins, enjoyed the small
sounds made by the feeding pea-fowl, the modest quaker grays and the
imperial splendours of their plumage. She enjoyed the turn of her own
wrist, its gold chain-bracelet and the handsome lace falling away from
and displaying it, as she held out the handfuls of corn. She enjoyed
even that space of rose-scarlet declaring itself between the dull blue
of her dress and the gray, weathered surface of the stone.
But all these formed only the accompaniment, the ground-tone, to more
reasoned, more vital enjoyments. Before her, beyond the carriage sweep,
lay the square lawn enclosed by red walls and by octagonal, pepper-pot
summer-houses, whereon--unwillingly, yet in obedience to the wild
justice of revenge--Roger Ormiston had shot the Clown, half-brother to
Touchstone, race-horse of mournful memory. As a child Helen had heard
that story. Now her somewhat light, blue-gray eyes, their beautiful
lids raised wide for once, looked out curiously upon the space of
dew-powdered turf; while the corners of her mouth--a mouth a trifle
thin lipped, yet soft and dangerously sweet for kissing--turned upward
in a reflective smile. She, too, knew what it was to be angry, to the
point of revenge; had indeed come to Brockhurst not without purpose of
that last tucked away in some naughty convolution of her active brain.
But Brockhurst and its inhabitants had proved altogether more
interesting than she had anticipated. This was the fourth day of her
visit, and each day had proved more to her taste than the preceding
one. So she concluded this matter of revenge might very well stand over
for the moment, possibly stand over altogether. The present was too
excellent, of its kind, to risk spoiling. Helen de Vallorbes valued the
purple and fine linen of a high civilisation; nor did she disdain,
within graceful limits, to fare sumptuously every day. She valued all
that is beautiful and costly in art, of high merit and distinction in
literature. Her taste was sure and just, if a little more disposed
towards that which is sensuous than towards that which is spiritual.
And in all its many forms she appreciated luxury, even entertaining a
kindness for that necessary handmaid of luxury--waste. Appreciated
these the more ardently, that, with birth-pangs at the beginning of
each human life, death-pangs and the corruption of the inevitable grave
at the close of each, all this lapping, meanwhile, of the doomed flesh
in exaggerations of ease and splendour seemed to her among the very
finest ironies of the great comedy of existence. It heightened, it
accentuated the drama. And among the many good things of life, drama,
come how and where and when it might, seemed to her supremely the best.
She desired it as a lover his mistress. To detect it, to observe it,
gave her the keenest pleasure. To take a leading part in and shape it
to the turn of her own heart, her own purpose, her own wit was, so far,
her ruling passion.
And of potential drama, of the raw material of it, as the days passed,
she found increasingly generous store at Brockhurst. It invaded and
held her imagination, as the initial conception of his poem will that
of the poet, or of his picture that of the painter. She brooded over
it, increasingly convinced that it might be a masterpiece. For the
drama--as she apprehended it--contained not only elements of virility
and strength, but an element, and that a persistent one, of the
grotesque. This put the gilded dome to her silent, and perhaps slightly
unscrupulous, satisfaction. How could it be otherwise, since the
presence of the grotesque is, after all, the main justification of the
theory on which her philosophy of life was based--namely, the belief
that above all eloquence of human speech, behind all enthusiasm of
human action or emotion, the ear which hears aright can always detect
the echo of eternal laughter? And this grim echo did not affect the
charming young lady to sadness as yet. Still less did it make her mad,
as the mere suspicion of it has made so many, and those by no means
unworthy or illiterate persons. For the laugh, so far, had appeared to
be on her side, never at her expense--which makes a difference. And the
chambers of her house of life were too crowded by health and agreeable
sensations, mental activities and sparkling audacities, to have any one
of them vacant for reception, more than momentary, of that
thrice-blessed guest, pity.
And so it followed that, as she fed the mincing pea-fowl, Madame de
Vallorbes' smile changed in character from reflection to impatience. A
certain heat running through her, she set her pretty teeth and fell to
pelting the pea-hens and chicks mischievously, breaking up all their
aristocratic reserve and making them jump and squeak to some purpose.
For this precious, this very masterpiece of a drama was not only here
potentially, but actually. It was alive. She had felt it move under her
hand--or under her heart, which was it?--yesterday evening. Again this
morning, just now, she had noted signs of its vitality, wholly
convincing to one skilled in such matters. Impatience, then, became
very excusable.
"For my time is short and the action disengages itself so deplorably
slowly!" she exclaimed. "Pah! you greedy, conceited birds, which do you
hold dearest after all, the filling of your little stomachs, or the
supporting of your little dignities? Be advised by a higher
intelligence. Revenge yourselves on the grains that hit and sting you
by gobbling them up. It is a venerable custom that of feasting upon
one's enemies. And has been practised, in various forms, both by
nations and individuals. There, I give you another chance of displaying
wisdom--there--there!--La! la! what an absurd commotion! You little
idiots, don't flutter. Agitation is a waste of energy, and advances
nothing. I declare peace. I want to consider."
And so, letting the remaining handfuls of corn dribble down very
slowly, while the sunshine grew warmer and the shadows of the guardian
griffins more distinct upon the lichen-encrusted stones, Helen de
Vallorbes sank back into meditation--Yes, unquestionably the drama was
alive. But it seemed so difficult to bring it to the birth. And she
wanted, very badly, to hear its first half-articulate cries and watch
its first staggering footsteps. All that is so entertaining, you
yourself safely grown-up, standing very firm on your feet, looking
down! And it would be a lusty child, this drama, very soon reaching
man's estate and man's inspiring violence of action, striking out like
some blind, giant Samson, blundering headlong in its unseeing,
uncalculating strength.--Helen laid her hands upon her bosom, and threw
back her head, while her throat bubbled with suppressed laughter. Ah!
it promised to be a drama of ten thousand, if she knew her power, and
knew her world--and she possessed considerable confidence in her
knowledge of both. Only, how on earth to set the crystal free of the
matrix, how to engage battle, how to get this thing fairly and squarely
born? For, as she acknowledged, in the flotation of all such merry
schemes as her present one, chance encounters, interludes, neatly
planned evasions and resultant pursuits, play so large and important a
part. But at Brockhurst this whole chapter of accidents was barred, and
received rules of strategy almost annihilated, by the fact of Richard
Calmady's infirmity and the hard-and-fast order of domestic procedure,
the elaborate system of etiquette, which that infirmity had gradually
produced. At Brockhurst there were no haphazard exits and entrances.
These were either hopelessly official and public, or guarded to an
equally hopeless point of secrecy. A contingent of tall, civil
men-servants was always on duty. Richard was invariably in his place at
table when the rest of the company came down. The ladies took their
after-dinner coffee in the drawing-room, and joined the gentlemen in
the Chapel-Room, library, or gallery, as the case might be. If they
rode, Richard was at the door ready mounted, along with the grooms and
led-horses. If they drove, he was already seated in the carriage.
"And how, how in the name of common sense," Madame de Vallorbes
exclaimed, stamping her foot, and thereby throwing the now thoroughly
nervous pea-fowl into renewed agitation, "are you to establish any
relation worth mentioning with a man who is perpetually being carried
in procession like a Hindu idol? My good birds, one's never alone with
him--whether by design and arrangement, I know not. But, so far, never,
never, picture that! And yet, don't tell me, matchless mixture of pride
and innocence though he is, he wouldn't like it!"
However, she checked her irritation by contemplation of yesterday. Ah!
that had been very prettily done assuredly. For riding in the forenoon
along the road skirting the palings of the inner park, while they
walked their horses over the soft, brown bed of fallen fir-needles,--she,
her father, and Dick,--the conversation dealt with certain first
editions and their bindings, certain treasures, unique in historic
worth, locked in the glass tables and fine Florentine and _pietra dura_
cabinets of the Long Gallery. Mr. Ormiston was a connoisseur and talked
well. And Helen had sufficient acquaintance with such matters both to
appreciate, and to add telling words to the talk.
"Ah! but I cannot go without seeing those delectable things, Richard,"
she said. "Would it be giving you altogether too much trouble to have
them out for me?"
"Why, of course not. You shall see them whenever you like," he
answered. "Julius knows all about them. He'll be only too delighted to
act showman."
Just here the road narrowed a little, and Mr. Ormiston let his horse
drop a few lengths behind, so that she, Helen, and her cousin rode
forward side by side. The tones of the low sky, of the ranks of firs
and stretches of heather formed a rich, though sombre, harmony of
colour. Scents, pungent and singularly exhilarating, were given off by
the damp mosses and the peaty moorland soil. The freedom of the forest,
the feeling of the noble horse under her, stirred Helen as with the
excitement of a mighty hunting, a positively royal sport. While the
close presence of the young man riding beside her sharpened the edge of
that excitement to a perfect keenness of pleasure.
"Ah, how glorious it all is!" she cried. "How glad I am that you asked
me to come here."
And she turned to Richard, looking at him as, since the first day of
their meeting, she had not, somehow, quite ventured to look.
"But, oh! dear me! please," she went on, "I know Mr. March is an angel,
a saint--but--but--_mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_, I don't want him to
show me those special treasures of yours. He'll take the life out of
them. I know it. And make them seem like things read of merely in a
learned book. Be very charming to me, Richard. Waste half an hour upon
me. Show me those moving relics yourself."
As she spoke, momentary suspicion rose in Dickie's eyes. But she gazed
back unflinchingly, with the uttermost frankness, so that suspicion
died, giving place to the shy, yet triumphant, gladness of youth which
seeks and finds youth.
"Do, Richard, pray do," she repeated.
The young man had averted his face rather sharply, and both horses,
somehow, broke into a hand gallop.
"All right," he answered. "I'll arrange it. This evening, about six,
after tea? Will that suit you? I'll send you word."
Then the road had widened, permitting Mr. Ormiston to draw up to them
again. The remainder of the ride had been a little silent.
Yes, all that had been prettily done. Nor had the piece that followed
proved unworthy of the prelude. She ran over the scene in her mind now,
as she stood among the pocketing pea-fowl, and it caused her both mirth
and delightful little heats, in which the heart has a word to
say.--Madame de Vallorbes was ravished to feel her heart, just now and
again.--For, contradictory as it may seem, no game is perfect that has
not moments of seriousness.--She recalled the aspect of the Long
Gallery, as one of those civil, ever-present men-servants had opened
the door for her, and she waited a moment on the threshold. The true
artist is never in a hurry. The breadth of the great room immediately
before her showed very bright with candle-light and lamplight. But that
died away, through gradations of augmenting obscurity, until the
extreme end, towards the western bay, melted out into complete
darkness. This produced an effect of almost limitless length which
moved her to a childish, and at first pleasing, fancy of vague
danger--an effect heightened by the ranges of curious and costly
objects standing against, or decorating, the walls in a perspective of
deepening gloom. Turquoise-coloured, satin curtains, faded to intimate
accord with the silvered surface of the paneling, were drawn across the
wide windows. They reached to the lower edge of the stonework merely,
leaving blottings of impenetrable shadow below. While, as culmination
of interest, as living centre of this rich and varied setting, was the
figure of Richard Calmady--seen, as his custom was, only to the
waist--seated in a high-backed chair drawn close against an antique,
oak table, upon which a small _pietra dura_ cabinet shad been placed.
The doors of the cabinet stood open, displaying slender columns of
jasper and porphyry, and little drawers encrusted with raised work in
marbles and precious stones. The young man sat stiffly upright, as one
who listens, expectant. His expression was almost painfully serious. In
one hand he held a string of pearls, attached to which, and enclosed by
intersecting hoops of gold, was a crystal ball that shone with the mild
effulgence of a mimic moon. And the great room was so very quiet, that
Helen, in her pause upon the threshold, had remarked the sound of
raindrops tapping upon the many window-panes as with impatiently
nervous fingers.
And this bred in her a corresponding nervousness--sensation to her,
heretofore, almost unknown. The darkness yonder began to provoke a
disagreeable impression, queerly challenging both her eyesight and her
courage. Old convent teachings, regarding the Prince of Darkness and
his emissaries, returned upon her. What if diabolic shapes lurked
there, ready to become stealthily emergent? She had scoffed at such
archaic fancies in the convent, yet, in lonely hours, had suffered
panic fear of them, as will the hardiest sceptic. A certain little
scar, moreover, carefully hidden under the soft hair arranged low on
her right temple, smarted and pricked. In short, her habitual
self-confidence suffered partial eclipse. She was visited by the
disintegrating suspicion, for once, that the eternal laughter might,
possibly, be at her expense, rather than on her side.
But she conquered such suspicion as contemptible, and cast out the
passing weakness. The bare memory of it angered her now, causing her to
fire a volley of yellow corn at a lordly peacock, which sent him
scuttling down the steps on to the gravel in most plebeian haste. Yes,
she had speedily cast out her weakness, thank heaven! What was all the
pother about after all? This was not the first time she had played
merry games with the affairs and affections of men. Madame de Vallorbes
smiled to herself, recalling certain episodes, and shook her charming
shoulders gleefully, as she looked out into the sunny morning. And
then, was there not ample excuse? This man moved her more than
most--more than any. She swore he did. Her attitude towards him was
something new, something quite different, thereby justifying her
campaign. And therefore, all the bolder for her brief self-distrust and
hesitation, she had swept across the great room, light of foot, and
almost impertinently graceful of carriage.
"Here you are at last!" Dickie had exclaimed, with a sigh as of relief.
"I shan't want anything more, Powell. You can come back when the
dressing-bell rings." Then, as the valet closed the door behind him, he
continued rapidly:--"Not that I propose to victimise you till then,
Helen. You mustn't stay a bit longer than you like. I confess I'm
awfully fond of this room. I'm almost ashamed to think how much time I
waste in it. Doing what? Oh, well, just dreaming! You see it contains
samples of the doings of all my father's people, and I return to
primitive faiths here and to perform acts of ancestor worship."
"Ah! I like that!" Helen said. And she did. Picture this man, long of
arm, unnaturally low of stature, and astonishingly--yes, quite
astonishingly good-looking, moving about among these books and
pictures, these trophies of war and of sport, these oriental jars, tall
almost as himself, and all the other strange furnishings from out
distant years and distant lands! Picture him emerging from that well of
soft darkness yonder, for instance! Helen's eyes danced under their
arched and drooping lids, and she registered the fact that, though
still frightened, her fright had changed in character. It was grateful
to her palate. She relished it as the bouquet of a wine of finest
quality. Meanwhile her companion talked on.
"The ancestor worship? Oh yes! I dare say you might like it for a
change. Getting it as I do, as habitual diet, it is not remarkably
stimulating. The natural man prefers to find occasion for worshipping
himself rather than his ancestors, after all, you know. But a little
turn of it will serve to fill in a gap and lessen the monotony of your
visit. I am afraid you must be a good deal bored, Helen. It must seem
rather terribly humdrum here after Paris and Naples, and--well--most
places, at that rate, as you know them."
Richard shifted his position. And the crystal moon encompassed by
golden bands, crossing and intersecting one another like those of a
sidereal sphere, gleamed as with an inward and unearthly light,
swinging slowly upon the movement of his hand.
"You must feel here as though the clock had been put back two or three
centuries. I know we move slowly, and conduct ourselves with tedious
deliberation. And so, you understand, you mustn't let me keep you. Just
look at what you like of these odds and ends, and then depart without
scruple. It's rather a fraud, in any case, my showing them to you.
Julius March, as I told you, is much better qualified to."
"Julius March, Julius March," Madame de Vallorbes broke in. "Do, I
beseech you, dear Cousin Richard, leave him to the pious retirement of
his study. Is he not middle-aged, and a priest into the bargain?"
"Unquestionably," Dickie said. "But, pardon me, I don't quite see what
that has to do with it."
Thereupon Madame de Vallorbes made a very naughty, little grimace and
drummed with her finger-tips upon the table.
"La! la!" she cried, "you're no better than all the rest. Commend me to
a clever man for incapacity to apprehend what is patent to the
intelligence of the most ordinary woman. Look about you."--Helen
sketched in their surroundings with a quick descriptive gesture.
"Observe the lights and shadows. The ghostly wavings of those pale
curtains. Smell the potpourri and spices. Think of the ancestor
worship. Listen to the protesting wind and rain. See the mysterious
treasure you hold in your hand. And then ask me what middle-age and the
clerical profession have to do with all this! Why, nothing, just
precisely nothing, nothing in the whole world. That's the point of my
argument. They'd ruin the sentiment, blight the romance, hopelessly
blight it--for me at least."
The conversation was slightly embarrassed, both Helen and Richard
talking at length, yet at random. But she knew that it was thus, and
not otherwise, that it behooved them to talk. For that which they said
mattered not in the least. The thing said served as a veil, as a cloak,
merely, wherewith to disguise those much greater things which,
perforce, remained unsaid.--To cover his and her lively consciousness
of their present isolation, desired these many days and now obtained.
To conceal the swift, silent approaches of spirit to spirit, so full of
inquiry and self-revelation, fugitive reserves and fugitive distrusts.
To hide, as far as might be, the existence of the hungry,
all-compelling _joie de vivre_ which is begotten whensoever youth thus
seeks and finds youth.--These unspoken and, as yet, unspeakable things
were alone of real moment, making eyes lustrous and lips quick with
tremulous, uncalled-for smiles irrespective of the purport of their
speech.
"Ah! but that's rather rough on poor dear Julius, you know," Dickie
said. "I suppose you wanted to learn all----"
"Learn?" she interrupted. "I wanted to feel. Don't you know there is
only one way any woman worth the name ever really learns--through her
emotions? Only the living feel. Such men as he, if they are sincere,
are already dead. He would have made feeling impossible."
A perceptible hush descended upon the room. Richard Calmady's hand
usually was steady enough, but, in the silence, the pearls chattered
against the table. He went rather pale and his face hardened.
"And are you getting anything of that which you wanted, Helen?" he
asked. "For sometimes in the last few days--since you have been
here--I--I have wondered if perhaps we were not all like that--all
dead----"
"You mean do I get emotion, am I feeling?" she said. "Rest contented.
Much is happening. Indeed I have doubted, during the last few days,
since I have been here, whether I have ever known what it is to feel
actually and seriously before."
She sat down at right angles to him, resting her elbows upon the table,
her chin upon her folded hands, leaning a little towards him. One of
those pleasant heats swept over her, flushing her delicate skin,
lending a certain effulgence to her beauty. The scent of roses long
faded hung in the air. But here was a rose sweeter far than they. No
white rose of paradise, it must be confessed. Rather like her immortal
namesake, that classic Helen, was she _rosa mundi_, glowing with warmth
and colour, rose-red rose altogether of this dear, naughty, lower
world?
"Richard," she said impulsively, "why don't you understand? Why do you
underrate your own power? Don't you know that you are quite the most
moving, the most attractive--well--cousin, a woman ever had?"
She looked closely at him, her lips a little parted, her head thrown
back.
"Life is sweet, dear cousin. Reckon with yourself and with it, and
live--live."--Then she put out her hand and held up the crystal between
her face and his. "There," she went on, "tell me about this. I become
indiscrete, thanks I suppose to your Brockhurst habit of putting back
the clock, and speak with truly Elizabethan frankness. It belongs to
semi-barbaric ages, doesn't it, this, to tell the true truth? Show me
this. It seems rather fascinating."
And Richard obeyed mechanically, pointing out to her the signs of the
Zodiac, those of the planets, and other figures of occult significance
engraved on the encircling, golden bands. Showed her how those same
bands, turning on a pivot, formed a golden cradle, in which the crystal
sphere reposed. He lifted it out from that cradle, moreover, and laid
it in the softer cradle of her palm. And of necessity in the doing of
all this, their heads--his and hers--were very near together, and their
hands met. But they were very solemn all the while, solemn, eager,
busy, as two babies revealing to each other the mysteries of a newly
acquired toy. And it seemed to Madame de Vallorbes that all this was as
pretty a bit of business as ever served to help forward such gay
purposes as hers. She was pleased with herself too--for did she not
feel very gentle, very sincere, really very innocent and good?
"No, hold it so," Richard said, rounding her fingers carefully, that
the tips of them might alone touch the surface of the crystal. "Now
gaze into the heart of it steadily, fixing your will to see. Pictures
will come presently, dimly at first, as in a mist. Then the mist will
lift and you will read your own fortune and--perhaps--some other
person's fate."
"Have you ever read yours?"
"Oh! mine's of a sort that needs no crystal to reveal it," he answered,
with a queer drop in his voice. "It's written in rather indecently big
letters and plain type. Always has been."
Helen glanced at him. His words whipped up her sense of drama, fed her
excitement. But she bent her eyes upon the crystal again, and the hush
descended once more, disturbed only by that nervous tapping of rain.
"I see nothing, nothing," she said presently. "And there is much I
would give very much to see."
"You must gaze with a simple intention." The young man's voice came
curiously hoarse and broken. "Purify your mind of all desire."
Helen did not raise her head.
"Alas! if those are the conditions of revelation my chances of seeing
are extremely limited. To purify one's mind of all desire is to commit
emotional suicide. Of course I desire, all the while I desire. And
equally, of course, you desire. Every one who is human and in their
sober senses must do that. Absence of desire means idiotcy, or----"
"Or what?"
For an instant she looked up at him, a very devil of dainty malice in
her expression, in the shrug of her shoulders too, beneath their fine
laces and the affected sobriety of that same dull-blue, poplin gown.
"Or priestly, saintly middle-age--from which may heaven in its mercy
ever deliver us," she said.
Richard shifted his position a little, gathering himself back from her
so near neighbourhood--a fact of which the young lady was not unaware.
"I'm not quite sure whether I echo your prayer," he said slowly. "I
doubt whether that attitude, or one approximate to it, is not the
safest and best for some of us."
"Safest, no doubt." Madame de Vallorbes' eyes were bent on the crystal
sphere again. "As it is safer to decline a duel, than go out and meet
your man. Best? On that point you must permit me to hold my own
opinion. The word best has many readings according to the connection in
which it is employed. Personally I should always fight."
"Whatever the odds?"
"Whatever the odds."--And almost immediately Madame de Vallorbes
uttered a little cry, curiously at variance with her bold words.
"Something is moving inside the crystal, something is coming. I don't
half like it, Richard. Perhaps we are tempting Providence. Yes, it
moves, it moves, like mist rising off a river. It is poisonous. Some
woman has looked into this before--a woman of my temperament--and read
an evil fortune. I know it. Tell me quick, how did the crystal come
here, to whom did it belong?"
"To Mary Stuart--Mary, Queen of Scots," Dickie said.
"Ah! unhappy woman, ill-omened woman. You should have told me that
before and I would never have looked. Here take it, take it. Lock it
up, hide it. Let no woman ever look in it again."
As she spoke Helen crossed herself hastily, pushing the magic ball
towards him. But, as though endowed with life and volition of its
own--or was it merely that Dick's hand was even yet not quite of the
steadiest?--it evaded his grasp, fell off the table edge and rolled,
gleaming moonlike, far across the floor, away behind the pedestal of
the bronze Pompeian Antinous, into the dusky shadow of those
ghostly-waving, turquoise, satin curtains.
With a sense of catastrophe upon her Helen had sprung to her
feet.--Even now, standing in the peaceful warmth of the autumn
sunshine, among the feeding pea-fowl, the remembrance of it caused her
a little shiver. For at sight of that gleaming ball hurrying across the
carpet, all the nervousness, the distrust of herself, the vague
spiritual alarms, which had beset her on first entering the room,
returned on her with tenfold force. The superstitious terrors of the
convent-bred girl mastered the light-hearted scepticism of the woman of
the world, and regions of sinister possibility seemed disclosing
themselves around her.
"Oh! how horrible! What does it mean?" she cried.
And Richard answered cheerily, somewhat astonished at her agitation,
trying to reassure her.
"Mean? Nothing, except that I was abominably awkward and the crystal
abominably slippery. What does it matter? We can find it again
directly."
Then, self-forgetful in the fulness of his longing to pacify her,
Richard had pushed his chair back from the table, intending to go in
search of the vagrant jewel. But the chair was high, and its make not
of the most solid sort; and so he paused, instinctively calculating the
amount of support it could be trusted to render him in his descent. And
during that pause Helen had felt her heart stand still. She set her
little teeth now, recalling it. For the extent of his deformity was
fully apparent for once. And, apprehending that which he proposed to
do, she was smitten by immense curiosity to realise the ultimate of the
grotesque in respect of his appearance as he should move, walk, grope
in the dimness over there after the lost crystal. But there are some
indulgences which can be bought at too high a price, and along with the
temptation to gratify her curiosity came an intensification of
superstitious alarm. What if she had sinned, and trafficked with
diabolic agencies, in trying to read the future? Payment of an actively
disagreeable character might be exacted for that, and would not such
payment risk disastrous augmentation if she gratified her curiosity
thus further? Helen de Vallorbes became quite wonderfully prudent and
humane.
"No, no, don't bother about it, don't move, dear Richard," she cried.
"Let me find it please. I saw exactly the direction in which it went."
And to emphasise her speech, and keep the young man in his place, she
laid her hands persuasively upon his shoulders. This brought her
charming face, so pure in outline, set in its aureole of honey-coloured
hair, very near to his, she looking down, he up. And in this position
the two remained longer than was absolutely necessary, silent, quite
still, while the air grew thick with the push of unspoken and as yet
unspeakable matters, and Helen's hands resting upon his shoulders grew
heavy, as the seconds passed, with languorous weight.
"There are better things than crystals to read in, after all, Richard,"
she said at last. Then she lifted her hands almost brusquely and
stepped back. "All the same it is stupid I should have to go away," she
continued, speaking more to herself than to him. "I am happy here. And
when I am happy it's easy to be good--and I like to be good."
She crossed the room and passed behind the bronze Pompeian Antinous.
Under the shadow of the curtains, in the angle of the bay, against the
wainscot, Queen Mary's magic ball showed softly luminous. Helen could
have believed that it watched her. She hesitated before stooping to
pick it up and looked over her shoulder at Richard Calmady. His back
was towards her, his chair close against the table again. He leaned
forward on his elbows, his face buried in his hands. Something in the
bowed head, in the set of the almost crouching figure reassured Madame
de Vallorbes. She picked up the crystal without more ado, with, indeed,
a certain flippancy of gesture. For she had received pleasing assurance
that she had been frightened in the wrong place, and that the eternal
laughter was very completely on her side after all.
And just then a bell had rung in some distant quarter of the great
house. Powell, incarnation of decent punctualities, had appeared.
Whereupon the temperature fell to below normal from fever-heat. Drama,
accentuations of sensibility, in short all the unspoken and
unspeakable, withered as tropic foliage at a touch of frost. No doubt
it was as well, Madame de Vallorbes reflected philosophically, since
the really psychological moment was passed. There had been a dinner
party last night, and----
But here the young lady's reminiscences broke off short. She gathered
up her blue, poplin, scarlet-lined skirts, ran down the steps,
scattering the pea-fowl to right and left, and hastened across the
gravel.
"Wait half a minute for me, dear Aunt Katherine," she cried. "Are you
going to the conservatories? I would so like to see them. May I go
too?"
Lady Calmady stood by the door in the high, red-brick wall. She wore a
white, lace scarf over her hair--turned up and back, dressed high, as
of old, though now somewhat gray upon the temples. The lace was tied
under her chin, framing her face. In her gray dress she looked as some
stately, yet gracious lady abbess might--a lady abbess who had known
love in all fulness, yet in all honour--a lady abbess painted, if such
happy chance could be, by the debonair and clean-hearted Reynolds. She
stood smiling, charmed--though a trifle unwillingly--by the brilliant
vision of the younger woman.
"Assuredly you may come with me, if it would amuse you," she said.
"I may? Then let me open that door for you. La! la! how it sticks. Last
night's rain must have swelled it;" and she wrestled unsuccessfully
with the lock.
"My dear, don't try any more," Katherine said. "You will tire yourself.
The exertion is too great for you. I will go back and call one of the
servants."
"No, no;" and regardless of her fine laces, and trinkets, and sables
Madame de Vallorbes put her shoulder against the resisting door and
fairly burst it open.
"See," she cried, breathless but triumphant, "I am very strong."
"You are very pretty," Katharine said, almost involuntarily.
The steeply-terraced kitchen gardens, neat box edgings, wide flower
borders in which a few clumps of chrysanthemum and Michaelmas daisy
still resisted the frost, ranged down to greenish brown ponds in the
valley bottom spotted with busy, quacking companies of white ducks.
Beyond was an ascending slope of thick wood, the topmost trees of which
showed bare against the sky line. All this was framed by the arch of
the door. Madame de Vallorbes glanced at it, while she pulled down the
soft waves of hair, which her late exertions had slightly disarranged,
over her right temple. Then she turned impulsively to Lady Calmady.
"Thank you, dear Aunt Katherine," she said. "I would so like you to
like me, you know."
"I should be rather unpardonably difficult to please, if I did not like
you, my dear," Lady Calmady answered. But she sighed as she spoke.
The two women moved away, side by side, down the path to the glistering
greenhouses. But Camp, who, missing Richard, had followed his mistress
out of the house for a leisurely morning potter, turned back sulkily
across the gravel homewards, his tail limp, his heavy head carried low.
His instincts were conservative, as has been already mentioned. He was
suspicious of newcomers. And whoever liked this particular newcomer,
Madame de Vallorbes, he was sorry to say--and on more than one occasion
he said it with quite inconvenient distinctness--he did not.
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH DICKIE TRIES TO RIDE AWAY FROM HIS OWN SHADOW, WITH SUCH
SUCCESS AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN ANTICIPATED
That same morning Richard was up and out early. Fog had followed on the
evening's rain, and at sunrise still shrouded all the landscape.
"Let her ladyship know I breakfast at the stables and shan't be in
before luncheon," he had said to Powell while settling himself in the
saddle. Then, followed by a groom, he fared forth. The house vanished
phantom-like behind him, and the clang of the iron gates as they swung
to was muffled by the heavy atmosphere, while he rode on by invisible
ways across an invisible land, hemmed in, close-encompassed, passed
upon, by the chill, ashen whiteness of the fog.
And for the cold silence and blankness surrounding him Richard was
grateful. It was restful--after a grim fashion--and he welcomed rest,
having passed a but restless night. For Dickie had been the victim of
much travail of spirit. His imagination vexed him, pricking up
slumbering lusts of the flesh. His conscience vexed him likewise,
suggesting that his attitude had not been pure cousinly; and this
shamed him, since he was still singularly unspotted from the world,
noble modesties and decencies still paramount in him. He was keenly,
some might say mawkishly, sensible of the stain and dishonour of
turning, even involuntarily and passingly, covetous glances upon
another man's goods. In sensation and apprehension he had lived at
racing pace during the last few days. That hour in the Long Gallery
last night had been the climax. The gates of paradise had opened before
him. And, since opposites of necessity imply their opposites, the gates
of hell had opened likewise. It appeared to Dickie that the great
poets, and painters, and musicians, the great lovers even, had nothing
left to tell him--for he knew. Knew, moreover, that his Eden had come
to him with the angel of the fiery sword that "turneth every way"
standing at the threshold of it--knew, yet further, as he had never
known before, the immensity of the difficulties, disabilities,
humiliations, imposed on him by his deformity. Bitterly, nakedly, he
called his trouble by that offensive name. Then he straightened himself
in the saddle. Yes, welcome the cold weight against his chest, welcome
the silence, the blankness, the dead, ashen pallor of the fog!
But just where the tan ride, leading down across the road to the left
diverges from the main road, this source of negative consolation began
to fail him. For a draw of fresher air came from westward, causing the
blurred, wet branches to quiver and the pall of mist to gather, and
then break and melt under its wholesome breath, while the rays of the
laggard sun, clearing the edge of the fir forest, eastward, pierced it,
hastening its dissolution. Therefore it followed that by the time
Richard rode in under the stable archway, he found the great yard full
of noise and confused movement. The stable doors stood wide along one
side of the quadrangle. Stunted, boyish figures shambled hither and
thither, unwillingly deserting the remnants of half-eaten breakfasts,
among the iron mugs and platters of the long, deal tables of the
refectory. Chifney and Preiston--the head-lad--hurried them, shouting
orders, admonishing, inciting to greater rapidity of action. And the
boys were sulky. The thick morning had promoted hopes of an hour or two
of unwonted idleness. Now those poor, little hopes were summarily
blighted. Lazy, pinched with cold by the raw morning air, still a bit
hungry, sick even, or downright frightened, they must mount and
away--the long line of race-horses streaming, in single file, up the
hillside to the exercising ground--with as short delay as possible, or
Mr. Chifney and his ash stick would know the reason why.
There were elements of brutality in the scene from which Richard would,
oftentimes, have recoiled. To-day he was selfish, absorbed to the point
of callousness. If he remarked them at all, it was in bitter welcome,
as he had welcomed the chill and staring blankness of the fog. He was
indifferent to the fact that Chifney was harsh, the horses testy or
wicked, that the boys' noses were red, and that they blew their purple
fingers before laying hold of the reins in a vain attempt to promote
circulation. Dickie sat still as a statue in the midst of all the
turmoil, the handle of his crop resting on his thigh, his eyes hot from
sleeplessness and wild thoughts, his face hard as marble.--Unhappy?
Wasn't he unhappy too? Suffer? Well, let them suffer--within reasonable
limits. Suffering was the fundamental law of existence. They must bow
to the workings of it along with the rest.
But one wretched, little chap fairly blubbered. He had been kicked in
the stomach some three weeks earlier, and had been in hospital. This
was his first morning out. He had grown soft, and was light-headed, his
knees all of a shake. By means of voluminous threats Preiston got him
up. But he sat his horse all of a huddle, as limp as a half-empty sack
of chaff. Richard looked on feeling, not pity, but only irritation,
finally amounting to anger. The child's whole aspect and the sniveling
sounds he made were so hatefully ugly. It disgusted him.
"Here Chifney, leave that fellow at home," he said. "He's no good."
"He's malingering, Sir Richard. I know his sort. Give in to him now and
we shall have the same game, and worse, over again to-morrow."
"Very probably," Richard answered. "Only it is evident he has no more
hand and no more grip than a sick cat to-day. We shall have some mess
with him, and I'm not in the humour for a mess, so just leave him.
There boy, stop crying. Do you hear?" he added, wheeling round on the
small unfortunate. "Mr. Chifney'll give you another day off, and the
doctor will see you. Only if he reports you fit and you give the very
least trouble to-morrow, you'll be turned out of the stables there and
then. We've no use for shirkers. Do you understand?"
In spite of his irritation, the hardness of Richard's expression
relaxed as he finished speaking. The poor, little beggar was so
abject--too abject indeed for common decency, since he too, after all,
was human. Richard's own self-respect made it incumbent upon him to
lift the creature out of the pit of so absolutely unseemly a
degradation. He looked kindly at him, smiled, and promptly forgot all
about him. While to the boy it seemed that the gods had verily
descended in the likeness of men, and he would have bartered his
little, dirty, blear-eyed rudiment of a soul thenceforward for another
such a look from Richard Calmady.
Dickie promptly forgot the boy, yet some virtue must have been in the
episode for he began to feel better in himself. As the horses filed
away through the misty sunshine--Preiston riding beside the fourth or
fifth of the string, while Richard and Chifney brought up the rear, his
chestnut suiting its paces to the shorter stride of the trainer's
cob--the fever of the night cooled down in him. Half thankfully, half
amusedly, he perceived things begin to assume their normal relations.
He filled his lungs with the pure air, felt the sun-dazzle pleasant in
his eyes. He had run somewhat mad in the last twenty-four hours surely?
He was not such a fatuous ass as to have mistaken Helen's frank
_camaraderie_, her bright interest in things, her charming little ways
of showing cousinly regard, for some deeper, more personal feeling? She
had been divinely kind, but that was just her--just the outcome of her
delightful nature. She would go away on Friday--Saturday perhaps--he
rather hoped Saturday--and be just as divinely kind to other people.
And then he shook himself, feeling the languid weight of her hands on
his shoulders again. Would she--would--? For an instant he wanted to
get at, and incontinently brain, those other people. After which,
Richard mentally took himself by the throat and proceeded to choke the
folly out of himself. Yes, she would go back to all those other people,
back moreover to the Vicomte de Vallorbes--whom, by the way, it
occurred to him she so seldom mentioned. Well, we don't continually
talk about the people we love best, do we, to comparative strangers?
She would go back to her husband--her husband.--Richard repeated the
words over to himself sternly, trying to drive them home, to burn them
into his consciousness past all possibility of forgetting.
Anyhow, she had been wonderfully sweet and charming to him. She had
shown him--quite unconsciously, of course--what life might be for--for
somebody else. She had revealed to him--what indeed had she not
revealed! He remembered the spirit of expectation that possessed him
riding back through the autumn woods the day he first met her. The
expectation had been more than justified by the sequel. Only--only--and
then Dick became stern with himself again. For, she having,
unconsciously, done so much for him, was it not his first duty never to
distress her?--never to let her know how much deeper it had all gone
with him than with her?--never to insult her beautiful innocence by a
word or look suggesting an affection less frank and cousinly than her
own?
Only, since even our strongest purposes have moments of lapse and
weakness in execution, it would be safer, perhaps, not to be much alone
with her--since she didn't know--how should she? Yes, Richard agreed
with himself not to loaf, to allow no idle hours. He would ride, he
would see to business. There were a whole heap of estate matters
claiming attention. He had neglected them shamefully of late.
Unquestionably Helen counted for very much, would continue to do so. He
supposed he would carry the ache of certain memories about with him
henceforth and forever. She had become part of the very fibre of his
life. He never doubted that. And yet, he told himself--assuming a
second-hand garment of slightly cynical philosophy which suited
singularly ill with the love-light in his eyes, there radiantly
apparent for all the world to see--that woman, even the one who first
shows you you have a heart--and a body too, worse luck--even she is but
a drop in the vast ocean of things. There remains all The Rest. And
with praiseworthy diligence Dickie set himself to reckon how immensely
much all The Rest amounts to. There is plenty, exclusive of her, to
think about. More than enough, indeed, to keep one hard at work all
day, and send one to bed honestly tired, to sleeping-point, at night.
Politics for instance, science, literature, entertaining little
controversial rows of sorts--the simple, almost patriarchal duties of a
great land-owner; pleasant hobbies such as the collection of first
editions, or a pretty taste in the binding of favourite books--the
observation of this mysterious, ever young, ever fertile nature around
him now, immutable order underlaying ceaseless change, the ever new
wonder and beauty of all that, and:--"I say, Chifney, isn't the brown
Lady-Love filly going rather short on the off foreleg? Anything wrong
with her shoulder?"--and sport. Yes, thank God, in the name of
everything healthy and virile, sport and, above all, horses--yes,
horses.
Thus did Richard Calmady reason with and essay to solace himself for
the fact that some fruits are forbidden to him who holds honour dear.
Reasoned with and solaced himself to such good purpose, as he fondly
imagined, that when, an hour and a half later, he established himself
in the trainer's dining-room, a mighty breakfast outspread before him,
he felt quite another man. Racing cups adorned the chimneypiece and
sideboard, portraits of race-horses and jockeys adorned the walls. The
sun streamed in between the red rep curtains, causing the pot-plants in
the window to give off a pleasant scent, and the canary, in his
swinging blue and white painted cage above them, to sing. Mrs. Chifney,
her cheeks pink, her manner slightly fluttered,--as were her lilac cap
strings,--presided over the silver tea and coffee service, admonished
the staid and bulky tom-cat who, jumping on the arm of Dickie's chair,
extended a scooping tentative paw towards his plate, and issued gentle
though peremptory orders to her husband regarding the material needs of
her guest. To Mrs. Chifney such entertainings as the present marked the
red-letter days of her calendar. Temporarily she forgave Chifney the
doubtful nature of his calling and his occasional outbreaks of profane
swearing alike. She ceased to regret that snug might-have-been, little,
grocery business in a country town. She forgot even to hanker after
prayer meetings, anniversary teas, and other mild, soul-saving
dissipations unauthorised by the Church of England. She ruffled her
feathers, so to speak, and cooed to the young man half in feudal, half
in unsatisfied maternal affection--for Mrs. Chifney was childless. And
it followed that as he teased her a little, going back banteringly on
certain accepted subjects of difference between them, praised, and made
a hole, in her fresh-baked rolls, her nicely browned, fried potatoes,
her clear, crinkled rashers, assuring her it gave one an appetite
merely to sit down in a room so shiningly clean and spick and span, she
was supremely happy. And Dickie was happy too, and blessed the
exercise, the food, and the society of these simple persons, which,
after his evil night, seemed to have restored to him his wiser and
better self.
"He always was the noblest looking young gentleman I ever saw," Mrs.
Chifney remarked subsequently to her husband. "But here at breakfast
this morning, when he said, 'If you won't be shocked, Mrs. Chifney, I
believe I could manage a second helping of that game pie,' his face was
like a very angel's from heaven. Unearthly beautiful, Thomas, and yet a
sort of pain at the back of it. It gave me a regular turn. I had to
shed a few tears afterwards when I got alone by myself."
"You're one of those that see more than's there, half your time,
Maria," the trainer answered, with an unusual effort at sarcasm, for he
was not wholly easy about the young man himself.--"There's something up
with him, and danged if I know what it is." But these reflections he
kept to himself.
Dr. Knott, later that same day, made reflections of a similar nature.
For though Dickie adhered valiantly to his good resolutions--going out
with the second lot of horses between ten and eleven o'clock, riding on
to Banister's farm to inspect the new barn and cowsheds in course of
erection, then hurrying down to Sandyfield Street and listening to long
and heated arguments regarding a right-of-way reported to exist across
the meadows skirting the river just above the bridge, a right strongly
denied by the present occupier. Notwithstanding these improving and
public-spirited employments, the love-light grew in his eyes all
through the long morning, causing his appearance to have something, if
not actually angelic, yet singularly engaging, about it. For,
unquestionably, next to a fortunate attachment, an unfortunate one, if
honest, is among the most inspiring and grace-begetting of possessions
granted to mortals. Helen must never know--that was well understood.
Yet the more Dickie thought the whole affair over, the more he
recognised the fine romance of thus cherishing a silent and secret
devotion. He was very young in this line as yet, it may be observed.
Meanwhile it was nearly two o'clock. He would need to ride home sharply
if he was to be in time for luncheon. And at luncheon he would meet
her. And remembering that, his heart--traitorous heart--beat quick, and
his lips--traitorous lips--began to repeat her name. Thus do the gods
of life and death love to play chuck-farthing with the wise purposes of
men, the theory of the eternal laughter having a root of truth in it,
as it would seem, after all! And there ahead of him, under the
shifting, dappled shadow of the overarching firs, Dr. Knott's broad,
cumbersome back, and high, two-wheeled trap blocked the road, while
Timothy, the old groom,--stiff-kneed now and none too active,--slowly
pushed open the heavy, white gate of the inner park.
As Richard rode up, the doctor turned in his seat and looked at him
from under his rough eyebrows, while his loose lips worked into a
half-ironical smile. He loved this lad of great fortune, and great
misfortune, more tenderly than he quite cared to own. Then, as Dick
checked his horse beside the cart, he growled out:--
"No need to make anxious inquiries regarding your health, young sir.
What have you been doing with yourself, eh? You look as fit as a fiddle
and as fresh as paint."
"If I look as I feel I must look ravenously hungry," Richard answered,
flushing up a little. "I've been out since six."
"Had some breakfast?"
"Oh dear, yes! Enough to teach one to know what a jolly thing a good
meal is, and make one wish for another."
"Hum!" Dr. Knott said. "That's a healthy state of affairs, anyhow.
Young horses going well?"
"Famously."
"Bless me, everything's beer and skittles with you just at present
then!"
Richard looked away down the smooth yellow road whereon the dappled
shadows kissed and mingled, mingled and kissed, and his heart cried
"Helen, Helen," once again.
"Oh! I don't know about that," he said. "I get my share as well as the
rest I suppose--at least--anyway the horses are doing capitally this
season."
"I should like to have a look at them."
"Oh, well you've only got to say when, you know. I shall be only too
delighted to show them you."
As he walked the trap through the gateway, Dr. Knott watched Richard
riding alongside.--"What's up with the boy," he thought. "His face is
as keen as a knife, and as soft as--God help us, I hope there's no
sweethearting on hand! It's bound to come sooner or later, but the
later the better, for it'll be a risky enough set out, come when it
may.--Ah, look out there now, you old fool,"--this to Timothy,--"don't
go missing the step and laying yourself up with broken ribs for another
three months, just when my work's at its heaviest. Be careful, can't
you?"
"But why not come in to luncheon now?" Richard said, wisdom whipping up
good resolutions once more, and bidding him check the gladness that
gained on him at thought of that approaching meeting. Oh yes! he would
be discreet, he would erect barriers, he would flee temptation. Knott's
presence offered a finely rugged barrier, surely. Therefore, he
repeated, "Come in now. My mother will be delighted to see you, and we
can have a look round the stables afterwards."
"I'll come fast enough if Lady Calmady will take me as I am. Workaday
clothes, and second best lot at that. You're alone, I suppose?"
He watched the young man as he spoke. Noted the lift of his chin, and
the slightly studied indifference of his manner.
"No, for once we're not. But that doesn't matter. My Uncle William
Ormiston is with us. You remember him?"
"I remember his wife."
"Oh! she's not here," Dickie said. "Only he and his daughter, Madame de
Vallorbes. You'll come?"
"Oh! dear yes, I'll come, if you'll be good enough to prepare your
ladies for a rough-looking customer. Don't let me keep you. Wonder what
the daughter's like?" he added to himself. "The mother was a bit of a
baggage."
CHAPTER VII
WHEREIN THE READER IS COURTEOUSLY INVITED TO IMPROVE HIS ACQUAINTANCE
WITH CERTAIN PERSONS OF QUALITY
But Richard might have spared himself the trouble of erecting barriers
against too intimate intercourse with his cousin. Providence, awaking
suddenly as it would seem, to the perils of his position, had already
seen to all that. For since he went forth, hot-eyed and hot-headed,
into the blank chill of the fog, the company at Brockhurst--as Powell
announced to him--had suffered large and unlooked-for increase. Ludovic
Quayle was the first of the self-invited guests to appear when Richard
was settled in the dining-room. He sauntered up to the head of the
table with his accustomed air of slightly supercilious inquiry, as of
one who expects to meet little save fools and foolishness, yet suffers
these gladly, being quite secure of his own wisdom.
"How are you, Dickie?" he said. "Fairly robust I hope, for the
Philistines are upon you. Still it might have been worse. I have done
what I could. My father, who has never grasped that there is an element
of comedy in the numerical strength of his family, wished to bring us
over a party of eight. But I stopped that. Four, as I tried to make him
comprehend, touched the limits of social decency. He didn't comprehend.
He rarely does. But he yielded, which was more to the point perhaps.
Understand though, we didn't propose to add surprise to the other
doubtful blessings of our descent on you. I wrote to you yesterday, but
it appears you went out at some unearthly hour this morning superior
alike to the state of the weather and arrival of your letters."
"Fine thing going out early---excellent thing going out early. Very
glad to see you, Calmady, and very kind indeed of you and Lady Calmady
to take us in in this friendly way and show us hospitality at such
short notice----"
This from Lord Fallowfeild--a remarkably tall, large, and handsome
person. He affected a slightly antiquated style of dress, with a
sporting turn to it,--coats of dust colour or gray, notably long as to
the skirts, well fitted at the waist, the surface of them traversed by
heavy seams. His double chin rested within the points of a high, white
collar, and was further supported by voluminous, black, satin stock.
His face, set in soft, gray hair and gray whisker, brushed well
forward, suggested that of a benign and healthy infant--an infant, it
may be added, possessed of a small and particularly pretty mouth. Save
in actual stature, indeed, his lordship had never quite succeeded in
growing up. Very full of the milk of human kindness, he earnestly
wished his fellow-creatures--gentle and simple alike--to be as
contented and happy as he, almost invariably, himself was. When he had
reason to believe them otherwise, it perplexed and worried him greatly.
It followed that he was embarrassed, apologetic even, in Richard
Calmady's presence. He felt vaguely responsible as for some neglected
duty, as though there was something somehow which he ought to set
right. And this feeling harassed him, increasing the natural
discursiveness and inconsequence of his speech. He was so terribly
nervous of forgetting and of hurting the young man's feelings by saying
the wrong thing, that all possible wrong things got upon his brain,
with the disastrous result that of course he ended by saying them. In
face of a person so sadly stationary as poor Dick, moreover, his own
perfect ability to move freely about appeared to him as little short of
discourteous, not to say coarse. He, therefore, tried to keep very
still, with the consequence that he developed an inordinate tendency to
fidget. Altogether Lord Fallowfeild did not show to advantage in
Richard Calmady's company.
"Ah, yes! fine thing going out early," he repeated. "Always made a
practice of it myself at your age, Calmady. Can't stand doctor's stuff,
don't believe in it, never did. Though I like Knott, good fellow
Knott--always have liked Knott. But never was a believer in drugs.
Nothing better than a good sharp walk, now, early, really early before
the frost's out of the grass. Excellent for the liver walking----"
Here, perceiving that his son Ludovic looked very hard at him, eyebrows
raised to most admonitory height, he added hastily--
"Eh?--yes, of course, or riding. Riding, nothing like that for
health--better exercise still----"
"Is it?" Richard put in. He was too busy with his own thoughts to be
greatly affected by Lord Fallowfeild's blunders just then. "I'm glad to
know you think so. You see it's a matter in which I'm not very much of
a judge."
"No--no--of course not.--Queer fellow Calmady," Lord Fallowfeild added
to himself. "Uncommonly sharp way he has of setting you down."
But just then, to his relief, Lady Calmady, Lady Louisa Barking, and
pretty, little Lady Constance Quayle entered the room together. Mr.
Ormiston and John Knott followed engaged in close conversation, the
rugged, rough-hewn aspect of the latter presenting a strong contrast to
the thin, tall figure and face, white and refined to the point of
emaciation, of the diplomatist. Julius March, accompanied by
Camp--still carrying his tail limp and his great head rather
sulkily--brought up the rear. And Dickie, while greeting his guests,
disposing their places at table, making civil speeches to his immediate
neighbour on the left,--Lady Louisa,--smiling a good-morning to his
mother down the length of the table, felt a wave of childish
disappointment sweep over him. For Helen came not, and with a great
desiring he desired her. Poor Dickie, so wise, so philosophic in fancy,
so enviably, disastrously young in fact!
"Oh! thanks, Lady Louisa--it's so extremely kind of you to care to
come. The fog was rather beastly this morning wasn't it? And I
shouldn't be surprised if it came down on us again about sunset. But
it's a charming day meanwhile.--There Ludovic please,--next Dr. Knott.
We'll leave this chair for Madame de Vallorbes. She's coming, I
suppose?"
And Richard glanced towards the door again, and, so doing, became aware
that little Lady Constance, sitting between Lord Fallowfeild and Julius
March, was staring at him. She had an innocent face, a small, feminine
copy of her father's save that her eyes were set noticeably far apart.
This gave her a slow, ruminant look, distinctly attractive. She
reminded Richard of a gentle, well-conditioned, sweet-breathed calf
staring over a bank among ox-eyed daisies and wild roses. As soon as
she perceived--but Lady Constance did not perceive anything very
rapidly--that he observed her, she gave her whole attention, to the
contents of her plate and her colour deepened perceptibly.
"Pretty country about you here, uncommonly pretty," Lord Fallowfeild
was saying in response to some remark of Lady Calmady's. "Always did
admire it. Always liked a meet on this side of the county when I had
the hounds. Very pleasant friendly spirit on this side too. Now
Cathcart, for instance--sensible fellow Cathcart, always have liked
Cathcart, remarkably sensible fellow. Plain man though--quite
astonishingly plain. Daughter very much like him, I remember.
Misfortune for a girl that. Always feel very much for a plain woman.
She married well though--can't recall who just now, but somebody we all
know. Who was it now, Lady Calmady?"
Between that haunting sense of embarrassment, and the kindly wish to
carry things off well, and promote geniality, Lord Fallowfeild spoke
loud. At this juncture Mr. Quayle folded his hands and raised his eyes
devoutly to heaven.
"Oh, my father! oh, my father!" he murmured. Then he leant a little
forward watching Lady Calmady.
"But, as you may remember, Mary Cathcart had a charming figure," she
was saying, very sweetly, essaying to soften the coming blow.
"Ah! had she though? Great thing a good figure. I knew she married
well."
"Naturally I agree with you there. I suppose one always thinks one's
own people the most delightful in the world. She married my brother."
"Did she though!" Lord Fallowfeild exclaimed, with much interest. Then
suddenly his tumbler stopped half-way to his mouth, while he gazed
horror-stricken across the table at Mr. Ormiston.
"Oh no, no! not that brother," Katherine added quickly. "The younger
one, the soldier. You wouldn't remember him. He's been on foreign
service almost ever since his marriage. They are at the Cape now."
"Oh! ah! yes--indeed, are they?" he exclaimed. He breathed more easily.
Those few thousand miles to the Cape were a great comfort to him. A man
could not overhear your strictures on his wife's personal appearance at
that distance anyhow.--"Very charming woman, uncommonly tactful woman,
Lady Calmady," he said to himself gratefully.
Meanwhile Lady Louisa Barking, at the other end of the table, addressed
her discourse to Richard and Julius, on either side of her, in the
high, penetrating key affected by certain ladies of distinguished
social pretensions. Whether this manner of speech implies a fine
conviction of superiority on the part of the speaker, or a conviction
that all her utterances are replete with intrinsic interest, it is
difficult to determine. Certain it is that Lady Louisa practically
addressed the table, the attendant men-servants, all creation in point
of fact, as well as her two immediate neighbours. Like her father she
was large and handsome. But her expression lacked his amiability, her
attitude his pleasing self-distrust. In age she was about
six-and-thirty and decidedly mature for that. She possessed a
remarkable power of concentrating her mind upon her own affairs. She
also laboured under the impression that she was truly religious,
listening weekly to the sermons of fashionable preachers on the
convenient text that "worldliness is next to godliness" and
entertaining prejudices, finely unqualified by accurate knowledge,
against the abominable errors of Rome.
"I was getting so terribly fagged with canvassing that my doctor told
me I really must go to Whitney and recruit. Of course Mr. Barking is
perfectly secure of his seat. I am in no real anxiety, I am thankful to
say. He does not speak much in the House. But I always feel speaking is
quite a minor matter, don't you?"
"Doubtless," Julius said, the remark appearing to be delivered at him
in particular.
"The great point is that your party should be able to depend absolutely
upon your loyalty. Being rather behind the scenes, as I can't help
being, you know, I do feel that more and more. And the party depends
absolutely upon Mr. Barking. He has so much moral stamina, you know.
That is what they all feel. He is ready at any moment to sacrifice his
private convictions to party interests. And so few members of any real
position are willing to do that. And so, of course, the leaders do
depend on him. All the members of the Government consult him in
private."
"That is very flattering," Richard remarked.--Still Helen tarried,
while again, glancing in the direction of the door, he encountered Lady
Constance's mild, ruminant stare.
"Can one pronounce anything flattering when one sees it to be so
completely deserved?" Ludovic Quayle inquired in his most urbane
manner. "Prompt and perpetual sacrifice of private conviction to party
interest, for example--how can such devotion receive recognition beyond
its deserts?"
"Do have some more partridge, Lady Louisa," Richard put in hastily.
"In any case such recognition is very satisfactory.--No more, thank
you, Sir Richard," the lady replied, not without a touch of acerbity.
Ludovic was very clever no doubt; but his comments often struck her as
being in equivocal taste. He gave a turn to your words you did not
expect and so broke the thread of your conversation in a rather
exasperating fashion. "Very satisfactory," she repeated. "And, of
course, the constituency is fully informed of the attitude of the
Government towards Mr. Barking, so that serious opposition is out of
the question."
"Oh! of course," Richard echoed.
"Still I feel it a duty to canvass. One can point out many things to
the constituents in their own homes which might not come quite so well,
don't you know, from the platform. And of course they enjoy seeing one
so much."
"Of course, it makes a great change for them," Richard echoed
dutifully.
"Exactly, and so on their account, quite putting aside the chance of
securing a stray vote here or there, I feel it a duty not to spare
myself, but to go through with it just for their sakes, don't you
know."
"My sister is nothing if not altruistic, you'll find, Calmady," Mr.
Quayle here put in in his most exquisitely amiable manner.
But now encouraged thereto by Lady Calmady, Lord Fallowfeild had
recovered his accustomed serenity and discoursed with renewed
cheerfulness.
"Great loss to this side of the county, my poor friend Denier," he
remarked. "Good fellow Denier--always liked Denier. Stood by him from
the first--so did your son.--No, no, pardon me--yes, to be
sure--excellent claret this--never tasted a better luncheon
claret.--But there was a little prejudice, little narrowness of feeling
about Denier, when he first bought Grimshott and settled down here.
Self-made man, you see, Denier. Entirely self-made. Father was a
clergyman, I believe, and I'm told his grandfather kept an umbrella
shop in the Strand. But a very able, right-minded man Denier, and
wonderfully good-natured fellow, always willing to give you an opinion
on a point of law. Great advantage to have a first-rate authority like
that to turn to in a legal difficulty. Very useful in county business
Denier, and laid hold of country life wonderfully, understood the
obligations of a land-owner. Always found a fox in that Grimshott gorse
of his, eh, Knott?"
"Fox that sometimes wasn't very certain of his country," the doctor
rejoined. "Hailed from the neighbourhood of the umbrella shop perhaps,
and wanted to get home to it."
Lord Fallowfeild chuckled.
"Capital," he said, "very good--capital. Still, it's a great relief to
know of a sure find like that. Keeps the field in a good temper. Yes,
few men whose death I've regretted more than poor Denier's. I miss
Denier. Not an old man either. Shouldn't have let him slip through your
fingers so early, Knott, eh?"
"Oh! that's a question of forestry," John Knott answered grimly. "If
one kept the old wood standing, where would the saplings' chances come
in?"
"Oh! ah! yes--never thought of that before,"--and thinking of it now
the noble lord became slightly pensive. "Wonder if it's unfair my
keeping Shotover so long out of the property?" he said to himself.
"Amusing fellow Shotover, very fond of Shotover--but extravagant
fellow, monstrously extravagant."
"Lord Denier's death gave our host here a seat on the local bench just
at the right moment," the doctor went on. "One man's loss is another
man's opportunity. Rather rough, perhaps, on the outgoing man, but then
things usually are pretty rough on the outgoing man in my experience."
"I suppose they are," Lord Fallowfeild said, rather ruefully, his face
becoming preternaturally solemn.
"Not a doubt of it. The individual may get justice. I hope he does. But
mercy is kept for special occasions--few and far between. One must take
things on the large scale. Then you find they dovetail very neatly,"
Knott continued, with a somewhat sardonic mirthfulness. The simplicity
and perplexity of this handsome, kindly gentleman, amused him hugely.
"But to return to Lord Denier--let alone my skill, that of the whole
medical faculty put together couldn't have saved him."
"Couldn't it, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild.
"That's just the bother with your self-made man. He makes
himself--true. But he spends himself physically in the making. All his
vitality goes in climbing the ladder, and he's none left over by the
time he reaches the top. Lord Denier had worked too hard as a youngster
to make old bones. It's a long journey from the shop in the Strand to
the woolsack you see, and he took sick at two-and-thirty I believe. Oh
yes! early death, or premature decay, is the price most outsiders pay
for a great professional success. Isn't that so, Mr. Ormiston?"
But at this juncture the conversation suffered interruption by the
throwing open of the door and entrance of Madame de Vallorbes.
"Pray let no one move," she said, rather as issuing an order than
preferring a request--for her father, Lord Fallowfeild, all the
gentlemen, had risen on her appearance--save Richard.--Richard, his
blue eyes ablaze, the corners of his mouth a-tremble, his heart going
forth tumultuously to meet her, yet he alone of all present denied the
little obvious act of outward courtesy from man to woman.
"Pinned to his chair, like a specimen beetle to a collector's card,"
John Knott said grimly to himself. "Poor dear lad--and with that face
on him too. I hoped he might have been spared taking fire a little
longer. However, here's the conflagration. No question about that. Now
let's have a look at the lady."
And the lady, it must be conceded, manifested herself under a new and
somewhat agitating aspect, as she swept up the room and into the vacant
place at Richard's right hand with a rush of silken skirts. She
produced a singular effect at once of energy and self-concentration--her
lips thin and unsmiling, an ominous vertical furrow between the spring
of her arched eyebrows, her eyes narrow, unresponsive, severe with
thought under their delicate lids.
"I am sorry to be late, but it was unavoidable. I was kept by some
letters forwarded from Newlands," she said, without giving herself the
trouble of looking at Richard as she spoke.
"What does it matter? Luncheon's admittedly a movable feast, isn't it?"
Madame de Vallorbes made no response. A noticeable hush had descended
upon the whole company, while the men-servants moved to and fro serving
the newcomer. Even Lady Louisa Barking ceased to hold high discourse,
political or other, and looked disapprovingly across the table. An hour
earlier she had resented the younger woman's merry wit, now she
resented her sublime indifference. Both then and now she found her
perfect finish of appearance unpardonable. Lord Fallowfeild's disjointed
conversation also suffered check. He fidgeted, vaguely conscious that
the atmosphere had become somewhat electric.--"Monstrously pretty
woman--effective woman--very effective--rather dangerous though.
Changeable too. Made me laugh a little too much before luncheon. Louisa
didn't like it. Very correct views, my daughter Louisa. Now seems in a
very odd temper. Quite the grand air, but reminds me of somebody I've
seen on the stage somehow. Suppose all that comes of living so much in
France," he said to himself. But for the life of him he could not think
of anything to say aloud, though he felt it would be eminently tactful
to throw in a casual remark at this juncture. Little Lady Constance was
disquieted likewise. For she, girl-like, had fallen dumbly and
adoringly in love with this beautiful stranger but a few years her
senior. And now the stranger appeared as an embodiment of unknown
emotions and energies altogether beyond the scope of her small
imagination. Her innocent stare lost its ruminant quality, became
alarmed, tearful even, while she instinctively edged her chair closer
to her father's. There was a great bond of sympathy between the
simple-hearted gentleman and his youngest child. Mr. Quayle looked on
with lifted eyebrows and his air of amused forbearance. And Dr. Knott
looked on also, but that which he saw pleased him but moderately. The
grace of every movement, the distinction of face and figure, the charm
of that finely-poised, honey-coloured head showing up against the
background of gray-blue tapestried wall, were enough, he owned--having
a very pretty taste in women as well as in horses--to drive many a man
crazy.--"But if the mother's a baggage, the daughter's a vixen," he
said to himself. "And, upon my soul if I had to choose between 'em--which
God Almighty forbid--I'd take my chance with the baggage." As climax
Lady Calmady's expression was severe. She sat very upright, and made no
effort at conversation. Her nerves were a little on edge. There had
been awkward moments during this meal, and now her niece's entrance
struck her as unfortunately accentuated, while there was that in
Richard's aspect which startled the quick fears and jealousies of her
motherhood.
And to Richard himself, it must be owned, this meeting so hotly
desired, and against the dangers of which he had so wisely guarded,
came in fashion altogether different to that which he had pictured.
Helen's manner was cold to a point far from flattering to his
self-esteem. The subtle intimacies of the scene in the Long Gallery
became as though they had never been. Dickie thinking over his restless
night, his fierce efforts at self-conquest, those long hours in the
saddle designed for the reduction of a perfervid imagination, wrote
himself down an ass indeed. And yet--yet--the charm of Helen's presence
was great. And surely she wasn't quite herself just now, there was
something wrong with her? Anybody could see that. Everybody did see it
in fact, he feared, and commented upon it in no charitable spirit.
Hostility towards her declared itself on every side. He detected
that--or imagined he did so--in Lady Louisa's expression, in Ludovic
Quayle's extra-superfine smile, in the doctor's close and rather
cynical attitude of observation, and, last but not least, in the
reserve of his mother's bearing and manner. And this hostility, real or
imagined, begot in Richard a new sensation--one of tenderness, wholly
unselfish and protective, while the fighting blood stirred in him. He
grew slightly reckless.
"What has happened? We appear to have fallen most unaccountably
silent," he said, looking round the table, with an air of gallant
challenge pretty to see.
"So we have, though," exclaimed Lord Fallowfeild, half in relief, half
in apology. "Very true--was just thinking the same thing myself."
While Mr. Ouayle, leaning forward, inquired with much sweetness:--"To
whom shall I talk? Madame de Vallorbes is far more profitably engaged
in discussing her luncheon, than she could be in discussing any
conceivable topic of conversation with such as I. And Dr. Knott is so
evidently diagnosing an interesting case that I have not the effrontery
to interrupt him."
Disregarding these comments Richard turned to his neighbour on the
left.
"I beg your pardon, Lady Louisa," he said, "but before this singular
dumbness overtook us all, you were saying?"--
The lady addressed, electing to accept this as a tribute to the
knowledge, and the weight, and distinction, of her discourse, thawed,
became condescending and gracious again.
"I believe we were discussing the prospects of the party," she replied.
"I was saying that, you know, of course there must be a large Liberal
majority."
"Yes, of course."
"You consider that assured?" Julius put in civilly.
"It is not a matter of personal opinion, I am thankful to say--because
of course every one must feel it is just everything for the country.
There is no doubt at all about the majority among those who really
know--Mr. Barking, for instance. Nobody can be in a better position to
judge than he is. And then I was speaking the other night to Augustus
Tremiloe at Lord Combmartin's--not William, you know, but Augustus
Tremiloe, the man in the Treasury, and he----"
"Uncommonly fine chrysanthemums those," Lord Fallowfeild had broken
forth cheerfully, finding sufficient, if tardy, inspiration in the
table decorations. "Remarkably perfect blossoms and charming colour.
Nothing nearly so good at Whitney this autumn. Excellent fellow my head
gardener, but rather past his work--no enterprise, can't make him go in
for new ideas."
Mr. Ormiston, leaning across Dr. Knott, addressed himself to Ludovic,
while casting occasional and rather anxious glances upon his daughter.
Thus did voices rise, mingle, and the talk get fairly upon its legs
again. Then Richard permitted himself to say quietly--
"You had no bad news, I hope, in those letters, Helen?"
"Why should you suppose I have had bad news?" she demanded, her teeth
meeting viciously in the morsel of kissing-crust she held in her
rosy-tipped fingers.
It was as pretty as a game to see her eat. Dickie laughed a little,
charmed even with her naughtiness, embarrassed too, by the directness
of her question.
"Oh! I don't exactly know why--I thought perhaps you seemed----"
"You do know quite exactly why," the young lady asserted, looking full
at him. "You saw that I was in a detestable, a diabolic temper."
"Well, perhaps I did think I saw something of the sort," Richard
answered audaciously, yet very gently.
Helen continued to look at him, and as she did so her cheek rounded,
her mouth grew soft, the vertical line faded out from her
forehead.--"You are very assuaging, Cousin Richard," she said, and she
too laughed softly.
"Understands the vineries very well though," Lord Fallowfeild was
saying; "and doesn't grow bad peaches, not at all bad peaches, but is
stupid about flowers. He ought to retire. Never shall have really
satisfactory gardens till he does retire. And yet I haven't the heart
to tell him to go. Good fellow, you know, good, honest, hard-working
fellow, and had a lot of trouble. Wife ailing for years, always ailing,
and youngest child got hip disease--nasty thing hip disease, very
nasty--quite a cripple, poor little creature, I am afraid a hopeless
cripple. Terrible anxiety and burden for parents in that rank of life,
you know."
"It can hardly be otherwise in any rank of life," Lady Calmady said
slowly, bitterly. An immense weariness was upon her--weariness of the
actual and present, weariness of the possible and the future. Her
courage ebbed. She longed to go away, to be alone for a while, to shut
eyes and ears, to deaden alike perception and memory, to have it all
cease. Then it was as though those two beautiful, and now laughing,
faces of man and woman in the glory of their youth, seen over the
perspective of fair, white damask, glittering glass and silver, rich
dishes, graceful profusion of flowers and fruit, at the far end of the
avenue of guests, mocked at her. Did they not mock at the essential
conditions of their own lives too? Katherine feared, consciously or
unconsciously they did that. Her weariness dragged upon her with almost
despairing weight.
"Do you get your papers the same day here, Sir Richard?" Lady Louisa
asked imperatively.
"Yes, they come with the second post letters, about five o'clock,"
Julius March answered.
But Lady Louisa Barking intended to be attended to by her host.
"Sir Richard," she paused, "I am asking whether your papers reach you
the same day?"
And Dickie replied he knew not what, for he had just registered the
discovery that barriers are quite useless against a certain sort of
intimacy. Be the crowd never so thick about you, in a sense at least,
you are always alone, exquisitely, delicately, alone with the person
you love.
CHAPTER VIII
RICHARD PUTS HIS HAND TO A PLOUGH FROM WHICH THERE IS NO TURNING BACK
"Dearest mother, you look most deplorably tired."
Richard sat before the large study table, piled up with letters,
papers, county histories, racing calendars, in the Gun-Room, amid a
haze of cigar smoke. "I don't wonder," he went on, "we've had a regular
field-day, haven't we? And I'm afraid Lord Fallowfeild bored you
atrociously at luncheon. He does talk most admired foolishness half his
time, poor old boy. All the same Ludovic shouldn't show him up as he
does. It's not good form. I'm afraid Ludovic's getting rather spoilt by
London. He's growing altogether too finicking and elaborate. It's a
pity. Lady Louisa Barking is a rather exterminating person. Her
conversation is magnificently deficient in humour. It is to be hoped
Barking is not troubled by lively perceptions or he must suffer at
times. Lady Constance is a pretty little girl, don't you think so? Not
oppressed with brains, I dare say, but a good little sort."
"You liked her?" Katherine said. She stood beside him, that mortal
weariness upon her yet.
"Oh yes!--well enough--liked her in passing, as one likes the wild
roses in the hedge. But you look regularly played out, mother, and I
don't like that in the least."
Richard twisted the revolving-chair half round, and held out his arms
in invitation. As his mother leaned over him, he stretched upward and
clasped his hands lightly about her neck.--"Poor dear," he said
coaxingly, "worn to fiddle-strings with all this wild dissipation! I
declare it's quite pathetic."--He let her go, shrugging his shoulders
with a sigh and a half laugh. "Well, the dissipation will soon enough
be over now, and we shall resume the even tenor of our way, I suppose.
You'll be glad of that, mother?"
The caress had been grateful to Katherine, the cool cheek dear to her
lips, the clasp of the strong arms reassuring. Yet, in her present
state of depression, she was inclined to distrust even that which
consoled, and there seemed a lack in the fervour of this embrace. Was
it not just a trifle perfunctory, as of one who pays toll, rather than
of one who claims a privilege?
"You'll be glad too, my dearest, I trust?" she said, craving further
encouragement.
Richard twisted the chair back into place again, leaned forward to note
the hour of the clock set in the centre of the gold and enamel
inkstand.
"Oh! I'm not prophetic. I don't pretend to go before the event and
register my sensations until both they and I have fairly arrived. It's
awfully bad economy to get ahead of yourself and live in the day after
to-morrow. To-day's enough--more than enough for you, I'm afraid, when
you've had a large contingent of the Whitney people to luncheon. Do go
and rest, mother. Uncle William is disposed of. I've started him out
for a tramp with Julius, so you need not have him on your mind."
But neither in Richard's words nor in his manner did Lady Calmady find
the fulness of assurance she craved.
"Thanks dearest," she said. "That is very thoughtful of you. I will see
Helen and find out----"
"Oh! don't trouble about her either," Richard put in. Again he studied
the jewel-rimmed dial of the little clock. "I found she wanted to go to
Newlands to bid Mrs. Cathcart good-bye. It seems Miss St. Quentin is
back there for a day or two. So I promised to drive her over as soon as
we were quit of the Fallowfeild party."
"It is late for so long a drive."
Richard looked up quickly and his face wore that expression of
challenge once again.
"I know it is--and so I am afraid we ought to start at once. I expect
the carriage round immediately." Then repenting:--"You'll take care of
yourself won't you, mother, and rest?"
"Oh yes! I will take care of myself," Katherine said. "Indeed, I appear
to be the only person I have left to take care of, thanks to your
forethought. All good go with you, Dick."
It followed--perhaps unreasonably enough--that Richard, some five
minutes later, drove round the angle of the house and drew the
mail-phaeton up at the foot of the gray, griffin-guarded flight of
steps--whereon Madame de Vallorbes, wrapped in furs, the cavalier hat
and its trailing plumes shadowing the upper part of her face and her
bright hair, awaited his coming--in a rather defiant humour. His cousin
was troubled, worried, and she met with scant sympathy. This aroused
all his chivalry. Whatever she wished for, that he could give her, she
should very certainly have. Of after consequences to himself he was
contemptuous. The course of action which had shown as wisdom a couple
of hours ago, showed now as selfishness and pusillanimity. If she
wanted him, he was there joyfully to do her bidding, at whatever cost
to himself in subsequent unrest of mind seemed but a small thing. If
heartache and insidious provocations of the flesh came later, let them
come. He was strong enough to bear the one and crush out the other, he
hoped. It would give him something to do--he told himself, a little
bitterly--and he had been idle of late!
And so it came about that Richard Calmady held out his hand, to help
his cousin into her place at his side, with more of meaning and welcome
in the gesture than he was quite aware. He forgot the humiliation of
the broad strap about his waist, of the high, ingeniously contrived
driving-iron against which his feet rested, steadying him upon the
sharply sloping seat. These were details, objectionable ones it was
true, but, to-day, of very secondary importance. In the main he was
master of the situation. For once it was his to render, rather than
receive, assistance. Helen was under his care, in a measure dependent
on him, and this gratified his young, masculine pride, doomed too often
to suffer sharp mortification. A fierce pleasure possessed him. It was
fine to bear her thus away, behind the fast trotting horses, through
the pensive, autumn brightness. Boyish self-consciousness and
self-distrust died down in Richard, and the man's self-reliance,
instinct of possession and of authority, grew in him. His tone was that
of command, for all its solicitude, as he said:--
"Look here, are you sure you've got enough on? Don't go and catch cold,
under the impression that there's any meaning in this sunshine. It is
sure to be chilly driving home, and it's easy to take more wraps."
Helen shook her head, unsmiling, serious.
"I could face polar snows."
Richard let the horses spring forward, while little pebbles rattled
against the body of the phaeton, and the groom, running a few steps,
swung himself up on to the back seat, immediately becoming immovable as
a wooden image, with rigidly folded arms.
"Oh! the cold won't quite amount to that," Richard said. "But I observe
women rarely reckon with the probabilities of the return journey."
"The return journey is invariably too hot, or too cold, too soon, or
too late--for a woman. So it is better not to remember its existence
until you are compelled to do so. For myself, I confess to the
strongest prejudice against the return journey."
Madame de Vallorbes' speech was calm and measured, yet there was a
conviction in it suggestive of considerable emotion. She sat well back
in the carriage, her head turned slightly to the left, so that Richard,
looking down at her, saw little but the pure firm line of her jaw, the
contour of her cheek, and her ear--small, lovely, the soft hair curling
away from above and behind it in the most enticing fashion. Physical
perfection, of necessity, provoked in him a peculiar envy and delight.
And nature appeared to have taken ingenious pleasure, not only in
conferring an unusual degree of beauty upon his companion, but in
finishing each detail of her person with unstinted grace. For a while
the young man lost himself in contemplation of that charming ear and
partially averted face. Then resolutely he bestowed his attention upon
the horses again, finding such contemplation slightly enervating to his
moral sense.
"Yes, return journeys are generally rather a nuisance, I suppose," he
said, "though my experience of that particular form of nuisance is
limited. I have not been outward-bound often enough to know much of the
regret of being homeward-bound. And yet, I own, I should not much mind
driving on and on everlastingly on a dreamy afternoon like this,
and--and as I find myself just now--driving on and seeking some El
Dorado--of the spirit, I mean, not of the pocket--seeking the Fortunate
Isles that lie beyond the sunset. For it would be not a little
fascinating to give one's accustomed self, and all that goes to make up
one's accepted identity, the slip--to drive clean out of one's old
circumstances and find new heavens, a new earth, and a new personality
elsewhere. What do you say, Helen, shall we try it?"
But Helen sat immobile, her face averted, listening intently, revolving
many things in her mind, meditating how and when most advantageously to
speak.
"It would be such an amiable and graceful experiment to try on my own
people, too, wouldn't it?" the young man continued, with a sudden
change of tone. "And I am so eminently fitted to lose myself in a crowd
without fear of recognition, just the person for a case of mistaken
identity!"
"Do not say such things, Richard, please. They distress me," Madame de
Vallorbes put in quickly. "And, believe me, I have no quarrel with the
return journey in this case. At Brockhurst I could fancy myself to have
found the Fortunate Isles of which you spoke just now. I have been very
happy there--too happy, perhaps, and therefore, to-day, the whip has
come down across my back, just to remind me."
"Ah! now you say the painful things," Dick interrupted. "Pray
don't--I--I don't like them."
Madame de Vallorbes turned her head and looked at him with the
strangest expression.
"My metaphor was not out of place. Do you imagine horses are the only
animals a man drives, _mon beau cousin_? Some men drive the woman who
belongs to them, and that not with the lightest bit, I promise you. Nor
do they forget to tie blood-knots in the whip-lash when it suits them
to do so."
"What do you mean?" he asked abruptly.
"Merely that the letters, which so stupidly endangered my self-control
at luncheon, contained examples of that kind of driving."
"How--how damnable," the young man said between his teeth.
The red and purple trunks of the great fir trees reeled away to right
and left as the carriage swept forward down the long avenue. To
Richard's seeing they reeled away in disgust, even as did his thought
from the images which his companion's words suggested. While, to her
seeing, they reeled, smitten by the eternal laughter, the echoes of
which it stimulated her to hear.--"The drama develops," she said to
herself, half triumphant, half abashed. "And yet I am telling the
truth, it is all so--I hardly even doctor it."--For she had been
angered, genuinely and miserably angered, and had found that odious to
the point of letting feeling override diplomacy. There was subtle
pleasure in now turning her very lapse of self-control to her own
advantage. And then, this young man's heart was the finest,
purest-toned instrument upon which she had ever had the chance to play
as yet. She was ravished by the quality and range of the music it gave
forth. Madame de Vallorbes pressed her hands together within the warm
comfort of her sable muff, averted her face again, lest it should
betray the eager excitement that gained on her, and continued:--
"Yes, whip and rein and bit are hardly pretty in that connection, are
they? If you would willingly give your identity the slip at times, dear
cousin, I have considerably deeper cause to wish to part company with
mine! You, in any case, are morally and materially free. A whole class
of particularly irritating and base cares can never approach you. And
it was in connection with just such cares that I spoke of the
hatefulness of return journeys."
Helen paused, as one making an effort to maintain her equanimity.
"My letters recall me to Paris," she said, "where detestable scenes and
most ignoble anxieties await me."
"How soon must you go?"
"That is what I asked myself," she said, in the same quiet, even voice.
"I have not yet arrived at a decision, and so I asked you to bring me
out Dickie, this afternoon."--She looked up at him, smiling, lovely and
with a certain wistful dignity, wholly coercive. "Can you understand
that the orderly serenity of your splendid house became a little
oppressive? It offered too glaring a contrast to my own state of mind
and outlook. I fancied my brain would be clearer, my conclusions more
just, here out of doors, face to face with this half-savage nature."
"Ah, I know all that," Richard said. Had not the blankness of the fog
brought him help this very morning?--"I know it, but I wish you did not
know it too."
"I know many things better not known," Helen replied. Her conscience
pricked her. She thanked her stars confession had ceased with
enlargement from the convent-school, and was a thing of the past. "You
see, I want to decide just how long I dare stay--if you will keep me?"
"We will keep you," Richard said.
"You are very charming to me, Dick," she exclaimed impulsively,
sincerely, again slightly abashed. "How long can I stay, I wonder,
without making matters worse in the end, both for my father and for
myself? I am young, after all, and I suppose I am tough. The cuticle of
the soul--if souls can have a cuticle--like that of the body, thickens
under repeated blows. But my father is no longer young. He is terribly
sensitive where I am concerned. And he is inevitably drawn into the
whirlpool of my wretched affair sooner or later. On his account I
should be glad to defer the return journey as long----"
"But--but--I don't understand," Richard broke out, pity and deep
concern for her, a blind fury against a person, or persons, unknown,
getting the better of him. "Who on earth has the power to plague you
and make you miserable, or your father either?"
The young man's face was white, his eyes full of pain, full of a great
love, burning down on her. As once, long ago, Helen de Vallorbes could
have danced and clapped her hands in naughty glee. For her hunting had
prospered above her fondest hopes. She had much ado to stifle the
laughter which bubbled up in her pretty throat. She was in the humour
to pelt peacocks royally, had such pastime been possible. As it was,
she closed her eyes for a little minute and waited, biting the inside
of her lip. At last, she said slowly, almost solemnly:--
"Don't you know that for certain mistakes, and those usually the most
generous, there is no redress?"
"What do you mean?" he demanded.
"Mean?--the veriest commonplace in my own case," she answered. "Merely
an unhappy marriage. There are thousands such."
They had left the shadow of the fir woods now. The carriage crossed the
white-railed culvert--bridging the little stream that takes its rise
amid the pink and emerald mosses of the peat-bog, and meanders down the
valley--and entered the oak plantation just inside the park gate.
Russet leaves in rustling, hurrying companies, fled up and away from
the rapidly turning wheels and quick horse hoofs. The sunshine was wan
and chill as the smile on a dead face. Lines of pale, lilac
cloud--shaped like those flights of cranes which decorate the oriental
cabinets of the Long Gallery--crossed the western sky above the bare
balsam poplars, the cluster of ancient half-timbered cottages at the
entrance to Sandyfield church lane, and the rise of the gray-brown
fallow beyond, where sheep moved, bleating plaintively, within a
wattled fold.
The scene, altogether familiar though it was, impressed itself on
Richard's mind just now, as one of paralysing melancholy. God help us,
what a stricken, famished world it is! Will you not always find sorrow
and misfortune seated at the root of things if, disregarding overlaying
prettiness of summer days, of green leaf and gay blossom, you dare draw
near, dig deep, look close? And can nothing, no one, escape the
blighting touch of that canker stationed at the very foundations of
being? Certainly it would seem not--Richard reasoned--listening to the
words of the radiant woman beside him, ordained, in right of her talent
and puissant grace, to be a queen and idol of men. For sadder than the
thin sunshine, bare trees and complaint of the hungry flock, was that
assured declaration that loveless and unlovely marriages--of which her
own was one--exist by the thousand, are, indeed, the veriest
commonplace!
These reflections held Richard, since he had been thinker and poet--in
his degree--since childhood; lover only during the brief space of these
last ten surprising days. Thus the general application claimed his
attention first. But hard on the heels of this followed the personal
application. For, as is the way of all true lovers, the universality of
the law under which it takes its rise mitigates, by most uncommonly
little, either the joy or sorrow of the particular case. Poignant
regret that she suffered, strong admiration that she bore suffering so
adherent with such lightness of demeanour--then, more dangerous than
these, a sense of added unlooked-for nearness to her, and a resultant
calling not merely of the spirit of youth in him to that same spirit
resident in her, but the deeper, more compelling, more sonorous call
from the knowledge of tragedy in him to that same terrible knowledge
now first made evident in her.--And here Richard's heart--in spite of
pity, in spite of tenderness which would have borne a hundred miseries
to save her five minutes' discomfort--sang _Te Deum_, and that lustily
enough! For by this revelation of the infelicity of her state, his
whole relation to, and duty towards her changed and took on a greater
freedom. To pour forth worship and offers of service at the feet of a
happy woman is at once an impertinence to her and a shame to yourself.
But to pour forth such worship, such offers of service, at the feet of
an unhappy woman--age-old sophistry, so often ruling the speech and
actions of men to their fatal undoing!--this is praiseworthy and
legitimate, a matter not of privilege merely, but of obligation to
whoso would claim to be truly chivalrous.
The perception of his larger liberty, and the consequences following
thereon, kept Richard silent till Sandyfield rectory, the
squat-towered, Georgian church and the black-headed, yew trees in the
close-packed churchyard adjoining, the neighbouring farm and its goodly
show of golden-gray wheat-ricks were left behind, and the carriage
entered on the flat, furze-dotted expanse of Sandyfield common. Flocks
of geese, arising from damp repose upon the ragged autumn turf, hissed
forth futile declarations of war. A gipsy caravan painted in staring
colours, and hung all over with heath-brooms and basket-chairs, caused
the horses to swerve. Parties of home-going school-children backed on
to the loose gravel at the roadside, bobbing curtsies or pulling
forelocks, staring at the young man and his companion, curious and half
afraid. For in the youthful, bucolic mind a mystery surrounded Richard
Calmady and his goings and comings, causing him to rank with crowned
heads, ghosts, the Book of Daniel, funerals, the Northern Lights, and
kindred matters of dread fascination. So wondering eyes pursued him
down the road.
And wondering eyes, as the minutes passed, glanced up at him from
beneath the sweeping plumes and becoming shadow of the cavalier's hat.
For his prolonged silence rendered Madame de Vallorbes anxious. Had she
spoken unadvisedly with her tongue? Had her words sounded crude and of
questionable delicacy? Given his antecedents and upbringing, Richard
was bound to hold the marriage tie in rather superstitious reverence,
and was likely to entertain slightly superannuated views regarding the
obligation of reticence in the discussion of family matters. She feared
she had reckoned insufficiently with all this in her eagerness,
forgetting subtle diplomacies. Her approach had lacked tact and
_finesse_. In dealing with an adversary of coarser fibre her attack
would have succeeded to admiration. But this man was refined and
sensitive to a fault, easily disgusted, narrowly critical in questions
of taste.
Therefore she glanced up at him again, trying to divine his thought,
her own mind in a tumult of opposing purposes and desires. And just as
the contemplation of her beauty had so deeply stirred him earlier this
same afternoon, so did the contemplation of his beauty now stir her. It
satisfied her artistic sense. Save that the nose was straighter and
shorter, the young man reminded her notably of a certain antique,
terracotta head of the young Alexander which she had once seen in a
museum at Munich, and which had left an ineffaceable impression upon
her memory. But, the face of the young Alexander beside her was of
nobler moral quality than that other--undebauched by feasts and
licentious pleasures as yet, masculine yet temperate, the sanctuary of
generous ambitions--merciless it might be, she fancied, but never base,
never weak. Thus was her artistic sense satisfied, morally as well as
physically. Her social sense was satisfied also. For the young man's
high-breeding could not be called in question. He held himself
remarkably well. She approved the cut of his clothes moreover, his sure
and easy handling of the spirited horses.
And then her eyes, following down the lines of the fur rug, received
renewed assurance of the fact of his deformity--hidden as far as might
be, with decent pride, yet there, permanent and unalterable. This
worked upon her strongly. For, to her peculiar temperament, the
indissoluble union in one body of elements so noble and so monstrous,
of youthful vigour and abject helplessness, the grotesque in short,
supplied the last word of sensuous and dramatic attraction. As last
evening, in the Long Gallery, so now, she hugged herself, at once
frightened and fascinated, wrought upon by excitement as in the
presence of something akin to the supernatural, and altogether beyond
the confines of ordinary experience.
And to think that she had come so near holding this inimitable creature
in her hand, and by overhaste, or clumsiness of statement should lose
it! Madame de Vallorbes was wild with irritation, racked her brain for
means to recover her--as she feared--forfeited position. It would be
maddening did her mighty hunting prove but a barren pastime in the end.
And thereupon the little scar on her temple, deftly concealed under the
soft, bright hair, began to smart and throb. Ah! well, the hunting
should not prove quite barren anyhow, of that she was determined, for,
failing her late gay purpose, that small matter of long-deferred
revenge still remained in reserve. If she could not gratify one
passion, she would gratify quite another. For in this fair lady's mind
it was--perhaps unfortunately--but one step from the Eden bowers of
love to the waste places of vindictive hate.--"Yet I would rather be
good to him, far rather," she said to herself, with a movement of quite
pathetic sincerity.
But here, just at the entrance to the village street, an altogether
unconscious _deus ex machina_--destined at once to relieve Helen of
further anxiety, and commit poor Dickie to a course of action affecting
the whole of his subsequent career--presented itself in the shape of a
white-tented miller's waggon, which, with somnolent jingle of harness
bells and most admired deliberation, moved down the centre of the road.
A yellow-washed garden-wall on one side, the brook on the other, there
was not room for the phaeton to pass.
"Whistle," Richard commanded over his shoulder. And the wooden image
thereby galvanised into immediate activity whistled shrilly, but
without result as far as the waggon was concerned.
"The fellow's asleep. Go and tell him to pull out of the way."
Then, while the groom ran neatly forward in twinkling, white breeches
and flesh-coloured tops, Richard, bending towards her, as far as that
controling strap about his waist permitted, shifted the reins into his
right hand and laid his left upon Madame de Vallorbes' sable muff.
"Look here, Helen," he said, rather hoarsely, "I am indescribably
shocked at what you have just told me. I supposed it was all so
different with you. I'd no suspicion of this. And--and--if I may say
so, you've taught me a lesson which has gone home--steady
there--steady, good lass"--for the horses danced and snorted--"I don't
think I shall ever grumble much in future about troubles of my own,
having seen how splendidly you bear yours. Only I can't agree with you
no remedy is possible for generous mistakes. The world isn't quite so
badly made as all that. There is a remedy for every mistake except--a
few physical ones, which we euphuistically describe as visitations of
God.--Steady, steady there--wait a bit.--And I--I tell you I can't sit
down under this unhappiness of yours and just put up with it. Don't
think me a meddling fool, please. Something's got to be done. I know I
probably appear to you the last person in the world to be of use. And
yet I'm not sure about that. I have time--too much of it--and I'm not
quite an ass. And you--you must know, I think, there's nothing in
heaven or earth I would not do for you that I could----"
The miller hauled his slow-moving team aside, with beery-thick
objurgations and apologies. The groom swung himself up at the back of
the carriage again. The impatient horses, getting their heads, swung
away down Sandyfield Street--scattering a litter of merry, little,
black pigs and remonstrant fowls to right and left--past modest village
shop, and yellow-washed tavern, and red, lichen-stained cottage,
beneath the row of tall Lombardy poplars that raised their brown-gray
spires to the blue-gray of the autumn sky. Richard's left hand held the
reins again.
"Half confidences are no good," he said. "So, as you've trusted me thus
far, Helen, don't you think you will trust somewhat further? Be
explicit. Tell me the rest?"
And hearing him, seeing him just then, Madame de Vallorbes' heart
melted within her, and, to her own prodigious surprise, she had much
ado not to weep.
CHAPTER IX
WHICH TOUCHES INCIDENTALLY ON MATTERS OF FINANCE
As Richard had predicted the fog reappeared towards sun sunset. At
first, as a frail mist, through which the landscape looked colourless
and blurred. Later it rose, growing in density, until all objects
beyond a radius of some twenty paces were engulfed in its nothingness
and lost. Later still--while Helen de Vallorbes paid her visit at
Newlands--it grew denser yet, heavy, torpid, close yet cold, penetrated
by earthy odours as the atmosphere of a vault, oppressive to the
senses, baffling to sight and hearing alike. From out it, half-leafless
branches, like gaunt arms in tattered draperies, seemed to claw and
beckon at the passing carriage and its occupants. The silver mountings
of the harness showed in points and splashes of hard, shining white as
against the shifting, universal dead-whiteness of it, while the breath
from the horses' nostrils rose into it as defiant jets of steam, that
struggled momentarily with the opaque, all-enveloping vapour, only to
be absorbed and obliterated as light by darkness, or life by death.
The aspect presented by nature was sinister, had Richard Calmady been
sufficiently at leisure to observe it in detail. But, as he slowly
walked the horses up and down the quarter of a mile of woodland drive,
leading from the thatched lodge on the right of the Westchurch road to
the house, he was not at leisure. He had received enlightenment on many
subjects. He had acquired startling impressions, and he needed to place
these, to bring them into line with the general habit of his thought.
The majority of educated persons--so-called--think in words, words
often arbitrary and inaccurate enough, prolific mothers of mental
confusion. The minority, and those of by no means contemptible
intellectual calibre,--since the symbol must count for more than the
mere label,--think in images and pictures. Dickie belonged to the
minority. And it must be conceded that his mind now projected against
that shifting, impalpable background of fog, a series of pictures which
in their cynical pathos, their suggestions at once voluptuous and
degraded, were hardly unworthy of the great master, William Hogarth,
himself.
For Helen, in the reaction and relief caused by finding her relation to
Richard unimpaired, caused too by that joyous devilry resident in her
and constantly demanding an object on which to wreak its derision, had
by no means spared her lord and master, Angelo Luigi Francesco, Vicomte
de Vallorbes. And this only son of a thrifty, hard-bitten, Savoyard
banker-noble and a Neopolitan princess of easy morals and ancient
lineage, this Parisian _viveur_, his intrigues, his jealousies, his
practical ungodliness and underlying superstition, his outbursts of
temper, his shrewd economy in respect of others, and extensive personal
extravagance, offered fit theme, with aid of little romancing, for such
a discourse as it just now suited his very brilliant, young wife to
pronounce.
The said discourse opened in a low key, broken by pauses, by tactful
self-accusations, by questionings as to whether it were not more
merciful, more loyal, to leave this or that untold. But as she
proceeded, not only did Helen suffer the seductions of the fine art of
lying, but she really began to have some ado to keep her exuberant
sense of fun within due limits. For it proved so excessively
exhilarating to deal thus with Angelo Luigi Francesco! She had old
scores to settle. And had she not this very day received an odiously
disquieting letter from him, in which he not only made renewed
complaint of her poor, little miseries of debts and flirtations, but
once more threatened retaliation by a cutting-off of supplies? In
common justice did he not deserve villification? Therefore, partly out
of revenge, partly in self-justification, she proceeded with increasing
enthusiasm to show that to know M. de Vallorbes was a lamentably
liberal education in all civilised iniquities. With a hand, sure as it
was light, she dissected out the unhappy gentleman, and offered up his
mangled and bleeding reputation as tribute to her own so-perpetually
outraged moral sense and feminine delicacy, not to mention her
so-repeatedly and vilely wounded heart. And there really was truth--as
at each fresh flight of her imagination she did not fail to remind
herself--in all that which she said. Truth?--yes, just that misleading
sufficiency of it in which a lie thrives. For, as every artist "in this
kind" is aware, precisely as you would have the overgrowth of your
improvisation richly phenomenal and preposterous, must you be careful
to set the root of it in the honest soil of fact. To omit this
precaution is to court eventual detection and consequent confusion of
face.
As it was, Helen entered the house at Newlands, a house singularly
unused to psychological aberrations, in buoyant spirits, mischief
sitting in her discreetly downcast eyes, laughter perplexing her lips.
She had placed her cargo of provocation, of resentment, to such
excellent advantage! She was, moreover, slightly intoxicated by her own
eloquence. She was at peace with herself and all mankind, with de
Vallorbes even since his sins had afforded her so rare an opportunity.
And this occasioned her to congratulate herself on her own conspicuous
magnanimity. It is so exceedingly pleasing not only to know yourself
clever, but to believe yourself good! She would be charming to these
dear kind, rather dull people. Not that Honoria was dull, but she had
inconveniently austere notions of honour and loyalty at moments. And
then the solitary drive home with Richard Calmady lay ahead, full of
possible drama, full of, well, heaven knew what! Oh! how entrancing a
pastime is life!
But to Richard, walking the snorting and impatient horses slowly up and
down the woodland drive in the blear and sightless fog, life appeared
quite other than an entrancing pastime. The pictures projected by his
thought, and forming the medium of it, caused him black indignation and
revolt, desolated him, too, with a paralysing disgust of his own
disabilities. For poor Dick had declined somewhat in the last few
hours, it must be owned, from the celestial altitudes he had reached
before luncheon. Some part of his cousin's discourse had been
dangerously intimate in character, suggesting situations quite other
than platonic. To him there appeared a noble innocence in her treatment
of matters not usually spoken of. He had listened with a certain
reverent amazement. Only out of purity of mind could such speech come.
And yet an undeniable effect remained, and it was not altogether
elevating. Richard was no longer the young Sir Galahad of the noontide
of this eventful day. He was just simply a man--in a sensible degree
the animal man--loving a woman, hating that other man to whom she was
legally bound. Hating that other man, not only because he was unworthy
and failed to make her happy, but because he stood in his--Richard's--way.
Hating the man all the more fiercely because, whatever the uncomeliness
of his moral constitution, he was physically very far from uncomely.
And so, along with nobler incitements to hatred, went the fiend envy,
which just now plucked at poor Dickie's vitals as the vulture at those
of the chained Titan of old. Whereupon he fell into a meditation
somewhat morbid. For, contemplating in pictured thought that other
man's bodily perfection, contemplating his property and victim,--the
fair modern Helen, who by her courage and her trials exercised so
potent a spell over his imagination,--Richard loathed his own maimed
body, maimed chances and opportunities, as he had never loathed them
before. How often since his childhood had some casual circumstance or
trivial accident brought the fact of his misfortune home to him,
causing him--as he at the moment supposed--to reckon, once and for all,
with the sum total of it! But as years passed and experience widened,
below each depth of this adhering misery another deep disclosed itself.
Would he never reach bottom? Would this inalienable disgrace continue
to show itself more restricting and impeding to his action, more
repulsive and contemptible to his fellow-men, through all the
succeeding stages and vicissitudes of his career, right to the very
close?
To her hosts Madame de Vallorbes appeared in her gayest and most
engaging humour. It was only a flying visit, she mustn't stay, Richard
was waiting for her. Only she felt she must just have two words with
Honoria. And say good-bye? Yes, ten thousand sorrows, it was good-bye.
She was recalled to Paris, home, and duty. She made an expressive
little grimace at Miss St. Quentin.
"Your husband will be"--began Mrs. Cathcart, in her large, gently
authoritative manner.
"Enchanted to see me, of course, dear Cousin Selina, or he would not
have required my return thus urgently. We may take that for said.
Meanwhile what strange sprigs of nobility flourish in the local soil
here."
And she proceeded to give an account of the Fallowfeild party at
luncheon more witty, perhaps, than veracious. Helen could be extremely
entertaining on occasion. She gave reins to her tongue, and it galloped
away with her in most surprising fashion.
"My dear, my dear," interrupted her hostess, "you are a little unkind
surely! My dear, you are a little flippant!"
But Madame de Vallorbes enveloped her in the most assuaging embrace.
"Let me laugh while I can, dearest Cousin Selina," she pleaded. "I have
had a delightful little holiday. Every one has been charming to me.
You, of course--but then you always are that. Your presence breathes
consolation. But Aunt Katherine has been charming too, and that, quite
between ourselves, was a little more than I anticipated. Now the
holiday draws to a close and pay-day looms large ahead. You know
nothing about such pay-days, thank heaven, dear Cousin Selina. They are
far from joyous inventions; and so"--the young lady spread abroad her
hands, palms upward, and shrugged her shoulders under their weight of
costly furs--"and so I laugh, don't you understand, I laugh!"
Miss St. Quentin's delicate, square-cut face wore an air of solicitude
as she followed her friend out of the room. There was a trace of
indolence in her slow, reflective speech, as in her long, swinging
stride--the indolence bred of unconscious strength rather than of
weakness, the leisureliness which goes with staying power both in the
moral and the physical domain.
"See here, Nellie," she said, "forgive brutal frankness, but which is
the real thing to-day--they're each delightful in their own way--the
tears or the laughter?"
"Both! oh, well-beloved seeker after truth," Madame de Vallorbes
answered. "There lies the value of the situation."
"Fresh worries?"
"No, no, the old, the accustomed, the well-accredited, the normal, the
stock ones--a husband and a financial crisis."
As she spoke Madame de Vallorbes fastened the buttons of her long
driving-coat. Miss St. Quentin knelt down and busied herself with the
lowest of these. Her tall, slender figure was doubled together. She
kept her head bent.
"I happen to have a pretty tidy balance just now," she remarked
parenthetically, and as though with a certain diffidence. "So you know,
if you are a bit hard up--why--it's all perfectly simple, Nellie, don't
you know."
For a perceptible space of time Madame de Vallorbes did not answer. A
grating of wheels on the gravel arrested her attention. She looked down
the long vista of ruddily lighted hall, with its glowing fire and
cheerful lamps to the open door, where, against the blear whiteness of
the fog, the mail-phaeton and its occupant showed vague, in outline and
in proportions almost gigantic against the thick, shifting atmosphere.
Miss St. Quentin raised her head, surprised at her companion's silence.
Helen de Vallorbes bent down, took the upturned face in both hands and
kissed the soft cheeks with effusion.
"You are adorable," she said. "But you are too generous. You shall lend
me nothing more. I believe I see my way. I can scrape through this
crisis."
Miss St. Quentin rose to her feet.
"All right," she said, smiling upon her friend from her superior height
with a delightful air of affection and apology. "I only wanted you just
to know, in case--don't you see. And--and--for the rest, how goes it
Helen? Are you turning all their poor heads at Brockhurst? You're
rather an upsetting being to let loose in an ordinary, respectable,
English country-house. A sort of _Mousquetaire au couvent_ the other
way about, don't you know. Are you making things fly generally?"
"I am making nothing fly," the other lady rejoined gaily. "I am as
inoffensive as a stained-glass saint in a chapel window. I am
absolutely angelic."
"That's worst of all," Honoria exclaimed, still smiling. "When you're
angelic you are most particularly deadly. For the preservation of local
innocents, somebody ought to go and hoist danger signals."
Miss St. Quentin, after just a moment's hesitation, followed her friend
through the warm, bright hall to the door. Then Helen de Vallorbes
turned to her.
"_Au revoir_, dearest Honoria," she said, "and the sooner the better.
Leave your shopgirls and distressed needlewomen, and all your other
good works for a still better one--namely for me. Come and reclaim, and
comfort, and support me for a while in Paris."
Again she kissed the soft cheek.
"I am as good as gold. I am just now actually mawkish with virtue," she
murmured, between the kisses.
Richard witnessed this exceedingly pretty leave-taking not without a
movement of impatience. The fog was thickening once more. It grew late.
He wished his cousin would get through with these amenities. Then,
moreover, he did not covet intercourse with Miss St. Quentin. He pulled
the fur rug aside with his left hand, holding reins and whip in his
right.
"I say, are you nearly ready?" he asked. "I don't want to bother you;
but really it's about time we were moving."
"I come, I come," Madame de Vallorbes cried, in answer. She put one
neatly-shod foot on the axle, and stepped up--Richard holding out his
hand to steady her. A sense, at once pleasurable and defiant, of
something akin to ownership, came over him as he did so. Just then his
attention was claimed by a voice addressing him from the further side
of the carriage. Honoria St. Quentin stood on the gravel close beside
him, bare-headed, in the clinging damp and chill of the fog.
"Give my love to Lady Calmady," she said. "I hope I shall see her again
some day. But, even if I never have the luck to do that, in a way it'll
make no real difference. I've written her name in my private calendar,
and shall always remember it."--She paused a moment. "We got rather
near each other somehow, I think. We didn't dawdle or beat about the
bush, but went straight along, passed the initial stages of
acquaintance in a few hours, and reached that point of friendship where
forgetting becomes impossible.
"My mother never forgets," Richard asserted, and there was, perhaps, a
slight edge to his tone. Looking down into the girl's pale,
finely-moulded face, meeting the glance of those steady, strangely
clear and observant eyes, he received an impression of something
uncompromisingly sincere and in a measure protective. This, for cause
unknown, he resented. Notwithstanding her high breeding. Miss St.
Quentin's attitude appeared to him a trifle intrusive just then.
"I am very sure of that--that your mother never forgets, I mean. One
knows, at once, one can trust her down to the ground and on to the end
of the ages."--Again she paused, as though rallying herself against a
disinclination for further speech. "All captivating women aren't made
on that pattern, unfortunately, you know, Sir Richard. A good many of
them it's wisest not to trust anything like down to the ground, or
longer than--well--the day before yesterday."
And without waiting for any reply to this cryptic utterance, she
stepped swiftly round behind the carriage again, waved her hand from
the door-step and then swung away, with lazy, long-limbed grace, past
the waiting men-servants and through to the ruddy brightness of the
hall.
Madame de Vallorbes settled herself back rather languidly in her place.
She was pricked by a sharp point of curiosity, regarding the tenor of
Miss St. Quentin's mysterious colloquy with Richard Calmady. She had
been able to catch but a word here and there, and these had been
provokingly suggestive. Had the well-beloved Honoria, in a moment of
overscrupulous conscientiousness permitted herself to hoist danger
signals? She wanted to know, for it was her business to haul such down
again with all possible despatch. She intended the barometer to
register set fair whatever the weather actually impending. Yet to
institute direct inquiries might be to invite suspicion. Helen,
therefore, declined upon diplomacy, upon the inverted sweetnesses
calculated nicely to mask an intention quite other than sweet. She
really held her friend in very warm affection. But Madame de Vallorbes
never confused secondary and primary issues. When you have a really big
deal on hand--and of the bigness of her present deal the last quarter
of an hour had brought her notably increased assurance--even the
dearest friend must stand clear and get very decidedly out of the way.
So, while the muffled thud of the horses' hoofs echoed up from the hard
gravel of the carriage drive through the thick atmosphere, and the bare
limbs of the trees clawed, as with lean arms clothed in tattered
draperies, at the passing carriage and its occupants, she contented
herself by observing:--
"I am grateful to you for driving me over, Richard. Honoria is very
perfect in her own way. It always does me good to see her. She's quite
unlike anybody else, isn't she?"
But Richard's eyes were fixed upon the blank wall of fog just ahead,
which, though always stable, always receded before the advancing
carriage. The effect of it was unpleasant somehow, holding, as it did
to his mind, suggestions of other things still more baffling and
impending, from which--though you might keep them at arm's
length--there was no permanent or actual escape. The question of Miss
St. Quentin's characteristics did not consequently greatly interest
him. He had arrived at conclusions. There was a matter of vital
importance on which he desired to speak to his cousin. But how to do
that? Richard was young and excellently modest. His whole purpose was
rather fiercely focused on speech. But he was diffident, fearing to
approach the subject which he had so much at heart clumsily and in a
tactless, tasteless manner.
"Miss St. Quentin? Oh yes!" he replied, rather absently. "I really know
next to nothing about her. And she seems merely to regard me as a
vehicle of communication between herself and my mother. She sent her
messages just now--I hope to goodness I shan't forget to deliver them!
She and my mother appear to have fallen pretty considerably in love
with one another."
"Probably," Madame de Vallorbes said softly. An agreeable glow of
relief passed over her. She looked up at Richard with a delightful
effect of pensiveness from beneath the sweeping brim of her cavalier
hat.--"I can well believe Aunt Katherine would be attracted by her,"
she continued. "Honoria is quite a woman's woman. Men do not care very
much about her as a rule. There is a good deal of latent vanity
resident in the members of your sex, you know, Richard; and men are
usually conscious that Honoria does not care so very much about them.
They are quite right, she does not. I really believe when poor,
dreadful, old Lady Tobermory left her all that money Honoria's first
thought was that now she might embrace celibacy with a good conscience.
The St. Quentins are not precisely millionaires, you know. Her wealth
left her free to espouse the cause of womanhood at large. She is a
little bit Quixotic, dear thing, and given to tilting at windmills. She
wants to secure to working women a fair business basis--that is the
technical expression, I believe. And so she starts clubs, and forms
circles. She says women must be encouraged to combine and to agitate.
Whether they are capable of combining I do not pretend to say. These
high matters transcend my small wit. But, as I have often pointed out
to her, agitation is the natural attitude of every woman. It would seem
superfluous to encourage or inculcate that, for surely wherever two or
three petticoats are gathered together, there, as far as my experience
goes, is agitation of necessity in the midst of them."
Madame de Vallorbes leaned back with a little sigh and air of exquisite
resignation.
"All the same, the majority of women are unhappy enough, heaven knows!
If Honoria, or any other sweet, feminine Quixote, can find means to
lighten the burden of our lives, she has my very sincere thanks, well
understood."
Richard drew his whip across the backs of the trotting horses, making
them plunge forward against that blank, impalpable wall of
all-encircling, ever-receding, ever-present fog. The carriage had just
crossed the long, white-railed bridge, spanning the little river and
space of marsh on either side, and now entered Sandyfield Street. The
tops of the tall Lombardy poplars were lost in gloom. Now and again the
redness of a lighted cottage window, blurred and contorted in shape,
showed through the gray pall. Slow-moving, country figures, passing
vehicles, a herd of some eight or ten cows--preceded by a diabolic
looking billy-goat, and followed by a lad astride the hind-quarters of
a bare-backed donkey--grew out of pallid nothingness as the carriage
came abreast of them, and receded with mysterious rapidity into
nothingness again. The effect was curiously fantastic and unreal. And
as the minutes passed that effect of unreality gained upon Richard's
imagination, until now--as last evening in the stately solitude of the
Long Gallery--he became increasingly aware of the personality of his
companion, increasingly penetrated by the feeling of being alone with
that personality, as though the world, so strangely blotted out by
these dim, obliterating vapours, were indeed vacant of all human
interest, human purpose, human history, save that incarnate in this
fair woman and his own relation to her. She alone existed, concrete,
exquisite, sentient, amid the vague, shifting immensities of fog. She
alone mattered. Her near neighbourhood worked upon him strongly,
causing an excitement in him which at once hindered and demanded
speech.
Night began to close in in good earnest. Passing the broad, yellowish
glare streaming out from the rounded tap-room window of the Calmady
Arms, and passing from the end of the village street on to the open
common, the light had become so uncertain that Richard could no longer
see his companion's face clearly. This was almost a relief to him, so
that, mastering at once his diffidence and his excitement, he spoke.
"Look here, Helen," he said, "I have been thinking over all that you
told me. I don't want to dwell on subjects that must be very painful to
you, but I can't help thinking about them. It's not that I won't leave
them alone, but that they won't leave me. I don't want to presume upon
your confidence, or take too much upon myself. Only, don't you see, now
that I do know it's impossible to sit down under it all and let things
go on just the same.--You're not angry with me?"
The young man spoke very carefully and calmly, yet the tones of his
voice were heavily charged with feeling.
Madame de Vallorbes clasped her hands rather tightly within her sable
muff. Unconsciously she began to sway a little, just a very little, as
a person will sway in time to strains of stirring music. An excitement,
not mental merely but physical, invaded her. For she recognised that
she stood on the threshold of developments in this very notable drama.
Still she answered quietly, with a touch even of weariness.
"Ah! dear Richard, it is so friendly and charming of you to take my
infelicities thus to heart! But to what end, to what end, I ask you?
The conditions are fixed. Escape from them is impossible. I have made
my bed--made it most abominably uncomfortably, I admit, but that is not
to the point--and I must lie on it. There is no redress. There is
nothing to be done."
"Yes, there is this," he replied. "I know it is wretchedly inadequate,
it doesn't touch the root of the matter. Oh! it's miserably
inadequate--I should think I did know that! Only it might smooth the
surface a bit, perhaps, and put a stop to one source of annoyance.
Forgive me if I say what seems coarse or clumsy--but would not your
position be easier if, in regard to--to money, you were quite
independent of that--of your husband, I mean--M. de Vallorbes?"
For a moment the young lady remained very still, and stared very hard
at the fog. The most surprising visions arose before her. She had a
difficulty in repressing an exclamation.
"Ah! there now, I have blundered. I've hurt you. I've made you angry,"
Dickie cried impulsively.
"No, no, dear Richard," she answered, with admirable gentleness, "I am
not angry. Only what is the use of romancing?"
"I am not romancing. It is the simplest thing out, if you will but have
it so."
He hesitated a little. The horses were pulling, the fog was in his
throat thick and choking--or was it, perhaps, something more
unsubstantial and intangible even than fog? The spacious barns and
rickyards of the Church Farm were just visible on the right. In less
than five minutes more, at their present pace, the horses would reach
the first park gate. The young man felt he must give himself time. He
quieted the horses down into a walk.
"If I were your brother, Helen, I should save you all these sordid
money worries as a matter of course. You have no brother--so, don't you
see, I come next. It's a perfectly obvious arrangement. Just let me be
your banker," he said.
Madame de Vallorbes shut her pretty teeth together. She could have
danced, she could have sung aloud for very gaiety of heart. She had not
anticipated this turn to the situation; but it was a delicious one. It
had great practical merits. Her brain worked rapidly. Immediately those
practical merits ranged themselves before her in detail. But she would
play with it a little--both diplomacy and good taste, in which last she
was by no means deficient, required that.
"Ah! you forget, dear Richard," she said, "in your friendly zeal you
forget that, in our rank of life, there is one thing a woman cannot
accept from a man. To take money is to lay yourself open to slanderous
tongues, is to court scandal. Sooner or later it is known, the fact
leaks out. And however innocent the intention, however noble and honest
the giving, however grateful and honest the receiving, the world puts
but one construction upon such a transaction."
"The world's beastly evil-minded then," Richard said.
"So it is. But that is no news, Dickie dear," Madame de Vallorbes
answered. "Nor is it exactly to the point."
Inwardly she trembled a little. What if she had headed him off too
cleverly, and he should regard her argument as convincing, her refusal
as final? Her fears were by no means lessened by the young man's
protracted silence.
"No, I don't agree," he said at last. "I suppose there are always risks
to be run in securing anything at all worth securing, and it seems to
me, if you look at it all round, the risks in this case are very
slight. Only you--and M. de Vallorbes need know. I suppose he must. But
then, if you will pardon my saying so, after what you have told me I
can't imagine he is the sort of person who is likely to object very
much to an arrangement by which he would benefit, at least indirectly.
As for the world,"--Richard ceased to contemplate his horses. He tried
to speak lightly, while his eyes sought that dimly seen face at his
elbow. "Oh, well, hang the world, Helen! It's easy enough for me to say
so, I dare say, being but so slightly acquainted with it and the ways
of it. But the world can't be so wholly hide-bound and idiotic that it
denies the existence of exceptional cases. And this case, in some of
its bearings at all events, is wholly exceptional, I am--happy to
think."
"You are a very convincing special pleader, Richard," Madame de
Vallorbes said softly.
"Then you accept?" he rejoined exultantly. "You accept?"
The young lady could not quite control herself.
"Ah! if you only knew the prodigious relief it would be," she
exclaimed, with an outbreak of impatience. "It would make an
incalculable difference. And yet I do not see my way. I am in a cleft
stick. I dare not say Yes. And to say No----" Her sincerity was
unimpeachable at that moment. Her eyes actually filled with tears.
"Pah! I am ashamed of myself," she cried, "but to refuse is
distracting."
The gate of the outer park had been reached. The groom swung himself
down and ran forward, but confused by the growing darkness and the
thick atmosphere he fumbled for a time before finding the heavy latch.
The horses became somewhat restive, snorting and fidgeting.
"Steady there, steady, good lass," Richard said soothingly. Then he
turned again to his companion. "Believe me it's the very easiest thing
out to accept, if you'll only look at it all from the right point of
view, Helen."
Madame de Vallorbes withdrew her right hand from her muff and laid it,
almost timidly, upon the young man's arm.
"Do you know, you are wonderfully dear to me, Dick?" she said, and her
voice shook slightly. She was genuinely touched and moved. "No one has
ever been quite so dear to me before. It is a new experience. It takes
my breath away a little. It makes me regret some things I have done.
But it is a mistake to go back on what is past, don't you think so?
Therefore we will go forward. Tell me, expound. What is this so
agreeably reconciling point of view?"
But along with the touch of her hand, a great wave of emotion swept
over poor Richard, making his grasp on the reins very unsteady. The
sensations he had suffered last evening in the Long Gallery again
assailed him. The flesh had its word to say. Speech became difficult.
Meanwhile his agitation communicated itself strangely to the horses.
They sprang forward against that all-encircling, ever-present, yet
ever-receding, blank wall of fog, to which the overarching trees lent
an added gloom and mystery, as though some incarnate terror pursued
them. The gate clanged-to behind the carriage. The groom scrambled
breathlessly into his place. Sir Richard's driving was rather reckless,
he ventured to think, on such a nasty, dark night, and with a lady
along of him too. He was not sorry when the pace slowed down to a walk.
That was a long sight safer, to his thinking.
"The right point of view is this," Richard said at last; "that in
accepting you would be doing that which, in some ways, would make just
all the difference to my life."
He held himself very upright on the sloping driving-seat, rather
cruelly conscious of the broad strap about his waist, and the high,
unsightly driving-iron against which, concealed by the heavy, fur rug,
his feet pushed as he steadied himself. He paused, gazing away into the
silent desolation of the now invisible woods, and when he spoke again
his voice had deepened in tone.
"It must be patent to you--it is rather detestably patent to every one,
I suppose, if it comes to that--that I am condemned to be of precious
little use to myself or any one else. I share the fate of the immortal
Sancho Panza in his island of Barataria. A very fine feast is spread
before me, while I find myself authoritatively forbidden to eat first
of this dish and then of that, until I end by being every bit as hungry
as though the table was bare. It becomes rather a nuisance at times,
you know, and taxes one's temper and one's philosophy. It seems a
little rough to possess all that so many men of my age would give just
anything to have, and yet be unable to get anything but unsatisfied
hunger, and--in plain English--humiliation, out of it."
Madame de Vallorbes sat very still. Her charming face had grown keen.
She listened, drawing in her breath with a little sobbing sound--but
that was only the result of accentuated dramatic satisfaction.
"You see I have no special object or ambition. I can't have one. I just
pass the time. I don't see any prospect of my ever being able to do
more than that. There's my mother, of course. I need not tell you she
and I love one another. And there are the horses. But I don't care to
bet, and I never attend a race-meeting. I--I do not choose to make an
exhibition of myself."
Again Helen drew her hand out of her muff, but this time quickly,
impulsively, and laid it on Richard's left hand which held the reins.
The young man's breath caught in his throat, he leaned sideways towards
her, her shoulder touching his elbow, the trailing plumes of her
hat--now limp from the clinging moisture of the fog--for a moment
brushing his cheek.
"Helen," he said rapidly, "don't you understand it's in your power to
alter all this? By accepting you would do infinitely more for me than I
could ever dream of doing for you. You'd give me something to think of
and plan about. If you'll only have whatever wretched money you need
now, and have more whenever you want it--if you'll let me feel, however
rarely we meet, that you depend on me and trust me and let me make
things a trifle easier and smoother for you, you will be doing such an
act of charity as few women have ever done. Don't refuse, for pity's
sake don't! I don't want to whine, but things were not precisely gay
before your coming, you know. Need it be added they promise to be less
so than ever after you are gone? So listen to reason. Do as I ask you.
Let me be of use in the only way I can."
"Do you consider what you propose?" Madame de Vallorbes asked, slowly.
"It is a good deal. It is dangerous. With most men such a compact would
be wholly inadmissible."
Then poor Dickie lost himself. The strain of the last week the young,
headlong passion aroused in him, the misery of his deformity, the
accumulated bitterness and rebellion of years arose and overflowed as a
great flood. Pride went down before it, and reticence, and decencies of
self-respect. Richard turned and rent himself, without mercy and, for
the moment, without shame. He pelted himself with cruel words, with
scorn and self-contempt, while he laughed, and the sound of that
laughter wandered away weirdly through the chill density of the fog,
under the tall, shadowy firs of the great avenue, over the
sombre-heather, out into the veiled, crowded darkness of the wide
woods.
"But I am not as other men are," he answered. "I am a creature by
myself, a unique development as much outside the normal social, as I am
outside the normal physical law. I--alone by myself--think of
it!--abnormal, extraordinary! You are safe enough with me, Helen. Safe
to indulge and humour me as you might a monkey or a parrot. All the
world will understand that! Only my mother, and a few old friends and
old servants take me seriously. To every one else I am an
embarrassment, a more or less distressing curiosity."--He met little
Lady Constance Quale's ruminant stare again in imagination, heard Lord
Fallowfeild's blundering speech.--"Remember our luncheon to-day. It was
flattering, at moments, wasn't it? And so if I do queer things, things
off the conventional lines, who will be surprised? No one, I tell you,
not even the most strait-laced or censorious. Allow me at least the
privileges of my disabilities. I am a dwarf--a cripple. I shall never
be otherwise. Had I lived a century or two ago I should have made sport
for you, and such as you, as some rich man's professional fool. And so,
if I overstep the usual limits, who will comment on that? Queer things,
crazy things, are in the part. What do I matter?"
Richard laughed aloud.
"At least I have this advantage, that in my case you can do what you
can do in the case of no other man. With me you needn't be afraid. No
one will think evil. With me--yes, after all, there is a drop of
comfort in it--with me, Helen, you're safe enough."
CHAPTER X
MR. LUDOVIC QUAYLE AMONG THE PROPHETS
That same luncheon party at Brockhurst, if not notably satisfactory to
the hosts, afforded much subsequent food for meditation to one at least
of the guests. During the evening immediately following it, and even in
the watches of the night, Lady Louisa Barking's thought was
persistently engaged with the subject of Richard Calmady, his looks,
his character, his temper, his rent-roll, the acreage of his estates,
and his prospects generally. Nor did her interest remain hidden and
inarticulate. For, finding that in various particulars her knowledge
was superficial and clearly insufficient, on her journey from
Westchurch up to town next day, in company with her brother Ludovic,
she put so many questions to that accomplished young gentleman that he
shortly divined some serious purpose in her inquiry.
"We all recognise, my dear Louisa," he remarked presently, laying aside
the day's Times, of which he had vainly essayed the study, with an air
of gentle resignation, crossing his long legs and leaning back in his
corner of the railway carriage, "that you are the possessor of an
eminently practical mind. You have run the family for some years now,
not without numerous successes, among which may be reckoned your
running of yourself into the arms--if you will pardon my mentioning
them--of my estimable brother-in-law, Barking."
"Really, Ludovic!" his sister protested.
"Let me entreat you not to turn restive, Louisa," Mr. Quayle rejoined
with the utmost suavity. "I am paying a high compliment to your
intelligence. To have run into the arms of Mr. Barking, or indeed of
anybody else, casually and involuntarily, to have blundered into
them--if I may so express myself--would have been a stupidity. But to
run into them intentionally and voluntarily argues considerable powers
of strategy, an intelligent direction of movement which I respect and
admire."
"You are really exceedingly provoking, Ludovic!"
Lady Louisa pushed the square, leather-covered dressing-case, on which
her feet had been resting, impatiently aside.
"Far from it," the young man answered. "Can I put that box anywhere
else for you? You like it just where it is?--Yes? But I assure you I am
not provoking. I am merely complimentary. Conversation is an art,
Louisa. None of my sisters ever can be got to understand that. It is
dreadfully crude to rush in waist-deep at once. There should be feints
and approaches. You should nibble at your sugar with a graceful
coyness. You should cut a few frills and skirmish a little before
setting the battle actively in array. And it is just this that I have
been striving to do during the last five minutes. But you do not appear
to appreciate the commendable style of my preliminaries. You want to
engage immediately. There is usually a first-rate underlying reason for
your interest in anybody----"
Again the lady shifted the position of the dressing-case.
"To the right?" inquired Mr. Quayle extending his hand, his head a
little on one side, his long neck directed forward, while he regarded
first his sister and then the dressing-case with infuriating urbanity.
"No? Let us come to Hecuba, then. Let us dissemble no longer, but put
it plainly. What, oh, Louisa! what are you driving at in respect of my
very dear friend, Dickie Calmady?"
Now it was unquestionably most desirable for her to keep on the
fair-weather side of Mr. Quayle just then. Yet the flesh is weak. Lady
Louisa Barking could not control a movement of self-justification. She
spoke with dignity, severely.
"It is all very well for you to say those sort of things, Ludovic----"
"What sort of things?" he inquired mildly.
"But I should be glad to know what would have become of the family by
now, unless some one had come forward and taken matters in hand? Of
course one gets no thanks for it. One never does get any thanks for
doing one's duty, however wearing it is to oneself and however much
others profit. But somebody had to sacrifice themselves. Mama is
unequal to any exertion. You know what papa is----"
"I do, I do," murmured Mr. Quayle, raising his gaze piously to the roof
of the railway carriage.
"If he has one of the boys to tramp over the country with him at
Whitney, and one of the girls to ride with him in London, he is
perfectly happy and content. He is alarmingly improvident. He would
prefer keeping the whole family at home doing nothing----"
"Save laughing at his jokes. My father craves the support of a
sympathetic audience."
"Shotover is worse than useless."
"Except to the guileless Israelite he is. Absolutely true, Louisa."
"Guy would never have gone into the army when he left Eton unless I had
insisted upon it. And it was entirely through the Barkings'
influence--at my representation of course--that Eddie got a berth in
that Liverpool cotton-broker's business. I am sure Alicia is very
comfortably married. I know George Winterbotham is not the least
interesting, but he is perfectly gentlemanlike and presentable, and so
on, and he makes her a most devoted husband. And from what Mr. Barking
heard the other day at the Club from somebody or other, I forget who,
but some one connected with the Government, you know, there is every
probability of George getting that permanent under-secretaryship."
"Did I not start by declaring you had achieved numerous successes?"
Ludovic inquired. "Yet we stray from the point, Louisa. For do I not
still remain ignorant of the root of your sudden interest in my friend
Dickie Calmady? And I thirst to learn how you propose to work him into
the triumphant development of our family fortunes."
The proportions of Lady Louisa's small mouth contracted still further
into an expression of great decision, while she glanced at the
landscape reeling away from the window of the railway carriage. In the
past twelve hours autumn had given place to winter. The bare hedges
showed black, while the fallen leaves of the hedgerow trees formed
unsightly blotches of sodden brown and purple upon the dirty green of
the pastures. Over all brooded an opaque, gray-brown sky, sullen and
impenetrable. Lady Louisa saw all this. But she was one of those
persons happily, for themselves, unaffected by such abstractions as the
aspects of nature. Her purposes were immediate and practical. She
followed them with praiseworthy persistence. The landscape merely
engaged her eyes because she preferred, just now, looking out of the
window to looking her brother in the face.
"Something must be done for the younger girls," she announced. "I feel
pretty confident about Emily's future. We need not go into that.
Maggie, if she marries at all--and she really is very useful at home,
in looking after the servants and entertaining, and so on--if she
marries at all, will marry late. She has no particular attractions as
girls go. Her figure is too solid, and she talks too much. But she will
make a very presentable middle-aged woman--sensible, dependable, an
excellent _menagere_. Certainly she had better marry late."
"A mature clergyman when she is rising forty--a widowed bishop, for
instance. Yes, I approve that," Mr. Quayle rejoined reflectively. "It
is well conceived, Louisa. We must keep an eye on the Bench and
carefully note any episcopal matrimonial vacancy. Bishops have a little
turn, I observe, for marrying somebody who _is_ somebody--specially _en
secondes noces_, good men. Yes, it is well thought of. With careful
steering we may bring Maggie to anchor in a palace yet. Maggie is
rather dogmatic, she would make not half a bad Mrs. Proudie. So she is
disposed of, and then?"
For a few seconds the lady held silent converse with herself. At last
she addressed her companion in tones of unwonted cordiality.
"You are by far the most sensible of the family, Ludovic," she began.
"And in a family so renowned for intellect, so conspicuous for 'parts
and learning,' as Macaulay puts it, that is indeed a distinction!"--Mr.
Quayle bowed slightly in his comfortable corner. "A thousand thanks,
Louisa," he murmured.
"I would not breathe a syllable of this to any of the others," she
continued. "You know how the girls chatter. Alicia, I am sorry to say,
is as bad as any of them. They would discuss the question without
intermission--simply, you know, talk the whole thing to death."
"Poor thing!--Yet, after all, what thing?" the young man inquired
urbanely.
Lady Louisa bit her lip. He was very irritating, while she was very
much in earnest. It was her misfortune usually to be a good deal in
earnest.
"There is Constance," she remarked, somewhat abruptly.
"Precisely--there is poor, dear, innocent, rather foolish, little
Connie. It occurred to me we might be coming to that."
In his turn Mr. Quayle fell silent, and contemplated the reeling
landscape. Pasture had given place to wide stretches of dark moorland
on either side the railway line, with a pallor of sour bog-grasses in
the hollows. The outlook was uncheerful. Perhaps it was that which
caused the young man to shake his head.
"I recognize the brilliancy of the conception, Louisa. It reflects
credit upon your imagination and--your daring," he said presently. "But
you won't be able to work it."
"Pray why not?" almost snapped Lady Louisa.
Mr. Quayle settled himself back in his corner again. His handsome face
was all sweetness, indulgent though argumentative. He was nothing,
clearly, unless reasonable.
"Personally, I am extremely fond of Dickie Calmady," he began. "I
permit myself--honestly I do--moments of enthusiasm regarding him. I
should esteem the woman lucky who married him. Yet I could imagine a
prejudice might exist in some minds--minds of a less emancipated and
finely comprehensive order than yours and my own of course--against
such an alliance. Take my father's mind, for instance--and unhappily my
father dotes on Connie. And he is more obstinate than nineteen
dozen--well, I leave you to fill in the comparison mentally, Louisa. It
might be slightly wanting in filial respect to put it into words."
Again he shook his head in pensive solemnity.
"I give you credit for prodigious push and tenacity, for a remarkable
capacity of generalship, in short. Yet I cannot disguise from myself
the certainty that you would never square my father."
"But suppose she wishes it herself. Papa would deny Connie nothing,"
the other objected. She was obliged to raise her voice to a point of
shrillness, hardly compatible with the dignity of the noble house of
Fallowfeild, _double_ with all the gold of all the Barkings, for the
train was banging over the points and roaring between the platforms of
a local junction. Mr. Quayle made a deprecating gesture, put his hands
over his ears, and again gently shook his head, intimating that no
person possessed either of nerves or self-respect could be expected to
carry on a conversation under existing conditions. Lady Louisa
desisted. But, as soon as the train passed into the comparative quiet
of the open country, she took up her parable again, and took it up in a
tone of authority.
"Of course I admit there is something to get over. It would be
ridiculous not to admit that. And I am always determined to be
perfectly straightforward. I detest humbug of any kind. So I do not
deny for a moment that there is something. Still it would be a very
good marriage for Constance, a very good marriage, indeed. Even papa
must acknowledge that. Money, position, age, everything of that kind,
in its favour. One could not expect to have all that without some
make-weight. I should not regret it, for I feel it might really be bad
for Connie to have so much without some make-weight. And I remarked
yesterday--I could not help remarking it--that she was very much
occupied about Sir Richard Calmady."
"Connie is a little goose," Mr. Quayle permitted himself to remark, and
for once there was quite a sour edge to his sweetness.
"Connie is not quick, she is not sensitive," his sister continued.
"And, really, under all the circumstances, that perhaps is just as
well. But she is a good child, and would believe almost anything you
told her. She has an affectionate and obedient disposition, and she
never attempts to think for herself. I don't believe it would ever
occur to her to object to his--his peculiarities, unless some
mischievous person suggested it to her. And then, as I tell you, I
remarked she was very much occupied about him."
Once again Mr. Quayle sought counsel of the landscape which once again
had changed in character. For here civilisation began to trail her
skirts very visibly, and the edges of those skirts were torn and
frayed, notably unhandsome. The open moorland had given place to flat
market-gardens and leafless orchards sloppy with wet. Innumerable
cabbages, innumerable stunted, black-branched apple and pear trees,
avenues of dilapidated pea and bean sticks, reeled away to right and
left. The semi-suburban towns stretched forth long, rawly-red arms of
ugly, little, jerry-built streets and terraces. Tall chimneys and
unlovely gasometers--these last showing as collections of some
monstrous spawn--rose against the opaque sky, a sky rendered
momentarily more opaque, dirtier and more dingy, by the masses of
London smoke hanging along the eastern horizon.
Usually Ludovic knew his own mind clearly enough. The atmosphere of it
was very far from being hazy. Now that atmosphere bore annoying
resemblance to the opacity obtaining overhead and along the eastern
horizon. The young man's sympathies--or were they his prejudices?--had
a convenient habit of ranging themselves immediately on one side or
other of any question presenting itself to him. But in the present case
they were mixed. They pulled both ways, and this vexed him. For he
liked to suppose himself very ripe, cynical, and disillusioned, while,
in good truth, sentiment had more than a word to say in most of his
opinions and decisions. Now sentiment ruled him strongly and pushed
him--but, unfortunately, in diametrically opposite directions. The
sentiment of friendship compelled him hitherward. While another
sentiment, which he refused to define--he recognised it as wholesome,
yet he was a trifle ashamed of it--compelled him quite other-where. He
took refuge in an adroit begging of the question.
"After all are you not committing the fundamental error of reckoning
without your host, Louisa?" he inquired. "Connie may be a good deal
occupied about Calmady, but thereby may only give further proof of her
own silliness. I certainly discovered no particular sign of Calmady
being occupied about Connie. He was very much more occupied about the
fair cousin, Helen de Vallorbes, than about any one of us, my
illustrious self included, as far as I could see."
In her secret soul his hearer had to own this statement just. But she
kept the owning to herself, and, with a rapidity upon which she could
not help congratulating herself, instituted a flanking movement.
"You hear all the gossip, Ludovic," she said. "Of course it is no good
my asking Mr. Barking about that sort of thing. Even if he heard it he
would not remember it. His mind is too much occupied. If a woman
marries a man with large political interests she must just give herself
to them generously. It is very interesting, and one feels, of course,
one is helping to make history. But still one has to sacrifice
something. I hear next to nothing of what is going on--the gossip, I
mean. And so tell me, what do you hear about her, about Madame de
Vallorbes?"
"At first hand only that which you must know perfectly well yourself,
my dear Louisa. Didn't you sit opposite to her at luncheon,
yesterday?--That she is a vastly good-looking and attractive woman."
"At second hand, then?"
"At second hand? Oh! at second hand I know various amiable little odds
and ends such as are commonly reported by the uncharitable and
censorious," Ludovic answered mildly. "Probably more than half of these
little treasures are pure fiction, generated by envy, conceived by
malice."
"Pray, Ludovic!" his sister exclaimed. But she recovered herself, and
added:--"you may as well tell me all the same. I think, under the
circumstances, it would be better for me to hear."
"You really wish to hear? Well, I give it you for what it is worth. I
don't vouch for the truth of a single item. For all we can tell, nice,
kind friends may be recounting kindred anecdotes of Alicia and the
blameless Winterbotham, or even of you, Louisa, and Mr. Barking."
Mr. Quayle fixed a glance of surpassing graciousness upon his sister as
he uttered these agreeable suggestions, and fervid curiosity alone
enabled her to resist a rejoinder and to maintain a dignified silence.
"It is said--and this probably is true--that she never cared two straws
for de Vallorbes, but was jockeyed in the marriage--just as you might
jockey Constance, you know, Louisa--by her mother, who has the
reputation of being a somewhat frisky matron with a keen eye to the
main chance. She is not quite all, I understand, a tender heart could
desire in the way of a parent. It is further said that _la belle
Helene_ makes the dollars fly even more freely than did de Vallorbes in
his best days, and he has the credit of having been something of a
_viveur_. He knew not only his Paris, but his Baden-Baden, and his
Naples, and various other warm corners where great and good men do
commonly congregate. It is added that _la belle Helene_ already gives
promise of being playful in other ways beside that of expenditure. And
that de Vallorbes has been heard to lament openly that he is not a
native of some enlightened country in which the divorce court
charitably intervenes to sever overhard connubial knots. In short, it
is rumoured that de Vallorbes is not a conspicuous example of the
wildly happy husband."
"In short, she is not respec----"
But the young man held up his hands and cried out feelingly:--
"Don't, pray don't, my dear Louisa. Let us walk delicately as Agag--my
father's morning ministrations to the maids again! For how, as I
pointed out just now, do we know what insidious little tales may not be
in circulation regarding yourself and those nearest and dearest to
you?"
Ludovic Quayle turned his head and once again looked out of the window,
his beautiful mouth visited by a slightly malicious smile. The train
was sliding onward above crowded, sordid courts and narrow alleys,
festering, as it seemed, with a very plague of poverty-stricken and
unwholesome humanity. Here the line runs parallel to the river--sullen
to-day, blotted with black floats and lines of grimy barges, which
straining, smoke-vomiting steam-tugs towed slowly against a strong
flowing tide. On the opposite bank the heavy masses of the Abbey, the
long decorated facade and towers of the Houses of Parliament, stood out
ghostly and livid in a gleam of frail, unrelated sunshine against the
murk of the smoky sky.
"I should have supposed Sir Richard Calmady was steady," Lady Louisa
remarked, inconsequently and rather stiffly. Ludovic really was
exasperating.
"Steady? Oh! perfectly. Poor, dear chap, he hasn't had much chance of
being anything else as yet."
"Still, of course, Lady Calmady would prefer his being settled. Clearly
it would be much better in every way. All things considered, he is
certainly one of the people who should marry young. And Connie would be
an excellent marriage for him, excellent--thoroughly suitable, better,
really, than on the face of it he could hope for. Ludovic, just look
out please and see if the carriage is here. Pocock always loses her
head at a terminus, and misses the men-servants. Yes, there is
Frederic--with his back to the train, looking the wrong way, of course.
He really is too stupid."
Mr. Quayle, however, succeeded in attracting the footman's attention,
and, assisted by that functionary and the lean and anxious Pocock--her
arms full of bags and umbrellas--conveyed his sister out of the railway
carriage and into the waiting brougham. She graciously offered to put
him down at his rooms, in St. James's Place, on her way to the Barking
mansion in Albert Gate, but the young man declined that honour.
"Good-bye, Louisa," he said, leaning his elbows on the open window of
the brougham and thereby presenting the back view of an irreproachably
cut overcoat and trousers to the passers-by. "I have to thank you for a
most interesting and instructive journey. Your efforts to secure the
prosperity of the family are wholly praiseworthy. I commend them. I
have a profound respect for your generalship. Still, pauper though I
am, I am willing to lay you a hundred to one in golden guineas that you
will never square papa."
Subsequently the young man bestowed himself in a hansom, and rattled
away in the wake of the Barking equipage down the objectionably steep
hill which leads from the roar and turmoil of the station into the
Waterloo Bridge road.
"I might have offered heavier odds," he said to himself, "for never,
never will she square papa."
And, not without a light sense of shame, he was conscious that he made
this reflection with a measure of relief.
CHAPTER XI
CONTAINING SAMPLES BOTH OF EARTHLY AND HEAVENLY LOVE
Katherine stood in the central space of the great, state bedroom. It
was just upon midnight, yet she still wore her jewels and her handsome,
trailing, black, velvet dress. She was very tired. But that tiredness
proceeded less from physical than mental weariness. This she
recognised, and foresaw that weariness of this character was not likely
to find relief and extinction within the shelter of the curtains of the
stately bed, whereon the ancient Persian legend of the flight of the
Hart through the tangled Forest of This Life was so deftly and quaintly
embroidered. For, unhappily to-night, the leopard, Care, followed very
close behind. And Katherine, taking the ancient legend as very
literally descriptive of her existing state of mind feared that, should
she undress and seek the shelter of the rose-lined curtains the leopard
would seek it also, and, crouching at her feet, his evil yellow eyes
would gaze into her own, wide open, all through that which remained of
the night. The night, moreover, was very wild. A westerly gale, with
now and again tumultuous violence of rain, rattled the many panes of
the windows, wailed in every crevice of door and casement, roared
through the mile-long elm avenue below, and roared in the chimneys
above. The Prince of the Power of the Air was let loose, and announced
his presence as with the shout of battle. Sleep was out of the question
under present conditions and in her present humour. Therefore Lady
Calmady had dismissed Clara--now promoted to the dignified office of
lady's-maid--and that bright-eyed and devoted waiting-woman had
departed reluctant, almost in tears, protesting that:--"it was quite
too bad, for her ladyship was being regularly worn out with all the
talking and company. And she, for her part, should be heartily glad
when the entertaining was over and they were all comfortably to
themselves again."
Nor could Katherine honestly assert that she would be altogether sorry
when the hour struck, to-morrow, for the departure of her guests. For
it appeared to her that, notwithstanding the courtesy and affection of
her brother and the triumphant charm of her niece, a spirit of unrest
had entered Brockhurst along with their entry. Would that same spirit
depart along with their departing? She questioned it. She was oppressed
by a fear that that spirit of unrest had come to stay. And so it was
that as she walked the length and breadth of the lofty, white-paneled
room, for all the rage and fury of the storm without, she still heard
the soft padding of Care, the leopard, close behind.
Then a singular desolation and sense of homelessness came upon
Katherine. Turn where she would there seemed no comfort, no escape, no
sure promise of eventual rest. Things human and material were emptied
not of joy only, but of invitation to effort. For something had
happened from which there was no going back. A fair woman from a far
country had come and looked upon her son, with the inevitable result,
that youth had called to youth. And though the fair woman in question,
being already wedded wife,--Katherine was rather pathetically
pure-minded,--could not in any dangerously practical manner steal away
her son's heart, yet she would, only too probably, prepare that heart
and awaken in it desires of subsequent stealing away on the part of
some other fair woman, as yet unknown, whose heart Dickie would do his
utmost to steal in exchange. And this filled her with anxiety and
far-reaching fears, not only because it was bitter to have some woman
other than herself hold the chief place in her son's affections, but
because she--as John Knott, even as Ludovic Quayle, though from quite
other causes--could not but apprehend possibilities of danger, even of
disaster, surrounding all question of love and marriage in the strange
and unusual case of Richard Calmady.
And thinking of these things, her sensibilities heightened and
intensified by fatigue and circumstances of time and place, a certain
feverishness possessed her. That bedchamber of many memories--exquisite
and tragic--became intolerable to her. She opened the double doors and
passed into the Chapel-Room beyond, the light thrown by the tall wax
candles set in silver branches upon her toilet-table, passing with her
through the widely open doors and faintly illuminating the near end of
the great room. There was other subdued light in the room as well. For
a glowing mass of coal and wood still remained in the brass basket upon
the hearth, and the ruddy brightness of it touched the mouldings of the
ceiling, glowed on the polished corners and carvings of tables,
what-nots, and upon the mahogany frames of solid, Georgian sofas and
chairs.
At first sight, notwithstanding the roaring of wind and ripping of rain
without, there seemed offer of comfort in this calm and spacious place,
the atmosphere of it sweet with bowls of autumn violets and
greenhouse-grown roses. Katherine sat down in Richard's low armchair
and gazed into the crimson heart of the fire. She made a valiant effort
to put away haunting fears, to resume her accustomed attitude of
stoicism, of tranquil, if slightly defiant, courage. But Care, the
leopard, refused to be driven away. Surely, stealthily he had followed
her out of her bedchamber and now crouched at her side, making his
presence felt so that all illusion of comfort speedily fled. She knew
that she was alone, consciously and bitterly alone, waking in the midst
of the sleeping house. No footstep would echo up the stairs, hot to
find her. No voice would call her name, in anxiety for her well-being
or in desire. It seemed to Katherine that a desert lay outstretched
about her on every hand, while she sat desolate with Care for her sole
companion. She recognised that her existing isolation was, in a measure
at all events, the natural consequence of her own fortitude and
ability. She had ruled with so strong and discreet a hand that the
order she had established, the machinery she had set agoing, could now
keep going without her. Hence her loneliness. And that loneliness as
she sat by the dying fire, while the wind raved without, was dreadful
to her, peopled with phantoms she dared not look upon. For, not only
the accustomed burden of her motherhood was upon her, but that other
unaccustomed burden of admitted middle-age. And this other burden,
which it is appointed a woman shall bear while her heart often is still
all too sadly young, dragged her down. The conviction pressed home on
her that for her the splendid game was indeed over, and that, for very
pride's sake, she must voluntarily stand aside and submit to rank
herself with things grown obsolete, with fashions past and out of date.
Katherine rose to her feet, filled, for the moment, by an immense
compassion for her own womanhood, by an overmastering longing for
sympathy. She was so tired of the long struggle with sorrow, so tired
of her own attitude of sustained courage. And now, when surely a little
respite and repose might have been granted her, it seemed that a new
order of courage was demanded of her, a courage passive rather than
active, a courage of relinquishment and self-effacement. That was a
little too much. For all her valiant spirit, she shrank away. She grew
weak. She could not face it.
And so it happened that to-night--as once long ago, when poor Richard
suffered his hour of mental and physical torment at the skilful, yet
relentless hands of Dr. Knott, in the bedchamber near by--Katherine's
anguish and revolt found expression in restless pacings, and those
pacings brought her to the chapel door. It stood ajar. Before the altar
the three hanging lamps showed each its tongue of crimson flame. A
whiteness of flowers, set in golden vases upon the re-table, was just
distinguishable. But the delicately carved spires and canopies of
stalls, the fair pictured saints, and figure of the risen Christ--His
wounded feet shining like pearls upon the azure floor of heaven--in the
east window, were lost in soft, thick, all-pervading gloom. The place
was curiously still, as though waiting silently, in solemn and strained
expectation for the accomplishment of some mysterious visitation. And,
all the while without, the gale flung itself wailing against the angles
of the masonry, and the rain beat upon the glass of the high, narrow
windows as with a passion of despairing tears.
For some time Katherine waited in the doorway, a sombre figure in her
trailing, velvet dress. The hushed stillness of the chapel, the
confusion and clamour of the tempest, taken thus in connection, were
very telling. They exercised a strong influence over her already
somewhat exalted imagination. Could it be, she asked herself, that
these typified the rest of the religious, and the unrest of the secular
life? Julius March would interpret the contrast they afforded in some
such manner no doubt. And what if Julius, after all, were right? What
if, shutting God out of the heart, you also shut that heart out from
all peaceful dwelling-places, leaving it homeless, at the mercy of
every passing storm? Katherine was bruised in spirit. The longing for
some sure refuge, some abiding city was dominant in her. The needs of
her soul, so long ignored and repudiated, asserted themselves. Yes,
what if Julius were right, and if content and happiness--the only
happiness which has in it the grace of continuance--consisted in
submission to, and glad acquiescence in, the will of God?
Thus did she muse, gazing questioningly at the whiteness of the altar
flowers and those steady tongues of flame, hearing the silence, as of
reverent waiting, which dwelt in the place. But, on the other hand, to
give, in this her hour of weakness, that which she had refused in the
hours of clear-seeing strength;--to let go, because she was alone and
the unloveliness of age claimed her, that sense of bitter injury and
injustice which she had hugged to her breast when young and still aware
of her empire,--would not such action be contemptibly poor spirited?
She was no child to be humbled into confession by the rod, frightened
into submission by the dark. To abase herself, in the hope of receiving
spiritual consolation, appeared to her as an act of disloyalty to her
dead love and her maimed and crippled son. She turned away with a
rather superb lift of her beautiful head, and went back to her own
bedchamber again. She hardened herself in opposition, putting the
invitations of grace from her as she might have put those of
temptation. She would yield to weakness, to feverish agitations and
aimless longings, no more. Whether sleep elected to visit her or not,
she would undress and seek her bed.
But hardly had she closed the door and, standing before her
toilet-table, began to unclasp the pearls from her throat and bracelets
from her wrists, than a sound, quite other than agreeable or
reassuring, saluted her ears from close by. It proceeded from the room
next door, now unoccupied, since Richard, some five or six years ago,
jealous of the dignity of his youth, had petitioned to be permitted to
remove himself and his possessions to the suite of rooms immediately
below. This comprised the Gun-Room, a bed and dressing-room, and a
fourth room connecting with the offices, which came in handy for his
valet. Since his decline upon this more commodious apartment, the old
nursery had stood vacant. Katherine could not find it in her heart to
touch it. It was furnished now as in Dickie's childish days, when,
night and morning, she had visited it to make sure of her darling's
health and safety.
And it was in this shrine of tender recollections that disquieting
sounds now arose. Hard claws rattled upon the boarded spaces of the
floor. Some creature snored and panted against the bottom of the door,
pushed it with so heavy a weight that the panels creaked, flung itself
down uneasily, then moved to and fro again, with that harsh rattling of
claws. The image of Care, the leopard, as embroidered upon the curtains
of her bed, was so present to Katherine's imagination to-night that,
for a moment, she lost her hold on probability and common sense. It
appeared to her that the anxieties and perturbations which oppressed
her had taken on bodily form, and, in the shape of a devouring beast,
besieged her chamber door. The conception was grisly. Both mind and
body being rather overstrained, it filled her with something
approaching panic. No one was within call. To rouse her brother, or
Julius, she must make a tour of half the house. Again the creature
pushed against the creaking panels, and, then, panting and snoring,
began ripping away the matting from the door-sill.
The terror of the unknown is, after all, greater than that of the
known. It was improbable, though the hour was late and the night wild,
that savage beasts or cares incarnate should actually be in possession
of Dickie's disused nursery. Katherine braced herself and turned the
handle. Still the vision disclosed by the opening door was at first
sight monstrous enough. A moving mass of dirty white, low down against
the encircling darkness, bandy legs, and great grinning mouth. The
bull-dog stood up, whining, fawning upon her, thrusting his heavy head
into her hand.
"Why Camp, good old friend, what brings you here? Are you, too,
homeless to-night? But why have you deserted your master?"
And then Lady Calmady's panic fears took on another aspect. Far from
being allayed they were increased. An apprehension of something
actively evil abroad in the great, sleeping house assailed her. She
trembled from head to foot. And yet, even while she shrank and
trembled, her courage reawoke. For she perceived that as yet she need
not rank herself wholly among fashions passed and things grown
obsolete. She had her place and value still. She was wanted, she was
called for--that she knew--though by whom wanted and for what purpose
she, as yet, knew not.
The bull-dog, meanwhile, his heavy head carried low, his crooked tail
drooping, trotted slowly away into the darkness and then trotted back.
He squatted upon his haunches, looking up with anxious, bloodshot eyes.
He trotted away again, and again returned and stood waiting, his whole
aspect eloquent in its dumb appeal. He implored her to follow, and
Katherine, fetching one of the silver candlesticks from her
dressing-table, obeyed.
She followed her ugly, faithful guide across the vacant disused
nursery, and on down the uncarpeted turning staircase which opens into
the square lobby outside the Gun-Room. The diamond panes of the
staircase windows chattered in their leaded frames, and the wind
shrieked in the spouts, and angles, and carved stonework, of the inner
courtyard as she passed. The gale was at its height, loud and
insistent. Yet the many-toned violence of it seemed to bear strange and
intimate relation--as that of a great orchestra to a single dominant
human voice--to the subtle, evil influence which she felt to be at
large within the sleeping house. And so, without pausing to consider
the wisdom of her action, pushed by the conviction that something of
profound import was taking place, and that some one, or something, must
be saved by her from threatening danger, Katherine threw open the
Gun-Room door.
The shout of the storm seemed far away. This place was quick with
stillness too, with the hush of waiting for the accomplishment of some
mysterious event or visitation, even as the dark chapel up-stairs had
been. Only here moving effect of soft, brilliant light, of caressing
warmth, of vague, insidious fragrance met her. Katherine Calmady had
only known passion in its purest and most legitimate form. It had been
for her, innocent of all grossness, or suggestion of degradation, fair
and lovely and natural, revelation of highest and most enchanting
secrets. But having once known it in its fulness, she could not fail to
recognise its presence, even though it wore a diabolic, rather than
angelic face. That passion met her now, exultant, effulgent, along with
that light and heat and fragrance, she did not for an instant doubt.
And the splendour of its near neighbourhood turned her faint with dread
and with poignant memories. She paused upon the threshold, steadying
herself with one hand against the cold, stone jamb of the arched
doorway, while in the other she held the massive candlestick and its
flickering, draught-driven lights.
A mist was before her eyes, a singing in her ears, so that she had much
ado to see clearly and reckon justly with that which she did see. Helen
de Vallorbes, clothed in a flowing, yet clinging, silken garment of
turquoise, shot with blue purple and shimmering glaucous green--a
garment in colour such as that with which the waves of Adriatic might
have clothed the rosy limbs of new-born Aphrodite, as she rose from the
cool, translucent sea-deeps--knelt upon the tiger-skin before the
dancing fire. Her hands grasped the two arms of Richard's chair. She
leaned down right across it, the lines and curves of her beautiful body
discernible under her delicate draperies. The long, open sleeves of her
dress fell away from her outstretched arms, showing them in their
completeness from wrist to shoulder. Her head was thrown back, so that
her rounded throat stood out, and the pure line of her lower jaw was
salient. Her eyes were half closed, while all the mass of her
honey-coloured hair was gathered low down on the nape of her neck into
a net of golden thread. A golden, netted girdle was knotted loosely
about her loins, the tasseled ends of it dragging upon the floor. She
wore no jewels, nor were they needed, for the loveliness of her person,
discovered rather than concealed by those changeful sea-blue draperies,
was already dangerously potent.
All this Katherine saw--a radiant vision of youth, an incarnation, not
of care and haunting fears, but of pleasure and haunting delights. And
she saw more than this. For in the depths of that long, low armchair
Richard sat, stiffly erect, his face dead white, thin, and
strained--Richard, as she had never beheld him before, though she knew
the face well enough. It was his father's face as she had seen it on
her marriage night, and on his death night too, when his fingers had
been clasped about her throat to the point of strangulation. Katherine
dared look no longer. Her heart stood still. Shame and anger took her,
and along with these an immense nostalgia for that which had once been
and was not. Her instinct was of flight. But Camp trotted forward,
growling, and squatted between the pedestals of the library-table, his
red eyes blinking sullenly in the square shadow. Involuntarily
Katherine followed him part way across the room.
Richard looked full at his cousin, absorbed, rigid, an amazement of
question in his eyes. Not a muscle of his face moved. But Madame de
Vallorbes' absorption was less complete. She started slightly and half
turned her head.
"Ah! there is that dog again," she said. "What has brought him back? He
hates me."
"Damn the dog!" Richard exclaimed, hoarsely under his breath. Then he
said:--"Helen, Helen, you know----"
But Madame de Vallorbes had turned her head yet further, and her arched
eyelids opened quite wide for once, while she smiled a little, her lips
parting and revealing her pretty teeth tightly set.
"Ah! the advent of the bull-dog explains itself," she exclaimed. "Here
is Aunt Katherine herself!"
Slowly, and with an inimitable grace, she rose to her feet. Her long,
winged sleeves floated back into place, covering her bare arms. Her
composure was astonishing, even to herself. Yet her breath came a
trifle quick as she contemplated Lady Calmady with the same enigmatic
smile, her chin carried high--the finest suggestion of challenge and
insolence in it--her eyes still unusually wide open and startlingly
bright.
"Richard holds a little court to-night," she continued airily, "thanks
to the storm. You also have come to seek the protection of his presence
it appears, Aunt Katherine. Indeed, I am not surprised, for you
certainly brew very wild weather at Brockhurst, at times."
Something in the young lady's bearing had restored Katherine's
self-control.
"The wind is going down," she replied calmly. "The storm need not alarm
you, or keep you watching any longer, Helen."
"Ah! pardon me--you know you are accustomed to these tempests," the
younger woman rejoined. "To me it still sounds more than sufficiently
violent."
"Yes, but merely on this side of the house, where Richard's and my
rooms are situated. The wind has shifted, and I believe on your side
you will suffer no further disturbance. You will find it quite quiet.
Then, moreover, you have to rise early to-morrow--or rather to-day. You
have a long journey before you and should secure all the rest you can."
Madame de Vallorbes gathered her silken draperies about her absently.
For a moment she looked down at the tiger-skin, then back at Lady
Calmady.
"Ah yes!" she said, "it is thoughtful of you to remind me of that.
To-day I start on my homeward journey. It should give me very much
pleasure, should it not? But--do not be shocked, Aunt Katherine--I
confess I am not altogether enraptured at the prospect. I have been too
happy, too kindly treated, here at Brockhurst, for it to be other than
a sorrow to me to depart."
She turned to Richard, her expression serious, intimate, appealing.
Then she shook back her fair head, and as though in obedience to an
irresistible movement of tenderness, stooped down swiftly over
him--seeming to drown him in the shimmering waves of some azure, and
thin, clear green, and royal, blue-purple sea--while she kissed him
full and daringly upon the mouth.
"Good-night, good-bye, dear Dickie," she said. "Yes, good-bye--for I
almost hope I may not see you in the morning. It would be a little
chilly and inadequate, any other farewell after this. I am grateful to
you.--And remember, I too am among those who, to their sorrow, never
forget."
She approached Lady Calmady, her manner natural, unabashed, playful
even, and gay.
"See, I am ready to go to bed like a good child, Aunt Katherine," she
said, "supported by your assurance that my side of the house is no
longer rendered terrific by wind and rain. But--I am so distressed to
trouble you--but all the lamps are out, and I am none too sure of my
way. It would be a rather tragic ending to my happy visit if I
incontinently lost myself and wandered till dawn, disconsolate, up and
down the passages and stairways of Richard's magnificent house. I might
even wander in here by mistake again, and that would be unpardonably
indiscreet, wouldn't it? So, will you light me to my own quarters, Aunt
Katherine? Thank you--how charmingly kind and sweet you are!"
As she spoke Madame de Vallorbes moved lightly away and passed on to
the lobby, the heels of her pretty, cloth-of-gold slippers ringing
quite sharply on the gray, stone quarries without. And, even as a
little while back she had followed the heavy-headed and ungainly
bull-dog, so now Lady Calmady, in her trailing, black, velvet dress,
silver candlestick in hand, followed this radiant, fleet-footed
creature, whose every movement was eloquent of youth and health and an
almost prodigal joy of living. Neither woman spoke as they crossed the
lobby, and passed the pierced and arcaded stone screen which divides
the outer from the inner hall. Now and again the flickering
candle-light glinted on the younger woman's girdle or the net which
controlled the soft masses of her honey-coloured hair. Now and again a
draught taking the folds of her silken raiment blew it hither and
thither, disclosing her beautiful arms or quick-moving slippered feet.
She was clothed with splendour of the sea, crowned, and shod, and girt
about the loins, with gold. And she fled on silently, till the wide,
shallow-stepped stairway, leading up to the rooms she occupied, was
reached. There, for a moment, she paused.
"Pray come no further," she said, and went on rapidly up the flight. On
the landing she stopped, a dimly discerned figure, blue and gold
against the dim whiteness of high paneled walls, moulded ceiling,
stairway, and long descending balustrade.
"I have arrived!" she cried, and her clear voice took strange
inflections of mockery and laughter. "I have arrived! I am perfectly
secure now and safe. Let us hope all other inmates of Brockhurst are
equally so this stormy night. A thousand thanks, dear Aunt Katherine,
for your guidance, and a thousand apologies for bringing you so far.
Now let me trouble you no longer."
The Gun-Room Katherine found just as she had left it, save that Camp
stood on the tiger-skin before the fire, his fore-paws and his great,
grinning muzzle resting on the arm of Richard's chair. Camp whined a
little. Mechanically the young man raised his hand and pulled the dog's
long, drooping ears. His face was still dead white, and there were
lines under his eyes and about the corners of his mouth, as of one who
tries to subdue expression of physical pain. He looked straight at Lady
Calmady.
"Ah!" he said, "so you have come back! You observe I have changed
partners!"
And again he pulled the dog's ears, while it appeared to his listener
that his voice curiously echoed that other voice which had so lately
addressed and dismissed her, taking on inflections of mockery. But as
she nerved herself to answer, he continued, hastily:--
"I want nothing, dear mother, nothing in the world. Pray don't concern
yourself any more about me to-night. Haven't I Camp for company? Lamps?
Oh! I can put them out perfectly well myself. You were right, of
course, perfectly right, to come if you were anxious about me. But now
surely you are satisfied?"
Suddenly Richard bowed his head, putting both hands over his eyes.
"Only now, mother, if you love me, go," he said, with a great sob in
his voice. "For God's sake go, and leave me to myself."
But after sleepless hours, in the melancholy, blear dawn of the
November day, Katherine lying, face downwards, within the shelter of
the embroidered curtains of the state bed, made her submission at last
and prayed.
"I am helpless, oh, Father Almighty! I have neither wit nor
understanding, nor strength. Have mercy, lest my reason depart from me.
I have sinned, for years I have sinned, setting my will, my judgment,
my righteousness against Thine. Take me, forgive me, teach me. I bring
nothing. I ask everything. I am empty. Fill me with Thyself, even as
with water one fills an empty cup. Give me the courage of patience
instead of the courage of battle. Give me the courage of meekness in
place of the courage of pride."
BOOK IV
A SLIP BETWIXT CUP AND LIP
CHAPTER I
LADY LOUISA BARKING TRACES THE FINGER OF PROVIDENCE
The spirit of unrest, which had entered Brockhurst in the dim October
weather, along with certain guests, did not--Lady Calmady had foreseen
as much--leave with their leaving. It remained a constant quantity.
Further, it engendered events very far away from and, at first sight,
wholly at variance with those which had accompanied its advent.
For example, Lady Louisa Barking, passing through Lowndes Square one
bleak, March morning on her way from Albert Gate to do a little quiet
shopping in Sloane Street, observed that the Calmadys' house--situated
at the corner of the square and of ---- Street--was given over to a
small army of work-people. During Richard's minority it had been let
for a term of years to Sir Reginald Aldham, of Aldham Revel in
Midlandshire. Since Dickie's coming of age it had stood empty, pending
a migration of the Brockhurst establishment, which migration had, in
point of fact, never yet taken place. But now, as Lady Louisa, walking
with a firm and distinguished tread along the gray, wind-swept
pavements, remarked, the house was in process of redecoration, of
painting within and without. And, looking on these things, Lady
Louisa's soul received very sensible comfort. She was extremely
tenacious of purpose. And, in respect of one purpose at least, heaven
had not seen fit, during the last four or five months, to smile upon
her. Superstitious persons might have regarded this fact as a warning.
Lady Louisa, however, merely regarded it as an oversight. Now at last,
so it appeared to her, heaven had awakened to a consciousness of its
delinquencies, with the satisfactory result that her own commendable
patience touched on reasonable hope of reward. And this was the more
agreeable and comforting to her because the Quayle family affairs were
not, it must be owned, at their brightest and best just at present.
Clouds lowered on the family horizon. For some weeks she had felt the
situation called for effective action on her part. But then, how to act
most effectively she knew not. Now the needed opportunity stared her in
the face, along with those high ladders and scaffolding poles
surrounding the Calmady mansion. She decided, there and then, to take
the field; but to take it discreetly, to effect a turning movement, not
attempt a front attack.
So, on her return to Albert Gate, after the completion of her morning
shopping, she employed the half hour before luncheon in writing an
affectionate, sisterly letter to Ludovic Quayle. That accomplished,
young gentleman happened, as she was aware, to be staying at
Brockhurst. She asked his opinion--in confidence--on the present very
uncomfortable condition of the family fortunes, declaring how
implicitly she trusted his good sense and respected his judgment. Then,
passing adroitly to less burning questions, she ended thus--
"Pray let Lady Calmady know how really _delighted everybody_ is to hear
she and Sir Richard will be up this season. I do trust, as I am such a
near neighbour, that if there is _anything_ I can do for her, either
now, or later when they are settling, she will not hesitate to let me
know. It would be such a _sincere_ pleasure to me. Mr. Barking is too
busy with tiresome, parliamentary committees to be able to allow
himself more than a week at Easter. I should be _thankful_ for a longer
rest, for I am feeling dreadfully fagged. But you know how
conscientious he always is; and of course one _must_ pay a certain
price for the confidence the leaders of one's party repose in one. So
do tell Lady Calmady we are _quite sure_ to be back immediately after
Easter."
Reading which sentences Mr. Quayle permitted himself a fine smile on
more than one count.
"Louisa reminds me of the sweet little poem of 'Bruce and the Spider,'"
he said to himself. "She displays heroic persistence. Her methods are a
trifle crude though. To provoke statements by making them is but a
primitive form of diplomacy. Yet why be hard upon Louisa? Like my poor,
dear father, she, more often than not, means well."
It followed that some few days later, on his return to Whitney, Ludovic
indited a voluminous letter to his sister, in his very best style. "It
is rather a waste," he reflected regretfully. "She will miss the
neatest points. The happiest turns of phrase will be lost upon Louisa!"
To recoup himself for which subjective loss the young man amused
himself by giving a very alarmist account of certain matters, though he
was constrained to admit the pleasing fact that Sir Richard and Lady
Calmady really had it in contemplation to go up to town somewhere about
Easter.
And, truth to tell, the main subject of Mr. Quayle's letter could
hardly be otherwise than disquieting, for it was undeniable that Lord
Shotover's debts were causing both himself and others serious
embarrassment at this period. There was nothing new in this, that young
nobleman's indebtedness being a permanent factor in his family's
financial situation. This spring his indebtedness had passed from the
chronic to the acute stage, that was all. With the consequence that it
became evident Lord Shotover's debts must be paid, or his relations
must submit to the annoyance of seeing him pass through the Bankruptcy
Court. Which of these objectionable alternatives was least
objectionable Lord Fallowfeild still stood in doubt, when, in obedience
to the parental summons, the young man reached Whitney. Lord
Fallowfeild had whipped himself up into a laudable heat of righteous
indignation before the arrival of the prodigal. Yet he contrived to be
out when the dog-cart conveying the said prodigal, and Mr. Decies of
the 101st Lancers--a friend of Guy Quayle, home on leave from India,
whence he brought news of his fellow-subaltern--actually drove up to
the door. When, pushed thereto by an accusing conscience, he did at
last come in, Lord Fallowfeild easily persuaded himself that there
really was not time before dinner for the momentous conversation.
Moreover, being very full of the milk of human kindness, he found it
infinitely more agreeable to hear the praises of the absent son, Guy,
than to fall foul of the present son, Shotover. So that it was not till
quite late that night, by which time he was slightly sleepy, while his
anger had sensibly evaporated, that the interview did, actually, take
place.
"Now then, Shotover, march off to the place of execution," Ludovic
Quayle said sweetly, as he picked up his bedroom candlestick. "It was a
deep and subtle thought that of bringing down Decies. Only, query, did
you think of it, or was it just a bit of your usual luck?"
Lord Shotover smiled rather ruefully upon his prosperous, and, it may
be added, slightly parsimonious, younger brother.
"Well, I don't deny it did occur to me it might work," he admitted.
"And after all, you know, one mercy is there's no real vice about his
dear old lordship."
Lord Fallowfeild fidgeted about the library, his expression that of a
well-nourished and healthy, but rather fretful infant.
"Oh! ah!--well--so here you are, Shotover," he said. "Unpleasant
business this of yours--uncommonly disagreeable business for both of
us."
"Deuced unpleasant business," the younger man echoed heartily. He
closely resembled his father in looks, save that he was clean shaven
and of a lighter build. Both father and son had the same slight lisp in
speaking. "Deuced unpleasant," he repeated. "Nobody can feel that more
than I do."
"Can't they though," said Lord Fallowfeild, with a charmingly innocent
air of surprise. "There, sit down, Shotover, won't you? It's a painful
thing to do, but we've got to talk it over, I suppose."
"Well, of course, if you're kind enough to give me the time, you
know,--that's rather what I came down here for."
"So you did though," the elder man returned, brightening as though
making an illuminating discovery. Then, fearing he was forgetting his
part and becoming amiable too rapidly, he made a gallant effort to whip
up his somnolent indignation. "It's very distressing to me to put it so
plainly, but in my opinion it's a disgraceful business."
"Oh! I give you my word I know it," Lord Shotover replied, with most
disarming candour. His father affected, with difficulty, not to hear
the remark.
"It doesn't do for a man in your position to be owing money all over
the country. It brings the aristocracy into contempt with the
shop-keeping class. They're always on the lookout for the shortcomings
of their superiors, those people. And they do pay their debts, you
see."
"They've always got such a thundering lot of money," Lord Shotover put
in. "Don't know how they'd contrive to spend it unless they did pay
their debts."
"Oh! ah!--yes----" His father hesitated. It struck him Shotover was a
reasonable fellow, very reasonable, and he took the whole matter in a
very proper spirit. In short, it was not easy to blow up Shotover. Lord
Fallowfeild thrust his hands far down into his trouser pockets and
turned sideways in the great, leather-covered chair.
"I'm not narrow-minded or prejudiced," he began. "I always have kept on
civil terms with those sort of people and always will. Courtesy is an
obligation on the part of a gentleman and a Christian. I'd as soon be
rude to my tailor as eat with my knife. But a man must respect his own
rank or others won't respect it, especially in these nasty, radical,
leveling times. You must stand by your class. There's a vulgar proverb
about the bird that fouls its own nest, you know. Well, I never did
that. I've always stood by my own class. Helped my poor brother
Archibald--you can't remember him--weren't born at the time--to run
away with Lady Jane Bateman. Low, common fellow Bateman. I never liked
Bateman. She left Ludovic all that money, you know----"
"Wish to goodness she'd left it to me," murmured Lord Shotover.
"Eh?" inquired his father. Then he fell into a moralising vein. "Nasty,
disreputable things elopements. I never did approve of elopements.
Leave other men's wives alone, Shotover."
The younger man's mouth worked a little.
"The nuisance is sometimes they won't leave you alone."
Lord Fallowfeild gazed at him a moment, very genially.
"Oh! ah!--well--I suppose they won't," he said, and he chuckled.
"Anyhow I stood by your poor Uncle Archibald. He was my brother of
course, and she was a second cousin of your mother's, so I felt bound
to. And I saw them across the Channel and into the Paris train.
Dreadfully bad crossing that night I remember, no private cabins to be
had, and Lady Jane was dreadfully ill. Never take your wife to sea on
your honeymoon, Shotover. It's too great a risk. That business cost me
a lot of money one way and another, and let me in for a most painful
scene with Bateman afterwards. But, as I say, you're bound to stand by
your own class. That'll be my only reason for helping you, you
understand, Shotover, if I do help you."
"And I am sure I hope you will."--The young man rose and stood with his
back to the fire and his hands under his coat-tails. He stooped a
little, looking down pensively at the hearth-rug between his feet. His
clothes--not yet paid for, or likely to be--claimed admiration, so did
the length of his legs and the neatness of his narrow hips.
"I can only assure you I shall be most awfully grateful if you do help
me," he said quietly. "I don't pretend to deserve it--but that doesn't
lessen gratitude--rather the other way, don't you know. I shall never
forget it."
"Won't you though?"
And for the life of him Lord Fallowfeild could not help beaming upon
this handsome prodigal. "Uncommonly highbred looking fellow, Shotover,"
he said to himself. "Don't wonder women run after him. Uncommonly high
bred, and shows very nice feeling too."
And then the kindly and simple gentleman drew himself up with a mental
jerk, remembering that he was there to curse rather than to bless. He
fidgeted violently.
"Not that I have actually made up my mind to help you yet," he went on.
"I am very much inclined to cast you adrift. It distresses me to put it
to you so plainly, but you are disgracefully extravagant, you know,
Shotover."
"Oh! I know," the young man admitted.
"You're a selfish fellow."--Lord Fallowfeild became relentless. "Yes,
it's extremely painful to me to say it to you, but you are downright
selfish. And that, in the long run, comes uncommonly hard on your
sisters. Good girls, your sisters. Never given your mother or me any
trouble, your sisters. But money has to come from somewhere, and each
time I pay your debts I have to cut down your sisters' portions."
"Yes, I know, and that's what's made me so infernally unwilling to come
to you about my affairs," Lord Shotover said, in tones of perfectly
genuine regret.
"Is it though?" his father commented. "Good fellow at heart," he added
to himself. "Displays very proper feeling. Always was a good-hearted
fellow."
"I can only tell you I've been awfully wretched about it for the last
three months."
"Have you though?" said Lord Fallowfeild, with sympathy.
"I got just about as low as I well could. I felt I was nothing but a
nuisance and encumbrance. It was beastly to think of fleecing the
girls, don't you know. I came precious near cutting my throat--only
that seemed rather a dirty way of getting out of it all."
"So it is--poor boy--quite right. Nasty mean way of shirking your
responsibilities. Quite agree with you. I have never had any opinion of
a man who cut his throat. Never mention such a thing, Shotover." He
blew his nose resonantly.--"Never talk of such a thing," he repeated.
"And--poor boy--I--I'll pay your debts. Only I tell you this really is
the last time. There must be no misunderstanding about that. You must
reform, Shotover, if it's only on account of your sisters. I don't want
to take an unfair advantage of you in alluding to your sisters. Only
you must understand clearly this is the last time. You see it's
becoming too frequent. I don't want to press the case unduly against
you, but you recollect--I'm sure you do--I paid your debts in
fifty-eight, and again in sixty-two, or sixty-three, was it? Yes, it
must have been sixty-three, because that was the year my poor friend
Tom Henniker died. Good fellow Henniker--I missed Henniker. And they
wanted me to take over the hounds. Nice fellow in the hunting-field,
Henniker. Never saw him lose his temper but once, and that was when
Image rode over the hounds on the edge of Talepenny Wood."
"Rather coarse sort of brute, Image," put in Lord Shotover.
"And Henniker had such an excellent manner with the farmers, genial and
cheery, very cheery at times and yet without any loss of dignity. Great
test of a man's breeding that, being cheery without loss of dignity.
Now my poor friend, Henniker--oh! ah! yes, where was I though? Your
debts now, Shotover. Yes, it must have been sixty-three, because they
all wanted me to succeed him as master, and I had to tell them I could
not afford it, so it must have been just after I cleared you."
He looked at his erring son with the most engaging air of appeal and
remonstrance.
"Really it won't do, Shotover," he repeated. "You must reform. It's
becoming too frequent. You'd better travel for a time. That's the
proper thing for a man in your position to do when he's in low water.
Not scuttle, of course. I wouldn't on any account have you scuttle.
But, three weeks or a month hence when things are getting into shape,
just travel for a time. I'll arrange it all for you. Only never talk of
cutting your throat again. And you quite understand this is positively
the last time. I am very much in earnest, my dear boy, nothing will
move me. This settlement is final. And we'll just run up quietly to
town to-morrow and have a talk with my lawyers, Fox and Goteway. Very
civil and accommodating fellow, Goteway--he may be able to make some
suggestions. Very nice, confidential-mannered person, Goteway. Knows
how to hold his tongue and doesn't ask unnecessary questions--useful
man, Goteway----"
Which things coming to the knowledge of Lady Louisa Barking moved her
at once to wrath, and to deepened conviction that the moment for
decisive action had arrived. It appeared to her that her father had put
himself out of court. His weakness regarding his eldest son had
practically delivered him into her hand. She congratulated herself upon
the good which is thus beneficently permitted to spring out of evil.
Yet while recognising that a just Providence sometimes, at all events,
overrules human folly to the production of happy results, she was by no
means disposed to spare the mortal whose individual foolishness had
given the divine wisdom its opportunity. Therefore when, some few days
later, Lord Fallowfeild called on her, after a third or fourth
interview with Messrs. Fox and Goteway--beaming, expansive, from the
sense of a merciful action accomplished--she received him in a
distinctly repressive manner. The great, white and gold drawing-rooms
in Albert Gate were not more frigid or unbending than the bearing of
their mistress as she suffered her father's embrace. And that amiable
nobleman, notwithstanding his large frame and exalted social position,
felt himself shiver inwardly in the presence of his daughter, even as
he could remember shivering when, as a small schoolboy, he had been
summoned to the dread presence of the headmaster.
"Very good rooms these of yours, Louisa," he began hastily. "Always
have admired these rooms. Capital space for entertaining. Barking was
quite right to secure the house as soon as it was in the market. I told
him at the time he would never regret it."
Lady Louisa did not answer, but called after the retreating footman,
who had just brought in a stately and limited tea-tray, much silver and
little food:--"I am not at home, William."
Then, as she put small and accurate measures of tea into a massive
teapot, she added severely:--"What is all this I hear about Shotover,
papa?"
"Oh! ah! yes--poor Shotover. Came up to town together again to-day.
Good-hearted fellow, your brother Shotover, but thoughtless. However I
have had a most satisfactory talk with my men of business, Fox and
Goteway. I know Barking does not think much of Fox and Goteway. Wanted
me to go to his own lawyers, Hodges and Banquet. But if any one serves
you conscientiously you should not leave them. It's against my
principles to turn off those who serve me conscientiously. I told
Barking so at the time, I remember. It came out of the business about
your settlements, wasn't it--or the last time I paid Shotover's----" He
cleared his throat hurriedly. "I see the Calmadys' house is being done
up," he continued. "Nice young fellow, Calmady. But I never can help
feeling a certain awkwardness with him. Takes you up rather short in
conversation too sometimes. Terribly distressing thing his deformity
and all that, both for himself and Lady Calmady. Hope, perhaps, she
doesn't feel it as some women would though--tactful woman, Lady
Calmady, and very good woman of business. Still, never feel quite at my
ease with Lady Calmady. Can't help wondering how they'll do in London,
you know. Rather difficult thing his going about much with that----"
Lady Louisa held out a small teacup. Her high penetrating voice
asserted itself resolutely against her father's kindly, stumbling
chatter, as she asked:--
"Is it true you are not coming up from Whitney this season?"
"Oh!--tea--yes, thank you very much, my dear. No--well, I think
possibly we may not come up this year. Goteway believes he has heard of
a very eligible tenant for the Belgrave Square house, very eligible.
And so, nothing actually decided yet, but I think very possibly we may
not come up."
He spoke apologetically, regarding his daughter, over the small teacup,
with an expression of entreaty. Every feature of his handsome, innocent
countenance begged her not to deal harshly with him. But Lady Louisa
remained obdurate.
"Shotover's conduct is becoming a positive scandal," she said.
"Not conduct, my dear--no, not conduct, only money," protested Lord
Fallowfeild.
"If money is not conduct I really don't know what is," retorted his
daughter. "I do not pretend to go in for such fine distinctions. In any
case Mr. Barking heard the most shocking rumours at his club the other
day."
"Did he though?" ejaculated Lord Fallowfeild.
"He was too considerate to tell me anything very definite, but he felt
that, going out and seeing everybody as of course I have to, it was
only right I should have some hint of what was being said. Every one is
talking about Shotover. You can imagine how perfectly intolerable it is
for me to feel that my brother's debts are being canvassed in this sort
of way."
"I am very sorry there should be any gossip," Lord Fallowfeild said
humbly. "Nasty thing gossip--lies, too, mostly, all of it. Nasty, low,
unprofitable thing gossip."
"And, of course, your all not coming up will give colour to it."
"Will it though? I never thought of that. You always see straight
through things, Louisa. You have by far the best head in the family,
except Ludovic--uncommonly clever fellow Ludovic. Wonder if I had
better talk it all over with Ludovic. If you and he agree in thinking
our not coming up will make more talk, why, if only on Shotover's
account, I----"
But this was not in the least the turn which his daughter desired the
conversation to take.
"Pray remember you have other children besides Shotover, papa!" she
said hastily. "And for every one's sake run no further risk of
impoverishing yourself. It is obvious that you must save where you can.
If there is the chance of a good let for the Belgrave Square house, it
would be madness to refuse it. And, after all, you do not really care
about London. If there are any important debates in the Lords, you can
always come up for a night or so. It does not matter about you."
"Oh! doesn't it though?" Lord Fallowfeild put in quite humbly and
gently.
"And mama would always rather stay on at Whitney. Only it must not
appear as if we were the least uncomfortable at meeting people. I shall
make it a point to go everywhere. I shall be dreadfully fagged, of
course, but I feel it a duty to all of you to do so. And I should like
the girls to go out too. People must not suppose they have no gowns to
their backs. Maggie and Emily have had several seasons. I am less
worried about them. But Connie must be seen. She is looking extremely
pretty."
"Isn't she though?" Lord Fallowfeild chimed in, brightening. The
picture of those reportedly gownless backs had depressed him
abominably.
"Yes, and she must have every advantage. I have quite decided that. She
must come up to me at once. I shall write to mama and point out to her
how necessary it is that one of the girls, at least, should be very
much _en evidence_ this year. And I am most anxious it should be
Connie. As I undertake all the fatigue and responsibility I feel I have
a right of choice. I will see that she is properly dressed. I undertake
everything. Now, papa, if you are going down by the 6:10 train you
ought to start. Will you have a hansom?"
Then, as she shook hands with him, and presented an unresponsive cheek
to the paternal lips, Lady Louisa clinched the matter.
"I may consider it quite settled, then, about Constance?" she said. "I
mentioned it to Mr. Barking yesterday, and we agreed it ought to be
done even if it entailed a little inconvenience and expense. It is not
right to be indifferent to appearances. The other two girls can come up
for a little while later. Alicia must help. Of course there is not much
room in that wretched, little Chelsea house of hers, but George
Winterbotham can turn out of his dressing-room. Alicia must exert
herself for once. And, papa, Connie need not bring a maid. Those
country girls from Whitney don't always fit in quite well with the
upper servants, and yet there is a difficulty about keeping them out of
the housekeeper's room. I will provide a maid for her. I'll write to
mama about everything to-morrow. And, papa, I do beg you will
discourage Shotover from coming here, for really I would much rather
not see him at present. Good-bye. Pray start at once. You have barely
time to get to Waterloo."
And so Lord Fallowfeild started, a little flustered, a little
crestfallen, on his homeward journey.
"Able woman, Louisa," he said to himself. "Uncommonly clear-sighted
woman, Louisa. But a trifle hard. Wonder if Barking ever feels that,
now? Not very sensitive man, Barking, though. Suppose that hardness in
Louisa comes of her having no children. Always plenty of children in
our family--except my poor brother Archibald and Lady Jane, they had no
children. Yet somebody told me she'd had one by Bateman, which died.
Never understood about that. Capital thing for Ludovic she never did
have any by Archibald. But it's always curious to me Louisa should have
no children. Shouldn't have expected that somehow of Barking and
Louisa. Sets her more free, of course, in regard to her sisters. Very
thoughtful for her sisters, Louisa. I suppose she must have Connie.
Nuisance all this gossip about Shotover. Pretty child, Connie--best
looking of the lot. People say she's like me. Wonderfully pretty child,
Connie. That young fellow Decies thinks so too, or I'm very much
mistaken. Very much attracted by Connie. Fine young fellow,
Decies--comfort to hear of Guy from him. Suppose she must go up to
Louisa. Gentlemanlike fellow, Decies. I shouldn't care to part with
Connie----"
And then, his reflections becoming increasingly interjectional as the
train trundled away southwestward, Lord Fallowfeild leaned back in the
corner of the railway carriage and fell very fast asleep.
CHAPTER II
TELLING HOW VANITY FAIR MADE ACQUAINTANCE WITH RICHARD CALMADY
There was no refusing belief to the fact. The old, cloistered life at
Brockhurst, for good or evil, was broken up. Katherine Calmady
recognised that another stage had been reached on the relentless
journey, that new prospects opened, new horizons invited her anxious
gaze. She recognised also that all which had been was dead, according
to its existing form, and should receive burial, silent, somewhat
sorrowful, yet not without hope of eventual resurrection in regard to
the nobler part of it. The fair coloured petals of the flower fall away
from the maturing fruit, the fruit rots to set free the seed. Yet the
vital principle remains, life lives on, though the material clothing of
it change. And, therefore, Katherine--an upspringing of patience and
chastened fortitude within her, the result of her reconciliation to the
Divine Light and resignation of herself to its indwelling--set herself,
not to arrest the falling of the flower, but to help the ripening of
the seed. If the old garments were out of date, too straight and narrow
for her child's growth, then let others be found him. She did not wait
to have him ask, she offered, and that without hint of reproach or of
unwillingness.
Yet so to offer cost her not a little. For it was by no means easy to
sink her natural pride, and go forth smiling with this son of hers, at
once beautiful and hideous in person, for all the world to see.
Something of personal heroism is demanded of whoso prescribes heroic
remedies, if those remedies are to succeed. At night, alone in the
darkness, Katherine, suddenly awaking, would be haunted by perception
of the curious glances, and curious comments, which must of necessity
attend Richard through all the brilliant pageant of the London season.
How would he bear it? And then--self-distrust laying fearful hands upon
her--how would she bear it, too? Would her late acquired serenity of
soul depart, her faith in the gracious purposes of Almighty God suffer
eclipse? Would she fall back into her former condition of black anger
and revolt? She prayed not. So long as these evils did not descend upon
her, she could bear the rest well enough. For, could she but keep her
faith, Katherine was beginning to regard all other suffering which
might be in store for her as a negligible quantity. With her healthy
body, and wholesome memories of a great and perfect human love, it was
almost impossible that she should adopt a morbid and self-torturing
attitude. Yet any religious ideal, worth the name, will always have in
it an ascetic element. And that element was so far present with her
that personal suffering had come to bear a not wholly unlovely aspect.
She had ceased to gird against it. So long as Richard was amused and
fairly content, so long as the evil which had been abroad in Brockhurst
House, that stormy autumn night, could be frustrated, and the
estrangement between herself and Richard,--unacknowledged, yet sensibly
present,--which that evil had begotten, might be lessened she cared
little what sacrifices she made, what fatigue, exertion, even pain, she
might be called on to endure. An enthusiasm of self-surrender animated
her.
During the last five months, slowly and with stumbling feet; yet very
surely, she had carried her life and the burden of it up to a higher
plane. And, from that more elevated standpoint, she saw both past
events and existing relationships in perspective, according to their
just and permanent values. Only one object, one person, refused to
range itself, and stood out from the otherwise calm, if pensive,
landscape as a threatening danger, a monument of things wicked and
fearful. Katherine tried to turn her eyes from that object, for it
provoked in her a great hatred, a burning indignation, sadly at
variance with the saintly ideals which had so captivated her mind and
heart. Katherine remained--always would remain, happily for
others--very much a woman. And, as woman and mother, she could not but
hate that other woman who had, as she feared, come very near seducing
her son.
Therefore very various causes combined to reconcile her to the coming
adventure. Indeed she set forth on it with so cheerful a countenance,
that Richard, while charmed, was also a trifle surprised by the
alacrity with which she embraced it. He regarded her somewhat
critically, questioning whether his mother was of a more worldly and
light-minded disposition than he had heretofore supposed.
There had been some talk of Julius March joining the contemplated
exodus. But he had declined, smiling rather sadly.
"No, no," he said. "To go would be a mistake and a weakly selfish one
on my part. I have long ceased to be a man of cities, and am best
employed, and indeed am most at my ease, herding my few sheep here in
the wilderness. I am part and parcel of just all that which we have
agreed it is wise you shall leave behind you for a while. My presence
would lessen the thoroughness of the change of scene and of thought.
You take up a way of life which was familiar to you years ago. The
habits of it will soon come back. I have never known them. I should be
a hindrance, rather than a help. No, I will wait and keep the lamps
burning before the altar, and the fire burning upon the hearth
until--and, please God, it may be in peace, crowned with good
fortune--you both come back."
But the adventure, fairly embarked on, displayed quite other
characteristics--as is the way with such skittish folk--than Katherine
had anticipated. Against possibilities of mortification, against
possibilities of covert laughter and the pointing fingers of the crowd,
she had steeled herself. But it had not occurred to her that both
Richard's trial and her own might take the form of an exuberant and
slightly vulgar popularity, and that, far from being shoved aside into
the gutter, the young man might be hoisted, with general acclamation,
on to the very throne of Vanity Fair.
The Brockhurst establishment moved up to town at the beginning of
April. And by the end of the month, Sir Richard Calmady, his wealth,
his house, his horses, his dinners, his mother's gracious beauty, and a
certain mystery which surrounded him, came to be in every one's mouth.
A new star had arisen in the social firmament, and all and sundry
gathered to observe the reported brightness of its shining. Rich,
young, good-looking, well-connected, and strangely unfortunate, here
indeed was a novel and telling attraction among the somewhat fly-blown
shows of Vanity Fair! Many-tongued rumour was busy with Dickie's name,
his possessions and personality. The legend of the man--a thing often
so very other than the man himself--grew, Jonah's gourd-like, in wild
luxuriance. All those many persons who had known Lady Calmady before
her retirement from the world, hastened to renew acquaintance with her.
While a larger, and it may be added less distinguished, section of
society, greedy of intimacy with whoso, or whatsoever, might represent
the fashion of the hour, crowded upon their heels. Invitations showered
down thick as snowflakes in January. To _get_ Sir Richard and Lady
Calmady was to secure the success of your entertainment, whatever that
entertainment might be--to secure it the more certainly because the two
persons in question exercised a rather severe process of selection, and
were by no means to be had for the asking.
All these things Ludovic Quayle noted, in a spirit which he flattered
himself was cynical, but which was, in point of fact, rather anxiously
affectionate. It had occurred to him that this sudden and unlooked-for
popularity might turn Richard's head a little, and develop in him a
morbid self-love, that _vanite de monstre_ not uncommon to persons
disgraced by nature. He had feared Richard might begin to plume
himself--as is the way of such persons--less upon the charming
qualities and gifts which he possessed in common with many other
charming persons, than upon those deplorable peculiarities which
differentiated him from them. And it was with a sincerity of relief, of
which he felt a trifle ashamed, that, as time went on, Mr. Quayle found
himself unable to trace any such tendency, that he observed his
friend's wholesome pride and carefulness to avoid all exposure of his
deformity. Richard would drive anywhere, and to any festivity, where
driving was possible. He would go to the theatre and opera. He would
dine at a few houses, and entertain largely at his own house. But he
would not put foot to ground in the presence of the many women who
courted him, or in that of the many men who treated him with rather
embarrassed kindness and courtesy to his face and spoke of him with
pitying reserve behind his back.
Other persons, besides Mr. Quayle, watched Richard Calmady's social
successes with interest. Among them was Honoria St. Quentin. That young
lady had been spending some weeks with Sir Reginald and Lady Aldham in
Midlandshire, and had now accompanied them up to town. Lady Aldham's
health was indifferent, confining her often for days together to the
sofa and a darkened room. Her husband, meanwhile, possessed a craving
for agreeable feminine society, liable to be gratified in a somewhat
errant manner abroad, unless gratified in a discreet manner at home. So
Honoria had taken over the duty, for friendship's sake, of keeping the
well-favoured, genial, middle-aged gentleman innocently amused. To
Honoria, at this period, no experience came amiss. For the past three
years, since the death of her godmother, Lady Tobermory, and her
resultant access of fortune, she had wandered from place to place,
seeing life, now in stately English country houses, now among the
overtaxed, under-fed women-workers of Whitechapel and Soho, now in some
obscure Italian village among the folds of the purple Apennines. Now
she would patronise a middle-class British lodging-house, along with
some girl friend richer in talent than in pence, in some seaside town.
Now she would fancy the stringent etiquette of a British embassy at
foreign court and capital. Honoria was nothing if not various. But,
amid all mutations of occupation and of place, her fearlessness, her
lazy grace, her serious soul, her gallant bearing, her loyalty to the
oppressed, remained the same. "Chaste and fair" as Artemis,
experimental as the Comte de St. Simon himself, Honoria roamed the
world--fascinating yet never quite fascinated, enthusiastic yet
evasive, seeking earnestly to live yet too self-centred as yet to be
able to recognise in what, after all, consists the heart of living.
She and Mr. Quayle had met at Aldham Revel during the past winter. She
attracted, while slightly confusing, that accomplished young
gentleman--confusing his judgment, well understood, since Mr. Quayle
himself was incapable of confusion. Her views of men and things struck
him as distinctly original. Her attitude of mind appeared
unconventional, yet deeply rooted prejudices declared themselves where
he would least have anticipated their existence. And so it became a
favourite pastime of Mr. Quayle's to present to her cases of
conscience, of conduct, of manners or morals--usually those of a common
acquaintance--for discussion, that he might observe her verdict. He
imagined this a scientific, psychologic exercise. He desired, so he
supposed, to gratify his own superior, masculine intelligence, by
noting the aberrations and arriving at the rationale of her thought.
From which it may be suspected that even Ludovic Quayle had his hours
of innocent self-deception. Be that, however, as it may, certain it is
that in pursuit of this pastime he one day presented to her the
peculiar case of Richard Calmady for discussion, and that, not without
momentous, though indirect, result.
It happened thus. One noon in May, Ludovic had the happiness of finding
himself seated beside Miss St. Quentin in the Park, watching the
endless string of passing carriages and the brilliant crowd on foot.
Sir Reginald Aldham had left his green chair--placed on the far side of
the young lady's--and leaned on the railings talking to some
acquaintance.
"A gay maturity," Ludovic remarked with his air of patronage,
indicating the elder gentleman's shapely back. "The term 'old boy' has,
alas, declined upon the vernacular, and been put to base uses of
jocosity, so it is a forbidden one. Else, in the present instance, how
applicable, how descriptive a term! Should we, I wonder, give thanks
for it, Miss St. Quentin, that the men of my generation will mature
according to a quite other pattern?"
"Will not ripen, but sour?" Honoria asked maliciously. Her companion's
invincible self-complacency frequently amused her. Then she
added:--"But, you know, I'm very fond of him. It isn't altogether easy
to keep straight as a young boy, is it? Depend upon it, it is ten times
more difficult to keep straight as an old one. For a man of that
temperament it can't be very plain sailing between fifty and sixty."
Mr. Quayle looked at her in gentle inquiry, his long neck directed
forward, his chin slightly raised.
"Sailing? The yacht is?"--
"The yacht is laid up at Cowes. And you understand perfectly well what
I mean," Honoria replied, somewhat loftily. Her delicate face
straightened with an expression of sensitive pride. But her anger was
short-lived. She speedily forgave him. The sunshine and fresh air, the
radiant green of the young leaves, the rather superb spectacle of
wealth, vigour, beauty, presented to her by the brilliant London world
in the brilliant, summer noon was exhilarating, tending to lightness of
heart. There was poetry of an opulent, resonant sort in the brave show.
Just then a company of Life Guards clattered by, in splendour of white
and scarlet and shining helmets. The rattle of accoutrements, and thud
of the hoofs of their trotting horses, detached itself arrestingly from
the surrounding murmur of many voices and ceaseless roar of the traffic
at Hyde Park Corner. A light came into Honoria's eyes. It was good to
be alive on such a day! Moreover, in her own purely platonic fashion,
she really entertained a very great liking for the young man seated at
her side.
"You have missed your vocation," she said, while her eyes narrowed and
her upper lip shortened into a delightful smile. "You were born to be a
schoolmaster, a veritable pedagogue and terror of illiterate youth. You
love to correct. And my rather sketchy English gives you an opportunity
of which I observe you are by no means slow to take advantage. You care
infinitely more for the manner of saying, than for the thing said.
Whereas I"--she broke off abruptly, and her face straightened, became
serious, almost severe, again. "Do you see who Sir Reginald is speaking
to?" she added. "There are the Calmadys."
A break had come in the loitering procession of correctly clothed men
and gaily clothed women, of tall hats and many coloured parasols, and
in the space thus afforded, the Brockhurst mail-phaeton became apparent
drawn up against the railings. The horses, a noticeably fine and
well-matched pair of browns, were restless, notwithstanding the groom
at their heads. Foam whitened the rings of their bits and falling
flakes of it dabbled their chests. Lady Calmady leaned sideways over
the leather folds of the hood, answering some inquiry of Sir Reginald,
who, hat in hand, looked up at her. She wore a close-fitting, gray,
velvet coat, which revealed the proportions of her full, but still
youthful figure. The air and sunshine had given her an unusual
brightness of complexion, so that in face as well as in figure, youth
still, in a sensible measure, claimed her. She turned her head,
appealing, as it seemed, to Richard, and the nimble breeze playing
caressingly with the soft white laces and gray plumes of her bonnet
added thereby somehow to the effect of glad and gracious content
pervading her aspect. Richard looked round and down at her, half
laughing. Unquestionably he was victoriously handsome, seen thus,
uplifted above the throng, handling his fine horses, all trace of
bodily disfigurement concealed, a touch of old-world courtliness and
tender respect in his manner as he addressed his mother.
Ludovic Quayle watched the little scene with close attention. Then, as
the ranks of the smart procession closed up again, hiding the carriage
and its occupants from sight, he leaned back with a movement of quiet
satisfaction and turned to his companion. Miss St. Quentin sat round in
her chair, presenting her long, slender, dust-coloured lace-and-silk-clad
person in profile to the passers-by, and so tilting her parasol as to
defy recognition. The expression of her pale face and singular eyes was
far from encouraging.
"Indeed--and why?" Ludovic permitted himself to remark, in tones of
polite inquiry. "I had been led to believe that you and Lady Calmady
were on terms of rather warm friendship."
"We are," Honoria answered, "that is, at Brockhurst."
"Forgive my indiscretion--but why not in London?"
The young lady looked full at him.
"Mr. Quayle," she asked, "is it true that you are responsible for this
new departure of theirs, for their coming up, I mean?"
"Responsible? You do me too great an honour. Who am I that I should
direct the action of my brother man? But Lady Calmady is good enough to
trust me a little, and I own that I advocated a modification of the
existing _regime_."--Ludovic crossed his long legs and fell to nursing
one knee. "It is not breach of confidence to tell you--since you know
the fact already--that fate decreed an alien element should obtrude
itself into the situation at Brockhurst last autumn. I need name no
names, I think?"
Honoria's head was raised. She regarded him steadfastly, but made no
sign.
"Ah! I need not name names," he repeated; "I thought not. Well, after
the alien element removed itself--the two facts may have no
connection--Lady Calmady very certainly never implied that they
had--but, as I remarked, after the alien element removed itself, it was
observable that our poor, dear Dickie Calmady became a trifle
difficult, a trifle distrait, in plain English most remarkably grumpy,
and far from delightful to live with. And his mother----"
"It's too bad, altogether too bad!" broke out Honoria hotly.
"Too bad of whom?" Mr. Quayle asked, with the utmost suavity. "Of the
nameless, obtrusive, alien element, or of poor, dear Dick?"
The young lady closed her parasol slowly, and turning, faced the
sauntering crowd again.
"Of Sir Richard Calmady, of course," she said.
Her companion did not answer immediately. His eyes pursued a receding
carriage far down the string, amid the gaily shifting sunshine and
shadow, and the fluttering lace and gray feathers of a woman's bonnet.
When he spoke, at last, it was with an unusual trace of feeling.
"After all, you know, there are a good many excuses for Richard
Calmady."
"If it comes to that there are a good many excuses for Helen de
Vallorbes," Honoria put in quickly.
"For? For?" the young man repeated, relaxing into the blandest of
smiles. "Yes, thanks--I see I was right. It was unnecessary to name
names.--Oh! undoubtedly, innumerable excuses, and of the most valid
description, were they needed--were they not swallowed up in the
single, self-evident excuse that the lady you mention is a supremely
clever and captivating person."
"You think so?" said Honoria.
"Think so? Show me the man so indifferent to his reputation for taste
that he could venture to think otherwise!"
"Still she should have left him alone."--Honoria's indolent, reflective
speech took on a peculiar intonation, and she pressed her long-fingered
hands together, as though controlling a shudder. "I--I'm ashamed to
confess it, I do not like him. But, as I told you, just on that
account----"
"Pardon me, on what account?"
Miss St. Quentin was quick to resent impertinence, and now momentarily
anger struggled with her natural sincerity. But the latter conquered.
Again she forgave Mr. Quayle. But a dull flush spread itself over her
pale skin, and he perceived that she was distinctly moved. This piqued
his curiosity.
"I know I'm awfully foolish about some things," she said. "I can't bear
to speak of them. I dread seeing them. The sight of them takes the
warmth out of the sunshine."
Again Ludovic fell to nursing his knee.--What an amazing invention is
the feminine mind! What endless entertainment is derivable from
striving to follow its tergiversations!
"And you saw that which takes the warmth out of the sunshine just now?"
he said. "Ah! well--alas, for Dickie Calmady!"
"Still I can't bear any one not to play fair. You should only hit a man
your own size. I told Helen de Vallorbes so. I'm very, very fond of
her, but she ought to have spared him."--She paused a moment. "All the
same if I had not promised Lady Aldham to stay on--as she's so poorly I
should have gone out of town when I found the Calmadys had come up."
"Oh! it goes as far as that, does it?" Ludovic murmured.
"I don't like to see them with all these people. The extent to which he
is petted and fooled becomes rather horrible."
"Are you not slightly--I ask it with all due deference and
humility--just slightly merciless?"
"No, no," the girl answered earnestly. "I don't think I'm that. The
women who run after him, and flatter him so outrageously, are really
more merciless than I am. I do not pretend to like him--I can't like
him, somehow. But I'm growing most tremendously sorry for him. And
still more sorry for his mother. She was very grand--a person
altogether satisfying to one's imagination and sense of fitness, at
home, with that noble house and park and racing stable for setting. But
here, she is shorn of her glory somehow."
The girl rose to her feet with lazy grace.
"She is cheapened. And that's a pity. There are more than enough pretty
cheap people among us already.--I must go. There's Sir Reginald looking
for me.--If I could be sure Lady Calmady hated it all I should be more
reconciled."
"Possibly she does hate it all, only that it presents itself as the
least of two evils."
"There is a touch of dancing dogs about it, and that distresses me,"
Miss St. Quentin continued. "It is Lady Calmady's _role_ to be apart,
separate from and superior to the rest."
"The thing's being done as well as it can be," Mr. Quayle put in
mildly.
"It shouldn't be done at all," the girl declared.--"Here I am, Sir
Reginald. You want to go on? I'm quite ready."
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH KATHERINE TRIES TO NAIL UP THE WEATHERGLASS TO SET FAIR
It is to be feared that intimate acquaintance with Lady Calmady's
present attitude of mind would not have proved altogether satisfactory
to that ardent idealist Honoria St. Quentin. For, unquestionably, as
the busy weeks of the London season went forward, Katherine grew
increasingly far from "hating it all." At first she had found the
varied interests and persons presented to her, the rapid interchange of
thought, the constant movement of society, slightly bewildering. But,
as Julius March had foretold, old habits reasserted themselves. The
great world, and the ways of it, had been familiar to her in her youth.
She soon found herself walking in its ways again with ease, and
speaking its language with fluency. And this, though in itself of but
small moment to her, procured her, indirectly, a happiness as greatly
desired as it had been little anticipated.
For to Richard the great world was, as yet, something of an
undiscovered country. Going forth into it he felt shy and diffident,
though a lively curiosity possessed him. The gentler and more modest
elements of his nature came into play. He was sensible of his own
inexperience, and turned with instinctive trust and tender respect to
her in whom experience was not lacking. He had never, so he told
himself, quite understood how fine a lady his mother was, how
conspicuous was her charm and distinguished her intelligence. And he
clung to her, grown man though he was, even as a child, entering a
bright room full of guests, clings to its mother's hand, finding
therein much comfort of encouragement and support. He desired she
should share all his interests, reckoning nothing worth the doing in
which she had not a part. He consulted her before each undertaking,
talked and laughed over it with her in private afterwards, thereby
unconsciously securing to her halcyon days, a honeymoon of the heart of
infinite sweetness, so that she, on her part, thanked God and took
courage.
And, indeed, it might very well appear to Katherine that her heroic
remedy was on the road to work an effectual cure. The terror of lawless
passion and of evil, provoked by that fair woman clothed as with the
sea waves, crowned and shod with gold, whom she had withstood so
manfully in spirit in the wild autumn night, departed from her. She
began to fear no more. For surely her son was wholly given back to
her--his heart still free, his life still innocent? And, not only did
this terror depart, but her anguish at his deformity was strangely
lessened, the pain of it lulled as by the action of an anodyne. For,
witnessing the young man's popularity, seeing him so universally
courted and welcomed, observing his manifest power of attraction, she
began to ask herself whether she had not exaggerated the misfortune of
that same deformity and the impediment that it offered to his career
and chances of personal happiness. She had been morbid, hypersensitive.
The world evidently saw in his disfigurement no such horror and
hopeless bar to success as she had seen. It was therefore a dear world,
a world rich in consolation and promise. It smiled upon Richard, and so
she smiled upon it, gratefully, trustfully, finding in the plenitude of
her thankfulness no wares save honest ones set out for sale in the
booths of Vanity Fair. A large hopefulness arose in her. She began to
form projects calculated, as she believed, to perpetuate the gladness
of the present.
Among other tender customs of Richard's boyhood into which Katherine,
at this happy period, drifted back was that of going, now and again, to
his room at night, and gossiping with him, for a merry, yet somewhat
pathetic half-hour, before herself retiring to rest. It fell out that,
towards the middle of June, there had been a dinner party at the
Barkings on a scale of magnificence unusual even in that opulent house.
It was not the second, or even the third, time Richard and his mother
had dined in Albert Gate. For Lady Louisa had proved the most
assiduously attentive of neighbours. Little Lady Constance Quayle was
with her. The young girl had brightened notably of late. Her prettiness
was enhanced by a timid and appealing playfulness. She had been seized,
moreover, with one of those innocent and absorbing devotions towards
Lady Calmady, that young girls often entertain towards an elder woman,
following her about with a sort of dog-like fidelity, and watching her
with eyes full of wistful admiration. On the present occasion the
guests at the Barking dinner had been politicians of distinction--members
of the then existing government. A contingent of foreign diplomatists
from the various embassies had been present, together with various
notably smart women. Later there had been a reception, largely
attended, and music, the finest that Europe could produce and money
could buy.
"Louisa climbs giddy heights," Mr. Quayle had said to himself, with an
attempt at irony. But, in point of fact, he was far from displeased,
for it appeared to him the house of Barking showed to uncommon
advantage to-night. "Louisa has no staying power in conversation, and
her voice is too loud, but in snippets she is rather impressive," he
added. "And, oh! how very diligent is Louisa!"
Driving home, Richard kept silence until just as the brougham drew up,
then he said abruptly:--
"Tired? No--that's right. Then come and sit with me. I want to talk. I
haven't an ounce of sleep in me somehow to-night."
It was hot, and when, some three-quarters of an hour later, Katherine
entered the big bedroom on the ground floor, the upper sashes of the
window were drawn low behind the blinds, letting in the muffled roar of
the great city as an undertone to the intermittent sound of footsteps,
or the occasional passing of a belated carriage or cab. It formed an
undertone, also, to Richard's memory of the music to which he had
lately listened, and the delight of which was still in his ears and
pulsing in his blood, making his blue eyes bright and dark and curving
his handsome lips into a very eloquent smile as he lay back against the
piled-up pillows of the bed.
"Good heavens, how divinely Morabita sang," he said, looking up at his
mother as she stood looking down on him, "better even than in _Faust_
last night! I want to hear her again just as often as I can. Her voice
carries one right away, out of oneself, into regions of pure and
unmitigated romance. All things are possible for the moment. One
becomes as the gods, omnipotent. We've got the box as usual on
Saturday, mother, haven't we? Do you remember if she sings?"
Katherine replied that the great soprano did sing.
"I'm glad," Richard said; "and yet I don't know that it's particularly
wholesome to hear her. After being as the gods, one descends with
rather too much of a run to the level of the ordinary mortal."--He
turned on his elbow restlessly, and the movement altered the lie of the
bedclothes, thereby disclosing the unsightly disproportion of his
person through the light blanket and sheet. "And if one's own level
happens unfortunately to be below that of even the ordinary
mortal--well--well--don't you know----"
"My dear!" Katherine put in softly.
Richard lay straight on his back again, and held out his hand to her.
"Sit down, do," he said. "Turn the big chair round so that I may see
you. I like you in that frilly, white dressing-gown thing. Don't be
afraid, I'm not going to be a brute and grumble. You're much too good
to me, and I know I am disgustingly selfish at times. I was this
winter, but----"
"The past is past," Katherine put in again very softly.
"Yes, please God, it is," he said,--"in some ways."--He paused, and
then spoke as though with an effort returning from some far distance of
thought:--"Yes, I like you in that white, frilly thing. But I liked
that new, black gown of yours to-night too. You looked glorious, do you
mind my saying so? And no woman walks as well as you do. I compared, I
watched. There's nothing more beautiful than seeing a woman walk really
well--or a man either, for that matter."
Then he caught at her hand again, laughing a little.--"No, I'm not
going to grumble," he said. "Upon my word, mother, I swear I'm not.
Here let's talk about your gowns. I should like to know, shall you
never wear anything but gray or black?"
"Never, not even to please you, Dickie."
"Ah, that's so delicious with you!" he exclaimed. "Every now and then
you bring one up short, one knocks one's head against a stone wall!
There is an indomitable strain in you. I only hope you've transmitted
it to me. I'm afraid I need stiffening.--I beg your pardon," he added
quickly and courteously, "it strikes me I am becoming slightly
impertinent. But that woman's voice has turned my brain and loosed the
string of my tongue so that I speak words of unwisdom. You enjoyed her
singing too, though, didn't you? I thought so, catching sight of you
while it was going on, attended by the faithful Ludovic and little Lady
Constance. It's quite touching to see how she worships you. And wasn't
Miss St. Quentin with you too? Yes, I thought so. I can't quite make up
my mind about Honoria St. Quentin. Sometimes she strikes me as one of
the loveliest women here--and she can walk, if you like, it's a joy to
see her. And then again, she seems to me altogether too long, and
off-hand somehow, and boyish! And then, too,"--Richard moved his head
against the white pillows, and stared up at the window, where the blind
sucked, with small creaking noises, against the top edge of the open
sash,--"she fights shy of me, and personal feeling militates against
admiration, you know. I am sorry, for I rather want to talk to her
about--oh, well, a whole lot of things. But she avoids me. I never get
the opportunity."
"My darling, don't you think that is partly imagination?"
"Perhaps it is," he answered. "I dare say I do indulge in unnecessary
fancies about people's manner and so on. I can't very well be off it,
you know. And every one is really very kind to me. Morabita was
perfectly charming when I thanked her in very floundering Italian. It's
a pity she's so fat. But, never mind, the fat vanishes, to all intents
and purposes, when she begins to sing. And old Barking is as kind as he
can be. I feel awfully obliged to him, though his ministrations
to-night amounted to being slightly embarrassing. He brought me cabinet
ministers and under-secretaries, and gorgeous Germans and Turks, in
batches--and even a real live Chinaman with a pig-tail. Mother, do you
remember the cabinets at home in the Long Gallery? I used to dream
about them. And that Chinaman gave me the queerest feeling to-night. It
was idiotic, but--did I ever tell you--when I was a little chap, I was
always dreaming about war or something, from which I couldn't get away.
Others could, but for me--from circumstances, don't you know--there was
no possibility of scuttling. And the little Chinese figures on the
black, lacquer cabinets were mixed up with it. As I say, it gripped me
to-night in the midst of all those people and---- Oh yes! old Barking
is very kind," he went on, with a change of tone. "Only I wish Lady
Louisa would warn him he need not trouble himself to be amusing. He
came and sat by me, towards the end of the evening, and told me the
most inane stories in that inflated manner of his. Verily, they were
ancient as the hills, and a weariness to the spirit. But that
good-looking, young fellow, Decies, swallowed them all down with the
devoutest attention and laughed aloud in all that he conceived to be
the right places."
A pause came in Richard's flow of words. He moved again restlessly and
clasped his hands under his head. Katherine had seldom seen him thus
excited and feverish. A sense of alarm grew on her, lest her heroic
remedy was, after all, not working a wholly satisfactory cure. For
there was a violence in his utterance, and in his face, a certain
recklessness of speech and of demeanour, very agitating to her.
"Oh, every one's kind, awfully kind," he repeated, looking away at the
sucking blind again, "and I'm awfully grateful to them, but---- Oh! I
tell you, that woman's voice has got me and made me drunk, made me mad
drunk. I almost wish I had never heard her. I think I won't go to the
opera again. Emotion that finds no outlet in action only demoralises
one and breaks up one's philosophy, and she makes me know all that
might be, and is not, and never, never can be. Good God! what a
glorious, what an amazing, business I could have made of life if----"
He slipped a little on the pillows, had to unclasp his hands hastily
and press them down on either side him, to keep his body fairly upright
in the bed. His features contracted with a spasm of anger. "If I had
only had the average chance," he added harshly. "If I had only started
with the normal equipment."
And, as she listened, the old anguish, lately lulled to rest in
Katherine's heart, arose and cried aloud. But she sought resolutely to
stifle its crying, strong in faith and hope.
"I know, my dearest, I know," she said pleadingly. "And yet, since we
have been here, I have thought perhaps we had a little underrated both
your happy gift of pleasing and the readiness of others to be pleased.
It seems to me, Dickie, all doors open if you stretch out your hand.
Well, my dear, I would have you go forward fearlessly. I would have you
more ambitious, more self-confident. I see and deplore my own cowardly
mistake. Instead of hiding you away at home, and keeping you to myself,
I ought to have encouraged you to mix in the world and fill the
position to which both your powers and your birth entitle you. I was
wrong--I lament my folly. But there is ample time in which to rectify
my mistake."
Richard's face relaxed.
"I wonder--I wonder," he said.
"I am sure," she replied.
"You are too sanguine," he said. "Your love for me blinds you to fact."
"No, no," she replied again. "Love is the only medium in which vision gains
perfect clearness, becomes trustworthy and undistorted."--Instinctively
Katherine folded her hands as in prayer, while the brightness of a pure
enthusiasm shone in her sweet eyes. "That I have learned beyond all
possibility of dispute. It has been given me, through much tribulation,
to arrive at that."
Richard smiled upon her tenderly, then, turning his head, remained
silent for a while. The sullen roar of the great city invaded the quiet
room through the open windows, the heavy regular tread of a policeman
on his beat, a shrill whistle hailing a hansom from a house some few
doors distant up the square, and then an answering rumble of wheels and
clatter of hoofs. Richard's face had grown fierce again, and his breath
came quick. He turned on his side, and once more the dwarfed
proportions of his person became perceptible. Lady Calmady averted her
eyes, fixing them upon his. But even there she found sad lack of
comfort, for in them she read the inalienable distress and desolation
of one unhandsomely treated by Nature, maimed and incomplete. Even the
Divine Light, resident within her, failed to reconcile her to that
reading. She shrank back in protest, once again, against the dealing of
Almighty God with this only child of hers. And yet--such is the
adorable paradox of a living faith--even while shrinking, while
protesting, she flung herself for support, for help, upon the very
Being who had permitted, in a sense caused, her misery.
"Mother can I say something to you?" Richard asked, rather hoarsely, at
last.
"Anything--in heaven or earth."
"But it is a thing not usually spoken of as I want to speak of it. It
may seem indecent. You won't be disgusted, or think me wanting in
respect or in modesty?"
"Surely not," Lady Calmady answered quietly, yet a certain trembling
took her, a nervousness as in face of the unknown. This strong, young
creature developed forces, presented aspects, in his present feverish
mood, with which she felt hardly equal to cope.
"Mother, I--I want to marry."
"I, too, have thought of that," she said.
"You don't consider that I am debarred from marriage?"
"Oh, no, no!" Katherine cried, a little sob in her voice.
He looked at her steadily, with those profoundly desolate eyes.
"It would not be wrong? It would not be otherwise than honourable?" he
asked.
If doubts arose within Katherine of the answer to that question, she
crushed them down passionately.
"No, my dearest, no," she declared. "It would not be wrong--it could
not, could not be so--if she loved you, and you loved whomsoever you
married."
"But I'm not in love--at least not in love with any person who can
become my wife. Yet that does not seem to me to matter very much. I
should be faithful, no fear, to any one who was good enough to marry
me. Enough of love would come, if only out of gratitude, towards the
woman who would accept me as--as I am--and forgive that--that which
cannot be helped."
Again trembling shook Katherine. So terribly much seemed to her at
stake just then! Silently she implored wisdom and clear-seeing might be
accorded her. She leaned a little forward, and taking his left hand
held it closely in both hers.
"Dearest, that is not all. Tell me all," she said, "or I cannot quite
follow your thought."
Richard flung his body sideways across the bed, and kissed her hands as
they held his. The hot colour rushed over his face and neck, up to the
roots of his close-cropped, curly hair. He spoke, lying thus upon his
chest, his face half buried in the sheet.
"I want to marry because--because I want a child--I want a son," he
said.
No words came to Katherine just then. But she disengaged one hand and
laid it upon the dear brown head, and waited in silence until the
violence of the young man's emotion had spent itself, until the broad,
muscular shoulders had ceased to heave and the strong, young hands to
grasp her wrist. Suddenly Richard recovered himself, sat up, rubbing
his hands across his eyes, laughing, but with a queer catch in his
voice.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I'm a fool, an awful fool. Hang Morabita
and her voice and the golden houses of the gods, and beastly, showy
omnipotence to which her voice carries one away! To talk
sense--mother--just brutal common sense. My fate is fixed, you know.
There's no earthly use in wriggling. I am condemned to live a cow's
life and die a cow's death. The pride of life may call, but I can't
answer. The great prizes are not for me. I'm too heavily handicapped. I
was looking at that young fellow, Decies, to-night and considering his
chances as against my own---- Oh! I know there's wealth in plenty. The
pasture's green enough to make many a man covet it, and the stall's
well bedded-down. I don't complain. Only mother, you know--I know.
Where's the use of denying that which we neither of us ever really
forget?--And then sometimes my blood takes fire. It did to-night. And
the splendour of living being denied me, I--I--am tempted to say a
Black Mass. One must take it out somehow. And I know I could go to the
devil as few men have ever gone, magnificently, detestably, with
subtleties and refinements of iniquity."
He laughed again a little. And, hearing him, his mother's heart stood
still.
"Verily, I have advantages," he continued. "There should be a
picturesqueness in my descent to hell which would go far to place my
name at the head of the list of those sinners who have achieved
immortality----"
"Richard! Richard!" Lady Calmady cried, "do you want to break my heart
quite?"
"No," he answered, simply. "I'd infinitely rather not break your heart.
I have no ambition to see my name in that devil's list except as an
uncommonly ironical sort of second best. But then we must make some
change, some radical change. At times, lately, I've felt as if I was a
caged wild beast--blinded, its claws cut, the bars of its cage soldered
and riveted, no hope of escape, and yet the vigour, the immense longing
for freedom and activity, there all the while."
Richard stretched himself.
"Poor beast, poor beast, poor beast!" he said, shaking his head and
smiling. "I tell you I get absurdly sentimental over it at times."
And then, happily, there came a momentary lapse in the entirety of his
egoism. He turned on his side and took Lady Calmady's hand again, and
fell to playing absently with her bracelets.
"You poor darling, how I torture you," he said. "And yet, now we've
once broken the ice and begun talking of all this, we're bound to talk
on to the finish--if finish there is. You see these few weeks in
London--I've enjoyed them--but still they've made me understand, more
than ever, all I've missed. Life calls, mother, do you see? And though
the beast is blind, and his claws are cut, and his cage bolted, yet,
when life calls, he must answer--must--or run mad--or die--do you see?"
"And you shall answer, my beloved. Never fear, you will answer,"
Katherine replied proudly.
Richard's hand closed hard upon hers.
"Thank you," he said. "You were made to be a mother of heroes, not of a
useless log like me.--And that's just why I want to be good. And to be
good I want a wife, that I may have that boy. I could keep straight for
him, mother, though I'm afraid I can't keep straight for myself, and
simply because it's right, much longer. I want him to have just all
that I am denied. I want him to restore the balance, both for you and
for me. I may have something of a career myself, perhaps, in politics
or something. It's possible, but that will come later, if it comes at
all. And then it would be for his sake. What I want first is the boy,
to give me an object and keep up my pluck, and keep me steady. I,
giving him life, shall find my life in him, be paid for my wretched
circumscribed existence by his goodly and complete one. He may be
clever or not--I'd rather, of course, he was not quite a dunce--but I
really don't very much mind, so long as he isn't an outrageous fool, if
he's only an entirely sound and healthy human animal."
Richard stretched himself upon the bed, straightened the sheet across
his chest, and clasped his hands under his head again. The desolation
had gone out of his eyes. He seemed to look afar into the future, and
therein see manly satisfaction and content. His voice was vibrant,
rising to a kind of chant.
"He shall run, and he shall swim, he shall fence, and he shall row," he
said. "He shall learn all gallant sports, as becomes an English
gentleman. And he shall ride,--not as I ride, God forbid! like a monkey
strapped on a dog at a fair, but as a centaur, as a young demigod. We
will set him, stark naked, on a bare-backed horse, and see that he's
clean-limbed, perfect, without spot or blemish, from head to heel."
And once more Katherine Calmady held her peace, somewhat amazed,
somewhat tremulous, since it seemed to her the young man was drawing a
cheque upon the future which might, only too probably, be dishonoured
and returned marked no account. For who dare say that this child would
ever come to the birth, or coming, what form it would bear? Yet, even
so, she rejoiced in her son and the high spirit he displayed, while the
instinct of romance which inspired his speech touched an answering
chord in, and uplifted, her.
By now the brief June night was nearly spent. The blind still creaked
against the open window sash, but the thud of horse-hoofs and beat of
passing footsteps had become infrequent, while the roar of the mighty
city had dwindled to a murmur, as of an ebbing tide upon a shallow,
sand-strewn beach. The after-light of the sunset, walking the horizon,
beneath the Pole star from west to east, broadened upward now towards
the zenith. Even here, in the heart of London, the day broke with a
spacious solemnity. Richard raised himself, and, sitting up, blew out
the candles placed on the table at the bedside.
"Mother," he said, "will you let in the morning?"
Lady Calmady was pale from her long vigil, and her unspoken, yet
searching, emotion. She appeared very tall, ghostlike even, in her
soft, white raiment, as she moved across and drew up the sucking blind.
Above the gray parapets of the houses, and the ranks of contorted
chimney-pots, the loveliness of the summer dawn grew wide. Warm amber
shaded through gradations of exquisite and nameless colour into blue.
While, across this last, lay horizontal lines of fringed,
semi-transparent, opalescent cloud. To Katherine those heavenly blue
interspaces spoke of peace, of the stilling of all strife, when the
tragic, yet superb, human story should at last be fully told and God be
all in all. She was very tired. The struggle was so prolonged. Her soul
cried out for rest. And then she reminded herself, almost sternly, that
the kingdom of God and the peace of it is no matter of time or of
place, but is within the devout believer, ever present, immediate,
possessing his or her soul, and by that soul in turn possessed. Just
then the sparrows, roosting in the garden of the square, awoke with
manifold and vociferous chirping and chattering. The voice from the bed
called to her.
"Mother," it said imperatively, "come to me. You are not angry at what
I have told you? You understand? You will find her for me?"
Lady Calmady turned away from the open window and the loveliness of the
summer dawn. She was less tired somehow. God was with her, so she could
not be otherwise than hopeful. Moreover, the world had proved itself
very kind towards her son. It would not deny him this last request,
surely?
"My dearest, I think I have found her already," Lady Calmady answered.
Yet, even as she spoke, she faltered a little, recognising the energy
and strength manifest in the young man's countenance, remembering his
late discourse, and the pent-up fires of his nature to which that
discourse had borne only too eloquent testimony. For who was a young
girl, but just out of the schoolroom, a girl in pretty, fresh
frocks--the last word of contemporary fashion,--whose baby face and
slow, wide-eyed gaze bore witness to her entire innocence of the great
primitive necessities, the rather brutal joys, the intimate vices, the
far-ranging intellectual questionings which rule and mould the action
of mankind,--who was she, indeed, to cope with a nature such as
Richard's?
"Mother, tell me, who is it?"
And instinctively Katherine fell to pleading. She sat down beside the
bed again and smoothed the sheet.
"You will be tender and loving to her, Dickie?" she said. "For she is
young and very gentle, and might easily be made afraid. You will not
forget what is due to your wife, to your bride, in your longing for a
child?"
"Who is it?" Richard demanded again.
"Ludovic's sister--little Lady Constance Quayle."
He drew in his breath sharply.
"Would she--would her people consent?" he said.
"I think so. Judging by appearances, I am almost sure they would
consent."
A long silence followed. Richard lay still, looking at the rosy flush
that broadened in the morning sky and touched the bosoms of those
delicate clouds with living, pulsating colour. And he flushed too, all
his being softened into a great tenderness, a great shyness, a quick
yet noble shame. For his whole attitude towards this question of
marriage changed strangely as it passed from the abstract, from regions
of vague purpose and desire, to the concrete, to the thought of a
maiden with name and local habitation, a maiden actual and accessible,
whose image he could recall, whose pretty looks and guileless speech he
knew.
"I almost wish she was not Ludovic's sister, though," he remarked
presently. "It is a great deal to ask."
"You have a great deal to offer," Katherine said, adding: "You can care
for her, Dickie?"
He turned his head, his lips working a little, his flushed face very
young and bright.
"Oh yes! I can care fast enough," he said. "And I think--I think I
could make her happy. And you see, already she worships you. We would
pet her, mother, and give her all manner of pretty things, and make a
little queen of her--and she would be pleased--she's a child, such a
child."
Richard remained awake far into the morning, till the rose had died out
of the sky, and the ascending smoke of many kitchen-chimneys began to
stain the expanse of heavenly blue. The thought of his possible bride
was very sweet to him. But when at last sleep came, dreams came
likewise. Helen de Vallorbes' perfect face arose, in reproach, before
him, and her azure and purple draperies swept over him, stifling and
choking him as the salt waves of an angry sea. Then some one--it was
the comely, long-limbed young soldier, Mr. Decies--whom he had seen
last night at the Barkings' great party when Morabita sang--and the
soprano's matchless voice was mixed up, in the strangest fashion, with
all these transactions--lifted Helen and all her magic sea-waves from
off him, setting him free. But even as he did so, Dickie perceived that
it was not Helen, after all, whom the young soldier carried in his
arms, but little Lady Constance Quayle. Whereupon Richard, waking with
a start, conceived a wholly unreasoning detestation of Mr. Decies,
while, along with that, his purpose of marrying Lady Constance
increased notably, waxed strong and grew, putting forth all manner of
fair flowers of promise and of hope.
CHAPTER IV
A LESSON UPON THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT--"PARENTS OBEY YOUR CHILDREN"
A family council was in course of holding in the lofty, white-and-gold
boudoir, overlooking the Park, in Albert Gate. Lady Louisa Barking had
summoned it. She had also exercised a measure of selection among
intending members. For instance Lady Margaret and Lady Emily,--the
former having a disposition, in the opinion of her elder sister, to put
herself forward and support the good cause with more zeal than
discretion, the latter being but a weak-kneed supporter of the cause at
best,--were summarily dismissed.
"It was really perfectly unnecessary to discuss this sort of thing
before the younger girls," she said. "It put them out of their place
and rather rubbed the freshness off their minds. And then they would
chatter among themselves. And it all became a little foolish and missy.
They never knew when to stop."
One member of the Quayle family, and that a leading one, had taken his
dismissal before it was given and, with a nice mixture of defective
moral-courage and good common-sense, had removed himself bodily from
the neighbourhood of the scene of action. Lord Shotover was still in
London. Along with the payment of his debts had come a remarkable
increase of cheerfulness. He made no more allusions to the unpleasant
subject of cutting his throat, while the proposed foreign tour had been
relegated to a vague future. It seemed a pity not to see the season
out. It would be little short of a crime to miss Goodwood. He might go
out with Decies to India in the autumn, when that young soldier's leave
had expired, and look Guy up a bit. He would rather like a turn at
pig-sticking--and there were plenty of pig, he understood, in the
neighbourhood of Agra, where his brother was now stationed. On the
morning in question, Lord Shotover, in excellent spirits, had walked
down Piccadilly with his father, from his rooms in Jermyn Street to
Albert Gate. The elder gentleman, arriving from Westchurch by an early
train, had solaced himself with a share of the by no means ascetic
breakfast of which his eldest son was partaking at a little after
half-past ten. It was very much too good a breakfast for a person in
Lord Shotover's existing financial position--so indeed were the
rooms--so, in respect of locality, was Jermyn Street itself. Lord
Fallowfeild knew this, no man better. Yet he was genuinely pleased,
impressed even, by the luxury with which his erring son was surrounded,
and proceeded to praise his cook, praise his valet's waiting at table,
praise some fine old sporting prints upon the wall. He went so far,
indeed, as to chuckle discreetly--immaculately faithful husband though
he was--over certain photographs of ladies, more fair and kind than
wise, which were stuck in the frame of the looking-glass over the
chimneypiece. In return for which acts of good-fellowship Lord Shotover
accompanied him as far as the steps of the mansion in Albert Gate.
There he paused, remarking with the most disarming frankness:--
"I would come in. I want to awfully, I assure you. I quite agree with
you about all this affair, you know, and I should uncommonly like to
let the others know it. But, between ourselves, Louisa's been so short
with me lately, so infernally short--if you'll pardon my saying
so--that it's become downright disagreeable to me to run across her. So
I'm afraid I might only make matters worse all round, don't you know,
if I put in an appearance this morning."
"Has she, though?" ejaculated Lord Fallowfeild, in reference presumably
to his eldest daughter's reported shortness. "My dear boy, don't think
of it. I wouldn't have you exposed to unnecessary unpleasantness on any
account."
Then, as he followed the groom-of-the-chambers up the bare, white,
marble staircase--which struck almost vaultlike in its chill and
silence, after the heat and glare and turmoil of the great thoroughfare
without--he added to himself:--
"Good fellow, Shotover. Has his faults, but upon my word, when you come
to think of it, so have all of us. Very good-hearted, sensible fellow
at bottom, Shotover. Always responds when you talk rationally to him.
No nonsense about him."--His lordship sighed as he climbed the marble
stair. "Great comfort to me at times Shotover. Shows very proper
feeling on the present occasion, but naturally feels a diffidence about
expressing it."
Thus, in the end, it happened that the family council consisted only of
the lady of the house, her sister Lady Alicia Winterbotham, Mr. Ludovic
Quayle, and the parent whom all three of them were, each in their
several ways, so perfectly willing to instruct in his duty towards his
children.
Ludovic, perhaps, displayed less alacrity than usual in offering good
advice to his father. His policy was rather that of masterly
inactivity. Indeed, as the discussion waxed hot--his sisters' voices
rising slightly in tone, while Lord Fallowfeild's replies disclosed a
vein of dogged obstinacy--he withdrew from the field of battle and
moved slowly round the room staring abstractedly at the pictures. There
was a seductive, female head by Greuze, a couple of reposeful
landscapes by Morland, a little Constable--waterways, trees, and
distant woodland, swept by wind and weather. But upon these the young
man bestowed scant attention. That which fascinated his gaze was a
series of half-length portraits in oval frames, representing his
parents, himself, his sisters, and brothers. These portraits were the
work of a lady whose artistic gifts, and whose prices, were alike
modest. They were in coloured chalks, and had, after adorning her own
sitting-room for a number of years, been given, as a wedding present,
by Lady Fallowfeild to her eldest daughter. Mr. Quayle reviewed them
leisurely now, looking over his shoulder now and again to note how the
tide of battle rolled, and raising his eyebrows in mute protest when
the voices of the two ladies became more than usually elevated.
"You see, papa, you have not been here"--Lady Louisa was saying.
"No, I haven't," interrupted Lord Fallowfeild. "And very much I regret
that I haven't. Should have done my best to put a stop to this
engagement at the outset--before there was any engagement at all, in
fact."
"And so you cannot possibly know how the whole thing--any breaking off
I mean--would be regarded."
"Can't I, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild. "I know perfectly well how I
should regard it myself."
"You do not take the advantages sufficiently into consideration, papa.
Of course with their enormous wealth they can afford to do
anything."--Mr. Winterbotham's income was far from princely at this
period, and Lady Alicia was liable to be at once envious of, and
injured by, the riches of others. Her wardrobe was limited. She was,
this morning, vexatiously conscious of a warmer hue in the back pleats
than in the front breadth of her mauve, cashmere dress, sparsely
decorated with bows of but indifferently white ribbon. "It has enabled
them to make an immense success. One really gets rather tired of
hearing about them. But everybody goes to their house, you know, and
says that he is perfectly charming."
"Half the parents in London would jump at the chance of one of their
girls making such a marriage,"--this from Lady Louisa.
Mr. Quayle looked over his shoulder and registered a conviction that
his father did not belong to that active, parental moiety. He sat
stubbornly on a straight-backed, white-and-gold chair, his hands
clasped on the top of his favourite, gold-headed walking-stick. He had
refused to part with this weapon on entering the house. It gave him a
sense of authority, of security. Meanwhile his habitually placid and
infantile countenance wore an expression of the acutest worry.
"Would they, though?" he said, in response to his daughter's
information regarding the jumping moiety.--"Well, I shouldn't. In point
of fact, I don't. All that you and Alicia tell me may be perfectly
true, my dear Louisa. I would not, for a moment, attempt to discredit
your statements. And I don't wish to be intemperate.--Stupid thing
intemperance, sign of weakness, intemperance.--Still I must repeat, and
I do repeat, I repeat clearly, that I do not approve of this
engagement."
"Did not I prophesy long, long ago what my father's attitude would be,
Louisa?" Mr. Quayle murmured gently, over his shoulder.
Then he fell to contemplating the portrait of his brother Guy, aged
seven, who was represented arrayed in a brown-holland blouse of
singular formlessness confined at the waist by a black leather belt,
and carrying, cupid-like, in his hands a bow and arrows decorated with
sky-blue ribbons.--"Were my brothers and I actually such appallingly
insipid-looking little idiots?" he asked himself. "In that case the
years do bring compensations. We really bear fewer outward traces of
utter imbecility now."
"I don't wish to be harsh with you, my dears--never have been harsh, to
my knowledge, with any one of my children. Believe in kindness. Always
have been lenient with my children----"
"And as indirect consequence thereof note my eldest brother's frequent
epistles to the Hebrews!" commented Mr. Quayle softly. "The sweet
simplicity of this counterfeit presentment of him, armed with a
pea-green bait-tin and jointless fishing-rod, hardly shadows forth the
copious insolvencies of recent times!"
"Never have approved of harshness," continued Lord Fallowfeild. "Still
I do feel I should have been given an opportunity of speaking my mind
sooner. I ought to have been referred to in the first place. It was my
right. It was due to me. I don't wish to assert my authority in a
tyrannical manner. Hate tyranny, always have hated parental tyranny.
Still I feel that it was due to me. And Shotover quite agrees with me.
Talked in a very nice, gentlemanly, high-minded way about it all this
morning, did Shotover."
The two ladies exchanged glances, drawing themselves up with an
assumption of reticence and severity.
"Really!" exclaimed Lady Alicia. "It seems a pity, papa, that
Shotover's actions are not a little more in keeping with his
conversation, then."
But Lord Fallowfeild only grasped the head of his walking-stick the
tighter, congratulating himself the while on the unshakable firmness
both of his mental and physical attitude.
"Oh! ah! yes," he said, rising to heights of quite reckless defiance.
"I know there is a great deal of prejudice against Shotover, just now,
among you. He alluded to it this morning with a great deal of feeling.
He was not bitter, but he is very much hurt, is Shotover. You are hard
on him, Alicia. It is a painful thing to observe upon, but you are
hard, and so is Winterbotham. I regret to be obliged to put it so
plainly, but I was displeased by Winterbotham's tone about your
brother, last time you and he were down at Whitney from Saturday to
Monday."
"At all events, papa, George has never cost his parents a single penny
since he left Balliol," Lady Alicia replied, with some spirit and a
very high colour.
But Lord Fallowfeild was not to be beguiled into discussion of side
issues, though his amiable face was crumpled and puckered by the effort
to present an uncompromising front to the enemy.
"Some of you ought to have written and informed me as soon as you had
any suspicion of what was likely to happen. Not to do so was underhand.
I do not wish to employ strong language, but I do consider it
underhand. Shotover tells me he would have written if he had only
known. But, of course, in the present state of feeling, he was shut out
from it all. Ludovic did know, I presume. And, I am sorry to say it,
but I consider it very unhandsome of Ludovic not to have communicated
with me."
At this juncture Mr. Quayle desisted from contemplation of the family
portraits and approached the belligerents, threading his way carefully
between the many tables and chairs. There was much furniture, yet but
few ornaments, in Lady Louisa's boudoir. The young man's long neck was
directed slightly forward and his expression was one of polite inquiry.
"It is very warm this morning," he remarked parenthetically, "and as a
family we appear to feel it. You did me the honour to refer to me just
now, I believe, my dear father? Since my two younger sisters have been
banished it has happily become possible to hear both you, and myself,
speak. You were saying?"
"That you might very properly have written and told me about this
business, and given me an opportunity of expressing my opinion before
things reached a head."
Mr. Quayle drew forward a chair and seated himself with mild
deliberation. Lord Fallowfeild began to fidget. "Very clever fellow,
Ludovic," he said to himself. "Wonderfully cool head"--and he became
suspicious of his own wisdom in having made direct appeal to a person
thus distinguished.
"I might have written, my dear father. I admit that I might. But there
were difficulties. To begin with, I--in this particular--shared
Shotover's position. Louisa had not seen fit to honour me with her
confidence.--I beg your pardon, Louisa, you were saying?--And so, you
see, I really hadn't anything to write about."
"But--but--this young man"--Lord Fallowfeild was sensible of a singular
reluctance to mention the name of his proposed son-in-law--"this young
Calmady, you know, he's an intimate friend of yours----"
"Difficulty number two. For I doubted how you would take the
matter----"
"Did you, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild, with an appreciable smoothing
of crumples and puckers.
"I'm extremely attached to Dickie Calmady. And I did not want to put a
spoke in his wheel."
"Of course not, my dear boy, of course not. Nasty unpleasant business
putting spokes in other men's wheels, specially when they're your
friends. I acknowledge that."
"I am sure you do," Mr. Quayle replied, indulgently. "You are always on
the side of doing the generous thing, my dear father,--when you see
it."
Here his lordship's grasp upon the head of his walking-stick relaxed
sensibly.
"Thank you, Ludovic. Very pleasant thing to have one's son say to one,
I must say, uncommonly pleasant."--Alas! he felt himself to be
slipping, slipping. "Deuced shrewd, diplomatic fellow, Ludovic," he
remarked to himself somewhat ruefully. All the same, the little
compliment warmed him through. He knew it made for defeat, yet for the
life of him he could not but relish it.--"Very pleasant," he repeated.
"But that's not the point, my dear boy. Now, about this young fellow
Calmady's proposal for your sister Constance?"
Mr. Quayle looked full at the speaker, and for once his expression held
no hint of impertinence or raillery.
"Dickie Calmady is as fine a fellow as ever fought, or won, an almost
hopeless battle," he said. "He is somewhat heroic, in my opinion. And
he is very lovable."
"Is he, though?" Lord Fallowfeild commented, quite gently.
"A woman who understood him, and had some idea of all he must have gone
through, could not well help being very proud of him."
Yet, even while speaking, the young man knew his advocacy to be but
half-hearted. He praised his friend rather than his friend's
contemplated marriage.--"But his dear, old lordship's not very quick.
He'll never spot that," he added mentally. And then he reflected that
little Lady Constance was not very quick either. She might marry
obediently, even gladly. But was it probable she would develop
sufficient imagination ever to understand, and therefore be proud of,
Richard Calmady?
"He is brilliant too," Ludovic continued. "He is as well read as any
man of his standing whom I know, and he can think for himself. And,
when he is in the vein he is unusually good company."
"Everybody says he is extraordinarily agreeable," broke in Lady Alicia.
"Old Lady Combmartin was saying only yesterday--George and I met her at
the Aldhams', Louisa, you know, at dinner--that she had not heard
better conversation for years. And she was brought up among Macaulay
and Rogers and all the Holland House set, so her opinion really is
worth having."
But Lord Fallowfeild's grasp had tightened again upon his
walking-stick.
"Was she, though?" he said rather incoherently.
"Pray, from all this, don't run away with the notion Calmady is a
prig," Ludovic interposed. "He is as keen a sportsman as you are--in as
far, of course, as sport is possible for him."
Here Lord Fallowfeild, finding himself somewhat hard pressed, sought
relief in movement. He turned sideways, throwing one shapely leg across
the other, grasping the supporting walking-stick in his right hand,
while with the left he laid hold of the back of the white-and-gold
chair.
"Oh! ah! yes," he said valiantly, directing his gaze upon the tree-tops
in the Park. "I quite accept all you tell me. I don't want to detract
from your friend's merits--poor, mean sort of thing to detract from any
man's friend's merits. Gentlemanlike young fellow, Calmady, the little
I have seen of him--reminds me of my poor friend his father. I liked
his father. But, you see, my dear boy, there is--well, there's no
denying it, there is--and Shotover quite----"
"Of course, papa, we all know what you mean," Lady Louisa interposed,
with a certain loftiness and, it must be owned, asperity. "I have never
pretended there was not something one had to get accustomed to. But
really you forget all about it almost immediately--every one does--one
can see that--don't they, Alicia? If you had met Sir Richard
everywhere, as we have this season, you would realise how very very
soon that is quite forgotten."
"Is it, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild somewhat incredulously. His face
had returned to a sadly puckered condition.
"Yes, I assure you, nobody thinks of it, after just the first little
shock, don't you know,"--this from Lady Louisa.
"I think one feels it is not quite nice to dwell on a thing of that
kind," her sister chimed in, reddening again. "It ought to be
ignored."--From a girl, the speaker had enjoyed a reputation for great
refinement of mind.
"I think it amounts to being more than not nice," echoed Lady Louisa.
"I think it is positively wrong, for nobody can tell what accident may
not happen to any of us at any moment. And so I am not at all sure that
it is not actually unchristian to make a thing like that into a serious
objection."
"You know, papa, there must be deformed people in some families, just
as there is consumption or insanity."
"Or under-breeding, or attenuated salaries," Mr. Quayle softly
murmured. "It becomes evident, my dear father, you must not expect too
much of sons, or I of brothers-in-law."
"Think of old Lord Sokeington--I mean the great uncle of the present
man, of course--of his temper," Lady Louisa proceeded, regardless of
ironical comment. "It amounted almost to mania. And yet Lady Dorothy
Hellard would certainly have married him. There never was any question
about it."
"Would she, though? Bad, old man, Sokeington. Never did approve of
Sokeington."
"Of course she would. Mrs. Crookenden, who always has been devoted to
her, told me so."
"Did she, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild. "But the marriage was broken
off, my dear."
He made this remark triumphantly, feeling it showed great acuteness.
"Oh, dear no! indeed it wasn't," his daughter replied. "Lord Sokeington
behaved in the most outrageous manner. At the last moment he never
proposed to her at all. And then it came out that for years he had been
living with one of the still-room maids."
"Louisa!" cried Lady Alicia, turning scarlet.
"Had he, though? The old scoundrel!"
"Papa," cried Lady Alicia.
"So he was, my dear. Very bad old man, Sokeington. Very amusing old man
too, though."
And, overcome by certain reminiscences, Lord Fallowfeild chuckled a
little, shamefacedly. His second daughter thereupon arranged the folds
of her mauve cashmere, with bent head.--"It is very clear papa and
Shotover have been together to-day," she thought. "Shotover's influence
over papa is always demoralising. It's too extraordinary the subjects
men joke about and call amusing when they get together."
A pause followed, a brief cessation of hostilities, during which Mr.
Quayle looked inquiringly at his three companions.
"Alicia fancies herself shocked," he said to himself, "and my father
fancies himself wicked, and Louisa fancies herself a chosen vessel.
Strong delusion is upon them all. The only question is whose delusion
is the strongest, and who, consequently, will first renew the fray? Ah!
the chosen vessel! I thought as much."
"You see, papa, one really must be practical," Lady Louisa began in
clear, emphatic tones. "We all know how you have spoiled Constance. She
and Shotover have always been your favourites. But even you must admit
that Shotover's wretched extravagance has impoverished you, and helped
to impoverish all your other children. And you must also admit,
notwithstanding your partiality for Constance, that----"
"I want to see Connie. I want to hear from herself that she"--broke out
Lord Fallowfeild. His kindly heart yearned over this ewe-lamb of his
large flock. But the eldest of the said flock interposed sternly.
"No, no," she cried, "pray, papa, not yet. Connie is quite contented
and reasonable--I believe she is out shopping just now, too. And while
you are in this state of indecision yourself, it would be the greatest
mistake for you to see her. It would only disturb and upset
her--wouldn't it, Alicia?"
And the lady thus appealed to assented. It is true that when she
arrived at the great house in Albert Gate that morning she had found
little Lady Constance with her pretty, baby face sadly marred by tears.
But she had put that down to the exigencies of the situation. All young
ladies of refined mind cried under kindred circumstances. Had she not
herself wept copiously, for the better part of a week, before finally
deciding to accept George Winterbotham? Moreover, a point of jealousy
undoubtedly pricked Lady Alicia in this connection. She was far from
being a cruel woman, but, comparing her own modest material advantages
in marriage with the surprisingly handsome ones offered to her little
sister, she could not be wholly sorry that the latter's rose was not
entirely without thorns. That the flower in question should have been
thornless, as well as so very fine and large, would surely have
trenched on injustice to herself. This thought had, perhaps
unconsciously, influenced her when enlarging on the becomingness of a
refined indifference to Sir Richard Calmady's deformity. In her heart
of hearts she was disposed, perhaps unconsciously, to hail rather than
deplore the fact of that same deformity. For did it not tend
subjectively to equalise her lot and that of her little sister, and
modify the otherwise humiliating disparity of their respective
fortunes? Therefore she capped Lady Louisa's speech, by saying
immediately:--
"Yes, indeed, papa, it would only be an unkindness to run any risk of
upsetting Connie. No really nice girl ever really quite likes the idea
of marriage----"
"Doesn't she, though?" commented Lord Fallowfeild, with an air of
receiving curious, scientific information.
"Oh, of course not! How could she? And then, papa, you know how you
have always indulged Connie"--Lady Alicia's voice was slightly peevish
in tone. She was not in very good health at the present time, with the
consequence that her face showed thin and bird-like. While,
notwithstanding the genial heat of the summer's day, she presented a
starved and chilly appearance.--"Always indulged Connie," she repeated,
"and that has inclined her to be rather selfish and fanciful."
The above statements, both regarding his own conduct and the effect of
that conduct upon his little ewe-lamb, nettled the amiable nobleman
considerably. He faced round upon the speaker with an intention of
reprimand, but in so doing his eyes were arrested by his daughter's
faded dress and disorganised complexion. He relented.--"Poor thing,
looks ill," he thought. "A man's an unworthy brute who ever says a
sharp word to a woman in her condition."--And, before he had time to
find a word other than sharp, Lady Louisa Barking returned to the
charge.
"Exactly," she asserted. "Alicia is perfectly right. At present Connie
is quite reasonable. And all we entreat, papa, is that you will let her
remain so, until you have made up your own mind. Do pray let us be
dignified. One knows how the servants get hold of anything of this kind
and discuss it, if there is any want of dignity or any indecision. That
is too odious. And I must really think just a little of Mr. Barking and
myself in the matter. It has all gone on in our house, you see. One
must consider appearances, and with all the recent gossip about
Shotover, we do not want another _esclandre_--the servants knowing all
about it too. And then, with all your partiality for Constance, you
cannot suppose she will have many opportunities of marrying men with
forty or fifty thousand a year."
"No, papa, as Louisa says, in your partiality for Connie you must not
entirely forget the claims of your other children. She must not be
encouraged to think exclusively of herself, and it is not fair that you
should think exclusively of her. I know that George and I are poor, but
it is through no fault of our own. He most honourably refuses to take
anything from his mother, and you know how small my private income is.
Yet no one can accuse George of lack of generosity. When any of my
family want to come to us he always makes them welcome. Maggie only
left us last Thursday, and Emily comes to-morrow. I know we can't do
much. It is not possible with our small means and establishment. But
what little we can do, George is most willing should be done."
"Excellent fellow, Winterbotham," Lord Fallowfeild put in soothingly.
"Very steady, painstaking man, Winterbotham."
His second daughter looked at him reproachfully.
"Thank you, papa," she said. "I own I was a little hurt just now by the
tone in which you alluded to George."
"Were you, though? I'm sure I'm very sorry, my dear Alicia. Hate to
hurt anybody, especially one of my own children. Unnatural thing to
hurt one of your own children. But you see this feeling of all of yours
about Shotover has been very painful to me. I never have liked
divisions in families. Never know where they may lead to. Nasty,
uncomfortable things divisions in families."
"Well, papa, I can only say that divisions are almost invariably caused
by a want of the sense of duty." Lady Louisa's voice was stern. "And if
people are over-indulged they become selfish, and then, of course, they
lose their sense of duty."
"My sister is a notable logician," Mr. Quayle murmured, under his
breath. "If logic ruled life, how clear, how simple our course! But
then, unfortunately, it doesn't."
"Shotover has really no one but himself to thank for any bitterness
that his brothers and sisters may feel towards him. He has thrown away
his chances, has got the whole family talked about in a most
objectionable manner, and has been a serious encumbrance to you, and
indirectly to all of us. We have all suffered quite enough trouble and
annoyance already. And so I must protest, papa, I must very strongly
and definitely protest, against Connie being permitted, still more
encouraged, to do exactly the same thing."
Lord Fallowfeild, still grasping his walking-stick,--though he could
not but fear that trusted weapon had proved faithless and sadly failed
in its duty of support,--gazed distractedly at the speaker. Visions of
Jewish money-lenders, of ladies more fair and kind than wise, of guinea
points at whist, of the prize ring of Baden-Baden, of Newmarket and
Doncaster, arose confusedly before him. What the deuce,--he did not
like bad language, but really,--what the dickens, had all these to do
with his ewe-lamb, innocent little Constance, her virgin-white body and
soul, and her sweet, wide-eyed prettiness?
"My dear Louisa, no doubt you know what you mean, but I give you my
word I don't," he began.
"Hear, hear, my dear father," put in Mr. Quayle. "There I am with you.
Louisa's wing is strong, her range is great. I myself, on this
occasion, find it not a little difficult to follow her."
"Nonsense, Ludovic," almost snapped the lady. "You follow me perfectly,
or can do so if you use your common sense. Papa must face the fact,
that Constance cannot afford--that we cannot afford to have her--throw
away her chances, as Shotover has thrown away his. We all have a duty,
not only to ourselves, but to each other. Inclination must give way to
duty--though I do not say Constance exhibits any real disinclination to
this marriage. She is a little flurried. As Alicia said just now, every
really nice-minded girl is flurried at the idea of marriage. She ought
to be. I consider it only delicate that she should be. But she
understands--I have pointed it out to her--that her money, her
position, and those two big houses--Brockhurst and the one in Lowndes
Square--will be of the greatest advantage to the girls and to her
brothers. It is not as if she was nobody. The scullery-maid can marry
whom she likes, of course. But in our rank of life it is different. A
girl is bound to think of her family, as well as of herself. She is
bound to consider----"
The groom-of-the-chambers opened the door and advanced solemnly across
the boudoir to Lord Fallowfeild.
"Sir Richard Calmady is in the smoking-room, my lord," he said, "to see
you."
CHAPTER V
IPHIGENIA
Chastened in spirit, verbally acquiescent, yet unconvinced, a somewhat
pitiable sense of inadequacy upon him, Lord Fallowfeild traveled back
to Westchurch that night. Two days later the morning papers announced
to all whom it might concern,--and that far larger all, whom it did not
really concern in the least,--in the conventional phrases common to
such announcements, that Sir Richard Calmady and Lady Constance Quayle
had agreed shortly to become man and wife. Thus did Katherine Calmady,
in all trustfulness, strive to give her son his desire, while the
great, and little, world looked on and made comments, various as the
natures and circumstances of the units composing them.
Lady Louisa was filled with the pride of victory. Her venture had not
miscarried. At church on Sunday--she was really too busy socially, just
now, to attend what it was her habit to describe as "odds and ends of
week-day services," and therefore worshipped on the Sabbath only, and
then by no means in secret or with shut door--she repeated the General
Thanksgiving with much unction and in an aggressively audible voice.
And Lady Alicia Winterbotham expressed a peevish hope that,--"such
great wealth might not turn Constance's head and make her just a little
vulgar. It was all rather dangerous for a girl of her age, and
she"--the speaker--"trusted _somebody_ would point out to Connie the
heavy responsibilities towards others such a position brought with it."
And Lord Shotover delivered it as his opinion that,--"It might be all
right. He hoped to goodness it was, for he'd always been uncommonly
fond of the young un. But it seemed to him rather a put-up job all
round, and so he meant just to keep his eye on Con, he swore he did."
In furtherance of which laudable determination he braved his eldest
sister's frowns with heroic intrepidity, calling to see the young girl
whenever all other sources of amusement failed him, and paying her the
compliment--as is the habit of the natural man, when unselfishly
desirous of giving pleasure to the women of his family--of talking
continuously and exclusively about his own affairs, his gains at cards,
his losses on horses, even recounting, in moments of more than
ordinarily expansive affection, the less wholly disreputable episodes
of his many adventures of the heart. And Honoria St. Quentin's
sensitive face straightened and her lips closed rather tight whenever
the marriage was mentioned before her. She refused to express any view
on the subject, and to that end took rather elaborate pains to avoid
the society of Mr. Quayle. And Lady Dorothy Hellard,--whose unhappy
disappointment in respect of the late Lord Sokeington and other
non-successful excursions in the direction of wedlock, had not cured
her of sentimental leanings,--asserted that,--"It was quite the most
romantic and touching engagement she had ever heard of." To which
speech her mother, the Dowager Lady Combmartin, replied, with the
directness of statement which made her acquaintance so cautious of
differing from her:--"Touching? Romantic? Fiddle-de-dee! You ought to
be ashamed of yourself for thinking so at your age, Dorothy. A
bargain's a bargain, and in my opinion the bride has got much the best
of it. For she's a mawkish, milk-and-water, little schoolgirl, while he
is charming--all there is of him. If there'd been a little more I
declared I'd have married him myself." And good-looking Mr. Decies, of
the 101st Lancers, got into very hot water with the mounted constables,
and with the livery-stable keeper from whom he hired his hacks, for
"furious riding" in the Park. And Julius March walked the paved ways
and fragrant alleys of the red-walled gardens at Brockhurst, somewhat
sadly, in the glowing June twilights, meditating upon the pitiless
power of change which infects all things human, and of his own lifelong
love doomed to "find no earthly close." And Mrs. Chifney, down at the
racing stables, rejoiced to the point of tears, being possessed by the
persistent instinct of matrimony common to the British, lower
middle-class. And Sandyfield parish rejoiced likewise, and pealed its
church-bells in token thereof, foreseeing much carnal gratification in
the matter of cakes and ale. And Madame de Vallorbes, whose letters to
Richard had come to be pretty frequent during the last eight months,
was overtaken by silence and did not write at all.
But this omission on the part of his cousin was grateful, rather than
distressing, to the young man. It appeared to him very sympathetic of
Helen not to write. It showed a finely, imaginative sensibility and
considerateness on her part, which made Dickie sigh, thinking of it,
and then, so to speak, turn away his head. And to do this last was the
less difficult that his days were very full just now. And his mind was
very full, likewise, of gentle thoughts of, and many provisions for,
the happiness of his promised bride.
The young girl was timid in his presence, it is true. Yet she was
transparently, appealing, anxious to please. Her conversation was
neither ready nor brilliant, but she was very fair to look upon in her
childlike freshness and innocence. A protective element, a tender and
chivalrous loyalty, entered into Richard's every thought of her. A
great passion and a happy marriage were two quite separate matters--so
he argued in his inexperience. And this was surely the wife a man
should desire, modest, guileless, dutiful, pure in heart as in person?
The gentle dumbness which often held her did not trouble him. It was a
pretty pastime to try to win her confidence and open the doors of her
artless speech.
And then, to Richard, tempted it is true, but as yet himself unsullied,
it was so sacred and wonderful a thing that this spotless
woman-creature in all the fragrance of her youth belonged to him in a
measure already, and would belong to him, before many weeks were out,
wholly and of inalienable right. And so it happened that the very
limitations of the young girl's nature came to enhance her attractions.
Dickie could not get very near to her mind, but that merely piqued his
curiosity and provoked his desire of discovery. She was to him as a
book written in strange character, difficult to decipher. With the
result that he accredited her with subtleties and many fine feelings
she did not really possess, while he failed to divine--not from
defective sympathy so much as from absorption in his self-created idea
of her--the very simple feelings which actually animated her. His
masculine pride was satisfied in that so eligible a maiden consented to
become his wife. His moral sense was satisfied also, since he had--as
he supposed--put temptation from him and chosen the better part. Very
certainly he was not violently in love. That he supposed to be a thing
of the past. But he was quietly happy. While ahead lay the mysterious
enchantments of marriage. Dickie's heart was very tender, just then.
Life had never turned on him a more gracious face.
Nevertheless, once or twice, a breath of distrust dimmed the bright
surface of his existing complacency. One day, for instance, he had
taken his _fiancee_ for a morning drive and brought her home to
luncheon. After that meal she should sit for a while with Lady Calmady
and then join him in the library down-stairs, for he had that which he
coveted to show her. But it appeared to him that she tarried unduly
with his mother, and he grew impatient waiting through the long minutes
of the summer afternoon. A barrel-organ droned slumberously from the
other side of the square, while to his ears, so long attuned to country
silences or the quick, intermittent music of nature, the ceaseless roar
of London became burdensome. Ever after, thinking of this first wooing
of his, he recalled--as slightly sinister--that ever-present murmur of
traffic,--bearing testimony, at it seemed later, to the many activities
in which he could play, after all, but so paltry and circumscribed a
part.
And, listening to that same murmur now, something of rebellion against
circumstance arose in Dickie for all that the present was very good.
For, as he considered, any lover other than himself would not sit
pinned to an armchair awaiting his mistress' coming, but, did she
delay, would go to seek her, claim her, and bear her merrily away. The
organ-grinder, meanwhile, cheered by a copper shower from some adjacent
balcony, turned the handle of his instrument more vigorously, letting
loose stirring valse-tune and march upon the sultry air. Such music
was, of necessity, somewhat comfortless hearing to Richard, debarred
alike from deeds of arms or joy of dancing. His impatience increased.
It was a little inconsiderate of his mother surely to detain Constance
for so long! But just then the sound of women's voices reached him
through the half-open door. The two ladies were leisurely descending
the stairs. There was a little pause, then he heard Lady Calmady say,
as though in gentle rebuke:--
"No, no, dear child, I will not come with you. Richard would like
better to see you alone. Too, I have a number of letters to write. I am
at home to no one this afternoon. You will find me in the sitting-room
here. You can come and bid me good-bye--now, dear child, go."
Thus admonished, Lady Constance moved forward. Yet, to Dickie's
listening ears, it appeared that it took her an inordinate length of
time to traverse the length of the hall from the foot of the stairs to
the library door. And there again she paused, the organ, now nearer,
rattling out the tramp of a popular military march. But the throb and
beat of the quickstep failed to hasten little Lady Constance's lagging
feet, so that further rebellion against his own infirmity assaulted
poor Dick.
At length the girl entered with a little rush, her soft cheeks flushed,
her rounded bosom heaving, as though she arrived from a long and
arduous walk, rather than from that particularly deliberate traversing
of the cool hall and descent of the airy stairway.
"Ah! here you are at last, then!" Richard exclaimed. "I began to wonder
if you had forgotten all about me."
The young girl did not attempt to sit down, but stood directly in front
of him, her hands clasped loosely, yet somewhat nervously, almost in
the attitude of a child about to recite a lesson. Her still, heifer's
eyes were situate so far apart that Dickie, looking up at her, found it
difficult to focus them both at the same glance. And this produced an
effect of slight uncertainty, even defect of vision, at once pathetic
and quaintly attractive. Her face was heart-shaped, narrowing from the
wide, low brow to the small, rounded chin set below a round, babyish
mouth of slight mobility but much innocent sweetness. Her light, brown
hair, rising in an upward curve on either side the straight parting,
was swept back softly, yet smoothly, behind her small ears. The neck of
her white, alpaca dress, cut square according to the then prevailing
fashion, was outlined with flat bands of pale, blue ribbon, and filled
up with lace to the base of the round column of her throat. Blue
ribbons adorned the hem of her simple skirt, and a band of the same
colour encircled her shapely, though not noticeably slender, waist. Her
bosom was rather full for so young a woman, so that, notwithstanding
her perfect freshness and air of almost childlike simplicity, there was
a certain statuesque quality in the effect of her white-clad figure
seen thus in the shaded library, with its russet-red walls and
furnishings and ranges of dark bookshelves.
"I am so sorry," she said breathlessly. "I should have come sooner, but
I was talking to Lady Calmady, and I did not know it was so late. I am
not afraid of talking to Lady Calmady, she is so very kind to me, and
there are many questions I wanted to ask her. She promises to help and
tell me what I ought to do. And I am very glad of that. It will prevent
my making mistakes."
Her attitude and the earnestness of her artless speech were to Richard
almost pathetically engaging. His irritation vanished. He smiled,
looked up at her, his own face flushing a little.
"I don't fancy you will ever make any very dangerous mistakes!" he
said.
"Ah! but I might," the girl insisted. "You see I have always been told
what to do."
"Always?" Dickie asked, more for the pleasure of watching her stand
thus than for any great importance he attached to her answer.
"Oh yes!" she said. "First by our nurses, and then by our governesses.
They were not always very kind. They called me obstinate. But I did not
mean to be obstinate. Only they spoke in French or German, and I could
not always understand. And since I have grown up my elder sisters have
told me what I ought to do."
It seemed to Richard that the girl's small, round chin quivered a
little, and that a look of vague distress invaded her soft, ruminant,
wide-set eyes.
"And so I should have been very frightened, now, unless I had had Lady
Calmady to tell me."
"Well, I think there's only one thing my mother will need to tell you,
and it won't run into either French or German. It can be stated in very
plain English. Just to do whatever you like, and--and be happy."
Lady Constance stared at the speaker with her air of gentle perplexity.
As she did so undoubtedly her pretty chin did quiver a little.
"Ah! but to do what you like can never really make you happy," she
said.
"Can't it? I'm not altogether so sure of that. I had ventured to
suppose there were a number of things you and I would do in the future
which will be most uncommonly pleasant without being conspicuously
harmful."
He leaned sideways, stretching out to a neighbouring chair with his
right hand, keeping the light, silk-woven, red blanket up across his
thighs with his left.
"Do sit down, Constance, and we will talk of things we both like to do,
at greater length---- Ah! bother--forgive me--I can't reach it."
"Oh! please don't trouble. It doesn't matter. I can get it quite well
myself," Lady Constance said, quite quickly for once. She drew up the
chair and sat down near him, folding her hands again nervously in her
lap. All the colour had died out of her cheeks. They were as white as
her rounded throat. She kept her eyes fixed on Richard's face, and her
bosom rose and fell, while her words came somewhat gaspingly. Still she
talked on with a touching little effect of determined civility.
"Lady Calmady was very kind in telling me I might sometimes go over to
Whitney," she said. "I should like that. I am afraid papa will miss me.
Of course there will be all the others just the same. But I go out so
much with him. Of course I would not ask to go over very often, because
I know it might be inconvenient for me to have the horses."
"But you will have your own horses," Richard answered. "I wrote to
Chifney to look out for a pair of cobs for you last week--browns--you
said you liked that colour I remember. And I told him they were to be
broken until big guns, going off under their very noses, wouldn't make
them so much as wince."
"Are you buying them just for me?" the girl said.
"Just for you?" Dickie laughed. "Why, who on earth should I buy
anything for but just you, I should like to know?"
"But"--she began.
"But--but"--he echoed, resting his hands on the two arms of his chair,
leaning forward and still laughing, though somewhat shyly. "Don't you
see the whole and sole programme is that you should do all you like,
and have all you like, and--and be happy."--Richard straightened
himself up, still looking full at her, trying to focus both these
quaintly--engaging, far-apart eyes. "Constance, do you never play?" he
asked her suddenly.
"I did practice every morning at home, but lately----"
"Oh! I don't mean that," the young man said. "I mean quite another sort
of playing."
"Games?" Lady Constance inquired. "I am afraid I am rather stupid about
games. I find it so difficult to remember numbers and words, and I
never can make a ball go where I want it to, somehow."
"I was not thinking of games either, exactly," Richard said, smiling.
The girl stared at him in some perplexity. Then spoke again, with the
same little effect of determined civility.
"I am very fond of dancing and of skating. The ice was very good on the
lake at Whitney this winter. Rupert and Gerry were home from Eton, and
Eddy had brought a young man down with him--Mr. Hubbard---who is in his
business in Liverpool, and a friend of my brother Guy's was staying in
the house too, from India. I think you have met him--Mr. Decies. We
skated till past twelve one night--a Wednesday, I think. There was a
moon, and a great many stars. The thermometer registered fifteen
degrees of frost Mr. Decies told me. But I was not cold. It was very
beautiful."
Richard shifted his position. The organ had moved farther away.
Uncheered by further copper showers, it droned again slumberously,
while the murmur sent forth by the thousand activities of the great
city waxed loud, for the moment, and hoarsely insistent.
"I do not bore you?" Lady Constance asked, in sudden anxiety.
"Oh no, no!" Richard answered. "I am glad to have you tell me about
yourself, if you will; and all that you care for."
Thus encouraged, the girl took up her little parable again, her sweet,
rather vacant, face growing almost animated as she spoke.
"We did something else I liked very much, but from what Alicia said
afterwards I am afraid I ought not to have liked it. One day it snowed,
and we all played hide-and-seek. There are a number of attics in the
roof of the bachelor's wing at Whitney, and there are long up-and-down
passages leading round to the old nurseries. Mama did not mind, but
Alicia was very displeased. She said it was a mere excuse for romping.
But that was not true. Of course we never thought of romping. We did
make a great noise," she added conscientiously, "but that was Rupert
and Gerry's fault. They would jump out after promising not to, and of
course it was impossible to help screaming. Eddy's Liverpool friend
tried to jump out too, but Maggie snubbed him. I think he deserved it.
You ought to play fair; don't you think so? After promising, you would
never jump out, would you?"
And there Lady Constance stopped, with a little gasp.
"Oh! I beg your pardon. I am so sorry. I forgot," she added
breathlessly.
Richard's face had become thin and keen.
"Forget just as often as you can, please," he answered huskily. "I
would infinitely rather have you--have everybody--forget altogether--if
possible."
"Oh! but I think that would be wrong of me," she rejoined, with gentle
dogmatism. "It is selfish to forget anything that is very sad."
"And is this so very sad?" Richard asked, almost harshly.
The girl stared at him with parted lips.
"Oh yes!" she said slowly. "Of course,--don't you think so? It is
dreadfully sad."--And then, her attitude still unchanged and her pretty
plump hands still folded on her lap, she went on, in her touching
determination to sustain the conversation with due readiness and
civility. "Brockhurst is a much larger house than Whitney, isn't it? I
thought so the day we drove over to luncheon--when that beautiful,
French cousin of yours was staying with you, you remember?"
"Yes, I remember," Richard said.
And as he spoke Madame de Vallorbes, clothed in the seawaves, crowned
and shod with gold, seemed to stand for a moment beside his innocent,
little _fiancee_. How long it was since he had heard from her! Did she
want money, he wondered? It would be intolerable if, because of his
marriage, she never let him help her again. And all the while Lady
Constance's unemotional, careful, little voice continued, as did the
ceaseless murmur of London.
"I remember," she was saying, "because your cousin is quite the most
beautiful person I have ever seen. Papa admired her very much too. We
spoke of that as soon as Louisa had left us, when we were alone. But
there seemed to me so many staircases at Brockhurst, and rooms opening
one out of the other. I have been wondering--since--lately--whether I
shall ever be able to find my way about the house."
"I will show you your way," Dickie said gently, banishing the vision of
Helen de Vallorbes.
"You will show it me?" the girl asked, in evident surprise.
Then a companion picture to that of Madame de Vallorbes arose before
Dickie's mental vision--namely, the good-looking, long-legged, young,
Irish soldier, Mr. Decies, of the 101st Lancers, flying along the attic
passages of the Whitney bachelor's wing, in company with this
immediately--so--demure and dutiful maiden and all the rest of that
admittedly rather uproarious, holiday throng. Thereat a foolish lump
rose in poor Richard's throat, for he too was, after all, but young. He
choked the foolish lump down again. Yet it left his voice a trifle
husky.
"Yes, I will show you your way," he said. "I can manage that much, you
know, at home, in private, among my own people. Only you mustn't be in
a hurry. I have to take my time. You must not mind that. I--I go
slowly."
"But that will be much better for me," she answered, with rather humble
courtesy, "because then I am more likely to remember my way. I have so
much difficulty in knowing my way. I still lose myself sometimes in the
park at Whitney. I did once this winter with--my brother Guy's friend,
Mr. Decies. The boys always tease me about losing my way. Even papa
says I have no bump of locality. I am afraid I am stupid about that. My
governesses always complained that I was a very thoughtless child."
Lady Constance unfolded her hands. Her timid, engagingly vague gaze
dwelt appealingly upon Richard's handsome face.
"I think, perhaps, if you do not mind, I will go now," she said. "I
must bid Lady Calmady good-bye. We dine at Lady Combmartin's to-night.
You dine there too, don't you? And my sister Louisa may want me to
drive with her, or write some notes, before I dress."
"Wait half a minute," Dickie said. "I've got something for you. Let's
see---- Oh! there it is!"
Raising himself he stood, for a moment, on the seat of the chair,
steadying himself with one hand on the back of it, and reached a
little, silver-paper covered parcel from the neighbouring table. Then
he slipped back into a sitting position, drew the silken blanket up
across his thighs, and tossed the little parcel gently into Lady
Constance Quayle's lap.
"I as near as possible let you go without it," he said. "Not that it's
anything very wonderful. It's nothing--only I saw it in a shop in Bond
Street yesterday, and it struck me as rather quaint. I thought you
might like it. Why--but--Constance, what's the matter?"
For the girl's pretty, heart-shaped face had blanched to the whiteness
of her white dress. Her eyes were strained, as those of one who beholds
an object of terror. Not only her chin but her round, baby mouth
quivered. Richard looked at her, amazed at these evidences of
distressing emotion. Then suddenly he understood.
"I frighten you. How horrible!" he said.
But little Lady Constance had not suffered persistent training at the
hands of nurses, and governesses, and elder sisters, during all her
eighteen years of innocent living for nothing. She had her own small
code of manners and morals, of honour and duty, and to the requirements
of that code, as she apprehended them, she yielded unqualified
obedience, not unheroic in its own meagre and rather puzzle-headed
fashion. So that now, notwithstanding quivering lips, she retained her
intention of civility and entered immediate apology for her own
weakness.
"No, no, indeed you do not," she replied. "Please forgive me. I know I
was very foolish. I am so sorry. You are so kind to me, you are always
giving me beautiful presents, and indeed I am not ungrateful. Only I
had never seen--seen--you like that before. And, please forgive me--I
will never be foolish again--indeed, I will not. But I was taken by
surprise. I beg your pardon. I shall be so dreadfully unhappy if you do
not forgive me."
And all the while her trembling hands fumbled helplessly with the
narrow ribbon tying the dainty parcel, and big tears rolled down slowly
out of her great, soft, wide-set, heifer's eyes. Never was there more
moving or guileless a spectacle! Witnessing which, Richard Calmady was
taken somewhat out of himself, his personal misfortune seeming matter
inconsiderable, while his childlike _fiancee_ had never appeared more
engaging. All the sweetest of his nature responded to her artless
appeal in very tender pity.
"Why, my dear Constance," he said, "there's nothing to forgive. I was
foolish, not you. I ought to have known better. Never mind. I don't.
Only wipe your pretty eyes, please. Yes--that's better. Now let me
break that tiresome ribbon for you."
"You are very kind to me," the girl murmured. Then, as the ribbon broke
under Richard's strong fingers, and the delicate necklace of many,
roughly-cut, precious stones--topaz, amethyst, sapphire, ruby,
chrysolite, and beryl joined together, three rows deep, by slender,
golden chains--slipped from the enclosing paper wrapping into her open
hands, Constance Quayle added, rather tearfully:--"Oh! you are much too
kind! You give me too many things. No one I know ever had such
beautiful presents. The cobs you told me of, and now this, and the
pearls, and the tiara you gave me last week. I--I don't deserve it. You
give me too much, and I give nothing in return."
"Oh yes, you do!" Richard said, flushing. "You--you give me yourself."
Lady Constance's tears ceased. Again she stared at him in gentle
perplexity.
"You promise to marry me----"
"Yes, of course, I have promised that," she said slowly.
"And isn't that about the greatest giving there can be? A few horses,
and jewels, and such rubbish of sorts, weigh pretty light in the
balance against that--I being I"--Richard paused a moment--"and
you--you."
But a certain ardour which had come into his speech, for all that he
sat very still, and that his expression was wholly gentle and
indulgent, and that she felt a comfortable assurance that he was not
angry with her, rather troubled little Lady Constance Quayle. She rose
to her feet, and stood before him again, as a child about to recite a
lesson.
"I think," she said, "I must go. Louisa may want me. Thank you so much.
The necklace is quite lovely. I never saw one like it. I like so many
colours. They remind me of flowers, or of the colours at sunset in the
sky. I shall like to wear this very much. You--you will forgive me for
having been foolish--or if I have bored you?"
Her bosom rose and fell, and the words came breathlessly.
"I shall see you at Lady Combmartin's? So--so now I will go."
And with that she departed, leaving Richard more in love with her,
somehow, than he had ever been before or had ever thought to be.
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH HONORIA ST. QUENTIN TAKES THE FIELD
It had been agreed that the marriage should take place, in the country,
one day in the first week of August. This at Richard's request. Then
the young man asked a further favour, namely, that the ceremony might
be performed in the private chapel at Brockhurst, rather than in the
Whitney parish church. This last proposal, it must be owned, when made
to him by Lady Calmady, caused Lord Fallowfeild great searchings of
heart.
"I give you my word, my dear boy, I never felt more awkward in my
life," he said, subsequently, to his chosen confidant, Shotover. "Can
quite understand Calmady doesn't care to court publicity. Told his
mother I quite understood. Shouldn't care to court it myself if I had
the misfortune to share his--well, personal peculiarities, don't you
know, poor young fellow. Still this seems to me an uncomfortable, hole
and corner sort of way of behaving to one's daughter--marrying her at
his house instead of from my own. I don't half approve of it. Looks a
little as if we were rather ashamed of the whole business."
"Well, perhaps we are," Lord Shotover remarked.
"For God's sake, then, don't mention it!" the elder man broke out, with
unprecedented asperity. "Don't approve of strong language," he added
hastily. "Never did approve of it, and very rarely employ it myself. An
educated man ought to be able to express himself quite sufficiently
clearly without having recourse to it. Still, I must own this
engagement of Constance's has upset me more than almost any event of my
life. Nasty, anxious work marrying your daughters. Heavy responsibility
marrying your daughters. And, as to this particular marriage, there's
so very much to be said on both sides. And I admit to you, Shotover, if
there's anything I hate it's a case where there's very much to be said
on both sides. It trips you up, you see, at every turn. Then I feel I
was not fairly treated. I don't wish to be hard on your brother Ludovic
and your sisters, but they sprung it upon me, and I am not quick in
argument, never was quick, if I am hurried. Never can be certain of my
own mind when I am hurried--was not certain of it when Lady Calmady
proposed that the marriage should be at Brockhurst. And so I gave way.
Must be accommodating to a woman, you know. Always have been
accommodating to women--got myself into uncommonly tight places by
being so more than once when I was younger----"
Here the speaker cheered up visibly, contemplating his favourite son
with an air at once humorous and contrite.
"You're well out of it, you know, Shotover, with no ties," he
continued, "at least, I mean, with no wife and family. Not that I don't
consider every man owning property should marry sooner or later. More
respectable if you've got property to marry, roots you in the soil,
gives you a stake, you know, in the future of the country. But I'd let
it be later--yes, thinking of marriageable daughters, certainly I'd let
it be later."
From which it may be gathered that Richard's demands were conceded at
all points. And this last concession involved many preparations at
Brockhurst, to effect which Lady Calmady left London with the bulk of
the household about the middle of July, while Richard remained in
Lowndes Square and the neighbourhood of his little _fiancee_--in
company with a few servants and many brown holland covers--till such
time as that young lady should also depart to the country. It was just
now that Lady Louisa Barking gave her annual ball, always one of the
latest, and this year one of the smartest, festivities of the season.
"I mean it to be exceedingly well done," she said to her sister Alicia.
"And Mr. Barking entirely agrees with me. I feel I owe it not only to
myself, but to the rest of the family to show that none of us see
anything extraordinary in Connie's marriage, and that whatever
Shotover's debts may have been, or may be, they are really no concern
at all of ours."
In obedience to which laudable determination the handsome mansion in
Albert Gate opened wide its portals, and all London--a far from
despicable company in numbers, since Parliament was still sitting and
the session promised to be rather indefinitely prolonged--crowded its
fine stairways and suites of lofty rooms, resplendent in silks and
satins, jewels and laces, in orders and titles, and manifold personal
distinctions of wealth, or office, or beauty, while strains of music
and scent of flowers pervaded the length and breadth of it, and the
feet of the dancers sped over its shining floors.
It chanced that Honoria St. Quentin found herself, on this occasion, in
a meditative, rather than an active, mood. True, the scene was
remarkably brilliant. But she had witnessed too many parallel scenes to
be very much affected by that. So it pleased her fancy to moralise, to
discriminate--not without a delicate sarcasm--between actualities and
appearances, between the sentiments which might be divined really to
animate many of the guests, and those conventional presentments of
sentiment which the manner and bearing of the said guests indicated.
She assured Lord Shotover she would rather not dance, that she
preferred the attitude of spectator, whereupon that gentleman proposed
to her to take sanctuary in a certain ante-chamber, opening off Lady
Louisa Barking's boudoir, which was cool, dimly lighted, and agreeably
remote from the turmoil of the entertainment now at its height.
The acquaintance of these two persons was, in as far as time and the
number of their meetings went, but slight, and, at first sight, their
tastes and temperaments would seem wide asunder as the poles. But
contrast can form a strong bond of union. And the young man, when his
fancy was engaged, was among those who do not waste time over
preliminaries. If pleased, he bundled, neck and crop, into intimacy.
And Miss St. Quentin, her fearless speech, her amusingly detached
attitude of mind, and her gallant bearing, pleased him mightily from a
certain point of view. He pronounced her to be a "first-rate sort," and
entertained a shrewd suspicion that, as he put it, Ludovic "was after
her." He commended his brother's good taste. He considered she would
make a tip-top sister-in-law. While the young lady, on her part,
accepted his advances in a friendly spirit. His fraternal attitude and
unfailing good-temper diverted her. His rather doubtful reputation
piqued her curiosity. She accepted the general verdict, declaring him
to be good-for-nothing, while she enjoyed the conviction that, rake or
no rake, he was incapable of causing her the smallest annoyance, or
being guilty,--as far as she herself was concerned,--of the smallest
indiscretion.
"You know, Miss St. Quentin," he remarked, as he established himself
comfortably, not to say cosily, on a sofa beside her,--"over and above
the pleasure of a peaceful little talk with you, I am not altogether
sorry to seek retirement. You see, between ourselves, I'm not,
unfortunately, in exactly good odour with some members of the family
just now. I don't think I'm shy----"
Honoria smiled at him through the dimness.
"I don't think you're shy," she said.
"Well, you know, when you come to consider it from an unprejudiced
standpoint, what the dickens is the use of being shy? It's only an
inverted kind of conceit at best, and half the time it makes you stand
in your own light."
"Clearly it's a mistake every way," the young lady asserted. "And,
happily, it's one of which I can entirely acquit you of being guilty."
Lord Shotover threw back his head and looked sideways at his
companion.--Wonderfully, graceful woman she was certainly! Gave you the
feeling she'd all the time there was or ever would be. Delightful thing
to see a woman who was never in a hurry.
"No, honestly I don't believe I'm weak in the way of shyness," he
continued. "If I had been, I shouldn't be here to-night. My sister
Louisa didn't press me to come. Strange as it may appear to you, Miss
St. Quentin, I give you my word she didn't. Nor has she regarded me
with an exactly favourable eye since my arrival. I am not abashed, not
a bit. But I can't disguise from myself that again I have gone, and
been, and jolly well put my foot in it."
He whistled very softly under his breath.--"Oh! I have, I promise you,
even on the most modest computation, very extensively and
comprehensively put my foot in it!"
"How?" inquired Honoria.
Lord Shotover's confidences invariably amused her, and just now she
welcomed amusement. For crossing her hostess' boudoir she had
momentarily caught sight of that which changed the speculative sarcasm
of her meditations to something approaching pain--namely, a pretty,
wide-eyed, childish face rising from out a cloud of white tulle, white
roses, and diamonds, the expression of which had seemed to her
distressingly remote from all the surrounding gaiety and splendour.
Actualities and appearances here were surely radically at variance?
And, now, she smilingly turned on her elbow and made brief inquiry of
her companion, promising herself good measure of superficial
entertainment which should serve to banish that pathetic countenance,
and allay her suspicion of a sorrowful happening which she was
powerless alike to hinder or to help.
Lord Shotover pushed his hands into his trousers pockets, leaned far
back on the sofa, turning his head so that he could look at her
comfortably without exertion and chuckling, a little, as he spoke.
"Well, you see," he said, "I brought Decies. No, you're right, I'm not
shy, for to do that was a bit of the most barefaced cheek. My sister
Louisa hadn't asked him. Of course she hadn't. At bottom she's awfully
afraid he may still upset the apple-cart. But I told her I knew, of
course, she had intended to ask him, and that the letter must have got
lost somehow in the post, and that I knew how glad she'd be to have me
rectify the little mistake. My manner was not jaunty, Miss St. Quentin,
or defiant--not a bit of it. It was frank, manly, I should call it
manly and pleasing. But Louisa didn't seem to see it that way somehow.
She withered me, she scorched me, reduced me to a cinder, though she
never uttered one blessed syllable. The hottest corner of the infernal
regions resided in my sister's eye at that moment, and I resided in
that hottest corner, I tell you. Of course I knew I risked losing the
last rag of her regard when I brought Decies. But you see, poor chap,
it is awfully rough on him. He was making the running all through the
winter. I could not help, feeling for him, so I chucked discretion----"
"For the first and only time in your life," put in Honoria gently. "And
pray who and what is this disturber of domestic peace, Decies?"
"Oh! you know the whole affair grows out of this engagement of my
little sister Connie's. By the way, though, the Calmadys are great
friends of yours, aren't they, Miss St. Quentin?"
The young man regarded her anxiously, fearful least he should have
endangered the agreeable intimacy of their present relation by the
introduction of an unpalatable subject of conversation. Even in this
semi-obscurity he perceived that her fine smile had vanished, while the
lines of her sensitive face took on a certain rigidity and effect of
sternness. Lord Shotover regretted that. For some reason, he knew not
what, she was displeased. He, like an ass, evidently had blundered.
"I'm awfully sorry," he began, "perhaps--perhaps----"
"Perhaps it is very impertinent for a mere looker-on like myself to
have any views at all about this marriage," Honoria put in quickly.
"Bless you, no, it's not," he answered. "I don't see how anybody can
very well be off having views about it--that's just the nuisance. The
whole thing shouts, confound it. So you might just as well let me hear
your views, Miss St. Quentin. I should be awfully interested. They
might help to straighten my own out a bit."
Honoria paused a moment, doubting how much of her thought it would be
justifiable to confide to her companion. A certain vein of
knight-errantry in her character inclined her to set lance in rest and
ride forth, rather recklessly, to redress human wrongs. But in
redressing one wrong it too often happens that another wrong--or
something perilously approaching one--must be inflicted. To save pain
in one direction is, unhappily, to inflict pain in the opposite one.
Honoria was aware how warmly Lady Calmady desired this marriage. She
loved Lady Calmady. Therefore her loyalty was engaged, and yet----
"I am no match-maker," she said at last, "and so probably my view is
unnecessarily pessimistic. But I happened to see Lady Constance just
now, and I cannot pretend that she struck me as looking conspicuously
happy."
Lord Shotover flattened his shoulders against the back of the sofa,
expanding his chest and thrusting his hands still farther into his
pockets with a movement at once of anxiety and satisfaction.
"I don't believe she is," he asserted. "Upon my word you're right. I
don't believe she is. I doubted it from the first, and now I'm pretty
certain. Of course I know I'm a bad lot, Miss St. Quentin. I've been
very little but a confounded nuisance to my people ever since I was
born. They're all ten thousand times better than I am, and they're
doing what they honestly think right. All the same I believe they're
making a ghastly mistake. They're selling the poor, little girl against
her will, that's about the long and short of it."
He bowed himself together, looking at his companion from under his
eyebrows, and speaking with more seriousness than she had ever heard
him yet speak.
"I tell you it makes me a little sick sometimes to see what excellent,
well-meaning people will do with girls in respect of marriage. Oh, good
Lord! it just does! But then a high moral tone doesn't come quite
gracefully from me. I know that. I'm jolly well out of it. It's not for
me to preach. And so I thought for once I'd act--defy authority, risk
landing myself in a worse mess than ever, and give Decies his chance.
And I tell you he really is a charming chap, a gentleman, you know, and
a nice, clean-minded, decent fellow--not like me, not a bit. He's
awfully hard hit too, and would be as steady as old time for poor
little Con's sake if----"
"Ah! now I begin to comprehend," Honoria said.
"Yes, don't you see, it's a perfectly genuine, for-ever-and-ever-amen
sort of business."
Lord Shotover leaned back once more, and turned a wonderfully pleasant,
if not preeminently responsible, countenance upon his companion.
"I never went in for that kind of racket myself, Miss St. Quentin," he
continued. "Not being conspicuously faithful, I should only have made a
_fiasco_ of it. But I give you my word it touches me all the same when
I do run across it. I think it's awfully lucky for a man to be made
that way. And Decies is. So there seemed no help for it. I had to chuck
discretion, as I told you, and give him his chance."
He paused, and then asked with a somewhat humorous air of
self-depreciation:--"What do you think now, have I done more harm than
good, made confusion worse confounded, and played the fool generally?"
But again Honoria vouchsafed him no immediate reply. The meditative
mood still held her, and the present conversation offered much food for
meditation. Her companion's confession of faith in true love, if you
had the good fortune to be born that way, had startled her. That the
speaker enjoyed the reputation of being something of a profligate lent
singular point to that confession. She had not expected it from Lord
Shotover, of all men. And, as coming from him, the sentiment was in a
high degree arresting and interesting. Her own ideals, so far, had a
decidedly anti-matrimonial tendency, while being in love appeared to
her a much overrated, if not actively objectionable, condition.
Personally she hoped to escape all experience of it. Then her thought
traveled back to Lady Calmady,--the charm of her personality, her
sorrows, her splendid self-devotion, and to the object of that
devotion--namely, Richard Calmady, a being of strange contrasts, at
once maimed and beautiful, a being from whom she--Honoria--shrank in
instinctive repulsion, while unwillingly acknowledging that he
exercised a permanent and intimate fascination over her imagination.
She dwelt, in quick pity, too, upon the frightened, wide-eyed, childish
face recently seen rising from out its diaphanous cloud of tulle, the
prettiness of it heightened by fair wealth of summer roses and flash of
costly diamonds, and upon Mr. Decies, the whole-hearted, young soldier
lover, whose existence threatened such dangerous complications in
respect of the rest of this strangely assorted company. Finally her
meditative survey returned to its point of departure. In thought she
surveyed her present companion,--his undeniable excellence of sentiment
and clear-seeing, his admittedly defective conduct in matters ethical
and financial. Never before had she been at such close quarters with
living and immediate human drama, and, notwithstanding her detachment,
her lofty indifference and high-spirited theories, she found it
profoundly agitating. She was sensible of being in collision with
unknown and incalculable forces. Instinctively she rose from her place
on the sofa, and, moving to the open window, looked out into the night.
Below, the Park, now silent and deserted, slept peacefully, as any
expanse of remote country pasture and woodland, in the mildly radiant
moonlight. Here and there were blottings of dark shadow cast by the
clumps or avenues of trees. Here and there the timid, yellow flame of
gas lamps struggled to assert itself against the all-embracing silver
brightness. Here and there windows glowed warm, set in the pale,
glistering facades of the adjacent houses. A cool, light wind, hailing
from the direction of the unseen Serpentine, stirred the hanging
clusters of the pink geraniums that fell over the curved lip of the
stone vases, standing along the broad coping of the balcony, and gently
caressed the girl's bare arms and shoulders.
Seen under these unaccustomed conditions familiar objects assumed a
fantastic aspect. For the night is a mighty magician, with power to
render even the weighty brick and stone, even the hard, uncomprising
outlines of a monster, modern city, delicately elusive, mockingly
tentative and unsubstantial. Meanwhile, within, from all along the
vista of crowded and brilliantly illuminated rooms, came the subdued,
yet confused and insistent, sound of musical instruments, of many
voices, many footsteps, the hush of women's trailing garments, the rise
and fall of unceasing conversation. And to Honoria standing in this
quiet, dimly-seen place, the sense of that moonlit world without, and
this gas and candle-lit world within, increased the nameless agitation
which infected her. A haunting persuasion of the phantasmagoric
character of all sounds that saluted her ears, all sights that met her
eyes, possessed her. A vast uncertainty surrounded and pressed in on
her, while those questionings of appearances and actualities, of truth
and falsehood, right and wrong, justice and injustice, with which she
had played idly earlier in the evening, took on new and almost terrible
proportions, causing her intelligence, nay, her heart itself, to reach
out, as never before, in search of some sure rock and house of defense
against the disintegrating apprehension of universal instability and
illusion.
"Ah! it is all very difficult, difficult to the point of alarm!" she
exclaimed suddenly, turning to Lord Shotover and looking him straight
in the face, with an unself-consciousness and desire of support so
transparent, that that gentleman found himself at once delighted and
slightly abashed.
"Bless my soul, but Ludovic is a lucky devil!" he said to
himself.--"What's--what's so beastly difficult, Miss St. Quentin?" he
asked aloud. And the sound of his cheery voice recalled Honoria to the
normal aspects of existence with almost humorous velocity. She smiled
upon him.
"I really believe I don't quite know," she said. "Perhaps that the two
people, of whom we were speaking, really care for each other, and that
this engagement has come between them, and that you have chucked
discretion and given him his chance. Tell me, what sort of man is
he--strong enough to make the most of his chance when he's got it?"
But at that moment Lord Shotover stepped forward, adroitly planting
himself right in front of her and thus screening her from observation.
"By George!" he said under his breath, in tones of mingled amusement
and consternation, "he's making the most of his chance now Miss St.
Quentin, and that most uncommonly comprehensively, unless I'm very much
mistaken."
Her companion's tall person and the folds of a heavy curtain, while
screening Honoria from observation, also, in great measure, obscured
her view of the room. Yet not so completely but that she saw two
figures cross it, one black, one white, those of a man and a girl. They
were both speaking, the man apparently pleading, the girl protesting
and moving hurriedly, the while, as though in actual flight. She must
have been moving blindly, at random, for she stumbled against the
outstanding, gilded leg of a consol table, set against the further
wall, causing the ornaments on it to rattle. And so doing, she gave a
plaintive exclamation of alarm, perhaps even of physical pain. Hearing
which, that nameless agitation, that sense of collision with unknown
and incalculable forces, seized hold on Honoria again, while Lord
Shotover's features contracted and he turned his head sharply.
"By George!" he repeated under his breath.
But the girl recovered herself, and, followed by her companion,--he
still pleading, she still protesting,--passed by the further window on
to the balcony and out of sight. There followed a period of embarrassed
silence on the part of the usually voluble Shotover, while his pleasant
countenance expressed a certain half-humorous concern.
"Really, I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I'd not the slightest intention
of landing you in for the thick of the brown like this.".
"Or yourself either," she replied, smiling, though, with that sense of
nameless agitation still upon her, her heart beat rather quick.
"Well, perhaps not. Between ourselves, moral courage isn't my strong
point. There's nothing I funk like a row. I say, what shall we do?
Don't you think we'd better quietly clear out?"
But just then a sound caught Honoria's ear before which all vague
questions of ultimate truth and falsehood, right and wrong fled away.
Whatever might savour of illusion, here was something real and actual,
something pitiful, moreover, arousing the spirit of knight-errantry in
her, pushing her to lay lance in rest and go forth, reckless of
conventionalities, reckless even of considerations of justice, to the
succour of oppressed womanhood. What words the man, on the balcony
without, was saying she could not distinguish--whether cruel or kind,
but that the young girl was weeping, with the abandonment of
long-resisted tears, she could not doubt.
"No, no, listen Lord Shotover," she exclaimed authoritatively. "Don't
you hear? She is crying as if her poor heart would break. You must
stay. If I understand you rightly your sister has only got you to
depend on. Whatever happens you must stand by her and see her through."
"Oh! but, my dear Miss St. Quentin----" The young man's aspect was
entertaining. He looked at the floor, he looked at Honoria, he rubbed
the back of his neck with one hand as though there might be placed the
seat of fortitude. "You're inviting me to put my head into the
liveliest hornet's nest. What the deuce--excuse me--am I to say to her
and all the rest of them? Decies, even, mayn't quite understand my
interference and may resent it. I think it is very much safer, all
round, to let them--him and her--thrash it out between them, don't you
know. I say though, what a beastly thing it is to hear a woman cry! I
wish to goodness we'd never come into this confounded place and let
ourselves in for it."
As he spoke, Lord Shotover turned towards the door, meditating escape
in the direction of that brilliant vista of crowded rooms. But Honoria
St. Quentin, her enthusiasm once aroused, became inexorable. With her
long swinging stride she outdistanced his hesitating steps, and stood,
in the doorway, her arms extended--as to stop a runaway horse--her
clear eyes aglow as though a lamp burned behind them, her pale,
delicately cut face eloquent of very militant charity. A spice of
contempt, moreover, for his display of pusillanimity was quite
perceptible to Shotover in the expression of this charming, modern
angel, clad in a ball-dress, bearing a fan instead of the traditional
fiery-sword, who, so determinedly, barred the entrance of that
comfortably conventional, worldly paradise to which he, just now, so
warmly desired to regain admittance.
"No, no," she said, with a certain vibration in her quiet voice, "you
are not to go! You are not to desert her. It would be unworthy, Lord
Shotover. You brought Mr. Decies here and so you are mainly responsible
for the present situation. And think, just think what it means. All the
course of her life will be affected by that which takes place in the
next half-hour. You would never cease to reproach yourself if things
went wrong."
"Shouldn't I?" the young man said dubiously.
"Of course you wouldn't," Honoria asserted. "Having it in your power to
help, and then shirking the responsibility! I won't believe that of
you. You are better than that. For think how young she is, and pretty
and dependent. She may be driven to do some fatally, foolish thing if
she's left unsupported. You must at least know what is going on. You
are bound to do so. Moreover, as a mere matter of courtesy, you can't
desert me and I intend to stay."
"Do you, though?" faltered Lord Shotover, in tones curiously resembling
his father's.
Honoria drew herself up proudly, almost scornfully.
"Yes, I shall stay," she continued. "I am no matchmaker. I have no
particular faith in or admiration for marriage----"
"Haven't you, though?" said Lord Shotover. He was slightly surprised,
slightly amused, but to his credit be it stated that he put no
equivocal construction upon the young lady's frank avowal. He felt a
little sorry for Ludovic, that was all, fearing the latter's good
fortune was less fully established than he had supposed.
"No, I don't believe very much in marriage--modern, upper-class
marriage," she repeated. "And, just precisely on that account, it seems
to me all the more degrading and shameful that a girl should risk
marrying the wrong man. People talk about a broken engagement as though
it was a disgrace. I can't see that. An unwilling, a--a--loveless
marriage is the disgrace. And so at the very church door I would urge
and encourage a woman to turn back, if she doubted, and have done with
the whole thing."
"Upon my word!" murmured Lord Shotover.--The infinite variety of the
feminine outlook, the unqualified audacity of feminine action, struck
him as bewildering. Talk of women's want of logic! It was their
relentless application of logic--as they apprehended it--which
staggered him.
Honoria had come close to him. In her excitement she laid her fan on
his arm.
"Listen," she said, "listen how Lady Constance is crying. Come--you
must know what is happening. You must comfort her."
The young man thrust his hands into his pockets with an air of
good-humoured and despairing resignation.
"All right," he replied, "only I tell you what it is, Miss St. Quentin,
you've got to come too. I refuse to be deserted."
"I have not the smallest intention of deserting you," Honoria said.
"Even yet discretion, though so lately chucked, might return to you.
And then you might cut and run, don't you know."
CHAPTER VII
RECORDING THE ASTONISHING VALOUR DISPLAYED BY A CERTAIN SMALL MOUSE IN
A CORNER
As Honoria St. Quentin and the reluctant Shotover stepped, side by
side, from the warmth and dimness obtaining in the anteroom, into the
pleasant coolness of the moonlit balcony, Lady Constance Quayle,
altogether forgetful of her usual careful civility and pretty
correctness of demeanour, uttered an inarticulate cry--a cry, indeed,
hardly human in its abandon and unreasoning anguish, resembling rather
the shriek of the doubling hare as the pursuing greyhound nips it
across the loins. Regardless of all her dainty finery of tulle, and
roses, and flashing diamonds, she flung herself forward, face
downwards, across the coping of the balustrade, her bare arms
outstretched, her hands clasped above her head. Mr. Decies, blue-eyed,
black-haired, smooth of skin, looking noticeably long and lithe in his
close-fitting, dress clothes, made a rapid movement as though to lay
hold on her and bear her bodily away. Then, recognising the futility of
any such attempt, he turned upon the intruders, his high-spirited
Celtic face drawn with emotion, his attitude rather dangerously
warlike.
"What do you want?" he demanded hotly.
"My dear good fellow," Lord Shotover began, with the most assuaging air
of apology. "I assure you the very last thing I--we--I mean I--want is
to be a nuisance. Only Miss St. Quentin thought--in fact, Decies, don't
you see--dash it all, you know, there seemed to be some sort of worry
going on out here and so----"
But Honoria did not wait for the conclusion of elaborate explanations,
for that cry and the unrestraint of the girl's attitude not only
roused, but shocked her. It was not fitting that any man, however
kindly or even devoted, should behold this well-bred, modest and
gentle, young maiden in her present extremity. So she swept past Mr.
Decies and bent over Lady Constance Quayle, raised her, strove to
soothe her agitation, speaking in tones of somewhat indignant
tenderness.
But, though deriving a measure of comfort from the steady arm about her
waist, from the strong, protective presence, from the rather stern
beauty of the face looking down into hers, Lady Constance could not
master her agitation. The train had left the metals, so to speak, and
the result was confusion dire. A great shame held her, a dislocation of
mind. She suffered that loneliness of soul which forms so integral a
part of the misery of all apparently irretrievable disaster, whether
moral or physical, and places the victim of it, in imagination at all
events, rather terribly beyond the pale.
"Oh!" she sobbed, "you ought not to be so kind to me. I am very wicked.
I never supposed I could be so wicked. What shall I do? I am so
frightened at myself and at everything. I did not recognise you. I
didn't see it was only Shotover."
"Well, but now you do see, my dear Con, it's only me," that gentleman
remarked, with a cheerful disregard of grammar. "And so you mustn't
upset yourself any more. It's awfully bad for you, and uncomfortable
for everybody else, don't you know. You must try to pull yourself
together a bit and we'll help you--of course, I'll help you. We'll all
help you, of course we will, and pull you through somehow."
But the girl only lamented herself the more piteously.
"Oh no, Shotover, you must not be so kind to me! You couldn't if you
knew how wicked I have been."
"Couldn't I?" Lord Shotover remarked, not without a touch of humorous
pathos. "Poor little Con!"
"Only, only please do not tell Louisa. It would be too dreadful if she
knew--she, and Alicia, and the others. Don't tell her, and I will be
good. I will be quite good, indeed I will."
"Bless me, my dear child, I won't tell anybody anything. To begin with
I don't know anything to tell."
The girl's voice had sunk away into a sob. She shuddered, letting her
pretty, brown head fall back against Honoria St. Quentin's bare
shoulder,--while the moonlight glinted on her jewels and the night wind
swayed the hanging clusters of the pink geraniums. Along with the
warmth and scent of flowers, streaming outward through the open
windows, came a confused sound of many voices, of discreet laughter,
mingled with the wailing sweetness of violins. Then the pleading,
broken, childish voice took up its tale again:--
"I will be good. I know I have promised, and I have let him give me a
number of beautiful things. He has been very kind to me, because he is
clever, and of course I am stupid. But he has never been impatient with
me. And I am not ungrateful, indeed, Shotover, I am not. It was only
for a minute I was wicked enough to think of doing it. But Mr. Decies
told me he--asked me--and--and we were so happy at Whitney in the
winter. And it seemed too hard to give it all up, as he said it was
true. But I will be good, indeed I will. Really it was only for a
minute I thought of it. I know I have promised. Indeed, I will make no
fuss. I will be good. I will marry Richard Calmady."
"But this is simply intolerable!" Honoria said in a low voice.
She held herself tall and straight, looking gallant yet pure, austere
even, as some pictured Jeanne d'Arc, a great singleness of purpose, a
high courage of protest, an effect at once of fearless challenge and of
command in her bearing.--"Is it not a scandal," she went on, "that in a
civilised country, at this time of day, woman should be allowed,
actually forced, to suffer so much? You must not permit this martyrdom
to be completed--you can't!"
As she spoke Decies watched her keenly. Who this stately, young
lady--so remarkably unlike the majority of Lord Shotover's intimate,
feminine acquaintance--might be, he did not know. But he discerned in
her an ally and a powerful one.
"Yes," he said impulsively, "you are right. It is a martyrdom and a
scandalous one. It's worse than murder, it's sacrilege. It's not like
any ordinary marriage. I don't want to be brutal, but it isn't. There's
something repulsive in it, something unnatural."
The young man looked at Honoria, and read in her expression a certain
agreement and encouragement.
"You know it, Shotover--you know it just as well as I do. And that
justified me in attempting what I suppose I would not otherwise have
felt it honourable to attempt.--Look here, Shotover, I will tell you
what has just happened. I would have had to tell you to-morrow, in any
case, if we had carried the plan out. But I suppose I have no
alternative but to tell you now, since you've come."
He ranged himself in line with Miss St. Quentin, his back against one
of the big stone vases. He struggled honestly to keep both temper and
emotion under control, but a rather volcanic energy was perceptible in
him.
"I love Lady Constance," he said. "I have told her so, and--and she
cares for me. I am not a Croesus like Calmady. But I am not a pauper.
I have enough to keep a wife in a manner suitable to her position, and
my own. When my Uncle Ulick Decies dies--which I hope he'll not hurry
to do, since I am very fond of him--there'll be the Somersetshire
property in addition to my own dear, old place in County Cork. And your
sister simply hates this marriage----"
"Lord bless me, my dear fellow, so do I!" Lord Shotover put in with
evident sincerity.
"And so, when at last I had spoken freely, I asked her to----"
But the young girl cowered down, hiding her face in Honoria St.
Quentin's bosom.
"Oh! don't say it again--don't say it," she implored. "It was wicked of
me to listen to you even for a minute. I ought to have stopped you at
once and sent you away. It was very wrong of me to listen, and talk to
you, and tell you all that I did. But everything is so strange, and I
have been so miserable. I never supposed anybody could ever be so
miserable. And I knew it was ungrateful of me, and so I dared not tell
anybody. I would have told papa, but Louisa never let me be alone with
him. She said papa indulged me, and made me selfish and fanciful, and
so I have never seen him for more than a little while. And I have been
so frightened."--She raised her head, gazing wide-eyed first at Miss
St. Quentin and then at her brother. "I have thought such dreadful
things. I must be very bad. I wanted to run away. I wanted to die----"
"There, you hear, you hear," Decies cried hoarsely, spreading abroad
his hands, in sudden violence of appeal to Honoria. "For God's sake
help us! I am not aware whether you are a relation, or a friend, or
what. But I am convinced you can help, if only you choose to do so. And
I tell you she is just killing herself over this accursed marriage.
Some one's got at her and talked her into some wild notion of doing her
duty, and marrying money for the sake of her family."
"Oh! I say, damn it all," Lord Shotover exclaimed, smitten with genuine
remorse.
"And so she believes she's committing the seven deadly sins, and I
don't know what besides, because she rebels against this marriage and
is unhappy. Tell her it's absurd, it's horrible, that she should do
what she loathes and detests. Tell her this talk about duty is a blind,
and a fiction. Tell her she isn't wicked. Why, God in heaven, if we
were none of us more wicked than she is, this poor old world would be
so clean a place that the holy angels might walk barefoot along the
Piccadilly pavement there, outside, without risking to soil so much as
the hem of their garments! Make her understand that the only sin for
her is to do violence to her nature by marrying a man she's afraid of,
and for whom she does not care. I don't want to play a low game on Sir
Richard Calmady and steal that which belongs to him. But she doesn't
belong to him--she is mine, just my own. I knew that from the first day
I came to Whitney, and looked her in the face, Shotover. And she knows
it too, only she's been terrorised with all this devil's talk of duty."
So far the words had poured forth volubly, as in a torrent. Now the
speaker's voice dropped, and they came slowly, defiantly, yet without
hesitation.
"And so I asked her to go away with me, now, to-night, and marry me
to-morrow. I can make her happy--oh, no fear about that! And she would
have consented and gone. We'd have been away by now--if you and this
lady had not come just when you did, Shotover."
The gentleman addressed whistled very softly.
"Would you, though?" he said, adding meditatively:--"By George now,
who'd have thought of Connie going the pace like that!"
"Oh, Shotover, never tell, promise me you will never tell them!" the
poor child cried again. "I know it was wicked, but----"
"No, no, you are mistaken there," Honoria put in, holding her still
closer. "You were tempted to take a rather desperate way out of your
difficulties. It would have been unwise, but there was nothing wicked
in it. The wrong thing is--as Mr. Decies tells you--to marry without
love, and so make all your life a lie, by pretending to give Richard
Calmady that which you do not, and cannot, give him."
Then the young soldier broke in resolutely again.
"I tell you I asked her to go away, and I ask her again now----"
"The deuce you do!" Lord Shotover exclaimed, his sense of amusement
getting the better alike of astonishment and of personal regrets.
"Only now I ask you to sanction her going, Shotover. And I ask you"--he
turned to Miss St. Quentin--"to come with her. I am not even sure of
your name, but I know by all that you've said and done in the last
half-hour, I can be very sure of you. And, I perceive, that if you come
nobody will dare to say anything unpleasant--there'll be nothing,
indeed, to be said."
Honoria smiled. The magnificent egoism of mankind in love struck her as
distinctly diverting. Yet she had a very kindly feeling towards this
black-haired, bright-eyed, energetic, young lover. He was in deadly
earnest--to the removing even of mountains. And he had need to be so,
for that mountains immediately blocked the road to his desires was
evident even to her enthusiastic mind. She looked across compellingly
at Lord Shotover. Let him speak first. She needed time, at this
juncture, in which to arrange her ideas and to think.
"My dear good fellow," that gentleman began obediently, patting Decies
on the shoulder, "I'm all on your side. I give you my word I am, and
I've reason to believe my father will be so too. But you see, an
elopement--specially in our sort of highly respectable, humdrum
family--is rather a strong order. Upon my honour, it is, you know,
Decies. And, even though kindly countenanced by Miss St. Quentin, and
sanctioned by me, it would make a precious undesirable lot of talk. It
really is a rather irregular fashion of conducting the business you
see. And then--advice I always give others and only wish I could always
remember to take myself--it's very much best to be off with the old
love before you're on with the new."
"Yes, yes," Miss St. Quentin put in with quick decision. "Lord Shotover
has laid his finger on the heart of the matter. It is just that.--Lady
Constance's engagement to Richard Calmady must be cancelled before her
engagement to you, Captain Decies, is announced. For her to go away
with you would be to invite criticism, and put herself hopelessly in
the wrong. She must not put herself in the wrong. Let me think! There
must be some way by which we can avoid that."
An exultation, hitherto unexperienced by her, inspired Honoria St.
Quentin. Her attitude was slightly unconventional. She sat on the stone
balustrade, with long-limbed, lazy grace, holding the girl's hand,
forgetful of herself, forgetful, in a degree, of appearances, concerned
only with the problem of rescue presented to her. The young man's
honest, wholehearted devotion, the young girl's struggle after duty and
her piteous desolation, nay, the close contact of that soft, maidenly
body that she had so lately held against her in closer, more intimate,
contact than she had ever held anything human before, aroused a new
class of sentiment, a new order of emotion, within her. She realised,
for the first time, the magnetism, the penetrating and poetic splendour
of human love. To witness the spectacle of it, to be thus in touch with
it, excited her almost as sailing a boat in a heavy sea, or riding to
hounds in a stiff country, excited her. And it followed that now, while
she perched aloft boy-like on the balustrade, her delicate beauty took
on a strange effulgence, a something spiritual, mysterious, elusive,
and yet dazzling as the moonlight which bathed her charming figure.
Seeing which, it must be owned that Lord Shotover's attitude towards
her ceased to be strictly fraternal, while the attractions of ladies
more fair and kind than wise paled very sensibly.
"I wish I hadn't been such a fool in my day, and run amuck with my
chances," he thought.
But Miss St. Quentin was altogether innocent of his observation or any
such thinkings. She looked up suddenly, her face irradiated by an
exquisite smile.
"Yes, I have it," she cried. "I see the way clear."
"But I can't tell them," broke in Lady Constance.
Honoria's hand closed down on hers reassuringly.
"No," she said, "you shall not tell them. And Lord Shotover shall not
tell them. Sir Richard Calmady shall tell Lord Fallowfeild that he
wishes to be released from his engagement, as he believes both you and
he will be happier apart. Only you must be brave, both for your own
sake, and for Mr. Decies', and for Richard Calmady's sake, also.--Lady
Constance," she went on, with a certain gentle authority, "do you want
to go back to Whitney to-morrow, or next day, all this nightmare of an
unhappy marriage done away with and gone? Well, then, you must come and
see Sir Richard Calmady to-night, and, like an honourable woman, tell
him the whole truth. It must be done at once, or your courage may fail.
We will come with you--Lord Shotover and I----"
"Good Lord, will we though!" the young man ejaculated, while the girl's
great, heifer's eyes grew strained with wonder at this astounding
announcement.
"I know it will be rather terrible," Honoria continued calmly. "But it
is a matter of a quarter of an hour, as against a lifetime, and of
honour as against a lie. So it's worth while, don't you think so, when
your whole future, and Mr. Decies'"--she pressed the soft hand again
steadily--"is at stake? You must be brave now, and tell him the
truth--just simply that you do not love him enough--that you have
tried,--you have, I know you have done that,--but you have failed, that
you love some one else, and that therefore you beg him, in mercy,
before it is too late, to set you free."
Fascinated both by her appearance and by the simplicity of her
trenchant solution of the difficulty, Lord Shotover stared at the
speaker. Her faith was infectious. Yet it occurred to him that all
women, good and bad, are at least alike in this--that their methods
become radically unscrupulous when they find themselves in a tight
place.
"It is a fine plan. It ought to work, for--cripple or not--poor
Calmady's a gentleman," he said, slowly. "But doesn't it seem just a
trifle rough, Miss St. Quentin, to ask him to be his own executioner?"
Honoria had slipped down from the balustrade, and stood erect in the
moonlight.
"I think not," she replied. "The woman pays, as a rule. Lady Constance
has paid already quite heavily enough, don't you think so? Now we will
have the exception that proves the rule. The man shall pay whatever
remains of the debt. But we must not waste time. It is not late yet, we
shall still find him up, and my brougham is here. I told Lady Aldham I
should be home fairly early. Get a cloak Lady Constance and meet us in
the hall. I suppose you can go down by some back way so as to avoid
meeting people. Lord Shotover, will you take me to say good-night to
your sister, Lady Louisa?"
The young man fairly chuckled.
"And you, Mr. Decies, must stay and dance."--She smiled upon him very
sweetly. "I promise you it will come through all right, for, as Lord
Shotover says, whatever his misfortunes may be, Richard Calmady is a
gentleman.--Ah! I hope you are going to be very happy. Good-bye."
Decies' black head went down over her hand, and he kissed it
impulsively.
"Good-bye," he said, the words catching a little in his throat. "When
the time comes, may you find the man to love you as you deserve--though
I doubt if there's such a man living, or dead either, for that matter!
God bless you."
Some half-hour later Honoria stood among the holland-shrouded furniture
in Lady Calmady's sitting-room in Lowndes Square. The period of exalted
feeling, of the conviction of successful attainment, was over, and her
heart beat somewhat painfully. For she had had time, by now, to realise
the surprising audacity of her own proceedings. Lord Shotover's parley
with Richard Calmady's man-servant, on the door-step, had brought that
home to her, placing what had seemed obvious, as a course of action to
her fervid imagination, in quite a new light.--Sir Richard Calmady was
at home? He was still up?--To that, yes. Would he see Lady Constance
Quayle upon urgent business?--To that again, yes--after a rather
lengthy delay, while the valet, inscrutable, yet evidently highly
critical, made inquiries.--The trees in the square had whispered
together uncomfortably, while the two young ladies waited in the
carriage. And Lord Shotover's shadow, which had usually, very surely,
nothing in the least portentous about it, lay queerly, three ways at
once, in varying degrees of density, across the gray pavement in the
conflicting gas and moonlight.
And now, as she stood among the shrouded furniture, which appeared
oddly improbable in shape seen in the flickering of two hastily lighted
candles, Honoria could hear Shotover walking back and forth, patiently,
on that same gray pavement outside. She was overstrained by the
emotions and events of the past hours. Small matters compelled her
attention. The creaking of a board, the rustle of a curtain, the
silence even of this large, but half-inhabited, house, were to her big
with suggestion, disquietingly replete with possible meaning, of
exaggerated importance to her anxiously listening ears.
Lord Shotover had stopped walking. He was talking to the coachman.
Honoria entertained a conviction that, in the overflowing of his good
nature, he talked--sooner or later--to every soul whom he met. And she
derived almost childish comfort from the knowledge of the near
neighbourhood of that eminently good-natured presence. Lord Shotover's
very obvious faults faded from her remembrance. She estimated him only
by his size, his physical strength, his large indulgence of all
weaknesses--including his own. He constituted a link between her and
things ordinary and average, for which she was rather absurdly thankful
at this juncture. For the minutes passed slowly, very slowly. It must
be getting on for half an hour since little Lady Constance, trembling
and visibly affrighted, had passed out of sight, and the door of the
smoking-room had closed behind her. The nameless agitation which
possessed her earlier that same evening returned upon Honoria St.
Quentin. But its character had suffered change. The questioning of the
actual, the suspicion of universal illusion, had departed, and in its
place she suffered alarm of the concrete, of the incalculable force of
human passion, and of a manifestation of tragedy in some active and
violent form. She did not define her own fears, but they surrounded her
nevertheless, so that the slightest sound made her start.
For, indeed, how slowly the minutes did pass! Lord Shotover was walking
again. The horse rattled its bit, and pawed the ground impatient of
delay. Though lofty, the room appeared close and hot, with drawn blinds
and shut windows. Honoria began to move about restlessly, threading her
way between the pieces of shrouded furniture. A chalk drawing of Lady
Calmady stood on an easel in the far corner. The portrait emphasised
the sweetness and abiding pathos, rather than the strength, of the
original, and Honoria, standing before it, put her hands over her eyes.
For the pictured face seemed to plead with and reproach her. Then a
swift fear took her of disloyalty, of hastiness, of self-confidence
trenching on cruelty. She had announced, rather arrogantly, that
whatever balance debt remained to be paid, in respect of Sir Richard
and Lady Constance Quayle's proposed marriage, should be paid by the
man. But would the man, in point of fact, pay it? Would it not, must it
not, be paid, eventually, by this other noble and much enduring
woman--whom she had called her friend, and towards whom she played the
part, as she feared, of betrayer? In her hot espousal of Lady
Constance's cause she had only saved one woman at the expense of
another--Oh! how hot the room grew! Suffocating--Lord Shotover's steps
died away in the distance. She could look Lady Calmady in the face no
more. Secure in her own self-conceit and vanity, she had betrayed her
friend.
Suddenly the sharp peal of a bell, the opening of a door, the dragging
of silken skirts, and the hurrying of footsteps.--Honoria gathered up
her somewhat scattered courage, and swung out into the hall. Lady
Constance Quayle came towards her, groping, staggering, breathless, her
head carried low, her face convulsed with weeping. But to this, for the
moment, Miss St. Quentin paid small heed. For, at the far end of the
hall, a bright light streamed out from the open doorway. And in the
full glare of it stood a young man--his head, with its cap of
close-cropped curls proudly distinguished as that of some classic hero,
his features the beautiful features of Katherine Calmady, his height
but two-thirds the height a man of his make should be, his face drawn
and livid as that of a corpse, his arms hanging down straight at his
sides, his hands only just not touching the marble quarries of the
floor on either side of him.
Honoria uttered an exclamation of uncontrollable pity and horror,
caught Constance Quayle by the arm, and hurried out into the moonlit
square to the waiting carriage. Lord Shotover flung away the end of his
cigar and strolled towards them.
"Got through, fixed it all right--eh, Connie? Bravo--that's grand!--Oh,
you needn't tell me! I can imagine it's been a beastly piece of work,
but anyway it's over now. You must go home and go to bed, and I'll
account for you somehow to Louisa. My mind's becoming quite inventive
to-night, I promise you.--There, get in--try to pull yourself together.
Miss St. Quentin, upon my word, I don't know how to thank you. You've
been magnificent, and put us under an everlasting obligation, Con and
Decies, and my father and I.--Nice night, isn't it? You'll put us down
in Albert Gate? All right. A thousand thanks.--Yes, I'll go on the box
again. You haven't much room for my legs among all those flounces.
Bless me, it occurs to me I'm getting confoundedly hungry. I shall be
awfully glad of some supper."
CHAPTER VIII
A MANIFESTATION OF THE SPIRIT
Brockhurst House had slumbered all day long in the steady warmth of the
July sun. The last three weeks had been rainless, so that the short
turf of the uplands began to grow crisp and discoloured, while the
resinous scent of the fir forest, at once stimulating and soothing, was
carried afar out over the sloping corn-fields and low-lying pastures.
Above the stretches of purple-budding heather and waste sandy places,
upon the moors, the heat-haze danced and quivered as do vapours arising
from a furnace. Along the underside of the great woods, and in the turn
of the valleys, shadows lingered, which were less actual shadows than
blottings of blue light. The birds, busy feeding wide-mouthed, hungry
fledglings, had mostly ceased from song. But the drowsy hum of bees and
chirrup of grasshoppers was continuous, and told, very pleasantly, of
the sunshine and large plenty reigning out of doors.
For Katherine the day in question had passed in Martha-like
occupations.--A day of organising, of ordering and countermanding, a
day of much detail, much interviewing of heads of departments, a day of
meeting respectful objections, enlightening thick understandings,
gently reducing decorously opposing wills. Commissariat, transport,
housing of guests, and the servants of guests--all these entered into
the matter of the coming wedding. To compass the doing of all things,
not only decently and in order, but handsomely, and with a becoming
dignity, this required time and thought. And so, it was not until after
dinner that Katherine found herself at leisure to cease taking thought
for the morrow. Too tired to rest herself by reading, she wandered out
on the troco-ground followed by Camp.
London had not altogether suited the bull-dog as the summer wore on.
Now, in his old age, so considerable a change of surroundings put him
about both in body and mind. Seeing which, Richard had begged his
mother to take the dog with her on leaving town. Camp benefited,
unquestionably, by his return to country air. His coat stared less. He
carried his ears and tail with more sprightliness and conviction. Still
he fretted after his absent master, and followed Katherine's footsteps
very closely, his forehead more than ever wrinkled, and his unsightly
mouth pensive notwithstanding its perpetual grin. He attended her now,
squatting beside her when she paused, trotting slowly beside her when
she moved, a silent, persistent, and, as it might seem, somewhat
fatefully faithful companion.
Yet the occasion was to all appearances far from fateful, the night and
the scene, alike, being very fair. The moon had not yet risen, but a
brightness behind the sawlike edge of the fir woods eastward heralded
its coming, while sufficient light yet remained in the western and
northern sky for the mass of the house, its ruddy walls and ranges of
mullioned windows, its pierced, stone parapet and stacks of slender,
twisted chimneys, to be seen with a low-toned distinctness of form and
colour infinitely charming. Soft and rich as velvet, it rose, with a
certain noble serenity, above its terraces and fragrant, red-walled
gardens, under the enormous dome of the tranquil, far-off, evening sky.
Every aspect of this place, in rain and shine, summer and winter, from
dawn to dark and round to dawn again, was familiar to Katherine
Calmady. Coming here first, as a bride, the homely splendour of the
house, and the gladness of its situation crowning the ridge of hill,
appealed strongly to her imagination. Later it sheltered her long
sorrow, following so hard on the heels of her brief joy. But in both
alike, during all the vicissitudes of her thought and of her career,
the face of Brockhurst remained as that of a friend, kindly,
beneficent, increasingly trusted and beloved. And so she had come to
know every stick and stone of it, from spacious, vaulted cellar to
equally spacious, low-roofed, sun-dried attic--the outlook from each
window, the character of each room, the turn of each stairway, the
ample proportions of each lobby and stairhead, all the pleasant scents,
and sounds, and colours, that haunted it both within and without. It
might have been supposed that after so many years of affectionate
observation and commerce, Brockhurst could have no new word in its
tongue, could hold no further self-revelation, for Lady Calmady. Yet,
as she passed now from the arcaded garden-hall, supporting the eastern
bay of the Long Gallery, on to the level, green square of the
troco-ground, and stood gazing out over the downward sloping park--the
rough, short turf of it dotted with ancient thorn trees and broken by
beds of bracken and dog-roses--to the Long Water, glistening like some
giant mirror some quarter-mile distant in the valley, she became
sensible of a novel element in her present relation to this place.
For the first time, in all her long experience, she was at Brockhurst
quite alone. The house was vacant even of a friend. For Julius March
had, rather to Katherine's surprise, selected just this moment for the
paying of his yearly visit to a certain college friend, a scholarly and
godly person, now rector of a sleepy, country parish away in the heart
of the great, Midlandshire grasslands. Katherine experienced a
momentary sense of injury at his going. Yet perhaps it was as well.
Between the turmoil of the past London season, the coming turmoil of
the wedding, and the large and serious issues which that wedding
involved, this time of solitude might be salutary. To Katherine, just
now, it seemed as a bridge carrying her over from one way of life to
another. A but slightly known country lay ahead. Solitude and
self-recollection are good for the soul if it would possess itself in
peace. The fair brightness of the Indwelling Light had not been
obscured in her during these months devoted to the world and to
society. But it was inevitable that her consciousness of it, and
consequently its clear-shining, should have suffered diminution at
times. The eager pressure of things to be done, things to be seen, of
much conversation, the varied pageant of modern life perpetually
presented to her eyes and her intelligence, could not but crowd out the
spiritual order somewhat. Of late she had had only time to smile upon
her God in passing, instead of spending long hours within the courts of
His temple. This she knew. It troubled her a little. She desired to
return to a condition of more complete self-collectedness. And so, the
first movement of surprise past, she hailed her solitude as a means of
grace, and strove, in sweet sincerity, to make good use of it.
And yet--since the human heart, if sound and wholesome, hungers, even
when penetrated by Godward devotion, for some fellow-creature on whom
to expend its tenderness--Katherine, just now, regretted to be alone.
The scene was so beautiful, she would gladly have had some one look on
it beside herself, and share its charm. Then thoughts of the future
obtruded themselves. How would little Constance Quayle view Brockhurst?
Would it claim her love? Would she embrace the spirit of it, and make
it not only the home of her fair young body, but the home of her
guileless heart? Katherine yearned in spirit over this girl standing on
the threshold of all the deeper experiences of a woman's life, of those
amazing revelations which marriage holds for an innocent and modest
maiden.--But oh! how lovely are such revelations when the lover is also
the beloved!
Katherine moved on a few paces. The thought of all that, even now at
forty-eight, cut her a little too sharply. It is not wise to call up
visions of joys that are dead. She would think of something else, so
she told herself, as she paused in her rustling gray dress upon the
dry, gravel path, the surface of which still sensibly held the warmth
of the sun, while Camp squatted soberly on his haunches beside her.
But, at first, only worrying thoughts responded to her call.--It was
not quite kind, surely, of Julius to have left home just now. It was a
little inconsiderate of him. If she dwelt on the thought of that,
clearly it would vex her--so it must be banished. Reynolds, the
housekeeper, had really been very perverse about the turning of the two
larger china-closets into extra dressing-rooms for the week of the
wedding, and Clara showed an inclination to back her up in opposition.
Of course the maids would give in--they always did, and that without
any subsequent attempt at small reprisals. Still the thought of that,
too, was annoying and must be banished. At dinner she had received a
singular letter from Honoria St. Quentin. It contained what appeared to
Katherine as rather over-urgent protestations of affection and offers
of service, if at any future time she--the writer--could be of use. The
letter was charming in its slight extravagance. But it struck Katherine
as incomprehensibly penitent in tone--the letter of one who has not
treated a friend quite loyally and is hot with anxiety to atone. It was
dated this morning too, and must have been posted at some surprisingly
early hour to have thus reached Brockhurst by the day mail. Lady
Calmady did not quite relish the missive, somehow, notwithstanding its
affection. It lacked the perfection of personal dignity which had
pleased her heretofore in Honoria St. Quentin. She felt vaguely
disappointed. And it followed that this thought, therefore, must go
along with the rest. For she refused to be disquieted. She would compel
herself to be at peace.
So, putting these small sources of discomfort from her, as unworthy
both of her better understanding and of this fair hour and fair place,
Katherine yielded herself wholly to the influences of her surroundings.
The dew was rising--promise of another hot, clear day to-morrow--and
along with it rose a fragrance of wild thyme from the grass slopes
immediately below. That fragrance mingled with the richer scents of
jasmine, full-cupped, July roses, scarlet, trumpet-flowered
honeysuckle, tall lilies, and great wealth of heavy-headed, clove
carnations, veiling the red walls or set in the trim borders of the
gardens behind. A strangely belated nightingale still sang in the big,
Portugal laurel beside the quaint, pepper-pot summer-house in the far
corner of the troco-ground, where the twenty-foot brick wall dips, in
steps of well-set masonry, to the gray three-foot balustrade. She never
remembered to have heard one sing so late in the summer. The bird was
answered moreover by another singer from the coppice, bordering the
trout-stream which feeds the Long Water, away across the valley. In
each case the song was, note for note, the same. But the chant of the
near bird was hotly urgent in its passion of "wooing and winning,"
while the song of the answerer came chastened and etherealised by
distance. A fox barked sharply on the left, out in the Warren. And the
churring of the night-jars, as they flitted hither and thither over the
beds of bracken and dog-roses, like gigantic moths, on swift, silent
wings, formed a continuous accompaniment, as of a spinning-wheel, to
the other sounds.
Never, as she watched and listened, had the genius of Brockhurst
appeared more potent or more enthralling. For a space she rested in it,
asking nothing beyond that which sight and hearing could give. It was
very good to breathe the scented air and be lulled by the inarticulate
music of nature. It was good to cease from self and from all individual
striving, to become a part merely of the universal movement of things,
a link merely in the mighty chain of universal being. But such an
impersonal attitude of mind cannot last long, least of all in the case
of a woman! Katherine's heart awoke and cried again for some human
object on which to expend itself, some kindred intelligence to meet and
reflect her own. Ah, were she but better, more holy and more wise,
these cravings would doubtless not assail her! The worship of the
Indwelling Light would suffice, and she would cease from desire of the
love of any creature. But she had not journeyed so far upon the road of
perfection yet, as she sadly told herself. Far from it. The nightingale
sang on, sang of love, not far hence, not far above, not within the
spirit only, but here, warm, immediate, and individual. And, do what
she would, the song brought to her mind such love, as she herself had
known it during the few golden months of her marriage--of meetings at
night, sweet and sacred, of partings, sweet and sacred too, at morning,
of secret delights, of moments, at once pure and voluptuous, known only
to virtuous lovers. It was not often that remembrance of all this came
back to her, save as a faint echo of a once clear-sounding voice.
Indeed she had supposed it all laid away forever, done with, even as
the bright colours it had once so pleased her to wear were laid away in
high mahogany presses that lined one side of the lofty state-bedroom
up-stairs. But now remembrance laid violent hands on her, shaking both
mind and body from their calm. The passion of the bird's song, the
caressing suavity of the summer night, the knowledge, too, that so soon
another bride and bridegroom would dwell here at Brockhurst, worked
upon her strangely. She struggled with herself, surprised and half
angered by the force of her own emotion, and pleaded at once against,
and for, the satisfaction of the immense nostalgia which possessed her.
"Ah! it is bitter, very bitter, to have had at once so much and so
little. Bow my proud neck, O Lord, to Thy yoke. If my beloved had but
been spared to me I had never walked in darkness, far from the way of
faith, and my child had never suffered bodily disfigurement. Perfect
me, O God, even at the cost of further suffering. It is sad to be shut
away from the joys of my womanhood, while my life is still strong in
me. Break me, O Lord, even as the ploughshare breaks the reluctant
clod. Hold not Thy hand till the work be fully accomplished, and the
earth be ready for the sowing which makes for harvest. Give me back the
beloved of my youth, the beloved of my life, if only for an hour. Teach
me to submit. Show me, beyond all dread of contradiction that vows,
truly made, hold good even in that mysterious world beyond the grave.
Show me that though the body--dear home and vehicle of love--may die,
yet love in its essence remains everlastingly conscious, faithful and
complete. Bend my will to harmony with Thine, O Lord, and cleanse me of
self-seeking. Ah! but still let me see his face once again, once again,
oh, my God--and I will rebel no more. Let me look on him, once again,
if only for a moment, and I shall be content. Hear me, I am greatly
troubled, I am athirst--I faint----"
Katherine's prayer, which had risen into audible speech, sank away into
silence. The near nightingale had fallen silent also. But from across
the valley, chastened and etherealised by distance, still came the song
of the answering bird. To Katherine those fine and delicate notes were
full of promise. They bore testimony to the soul which dwells forever
behind the outward aspect and sense. Whether she fainted in good truth,
or whether she passed, for a while, into that sublimated state of
consciousness wherein the veils of habit cease to blind and something
of the eternal essence and values of things is revealed, perception
overstepping, for once, the limits of ordinary, earth-bound
apprehension and transcending ordinary circumscription of time and
place, she could not tell. Nor did she greatly care. For a great peace
descended upon her, accompanied by a gentle, yet penetrating
expectancy. She stood very still, her feet set on the warm gravel, the
night air wrapping her about as with a fragrant garment, the ghostly
sweetness of that far-away bird-song in her ears, while momentarily the
conviction of the near presence of the man who had so loved her, and
whom she had so loved, deepened within her. And therefore it was
without alarm, without any shock of amazement, that gradually she found
her awareness of that presence change from something felt, to something
actually seen.
He came towards her--that first Richard Calmady, her husband and
lover--across the smooth, green levels of the troco-ground which lay
dusky in the mingling half-lights of the nearly departed sunset and the
rising moon, as he had come to her a hundred times in life, back from
the farms or the moorlands, from sport or from business, or from those
early morning rides, the clean freshness of the morning upon him, after
seeing his race-horses galloped. He came bareheaded, in easy
workmanlike garments, short coat, breeches, long boots and spurs. He
came with the repose of movement which is born of a well-knit frame,
and a temperate life, and the grace of gentle blood. He came with the
half smile on his lips, and the gladness in his eyes when they first
met hers, which had always been there however brief the parting. And
Katherine perceived it was just thus our beloved dead must needs return
to us--should they return at all--laying aside the splendours of the
spirit in tenderness for mortal weakness. Even as the Christ laid aside
the visible glory of the Godhead, and came a babe among men, so must
they come in humble, every-day fashion, graciously taking on the manner
and habit common to them during earthly life. Therefore she suffered no
shrinking, but turned instinctively, as she had turned a hundred times,
laughing very softly in the fulness of content, raising her hands,
throwing back her head, knowing that he would come behind her and take
her hands in his, and kiss her, so, bending down over her shoulder.
And, when he came, she did not need to speak, but only to gaze into the
well-beloved face, familiar, yet touched--as it seemed to her--with a
mysterious and awful beauty, beholding which she divined the answer to
many questions.
For she perceived, as one waking from an uneasy dream perceives the
comfortable truth of day, that her love was not given back to her, for
the dear reason that her love had never been taken away. The fiction of
Time ceased to rule in her, so that the joy of bride and new-wed wife,
the strange, sweet perplexities of dawning motherhood were with her
now, not as memories merely, but as actual, ever present, deathless
fact--the culminating, and therefore permanent, revelation of her
individual experience. She perceived this continued and must continue,
since it was the fine flower of her nature, the unit of her personal
equation, the realisation of the eternal purpose concerning her of
Almighty God. This fiction of old age was discredited, so was the
bitterness of deposition, the mournful fiction of being passed by and
relegated to the second place. Her place was her own. Her standing
ground in the universal order, a freehold, absolute and inalienable.
She could not abdicate her throne, neither could any wrest it away from
her. She perceived that not self-effacement, but self-development, not
dissolution, but evolution, was the service required of her. And, as
divinely designed contribution to that end was every joy, every sorrow,
laid upon her, since by these was she differentiated from all others,
by these was she built up into a separate existence, sane, harmonious,
well-proportioned, a fair lamp lighted with a burning coal from off the
altar of that God of whom it is written, not only that He is a
consuming fire, but that He is Love.
All this, and more, did Katherine apprehend, beholding the familiar,
yet mysterious countenance of her well-beloved. And the tendency of
that apprehension made for tranquillity of spirit, for a sure and
certain hope. The faculty which reasons, demands explanation and proof,
might not be satisfied, but that higher faculty which divines, accepts,
believes, assuredly was so. Nor could it be otherwise, since it is the
spirit, the idea, not the letter, which giveth life.
How long she stood thus, in tender and illuminating, though wordless,
communion with the dead, Katherine did not know. The deepest spiritual
experiences, like the most exquisite physical ones, are to be measured
by intensity rather than duration. For a space the vision sensibly held
her, the so ardently desired presence there incontestibly beside her, a
personality vivid and distinct, yet in a way remote, serene as the
immense dome of the cloudless sky, chastened and etherealised as the
song of the answering nightingale, and in this differing from any
bodily presence, as the song in question differed from that of the bird
in the laurel close at hand.
Gradually, and with such sense of refreshment as one enjoys who,
bathing in some clear stream at evening, washes away all soil and sweat
of a weary journey, Katherine awoke to more ordinary observation of her
material surroundings. She became aware that the dog, Camp, had turned
singularly restless. He slunk away as though wishing to avoid her near
neighbourhood, crawled back to her, with dragging hind quarters,
cringing and whining as though in acute distress. And, by degrees,
another sound obtruded itself, speaking of haste and effort, notably at
variance with the delicate and gracious stillness. It came from the
highroad crossing the open moor, which loomed up a dark, straight ridge
against the southern horizon. It came in rising and falling cadence,
but ever nearer and nearer, increasingly distinct, increasingly
urgent--the fast, steady trot of a horse. The moon, meanwhile, had
swept clear of the saw-like edge of the fir forest, and, while the
thin, white light of it broadened upon the dewy grass and the beat of
the horse-hoofs rang out clearer and clearer, Katherine was aware that
the dear vision faded and grew faint. As it had come, softly, without
amazement or fear, so it departed, without agitation or sadness of
farewell, leaving Katherine profoundly consoled, the glory of her
womanhood restored to her in the indubitable assurance that what had
been of necessity continued, and forever was.
And, therefore, she still listened but idly to the approaching sound,
not reckoning with it as yet, though the roll of wheels was now added
to the rapid beat of the hoofs of the trotting horse. It had turned
down over the hillside by the crossroad leading to the upper lodge.
Suddenly it ceased. The shout of a man's voice, loud and imperative, a
momentary pause, then the clang of heavy, iron gates swinging back into
place, and once again the roll of wheels and that steady, urgent,
determined trot, coming nearer and nearer down the elm avenue, whose
stately rows of trees looked as though made of ebony and burnished
silver in the slanting moonlight. On it came across the bridge spanning
the glistering whiteness of the Long Water. And on again steadily, and
no less rapidly, as though pressed by the hand of a somewhat merciless
driver, hot to arrive, bearer of stirring tidings, up the steeply
ascending hill to the house.
Lady Calmady listened, beginning to question whom this nocturnal
disturber of the peace of Brockhurst might be. But only vaguely as yet,
since that which she had recently experienced was so great, so
wide-reaching in its meaning and promise, that, for the moment, it
dwarfed all other possible, all other imaginable, events. The gracious
tranquillity which enveloped her could not be penetrated by any anxiety
or premonition of momentous happenings as yet. It was not so, however,
with Camp. For a spirit of extravagant and unreasoning excitement
appeared to seize on the dog. Forgetful of age, of stiff limbs and
short-coming breath, he gamboled round Lady Calmady, describing crazy
circles upon the grass, and barking until the unseemly din echoed back
harshly from against the great red and gray facade. He fawned upon her,
abject, yet compelling, and, at last, as though exasperated by her
absence of response, turned tail and bounded away through the
garden-hall and along the terrace, disappearing through the small,
arched side-door into the house. And there, within, stir and movement
became momentarily more apparent. Shifting lights flashed out through
the many-paned windows, as though in quick search of some eagerly
desired presence.
Nevertheless, for a little space, Katherine lingered, the fragrance of
the wild thyme and of the fair gardens still about her, the somnolent
churring of the night-jars and faint notes of the nightingale's song
still saluting her ears. It was so difficult to return to and cope with
the demands of ordinary life. For had she not been caught up into the
third heaven and heard words unspeakable, unlawful, in their entirety,
for living man to utter?
But things terrestrial, in this case as in so many other cases, refused
to make large room for, or brook delay from, things celestial. Two
servants came out, hurriedly, from that same arched side-door. Then
Clara, that devoted handmaiden, called from the window of the red
drawing-room.
"Her ladyship's there, on the troco-ground. Don't you see, Mr. Winter?"
The butler hurried along the terrace. Katherine met him on the steps of
the garden-hall.
"Is anything wrong, Winter?" she asked kindly, for the trusted servant
betrayed unusual signs of emotion. "Am I wanted?"
"Sir Richard has returned, my lady," he said, and his voice trembled.
"Sir Richard is in the Gun-Room. He gave orders that your ladyship
should be told that he would be glad to speak to you immediately."
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH DICKIE SHAKES HANDS WITH THE DEVIL
"My dear, this is quite unexpected."
Lady Calmady's tone was one of quiet, innate joyousness. A gentle
brightness pervaded her whole aspect and manner. She looked wonderfully
young, as though the hands of the clock had been put back by some
twenty and odd years. Every line had disappeared from her face, and in
her eyes was a clear shining very lovely to behold. Richard glanced at
her as she came swiftly towards him across the room. Then he looked
down again, and answered deliberately:--
"Yes, it is, as you say, quite unexpected. This time last night I as
little anticipated being back here as you anticipated my coming. But
one's plans change rapidly and radically at times. Mine have done so."
He sat at the large, library writing-table, a pile of letters, papers,
circulars before him, judged unworthy of forwarding, which had
accumulated during his absence. He tore off wrappers, tore open
envelopes, quickly yet methodically, as though bending his mind with
conscious determination to the performance of a self-inflicted task.
Looking at the contents of each in turn, with an odd mixture of
indifference and close attention, he flung the major part into the
waste-paper basket set beside his revolving-chair. A tall, green-shaded
lamp shed a circle of vivid light upon the silver and maroon leather
furnishings of the writing-table, upon the young man's bent head, and
upon his restless hands as they grasped, and straightened, and then
tore, with measured if impatient precision, the letters and papers
lying before him.
Lady Calmady stood resting the tips of her fingers on the corner of the
table, looking down at him with those clear shining eyes. His reception
of her had not been demonstrative, but of that she was hardly sensible.
The reconciling assurances of faith, the glories of the third heaven,
still dazzled her somewhat. Her feet hardly touched earth yet, so that
her mother-love and all its sensitive watchfulness was, as yet,
somewhat in abeyance. She spoke again with the same quiet joyousness of
tone.
"You should have telegraphed to me, dearest, and then all would have
been ready to welcome you. As it is, I fear, you must feel yourself a
trifle neglected. I have been, or have fancied myself, mightily busy
all day--foolishly cumbered about much serving--and had gone out to
forget maids, and food, and domesticities generally, into the dear
garden."--She paused, smiling. "Ah! it is a gracious night," she said,
"full of inspiration. You must have enjoyed the drive home. The
household refuses to take this marriage of yours philosophically,
Dickie. It demands great magnificence, quite as much, be sure, for its
own glorification as for yours. It also multiplies small difficulties,
after the manner of well-conducted households, as I imagine, since the
world began."
Richard tore the prospectus of a mining company, offering wealth beyond
the dreams of avarice, right across with a certain violence.
"Oh, well, the household may forego its magnificence and cease from the
multiplication of small difficulties alike, as far as any marriage of
mine is concerned. You can tell the household so to-morrow, mother, or
I can. Perhaps the irony of the position would be more nicely pointed
by the announcement coming directly from myself. That would heighten
the drama."
"But, Dickie, my dearest?" Katherine said, greatly perplexed.
"The whole affair is at an end. Lady Constance Quayle is not going to
marry me, and I am not going to marry Lady Constance Quayle. On that
point at least she and I are entirely at one. All London will know this
to-morrow. Perhaps Brockhurst, in the interest of its endangered
philosophy, had better know it to-night."
Richard leaned forward, opening, tearing, sorting the papers again. A
rasping quality was in his voice and speech, hitherto unknown to his
mother, a cold, imperious quality in his manner, also, new to her. And
these brought her down to earth, setting her feet thereon
uncompromisingly. And the earth on which they were thus set was, it
must be owned, rather ugly. A woman made of weaker stuff would have
cried out against such sudden and painful declension. But Katherine,
happily both for herself and for those about her, waking even from
dreams of noble and far-reaching attainment, waked with not only her
wits, but her heart, in steady action. Yet she in nowise went back on
the revelation that had been vouchsafed to her. It was in nowise
disqualified or rendered suspect, because the gamut of human emotion
proved to have more extended range and more jarring discords than she
had yet reckoned with. Her mind was large enough to make room for novel
experience in sorrow, as well as in joy, retaining the while its poise
and sanity. Therefore she, recognising a new phase in the development
of her child, without hesitation or regret of self-love for the
disturbance of her own gladness braced herself to meet it. His pride
had been wounded--somehow, she knew not how--to the very quick. And the
smart of that wound was too shrewd, as yet, for any precious balms of
articulate tenderness to soothe it. She must give it time to heal a
little, meanwhile setting herself scrupulously to respect his dark
humour, meet his pride with pride, his calm with at least equal
calmness.
She drew a chair up to the end of the table, and settled herself to
listen quite composedly.
"It will be well, dearest," she said, "that you should explain to me
clearly what has happened. To do so may avert possible complications."
Richard's hands paused among the papers. He regarded Lady Calmady
reflectively, not without a grudging admiration. But an evil spirit
possessed him, a necessity of mastery--inevitable reaction from
recently endured humiliation--which provoked him to measure his
strength against hers. He needed a sacrifice to propitiate his anger.
That sacrifice must be in some sort a human one. So he deliberately
pulled the tall lamp nearer, and swung his chair round sideways,
leaning his elbow on the table, with the result that the light rested
on his face. It did more. It rested upon his body, upon his legs and
feet, disclosing the extent of their deformity.
Involuntarily Katherine shrank back. It was as though he had struck
her. Morally, indeed, he had struck her, for there was a cynical
callousness in this disclosure, in this departure from his practice of
careful and self-respecting concealment. Meanwhile Richard watched her,
as, shrinking, her eyelids drooped and quivered.
"Mother," he said, quietly and imperatively.--And when, not without
perceptible effort, she again raised her eyes to his, he went on:--"I
quite agree with you that it will be well for me to explain with a view
to averting possible complications. It has become necessary that we
should clearly understand one another--at least that you, my dear
mother, should understand my position fully and finally. We have been
too nice, you and I, heretofore, and, the truth being very far from
nice, have expended much trouble and ingenuity in our efforts to ignore
it. We went up to London in the fond hope that the world at large would
support us in our self-deception. So it did, for a time. But, being in
the main composed of very fairly honest and sensible persons, it has
grown tired of sentimental lying, of helping us to bury our heads
ostrich-like in the sand. It has gone over to the side of truth--that
very far from flattering or pretty truth to which I have just
alluded--with this result, among others, that my engagement has come to
an abrupt and really rather melodramatic conclusion."
He paused.
"Go on, Richard," Lady Calmady said, "I am listening."
He drew himself up, sitting very erect, keeping his eyes steadily fixed
on her, speaking steadily and coldly, though his lips twitched a
little.
"Lady Constance did me the honour to call on me last night, rather
later than this, absenting herself in the very thick of Lady Louisa
Barking's ball for that purpose."
Katherine moved slightly, her dress rustled.
"Yes--considering her character and her training it was a rather
surprising _demarche_ on her part, and bore convincing testimony to her
agitation of mind."
"Did she come alone?"
Richard lapsed into an easier position.
"Oh, dear no!" he said. "Allowing for the desperation which dictated
her proceedings, they were carried out in a very regular manner, with a
praiseworthy regard for appearances. Lady Constance is, in my opinion,
a very sweet person. She is perfectly modest and has an unusual
regard--as women go--for honour and duty--as women understand
them."--Again his voice took on that rasping quality. "She brought a
friend, a young lady, with her. Fortunately there was no occasion for
me to speak to her--she had the good taste to efface herself during our
interview. But I saw her in the hall afterwards. I shall always
remember that very distinctly. So, I imagine, will she. Then Lord
Shotover waited outside with the carriage. Oh! believe me, admitting
its inherent originality, the affair was conducted with an admirable
regard for appearances."
Again the regular flow of Richard's speech was broken. His throat had
gone very dry.
"Lady Constance appealed to me in extremely moving terms, articulate
and otherwise, to set her free."
"To set her free--and upon what grounds?"
"Upon the rather crude, but preeminently sensible grounds, my dear
mother, that after full consideration, she found the bid was not high
enough."
"Indeed," Katherine said.
"Yes, indeed, my dear mother," Richard repeated. "Does that surprise
you? It quite ceased to surprise me, when she pointed out the facts of
the case. For she was touchingly sincere. I respected her for that. The
position was an ungracious one for her. She has a charming nature, and
really wanted to spare me just as much as was possible along with the
gaining of her cause. Her gift of speech is limited, you know, but then
no degree of eloquence or diplomacy could have rendered that which she
had to say agreeable to my self-esteem. Oh! on the whole she did it
very well, very conclusively."
Richard raised his head, pausing a moment. Again that dryness of the
throat checked his utterance. And then, recalling the scene of the past
night, a great wave of unhappiness, pure and simple, of immense
disappointment, immense self-disgust broke over him. His anger, his
outraged pride, came near being swamped by it. He came near losing his
bitter self-control and crying aloud for help. But he mastered the
inclination, perhaps unfortunately, and continued speaking.
"Yes, decidedly, with the exception of Ludovic, that family do not
possess ready tongues, yet they contrive to make their meaning pretty
plain in the end. I have just driven over from Whitney, and am fresh
from a fine example of eventual plain speaking from that excellent
father of the family, Lord Fallowfeild. It was instructive. For the
main thing, after all, as we must both agree, mother, is to understand
oneself clearly and to make oneself clearly understood. And in this
respect you and I, I'm afraid, have failed a good deal. Blinded by our
own fine egoism we have even failed altogether to understand others.
Lady Constance, for instance, possesses very much more character than
it suited us to credit her with."
"You are harsh, dearest," Katherine murmured, and her lips trembled.
"Not at all," he answered. "I have only said good-bye to lying. Can you
honestly deny, my dear mother, that the whole affair was just one of
convenience? I told you--it strikes me now as a rather brutally
primitive announcement--that I wanted a wife because I wanted a son--a
son to prove to me the entirety of my own manhood, a son to give me at
second hand certain obvious pleasures and satisfactions which I am
debarred, as you know, from obtaining at first hand. You engaged to
find me a bride. Poor, little Lady Constance Quayle, unfortunately for
her, appeared to meet our requirements, being pretty and healthy, and
too innocent and undeveloped to suspect the rather mean advantage we
proposed to take of her.--What? I know it sounds rather gross stated
thus plainly. But, the day of lies being over, dare you deny it?--Well
then, we proceeded to traffic for this desirable bit of young
womanhood, of prospective maternity,--to buy her from such of her
relations as were perverted enough to countenance the transaction, just
as shamelessly as though we had gone into the common bazar, after the
manner of the cynical East, and bargained for her, poor child, in
fat-tailed sheep or cowries. Doesn't it appear to you almost
incredible, almost infamous that we--you and I, mother--should have
done this thing? The price we offered seemed sufficient to some of her
people--not to all, I have learned that past forgetting to-day, thanks
to Lord Fallowfeild's thick-headed, blundering veracity. But, thank
heaven, she had more heart, more sensibility, more self-respect, more
decency, than we allowed for. She plucked up spirit enough to refuse to
be bought and sold like a pedigree filly or heifer. I think that was
rather heroic, considering her traditions and the pressure which had
been brought to bear to keep her silent. I can only honour and
reverence her for coming to tell me frankly, though at the eleventh
hour, that she preferred a man of no particular position or fortune,
but with the ordinary complement of limbs, to Brockhurst, and the house
in London, and my forty to forty-five thousand a year, plus----"
Richard laughed savagely, leaning forward, spreading out his arms.
"Well, my dear mother,--since as I say the day of lies is over,--plus
the remnant of a human being you may see here, at this moment, if you
will only have the kindness to look!"
At first Katherine had listened in mute surprise, bringing her mind,
not without difficulty, into relation to the immediate and the present.
Then watchful sympathy had been aroused, then anxiety, then tenderness,
denying itself expression since the time for it was not yet ripe. But
as the minutes lengthened and the flow of Richard's speech not only
continued, but gained in volume and in force, sympathy, anxiety,
tenderness, were merged in an emotion of ever-deepening anguish, so
that she sat as one who contemplates, spellbound, a scene of veritable
horror. From regions celestial to regions terrestrial she had been
hurried with rather dislocating suddenness. But her sorry journey did
not end there. For hardly were her feet planted on solid earth again,
than the demand came that she should descend still further--to regions
sub-terrestrial, regions frankly infernal. And this descent to hell,
though rapid to the point of astonishment, was by no means easy. Rather
was it violent and remorseless--a driving as by reiterated blows, a
rude merciless dragging onward and downward. Yet even so, for all the
anguish and shame--as of unseemly exposure--the perversion of her
intention and action, the scorn so ruthlessly poured upon her, it was
less of herself, the compelled, than of Richard, the compelling, that
she thought. For even while his anger thus drove and dragged her, he
himself was tortured in the flame far below,--so it seemed, and that
constituted the finest sting of her agony--beyond her power to reach or
help. She, after all, but stood on the edge of the crater, watching. He
fought, right down in the molten waves of it--fought with himself, too,
more fiercely even than he fought with her. So that now, as years ago
waiting outside the red drawing-room, hearing the stern, peremptory
tones of the surgeons, the moan of unspeakable physical pain, the
grating of a saw, picturing the dismemberment of the living body she so
loved, Katherine was tempted to run a little mad and beat her beautiful
head against the wall. But age, while taking no jot or tittle from the
capacity of suffering, still, in sane and healthy natures, brings a
certain steadiness to the brain and coolness to the blood. Therefore
Katherine sat very still and silent, her sweet eyes half closed, her
spirit bowed in unspoken prayer. Surely the all-loving God, who, but a
brief hour ago, had vouchsafed her the fair vision of the delight of
her youth, would ease his torment and spare her son?
And, all the while, outward nature remained reposeful and gracious in
aspect as ever. The churring of the night-jars, the occasional bark of
the fox in the Warren, the song of the answering nightingales, wandered
in at the open casements. And, along with these, came the sweetness of
the beds of wild thyme from the grass slopes, and the rich, languid
scent of the blossom of the little, round-headed, orange trees set, in
green tubs below the carven guardian griffins, on the flight of steps
leading up to the main entrance. That which had been lovely, continued
lovely still. And, therefore perhaps,--she could hope it even in the
fulness of her anguish,--the gates of hell might stand open to
ascending as well as descending feet and so that awful road might at
last--at last--be retraced by this tormented child of hers, whom,
though he railed against her, she still supremely loved.
But Richard, whether actually or intentionally it would be difficult to
say, misinterpreted and resented her silence and apparent calm. He
waited for a time, his eyes fastened upon her half-averted face. Then
he picked up one of the remaining packets from the table, tore off the
wrapper, glanced at the contents, stretched out his left arm holding
the said contents suspended over the waste-paper basket.
"Yes, it is evident," he declared, "even you do not care to look! Well,
then, must you not admit that you and I have been guilty of an
extravagance of fatuous folly, and worse, in seriously proposing that a
well-born, sensitive girl should not only look at, habitually and
closely, but take for all her chance in life a crippled dwarf like
me--an anomaly, a human curiosity, a creature so unsightly that it must
be carried about like any baby-in-arms, lest its repulsive ungainliness
should sicken the bystanders if, leaving the shelter of a railway-rug
and an armchair, it tries--unhappy brute--to walk?--Oh! I'm not angry
with her. I don't blame her. I'm not surprised. I agree with her down
to the ground. I sympathise and comprehend--no man more. I told her so
last night--only amazed at the insane egoism that could ever have
induced me to view the matter in any other light. Women are generally
disposed to be hard on one another. But if you, my dear mother, should
be in any degree tempted to be hard on Constance Quayle, I beg you to
consider your own engagement, your own marriage, my father's----"
Here Katherine interrupted him, rising in sudden revolt.
"No, no, Richard," she said, "that is more, my dear, than I can either
permit or can bear. If you have any sort of mercy left in you, do not
bring your father's name, and that which lies between him and me, into
this hideous conversation."
The young man looked hard at her, and then opening his hand, let the
pieces of torn paper flutter down into the basket. It was done with a
singularly measured action, symbolic of casting off some last tie,
severing some last link, which bound his life and his allegiance to his
companion.
"Yes, exactly," he said. "As I expected, the day of lying being over,
you as good as own it an outrage to your taste, and your affections,
that so frightful a thing, as I am, should venture to range itself
alongside your memories of your husband. Out of your own mouth are you
judged, my dear mother. And, if I am thus to you, upon whom, after all,
I have some natural claim, what must I be to others? Think of it! What
indeed?"
Katherine made no attempt to answer. Perception of the grain of truth
which seasoned the vast, the glaring, injustice of his accusations
unnerved her. His speech was ingeniously cruel. His humour such, that
it was vain to protest. And the hopelessness of it all affected her to
the point of physical weakness. She moved across the room, intending to
gain the door and go, for it seemed to her the limit of her powers of
endurance had been reached. But her strength would not carry her so
far. She stumbled on the upturned corner of the shining, tiger-skin
rug, recovered herself trembling, and laid hold of the high, narrow,
marble shelf of the chimneypiece for support. She must rest a little
lest her strength should wholly desert her, and she should fall before
reaching the door.
Behind her, within the circle of lamplight, Richard remained, still
sorting, tearing, flinging away that which remained of the pile of
papers. This deft, persistent activity of his, in its mixture of
purpose and abstraction was agitating--seeming, to Katherine's
listening ears, as though it might go on endlessly, until not only
these waste papers, but all and everything within his reach, things
spiritual, things of the heart, duties, obligations, gracious and
tender courtesies, as well as things merely material, might be thus
relentlessly scrutinised, judged worthless, rent asunder and cast
forth. What would be spared she wondered, what left? And when the work
of destruction was completed, what would follow next?--Bracing herself,
she turned, purposing to close the interview by some brief pleading of
indisposition and to escape. But, as she did so, the sound of tearing
ceased. Richard slipped down from his place at the writing-table, and
shuffling across the room, flung himself down in the long, low armchair
on the opposite side of the fireplace.
"I don't want to detain you for an unreasonable length of time,
mother," he said. "We understand each other in the main, I think, and
that without subterfuge or self-deception at last. But there are
details to be considered, and, as I leave here early to-morrow morning,
I think you'll feel with me it's desirable we should have our talk out.
There are a good many eventualities for which it's only reasonable and
prudent to make provision on the eve of an indefinitely long absence.
Practically a good many people are dependent on me, one way and
another, and I don't consider it honourable to leave their affairs at
loose ends, however uncertain my own future may be."
Richard's voice had still that rasping quality, while his bearing was
instinct with a coldly dominating, and almost aggressive, force.
Katherine, though little addicted to fear, felt strangely shaken,
strangely alienated by the dead weight of the personality, by
perception of the innate and tremendous vigour, of this being to whom
she had given birth. She had imagined, specially during the last few
months of happy and intimate companionship, that if ever mother knew
her child, she knew Richard--through and through. But it appeared she
had been mistaken. For here was a new Richard, at once terrible and
magnificent, regarding whom she could predicate nothing with certainty.
He defied her tenderness, he out-paced her imagination, he paralysed
her will. Between his thoughts, desires, intentions, and hers, a blind
blank space had suddenly intruded itself, impenetrable to her thought.
In person he was here close beside her, in mind he was despairingly far
away. And to this last, not only his words, but his manner, his
expression, his singular, yet sombre, beauty, bore convincing
testimony. He had matured with an almost unnatural rapidity, leaving
her far behind. In his presence she felt diffident, mentally insecure,
even as a child.
She remained standing, holding tightly to the narrow ledge of the
mantelpiece. She felt dazed and giddy as in face of some upheaval, some
cataclysm, of nature. In relation to her son she was conscious, in
truth, that her whole world had suffered shipwreck.
"Where are you going, Dickie?" she asked at last very simply.
"Anywhere and everywhere where amusement, or even the semblance of it,
is to be had," he answered.--"Do you wish to know how long I shall be
away? Just precisely as long as amusement in any form offers itself,
and as my power of being amused remains to me. This strikes you as
slightly ignoble? I am afraid that's a point, my dear mother, upon
which I am supremely indifferent. You and I have posed rather
extensively on the exalted side of things so far, have strained at
gnats and finished up by swallowing a remarkably full-grown camel. This
whole business of my proposed marriage has been anything but graceful,
when looked at in the common-sense way in which most people, of
necessity, look at it. Lord Fallowfeild appealed to me against
myself--which appeared to me slightly humorous--as one man of the world
to another. That was an eye-opener. It was likewise a profitable
lesson. I promptly laid it to heart. And it is exclusively from the
point of view of the man of the world that I propose to regard myself,
and my circumstances, and my personal peculiarities, in future. So, to
begin with, if you please, from this time forth, we put aside all
question of marriage in my case. We don't make any more attempts to buy
innocent and well-bred, young girls, inviting them to condone my
obvious disabilities in consideration of my little title and my money."
Richard ceased to look at Lady Calmady. He looked away through the open
window into the serene sky of the summer night, a certain hunger in his
expression not altogether pleasant to witness.
"Fortunately," he continued, with something between a laugh and a
sneer, "there is a mighty army of women--always has been--who don't
come under the head of innocent, young girls, though some of them have
plenty of breeding of a kind. They attach no superstitious importance
to the marriage ceremony. My position and money may obtain me
consolations in their direction."
Lady Calmady ceased to require the cold support of the marble
mantelshelf.
"It is unnecessary for us to discuss that subject, at least, Richard,"
she said.
The young man turned his head again, looking full at her. And again the
distance that divided her from him became to her cruelly apparent,
while his strength begot in her a shrinking of fear.
"I am sorry," he replied, "but I can't agree with you there. It is
inevitable that we should differ in the future, and that you should
frequently disapprove. I can't expect you to emancipate yourself from
prejudice, as I am already emancipated. I am not sure I even wish that.
Still, whatever the future may bring forth, of this, my dear mother, I
am determined to make a clean breast to-night, so that you shall never
have cause to charge me with lack of frankness or of attempt to deceive
you."
Yet, at the moment, the poor mother's heart cried out to be deceived,
if thereby it might be eased a little of suffering. Then, a nobler
spirit prevailing within her, Katherine rallied her fortitude. Better
he should be bound to her even by cynical avowal of projected vice,
than not bound at all. Listening now, she gained the right--a bitter
enough right--to command a measure of his confidence in those still
darker days which, as she apprehended, only too certainly lay ahead. So
she answered calmly:--
"Go on, Richard. As you say we may differ in the future. I may
disapprove, but I can be silent. You are right. It is better for us
both that I should hear."
And once more the young man was compelled to yield her a grudging
admiration. His tone softened somewhat.
"I don't like to see you stand, mother," he said. "Our conversation may
be prolonged. One never quite knows what may crop up. You will be
overtired. And to-morrow, when I am gone, there will be things to do."
Lady Calmady drew forward the chair from the end of the writing-table.
Her back was towards the lamp, her face in shadow. Of this she was
glad. In a degree it lessened the strain. The sweet, night air, coming
in at the open casements, fluttered the lace on her bodice, as with the
touch of a light, cool hand. Of this she was glad too. It was
refreshing, and she grew increasingly exhausted and physically weak.
Richard observed her, not without solicitude.
"I am afraid you are not well, mother," he said.
But Katherine shook her head, smiling upon him with misty eyes and lips
somewhat tremulous.
"I am always well," she replied. "Only to-night it has been given me to
scale heights and sound opposing depths, and I am a little overcome by
perplexity and by surprise. But what does that signify? I shall have
plenty of time--too much probably--in which to rest and range my ideas
when--you are gone, my dearest."
"You must not be here alone."
"Oh no! People will visit me, no doubt, animated by kindly wishes to
lessen my solitude," she answered, still smiling. Remembrance of
Honoria St. Quentin's letter came to her mind. Could it be that the
girl had some inkling of what was in store for her, and that this had
inspired the slight over-warmth of her protestations of
affection?--"Honoria would always be ready to come, should I ask her,"
she said.
All solicitude passed from Richard's expression, all softening from his
tone.
"By all means ask her. That would cap the climax, and round the irony
of the situation to admiration!"
"Indeed? Why?" Katherine inquired, painfully impressed by the renewed
bitterness of his manner.
"If you're fond of her that is convincingly sufficient. She and I have
never been very sympathetic, but that's a detail. I shall be gone.
Therefore pray have her, or anybody else you happen to fancy, so long
as you do have some one. You mustn't be here alone."
"Julius remains faithful through all chances and changes."
"But I imagine even Julius has sufficient social sense to perceive that
faithfulness may be a little out of place at this juncture. At least I
sincerely hope he'll perceive it, for otherwise he will have to be made
to do so--and that will be a nuisance."
"Dickie, Dickie, what are you implying?" Lady Calmady exclaimed. "By
what strange and unlovely thoughts are you possessed to-night?"
"I am learning to look at things as the average man of the world looks
at them, that's all," he said. "We have been too refined, you and I, to
be self-critical, with the consequence that we have allowed ourselves a
considerable degree of latitude in many directions. Julius' permanent
residence here ranks among the fine-fanciful disregardings of accepted
proprieties with which we have indulged ourselves. But spades are to be
called spades in future--at least by me. So, for the very same reason
that I go forth, like the average man of the world, to enjoy the
pleasures of sin for a season, do I object to Julius, or any other man,
being your guest during my absence, unless you have some woman of your
own position in life living here with you. The levels in social matters
have changed, once and for all. I have come to a sane mind and
renounced the eccentric subterfuges and paltry hypocrisies, by means of
which we have attempted, you and I, to keep disagreeable facts at bay.
Truth, naked and unabashable, is the only goddess I worship
henceforth."
He leaned forward, laying his hands upon the arms of his chair. His
manner was harsh still. But all coldness had departed from it, rather
did a white heat of passion consume him dreadful to witness.
"Yes, it is wisest to repeat that, so that, on your part, there may be
no excuse for any shadow of misapprehension. The levels have altered.
The old ones can never be restored. I want to have you grasp this,
mother--swallow it, digest it, so that it passes into fibre and tissue
of your every thought about me. For an acutely, unscientific, an
ingeniously unreasonable, idea obtains widely among respectable,
sentimental, so-called religious persons, regarding those who are the
victims of disfiguring accident, or, like myself, are physically
disgraced from birth. Because we have been deprived of our natural
rights, because we have so abominably little, we are expected to be
slavishly grateful for the contemptible pittance that we have. Because,
slothfully, by His neglect, or, wantonly, for His amusement, the
Creator has tortured us, maiming, distorting us up as a laughing-stock
before all man and womankind--because He has played a ghastly and
brutal practical joke on us, fixing the marks of low comedy in our
living flesh and bone--therefore we, forsooth, are to be more pious,
more clean-living, temperate, and discreet than the rest--to bow
amiably beneath the cross, gratefully to kiss the rod! Those
irregularities of conduct which are smiled at, and taken for granted,
in a man made after the normal, comely fashion, become a scandal in the
case of a poor, unhappy devil like me, at which good people hold up
their hands in horror. Faugh!--I tell you I'm sick of such cowardly
cant. A pretty example the Almighty's set me of justice and mercy!
Handsome encouragement He has given me to be virtuous and sober! Much I
have for which to praise His holy name! Arbitrarily, without excuse, or
faintest show of antecedent reason, He has elected to curse. And the
curse will cling forever and ever, till they lay me in a coffin nearly
half as short again as that of any other man, and leave the hideousness
of my deformity to be obliterated and purged at last--eaten away by the
worms in the dark."
Richard stretched out his hands, palms upward.
"And in return for all this shall I bless? No, indeed--no, thank you.
Not even towards God Almighty Himself will I play the part of
lick-spittle and sycophant. I have fine enough stuff in me, let alone
the energy begotten by the flagrance of His injustice, to take higher
grounds with Him than that. I will break what men hold to be His laws,
wherever and whenever I can--I will make hay of His so-called natural
and moral order, just as often as I get the chance. I will curse, and
again, curse back."
The speaker's voice was deep and resonant, filling the whole room. His
utterance deliberate and unshaken. His face dark with the malign beauty
of implacable hatred. Hearing him, seeing him thus, Katherine Calmady's
fortitude forsook her. She ceased to distinguish or discriminate.
Nature gave way. She knelt upon the floor before him, her hands
clasped, tears coursing down her cheeks. But of her attitude and aspect
she was unconscious.
"Oh, Richard, Richard!" she cried, "forgive me. Curse me, my dearest,
throw all the blame on me, my dearest--I accept it--not on God. Only
try, try to forgive! Forgive me for being your mother. Forgive me that
I ever loved and married. Forgive me the intolerable wrong which, all
unknowingly, I did you before your birth. I humble myself before you,
and with reason. For I am the cause, I, who would give my life for your
happiness, my blood for your healing, a thousand times. But through all
these years I have done my poor best to serve you and to make up. The
hypocrisies and subterfuges which you lash so scornfully--and rightly
perhaps--were the fruit of my overcare for you. Rail at me. I deserve
it. Perhaps I have been faithless, but only once or twice, and for a
moment. I was faithless towards you here, in the garden to-night. But
then I supposed you content. Ah! I hardly know what I say!--Only rail
at me, my beloved, not at God. And then try--try not to leave me in
anger. Try, before you go, to forgive!"
Richard had sunk back in his chair, his hands clasped under his head,
watching her. It gave him the strangest sensation to see his mother
kneeling before him thus. At first it shocked him almost to the point
of heated protest, as against a thing unpermissible and indecorous.
Then the devils of wounded pride, of anarchy, and of revolt asserting
themselves, he began to relish, to be appeased by, the unseemly sight.
Little Lady Constance Quayle, and all that of which she was the symbol,
had disappointed and escaped him. But here was a woman, worth a dozen
Constance Quayles, in beauty, in intellect, and in heart, prostrate
before him, imploring his clemency as the penitent implores the
absolution of the priest! An evil gladness took him that he had power
thus to subjugate so regal a creature. His gluttony of inflicting
pain--since he himself suffered--his gluttony of exercising
dominion--since he himself had been defied and defrauded--was in a
degree satisfied. His arrogance was at once reinforced and assuaged.
"It is absurd to speak of forgiveness," he said presently, and slowly,
"as it is absurd to speak of restitution. These are mere words, having
no real tally in fact. We appear to have volition, but actually and
essentially we are as leaves driven by the wind. Where it blindly
drives, there we blindly go. So it has been from the beginning. So it
always will be. In the last twenty-four hours there are many things I
have ceased to believe in, and among them, my dear mother, is human
responsibility."
He paused, and motioned Lady Calmady towards her chair with a certain
authority.
"Therefore calm yourself," he said. "Grieve as little as may be about
all this matter, and let us talk it over without further emotion."
He waited a brief space, giving her time to recover her composure, and
then continued coldly, with a careful abstention from any show of
feeling.
"Let us clear our minds of cant, and go forward knowing that there is
really neither good nor evil. For these--even as God Himself, whose
existence I treated from the anthro-pomorphic standpoint just now, so
as to supply myself with a target to shoot at, a windmill at which to
tilt, a row of ninepins set up for the mere satisfaction of knocking
them down again--these are plausible delusions invented by man, in the
vain effort to protect himself and his fellows from the profound sense
of loneliness, and impotence, which seizes on him if he catches so much
as a passing glimpse of the gross comedy of human aspiration, human
affection, briefly, human existence."
But, strive as he might, excitement gained on Richard once more, for
young blood is hot and gallops masterfully along the veins, specially
under the whip of real or imagined disgrace. He sat upright, grasping
the arms of his chair, and looking, not at his mother, but away into
the deep of the summer night.
"Perhaps my personal peculiarities confer on me unusually acute
perception of the inherent grossness of the human comedy. I propose to
take the lesson to heart. They teach me not to sacrifice the present to
the future, but to fling away ideals like so much waste paper, and just
take that which I can immediately get. They tell me to limit my
horizon, and go the common way of common, coarse-grained, sensual
man--in as far as that way is possible to me--and be of this world
worldly. And so, mother, I want you to understand that from this day
forth I turn over a new leaf, not only in thought, but in conduct. I am
going to have just all that my money and position, and even this vile
deformity--for, by God, I'll use that too--what people won't give for
love they'll give for curiosity--can bring me of pleasure and
notoriety. I am going to lay hold of life with these rather horribly
strong arms of mine"--he looked across at Lady Calmady with a sneering
smile.--"Strong?" he repeated, "strong as a young bull-ape's. I mean to
tear the very vitals out of living, to tear knowledge, excitement,
intoxication, out of it, making them, by right of conquest, my own. I
will compel existence to yield me all that it yields other men, and
more--because my senses are finer, my acquaintance with sorrow more
intimate, my quarrel with fortune more vital and more just. As I cannot
have a wife, I'll have mistresses. As I cannot have honest love, I'll
have gratified lust. I am not stupid. I shall not follow the beaten
track. My imagination has been stimulated into rather dangerous
activity by the pre-natal insult put upon me. And now that I have
emancipated myself, I propose to apply my imagination practically."
The young man flung himself back in his chair again.
"There ought to be startling results," he said, with gloomy exultation.
"Don't you think so, mother? There should be startling results."
Lady Calmady bowed herself together, putting her hands over her eyes.
Then raising her head, she managed to smile at him, though very sadly,
her sweet face drawn by exhaustion and marred by lately shed tears.
"Ah! yes, my dearest," she answered, "no doubt the results will be
startling, but whether any sensible increase of happiness, either to
yourself or others, will be counted among them is open to question."
Richard laughed bitterly.--"I shall have lived, anyhow," he rejoined.
"Worn out, not rusted and rotted out--which, according to our former
fine-fanciful programme, seemed the only probable consummation of my
unlucky existence."
His tone changed, becoming quietly businesslike and indifferent.
"I am entering horses for some of the French events, and I go through
to Paris to-morrow to see various men there and make the necessary
arrangements. I shall take Chifney with me for a few days. But the
stables will not give you any trouble. He will have given all the
orders."
"Very well," Katherine said mechanically.
"Later I shall go on to Baden-Baden."
Katharine rallied somewhat.
"Helen de Vallorbes is there," she said, not without a trace of her
former pride.
"Certainly Helen de Vallorbes is there," he answered. "That is why I
go. I want to see her. It is inconsistent, I admit, for Helen remains
the one person gloriously untouched by the wreck of the former order of
things. Pray let there be no misconception on that point. She belonged
to the ideal order, she belongs to it still."
"Ah, my dear, my dear!" Katharine almost cried. His perversity hurt her
a little too much so that the small, upspringing flame of decent pride
was quenched.
"Yes," he went on, "there was my initial, my cardinal, mistake. For I
was a traitor to all that was noblest and best in me, when I persuaded
myself, and weakly permitted you to persuade me, that a loveless
marriage is better than a love in which marriage is impossible,--that
Lady Constance Quayle, poor little soul, bought, paid for, and my
admitted property, could fill Helen's place,--though Helen was--and I
intend her to remain so, for I care for her enough to hold her honour
as sacred as I do your own--forever inaccessible."
Lady Calmady staggered to her feet.
"That is enough, Richard," she said. "That is enough. If you have more
to say, in pity leave it until to-morrow."
The young man looked at her strangely.
"You are ill, mother," he said.
"No, no, I am only broken-hearted," she replied. "And a broken heart,
alas! never killed so healthy a body as mine. I shall survive this--and
more perhaps. God knows. Do not vex yourself about me, Dickie.--Go,
live your life as it seems fit to you. I have not the will, even had I
the right, to restrain you. And meanwhile I will be the steward of your
goods, as, long ago, when you were a child and belonged to me wholly.
You can trust me to be faithful and discreet, at least in financial and
practical matters. If you ever need me, I will come even to the ends of
the earth. And should the desire take you to return, here you will find
me.--And so, good-bye, my darling. I am foolishly tired. I grow
lightheaded, and dare not linger, lest in my weakness I say that which
I afterwards regret."
She passed to the door and went out, without looking back.
Left to himself Richard Calmady crossed to the writing-table, swung
himself up into the revolving-chair, and remained there sorting and
docketing papers far into the night. But once, stooping, with
long-armed adroitness, to unlock the lowest drawer of the table, a
madness of disgust towards the unsightliness of his own person seized
on and tore him.
"Oh! God, God, God," he cried aloud, in the extremity of his passion,
"why hast Thou made me thus?"
And to that question, as yet, there was no answer, though it rang afar
over the sleeping park, and up to the clear shining stars of the
profound and peaceful summer night.
BOOK V
RAKE'S PROGRESS
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH THE READER IS COURTEOUSLY ENTREATED TO GROW OLDER BY THE SPACE
OF SOME FOUR YEARS, AND TO SAIL SOUTHWARD HO! AWAY
The southeasterly wind came fresh across the bay from the crested range
of the Monte Sant' Angelo. The blossoms of the Judas-trees, breaking
from the smooth gray stems and branches--on which they perch so
quaintly--fell in a red-mauve shower upon the slabs of the marble
pavement, upon the mimic waves of the fountain basin, and upon the
clustering curls, and truncated shoulders, of the bust of Homer
standing in the shade of the grove of cypress and ilex which sheltered
the square, high-lying hill-garden, at this hour of the morning, from
the fierceness of the sun. They floated as far even as the semicircular
steps of the pavilion on the extreme right--the leaded dome of which
showed dark and livid on the one side, white and glistering on the
other, against the immense and radiant panorama of mountain, sea, and
sky.
The garden, its fountains, neatly clipped shrubs, and formal paved
alleys, was backed by a large villa of the square, flat-roofed order
common to southern Italy. The record of its age had recently suffered
modification by application of a coat of stucco, of a colour
intermediate between faint lemon-yellow and pearl-gray, and by the
renovation of the fine arabesques--Pompeian in character--decorating
the narrow interspaces between its treble range of Venetian shutters.
Otherwise, the aspect of the Villa Vallorbes showed but small
alteration since the year when, for a few socially historic weeks, the
"glorious Lady Blessington," and her strangely assorted train,
condescended to occupy it prior to taking up their residence at the
Palazzo Belvedere near by. The walls were sufficiently massive to
withstand a siege. The windows of the ground floor, set in deeply-hewn
ashlar work, were cross-barred as those of a prison. Above, the central
windows and door of the entresol, opened on to a terrace of black and
white marble, from which at either end a wide, shallow-stepped, curved
stairway led down into the garden. The first floor consisted of a suite
of noble rooms, each of whose lofty windows gave on to a balcony of
wrought ironwork, very ornate in design. The topmost story, immediately
below the painted frieze of the parapet, coincided in height and in
detail with the entresol.
The villa was superbly situated upon an advancing spur of hill, so
that, looking down from its balconies, looking out from between the
pale and slender columns of the pavilion, the whole city of Naples lay
revealed below.--Naples, that bewildering union of modern commerce and
classic association--its domes, its palms, its palaces, its crowded,
hoarse-shouting quays, its theatres and giant churches, its steep and
filthy lanes black with shadow, its reeking markets, its broad,
sun-scorched piazzas, its glittering, blue waters, its fringing forest
of tall masts, and innumerable, close-packed hulls of oceangoing ships!
Naples, city of glaring contrasts--heaven of rascality, hell of horses,
unrivaled all the western world over for natural beauty, for spiritual
and moral grossness! Naples, breeding, teeming, laughing, fighting,
festering, city of music, city of fever and death! Naples, at once
abominable and enchanting--city to which, spite of noise, stenches,
cruelty and squalor, those will return, of necessity, and return again,
whose imagination has once been taken captive in the meshes of her
many-coloured net!
And among the captives of Naples, on the brilliant morning in question
in the early spring of the year 1871, open-eared and open-eyed to its
manifest and manifold incongruities, relishing alike the superficial
beauty and underlying bestiality of it, was very certainly Helen de
Vallorbes. Several years had elapsed since she had visited this
fascinating locality, and she could congratulate herself upon
conditions adapted to a more intimate and comprehensive acquaintance
with its very various humours than she had ever enjoyed before. She had
spent more than one winter here, it is true, immediately subsequent to
her marriage. But she had then been required to associate exclusively
with the members of her husband's family, and to fill a definite
position in the aristocratic society of the place. The tone of that
society was not a little lax. Yet, being notably defective in the
saving grace of humour--as to the feminine portion of it, at all
events--its laxity proved sadly deficient in vital interest. The fair
Neapolitans displayed as small intelligence in their intrigues as in
their piety. In respect of both they remained ignorant, prejudiced,
hopelessly conventional. Their noble ancestresses of the Renaissance
understood and did these things better--so Helen reflected. She found
herself both bored and irritated. She feared she had taken up her
residence in southern Italy quite three centuries too late.
But all that was in the past--heaven be praised for it! Just now she
was her own mistress, at liberty--thanks to the fortune of war--to
comport herself as she pleased and obey any caprice that took her. The
position was ideal in its freedom, while the intrinsic value of it was
enhanced by contrast with recent disagreeable experiences. For the
alarms and deprivations of the siege of Paris were but lately over. She
had come through them unscathed in health and fortune. Yet they had
left their mark. During those months of all-encompassing disappointment
and disaster the eternal laughter--in which she trusted--had rung
harshly sardonic, to the breaking down of self-confidence, and
light-hearted, cynic philosophy. It scared her somewhat. It made her
feel old. It chilled her with suspicion of the actuality of The Four
Last Things--death and judgment, heaven and hell. The power of a merry
scepticism waxed faint amid the scream of shells and long-drawn,
murderous crackle of the _mitrailleuse_. Helen, indeed, became actively
superstitious, thereby falling low in her own self-esteem. She took to
frequenting churches, and spending long, still days with the nuns, her
former teachers, within the convent of the Sacre Coeur. Circumstances
so worked upon her that she made her submission, and was solemnly and
duly received back into the fold of the Church. She confessed ardently,
yet with certain politic reservations. The priest, after all, is but
human. It is only charitable to be considerate of his feelings--so she
argued--and avoid overburdening his conscience, poor dear man, by
blackening your own reputation too violently! The practice of religion
was a help--truly it was, since it served to pass the time. And then,
who could tell but that it might not prove really useful hereafter, as,
when all is said and done, those dread Four Last Things will present
themselves to the mind, in hours of depression with haunting
pertinacity? It is clearly wise, then, to be on the safe side of Holy
Church in these matters, accepting her own assertion that she is very
certainly on the safe side of the Deity.
Yet, notwithstanding her pious exercises, Helen de Vallorbes found
existing circumstances excessively disturbing and disquieting. She was
filled with an immense self-pity. She feared her health was failing.
She became nervously sensible of her eight-and-twenty years, telling
herself that her youth and the glory of it had departed. She wore black
dresses, rolled bandages, pulled lint. Selecting Mary Magdalene as her
special intercessor, she made a careful study of the life and legends
of that saint. This proved stimulating to her imagination. She
proceeded to write a little one-act drama concerning the holy woman's
dealings, subsequent to her conversion, quite late in life in fact,
with such as survived of her former lovers. The dialogue was very
moving in parts. Helen read it aloud one bleak January evening, by the
light of a single candle, to her friend M. Paul Destournelle, poet and
novelist--with whom, just then, by her own desire, her relations were
severely platonic--and they both wept. The application, though
delicate, was obvious. And those tears appeared to lay the dust of so
many pleasant sins, and promise fertilisation of so heavy a crop of
virtue, that--by inevitable action of the law of contraries--the two
friends found it more than ever difficult to say farewell and part that
night.
Now looking back on all that, viewing it calmly in perspective, her
action and attitude struck Helen as somewhat imbecile. Prayer and
penitence have too often a tendency to kick the beam when fear ceases
to weight the balance. And so it followed that the lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, presented themselves to her
as powers by no means contemptible, or unworthy of invocation, this
morning, while she sat at the luxuriously furnished breakfast-table
beneath the glistering dome of the airy pavilion and gazed out between
its slender columns, over the curving lines of the painted city and
glittering waters of the bay, to the cone of Vesuvius rising, in
imperial purple, against the azure sky. To-day, sign, as she noted, of
fine weather, omen, as she trusted, of good fortune, the smoke of its
everlasting burnings towered up and up into the translucent atmosphere,
and then drifted away--a gigantic, wedge-shaped pennon--towards Capri
and the open sea. And, beholding these things, out of simple, physical
well-being, fulness of bread, conviction of her own undiminished
beauty, and the merry devilry begotten of these, she fell to projecting
a second, a companion, one-act drama founded upon the life of the
Magdalene, but, this time, before the saint's conversion, at an
altogether earlier stage of her very instructive history. And this
drama she would not read to M. Destournelle--not a bit of it. In it he
should have neither part nor lot.--Registering which determination, she
shook her charming, honey-coloured head, holding up both hands with a
gesture of humorous and well-defined repudiation.
For, in truth, the day of M. Destournelle appeared, just now, to be
very effectually over. It had been reasonable enough to urge her
natural fears in journeying through a war-distracted land--although
guarded by Charles, most discreet and resourceful of English
men-servants, and Zelie Forestier, most capable of French
lady's-maids--as excuse for Paul Destournelle joining her at a wayside
station a short distance out of Paris and accompanying her south. _A la
guerre comme a la guerre._ A beautiful woman can hardly be too careful
of her person amid the many and primitive dangers which battle and
invasion let loose. De Vallorbes himself--detestably jealous though he
was--could hardly have objected to her thus securing effective
protection, had he been acquainted with the fact. That he was not so
acquainted was, of course, the veriest oversight. But, the frontier
once reached--the better part of three weeks had elapsed in the
reaching of it--and all danger of war and tumult past, both the
necessity and, to be frank, the entertainment of M. Destournelle's
presence became less convincing. Helen grew a trifle weary of his
transports, his suspicions, his _bel tete de Jesu souffrant_, his
insatiable literary and personal vanity. The charm, the excitement, of
the situation, began to wear rather threadbare, while the practical
inconveniences and restrictions it imposed increasingly disclosed
themselves. A lover, as Helen reflected, provided you see enough of
him, offers but small improvement upon a husband. He is liable to
become possessive and didactic, after the manner of the natural man. He
is liable to forget that the relation is permitted, not legalised--that
it exists on suffrance merely, and is therefore terminable at the will
of either party. The last days of that same southern journey had been
marked by misunderstandings and subsequent reconciliations, in an
ascending scale of acrimony and fervour on the part of her companion.
In Helen's case familiarity tended very rapidly to breed contempt. She
ceased to be in the least amused by these recurring agitations. At
Pisa, after a scene of a particularly excited nature, she lost all
patience, frankly told her admirer that she found him not a little
ridiculous, and requested him to remove himself, his grievances, and
his _bel tete de Jesu_ elsewhere. M. Destournelle took refuge in
nerves, threats of morphia, and his bedchamber,--in the chaste
seclusion of which apartment Helen left him, unvisited and unconsoled,
while, attended by her servants, she gaily resumed her journey.
An adorable sense of independence possessed her, of the charm of her
own society, of the absence of all external compelling or directing of
her movements--no circumscription of her liberty possible--the world
before her where to choose! Not only were privations, dismal hauntings
of siege and slaughter, left behind, and M. Destournelle, just now most
wearisome of lovers, left behind also, but de Vallorbes himself had,
for the time being, become a permissibly negligible quantity. The news
of more fighting, more bloodshed, had just reached her, though the
German armies were marching back to the now wholly German Rhine. For
upon unhappy Paris had come an hour of deeper humiliation than any
which could be procured by the action of foreign foes. She was a
kingdom divided against herself, a mother scandalously torn by her own
children. News had reached Helen too, news special and highly
commendatory of her husband, Angelo Luigi Francesco. Early in that
eventful struggle he had enlisted in the Garde Mobile, all the manhood
and honest sentiment resident in him stirred into fruitful activity by
the shame and peril of his adopted country. Now Helen learned he had
distinguished himself in the holding of Chatillon against the
insurgents, had been complimented by MacMahon upon his endurance and
resource, had been offered, and had accepted, a commission in the
regular army. Promotion was rapid during the later months of the war,
and probability pointed to the young man having started on a serious
military career.
"Well, let him both start and continue," Helen commented. "I am the
last person to be otherwise than delighted thereat. Just in proportion
as he is occupied he ceases to be inconvenient. If he succeeds--good.
If he is shot--good likewise. For him laurels and a hero's tomb. For me
crape and permanent emancipation. An agreeably romantic conclusion to a
profoundly unromantic marriage--fresh proof, were such needed, of the
truth of the immortal Dr. Pangloss' saying, that 'all is for the best
in this best of all possible worlds!'"
In such happy frame of mind did Madame de Vallorbes continue during her
visit to Florence and upon her onward way to Perugia. But there
self-admiration ceased to be all-sufficient for her. She needed to read
confirmation of that admiration in other eyes. And the gray Etruscan
city, uplifted on its star-shaped hill, offered her a somewhat grim
reception. Piercing winds swept across the Tiber valley from the still
snow-clad Apennines above Assisi. The austere, dark-walled,
lombard-gothic churches and palaces showed forbidding, merciless
almost, through the driving wet. Even in fair summer weather suspicion
of ancient and implacable terror lurks in the shadow of those cyclopean
gateways, and stalks over the unyielding, rock-hewn pavements of those
solemn mediaeval streets. There was an incalculable element in Perugia
which raised a certain anger in Helen. The place seemed to defy her and
make light of her pretensions. As during the siege of Paris, so now,
echoes of the eternal laughter saluted her ears, ironic in tone.
Nor was the society offered by the residents in the hotel,
weather-bound like herself, of a specially enlivening description. It
was composed almost exclusively of middle-aged English and American
ladies--widows and spinsters--of blameless morals and anxiously active
intelligence. They wrapped their lean forms in woolen shawls and
ill-cut jackets. They pervaded salon and corridors guide-book in hand.
They discoursed of Umbrian antiquities, Etruscan tombs, frescoes and
architecture. Having but little life in themselves, they tried, rather
vainly, to warm both hands at the fire of the life of the past. Among
them, Helen, in her vigorous and self-secure, though fine-drawn,
beauty, was about as much at home as a young panther in a hen-roost.
They admired, they vaguely feared, they greatly wondered at her. Had
one of those glorious young gallants, Baglioni or Oddi, clothed in
scarlet, winged, helmeted, sword on thigh, as Perugino has painted them
on the walls of the Sala del Cambio--very strangest union of sensuous
worldliness and radiant arch-angelic grace--had one of these
magnificent gentlemen ruffled into the hotel parlour, he could hardly
have startled the eyes, and perplexed the understanding, of the
virtuous and learned Anglo-Saxon and Transatlantic feminine beings
there assembled, more than did Madame de Vallorbes.
For all such sexless creatures, for the great company of women in whose
outlook man plays no immediate or active part, Helen had, in truth,
small respect. They appeared to her so absurdly inadequate, so
contemptibly divorced from the primary interests of existence. More
than once, in a spirit of mischievous malice, she was tempted to bid
the good ladies lay aside their Baedekers and Murrays, and increase
their knowledge of the Italian character and language by study of the
_Novelle_ of Bandello, or of certain merry tales to be found in the
pages of the _Decameron_. She had copies of both works in her
traveling-bag. She was prepared, moreover, to illustrate such ancient
saws by modern instances, for the truth of which last she could quite
honestly vouch. But on second thoughts she spared her victims. The
quarry was not worth the chase. What self-respecting panther can, after
all, go a-hunting in a hen-roost? So from the neighbourhood of their
unlovely clothes, questioning glances, and under-vitalised pursuit of
art and literature, she removed herself to her sitting-room up-stairs.
Charles should serve her meals there in future, for to sit at table
with these neuters, clothed in amorphous garments, came near upsetting
her digestion.
Meanwhile, as she watched the rain streaming down the panes of the big
windows, watched thin-legged, heavily-cloaked figures tacking,
wind-buffeted, across the gray-black street into the shelter of some
cavernous _port cochere_, it must be owned her spirits went very
sensibly down into her boots. Even the presence of the despised and
repudiated Destournelle would have been grateful to her. Remembrance of
all the less successful episodes of her career assaulted her. And in
that connection, of necessity, the thought of Brockhurst returned upon
her. For neither the affair of her childhood--that of the little dancer
with blush-roses in her hat--or the other affair--of now nearly four
years back--the intimate drama frustrated, within sight of its climax,
by intervention of Lady Calmady--could be counted otherwise than as
failures. It was strange how deep-seated was her discontent under this
head. As on Queen Mary's heart the word Calais, so on hers Brockhurst,
she sometimes thought, might be found written when she was dead. In the
last four years Richard had given her princely gifts. He had treated
her with a fine, old-world chivalry, as something sacred and apart. But
he rarely sought her society. He seemed, rather carefully, to elude her
pursuit. His name was not exactly a patent of discretion and rectitude
in these days, unfortunately. Still Helen found his care of her
reputation--as far as association of her name with his went--somewhat
exaggerated. She could hardly believe him to be indifferent to her, and
yet---- Oh! the whole matter was unsatisfactory, abominably
unsatisfactory--of a piece with the disquieting influences of this grim
and fateful city, with the detestable weather evident there without!
And then, suddenly, an idea came to Helen de Vallorbes, causing the
delicate colour to spring into her cheeks, and the light into her eyes,
veiled by those fringed, semitransparent lids. For, some two years
earlier, Richard Calmady had taken her husband's villa at Naples on
lease, it offering, as he said, a convenient _pied a terre_ to him
while yachting along the adjacent coasts, up the Black Sea to Odessa,
and eastward as far as Aden, and the Persian Gulf. The house, save for
the actual fabric of it, had become rather dilapidated and ruinate. To
de Vallorbes it appeared clearly advantageous to get the property off
his hands, and touch a considerable yearly sum, rather than have his
pocket drained by outgoings on a place in which he no longer cared to
live. So the Villa Vallorbes passed for the time being into Richard
Calmady's possession. It pleased his fancy. Helen heard he had restored
and refurnished it at great expenditure of money and of taste.
These facts she recalled. And, recalling them, found both the actuality
of rain-blurred, wind-scourged town without, and anger-begetting
memories of Brockhurst within, fade before a seductive vision of
sun-bathed Naples and of that nobly placed and painted villa, in
which--as it seemed to her--was just now resident promise of high
entertainment, the objective delight of abnormal circumstance, the
subjective delight of long-cherished revenge. All the rapture of her
existing freedom came back on her, while her brain, fertile in forecast
of adventure, projected scenes and situations not unworthy of the pen
of Boccaccio himself. Fired by such thoughts, she moved from the
window, stood before a tall glass at right angles to it and
contemplated her own fair reflection long and intimately. An absorbing
interest in the general effect, and in the details, of her person
possessed her. She moved to and fro observing the grace of her
carriage, the set of her hips, the slenderness of her waist. She
unfastened her soft, trailing tea-gown, throwing the loose bodice of it
back, critically examining her bare neck, the swell of her beautiful
bosom, the firm contours of her arms from shoulder to elbow. Her skin
was of a clear, golden whiteness, smooth, fine in texture, as that of a
child. Placing her hands on the gilded frame of the mirror, high up on
either side, she observed her face, exquisitely healthful in colour,
even as seen in this mournful, afternoon light. She leaned forward,
gazing intently into her own eyes--meeting in them, as Narcissus in the
surface of the fatal pool, the radiant image of herself. And this
filled her with a certain intoxication, a voluptuous self-love, a
profound persuasion of the power and completeness of her own beauty.
She caressed her own neck, her own lips, with lingering finger-tips.
She bent her bright head and kissed the swell of her cuplike breasts.
Never had she received so entire assurance of the magic of her own
personality.
"It is all--all, as perfect as ever," she exclaimed exultantly. "And
while it remains perfect, it should be made use of."
Helen waved her hand, smiling, to the smiling image in the mirror.
"You and I together--your beauty and my brains--I pit the pair of us
against all mankind! Together we have worked pretty little miracles
before now, causing the proud to lay aside their pride and the godly
their virtue. A man of strange passions shall hardly escape us--nor
shall the mother that bare him escape either."
Her face hardened, her laughing eyes paled to the colour of fine steel.
She lifted the soft-curling hair from off her right temple disclosing a
small, crescent-shaped scar.
"That is the one blemish, and we will exact the price of it--you and
I--to the ultimate _sou_."
Then she moved away, overcome by sudden amusement at her own attitude,
which she perceived risked being slightly comic. Heroics were, to her
thinking, unsuitable articles for home consumption. Yet her purpose
held none the less strongly and steadily because excitement lessened.
She refastened her tea gown, tied the streaming azure ribbons of it,
patted bows and laces into place, walked the length of the room a time
or two to recover her composure, then rang the bell. And, on the
arrival of Charles,--irreproachably correct in dress and demeanour, his
clean-shaven, sharp-featured, rakish countenance controlled to
praiseworthy nullity of expression, she said:--
"The weather is abominable."
The man-servant set down the tray on a little table before her, turned
out the corners of the napkin, deftly arranged the tea-things.
"It is a little dull, my lady."
"How is the glass?"
"Falling steadily, my lady."
"I cannot remain here."
"No, my lady?"
"Find out about the trains south--to Naples."
"Yes, my lady. We can join the Roman express at Chiusi. When does your
ladyship wish to start?"
"I must telegraph first."
"Certainly, my lady."
Charles produced telegraph forms. It was Helen's boast that, upon
request, the man could produce any known object from a packet of pins
to a white elephant, or fully manned battleship. She had a lively
regard for her servant's ability. So had he, it may be added, for that
of his mistress. The telegram was written and despatched. But the reply
took four days in reaching Madame de Vallorbes, and during those days
it rained incessantly. The said reply came in the form of a letter. Sir
Richard Calmady was at Constantinople, so the writer--Bates, his
steward--had reason to believe. But it was probable he would return to
Naples shortly. Meanwhile he--the steward--had permanent orders to the
effect that the villa was at Madame de Vallorbes' disposition should
she at any time express the wish to visit it. She would find everything
prepared for her reception. This information caused Helen singular
satisfaction. It was very charming, very courteous, of Richard thus to
remember her. She set forth from Perugia full of ingenious purpose,
deliciously light of heart.
Thus did it come about that, on the afore-mentioned gay, spring
morning, Madame de Vallorbes breakfasted beneath the glistering dome of
the airy pavilion, all Naples outstretched before her, while the
blossoms of the Judas-trees fell in a red-mauve shower upon the slabs
of the marble pavement, and the mimic waves of the fountain basin, and
upon the clustered curls and truncated shoulders of the bust of Homer
stationed within the soft gloom of the ilex and cypress grove. She had
arrived the previous evening, and had met with a dignified welcome from
the numerous household. Her manner was gracious, kindly,
captivating--she intended it to be all that. She slept well, rose in
buoyant health and spirits, partook of a meal offering example of the
most finished Italian cooking. Finish, in any department, appealed to
Helen's artistic sense. Life was sweet--moreover it was supremely
interesting! Her breakfast ended, rising from her place at table, she
looked away to the purple cone of the great volcano and the uprising of
the smoke of its everlasting burnings. The sight of this, magnificent,
menacing evidence of the anarchic might of the powers of nature,
quickened the pagan instinct in her. She wanted to worship. And even in
so doing, she became aware of a kindred something in herself--of an
answering and anarchic energy, a certain menace to the conventional
works and ways, and fancied security, of groping, purblind man. The
insolence of a great lady, the dangerously primitive instincts of a
great courtesan, filled her with an enormous pride, a reckless
self-confidence.
Turning, she glanced back across the formal garden, bright with waxen
camellias set in glossy foliage, with early roses, with hyacinths,
lemon and orange blossom, towards the villa. Upon the black-and-white
marble balustrade a man leaned his elbows. She could see his broad
shoulders, his bare head. From his height she took him, at first, to be
kneeling, as, motionless, he looked towards her and towards the
splendid view. Then she perceived that he was not kneeling, but
standing upright. She understood, and a very vital sensation ran right
through her, causing the queerest turn in her blood.
"Mercy of heaven!" she said to herself, "is it conceivable that now, at
this time of day, I am capable of the egregious folly of losing my
head?"
CHAPTER II
WHEREIN TIME IS DISCOVERED TO HAVE WORKED CHANGES
Helen, however, did not stay to debate as to the state of her
affections. She had had more than enough of reflection of late. Now
action invited her. She responded. The sweep of her turquoise-blue
cloth skirts sent the fallen Judas-blossoms dancing, to left and right,
in crazy whirling companies. She did not wait even to put on her
broad-brimmed, garden hat,--the crown of it encircled, as luck would
have it, by a garland of pale, pink tulle and pale, pink roses,--but
braved the sunshine with no stouter head-covering than the coils of her
honey-coloured hair. Rapidly she passed up the central alley between
the double row of glossy leaved camellia bushes, laughter in her
downcast eyes and a delicious thrill of excitement at her heart. She
felt strong and light, her being vibrant, penetrated and sustained
throughout by the bracing air, the sparkling, crystal-clear atmosphere.
Yet for all her eagerness Helen remained an artist. She would not
forestall effects. Thriftily she husbanded sensations. Thus, reaching
the base of the black-and-white marble wall supporting the terrace,
where, midway in its long length, it was broken by an arched grotto of
rough-hewn stonework, in which maiden-hair fern rooted,--the delicate
fronds of it caressing the shoulders of an undraped nymph, with
ever-dripping water-pitcher upon her rounded hip,--Helen turned sharp
to the left, and arrived at the bottom of the descending flight of
steps without once looking up. That Richard Calmady still leaned on the
balustrade some twelve to fourteen feet above that same cool, green
grotto she knew well enough. But she did not choose to anticipate
either sight or greeting of him. Both should come to her as a whole.
She would receive a single and unqualified impression.
So, silently, without apparent haste, she passed up the flight of
shallow steps on to the edge of the wide black-and-white chequer-board
platform. It was sun-bathed, suspended, as it seemed, between that
glorious prospect of city, mountain, sea, and the unsullied purity of
the southern heavens. It was vacant, save for the solitary figure and
the sharp-edged, yet amorphous, shadow cast by that same figure. For
the young man had moved as she came up from the garden below. He stood
clear of the balustrade, only the fingers of his left hand resting upon
the handrail of it. Seeing him thus the strangeness, the grotesque
incompleteness, of his person struck her as never before. But this,
though it did not move her to mirth as in her childhood, moved her to
pity no more now than it then had. That which it did was to deepen, to
stimulate, her excitement, to provoke and to satisfy the instinct of
cruelty latent in every pagan nature such as hers. Could Helen have
chosen the moment of her birth she would have been a great lady of
Imperial Rome, holding power of life and death over her slaves, and the
mutes and eunuchs with which the East should have furnished her palace
in the eternal city, and her dainty villa away there on the purple
flanks of Vesuvius at Herculaneum or Pompeii. The delight of her own
loveliness, of her own triumphant health and activity, would have been
increased tenfold by the sight of, by power over, such stultified and
hopelessly disfranchised human creatures. And the first sight of
Richard Calmady now, though she did not stop very certainly to analyse
the exact how and why of her increasing satisfaction, took its root in
this same craving for ascendency by means of the suffering and loss of
others. While, unconsciously, the fine flavour of her satisfaction was
heightened by the fact that the victim, now before her, was her equal
in birth, her superior in wealth, in intelligence and worldly station.
But as she drew nearer, Richard the while making no effort to go
forward and receive her, buoyant self-complacency and self-congratulation
suffered diminution. For, rehearsing this same meeting during those
rain-blotted days of waiting at Perugia, imagination had presented
Dickie as the inexperienced, tender-hearted, sweet-natured lad she had
known and beguiled at Brockhurst four years earlier. As has already
been stated her meetings with him, since then, had been brief and
infrequent. Now she perceived that imagination had played a silly trick
upon her. The boy she had left, the man who stood awaiting her so
calmly were, save in one distressing peculiarity, two widely different
persons. For in the interval Richard Calmady had eaten very freely of
the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that diet
had left its mark not only on his character, but on his appearance. He
had matured notably, all trace of ingenuous, boyish charm having
vanished. His skin, though darkened by recent seafaring, was
colourless. His features were at once finer and more pronounced than of
old--the bone of the face giving it a noticeable rigidity of outline,
index at once of indomitable will and irreproachable breeding. The
powerful jaw and strong muscular neck might have argued a measure of
brutality. But happily the young man's mouth had not coarsened. His
lips were compressed, relaxing rarely into the curves which, as a lad,
had rendered his smile so peculiarly engaging. Still there was no trace
of grossness in their form or expression. Hard living had, indeed, in
Richard's case, been matter of research rather than of appetite. The
intellectual part of him had never fallen wholly into bondage to the
animal. He explored the borders of the Forbidden hoping to find some
anodyne with which to assuage the ache of a vital discontent, rather
than by any compulsion of natural lewdness.
Much of this quick-witted Helen quickly apprehended. He was cleverer,
more serious, and mentally more distinguished, than she had supposed
him. And this, while opening up new sources of interest and pricking
her ambition of conquest, disclosed unforeseen difficulties in the way
of such conquest. Moreover, she was slightly staggered by the strength
and inscrutability of his countenance, the repose of his bearing and
manner. His eyes affected her oddly. They were cold and clear as some
frosty, winter's night, the pupils of them very small. They seemed to
see all things, yet tell nothing. They were as windows opening onto an
endless perspective of empty space. They at once challenged curiosity
and baffled inquiry. Helen's excitement deepened, and she was sensible
it needed all the subjective support, all the indirect flattery, with
which the fact of his deformity supplied her self-love to prevent her
standing in awe of him. As consequence her address was impulsive rather
than studied.
"Richard, I have had a detestable winter," she said. "It wore upon me.
It demoralised me. I was growing dull, superstitious even. I wanted to
get away, to put a long distance between myself and certain
experiences, certain memories. I wanted to hear another language. You
have always been sympathetic to me. It was natural, if a little
unconventional, to take refuge with you."
Madame de Vallorbes spoke with an unaccustomed and very seductive air
of apology, her face slightly flushed, her arms hanging straight at her
sides, the long, pink, tulle strings of the hat she carried in her left
hand trailing upon the black-and-white squares of the pavement.
"To do so seemed obvious in contemplation. I did not stop to consider
possible objections. But, in execution, the objections become hourly
more glaringly apparent. I want you to reassure me. Tell me I have not
dared too greatly in coming thus uninvited?"
"Of course not," he answered. "I hope you found the house comfortable
and everything prepared for you. The servants had their orders."
"I know, I know. That you should have provided against the possibility
of my coming some day moved me a little more than I care to tell
you."--Helen paused, looking upon him, and that look had in it a
delicate affinity to a caress. But the young man's manner, though
faultlessly courteous, was lacking in any hint of enthusiasm. Helen
could have imagined, and that angered her, something of irony in his
tone.
"Oh, there's no matter for thanks," he said. "The house was yours, will
be yours again. The least I can do, since you and de Vallorbes are good
enough to let me live in it meanwhile, is to beg you to make any use
you please of it. Indeed it is I, rather than you, who come uninvited
just now. I had not intended being back here for another month. But
there was a case of something suspiciously like cholera on board my
yacht at Constantinople, and it seemed wisest to get away to sea as
soon as possible. One of the firemen--oh, he's all right now! Still I
shall send him home to England. He's a married man--the only one I have
on board. A useful fellow, but he must go. I don't choose to take the
responsibility of creating the widow and the fatherless whenever one of
my crew chances to fall sick and depart into the unknown."
Richard talked on, very evidently for the mere sake of passing the
time. And all the while those eyes, which told nothing, dwelt quietly
upon Helen de Vallorbes until she became nervously impatient of their
scrutiny. For it was not at all thus that she had pictured and
rehearsed this meeting during those days of waiting at Perugia!
"We got in last night," he continued. "But I slept on board. I heard
you had just arrived, and I did not care to run the risk of disturbing
you after your journey."
"You are very considerate," Helen remarked.
She was surprised out of all readiness of speech. This new Richard
impressed her, but she resented his manner. He took her so very much
for granted. Admiration and homage were to her as her daily bread, and
that any man should fail to offer them caused her frank amazement. It
did more. It raised in her a longing to inflict pain. He might not
admire, but at least he should not remain indifferent. Therefore she
backed a couple of steps, so as to get a good view of Richard Calmady.
And, without any disguise of her purpose, took a comprehensive and
leisurely survey of his dwarfed and mutilated figure. While so doing
she pinned on her rose-trimmed hat, and twisted the long, tulle strings
of it about her throat.
"You have altered a good deal, Richard," she said reflectively.
"Probably," he answered. "I had a good deal to learn, being a very
thin-skinned young simpleton. In part, anyhow, I have learned it. And I
do my best practically to apply my knowledge. But if I have altered,
so, happily, have not you."
"I remain a simpleton?" she inquired, her irritation finding voice.
"You cannot very well remain that which you never have been. What you
do remain is--if I may say so--victoriously yourself, unspoiled,
unmodified by contact with that singularly stupid invention, society,
true to my earliest recollections of you even----" Richard shuffled
closer to the balustrade, threw his left arm across it, grasping the
outer edge of the broad coping,--"even in small details of dress."
He looked away over the immense and radiant prospect, and then up at
the radiant woman in her vesture of turquoise, pink, and gold.
And, so doing, for the first time his face relaxed, being lighted up by
a flickering, mocking smile. And something in his shuffling movements,
in the fine irony of his expression, pierced Helen with a sensation
hitherto unknown, broke up the absoluteness of her egotism, stirred her
blood. She forgot resentment in an absorbed and absorbing interest. The
ordinary man of the world she knew as thoroughly as her old shoe. Such
an one presented small field of discovery to her. But this man was
unique in person, and promised to be so in character also. Her
curiosity regarding him was profound. For the moment it sunk all
personal considerations, all humorous or angry criticism, either of her
own attitude towards him or of his attitude towards her. Silently she
came forward, sat down on the marble bench, close to where he stood,
and, turning sideways, leaned her elbows upon the top of the balustrade
beside him. She looked up now, rather than down at him, and it went
home to her, had nature spared him infliction of that hideous
deformity, what a superb creature physically he would have been! There
was a silence, Helen remaining intent, quiet, apprehension and
imagination sensibly upon the stretch.
At last Richard spoke abruptly.
"By the way, did you happen to observe the decorations of your room? Do
you like them?"
"Yes and no," she answered. "They struck me as rather wonderful, but
liable to induce dreams of Scylla and Charybdis, of the Fata Morgana,
and other inconvenient accidents of the deep. Fortunately I was too
tired last night to be excursive in fancy, or I might have slept badly.
You have gathered all the colours of the ocean and fixed them, somehow,
on those carpets and hangings and strangely frescoed walls."
"You saw that?"
"How could I fail to see it, since you kindly excuse me of being, or
ever having been, a simpleton?"--Helen spoke lightly, tenderly almost.
An overmastering desire to please had overtaken her. "You have employed
a certain wizardry in the furnishing of that room," she continued. "It
lays subtle influences upon one. What made you think of it?"
"A dream, an idea, which has stuck by me queerly, though all other fond
things of the sort were pitched overboard long ago. I suppose one is
bound to be illogical on one point, if only to prove to oneself the
absolutism of one's logic on all others. Thus do I, otherwise sane and
consistent realist, materialist, pessimist, cling to my one dream and
ideal--take it out, dandle it, nourish and cherish it, with weakly
sentimental faithfulness. To do so is ludicrous. But then my being here
at all, calmly considered, is ludicrous. And it, too, is among the
results of the one idea."
He paused, and Helen, leaning beside him, waited. The sunshine covered
them both. The sea wind was fresh in their faces. While the many voices
of Naples came up to them confused, strident, continuous, with
sometimes a bugle-call, sometimes a clang of hammers, or quick pulse of
stringed instruments, or jangle of church-bells, or long-drawn bellow
of a steamship clearing for sea, detaching itself from the universal
chorus. Capri, Ischia, Procida, floated, islands of amethyst, upon the
sapphire of the bay, and the smoke of Vesuvius rolled ceaselessly
upward.
"You see and hear and feel all this," Richard continued presently.
"Well, when I saw it for the first time I was pretty thoroughly out of
conceit with myself and all creation. I had been experimenting freely
in things not usually talked of in polite society. And I was abominably
sold, for I found the enjoyment such things procure is decidedly
overrated. Unmentionable matters, once fully explored, are just as
tedious and inadequate as those which supply the most unexceptionable
subjects of conversation. Moreover, in the process of exploration I had
touched a good deal of pitch, and, the simpleton being still
superfluously to the fore in me, I was squeamishly sensible of
defilement."
The young man shifted his position slightly, resting his chin in the
hollow of his hands, speaking quietly and indifferently, as of some
matter foreign to himself and his personal interests.
"I have reason to believe I was as fairly and squarely wretched as it
is possible for an intelligent being to be. I had convinced myself,
experimentally, that human existence, human nature, was a bottomless
pit and an uncommonly filthy one at that. Reaction was inevitable. Then
I understood why men have invented gods, subscribed to irrational
systems of theology, hailed and accredited transparently ridiculous
miracles. Such lies are necessary to certain stages of development
simply for the preservation of sanity, just as, at another stage,
sanity, for its own preservation, is necessarily driven to declare
their falsehood. And so I, after the manner of my kind, was driven to
take refuge in a dream. The subjective, in some form or other, alone
makes life continuously possible. And all this, we now look at,
determined the special nature of my attempt at subjective support and
consolation."
Richard paused again, contemplating the view.
"All this--its splendour, its diversity, its caprices and seductions,
its suggestion of underlying danger--presented itself to me as the
embodiment of a personality that has had remarkable influence in the
shaping of my life."
So far Helen had listened intently and silently. Now she moved a
little, straightening up her charming figure, pulling down the wide
brim of her hat to shelter her eyes from the heat and brightness of the
sun.
"A woman?" she asked briefly.
Richard turned to her, that same flickering of mockery in his still
face.
"Oh! you mustn't require too much of me!" he said. "Remember the
simpleton was not wholly eradicated then.--Yes, very much a woman. Of
course. How should it be otherwise? It gave me great pleasure to look
at that which looked like her. It gives me pleasure even yet. So I
wrote and asked de Vallorbes to be kind enough to let me rent the
villa. You remember it was not particularly well cared for. There was
an air of fallen greatness about the poor place. Inside it was
something of a barrack."
"I remember," Helen said.
"Well, I restored and refurnished it--specially the rooms you now
occupy, in accordance with what I imagined to be her taste. The whole
proceeding was not a little feeble-minded, since the probability of her
ever inhabiting those rooms was more than remote. But it amused, it
pacified me, as prayer to their self-invented deities pacifies the
devout. I never stay here for long together. If I did the spell might
be broken. I go away, I travel. I even experiment in things not usually
spoken of, but with a cooler judgment and less morbidly sensitive
conscience than of old. I amuse myself after more active and practical
fashions in other places. Here I amuse myself only with my idea."
The even flow of his speech ceased.--"What do you think of it, Helen?"
he demanded, almost harshly.
"I think it can't last. It is too intangible, too fantastic."
"I admit that to keep it intact needs an infinity of precautions. For
instance, I can make no near acquaintance with Naples. I cannot permit
myself to see the town at close quarters. I only look at it from here.
If I want to go to or from the yacht, I do so at night and in a closed
carriage. I took on de Vallorbes' box at the San Carlo. If any good
opera is given I go and hear it. Otherwise I remain exclusively in the
house and garden. I am not acquainted with a single soul in the place."
"And the woman," Helen exclaimed, a singular emotion at once of envy
and protest upon her. "Do you treat her with the same cold-blooded
calculation?"
"Of the woman I know just as much and just as little as I know of
Naples. It is conceivable there may be unlovely elements in her
character, as well as unlovely quarters of this beautiful city. I have
avoided knowledge of both. You see the whole arrangement is designed
not for her benefit, but for my own. It's an elaborate piece of
self-seeking on my part, but, so far, it has really worked rather
successfully."
"It is preposterous. It cannot in the nature of things continue
successful," Helen declared.
"I am not so sure of that," he replied calmly. "Even the most
preposterous of religious systems proves to have a remarkable power of
survival. Why not this one? In any case, neither the success nor the
failure depends on me. I shall be true, on my part. The rest depends on
her."
As Richard spoke he turned, leaning his back against the balustrade,
his face away from the sunlight and the wide view. Again the extent of
his deformity became arrestingly apparent to Madame de Vallorbes.
"Has this woman ever been here?" she asked.
"Yes--she has been here."
"And then? And then?" Helen cried.
The young man looked up at her, his face keen yet impassive, his
eyes--as windows opening on to endless perspective of empty
space--telling nothing. She recognised, once again, that he was very
strong. She also recognised that, notwithstanding his strength, he was
horribly sad.
"Ah! then," he said, "the last of the poor, little, subjective supports
and consolations seemed in danger of going overboard and joining their
fellows in the uneasy deeps of the sea.--But the history of that will
keep till a more convenient season, Cousin Helen. You have stood in the
midday sun, and I have talked about myself, quite long enough. However,
it was only fair to acquaint you with the limited resources in the way
of society and amusement offered by your present dwelling. There are
horses and carriages of course. Give what orders you please. Only
remember both the town and the surrounding country are pretty rough. It
is not fit for a lady to drive by herself. Always take your own man, or
one of mine, with you if you go out. I hope you won't be quite
intolerably bored. Ask for whatever you want.--You let me dine with
you? Thanks."
CHAPTER III
HELEN DE VALLORBES APPREHENDS VEXATIOUS COMPLICATIONS
Four gowns lay outspread upon the indigo-purple, embroidered coverlet
of the bed. The afterglow of an orange and crimson sunset touched the
folds of them, ranged upward to the vaultings of the frescoed ceiling,
and stained the lofty walls as with the glare of a furnace. Sea-greens,
sea-blues, died in the heat of it, abashed and vanquished. But so did
not Madame de Vallorbes' white lawn and lace _peignoir_, or her
abundant hair, which Zelie Forestier--trim of figure, and sour of
countenance--was in the act of dressing. These caught the fiery light
and held it, so that from head to foot Helen appeared as an image of
living gold. Sitting before the toilet-table, her reflection in the
great, oval mirror pleased her.
"Which shall I wear?"
"That depends upon the length of time madame proposes to stay here. The
black dress might be worn on several occasions with impunity. The
peacock brocade, the _eau de Nil_, the crocus yellow, but once--twice
at the uttermost. They are ravishing costumes, but wanting in repose.
They are unsuited for frequent repetition."
Zelie's lean fingers twisted, puffed, pinned, the shining hair very
skilfully.
"I will put on the black dress."
"Relieved by madame's _parure_ of pink topaz?"
"Yes, I will wear the pink topazes."
"Then it will be necessary to modify the style of madame's _coiffure_."
"There is plenty of time."
Helen took a hand-glass from the table and leaned forward in the low,
round-backed chair--faithful copy of a fine classic model. She wanted
to see the full glory of the afterglow upon her profile, upon her neck,
and bosom. Thus might Cassiopeia, glass in hand, in her golden chair
sit in high heaven!--Helen smiled at the pretty conceit. But the glory
was already departing. Sea-blues, sea-greens, sad by contrast, began to
reassert their presence on walls and carpet and hangings.
"The black dress? madame decides to remain then?"
As she spoke the lady's-maid laid out the jewels,--chains, bracelets,
brooches,--each stone set in a rim of tiny rose-knots of delicate
workmanship. As she fingered them little, yellow-pink flames seemed to
dance in their many facets. Then the afterglow died suddenly. The
flames ceased to dance. Helen's white garments turned livid, her neck
and bosom gray--and that, somehow, was extremely unpleasing to Madame
de Vallorbes.
"Light the candles," she said, almost sharply. "Yes, I remain. Do
hurry, Zelie. It is impossible to see. I detest darkness. Hurry. Do you
suppose I want to stay here all night? And look--you must bring that
chain further forward. It is not graceful. Make it droop. Let it follow
the line of my hair so that the pendant may fall there, in the centre.
You have it too much to the right. The centre--the centre--I tell you.
There, let the drop just clear my forehead."
Thus admonished the French woman wound the jewels in her mistress'
hair. But Madame de Vallorbes remained dissatisfied. The day had been
one of uncertainty, of conflicting emotions, and Helen's love of
unqualified purposes was great. Confusion in others was highly
diverting. But in herself--no thank you! She hated it. It touched her
self-confidence. It endangered the absoluteness of her self-belief and
self-worship. And these once shaken, small superstitions assaulted her.
In trivial happenings she detected indication of ill-luck. Now Zelie's
long, narrow face, divided into two unequal portions by a straight bar
of black eyebrow, and her lean hands, as reflected in the mirror, awoke
unreasoning distrust. They appeared to be detached from the woman's
dark-clothed person, the outlines of which were absorbed in the
increasing dimness of the room. The sallow face moved, peered, the
hands clutched and hovered, independent and unrelated, about Helen's
graceful head.
"For pity's sake, more candles, Zelie!" she repeated. "You look
absolutely diabolic in this uncertain light."
"In an instant, madame. I am compelled first to fix this curl in
place."
She accomplished the operation with most admired deliberation, and
moved away more than once, to observe the effect, before finally
adjusting the hairpin.
"I cannot but regret that madame is unable to wear her hair turned back
from the face. Such an arrangement confers height and an air of
spirituality, which, in madame's case, would be not only becoming but
advantageous."
Helen skidded the hand-glass down upon the dressing-table, causing
confusion amid silver-topped pots and bottles, endangering a jar of
hyacinths, upsetting a tray of hairpins.
"Have I not repeatedly given you orders never to allude to that
subject," she cried.
The maid was on her knees calmly collecting the scattered contents of
the tray.
"A thousand pardons, madame," she said, with a certain sour impudence.
"Still, it must ever be a matter of regret to any one truly
appreciating madame's style of beauty, that she should be always
constrained to wear her hair shading her forehead."
Modern civilisation imposes restrictions even upon the most
high-spirited. At that moment Madame de Vallorbes was ripe for the
commission of atrocities. Had she been--as she coveted to be--a lady of
the Roman decadence it would have gone hard with her waiting-woman, who
might have found herself ordered for instant execution or summarily
deprived of the organs of speech. But, latter-day sentiment happily
forbidding such active expressions of ill-feeling on the part of the
employer towards the employed, Helen was forced to swallow her wrath,
reminding herself, meanwhile, that a confidential servant is either
most invaluable of friends or most dangerous of enemies. There is no
_via media_ in the relation. And Zelie as an enemy was not to be
thought of. She could not--displeasing reflection--afford to quarrel
with Zelie. The woman knew too much. Therefore Madame de Vallorbes took
refuge in lofty abstraction, while the tiresome uncertainties, the
conflicting inclinations of the past day, quick to seize their
opportunity, as is the habit of such discourteous gentry,--returned
upon her with redoubled importunity and force.
She had not seen Richard since parting with him at noon, the enigmatic
suggestions of his conversation still unresolved, the alternate
resentment at his apparent indifference and attraction of his strong
and somewhat mysterious personality still vitally present to her. Later
she had driven out to Pozzuoli. But neither stone-throwing urchins,
foul and disease-stricken beggars, the pale sulphur plains and
subterranean rumblings of the Solfaterra, nor stirring of nether fires
therein resident by a lanky, wild-eyed lad--clothed in leathern jerkin
and hairy, goatskin leggings--with the help of a birch broom and a few
local newspapers, served effectually to rouse her from inward debate
and questioning. The comfortable, cee-spring carriage might swing and
sway over the rough, deep-rutted roads behind the handsome, black,
long-tailed horses, the melodramatic-looking coachman might lash
stone-throwing urchins and anathematise them, their ancestors and
descendants, alike, to the third and fourth generation in the vilest,
Neapolitan argot, Charles might resort to physical force in the removal
of wailing, alms-demanding, vermin-eaten wrecks of humanity, but still
Helen asked herself only--should she go? Should she stay? Was the game
worth the candle? Was the risk, not only of social scandal, but of
possible _ennui_, worth the projected act of revenge? And worth
something more than that. For revenge, it must be owned, already took a
second place in her calculations. Worth, namely, the enjoyment of
possible conquest, the humiliation of possible defeat and rejection, by
that strangely coercive, strangely inscrutable, being, her cousin,
Dickie Calmady?
No man had ever impressed her thus. And she returned on her thought,
when first seeing him upon the terrace that morning, that she might
lose her head. Helen laughed a little bitterly. She, of all women, to
lose her head, to long and languish, to entreat affection, and to be
faithful--heaven help us, faithful!--could it ever come to that?--like
any sentimental schoolgirl, like--and the thought turned her not a
little wicked--like Katherine Calmady herself! And then, that other
woman of whom Richard had told her, with a cynical disregard of her own
claims to admiration, who on earth could she be? She reviewed those
ladies with whom gossip had coupled Richard's name. Morabita, the
famous _prima donna_, for instance. But surely, it was inconceivable
that mountain of fat and good nature, with the voice of a seraph,
granted, but also with the intellect of a frog, could ever inspire so
fantastic and sublimated a passion! And passing from these less
legitimate affairs of the heart--in which rumour accredited Richard
with being very much of a pluralist--her mind traveled back to the
young man's projected marriage with Lady Constance Decies, sometime
Lady Constance Quayle. Remembering the slow, sweet, baby-face and
gentle, heifer's eyes, as she had seen them that day at luncheon at
Brockhurst, nearly five years ago, she again laughed.--No, very
certainly there was no affinity between the glorious and naughty city
of Naples and that mild-natured, well-drilled, little, English girl!
Who was it then--who? But, whoever the fair unknown rival might be,
Helen hated her increasingly as the hours passed, regarding her as an
enemy, a creature to be exterminated, and swept off the board. Jealousy
pricked her desire of conquest. An intrigue with Richard Calmady
offered singular, unique attractions. But the force of such attractions
was immensely enhanced by the excitement of wresting his affections
away from another woman.
Suddenly, in the full swing of these meditations, as she reviewed them
for the hundredth time, Zelie's voice claimed her attention.
"I made the inquiries madame commanded."
"Well?" Helen said. She was standing fastening clusters of topaz in the
bosom of her dress.
"The servants in this house are very reserved. They are unwilling to
give information regarding their master's habits. I could only learn
that Sir Richard occupies the entresol. Communicating as it does with
the garden, no doubt it is convenient to a gentleman so afflicted as
himself."
Helen bowed herself together, while the black lace and China-crape
skirt slipped over her head. Emerging from which temporary eclipse, she
said:--
"But do people stay here much? Does my cousin entertain? That is what I
told you to find out."
"As I tell madame, the servants are difficult of approach. They are
very correct. They fear their master, but they also adore him. Charles
can obtain little more information than myself. But he infers that Sir
Richard, when at the villa, lives in retirement--that he is subject to
fits of melancholy. There will be little diversion for madame it is to
be feared! But what would you have? Even though one should be young and
rich _ce ne serait que peu amusant d'etre estropie, d'etre monstre
enfin_."
Helen drew in her breath with a little sigh of content, while taking a
final look at herself in the oval glass. The soft, floating draperies,
the many jewels, each with its heart of quick, yellow-pink light,
produced a combination at once sombre and vivid. It satisfied her sense
of artistic fitness. Decidedly she did well to begin with the black
dress, since it had in it a quality rather of romance than of
worldliness! Meanwhile Zelie, kneeling, straightened out the folds of
the long train.
"Ah!" she exclaimed. "I had forgotten also to inform madame that M.
Destournelle has arrived in Naples. Charles, thinking of nothing less
than such an encounter, met him this morning on the quay of the Santa
Lucia."
Helen wheeled round violently, much to the discomfiture of those
carefully adjusted folds.
"Intolerable man!" she cried. "What on earth is he doing here?"
"That, Charles naturally could not inquire.--Will madame kindly remain
tranquil for a moment? She has torn a small piece of lace which must be
controlled by a pin. Probably _monsieur_ is still _en voyage_, is
visiting friends as is madame herself."
A sudden distrust that the black dress was too mature, that it
constituted an admission of departing youth, invaded Helen. The
reflection in the oval mirror once more caused her discomfort.
"Tell Charles that I am no longer acquainted with M. Destournelle. If
he presumes to call he is to be refused."
Helen set her teeth. But whether in anger towards her discarded lover,
or the black dress, she would have found it difficult to declare. Again
uncertainty held her, suspicion of circumstance, and, in a degree, of
herself. The lady's-maid, imperturbable, just conceivably impertinent,
in manner, had risen to her feet.
"There," she said, "it will be secure for to-night, if madame will
exercise a moderate degree of caution and avoid abrupt movements.
Charles says that _monsieur_ inquired very urgently after madame. He
appeared dejected and in weak health. He was agitated on meeting
Charles. He trembled. A little more and he would have wept. It would be
well, perhaps, that madame should give Charles her orders regarding
_monsieur_ herself."
"You should not have made me wear this gown," Helen broke out
inconsequently. "It is depressing, it is hideous. I want to change it."
"Impossible. Madame is already a little late, and there is nothing
wrong with the costume. Madame looks magnificent. Also her wardrobe is,
at present, limited. The evening dresses will barely suffice for a stay
of a week, and it is not possible for me to construct a new one under
ten days."
Thereupon an opening of doors and voice from the anteroom announcing:--
"Dinner is served, my lady. Sir Richard is in the dining-room."
And Helen swept forward, somewhat stormy and Cassandra-like in her
dusky garments. Passing out through the high, narrow doorway, she
turned her head.
"Charles, under no circumstance--none, understand--am I at home to
Monsieur Destournelle."
"Very good, my lady," and, as he closed the double-doors, the
man-servant looked at the lady's-maid his tongue in his cheek.
But, on the journey through the noble suite of rooms, Helen's spirits
revived somewhat. Her fair head, her warm glancing jewels, her graceful
and measured movements, as given back by many tall mirrors, renewed her
self-confidence. She too must be fond of her own image, by the way,
that unknown rival to the dream of whose approval Richard Calmady had
consecrated these splendid furnishings--witness the multiplicity of
looking-glasses!--And then the prospect of this _tete-a-tete_ dinner,
the interest of her host's powerful and enigmatic personality, provoked
her interest to the point not only of obliterating remembrance of the
ill-timed advent of her ex-lover, but of inducing something as closely
akin to self-forgetfulness as was possible to her self-centred nature.
She grew hotly anxious to obtain, to charm--if it might be, to usurp
the whole field of Richard's attention and imagination.
A small round table showed as an island of tender light in the dimness
of the vast room. And Richard, sitting at it awaiting her coming,
appeared more nearly related to the Richard of Brockhurst and of five
years ago than he had done during the interview of the morning. In any
case, she took him more for granted. While he, if still inscrutable and
unsmiling, proved an eminently agreeable companion, ready of
conversation, very much at his ease, very much a cultivated man of the
world, studious--a little excessively so, she thought--in his avoidance
of the personal note. And this at once piqued Helen, and incited her to
intellectual effort. If this was what he wanted, well, he should have
it! If he elected to talk of travel, of ancient and alien religions, of
modern literature and art, she could meet him more than half-way. Her
intelligence ran nimbly from subject to subject, point to point. She
struck out daring hypotheses, indulged in ingenious paradox, her mind
charmed by her own eloquence, her body comforted by costly wines and
delicate meats. Nor did she fail to listen also, knowing how very dear
to every man is the sound of his own voice, or omit to offer refined
flattery of quick agreement and seasonable laughter. It was late when
she rose from the table at last.
"I have had a delightful dinner," she said. "Absolutely delightful. And
now I will encroach no longer on your time or good nature, Richard. You
have your own occupations, no doubt. So, with thanks for shelter and
generous entertainment, we part for to-night."
She held out her hand smiling, but with an admirable effect of
discretion, all ardour, all intimacy, kept in check by self-respect and
well-bred dignity. Madame de Vallorbes was enchanted with the reserve
of her own demeanour. Let it be well understood that she was the least
importunate, the least exacting, the most adaptable, of guests!
Richard took her outstretched hand for the briefest period compatible
with courtesy. And a momentary spasm--so she fancied--contracted his
face.
"You are very welcome, Helen," he said. "If it is warm let us breakfast
in the pavilion to-morrow. Twelve--does that suit you? Good-night."
Upon the inlaid writing-table in the anteroom, Helen found a long and
impassioned epistle from Paul Destournelle. Perusal of it did not
minister to peaceful sleep. In the small hours she left her bed, threw
a silk dressing-gown about her, drew aside the heavy, blue-purple,
window curtain and looked out. The sky was clear and starlit. Naples,
with its curving lines of innumerable lights, lay outstretched below.
In the southeast, midway between the two, a blood-red fire marked the
summit of Vesuvius. While in the dimly seen garden immediately
beneath--the paved alleys of which showed curiously pale, asserting
themselves against the darkness of the flower borders, and otherwise
impenetrable shadows of the ilex and cypress grove--a living creature
moved, black, slow of pace, strange of shape. At first Helen took it
for some strayed animal. It alarmed her, exciting her to wildest
conjectures as to its nature and purpose, wandering in the grounds of
the villa thus. Then, as it passed beyond the dusky shade of the trees,
she recognised it. Richard Calmady shuffled forward haltingly, to the
terminal wall of the garden, leaned his arms on it, looking down at the
beautiful and vicious city and out into the night.
Helen de Vallorbes shivered--the marble floor striking up chill, for
all the thickness of the carpet, to her bare feet. Her eyes were hard
with excitement and her breath came very quick. Suddenly, yielding to
an impulse of superstitious terror, she dragged the curtains together,
shutting out that very pitiful sight, and, turning, fled across the
room and buried herself, breathless and trembling, between the sheets
of the soft, warm, faintly fragrant bed.
"He is horrible," she said aloud, "horrible! And it has come to me at
last. It has come--I love--I love!"
CHAPTER IV
"MATER ADMIRABILIS"
"There, there, my good soul, don't blubber. Hysterics won't restore
Lady Calmady to health, or bring Sir Richard back to England, home, and
duty, or be a ha'porth of profit to yourself or any other created
being. Keep your tears for the first funeral. For I tell you plainly I
shan't be surprised out of seven days' sleep if this business involves
a visit to the churchyard before we get to the other side of it."
John Knott stood with his back to the Chapel-Room fire, his shoulders
up to his ears, his hands forced down into the pockets of his
riding-breeches. Without, black-thorn winter held the land in its
cheerless grasp. The spring was late. Night frosts obtained, followed
by pallid, half-hearted sunshine in the early mornings, too soon
obliterated by dreary, easterly blight. This afternoon offered
exception to the rule only in the additional discomfort of small,
sleeting rain and a harsh skirling of wind in the eastward-facing
casements.--"Livery weather," the doctor called it, putting down his
existing lapse from philosophic tolerance to insufficient secretions of
the biliary duct.
Before him stood Clara--sometime Dickie Calmady's devoted nurse and
playfellow--her eyes very bright and moist, the reds and whites of her
fresh complexion in lamentable disarray.
"I'd never have believed it of Sir Richard," she assented, chokingly.
"It isn't like him, so pretty as he was in all his little ways, and
loving to her ladyship, and civilly behaved to everybody, and careful
of hurting anybody's feelings--more so than you'd expect in a young
gentleman like him. No! it isn't like him. In my opinion he's been got
hold of by some designing person, who's worked on him to keep him away
to serve their own ends. There, I'd never have believed it of him, that
I wouldn't!"
The doctor's massive head sank lower, his massive shoulders rose
higher, his loose lips twisted into a snarling smile.
"Lord bless you, that's nothing new! We none of us ever do believe it
of them when the little beggars are in long clothes, or first breeched
for that matter. It's a trick of Mother Nature's--one-idead old lady,
who cares not a pin for morality, but only for increase. She knows well
enough if we did believe it of them we should clear them off wholesale,
along with the blind kittens and puppies. A bucket full of water, and
broom to keep them under, would make for a mighty lessening of
subsequent violations of the Decalogue! Don't tell me King Herod was
not something of a philanthropist when he got to work on the infant
population of Bethlehem. One woman wept for each of the little brats
then, but his Satanic Majesty only knows how many women wouldn't have
had cause to weep for each one of them later, if they'd been spared to
grow up."
While speaking, Dr. Knott kept his gaze fixed upon his companion. His
humour was none of the gentlest truly, yet he did not let that obscure
the main issue. He had business with Clara, and merely waited till the
reds and whites of her comely face should have resumed their more
normal relations before pursuing it. He talked, as much to afford her
opportunity to overcome her emotion, as to give relief to his own.
Though now well on the wrong side of sixty, John Knott was hale and
vigorous as ever. His rough-hewn countenance bore even closer
resemblance, perhaps, to that of some stone gargoyle carved on
cathedral buttress or spout. But his hand was no less skilful, his
tongue no less ready in denunciation of all he reckoned humbug, his
heart no less deeply touched, for all his superficial irascibility, by
the pains, and sins, and grinding miseries, of poor humanity than of
old.
"That's right now," he said approvingly, as the heaving of Clara's
bosom became less pronounced. "Wipe your eyes, and keep your nerves
steady. You've got a head on your shoulders--always had. Well, keep it
screwed on the right way, for you'll need all the common sense that is
in it if we are to pull Lady Calmady through. Do?--To begin with this,
give her food every two hours or so. Coax her, scold her, reason with
her, cry even.--After all, I give you leave to, just a little, if that
will serve your purpose and not make your hand shake--only make her
take nourishment. If you don't wind up the clock regularly, some fine
morning you'll find the wheels have run down."
"But her ladyship won't have any one sit up with her."
"Very well, then sleep next door. Only go in at twelve and two, and
again between five and six."
"But she won't have anybody occupy the dressing-room. It used to be the
night nursery you remember, sir, and not a thing in it has been touched
since Sir Richard moved down to the gun-room wing."
"Oh, fiddle-de-dee! It's just got to be touched now, then. I can't be
bothered with sentiment when it's ten to one whether I save my
patient."
Again sobs rose in Clara's throat. The poor woman was hard pressed. But
that fixed gaze from beneath the shaggy eyebrows was upon her, and,
with quaint gurglings, she fought down the sobs.
"My lady's as gentle as a lamb," she said, "and I'd give the last drop
of my blood for her. But talk of managing her, of making her do
anything, as well try to manage the wind, she's that set in her ways
and obstinate!"
"If you can't manage her, who can?--Mr. March?"
Clara shook her head. Then reluctantly, for though honestly ready to
lay down her life for her mistress, she found it far from easy to
invite supersession in respect of her, she said:--"Miss St. Quentin's
more likely to get round my lady than any one else."
"Well, then, I'll talk to her. Where is Miss St. Quentin?"
"Here, Dr. Knott. Do you want me?"
Honoria had strolled into the room from the stairhead, her attention
arrested by the all-too-familiar sound--since sorrowful happenings
often of late had brought him to Brockhurst--of the doctor's voice. The
skirt of the young lady's habit, gathered up in her left hand,
displayed a slightly unconventional length of muddy riding-boot. The
said skirt, her tan, covert coat, and slouched, felt hat, were furred
with wet. Her garments, indeed, showed evident traces of hard service,
and, though notably well cut, were far from new or smart. They were
sad-coloured, moreover, as is the fashion of garments designed for
work. And this weather-stained, mud-bespattered costume, taken in
connection with her pale, sensitive face, her gallant bearing, and the
luminous smile with which she greeted not only Dr. Knott but the
slightly flustered Clara, offered a picture pensive in tone, but very
harmonious, and of a singularly sincere and restful quality. To all,
indeed, save those troubled by an accusing conscience and fear of
detection, Honoria St. Quentin's presence brought a sense of security
and reassurance at this period of her development. Her enthusiasms
remained to her, but they were tempered by a wider experience and a
larger charity--at least in the majority of cases.
"I'm in a beastly mess," she observed casually.
"So are we," Knott answered. He had a great liking for this young lady,
finding in her a certain stoicism along with a quickness of practical
help. "But our mess is worse than yours, in that it is internal rather
than external. Yours'll brush off. Not so ours--eh, Clara? There, you
can go. I'll talk things over with Miss St. Quentin, and she'll talk
'em over with you later."
Honoria's expression had grown anxious. She spoke in a lower tone of
voice.
"Is Lady Calmady worse?"
"In a sense, yes--simply because she is no better. And she's ill, I
tell you, just as dangerously ill as any woman can be, who has nothing
whatever actually the matter with her."
"Except an only son," put in Honoria. "I am beginning to suspect that
is about the most deadly disease going. The only thing to be said in
its favour is that it is not infectious."
John Knott could not quite keep admiration from his eyes, or
provocation from his tongue. He richly enjoyed getting a rise out of
Miss St. Quentin.
"I am not so sure of that," he said. "In the case of beautiful women,
judging by history, it has shown a tendency to be recurrently sporadic
in any case."
"Recommend all such to spend a few months at Brockhurst then, under
existing circumstances," Honoria answered. "There will be very little
fear for them after that. They will have received such a warning,
swallowed such an antidote!--It is like assisting at the infliction of
slow torture. It almost gets on one's brain at times."
"Why do you stay on then?"
Honoria looked down at her muddy boots and then across at the doctor.
She was slightly the taller of the two, for in these days his figure
had fallen together and he had taken to stooping. Her expression had a
delightful touch of self-depreciation.
"Why does any one stay by a sinking ship, or volunteer for a forlorn
hope? Why do you sit up all night with a case of confluent smallpox, or
suck away the poisonous membrane from a diphtheric throat, as I hear
you did only last week? I don't know. Just because, if we are made on
certain lines, we have to, I suppose. One would be a trifle too much
ashamed to be seen in one's own company, afterwards, if one deserted.
It really requires less pluck to stick than to run--that's the reason
probably.--But about dear Lady Calmady. The excellent Clara was in
tears. Is there any fresh mischief over and above the only son?"
"Not at present. But it's an open question how soon there may
be.--Good-day, Mr. March. Been riding? Ought to be a bit careful of
that cranky chest of yours in this confounded weather.--Lady
Calmady?--Yes, as I was telling Miss St. Quentin, her strength is so
reduced that complications may arise any day. A chill, and her lungs
may go; a shock, and her heart. It comes to a mere question of the
point of least resistance. I won't guarantee the continued soundness of
any organ unless we get changed conditions, a let up of some sort."
The doctor looked up from under his eyebrows, first at Honoria and then
at Julius. He spoke bitterly, defiant of his inclination towards
tenderness.
"She's just worn herself out," he said, "that's the fact, in the
service of others, loving, giving, attempting the impossible in the way
of goodness all round. 'Be not righteous over much'--there's a text to
that effect in the Scriptures, Mr. March, isn't there? Preach a good,
rattling sermon on it next Sunday to Lady Calmady, if you want to keep
her here a bit longer. Nature abhors a vacuum. Granted. But nature
abhors excess, even of virtue. And punishes it just as harshly as
excess of vice.--Yes, I tell you, she's worn herself out."
Miss St. Quentin dropped into a chair and sat bowed together, her hands
on her knees, her feet rather far apart. The brim of her hat, pulled
down in front to let the rain run off, partially concealed her face.
She was not sorry, for a movement of defective courage was upon her,
evidence of which she preferred to keep to herself. Julius March
remained silent. And this she resented slightly, for she badly wanted
somebody to say something, either vindictive or consolatory. Then,
indignation getting the better alike of reticence and charity, she
exclaimed:--
"It is unpardonable. It ought to be impossible one person should have
power to kill another by inches, like this, with impunity."
Ludovic Quayle had sauntered into the room behind Julius March. He too
was wet and dirty, but such trifles in no wise affected the
completeness of his urbanity. His long neck directed forward, as in
polite inquiry, he advanced to the little group by the fire, and took
up his station beside Honoria's chair.
"Pardon me, my dear Miss St. Quentin," he asked sweetly, "but why the
allusions to murder? What is unpardonable?"
"Sir Richard Calmady's conduct," she answered shortly. She threw back
her head and addressed Dr. Knott. "It is so detestably unjust. What
possible quarrel has he with her, after all?"
"Ah! that--that--lies very deep. A thing, perhaps, only a man, or a
mother, can quite comprehend," the doctor answered slowly.
Honoria's straight eyebrows drew together. She objected to extenuating
circumstances in this connection, yet, as she admitted, reason usually
underlay all Dr. Knott's statements. She divined, moreover, that
reason, just now, touched upon matters inconveniently intimate. She
abstained, therefore, from protest or comment. But, since feminine
emotion, even in the least weakly of the sex, is bound to find an
outlet, she turned upon poor Mr. Quayle.
"He is your friend," she said. "The rest of us are helpless. You ought
to take measures. You ought to suggest a remedy."
"With all the pleasure in life," the young man answered. "But you may
remember that you delivered yourself of precisely the same sentiments a
year and a half ago. And that, fired with the ardour of a chivalrous
obedience, I fled over the face of the European continent in hot
pursuit of poor, dear Dickie Calmady."
"Poor, dear!" ejaculated Honoria.
"Yes, very much poor, dear, through it all," the young man affirmed.
"Breathless, but still obedient, I came up with him at Odessa."
"What was he doing there?" put in the doctor.
Mr. Quayle regarded him not without humour.
"Really, I am not my friend's keeper, though Miss St. Quentin is
pleased to make me a handsome present of that enviable office. And
so--well--I didn't inquire what he was doing. To tell the truth, I had
not much opportunity, for though I found him charming,--yes, charming,
Miss St. Quentin,--I also found him wholly unapproachable regarding
family affairs. When, with a diplomatic ingenuity upon which I cannot
but congratulate myself, I suggested the advisability of a return to
Brockhurst, in the civilest way in the world he showed me the door.
Impertinence is not my _forte_. I am by nature humble-minded. But, I
give you my word, that was a little episode of which I do not crave the
repetition."
Growling to himself, clasping his hands behind his back, John Knott
shifted his position. Then, taken with that desire of clergy-baiting,
which would seem to be inherent in members of the Faculty, he addressed
Julius March.
"Come, now," he said, "your pupil doesn't do you an overwhelming amount
of credit it must be admitted, still you ought to be able to give an
expert's opinion upon the tendencies of his character. How much longer
do you allow him before he grows tired of filling his belly with the
husks the swine eat?"
"God knows, not I," Julius answered sadly, but without rancour. "I
confess to the faithlessness of despair at times. And yet, being his
mother's son, he cannot but tire of it eventually, and when he does so
the revulsion will be final, the restoration complete----"
"He'll die the death of the righteous? Oh yes! I agree there, for
there's fine stuff in him, never doubt that. He'll end well enough.
Only the beginning of that righteous ending, if delayed much longer,
may come a bit too late for the saving of my patient's life
and--reason."
"Do you mean it is as serious as all that?" Ludovic asked with sudden
anxiety.
"Every bit as serious!--Oh! you should have let your sister marry him,
Mr. Quayle. Then he would have settled down, come into line with the
average, and been delivered from the morbid sense of outlawry which had
been growing on him--it couldn't be helped, on the whole he has kept
very creditably sane in my opinion--from the time he began to mix
freely in general society. I'm not very soft or sickly sentimental at
my time of day, but I tell you it turns my stomach to think of all he
must have gone through, poor chap. It's a merciless world, Miss St.
Quentin, and no one knows that better than we case-hardened old sinners
of doctors.--Yes, your sister should have married him, and we might
have been saved all this. I doubted the wisdom of the step at the time.
But I was a fool. I see now his mother's instinct was right."
Mr. Quayle pursed up his small mouth and gently shrugged his shoulders.
"It is a delicate subject on which to offer an opinion," he said. "I
debated it freely in the privacy of my inner consciousness at the time,
I assure you. If Lady Calmady had lighted upon the right, the uniquely
right, woman--perhaps--yes. But to shore up a twenty-foot, stone wall
with a wisp of straw,--my dear doctor, does that proceeding approve
itself to your common sense? And, as is a wisp of straw to such a wall,
so was my poor, little sister,--it's hardly flattering to my family
pride to admit it,--but thus indeed was she, and no otherwise, to
Dickie Calmady."
Whereupon Honoria glanced up gratefully at the speaker, for even yet
her conscience pricked her concerning the part she had played in
respect of that broken engagement. While John Knott, observant of that
upward glance, was once again struck by her manifest sincerity, and the
gallant grace of her, heightened by those workmanlike and
mud-bespattered garments. And, being so struck, he was once again
tempted by, and once again yielded himself to, the pleasures of
provocation.
"Marry him yourself, Miss St. Quentin," he growled, a touch of earnest
behind his raillery, "marry him yourself and so set the rest of us free
of the whole pother. I'd back you to handle him or any fellow living,
with mighty great success, if you'd the mind to!"
For a moment it seemed open to question whether that very fair fish
might not make short work of angler as well as of bait. But Honoria
relented, refusing provocation. And this not wholly in mercy to the
speaker, but because it offered her an opportunity of reading Mr.
Quayle a, perhaps useful, lesson. Her serious eyes narrowed, and her
upper lip shortened into a delightful smile.
"Hopeless, Dr. Knott!" she answered. "To begin with he'll never ask me,
since we like each other very royally ill. And to end with--" she
carefully avoided sight of Mr. Quayle--"I--you see--I'm not what you
call a marrying man."
CHAPTER V
EXIT CAMP
About twenty minutes later the young lady, still booted and spurred,
opened the door which leads from the Chapel-Room into Lady Calmady's
bedchamber. As she did so a gentle warmth met her, along with a
sweetness of flowers. Within, the melancholy of the bleak twilight was
mitigated by the soft brightness of a pink-shaded lamp, and a fitful
flickering of firelight. This last, playing upon the blue-and-white,
Dutch tiling of the hearth and chimney-space conferred a quaint effect
of activity upon the actors in the biblical scenes thereon depicted.
The patriarch Abraham visibly flourished his two-inch sword above the
prostrate form of hapless Isaac. The elders pranced, unblushingly, in
pursuit of the chaste Susanna. While poor little Tobit, fish in hand,
clung anxiously to the flying draperies of his long-legged, and
all-too-peripatetic, guardian angel. Such profane vivacity, on the part
of persons usually accounted sacred, offered marked an almost cynical
contrast to the extreme quiet otherwise obtaining, accentuated the
absoluteness, deepened the depth, of it. For nothing stirred within the
length and breadth of the room, nor did any smallest sound disturb the
prevailing silence. At these southward-facing casements no harsh wind
shrilled. The embroidered curtains of the state-bed hung in stiff,
straight folds. The many-coloured leaves and branches of the trees of
the Forest of This Life were motionless. Care, the Leopard, crouched,
unobservant, forgetful to spring, while the Hart was fixed spellbound
in the midst of its headlong flight. A spell seemed, indeed, to rest on
all things, which had in it more than the watchful hush of the ordinary
sickroom. It suggested a certain moral attitude--a quiet, not
acquiesced in merely, but promoted.
Upon Honoria--her circulation quickened by recent exercise, her cheeks
still tingling from the stinging sleet, her retina still retaining
impressions of the stern grandeur of the wide-ranging fir woods and
gray-brown desolation of the moors--this extreme quiet produced an
extremely disquieting effect. Passing from the Chapel-Room and the
society of her late companions--all three persons of distinct
individuality, all three possessing, though from very differing
standpoints, a definitely masculine outlook on life--into this silent
bedchamber, she seemed to pass with startling abruptness from the
active to the passive, from the objective to the subjective side of
things, from the world that creates to that which obeys, merely, and
waits. The present and masculine, with its clear practical reason, its
vigorous purposes, was exchanged for a place peopled by memories only,
dedicated wholly to submissive and patient endurance. And this fell in
extremely ill with Honoria's present humour, while the somewhat
unseemly antics of the small, scriptural personages, pictured upon the
chimney-space and hearth, troubled her imagination, in that they added
a point of irony to this apparent triumph of the remote over the
immediate, of tradition over fact.
Nor as, stung with unspoken remonstrance, she approached Lady Calmady
was this sense of intrusion into an alien region lessened, or her
appreciation of the difficulties of the mission she had been deputed by
doctor, priest, and amiable young fine gentleman--her late
companions--to fulfil, by any means lightened.
For Katherine lay back in the great rose-silk and muslin-covered
armchair, at right angles to the fireplace, motionless, not a
participant merely, so it seemed to the intruder, in that all-embracing
quiet, but the very source and centre of it, its nucleus and heart. The
lines of her figure were shrouded in a loose, wadded gown of
dove-coloured silk, bordered with swan's-down. A coif of rare, white
lace covered her upturned hair. Her eyes were closed, the rim of the
eye-socket being very evident. While her face, though smooth and still
graciously young, was so attenuated as to appear almost transparent.
Now, as often before, it struck Honoria that a very exquisite spiritual
quality was present in her aspect--her whole bearing and expression
betraying, less the languor and defeat of physical illness, than the
exhaustion of long sustained moral effort, followed by the calm of
entire self-dedication and renunciation of will.
On the table at her elbow were a bowl of fresh-picked violets and
greenhouse-grown tea-roses, some books of the hour, both English and
French, a miniature of Dickie at the age of thirteen--the proud, little
head and its cap of close-cropped curls showing up against a background
of thick-set foliage. On the table, too, lay a well-worn, vellum-bound
copy of that holiest of books ever, perhaps, conceived by the heart and
written by the hand of man--Thomas a Kempis' _Imitation of Christ_. It
was open at the chapter which is thus entitled--"Of the Zealous
Amendment of our Whole Life." While close against it was a packet of
Richard's letters--those curt, businesslike communications, faultlessly
punctual in their weekly arrival, which, while they relieved her
anxiety as to his material well-being, stabbed his mother's heart only
less by the little they said, than by all they left unsaid.
And looking upon that mother now, taking cognisance of her
surroundings, Honoria St. Quentin's young indignation, once again,
waxed hot. While, since it was the tendency of her mind to run eagerly
towards theory, to pass from the particular to the general, and
instinctively to apprehend the relation of the individual to the mass,
looking thus upon Katherine, she rebelled, not only against the doom of
this one woman, but against that doom of universal womanhood of which
she offered, just now, only too eloquent an example. And a burning
compassion animated Honoria for feminine as against all masculine
creatures, for the bitter patience demanded of the passive, as against
the large latitude permitted the active principle; for the perpetual
humiliation of the subjective and spiritual under the heavy yoke of the
objective and practical,--for the brief joy and long barrenness of all
those who are condemned to obey and to wait, merely, as against those
who are born to command and to create.
From a child she had been aware of the element of tragedy inherent in
the fact of womanhood. It had quickened exaggerations of sentiment in
her at times, and pushed her into not a little knight-errantry,--witness
the affair of Lady Constance Quayle's engagement. But, though more
sober in judgment than of old and less ready to get her lance in rest,
the existence of that tragic element had never disclosed itself more
convincingly to her than at the present moment, nor had the necessity
to attempt the assuaging of the smart of it called upon her with more
urgent voice. Yet she recognised that such attempt taxed all her
circumspection, all her imaginative sympathy and tact. Very free
criticism of the master of the house, of his sins of omission and
commission alike, were permissible in the Chapel-Room and in the
presence of her late companions. The subject, unhappily, had called for
too frequent mention, by now, for any circumlocution to be incumbent in
the discussion of it. But here, in the brooding quiet of this
bedchamber, and in Lady Calmady's presence, all that was changed.
Trenchant statements of opinion, words of blame, were proscribed. The
sinner, if spoken of at all, must be spoken of with due reticence and
respect, his wilfulness ignored, the unloveliness of his conduct
gently, even eagerly, explained away.
And, therefore, it came about that this fair champion of much-wronged
womanhood, though fired with the zeal of righteous anger, had to go
very softly and set a watch before her lips. But as she paused, fearful
to break in too abruptly upon Lady Calmady's repose, she began to
question fearfully whether speech was, in truth, still available as a
means of communication between herself and the object of her
solicitude. For Lady Calmady lay so very still, her sweet face showed
so transparent against the rose-silk, muslin-covered pillows, that the
younger woman was shaken by a swift dread that Dr. Knott's melancholy
predictions had already found fulfilment, and that the lovely,
labour-wasted body had already let the valiant, love-wasted soul
depart.
"Cousin Katherine, dear Cousin Katherine," she called very gently,
under her breath, and then waited almost awestricken, sensible, to the
point of distress, alike of the profound quiet, which it seemed as an
act of profanity to have even assayed to break, and of the malign
activity of those little, scriptural figures anticking so wildly in the
chimney-space and on the hearth.
Seconds, to Honoria of measureless duration, elapsed before Lady
Calmady gave sign of life. At length she moved her hands, as though
gathering, with infinite tenderness, some small and helpless creature
close and warm against her bosom. Honoria's vision grew somewhat
blurred and misty. Then, with a long-drawn, fluttering sigh, Katherine
looked up at the tall, straight figure.
"Dick--ah, you've come in! My beloved--have you had good sport?" she
said.
Honoria sat down on the end of the sofa, bowing her head.
"Alas, alas, it is only me, Cousin Katherine. Nothing better than me,
Honoria St. Quentin. Would that it were some one better," and her voice
broke.
But Lady Calmady had come into full possession of herself.
"My dear, I must have been dozing, and my thoughts had wandered far on
the backward road, as is the foolish habit of thoughts when one grows
old and is not altogether well and strong."--Katherine spoke faintly,
yet with an air of sweetly playful apology. "One is liable to be
confused, under such circumstances, when one first wakes--and--you have
the smell of the sleet and the freshness of the moors upon you." She
paused, and then added:--"But, indeed, the confusion of sleep once
past, I could hardly have anything dearer for my eyes first to light on
than your very dear self."
Hearing which gracious words, indignation in the cause of this woman,
burning compassion for the wrongs and sorrows of universal womanhood,
both of which must be denied utterance, worked very forcibly in
Honoria. She bent down and taking Lady Calmady's hand kissed it. And,
as she did this, her eyes were those of an ardent, yet very reverent
lover, and so, when next she spoke, were the tones of her voice.
But Katherine, still anxious to repair any defect in her recognition
and greeting, and still with that same effect of playful
self-depreciation, spoke first.
"I had been reviewing many things, with the help of blessed Thomas a
Kempis here, before I became so drowsy. The dear man lays his finger
smartly upon all the weak places in one's fancied armour of
righteousness. It is sometimes not quite easy to be altogether grateful
to him. For instance, he has pointed out to me conclusively that I grow
reprehensibly selfish."
"Oh come, come!" Honoria answered, in loving raillery. "Thomas is acute
to the point of lying if he has convinced you of that!"
"Unhappily, no," Katherine returned. "I know it, I fear, without any
pointing of Thomas's finger. But I rather shirked admission of my
knowledge--well, for the very bad reason that I wanted very badly to
put off the day of amendment. Now the holy man has touched my witness
and"--she turned her head against the pillows and looked full at the
younger woman, while her under-lip quivered a little. "My dear, I have
come to be very greedy of the comfort of your companionship. I have
been tempted to consider not your advantage, but solely my own. The
pointing finger of Thomas has brought it home to me that Brockhurst and
I are feeding upon your generosity of time, and helpfulness, to an
unconscionable extent. We are devouring the best days of your life, and
hindering you alike from work and from pleasure. It must not be. And
so, my dear, I beg you go forth, once more, to all your many friends
and to society. You are too young, and too gifted, to remain here in
this sluggish backwater, alongside a derelict like me. It is not right.
You must make for the open stream again and let the free wind and the
strong current bear you gladly on your appointed course. And my
gratitude and my blessing will go with you always. But you must delay
no longer. For me you have done enough."
For a little space Honoria held her friend's hand in silence.
"Are--are--you tired of me then?" she said.
"Ah, my dear!" Katherine exclaimed. And the exclamation was more
reassuring, somehow, than any denial could have been.
"After all," Honoria went on, "I really don't see why you're to have a
monopoly of faithfulness. There's selfishness now, if you like--to
appropriate a virtue _en bloc_ not leaving a rag, not the veriest
scrappit of it for anybody else! And then, has it never occurred to
you, that I may be just every bit as greedy of your companionship as
you of mine--more so, I fancy, because--because----"
Honoria bowed her head and kissed the hand she held, once again.
"You see--I know it sounds as if I was rather a beast--perhaps I
am--but I never cared for any one--really to care, I mean--till I cared
for you."
"My dear!"--Katherine said again, wondering, shrinking somewhat, at
once touched and almost repulsed. The younger woman's attitude was so
far removed from her own experience.
"Does it displease you? Does it seem to you unnatural?" Honoria asked
quickly.
"A little," Lady Calmady answered, smiling, yet very tenderly.
"All the same it's quite true. You opened a door, somehow, that had
always been shut. I hardly believed in its existence. Of course I had
read plenty about the--affections, shall we call them? And had heard
women and girls, and men, too, for that matter, talk about them pretty
freely. But it bored me a good deal. I thought it all rather silly, and
rather nasty perhaps."--Honoria shook her head. "It didn't appeal to me
in the least. But when you opened the door"--she paused, her face very
grave, yet with a smile on it, as she looked away at the little figures
anticking upon the hearth. "Oh, dear me, I own I was half scared," she
said, "it let in such a lot of light!"
But, for this speech, Lady Calmady had no immediate answer. And so the
quiet came back, settling down sensibly on the room again--even as,
when at dawn the camp is struck, the secular quiet of the desert comes
back and possesses its own again. And, in obedience to that quiet,
Katherine's hand rested passively in the hand of her companion, while
she gazed wonderingly at the delicate, half-averted face, serious, lit
up by the eagerness of a vital enthusiasm. And, having a somewhat
sorrowful fund of learning to draw upon in respect of the dangers all
eccentricity, either of character or development, inevitably brings
along with it, she trembled, divining that noble and strong and pure
though it was, that face, and the temperament disclosed by it, might
work sorrow, both to its possessor and to others, unless the enthusiasm
animating it should find some issue at once large and simple enough to
engage its whole aspiration and power of work.
But abruptly Honoria broke up the brooding quiet, laughing gently, yet
with a catch in her throat.
"And when you had let in the light, Cousin Katherine, good heavens, how
thankful I was I had never married. Picture finding out all that after
one had bound oneself, after one had given oneself! What an awful
prostitution."--Her tone changed and she stroked the elder woman's hand
softly. "So you see you can't very well order me off, the pointing
finger of Thomas notwithstanding. You have taught me----"
"Only half the lesson as yet," Katherine said. "The other half, and the
doxology which closes it, neither I, nor any other woman, can teach
you."
"You really believe that?"
"Ah! my dear," Katherine said, "I do more than believe. I know it."
The younger woman regarded her searchingly. Then she shook her charming
head.
"It's no good to arrive at a place before you've got to it," she
declared. "And I very certainly haven't got to the second half of the
lesson, let alone the doxology, yet. And then I'm so blissfully content
with the first half, that I've no disposition to hurry. No, dear Cousin
Katherine, I am afraid you must resign yourself to put up with me for a
little while longer. Your foes, unfortunately, are of your own
household in this affair. Dr. Knott has just been holding forth to
us--Julius March, and Mr. Quayle, and me--and swearing me over, not
only to stay, but to make you eat and drink and come out of doors, and
even to go away with me. Because--yes, in a sense your Thomas is right
with his pointing finger, though he got a bit muddled, good man, not
being quite up-to-date, and pointed to the wrong place----"
Honoria left her sentence unfinished. She knelt down--her tall, slender
figure, angular, more like that of a youth, than like that of a maid,
in her spare mud-stained habit and coat. Impulsively she put her hands
on Lady Calmady's hips, laid her head in her lap.
"Have you but one blessing, oh! my more than mother?" she cried. "Do we
count for nothing, all the rest of us--your household, and tenants rich
and poor, and Julius the faithful, and Ludovic the bland, and that
queer lump of sagacity and ugliness, John Knott? Why will you kill
yourself? Why will you die and leave us all, just because one person is
perverse? That's hardly the way to make us--who love you--bear with and
pity him and welcome him home.--Oh! I know I am treading on dangerous
ground and venturing to approach very close. But I don't care--not a
hang! We're at the end of our patience. We want you, and we mean to
have you back."
Honoria raised herself, knelt bolt upright, her hands on the arms of
Lady Calmady's chair, her expression full of appeal.
"Be kind to us, be kind," she said. "We only ask you, after all, to eat
and drink--to let Clara take care of you at night, and I'll do so by
day.--And then, when you are stronger, you must come away with me, up
north, to Ormiston. You have not been there for years, and its gray
towers are rather splendid overlooking that strong, uneasy, northern
sea. It stirs the Viking blood in one, and makes that which was hard
seem of less moment. Roger and Mary are there, too--will be all this
summer. And you know it refreshed you to see them last year. And if we
go pretty soon the boys will be at school, so they won't tire you with
their racketing. They're jolly monkeys, though, in my opinion, Godfrey
wants smacking. He comes the elder-brother a lot too much over poor
little Dick.--But that's neither here nor there. Oh! it's for you to
get out of the backwater into the stream, ten times more than for me.
Dearest physician, heal thyself!"
But Katherine, though deeply touched by the loving ardour of the
younger woman's appeal, and the revelation of tenderness and watchful
care, constantly surrounding her, which that appeal brought along with
it, could not rouse herself to any immediate response. Sternly,
unremittingly, since the fair July night when Richard had left her
nearly five years earlier, she had schooled herself into unmurmuring
resignation and calm. In the prosecution of such a process there must
be loss as well as gain. And Katherine had, in great measure, atrophied
impulse, and, in eradicating personal desire, had come near destroying
all spontaneity of emotion. She could still give, but the power of
receiving was deadened in her. And she had come to be jealous of the
quiet which surrounded her. It was her support and solace. She asked
little more than not to have it broken up. She dreaded even affection,
should that strive to draw her from the cloistered way of life. The
world, and its many interests, had ceased to be of any moment to her.
She asked to be left to contemplation of things eternal and to the
tragedy of her own heart. And so, though it was beautiful to know
herself to be thus cherished and held in high esteem, that beauty came
to her as something unrelated, as sweet words good to hear, yet spoken
of some person other than herself, or of a self she had ceased to be.
All privilege implies a corresponding obligation, and to the meeting of
fresh obligations Katherine felt herself not only unequal, but
indisposed. And so, she smiled now upon Honoria St. Quentin, leaning
back against the rose-silk and muslin-covered pillows, with a lovely
indulgence, yet rather hopelessly unmoved and remote.
"Ah! my dear, I am beyond all wish to be healed after the fashion you,
in your urgent loving-kindness, would have me," she said. "I look
forward to the final healing, when my many mistakes and shortcomings
shall be forgiven and the smart of them removed. And I am very tired. I
do not think it can be required of me to go back."
"I know, I know," Honoria replied.--She rose to her feet and moved
across to the fireplace, her straight eyebrows drawn together, her
expression one of perplexity. "I must seem a brute for trying to drag
you back. When Dr. Knott, and the other two men, asked me to come and
reason with you, I was on the edge of refusing. I hardly had the heart
to worry you. And yet," she added wistfully, "after all, in a way, it
is just simply your own, dear fault. For if you will be a sort of
little kingdom of heaven to us, you see, it's inevitable that, when you
threaten to slip away from us, we should play the part of the violent
and do our best to take our kingdom by force and keep it in spite of
itself."
"You overrate the heavenliness of the poor little kingdom," Katherine
said. "Its soil has become barren, its proud cities are laid waste.
It's an unprofitable place, believe me, dearest child. Let it be. Seek
your fortune in some kingdom from which the glory has not departed and
whose motto is not _Ichabod_."
"Unfortunately, I can't do that," the younger woman answered. "I've
explained why already. Where my heart is, there, you see, my kingdom is
also."
"Ah! my dear, my dear," Katherine said, touched, yet somewhat weary.
"And after all it is not wholly for our own sakes we make this fight to
keep you."--Miss St. Quentin's voice sank. She spoke slowly and as
though with reluctance. "We do it for the sake of the person you love
best in the world. I don't say we love him very much, but that is
beside the mark. We owe him a certain duty--I, because I am living in
his house, the others because they are his friends. When he comes
home--as come he surely will--they all say that, even while they blame
him--would it not be an almost too cruel punishment if he found
Brockhurst empty of your presence? You would not wish that. It's not a
question of me, of course. I don't count. But you gone, no one--not
even the old servants, I believe--would stay. Blame would be turned
into something awkwardly near to hatred."
Lady Calmady's serenity did not desert her, but a touch of her old
loftiness of manner was apparent. And Miss St. Quentin was very glad.
Anything, even anger, would be welcome if it dissipated that unnatural,
paralysing calm.
"You forget Julius, I think," she said. "He will be faithful to the
very end, faithful unto death. And so will another friend of happier
days, poor, blind, old Camp."
A sudden inspiration came to Honoria St. Quentin.
"You must only count on Julius, I am afraid, Cousin Katherine--not on
Camp."
And to her immense relief she perceived Lady Calmady's serenity give a
little. It was as though she came nearer. Her sweet face was troubled,
her eyes full of questioning.
"Camp grew a little too tired of waiting about three weeks ago. You did
not ask for him----"
"Didn't I?" Katherine said, smitten by self-reproach.
"Never once--and so we did not tell you, fearing to distress you."
Miss St. Quentin came over and sat down on the end of the sofa again.
She rested her hands on her knees. Her feet were rather far apart. She
fixed her eyes upon the small prophets and patriarchs anticking upon
the hearth.
"But it wasn't really so very bad," she said reflectively. "And we did
all we could to smooth his passage, poor, dear beast, to the place
where all good dogs go. We had the vet out from Westchurch two or three
times, but there was nothing much he could do. And I thought him a bit
rough. Nervousness, I fancy. You see the dog did not like being handled
by a stranger, and made it rather hot for him once or twice. I could
not let him be worried, poor old man, and so Julius March, and Winter,
and I, took turn and turn about with him."
"Where did he die?"
"In the Gun-Room, on the tiger-skin."--Honoria did not look round. Her
voice grew perceptibly husky. "Chifney and I sat up with him that last
night."
"You and Chifney?" Lady Calmady exclaimed, almost in protest.
"Yes. Of course the men would have been as kind as kind could be. Only
I had a feeling you would be glad to know I was there, later, when we
told you. You see Chifney's as good as any vet, and I had to have
somebody. The dog was rather queer. I did not quite know how to manage
him alone."
Lady Calmady put out her hand. Honoria took it silently, and fell to
stroking it once more. It was a declaration of peace, she felt, on the
part of the obstinate well-beloved--possibly a declaration of something
over and above peace.
"Winter saw to our creature comforts," the young lady continued. "Oh,
we weren't starved, I promise you! And Chifney was excellent company."
She hesitated a moment.
"He told me endless yarns about horses--about Doncaster and Newmarket,
and Goodwood. I was greatly flattered at being regarded sufficiently of
the equestrian order to hear all that.--And he told me stories about
Richard, when he was quite a little boy--and about his father also."
Honoria had a conviction the tears were running down Lady Calmady's
cheeks, but she would not look round. She only stroked the hand she
held softly, and talked on.
"They were fine," she said, "some of those stories. I am glad to have
heard them. They went home to me. When all is said and done, there is
nothing like breeding and pluck, and the courtesy which goes along with
them. But after midnight Camp grew very restless. He had his blanket in
the big armchair--you know the one I mean--as usual. But he wouldn't
stay there. We had to lift him down. You see his hindquarters were
paralysed, and he couldn't help himself much. It was pathetic. I can't
forget the asking look in his half-blind eyes. But we couldn't make out
what he wanted. At last he dragged himself as far as the door, and we
set it open and watched him, poor, dear beast. He got across the lobby
to the bottom of the little staircase----"
The speaker's breath caught.
"Then we made out what it was. He wanted to get up here, to come to
you.--Well, I could understand that! I should want just that myself,
shall want it, when it comes to the last. He whimpered when Chifney
carried him back into the Gun-Room."
Honoria turned her head and looked Lady Calmady in the face. Her own
was more than commonly white and very gentle in expression.
"He died in the gray of the morning, with his great head on my lap. I
fancy it eased him to have something human, and--rather pitiful--close
against him. Julius had just come in to see how we were getting on, I
won't declare he did not say a prayer--I think he did. But I wasn't
quite as steady as I might have been just then."
She turned her head, looking back at the figures upon the hearth. She
was satisfied. Lady Calmady's long-sustained calm had given way, and
she wept.
"We buried him, in his blanket, under the big Portugal-laurel, where
the nightingale sings, at the corner of the troco-ground, close to Camp
the First and Old Camp. The upper servants came, and Chaplin and
Hariburt from the house-stables, and Chifney and the head-lad--and some
of the gardeners. Poor, old Wenham drove up in his donkey-chair from
the west lodge. Julius was there, of course. We did all things decently
and in order."
Honoria's voice ceased. She sat stroking the dear hand she held and
smiling to herself, notwithstanding a chokiness in her throat, for she
had a comfortable belief the situation was saved.
Then Clara entered, prepared to encounter remonstrance, bearing a tray.
"It's all right, Clara," Miss St. Quentin said. "Lady Calmady is quite
ready for something to eat. I've been telling her about Camp."
And Katherine, sitting upright, with great docility and a certain
gentle shame, accepted food and drink.
"Since you wish it, dearest," she said, "and since Julius must not be
left alone in a quite empty house."
"Our kingdom of heaven stays with us then?" Honoria exclaimed joyously.
"Such as it is--poor thing--it will do its best to stay. I thought I
had cried my eyes dry forever, long ago. But it seems not. You and Camp
have broken up the drought."
"I have not hurt you?" Honoria said, in sudden penitence.
"No, no--you have given me relief. I was ceasing to be human. The
blessed Thomas was right--I grew very selfish."
"But you're not displeased with me?" Honoria insisted. Lady Calmady's
playfulness had returned, but with a new complexion.
"Ah! it is a little soon to ask that!" she said. "Still I will go north
with you a fortnight hence--go to Ormiston. And by then, perhaps, you
may be forgiven. Open the casement, dearest, and let in the wind. The
air of this room is curiously dead. Give my love to Julius and Ludovic.
Tell them I will come into the Chapel-Room after dinner
to-night.--What--my child, are you so very glad?--Kiss me.--God keep
you.--Now I will rest."
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH M. PAUL DESTOURNELLE HAS THE BAD TASTE TO THREATEN TO UPSET
THE APPLE-CART
Helen de Vallorbes rose from her knees and slipped out from under the
greasy and frayed half-curtain of the confessional box. The atmosphere
of that penitential spot had been such as to make her feel faint and
dizzy. She needed to recover herself. And so she stood, for a minute or
more, in the clear, cool brightness of the nave of the great basilica,
her highly-civilised figure covered by a chequer-work of morning
sunshine streaming down through the round-headed windows of the lofty
clere-storey. As the sense of physical discomfort left her she
instinctively arranged her veil, and adjusted her bracelets over the
wrists of her long gloves. Yet, notwithstanding this trivial and
mundane occupation, her countenance retained an expression of devout
circumspection, of the relief of one who has accomplished a serious and
somewhat distasteful duty. Her sensations were increasingly agreeable.
She had rid herself of an oppressive burden. She was at peace with
herself and with--almost--all man and womankind.
Yet, it must be admitted, the measure had been mainly precautionary.
Helen had gone to confession, on the present occasion, in much the same
spirit as an experienced traveler visits his dentist before starting on
a protracted journey. She regarded it as a disagreeable, but politic,
insurance against possible accident. Her distaste had been increased by
the fact that there really were some rather risky matters to be
confessed. She had even feared a course of penance might have been
enforced before the granting of absolution--this certainly would have
been the case had she been dealing with that firm disciplinarian and
very astute man of the world, the Jesuit father who acted as her
spiritual adviser in Paris. But here in Naples, happily, it was
different. The fat, sleepy, easy-going, old canon--whose person exuded
so strong an odour of snuff that, at the solemnest moment of the
_confiteor_, she had been unable to suppress a convulsive sneeze--asked
her but few inconvenient questions. Pretty fine-ladies will get into
little difficulties of this nature. He had listened to very much the
same story not infrequently before, and took the position amiably,
almost humorously, for granted. It was very wicked, a deadly sin, but
the flesh--specially such delicately bred, delicately fed, feminine
flesh--is admittedly weak, and the wiles of Satan are many. Is it not
an historic fact that our first mother did not escape?--Was Helen's
repentance sincere, that was the point? And of that Helen could
honestly assure him there was no smallest doubt. Indeed, at this
moment, she abhorred, not only her sin, but her co-sinner, in the
liveliest and most comprehensive manner. Return to him? Sooner the dog
return to its vomit! She recognised the iniquity, the shame, the
detestable folly, of her late proceedings far too clearly. Temptation
in that direction had ceased to be possible.
Then followed the mysterious and merciful words of absolution. And
Helen rose from her knees and slipped out from beneath the frayed and
greasy curtain a free woman, the guilt of her adultery wiped off by
those awful words, as, with a wet cloth, one would wipe writing off a
slate leaving the surface of it clean in every part. Precisely how far
she literally believed in the efficacy of that most solemn rite she
would not have found it easy to declare. Scepticism warred with
expediency. But that appeared to her beside the mark. It was really
none of her business. Let her teachers look to all that. To her it was
sufficient that she could regard it from the practical standpoint of an
insurance against possible accident--the accident of sin proving
actually sinful and actually punishable by a narrow-minded deity, the
accident of the veritable existence of heaven and hell, and of Holy
Church veritably having the keys of both these in her keeping, the
accident--more immediately probable and consequently worth guarding
against--that, during wakeful hours, some night, the half-forgotten
lessons of the convent school would come back on her, and, as did
sometimes happen, would prove too much for her usually victorious
audacity.
But, it should be added that another and more creditable instinct did
much to dictate Madame de Vallorbes' action at this juncture. As the
days went by the attraction exercised over her by Richard Calmady
suffered increase rather than diminution. And this attraction affected
her morally, producing in her modesties, reticencies of speech, even of
thought, and prickings of unflattering self-criticism unknown to her
heretofore. Her ultimate purpose might not be virtuous. But undeniably,
such is the complexity--not to say hypocrisy--of the human heart, the
prosecution of that purpose developed in her a surprising sensibility
of conscience. Many episodes in her career, hitherto regarded as
entertaining, she ceased to view with toleration, let alone
complacency. The remembrance of them made her nervous. What if Richard
came to hear of them? The effect might be disastrous. Not that he was
any saint, but that she perceived that, with the fine inconsistency
common to most well-bred Englishmen, he demanded from the women of his
family quite other standards of conduct to those which he himself
obeyed. Other women might do as they pleased. Their lapses from the
stricter social code were no concern of his. He might, indeed, be not
wholly averse to profiting by such lapses. But in respect of the women
of his own rank and blood the case was quite otherwise. He was
alarmingly capable of disgust. And, not a little to her own surprise,
fear of provoking, however slightly, that disgust had become a reigning
power with her. Never had she felt as she now felt. Her own sensations
at once captivated and astonished her. This had ceased to be an
adventure dictated by merry devilry, undertaken out of lightness of
heart, inspired by a mischievous desire to see dust whirl and straws
fly, or undertaken even out of necessity to support self-satisfaction
by ranging herself with cynical audacity on the side of the Eternal
Laughter. This was serious. It was desperate--the crisis, as she told
herself, of her life and fate. The result was singular. Never had she
been more vividly, more electrically, alive. Never had she been more
diffident and self-distrustful.
And this complexity of sensation served to press home on her the high
desirability of insurance against accident, of washing clean, as far as
might be possible, the surface of the slate. So it followed that now,
standing in the chequer-work of sunshine within the great basilica,
self-congratulation awoke in her. The lately concluded ceremony, some
of the details of which had really been most distasteful, might or
might not be of vital efficacy, but, in any case, she had courageously
done her part. Therefore, if Holy Church spoke truly, her first
innocence was restored. Helen hugged the idea with almost childish
satisfaction. Now she could go back to the Villa Vallorbes in peace,
and take what measure----
She left the sentence unfinished. Even in thought it is often an error
to define. Let the future and her intentions regarding it remain in the
vague! She signed to Zelie Forestier--seated on the steps of a
side-chapel, yellow-paper-covered novel in hand--to follow her. And,
after making a genuflexion before the altar of Our Lady of the
Immaculate Conception, gathered up her turquoise-coloured skirts--the
yellow-tufa quarries were not superabundantly clean--and pursued her
way towards the great main door. The benevolent priest, charmed by her
grace of movement, watched her from his place in the confessional,
although another penitent now kneeled within the greasy curtain. Verily
the delinquencies of so delectable a piece of womanhood were easily
comprehensible! Neither God nor man, in such a case, would be extreme
to mark what was done amiss.--Moreover, had she not promised generous
gifts alike to church and poor? The sin which in an ugly woman is
clearly mortal, in a pretty one becomes little more than venial. Making
which reflection a kindly, fat chuckle shook his big paunch, and,
crossing himself, he turned his attention to the voice murmuring from
behind the wooden lattice at his side.
Yet it would appear that abstract justice judged less leniently of the
position. For, passing out on to the portico--about the base of whose
enormous columns half-naked beggars clustered, exposing sores and
mutilations, shrilly clamouring for alms--the dazzling glare of the
empty, sun-scorched piazza behind him, Helen came face to face with no
less a personage than M. Paul Destournelle.
It was as though some one had struck her. The scene reeled before her
eyes. Then her temper rose as in resentment of insult. To avoid all
chance of such a meeting she had selected this church in an
unfashionable quarter of the town. Here, at least, she had reckoned
herself safe from molestation. And, that precisely in the hour of
peace, the hour of politic insurance against accident, this accident of
all others should befall her, was maddening! But anger did not lessen
her perspicacity. How to inflict the maximum of discomfort upon M.
Destournelle with the minimum of risk to herself was the question. An
interview was inevitable. She wanted, very certainly, to get her claws
into him, but, for safety's sake, that should be done not in attack,
but in defense. Therefore he should speak first, and in his words,
whatever those words might be, she promised herself to discover
legitimate cause of offense. So, leisurely, and with studied ignorance
of his presence, she flung largesse of _centissimi_ to right and left,
and, while the chorus of blessing and entreaty was yet loud, walked
calmly past M. Destournelle down the wide, shallow steps, from the
solid shadow of the portico to the burning sun-glare of the piazza.
The young man's countenance went livid.
"Do you dare to pretend not to recognise me?" he literally gasped.
"On the contrary I recognise you perfectly."
"I have written to you repeatedly."
"You have--written to me with a ridiculous and odious persistence."
Madame de Vallorbes picked her steps. The pavement was uneven, the heat
great. Destournelle's hands twitched with agitation, yet he contrived
not only to replace his Panama hat, but opened his white umbrella as a
precaution against sunstroke. And this diverted, even while
exasperating, Helen. Measures to ensure personal safety were so
characteristic of Destournelle.
"And with what fault, I ask you, can you reproach me, save that of a
too absorbing, a too generous, adoration?"
"That fault in itself is very sufficient."
"Do you not reckon, then, in any degree, with the crime you are in
process of committing? Have you no sense of gratitude, of obligation?
Have you no regret for your own loss in leaving me?"
Helen drew aside to let a herd of goats pass. They jostled one another
impudently, carrying their inquisitive heads and short tails erect, at
right angles to the horizontal line of their narrow backs. They
bleated, as in impish mischief. Their little beards wagged. Their
little hoofs pattered on the stone, and the musky odour of them hung in
the burning air. Madame de Vallorbes put her handkerchief up to her
face, and over the edge of it she contemplated Paul Destournelle. Every
detail of his appearance was not only familiar, but associated in her
mind with some incident of his and her common past. Now the said
details asserted themselves, so it seemed to her, with an impertinence
of premeditated provocation.--The high, domed skull, the smooth,
prematurely-thin hair parted in the middle and waved over the ears. The
slightly raised eyebrows, and fatigued, red-lidded, and vain, though
handsome eyes. The straight, thin nose, and winged, open nostrils, so
perpetually a-quiver. The soft, sparse, forked beard which closely
followed the line of the lower jaw and pointed chin. The moustache,
lightly shading the upper lip, while wholly exposing the fretful and
rather sensuous mouth. The long, effeminate, and restless hands. The
tall, slight figure. The clothes, of a material and pattern fondly
supposed by their wearer to present the last word of English fashion in
relation to foreign travel, the colour of them accurately matched to
the pale, brown hair and beard.--So much for the detail of the young
man's appearance. As a whole, that appearance was elegant as only
French youth ventures to be elegant. Refinement enveloped Paul
Destournelle--refinement, over-sensitised and under-vitalised, as that
of a rare exotic forced into precocious blossoming by application of
some artificial horticultural process. And all this--elaborately
effective and seductive as long as one should happen to think so,
elaborately nauseous when one had ceased so to think--had long been
familiar to Helen to the point of satiety. She turned wicked, satiety
transmuting itself into active vindictiveness. How gladly would she
have torn this emasculated creature limb from limb, and flung the lot
of it among the refuse of the Neapolitan gutter!
But, from beneath the shade of his umbrella, the young man recommenced
his plaint.
"It is inconceivable that, knowing my cruel capacity for suffering, you
should be indifferent to my present situation," he asserted, half
violently, half fretfully. "The whole range of history would fail to
offer a case of parallel callousness. You, whose personality has
penetrated the recesses of my being! You, who are acquainted with the
infinite intricacy of my mental and emotional organisation! A touch
will endanger the harmony of that exquisite mechanism. The
interpenetration of the component parts of my being is too complete. I
exist, I receive sensations, I suffer, I rejoice, as a whole. And this
lays me open to universal, to incalculable, pain. Now my nerves are
shattered--intellectual, moral, physical anguish permeate in every
part. I rally my self-reverence, my nobility of soul. I make efforts.
By day I visit spots of natural beauty and objects of art. But these
refuse to gratify me. My thought is too turgid to receive the impress
of them. Concentration is impossible to me. Feverish agitation perverts
my imagination. My ideas are fugitive. I endure a chronic delirium.
This by day," he extended one hand with a despairing gesture, "but by
night----"
"Oh, I implore you," Helen interrupted, "spare me the description of
your nights! The subject is a hardly modest one. And then, at various
times, I have already heard so very much about them, those nights!"
Calmly she resumed her walk. The amazing vanity of the young man's
speech appeased her, in a measure, since it fed her contempt. Let him
sink himself beyond all hope of recovery, that was best. Let him go
down, down, in exposition of fatuous self-conceit. When he was low
enough, then she would kick him! Meanwhile her eyes, ever greedy of
incident and colour, registered the scene immediately submitted to
them. In the centre of the piazza, women--saffron and poppy-coloured
handkerchiefs tied round their dark heads--washed, with a fine
impartiality, soiled linen and vegetables in an iron trough, grated for
a third of its length, before a fountain of debased and flamboyant
design. Their voices were alternately shrill and gutteral. It was
perhaps as well not to understand too clearly all which they said. On
the left came a break in the high, painted house-fronts, off which in
places the plaster scaled, and from the windows of which protruded
miscellaneous samples of wearing apparel and bedding soliciting
much-needed purification by means of air and light. In the said break
was a low wall where coarse plants rooted, and atop of which lay some
half-dozen ragged youths, outstretched upon their stomachs, playing
cards. The least decrepit of the beggars, armed with Helen's largesse
of copper coin, had joined them from beneath the portico. Gambling,
seasoned by shouts, imprecations, blows, grew fast and furious. In the
steep roadway on the right a dray, loaded with barrels, creaked and
jolted upward. The wheels of it were solid discs of wood. The great,
mild-eyed, cream-coloured oxen strained, with slowly swinging heads,
under the heavy yoke. Scarlet, woolen bands and tassels adorned their
broad foreheads and wide-sweeping, black-tipped horns, and here and
there a scarlet drop their flanks, where the goad had pricked them too
shrewdly. And upon it all the unrelenting southern sun looked down, and
Helen de Vallorbes' unrelenting eyes looked forth. One of those quick
realisations of the inexhaustible excitement of living came to her. She
looked at the elegant young man walking beside her, apprised, measured,
him. She thought of Richard Calmady, self-imprisoned in the luxurious
villa, and of the possibilities of her, so far platonic, relation to
him. She glanced down at her own rustling skirts and daintily-shod feet
traveling over the hot stones, then at the noisy gamblers, then at the
women washing, with that consummate disregard of sanitation, food and
raiment together in the rusty iron trough by the fountain. The violent
contrasts, the violent lights and shadows, the violent diversities of
purpose and emotion, of rank, of health, of fortune and misfortune,
went to her head. Whatever the risks or dangers that excitement
remained inexhaustible. Nay, those very dangers and risks ministered to
its perpetual upflowing. It struck her she had been over-scrupulous,
weakly conscientious, in making confession and seeking absolution. Such
timid moralities do not really shape destiny, control or determine
human fate. The shouting, fighting youths there, with their filthy pack
of cards and few _centissimi_, sprawling in the unstinted sunshine,
were nearer the essential truth. They were the profound, because the
practical philosophers! Therefore let us gamble, gamble, gamble, be the
stake small or great, as long as the merest flicker of life, or
fraction of uttermost farthing, is left! And so, when Destournelle took
up his lament again, she listened to him, for the moment, with
remarkable lightness of heart.
"I appeal to you in the name of my as yet unwritten poems, my
masterpieces for which France, for which the whole brotherhood of
letters, so anxiously waits, to put a term to this appalling
chastisement!"
"Delicious!" said Helen, under her breath.
"Your classicism is the natural complement of my mediaevalism. The
elasticity, the concreteness, of your temperament fertilised the
too-brooding introspectiveness of my own. It lightened the reverence
which I experience in the contemplation of my own nature. It induced in
me the hint of frivolity which is necessary to procure action. Our
union was as that of high-noon and impenetrable night. I anticipated
extraordinary consequences."
"Marriage of a butterfly and a bat? Yes, the progeny should be
surprising, little animals certainly," commented Madame de Vallorbes.
"In deserting me you have rendered me impotent. That is a crime. It is
an atrocity. You assassinate my genius."
"Then, indeed, I have reason to congratulate myself on my ingenuity,"
she returned, "since I succeeded in the assassination of the
non-existent!"
"You, who have praised it a thousand times--you deny the existence of
my genius?" almost shrieked M. Destournelle. He was very much in
earnest, and in a very sorry case. His limbs twitched. He appeared on
the verge of an hysteric seizure. To plague him thus was a charmingly
pretty sport, but one safest carried on with closed doors--not in so
public a spot.
"I do not deny the existence of anything, save your right to make a
scene and render me ridiculous as you repeatedly did at Pisa."
"Then you must return to me."
"Oh! la, la!" cried Helen.
"That you should leave me and live in your cousin's house constitutes
an intolerable insult."
"And where, pray, would you have me live?" she retorted, her temper
rising, to the detriment of diplomacy. "In the street?"
"It appears to me the two localities are synonymous--morally."
Madame de Vallorbes drew up. Rage almost choked her. M. Destournelle's
words stung the more fiercely because the insinuation they contained
was not justified by fact. They brought home to her her non-success in
a certain direction. They called up visions of that unknown rival, to
whom--ah, how she hated the woman!--Richard Calmady's affections were,
as she feared, still wholly given. That her relation to him was
innocent, filled her with humiliation. First she turned to Zelie
Forestier, who had followed at a discreet distance across the piazza.
"Go on," she said, "down the street. Find a cab, a clean one. Wait in
it for me at the bottom of the hill."
Then she turned upon M. Destournelle.
"Your mind is so corrupt that you cannot conceive of an honest
friendship, even between near relations. You fill me with repulsion--I
measured the depth of your degeneracy at Pisa. That is why I left you.
I wanted to breathe in an uninfected atmosphere. My cousin is a person
of remarkable intellectual powers, of chivalrous ideals, and of
superior character. He has had great troubles. He is far from well. I
am watching over and nursing him."
The last statement trenched boldly on fiction. As she made it Madame de
Vallorbes moved forward, intending to follow the retreating Zelie down
the steep, narrow street. For a minute M. Destournelle paused to
recollect his ideas. Then he went quickly after her.
"Stay, I implore you," he said. "Yes, I own at Pisa I lost myself. The
agitation of composition was too much for me. My mind seethed with
ideas. I became irritable. I comprehend I was in fault. But it is so
easy to recommence, and to range oneself. I accept your assurances
regarding your cousin. It is all so simple. You shall not return to me.
You shall continue your admirable work. But I will return to you. I
will join you at the villa. My society cannot fail to be of pleasure to
your cousin, if he is such a person as you describe. In a _milieu_
removed from care and trivialities I will continue my poem. I may even
dedicate it to your cousin. I may make his name immortal. If he is a
person of taste and ideals, he cannot fail to appreciate so magnificent
a compliment. You will place this before him. You will explain to him
how necessary to me is your presence. He will be glad to cooperate in
procuring it for me. He will understand that in making these
propositions I offer him a unique opportunity, I behave towards him
with signal generosity. And if, at first, the intrusion of a stranger
into his household should appear inconvenient, let him but pause a
little. He will find his reward in the development of my genius and in
the spectacle of our mutual felicity."
Destournelle spoke with great rapidity. The street which they had now
entered, from the far end of the piazza, was narrow. It was encumbered
by a string of laden mules, by a stream of foot passengers.
Interruption of his monologue, short of raising her voice to screaming
pitch, was impossible to Madame de Vallorbes. But when he ceased she
addressed him, and her lips were drawn away from her pretty teeth
viciously.
"Oh! you unspeakable idiot!" she said. "Have you no remnant of
decency?"
"Do you mean to imply that Sir Richard Calmady would have the
insolence, is so much the victim of insular prejudice as, to object to
our intimacy?"
Madame de Vallorbes clapped her hands together in a sort of frenzy.
"Idiot, idiot," she repeated. "I wish I could kill you."
Suddenly M. Paul Destournelle had all his wits about him.
"Ah!" he said, with a short laugh, curiously resembling in its malice
the bleating of the little goats, "I perceive that which constitutes
the obstacle to our union. It shall be removed."
He lifted his Panama hat with studied elegance, and turning down a
break-neck, side alley, called, over his shoulder:--
"_Abientot tres chere madame._"
CHAPTER VII
SPLENDIDE MENDAX
Unpunctuality could not be cited as among Madame de Vallorbes'
offenses. Yet, on the morning in question, she was certainly very late
for the twelve o'clock breakfast. Richard Calmady--awaiting her coming
beneath the glistering dome of the airy pavilion, set in the angle of
the terminal wall of the high-lying garden--had time to become
conscious of slight irritation. It was not merely that he was
constitutionally impatient of delay, but that his nerves were
tiresomely on edge just now. Trifles had power to endanger his somewhat
stoic equanimity. But when at length Helen emerged from the house
irritation was forgotten. Moving through the vivid lights and shadows
of the ilex and cypress grove, her appearance had a charm of unwonted
simplicity. At first sight her graceful person had the effect of being
clothed in a religious habit. Richard's youthful delight in seeing a
woman walk beautifully remained to him. It received satisfaction now.
Helen advanced without haste, a certain grandeur in her demeanour, a
certain gloom, even as one who takes serious counsel of himself,
indifferent to external things, at once actor in, and spectator of,
some drama playing itself out in the theatre of his own soul. And this
effect of dignity, of self-recollection, was curiously heightened by
her dress--of a very soft and fine, woolen material, of spotless white,
the lines of it at once flowing and statuesque. While as head-gear, in
place of some startling construction of contemporary, Parisian
millinery, she wore, after the modest Italian fashion, a black lace
mantilla over her bright hair.
Arrived, she greeted Richard curtly, and without apology for delay
accepted the contents of the first dish offered to her by the waiting
men-servants, ate as though determinedly and putting a force upon
herself, and--that which was unusual with her before sundown--drank
wine. And, watching her, involuntarily Richard's thought traveled back
to a certain luncheon party at Brockhurst, graced by the presence of
genial, puzzle-headed Lord Fallowfeild and members of his numerous
family, when Helen had swept in, even as now, had been self-absorbed,
even as now. Of the drive to Newlands, all in the sad November
afternoon, following on that luncheon, he also thought, of
communications made by Helen during that drive, and of the long course
of event and action directly or indirectly consequent on those
communications. He thought of the fog, too, enveloping and almost
choking him, when in the early morning driven by furies, still virgin
in body as in heart, he had ridden out into a blank and sightless world
hoping the chill of it would allay the fever in his blood,--and of the
fog again, in the afternoon, from out which the branches of the great
trees, like famine-stricken arms in tattered draperies, seemed to pluck
evilly at the carriage, as he walked the smoking horses up and down the
Newlands' drive, waiting for Helen to rejoin him. And now, somehow,
that fog seemed to come up between him and the well-furnished
breakfast-table, between him and the radiant expanse of the vivacious,
capricious, half-classic, half-modern, mercantile city outstretched
there, teeming, breeding, fermenting, in the fecundating heat of the
noonday sun. The chill of the fog struck cold into his vitals now,
giving him the strangest physical sensation. Richard straightened
himself in his chair, passed his hands across his eyes impatiently.
Brockhurst, and all the old life of it, was a subject of which he
forbade himself remembrance. He had divorced himself from all that, cut
himself adrift from it long ago. By an act of will, he tried to put it
out of his mind now. But the fog remained--an actual clouding of his
physical vision, blurring all he looked upon. It was horribly
uncomfortable. He wished he was alone. Then he might have slipped down
from his chair and, according to his poor capacity of locomotion,
sought relief in movement.
Meanwhile, silently, mechanically, Helen de Vallorbes continued her
breakfast. And as she so continued, in addition to his singular
physical sensations of blurred vision and clinging chill, he became
aware of a growing embarrassment and constraint between himself and his
companion. So far, his and her intercourse had been easy and
spontaneous, because superficial. Since that first interview on the
terrace a tacit agreement had existed to avoid the personal note. Now,
for cause unknown, that intercourse threatened entering upon a new
phase. It was as though the concentration, the tension, which he
observed in her, and of which he was sensible in himself, must of
necessity eventuate in some unbosoming, some act--almost
involuntary--of self-revelation. This unaccustomed silence and
restraint seemed to Richard charged with consequences which, in his
present condition of defective volition, he was powerless to prevent.
And this displeased him, mastery of surrounding influences being very
dear to him.
At last, coffee having been served, the men-servants withdrew to the
house, but the constraint was not thereby lessened. Helen sat upright,
her chin resting upon the back of her left hand, her eyes, under their
drooping lids, looking out with a veiled fierceness upon the fair and
glittering prospect. Richard saw her face in profile. The black
mantilla draped her shoulders and bust with a certain austerity of
effect. It was evident that--by something--she had been stirred to the
extinction of her habitual vivacity and desire to shine. And Richard,
for all his coolness of head and rather cynical maturity of outlook,
had a restless suspicion of going forth--even as on that foggy morning
at Brockhurst--into a blank and sightless world, full of hazardous
possibility, where the safe way was difficult of discovery and where
masked dangers might lurk. Solicitous to dissipate his discomfort he
spoke a little at random.
"You must forgive me for being such an abominably bad host," he said
courteously. "I am not quite the thing this morning, somehow. I had a
little go of fever last night. My brain is like so much pulp."
Helen dropped her hand upon the table as though putting a term to an
importunate train of thought.
"I have always understood the villa to be remarkably free from
malaria," she remarked abstractedly.
"So it is. I quite believe that. The servants certainly keep well
enough. But so, unfortunately, is not the port."
Helen turned her head. A vertical line was observable between her
arched eyebrows.
"The port?" she repeated.
Richard swallowed his black coffee. Perhaps it might steady him and
clear his head. The numbness of his faculties and senses alike
exasperated him, filling him with a persuasion he would say precisely
those things wisdom would counsel to leave unsaid.
"Yes--you know I generally go down and sleep on board the yacht."
There was a momentary pause. Madame de Vallorbes' lips parted in a
soundless exclamation. Then she pushed back the modest folds of the
mantilla, leaving her neck free. The action of her hands was very
graceful as she did this, and she looked fixedly at Richard Calmady.
"I did not know that," she said slowly. Then added, as though reasoning
out her own thought:--"And Naples harbour is admittedly one of the most
pestilential holes on the face of the earth. Are you not tempting
providence in the matter of disease, Richard? Are you not rather
wantonly indiscreet?"
"On the contrary," he answered, and something of mockery touched his
expression, "I see it quite otherwise. I have been congratulating
myself on the praiseworthy abundance of my discretion."
And the words were no sooner out of his mouth than Richard cursed
himself for a bungler, and a slightly vulgar one at that. But upon his
hearer those same words worked a remarkable change. Her gloom, her
abstraction, departed, leaving only a pretty pensiveness. She smiled
with chastened sweetness upon Richard Calmady--a smile nicely attuned
to the semi-religious simplicity of her dress.
"Ah! perhaps we are both a trifle out of sorts this morning!" she said.
"I, too, have had my little turn of sickness--sickness of heart. And
that seems unfair, since I rose in the best disposition of spirit.
Quite early I went to confession."
"Confession?" Richard repeated. "I did not know your submission to the
Church carried you to such practical lengths."
"Evidently we are each fated to make small discoveries regarding the
habits of the other, to-day," she rejoined. "Possibly confession is to
me just what those nights spent on board the yacht, lying in that
malodorous harbour, are to you!"
Helen's smile broadened to a dainty naughtiness, infinitely provoking.
But pensiveness speedily supervened. She folded her hands upon the edge
of the table and looked down at them meditatively.
"I relieved my conscience. Not that there was much to relieve it of,
thank heaven! We have lived austerely enough most of us, this winter in
France. Only it becomes a matter of moral, personal cleanliness, after
a time, all that--exaggerated, but very comfortable. Just as one takes
one's bath twice daily, not that it is necessary but that it is a
luxury of physical purity and self-respect, so one comes to go to
confession. That is a luxury of moral purification. It is as a bath to
the soul, ministering to the perfection of its cleanliness and health."
She looked up at Richard smiling, that same dainty naughtiness very
present.
"You observe I am eminently candid. I tell you exactly how my religion
affects me. I can only reach high-thinking through acts which are
external and concrete. In short, I am a born sacramentalist."
And Richard listened, interested and entertained. Yet, since that
strange blurring of fog still confused his vision and his judgment,
vaguely suspicious that he missed the main intent of her speech.
Suspicious as one who, listening to the clever patter of a conjurer,
detects in it the effort to distract attention from some difficult feat
of legerdemain, until that feat has passed from attempt merely into
accomplished fact.
"And, indirectly, that is where my heart-sickness comes in," she
continued, with a return to something of her former abstraction and
gloom. "I was coming away, coming back here--and I was very happy. It
is not often one can say that. And then--_pouf_---like that," she
brought her hands smartly together, "the charming bubble burst! For,
upon the very church steps, I met a man whom I have every cause to
hate."
As she spoke, the fog seemed to draw away, burnt up by the great,
flaming sun-god there. Richard's brain grew clear--clearer, indeed,
than in perfect health--and his still face grew more still than was,
even to it, quite natural.
"Well?" he asked, almost harshly.
And Helen, whose faith in her own diplomacy had momentarily suffered
eclipse, rejoiced. For the tone of his voice betrayed not disgust, but
anxiety. It stirred her as a foretaste of victory. And victory had
become a maddening necessity to her. Destournelle had forced her hand.
His natural infirmity of purpose relieved her of the fear he could work
her any great mischief. Yet his ingenuity, inspired by wounded vanity,
might prove beyond her calculations. It is not always safe to forecast
the future by experience of the past in relation to such a being as
Destournelle! Therefore it became of supreme importance, before that
gentleman had time further to obtrude himself, to bind Richard Calmady
by some speech, some act, from which there was no going back. And more
than just that. The sight of her ex-lover, though she now loathed
him--possibly just because she so loathed him--provoked passion in her.
It was as though only in a new intrigue could she rid herself of the
remembrance of the old intrigue which was now so detestable to her. She
craved to do him that deepest, most ultimate, despite. And passion
cried out in her. The sight of him, though she loathed him, had made
her utterly weary of chastity. All of which emotions--but held as
hounds in a leash, ready to be slipped when the psychological moment
arrived, and by no means to be slipped until the arrival of
it--dictated the tenor of her next speech.
"Well," she answered, with an air of half-angry sincerity altogether
convincing, "I really don't know that I am particularly proud of the
episode. I know I was careless, that I laid myself open to the
invidious comment, which is usually the reward of all disinterested
action. One learns to accept it as a matter of course. And you see Paul
Destournelle----"
"Oh, Destournelle!" Richard exclaimed.
"You have read him?"
"Every one has read him."
"And what do you think of him?"
"That his technique is as amazingly clever as his thought is amazingly
rotten."
"I know--I know," she said eagerly. "And that is just what induced me
to do all I could for him. If one could cut the canker away, give him
backbone and decency, while retaining that wonderful technique, one
would have a second and a greater Theophile Gautier."
Richard was looking full at her. His face had more colour, more
animation, than usual.
"If--yes--if," he returned. "But that same _if_ bulks mighty big to my
mind."
"I know," she repeated. "Yet it seemed to me worth the attempt. And
then, you understand,--who better?--that if one's own affairs are not
conspicuously happy, one has all the more longing the affairs of others
should be crowned with success. And this winter specially, among the
sordid miseries, disgraces, deprivations, of the siege, one was liable
to take refuge in an over-exalted altruism. It was difficult in so mad
a world not to indulge in personal eccentricity--to the neglect of due
worship of the great goddess Conventionality. With death in visible
form at every street corner, one's sense of humour, let alone one's
higher faculties, rebelled against the futility of such worship. So
many detestable sights and sounds were perpetually presented to
one--not to mention broth of abominable things daily for dinner--that
one turned, with thanksgiving, to beautiful form in art, to perfectly
felicitous words and phrases. The meaning of them mattered but little
just then. They freed one from the tyranny of more or less disgusting
fact. They satisfied eye and ear. One asked nothing more just
then--luckily, you will say, since the animal Destournelle has very
surely nothing more to give."
In speaking, Helen pushed her chair back, turning it sideways to the
table. Her speech was alive with varied and telling inflections. Her
smallest gesture had in it something descriptive and eloquent.
"And so I fell to encouraging the animal," she continued, almost
plaintively, yet with a note of veiled laughter in her voice.
"Reversing the order of Circe--Naples inclines one to classic
illustration, sometimes a little hackneyed--by the way, speaking of
Naples, look at the glory of it all just now, Richard!--I tried to
turn, not men to swine, but swine to men. And I failed, of course. The
gods know best. They never attempt metamorphosis on the ascending
scale! I let Destournelle come to see me frequently. The world advised
itself to talk. But, being rather bitterly secure of myself, I
disregarded that. If one is aware that one's heart was finally and long
ago disposed of, one ceases to think seriously of that side of things.
You must know all that well enough--witness the sea-born furnishings of
my bedroom up-stairs!"
For half a minute she paused. Richard made no comment.
"Hard words break no bones," she added lightly. "And so, to show how
much I despised all such censorious cackle, I allowed Destournelle to
travel south with me when I left Paris."
"You pushed neglect of the worship of conventionality rather far,"
Richard said.
Helen rose to her feet. Excitement gained on her, as always during one
of her delightful improvisations, her talented _viva voce_ improvements
on dry-as-dust fact. She laughed softly, biting her lip. More than one
hound had been slipped by now. They made good running. She stood by
Richard Calmady, looking down at him, covering him, so to speak, with
her eyes. The black mantilla no longer veiled her bright head. It had
fallen to the ground, and lay a dark blot upon the mellow fairness of
the tesselated pavement. White-robed, statuesque--yet not with the
severe grace of marble, but with that softer, more humanly seductive
grace of some figure of cunningly tinted ivory--she appeared, just
then, to gather up in herself all the poetry, the intense and vivid
light, the victorious vitality, of the clear, burning, southern noon.
"Ah, well, conventionality proved perfectly competent to avenge
herself!" she exclaimed. "The animal Destournelle took the average, the
banal view, as might have been anticipated. He had the insane
presumption to suppose it was himself, not his art, in which I was
interested. I explained his error, and departed. I recovered my
equanimity. That took time. I felt soiled, degraded. And then to-day I
meet him again, unashamed, actually claiming recognition. I repeated my
explanation with uncompromising lucidity----"
Richard moved restlessly in his chair, looking up almost sharply at
her.
"Waste of breath," he said. "No explanation is lucid if the hearer is
unwilling to accept it."
And then the two cousins, as though they had reached unexpectedly some
parting of the ways, calling for instant decision in respect of the
future direction of their journey, gazed upon one another
strangely--each half defiant of the other, each diligent to hide his
own and read the other's thought, each sensible of a crisis, each at
once hurried and arrested by suspicion of impending catastrophe, unless
this way be chosen that declined--though it seemed, in good truth, not
in their keeping, but in that of blind chance only that both selection
and rejection actually resided. And, in this strait, neither habit of
society, fine sword-play of diplomacy and tact, availed to help them.
For suddenly they had outpaced all that, and brought up amongst ancient
and secular springs of action and emotion before which civilisation is
powerless and the ready tongue of fashion dumb.
But even while he so gazed, in fateful suspense and indecision, the fog
came up again, chilling Richard Calmady's blood, oppressing his brain
as with an uprising of foul miasma, blurring his vision, so that
Helen's fair, downward-gazing face was distorted, rendered illusive and
vague. And, along with this, distressing restlessness took him,
compelling him to seek relief in change of posture and of place. He
could not stop to reckon with how that which he proposed to do might
strike an onlooker. His immediate sensations filled his whole horizon.
Silently he slipped down from his chair, stood a moment, supporting
himself with one hand on the edge of the table, and then moved forward
to that side of the pavilion which gave upon the garden. Here the
sunshine was hot upon the pavement, and upon the outer half of each
pale, slender column. Richard leant his shoulder against one of these,
grateful for the genial heat.
Since her first and somewhat inauspicious meeting with him in
childhood, Helen had never, close at hand, seen Richard Calmady walk
thus far. She stared, fascinated by that cruel spectacle. For the
instant transformation of the apparently tall, and conspicuously
well-favoured, courtly gentleman, just now sitting at table with her,
into the shuffling, long-armed, dwarfed and crippled creature was, at
first utterly incredible, then portentous, then, by virtue of its very
monstrosity, absorbing and, to her, adorable, whetting appetite as
veritable famine might. Chastity became to her more than ever absurd, a
culpable waste of her own loveliness, of sensation, of emotion, a sin
against those vernal influences working in this generous nature
surrounding her and working in her own blood. All the primitive
instinct of her womanhood called aloud in her that she must wed--must
wed. And the strident voice of the great, painted city coming up to
her, urgent, incessant, carried the same message, as did the radiant
sea, whose white lips kissed the indented coast-line as though pale and
hungry with love. While the man before her, by his very abnormality and
a certain secretness inevitable in that, heightened her passion. He was
to her of all living men most desirable, so that she must win him and
hold him, must see and know.
In a few steps, light as those of the little, rose-crowned dancer of
long ago, she followed him across the shining floor. There was a point
of north in the wind, adding exhilaration to the firm sunshine as ice
to rare wine. The scent of narcissus, magnolia, and lemon blossom was
everywhere. The cypresses yielded an aromatic, myrrh-like sweetness.
The uprising waters of the fountain, set in the central alley, swerved
southward, falling in a jeweled rain. Helen, in her spotless raiment,
came close and Richard Calmady turned to her. But his eyes no longer
questioned hers. They were as windows opening back on to empty space,
seeing all, yet telling nothing. His face had become still again and
inscrutable, lightened only by that flickering, mocking smile. It
seemed as though the psychological moment were passed and social sense,
ordinary fashions of civilised intercourse, had not only come back but
come to stay.
"I think we will omit Destournelle from our talk in future," he said.
"As a subject of conversation I find he disagrees with me,
notwithstanding his felicity of style and his admirable technique. I
will give orders which, I hope, may help to protect you from annoyance
in future. In this delightful land, by wise exercise of just a little
bribery and corruption, it is still possible to make the unwelcome
alien prefer to seek health and entertainment elsewhere. Now, will you
like to go back to the house?"
The approach to the pavilion from the lower level of the garden was by
a carefully graded slope of Roman brick, set edgewise. At regular
intervals of about eighteen inches this was crossed--on the principle
of a gang-plank--by raised marble treads. Without waiting for his
cousin's reply, Richard started slowly down the slope. At the best of
times this descent for him demanded caution. Now his vision was again
so queerly blurred that he miscalculated the distance between the two
lowest treads, slipped and stumbled, lunging forward. Quick as a cat,
Madame de Vallorbes was behind him, her right hand grasping his right
elbow, her left hand under his left armpit.
"Ah! Dickie, Dickie, don't fall!" she cried, a sudden terror in her
voice.
Her muscles hardened like steel. It needed all her strength to support
him, for he was heavy, his body inert as that of one fainting. For a
moment his head rested against her bosom; and her breath came short,
sighing against his neck and cheek.
By sheer force of will Richard recovered his footing, disengaging
himself from her support, shuffling aside from her.
"A thousand thanks, Helen," he said.
Then he looked full at her, and she--untender though she was--perceived
that the perspective of space on which, as windows might, his eyes
seemed to open back, was not empty. It was peopled, crowded--even as
those steep, teeming byways of Naples--by undying, unforgetable misery,
humiliation, revolt.
"Yes, it is rather unpardonable to be--as I am--isn't it?" he said.
Adding hastily, yet with a certain courteous dignity:--"I am ashamed to
trouble you, to ask you--of all people--to run messages for me--but
would you go on to the house----"
"Dickie, why may not I help you?" she interrupted.
"Ah!" he said, "the answer to that lies away back in the beginning of
things. Even unlucky devils, such as myself, are not without a certain
respect for that which is fitting, for seemliness and etiquette. Send
one of my men please. I shall be very grateful to you--thanks."
And Helen de Vallorbes, her passion baulked and therefore more than
ever at white heat, swept up the paved alley, amid the sweet scents of
the garden, beneath the jeweled rain of the fountain, that point of
north in the wind dallying with her as in laughing challenge, making
her the more mad to have her way with Richard Calmady, yet knowing that
of the two--he and she--he was the stronger as yet.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH HELEN DE VALLORBES LEARNS HER RIVAL'S NAME
"I hear Morabita sings, in _Ernani_, at the San Carlo on Friday night.
Do you care to go, Helen?"
The question, though asked casually, had, to the listener, the effect
of falling with a splash, as of a stone into a well, awakening
unexpected echoes, disturbing, rather harshly, the constrained silence
which had reigned during the earlier part of dinner.
All the long, hot afternoon, Madame de Vallorbes had been
alone--Richard invisible, shut persistently away in those rooms of the
_entresol_ into which, as yet, she had never succeeded in penetrating.
Richard had not proposed to her to do so. And it was part of that
praiseworthy discretion which she had agreed with herself to
practise--in her character of scrupulously unexacting guest--only to
accept invitations, never to issue them. How her cousin might occupy
himself, whom even he might receive, during the time spent in those
rooms, she did not know. And it was idle to inquire. Neither of her
servants, though skilful enough, as a rule, in the acquisition of
information, could, in this case, acquire any. And so it came about
that during those many still bright hours, following on her rather
agitated parting with Richard at midday, while she paced the noble
rooms of the first floor--once more taking note of their costly
furnishings and fine pictures, meeting her own restless image again and
again in their many mirrors--and later, near sundown, when she walked
the dry, brown pathways of the ilex and cypress grove, the wildest
suspicions of his possible doings assailed her. For she was constrained
to admit that, though she had spent a full week now under his roof, it
was but the veriest fringe, after all, of the young man's habits and
thought with which she was actually acquainted. And this not only
desperately intrigued her curiosity, but the apartness, behind which he
entrenched himself and his doings, was as a slight put upon her and
consequent source of sharp mortification. So to-day she ranged all
permitted spaces of the villa and its grounds softly, yet lithe,
watchful, fierce as a she-panther--her ears strained to hear, her eyes
to see, driven the while by jealousy of that nameless rival, to
remembrance of whom all the whole place was dedicated, and by baffled
passion, as with whips.
Nor did superstition fail to add its word of ill-omen at this juncture.
A carrion crow, long-legged, heavy of beak, alighting on the clustered
curls of the marble bust of Homer, startled her with vociferous
croakings. A long, narrow, many-jointed, blue-black, evil-looking
beetle crawled from among the rusty, fibrous, cypress roots across her
path. A funeral procession, priest and acolytes, with lighted tapers,
sitting within the glass-sided hearse at head and foot of the
flower-strewn coffin, wound slowly along the dusty, white
road--bordered by queer growth of prickly-pear and ragged, stunted
palm-trees--far below. She crossed herself, turning hurriedly away.
Yet, for an instant, Death, triumphant, hideous, inevitable, and all
the spiritual terror and physical disgust of it, grinned at her, its
fleshless face, as it seemed, close against her own. And alongside
Death--by some malign association of ideas and ugly antic of
profanity--she saw the _bel tete de Jesu_ of M. Paul Destournelle as
she had seen it this morning, he looking back, hat in hand, as he
plunged down the break-neck, Neapolitan side-street, with that impish,
bleating, goatlike laugh.
By the time the dinner-hour drew near she found her outlook in radical
need of reconstruction, and to that end bade Zelie dress her in the
crocus-yellow brocade, reserved for some emergency such as the present.
It was a gown, surely, to restore self-confidence and induce
self-respect! Fashioned fancifully, according to a picturesque,
seventeenth-century, Venetian model, the full sleeves and the
long-waisted bodice of it--this cut low, generously displaying her
shoulders and swell of her bosom--were draped with superb _guipure de
Flandres a brides frisees_ and strings of seed pearls. All trace of
ascetic simplicity had very certainly departed. Helen was
resplendent--strings of seed pearls twisted in her honey-coloured hair,
a clear red in her cheeks and hard brilliance in her eyes, bred of
eager jealous excitement. She had, indeed, reached a stage of feeling
in which the sight of Richard Calmady, the fact of his presence, worked
upon her to the extent of dangerous emotion. And now this statement of
his, and the question following it, caused the flame of the inward
fires tormenting her to leap high.
"Ah! Morabita!" she exclaimed. "What an age it is since I have heard
her sing, or thought about her! How is her voice lasting, Richard?"
"I really don't know," he answered, "and that is why I am rather
curious to hear her. There was literally nothing but a voice in her
case--no dramatic sense, nothing in the way of intelligence to fall
back on. On that account it interested me to watch her. She and her
voice had no essential relation to one another. Her talent was stuck
into her, as you might stick a pin into a cushion. She produced
glorious effects without a notion how she produced them, and gave
expression--and perfectly just expression--to emotions she had never
dreamed of. At the best of times singers are a feeble folk
intellectually, but, of all singers I have known, she was mentally the
very feeblest."
"No, perhaps she was not very wise," Helen put in, but quite mildly,
quite kindly.
"And so if the voice went, everything went. And that made one reflect
agreeably upon the remarkably haphazard methods employed by that which
we politely call Almighty God in His construction of our unhappy
selves. Design?--There's not a trace of design in the whole show.
Bodies, souls, gifts, superfluities, deficiencies, just pitched
together anyhow. The most bungling of human artists would blush to turn
out such work."
Richard spoke rapidly. He had refused course after course. And now the
food on his plate remained untasted. Seen in the soft light of the
shaded candles his face had a strange look of distraction upon it, as
though he too was restless with an intimate, deep-seated restlessness.
His skin was less colourless than usual, his manner less colourless
also. And this conferred a certain youthfulness on him, making him seem
nearer--so Helen thought--to the boy she had known at Brockhurst, than
to the man, whom lately, she had been so signally conscious that she
failed to know.
"No, I hope Morabita's voice remains to her," he continued. "Her
absolute nullity minus it is disagreeable to think of. And much as I
relish collecting telling examples of the fatuity of the Creator--she,
voiceless, would offer a supreme one--I would spare her that, poor
dear. For she was really rather charming to me at one time."
"So it was commonly reported," Helen remarked.
"Was it?" Richard said absently.
Though as a rule conspicuously abstemious, he had drunk rather freely
to-night, and that with an odd haste of thirst. Now he touched his
champagne tumbler, intimating to Bates, the house-steward--sometime the
Brockhurst under butler--that it should be refilled.
"I can't have seen Morabita for nearly three years," he went on. "And
my last recollections of her are unfortunate. She had sent me a box, in
Vienna it was I think, for the _Traviata_. She was fat then, or rather,
fatter. Stage furniture leaves something to desire in the way of
solidity. In the death scene the middle of the bed collapsed. Her
swan-song ceased abruptly. Her head and heels were in the air, and the
very largest rest of her upon the floor, bed and bedclothes standing
out in a frill all around. It was a sight discouraging to sentiment. I
judged it kinder not to go to supper with her after the performance
that night."
Richard paused, again drained his glass.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "what atrocious nonsense I am talking!"
"I think I rather enjoy it," Madame de Vallorbes answered. She looked
at the young man sideways, from under her delicate eyelids. He was
perfectly sober--of that there was no question. Yet he was less
inaccessible, somehow, than usual. She inclined to experiment.--"Only I
am sorry for Morabita in more ways than one, poor wretch. But then
perhaps I am just a little sorry for all those women whom you reject,
Richard."
"The women whom I reject?" he said harshly.
"Yes, whom you reject," Helen repeated.--Then she busied herself with a
small black fig, splitting it deftly open, disclosing the purple, and
rose, and clear living greens of the flesh and innumerable seeds of it,
colours rich as those of a tropic sky at sunset.--"And there are so
many of those women it seems to me! I am coming to have a quite
pathetic fellowship for them." She buried her white teeth in the
softness of the fig.--"Not without reason, perhaps. It is idle to deny
that you are a pastmaster in the ungentle art of rejection. What have
you to say in self-defense, Dickie?"
"That talking nonsense appears to be highly infectious--and that it is
a disagreeably oppressive evening."
Helen de Vallorbes smiled upon him, glanced quickly over her shoulder
to assure herself the servants were no longer present--then spoke,
leaning across the corner of the table towards him, while her eyes
searched his with a certain daring provocation.
"Yes, I admit I have finished my fig. Dinner is over. And it is my
place to disappear according to custom."--She laid her rosy finger-tips
together, her elbows resting on the table. "But I am disinclined to
disappear. I have a number of things to say. Take that question of
going to the opera, for instance. Half Naples will be there, and I know
more than half Naples, and more than half Naples knows me. I do not
crave to run incontinently into the arms of any of de Vallorbes' many
relations. They were not conspicuously kind to me when I was here as a
girl and stood very much in need of kindness. So the question of going
to the San Carlo, you see, requires reflection. And then,"--her tone
softened to a most persuasive gentleness,--"then, the evenings are a
trifle long when one is alone and has nothing very satisfactory to
think about. And I have been worried to-day, detestably worried."--She
looked down at her finger-tips. Her expression became almost sombre.
"In any case I shall not plague you very much longer, Richard," she
said rather grandly. "I have determined to remove myself bag and
baggage. It is best, more dignified to do so. Reluctantly I own that.
Here have I no abiding city. I wish I had, perhaps, but I haven't.
Therefore it is useless, and worse than useless, to play at having one.
One must just face the truth."
She looked full at the young man, smiling at him, as though somehow
forgiving him a slight, an unkindness, a neglect.
"And so, just because to you it all matters so uncommonly little, let
us talk rather longer this evening."
She rose.
"I'll go on into the long drawing-room," she said. "The windows were
still open there when I came in to dinner. The room will be pleasantly
cool. You will come?"
And she moved away quietly, thoughtfully, opened the high double-doors,
left them open, and that without once looking back. Yet her hearing was
strained to catch the smallest sound above that which accompanied her,
namely, the rustling of her dress. Then a queer shiver ran all down her
spine and she set her teeth, for she perceived that halting, shuffling
footsteps had begun to follow those light and graceful footsteps of her
own.
"_Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute_," she said to herself. "I have
no fear for the rest."
Yet, crossing the near half of the great room, she sank down on a sofa,
thankful there was no farther to go. In the last few minutes she had
put forth more will-power, felt more deeply, than she had supposed. Her
knees gave under her. It was a relief to sit down.
The many candles in the cut-glass chandeliers, hanging from along the
centre of the painted ceiling, were lighted, filling the length and
breadth of the room with a bland, diffused radiance. It touched picture
and statue, tall mirror, rich curtain, polished woodwork of chair and
table, gleaming ebony and ivory cabinet. It touched Helen de Vallorbes'
bright head and the strings of pearls twisted in her hair, her white
neck, the swell of her bosom, and all that delicate wonder of
needlework--the Flanders' lace--trimming her bodice. It lay on her lap,
too, as she leaned back in the corner of the sofa, her hands pressed
down on either side her thighs--lay there bringing the pattern of her
brocaded dress into high relief. This was a design of pomegranates--leaves,
flowers, and fruit--and of trailing, peacock feathers, a couple of
shades lighter than the crocus-yellow ground. The light took the
over-threads and stayed in them.
The window stood wide open on to the balcony, the elaborately
wrought-ironwork of which--scroll and vase, plunging dolphin and
rampant sea-horse--detached itself from the opaque background of the
night. And in at the window came luscious scents from the garden below,
a chime of falling water, the music, faint and distant, in rising and
falling cadence of a marching military band. In at it also, and rising
superior to all these in imperativeness and purpose, came the voice of
Naples itself--no longer that of a city of toil and commerce, but that
of a city of pleasure, a city of licence, until such time as the dawn
should once again break, and the sun arise, driving back man and beast
alike to labour, the one from merry sinning, the other from hard-earned
sleep. And once again, but in clearer, more urgent, accents, the voice
of the city repeated its message to Helen de Vallorbes, calling aloud
to her to do even as it was doing, namely, to wed--to wed. And, hearing
it, understanding that message, for a little space shame took her, in
face both of its and her own shamelessness, so that she closed her
eyes, unable for the moment to look at Richard Calmady as he crossed
the great room in that bland and yet generous light. But, almost
immediately, his voice, cold and measured in tone, there close beside
her, claimed her attention.
"That which you said at dinner rather distresses me, Helen."
Then, shame or no shame, Madame de Vallorbes, of necessity, opened her
eyes. And, so doing, it needed all her self-control to repress a cry.
She forced her open hands down very hard on the mattress of the sofa.
For Richard leaned his back against the jamb of the open window, and
she saw his face and all his poor figure in profile. His left hand hung
straight at his side, the tips of his fingers only just not touching
the floor. And again, as at midday the spectacle of his deformity
worked upon her strangely.
"What of all that which I said at dinner distresses you?" she asked
gently, with sudden solicitude.
"You showed me that I have been a wretchedly negligent host."--In
speaking, the young man turned his head and looked at her, paused a
moment, almost startled by her resplendent aspect. Then he looked down
at his own stunted and defective limbs. His expression became very
grim. He raised his shoulders just perceptibly. "I reproach myself with
having allowed you to be so much alone. It must have been awfully dull
for you."
"It was a little dull," Helen said, still gently.
"I ought to have begged you to ask some of the people you know in
Naples to come here. It was stupid of me not to think of it. I need not
have seen them, neither need they have seen me."
He looked at her steadily again, as though trying to fix her image in
his memory.
"Yes, it was stupid of me," he repeated absently. "But I have got into
churlish, bachelor habits--that can hardly be helped, living alone, or
on board ship, as I do--and I have pretty well forgotten how to provide
adequately for the entertainment of a guest."
"Oh! I have had that which I wanted, that which I came for," Helen
answered, very charmingly,--"had it in part, at all events. Though I
could have put up with just a little more of it, Dickie, perhaps."
"I warned you, if you remember, that opportunities of amusement--as
that word is generally understood--would be limited."
"Amusement?" she exclaimed, with an almost tragic inflection of
contempt.
"Oh yes!" he said, "amusement is not to be despised. I'd give all I am
worth, half my time, to be amused--but that again, like hospitality, is
rather a lost art with me. You remember, I warned you life at the villa
in these days was not precisely hilarious."
Helen clapped her hands together.
"Ah! you are wilfully obtuse, you are wilfully, cruelly pigheaded!" she
cried. "Pardon me, dear Richard, but your attitude is enough to
exasperate a saint. And I am no saint as yet. I am still
human--radically, for my own peace of mind lamentably, human. I am only
too capable of being grieved, humiliated, hurt. But there, it is folly
to say such things to you! You are hopelessly insensible to all that.
So I take refuge in quoting your own words of this morning against
you--that no explanation is lucid if the hearer refuses to accept it."
"I am dull, no doubt, but honestly I fail to see how that remark of
mine can be held to apply in the present case."
"It applies quite desolatingly well!" Helen declared, with spirit. Then
her manner softened into a seductiveness of forgiveness once
again.--"And so, dear Richard, I am glad that I had already determined
to leave here to-morrow. It would have been a little too wretched to
arrive at that determination after this conversation. You must go alone
to hear your old flame, Morabita, sing. Only, if her voice is still as
sympathetic as of old, if it moves you from your present insensibility,
you may read remembrance of some aspects of my visit into the witchery
of it if you like. It may occur to you what those aspects really
meant."
Helen smiled upon him, leaning a little forward. Her eyes shone, as
though looking out through unshed tears.
"It's not exactly flattering to one's vanity to be compelled to depute
to another woman the making of such things clear. But it is too evident
I waste my time in attempting to make them clear myself. No explanation
is lucid, _et caetera_----"
Helen shook back her head with an extraordinary charm of half-defiant,
half-tearful laughter. She was playing a game, her whole intelligence
bent on the playing of it skilfully. Yet she was genuinely touched. She
was swayed by her very real emotion. She spoke from her heart, though
every word, every passing action, subserved her ultimate purpose in
regard to Richard Calmady.
"And, after all, one must retain some remnant of self-respect with
which to cover the nakedness of one's---- Oh yes! decidedly, Morabita's
voice had best do the rest."
Richard had moved from his station in the window. He stood at the far
end of the sofa, resting his hands on the gilded and carven arm of it.
Now the ungainliness of his deformity was hidden, and his height was
greater than that of his companion, obliging her to look up at him.
"I gave you my word, Helen," he said, "I have no notion what you are
driving at."
"Driving at, driving at?" she cried. "Why, the self-evident truth that
you are forcing me rather brutally to pay the full price of my weakness
in coming here, in permitting myself the indulgence of seeing you
again. You told me directly I arrived, with rather cynical frankness,
that I had not changed. That is quite true. What I was at Brockhurst,
four years ago, what I then felt, that I am and that I feel still. Oh!
you have nothing to reproach yourself with in defect of plain speaking,
or excess of amiable subterfuge! You hit out very straight from the
shoulder! Directly I arrived you also told me how you had devoted this
place--with which, after all, I am not wholly unconnected--to the cult,
to the ideal worship, of a woman whom you loved."
"So I have devoted it," Richard said.
"And yet I was weak enough to remain!"
The young man's face relaxed, but its expression remained enigmatic.
"And why not?" he asked.
"Because, in remaining, I have laid myself open to misconstruction, to
all manner of pains and penalties, not easy to be endured, to the
odious certainty of appearing contemptible in your estimation as well
as in my own."
Helen patted her pretty foot upon the floor in a small frenzy of
irritation.
"How can I hope to escape, since even the precious being whom you
affect to worship you keep sternly at arm's length, that is among the
other pleasing things you confided to me immediately on my
arrival--lest, seen at close quarters, she should fall below your
requirements and so you should suffer disillusion. Ah! you are
frightfully cold-blooded, repulsively inhuman. Whether you judge others
by yourself, reckoning them equally devoid of natural feeling, or
whether you find a vindictive relish in rejecting the friendship and
affection so lavishly offered you----"
"Is it offered lavishly? That comes as news to me," he put in.
"Ah! but it is. And I leave you to picture the pleasing entertainment
afforded the offerer in seeing you ignore the offering, or, worse
still, take it, examine it, and throw it aside like a dirty rag! In one
case you underline your rejection almost to the point of insult."
"This is very instructive. I am learning a whole lot about myself,"
Richard said coolly.
"But look," Madame de Vallorbes cried, "do you not prefer exposing
yourself to the probability of serious illness rather than remain under
the same roof with me? The inference hits one in the face. To you the
pestilential exhalations, the unspeakable abominations, of Naples
harbour appear less dangerous than my near neighbourhood."
"You put it more strongly than I should," he answered, smiling. "Yet,
from a certain standpoint, that may very well be true."
For an instant Helen hesitated. Her intelligence, for all its
alertness, was strained exactly to appraise the value of his words,
neither over, nor under, rating it. And her eyes searched his with a
certain boldness and imperiousness of gaze. Richard, meanwhile, folding
his arms upon the carven and gilt frame of the sofa, looked back at
her, smiling still, at once ironically and very sadly. Then swift
assurance came to her of the brazen card she had best play. But,
playing it, she was constrained to avert her eyes and set her glance
pensively upon the light-visited surface of her crocus-yellow, silken
lap.
"I will do my best possible to accept your nightly journeys as a
compliment in disguise, then," she said, quite softly. "For truly, when
I come to think of it, were she, herself, here--she, the woman you so
religiously admire that you take elaborate pains to avoid having
anything on earth to do with her--were she herself here you could
hardly take more extensive measures to secure yourself against risk of
disappointment, hardly exercise a greater rage of caution!"
"Perhaps that's just it. Perhaps you have arrived at it all at last.
Perhaps she is here," he said.
And he turned away, steadying himself with one hand against the jamb of
the window, and shuffled out slowly, laboriously, onto the balcony into
the night.
For a quite perceptible length of time Helen de Vallorbes continued to
contemplate the light-visited surface of her crocus-yellow, silken lap.
She followed the lines of the rich pattern--pomegranate, fruit and
blossom, trailing peacock's feather. For by such mechanical employment
alone could she keep the immensity of her excitement and of her triumph
in check. To shout aloud, to dance, to run wildly to and fro, would
have been only too possible to her just then. All that for which she
had schemed, had ruled herself discreetly, had ridden a waiting race,
had been hers, in fact, from the first--the prize adjudged before ever
she left the starting-post. She held this man in the hollow of her
hand, and that by no result of cunning artifice, but by right divine of
beauty and wit and the manifold seductions of her richly-endowed
personality. And, thinking of that, she clenched her dainty fists,
opened them again, and again clenched them, upon the yielding mattress
of the sofa, given over to an ecstasy of physical enjoyment, weaving
even as, with clawed and padded paws, her prototype the she-panther
might. Slowly she raised her downcast eyes and looked after Richard
Calmady, his figure a blackness, as of vacancy, against the elaborate
wrought-ironwork of the balcony. And so doing, an adorable sensation
moved her, at once of hungry tenderness and of fear--fear of something
unknown, in a way fundamental, incalculable, the like of which she had
never experienced before. Ah! indeed, of all her many loves, here was
the crown and climax! Yet, in the midst of her very vital rapture, she
could still find time for remembrance of the little, crescent-shaped
scar upon her temple, and for remembrance of Katherine Calmady, who
had, unwittingly, fixed that blemish upon her and had also more than
once frustrated her designs. This time frustration was not possible.
She was about to revenge the infliction of that little scar! And, at
the same time the intellectual part of her was agreeably intrigued,
trying to disentangle the why and wherefore of Richard's late action
and utterances. While self-love was gratified to the highest height of
its ambition by the knowledge that not only in his heart had she long
reigned, but that he had dedicated time and wealth and refined
ingenuity to the idea of her, to her worship, to the making of this,
her former dwelling-place, into a temple for her honour, a splendid
witness to her victorious charm, a shrine not unfitting to contain the
idol of his imagination.
For a little space she rested in all this, savouring the sweetness of
it as some odour of costly sacrifice. For whatever her sins and lapses,
Helen de Vallorbes had the fine aesthetic appreciations, as well as the
inevitable animality, of the great courtesan. The artist was at least
as present in her as the whore. And it was not, therefore, until
realisation of her present felicity was complete, until it had soaked
into her, so to speak, to the extent of a delicious familiarity, that
she was disposed to seek change of posture or of place. Then, at last,
softly, languidly, for indeed she was somewhat spent by the manifold
emotions of the day, she rose and followed Richard into the starless,
low-lying night. Her first words were very simple, yet to herself
charged with far-reaching meaning--as a little key may give access to a
treasure-chest containing riches of fabulous worth.
"Richard, is it really true, that which you have told me?"
"What conceivable object could I have in lying?"
"Then why have you delayed?--why wasted the precious days--the precious
months and years, if it comes to that?"
"How in honour and decency could I do otherwise--circumstances being
such as they are, I being that which I am?"
The two voices were in notable contrast. Both were low, both were
penetrated by feeling. But the man's was hoarse and rasping, the
woman's smooth and soft as milk.
"Ah! it is the old story!" she said. "Will you never comprehend,
Dickie, that what is to you hateful in yourself, may to some one else
be the last word of attraction, of seduction, even?"
"God forbid I should ever comprehend that!" he answered. "When I take
to glorying in my shame, pluming myself upon my abnormality, then,
indeed, I become beyond all example loathsome. The most deplorable
moment of my very inglorious career will be precisely that in which I
cease to look at myself with dispassionate contempt."
Helen knelt down, resting her beautiful arms upon the dark hand-rail of
the balcony, letting her wrists droop over it into the outer dimness.
The bland light from the open window dwelt on her kneeling figure and
bowed head. But it was as well, perhaps, that the night dropped a veil
upon her face.
"And yet so it is," she said. "You may repudiate the idea, but the fact
remains. I do not say it would affect all women alike--affect those,
for instance, whose conception of love, and of the relation between man
and woman, is dependent upon the slightly improper and very tedious
marriage service as authorised by the English Church. Let the
conventional be conventional still! So much the better if you don't
appeal to them--meagre, timid, inadequate, respectable--a generation of
fashion-plates with a sixpenny book of etiquette, moral and social,
stuck inside them to serve for a soul."
Helen's voice broke in a little spasm of laughter, and her hands began,
unconsciously, to open and close, open and close, weaving in soft,
outer darkness.
"We may leave them out of the argument.--But there remain the elect,
Richard, among whom I dare count myself. And over them, never doubt it,
just that which you hate and which appears at first sight to separate
you so cruelly from other men, gives you a strange empire. You
stimulate, you arrest, you satisfy one's imagination, as does the
spectacle of some great drama. You are at once enslaved and emancipated
by this thing--to you hateful, to me adorable--beyond all measure of
bondage or freedom inflicted upon, or enjoyed by, other men. And in
this, just this, lies magnificent compensation if you would but see it.
I have always known that--known that if you would put aside your
arrogance and pride, and yield yourself a little, it was possible to
love you, and give you such joy in loving as one could give to no-one
else on earth."
Her voice sweetened yet more. She leaned forward, pressing her bosom
against the rough ironwork of the balcony.
"I knew that, from the first hour we met, in the variegated, autumn
sunshine, upon the greensward, before the white summer-house
overlooking that noble, English, woodland view. I saw you, and so doing
I saw mysteries of joy in myself unimagined by me before. It went very
hard with me then, Richard. It has gone very hard with me ever since."
Madame de Vallorbes' words died away in a grave and delicate whisper.
But she did not turn her head, nor did Richard speak. Only, close there
beside her, she heard him breathe, panting short and quick even as a
dog pants, while a certain vibration seemed to run along the rough
ironwork against which she leaned. And by these signs Helen judged her
speech, though unanswered, had not been wholly in vain. From below, the
luscious fragrance of the garden, the chime of falling water, and the
urgent voice of the painted pleasure-city came up about her. Night had
veiled the face of Naples, even as Helen's own. Yet lines of
innumerable lights described the suave curve of the bay, climbed the
heights of Posilipo, were doubled in the oily waters of the harbour,
spread abroad alluring gaiety in the wide piazzas, and shone like
watchful and soliciting eyes from out the darkness of narrow street,
steep lane, and cutthroat alley. While, above all that, high uplifted
against the opacity of the starless sky, a blood-red beacon burned on
the summit of Vesuvius, the sombre glow of it reflected upon the
underside of the masses of downward-rolling smoke as upon the belly of
some slow-crawling, monstrous serpent.
Suddenly Helen spoke once again, and with apparent inconsequence.
"Richard, you must have known she could never satisfy you--why did you
try to marry Constance Quayle?"
"To escape."
"From whom--from me?"
"From myself, which is much the same thing as saying from you, I
suppose."
"And you could not escape?"
"So it seems."
"But--but, dear Richard," she said plaintively, yet with very winning
sweetness, "why, after all, should you want so desperately to escape?"
Richard moved a little farther from her.
"I have already explained that to you, to the point of insult, so you
tell me," he said. "Surely it is unnecessary to go over the ground
again?"
"You carry your idealism to the verge of slight absurdity," she
answered. "Oh! you of altogether too little faith, how should you gauge
the full flavour of the fruit till you have set your teeth in it?
Better, far better, be a sacramentalist like me and embrace the idea
through the act, than refuse the act in dread of imperiling the
dominion of the idea. You put the cart before the horse with a
vengeance, Dickie! There's such a thing as being so reverently-minded
towards your god that he ceases to be the very least profit or use to
you."
And again she heard that panting breath beside her. Again laughter
bubbled up in her fair throat, and her hands fell to weaving the soft,
outer darkness.
"You must perceive that it cannot end here and thus," she said
presently.
"Of course not," he answered. Then, after a moment's pause, he added
coldly enough:--"I foresaw that, so I gave orders yesterday that the
yacht was not to be laid up, but only to coal and provision, and
undergo some imperatively necessary repairs. She should be ready for
sea by the end of the week."
Helen turned sideways, and the bland light, from the room within,
touched her face now as well as her kneeling figure.
"And then, and then?" she demanded, almost violently.
"Then I shall go," Richard replied. "Where, I do not yet know, but as
far, anyhow, as the coal in the yacht's bunkers will drive her.
Distance is more important than locality just now. And I leave you here
at the villa, Helen. Do not regret that you came. I don't."
He too had turned to the light, which revealed his face ravaged and
aged by stress of emotion, revealed too the homelessness, as of empty
space, resident in his eyes.
"I shall be glad to remember the place pleases and speaks to you. It
has been rather a haven of rest to me during these last two years. You
would have had it at my death, in any case. You have it a little
sooner--that's all."
But Helen held out her arms.
"The villa, the villa," she cried, "what do I want with that! God in
heaven, are you utterly devoid of all sensibility, all heart? Or are
you afraid--afraid even yet, oh, very chicken-livered lover--that
behind the beauty of Naples you may find the filth? It is not so,
Dickie. It is not so, I tell you.--Look at me. What would you have
more? Surely, for any man, my love is good enough!"
And then hurriedly, with a rustling of silken skirts, hot with anger
from head to heel, she sprang to her feet.
Across the room one of the men-servants advanced.
"The carriage is at the door, sir," he said.
And Madame de Vallorbes' voice broke in with a singular lightness and
nonchalance:--
"Surely it is rather imprudent to go out again to-night? You told me,
at dinner, you were not well, that you had had a touch of fever."
She held out her hand, smiling serenely.
"Be advised," she said--"avoid malaria. I shall see you before I go
to-morrow? Yes--an afternoon train, I think. Good-night, we meet at
breakfast as usual."
She stepped in at the window, gathered up certain small properties--a
gold scent-bottle, one or two books, a blotting-case, as with a view to
final packing and departure. Just as she reached the door she heard
Richard say curtly:--
"Send the carriage round. I shall not want it to-night."
But even so Helen did not turn back. On the contrary, she ran, light of
foot as the little dancer, of long ago, with blush-roses in her hat,
through all the suite of rooms to her own sea-blue, sea-green
bedchamber, and there, sitting down before the toilet-table, greeted
her own radiant image in the glass. Her lips were very red. Her eyes
shone like pale stars on a windy night.
"Quick, quick, undress me, Zelie! Put me to bed. I am simply expiring
of fatigue," she said.
CHAPTER IX
CONCERNING THAT DAUGHTER OF CUPID AND PSYCHE WHOM MEN CALL VOLUPTAS
The furniture, though otherwise of the customary proportions, had all
been dwarfed. This had been achieved in some cases by ingenious design
in its construction, in others by the simple process of cutting down,
thus reducing table and chair, couch and bureau, in itself of whatever
grace of style, dignity of age, or fineness of workmanship, to an
equality of uncomely degradation in respect of height. The resultant
effect was of false perspective. Nor was this unpleasing effect
lessened by the proportions of the room itself. In common with all
those of the _entresol_, it was noticeably low in relation to its
length and width, while the stunted vaultings of its darkly-frescoed
ceiling produced an impression of heaviness rather than of space.
Bookcases, dwarfed as were all the other furnishings, lined the walls
to within about two feet of the spring of the said vaulting. Made of
red cedar and unpolished, the cornices and uprights of them were carved
with arabesques in high relief. An antique, Persian carpet, sombre in
colouring and of great value, covered the greater portion of the pale
pink and gray mosaic pavement of the floor. Thick, rusty-red,
Genoa-velvet curtains were drawn over each low, square window. A fire
of logs burned on the open hearth. And this notwithstanding the
unaccustomed warmth of the outside air, did but temper the chill
atmosphere of the room and serve to draw a faint aroma from the carven
cedar wood.
It was here, to his library,--carried down-stairs by his men-servants
as a helpless baby-child might be,--that Richard Calmady had come when
Helen de Vallorbes departed so blithely to her bedchamber. And it was
here he remained, though nearly two hours had elapsed since then,
finding sleep impossible.
For the wakefulness and unrest of rapidly breeding illness were upon
him. His senses and his will had been in very active conflict. Desire
had licked him, as with fiery tongues, driving him onward. Honour,
self-contempt in face of temptation to sensual indulgence, an
aspiration after somewhat stoic asceticism which had come to influence
his action of late, held him back. But now, here and alone, the
immediately provoking cause of passion removed, reaction against the
strain of all that had very sensibly set in. He felt strangely astray,
as though drifting at hazard upon the waters of an unquiet,
mist-blinded sea. He was conscious of a deep-seated preoccupation
regarding some matter, which he was alike unable to forget or to
define. Formless images perplexed his vision. Formless thoughts pursued
one another, as with the hurry of rumoured calamity, through his mind.
A desolating apprehension of things insufficiently developed, of the
inconclusive, the immature, the unattained, of things mutilated, things
unfinished, born out of due time and incomplete, oppressed his fancy.
Even the events of the last few hours, in which he had played so
considerable a part, took on a shadowy semblance, ceased to appeal to
him as realities, began to merge themselves in that all-pervading
apprehension of defectiveness, of that which is wanting, lopped off, so
to speak, and docked. It was to him as though all natural, common-sense
relations were in abeyance, as though his own, usually precise, mental
processes were divorced from reason and experience, had got out of
perspective, in short--even as this low, wide, cedar-scented library,
of which the vaulted ceiling seemed to approach unduly close to the
mosaic, marble floor, and all its dwarfed furnishings, its squat tables
and almost legless chairs, had got out of perspective.
The alternate purposeless energy and weariful weakness of fever, just
as the alternate dry flush and trembling chill of it, distressed him.
He had slipped on a smoking-coat, but even the weight of this thin,
silk garment seemed oppressive, although, now and again, he felt as
though around his middle he wore a belt of ice. Not without
considerable exertion he rolled forward a couch--wide, high-backed,
legless, mounted upon little wheels--to the vicinity of the fire. He
drew himself up on to it and rested among the piled-up cushions.
Perhaps, if he waited, exercising patience, sleep might mercifully
visit him and deliver him from this intolerable confusion of mind.
Deliver him, too, from that hideous apprehension of universal
mutilation, of maimed purposes, maimed happenings, of a world peopled
by beings maimed as he was himself, but after a more subtle and
intimate fashion, a fashion intellectual or moral rather than merely
physical, so that they had to him, just now, an added hatefulness of
specious lying, since to ordinary seeing they appeared whole, while
whole they truly and actually were not.
Sternly he tried to shake himself free of these morbid fancies, to
bring his imagination under control and force himself once again to
join hands with reality and common sense. And, to this end, he turned
his attention to the consideration of practical matters. He dwelt on
the details of the coaling and revictualing of his yacht, upon the
objective of the voyage upon which he proposed to start a few days
hence. He reviewed the letters which must be written and the
arrangements which must be made with a view to putting his cousin
legally in possession of the villa, the rent of which he proposed still
to pay to her husband. This suite of rooms he would retain for his own
use. That was necessary, obligatory. Yet, why must he retain it? He did
not propose to return and live here at any future time. This episode
was over--or rather, had it not simply failed of completion? Was it
not, like all the rest, maimed, lopped off ungainly, docked? Then,
where came in the obligation to reserve these rooms? He could not
remember. Yet he knew that he was compelled to do so, because--because----
And, once again, Richard's power of concentration broke down. Once
again his thought eluded him, becoming tangled, fugitive, not to be
grasped. While, like swarms of shrill squeaking bats disturbed in the
recesses of some age-old cavern by sudden intrusion of voices and of
lights, half-formed visions, half-formed ideas, once again, flapped
duskily about him, torturing in their multiplicity alike to his senses
and his brain. He fought with them, striving to beat them off in a
madness of disgust, half suffocated by the fanning of their foul and
stifling wings. Then, exhausted by the conflict, he stumbled and fell,
while they closed down on him. And he, losing consciousness, slept.
That unconsciousness lasted in point of fact but for a few minutes. Yet
to Richard those minutes were as years, as centuries. At length, still
heavy with dreamless slumber, he was aware of the stealthy turning of a
key in a lock. Little padding foot-falls, soft as those of some strong,
yet dainty, cat-creature crossed the carpet. A whisper of silk came
along with them, like the murmur of the breeze in an oak grove on a
clear, hot, summer noon, or the sibilant ripple of the sea upon spaces
of fine-ribbed, yellow sand. And the impression produced upon Richard
was delicious, as of one passing from a close room into the open air.
Confusion and exhaustion left him. Energy returned. The energy of
breeding fever merely, yet to him it appeared that of refreshment, of
renewed and abounding health. He was conscious, too, of a will outside
himself, acting upon his will--a will self-secure, impregnable, working
with triumphant daring towards a single end. It certainly was
unmaimed--in its present manifestation in any case. It told, and with
assurance, of completion, of attainment. Yielding himself to it, with
something of the recklessness a man yields himself to the poison which
yet promises relief, Richard opened his eyes.
Before him stood Helen de Vallorbes. In one hand she carried a little
lamp. In the other her high-heeled, cloth-of-gold slippers. Her feet
were bare. In the haste of the journey, from her bedchamber up-stairs
through the great rooms and down the marble stairs, the fronts of the
sea-blue, sea-green dressing-gown she wore had flown apart, thus
disclosing not only her delicate night-dress, but--since this last was
fine to the point of transparency--all the secret loveliness of her
body and her limbs. Her shining hair curled low upon her forehead, half
concealed her pretty ears, and lay upon her shoulders like a little,
golden cape. And, from out this brightness of her hair, the exultant
laughter bubbling in her throat, the small lamp carried high in one
hand, she looked down at Richard Calmady.
"I waited till the hours grew old and you did not come to me, so I have
come to you, Dickie," she said. "Let what will happen to-morrow, this
very certainly shall happen to-night--that with you and me Love shall
have his own way, speak his own language, be worshipped with the rites,
be found in the sacraments, ordained by himself, and to which all
nature is, and has been, obedient since life on earth first began!"
Not till the gray of a rain-washed, windy morning had come, and Naples
had put off its merry sinning, changing from a city of pleasure to a
city of labour and, too often, of callously inflicted pain, did Helen
de Vallorbes leave the cedar-scented library. The fire of logs had
burnt itself out upon the hearth, and other fires, perhaps, had pretty
thoroughly burnt themselves out likewise. Then, with the extinguished
lamp in one hand and her high-heeled, cloth-of-gold slippers in the
other, she had run swiftly, barefoot, up the cold, marble stairs,
through the suite of lofty rooms, her image, in the bleak dimness of
the wet morning, given back by their tall mirrors as that of no mortal
woman but some fear-driven, hurrying ghost. Carefully closing the door
of the bedchamber behind her, she threw her dressing-gown aside and
buried herself in the luxurious softness of the unslept-in bed. And she
was only just in time. Servants began to move to and fro. The house was
awake.
CHAPTER X
THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION
Sullenly, persistently, the rain came down. In the harbour the wash was
just sufficient to make the raveled fruit-baskets, the shredded
vegetables, the crusts and offal thrown out from the galleys, heave and
sway upon the oily surface of the water, while screaming gulls dropped
greedily upon the floating refuse, and rising, circled over the black,
liquid lanes and open spaces between the hulls of the many ships. But
it was insufficient to lift the yacht, tied up to the southern quay of
the Porto Grande. She lay there inert and in somewhat sorry plight
under the steady downpour. For the moment all the winsome devilry of a
smart, sea-going craft was dead in her, and she sulked, ashamed through
all her eight hundred tons of wood and iron, copper, brass, and steel.
For she was coaling, over-deck, and was grimy from stem to stern.
While, arrayed in the cast clothes of all Europe, tattered, undersized,
gesticulating, the human scum of Naples swarmed up the steep, narrow
planks from the inky lighters and in over her side.
"Beastly dirty job this. Shan't get her paint clean under a week!" the
first mate grumbled to his companion, the second mate--a dark-haired,
dreamy-eyed, West-country lad, but just out of his teens.
The two officers, in dripping oilskins, stood at the gangway checking
the tally of coal-baskets as they came on board. Just now there was a
pause in the black procession, as an empty lighter sheered off, making
room for a full one to come alongside, thus rendering conversation
momentarily possible.
"Pity the boss couldn't have stayed on shore till we were through with
it and cleaned up a bit," the speaker continued. "Makes the old man no
end waxy to have any one on board when the yacht's like she is. I don't
blame him. She's as neat and pretty as a white daisy in a green pasture
when she's away to sea. And now, poor little soul, she's a regular
slut."
"I know I'd 'ave stayed ashore fast enough if I was the boss," the boy
said, half wistfully. "That villa of his is like a piece of poetry. I
keep on saying over to myself how it looks."
"Oh! it's not so bad for foreign parts," the senior officer replied.
"And you're young yet and soft, Penberthy. You'll come of that
presently. England's best for houses, town and country, and most other
things--women, and fights, and even sunshine, for when you do get
sunshine at home there's no spite in it.--Hi! there you ganger," he
shouted suddenly, and resentfully, leaning out over the bulwarks,
"hurry 'em up a bit, can't you? You don't suppose I mean to stand here
till the second anniversary of the Day of Judgment, watching your
blithering, chicken-shanked macaronies suck rotten oranges, do you?
Start 'em up again. Whatever are you waiting for, man? Start 'em up, I
say."
The boy's dreamy eyes, full of unwritten verse, dwelt with a curious
indifference upon the broken procession of ascending, black figures. He
had but lately joined, and to him both the fine vessel and her owner
were invested with a certain romance.
"What was the fancy for calling the yacht the _Reprieve_?" he asked
presently.
"Wait till you've had the chance to take a good look at Sir Richard,
and you'll answer your question yourself," the other man answered
oracularly. Then he broke out again into sustained invective:--"Hold up
there, you little fool of a tight-rope-dancing, _bella Napoli_ gorilla,
and don't go dropping good, honest, Welsh steam-coal overboard into
your confounded, stinking local sewer! I don't care to see any of your
blamed posturings, don't flatter yourself. Hold up you grimacing, great
grandson of a lousy she-ape, can't you, and walk straight.--Take him
all round Sir Richard Calmady's the best boss I ever sailed with--one
of the sternest, but the civilest too.--Shove 'em along, ganger, will
you. Shove 'em along, I say.--He's one of the few men I've loved, I'm
not ashamed to say it, Mr. Penberthy, and about the only one I ever
remember to have feared, in my life."
Meanwhile, if the scene to seaward was cheerless, that to landward
offered but small improvement. For the murk of low-brooding cloud and
falling rain blotted out the Castel S. Elmo, and the Capo di Monte and
Pizzafalcone heights. Even the Castello del'Ovo down on the shore line,
comparatively near at hand, loomed up but a denser mass of indigo-gray
amid the all obtaining grayness. The tall multi-coloured,
many-shuttered houses fronting the quays--restaurants, _cafes_,
money-changers' bureaux, ships' chandlers, and slopshops--looked tawdry
and degraded as a clown's painted face seen by daylight. Thick,
malodorous vapours arose from the squalid streets, lying back on the
level, and from the crowded shipping of the port. These hung in the
stagnant air, about the forest of masts and the funnels of steamers.
And the noise of the place was as that of Bedlam let loose.--The
long-drawn, chattering rush of the coal pitched from the baskets down
the echoing, iron shoots. The grate and scream of saws cutting through
blocks of stone and marble. The grind of heavy wheels upon the broken,
irregular flags. The struggling clatter of hoofs, lashing of whips,
squeal of mules, savage voices raised in cries and imprecations. The
clank and roar of machinery. The repeated bellowing of a great liner,
blowing off steam as she took up her berth in the outer harbour. The
shattering rattle of the chains of a steam crane, when the monster
iron-arm swung round seeking or depositing its burden and the crank ran
out in harsh anger, as it seemed, and defiance. And through all this,
as under-current, the confused clamour of the ever-shifting,
ever-present crowd, and the small, steady drip of the rain. Squalid,
sordid, brutal even, the coarse actualities of her trade and her
poverty alike disclosed, her fictions and her foulness uncondoned by
reconciling sunshine, Naples had declined from radiant goddess to
common drab.
It was in this character that Richard Calmady, driving yesterday, and
for the first time, through the streets at noon, had been fated to see
his so fondly-idealised city. It was in this character that he
apprehended it again to-day, waiting in his deck-cabin until cessation
of the rain and on-coming of the friendly dusk should render it not
wholly odious to sit out on deck. The hours lagged, and even this
bright and usually spotless apartment--with its shining, white walls,
its dark, blue leather and polished, mahogany fittings--the coal dust
penetrated. It rimmed the edge of the books neatly ranged on the racks.
It smirched the charts laid out on the square locker-table below. It
drifted in at the cabin windows, along with the babel of sound and the
all-pervading stench of the port. This was, in itself, sufficiently
distasteful, sufficiently depressing. And to Richard, just now, the
disgust of it came with the heightened sensibility of physical illness,
and as accompaniment to an immense private shame and immense
self-condemnation, a conviction of outlawry and a desolation passing
speech. He looked for comfort, for promise of restoration, and found
none, in things material or things intellectual, in others or in
himself. For his mind, always prone to apprehend by images rather than
by words, and to advance by analogy rather than by argument,
discovered, in surrounding aspects and surrounding circumstance, a
rather hideously apt parable and illustration of its present state.
Just as this seemingly fair city was proven, on intimate acquaintance,
repulsive beyond the worst he had ever feared and earnestly refused to
know of it, so a certain fair woman, upon whom, since boyhood, his
best, most chivalrous, most unselfish, affections had centred, was
proven--herself, moreover, flagrantly contributing to that
proving--vile beyond all that rumor, heard and passionately denied by
him, had ever ventured to whisper concerning her. Nor was the misery of
this revelation lessened by the knowledge that his own part in it all
had been very base. He had sinned before. He would sin again probably.
Richard had long ceased to regard these matters from a strictly
puritanic standpoint. But this particular sinning was different to any
that had gone before, or which could come after it. For it partook--so
at least, it now appeared to him--of the nature of sacrilege, since he
had sinned against his ideal, degrading that to gross uses which he had
agreed with himself to hold sacred, defiling it and, thereby, very
horribly defiling himself.
And this disgrace of their relation, his own and hers, the inherent
abomination of it all and its inherent falsity, had been forced home on
him with a certain violence of directness just in the common course of
daily happenings. For among the letters, brought to him along with his
first breakfast, yesterday, after that night of secret licence, had
been three of serious import. One was from Lady Calmady, and that he
put aside with a certain anger, calling himself unwilling, knowing
himself unfit, to read it. Another he tore open. The handwriting was
unknown to him. He began reading it in bewilderment. Then he
understood.
"MONSIEUR,"--it ran,--"You are in process of exterminating me. But,
since I have reason to believe that no sufficient opportunity has been
afforded you of realising the enormity of your conduct, I rally the
profoundness of nobility which I discover within me--I calm myself. I
go further, I explain. Living in retirement, you may not have learned
that I am in Naples. I followed your cousin here--Madame de Vallorbes.
My connection with her represents the supreme passion of my passionate
youth. At once a frenzy and an anodyne, I have found in it the
inspiration of my genius in its later development. This work must not
be put a stop to. It is too majestic, it is weighted with too serious
consequences to the whole of thinking France, of thinking Europe. A
less experienced woman cannot satisfy the extravagance of my desires,
the demands of my all-consuming imagination. The reverence with which a
person, such as yourself, must regard commanding talent, the
concessions he must be willing to make to its necessities, are without
limit. This I cannot doubt that you will admit. The corollary is
obvious. Either, _monsieur_, you will immediately invite me to reside
with you at your villa--thereby securing for yourself daily intercourse
with a nature of distinguished merit--or you will restore Madame de
Vallorbes to me without hesitation or delay. Her devotion to me is
absolute. How could it fail to be so, since I have lavished upon her
the treasures of my extraordinary personality? But a fear of insular
prejudice on your part withholds her at this moment from full
expression of that devotion. She suffers as well as myself. It will be
your privilege to put a term to this suffering by requesting me to join
her, or by restoring her to me. To do otherwise will be to prolong the
eclipse of my genius, and thereby outrage the conscience of civilised
humanity which breathlessly awaits the next utterance of its chosen
poet. If you require the consolation of feminine society, marry--it
would be very simple--some white-souled, English miss. But restore to
me, to whom her presence is indispensable, this woman of regal
passions. I shall present myself at your house to-day to receive your
answer in person. The result of a refusal on your part to receive me
will be attended by calamitous consequences to yourself.--Accept,
_monsieur_, the expression of my highest consideration,
"PAUL AUGUSTE DESTOURNELLE."
For the moment Richard saw red, mad with rage at the insolence of the
writer. And then came the question, was it true, this which the letter
implied? Had Helen, indeed, lied to him? And, notwithstanding its
insane vanity, did this precious epistle give a more veracious account
of her relation to the young poet than that which she had herself
volunteered? He tried to put the thought from him. Who was he--to-day
of all days--to be nice about the conduct of another? Who was he to sit
in judgment? So he turned to his correspondence again, taking another
letter, at random, from the pile. And then, looking at the
superscription, he turned somewhat sick.
"MON CHER,"--wrote M. de Vallorbes,--"My steward informs me that he has
just received your draft for a quarter's rent of the villa. I thank you
a thousand times for your admirable punctuality. Decidedly you are of
those with whom it is a consolation to do business. Need I assure you
that the advent of this money is far from inopportune, since a grateful
country, while showering distinctions upon me with one hand, with the
other picks my pocket. I find it not a little expensive this famous
military service! But then, ever since I can remember, I have found all
that afforded me the slightest, active pleasure equally that! And this
sport of war, I promise you, is the most excellent sport in which I
have as yet participated. It satisfies the primitive instincts more
thoroughly than even your English fox-hunting. A _battue_ of
_Communards_ is obviously superior to a _battue_ of pheasants. To the
dignity of killing one's fellow-men is added the satisfaction of
ridding oneself of vermin. It becomes a matter of sanitation and
self-respect. And this, indirectly, recalls to me, that report declares
my wife to be with you at Naples. _Mon cher je vous en fais cadeau_.
With you, at least, I know that my honour is safe. You may even instil
into her mind some faint conception of the rudiments of morality. To be
frank with you, she needs that. A couple of months ago she did me the
honour to elope--temporarily, of course--with M. Paul Destournelle. You
may have glanced, one day, at his crapulous verses. I suppose honour
demanded that I should pursue the guilty pair and account for one, if
not both, of them. But I was too busily engaged with my little
_Communards_. We set these gentry up against a wall and dispose of them
in batches. I have had a good deal of this, but, as I say, it has not
yet become monotonous. Traits of individual character lend it vivacity.
And then, putting aside the exigencies of my profession, I do not know
that anything is to be gained by inviting public scandal. You have an
English proverb to the effect that one should wash one's dirty linen at
home. This I have tried to do, as you cannot but be aware, all along.
If one has had the misfortune to marry Messalina, one learns to be
philosophic. A few lovers more or less, in that connection, what, after
all, does it matter? Indeed, I begin to derive ironical consolation
from the fact of their multiplicity. The existence of one would have
constituted a reflection upon my charms. But a matter of ten, fifteen,
twenty, ceases to be in any degree personal to myself. Only I object to
Destournelle. He is too young, too _rococco_. He represents a descent
in the scale. I prefer _des hommes mures_, generals, ministers,
princes. The devil knows we have had our share of such! Your generosity
to her has saved us from Jews so far, and from _nouveaux riches_, by
relieving the business of commercial aspects. Give her some salutary
advice, therefore, _mon cher_, and if she becomes inconvenient forward
her to Paris. I forgive to seventy-times-seven, being still proud
enough to struggle after an appearance of social and conjugal decency.
_Enfin_ it is a relief to have unburdened myself for once, and you have
been the good genius of my unfortunate _menage_, for which heaven
reward you.--Yours, in true cousinly regard and supreme reliance on
your discretion,
"LUIGI ANGELO FRANCESCO DE VALLORBES."
That this, in any case, had a stamp of sincerity upon it, Richard could
not doubt. It must be admitted that he had long ceased to accept Madame
de Vallorbes' estimate of her husband with unqualified belief. But, be
that as it might, whether he were a consummate, or merely an average,
profligate, one thing was certain that this man trusted him--Richard
Calmady,--and that he--Richard Calmady--had very vilely betrayed that
trust. He stared at the letter, and certain sentences in it seemed to
sear him, even as the branding-iron used on a felon might. This was a
new shame, different to, and greater than, any his deformity had ever
induced in him, even as evil done is different to, and greater than,
evil suffered. Morality may be relative only and conventional. Honour,
for all persons of a certain standing and breeding, remains absolute.
And it was precisely of his own honour that he had deprived himself.
Not only in body, but in character, he was henceforth monstrous. For a
while Richard had remained very still, looking at this thing into which
he had made himself as though it were external and physically visible
to him.
Then, suddenly, he had reached out his hand for his mother's letter. A
decision of great moment was impending. He would know what she had to
say before finally making that decision. He wondered bitterly, grimly,
whether her words would plunge him yet deeper in this abyss of
self-hatred and self-contempt.
MY DARLING,"--she wrote,--"I am foolishly glad to learn that you are
back at Naples. It gives me comfort to know you are even thus much
nearer home and in a country where I too have traveled and of which I
retain many dear and delightful recollections. You may be surprised,
perhaps, to see the unaccustomed address upon my note-paper and may
wonder what has made me guilty of deserting my post. Now, since the
worst of it is certainly over, I may tell you that my health has failed
a good deal of late. Nothing of a really serious nature--you need not
be alarmed about me. But I had got into a rather weak and unworthy
state, from which it became very desirable I should rouse myself.
Selfishness is insidious, but none the less reprehensible because it
takes the apparently innocent form of sitting in a chair with one's
eyes shut! However, that best of men, John Knott, brought very bracing
influences to bear on me, convincing me of sin--in the gentlest way in
the world--by means of Honoria St. Quentin. And so I picked myself up,
dear Dickie,--picked the whole of myself up, as I hope, always saving
and excepting my self-indulgent inertia,--and came away here to
Ormiston. At first, I confess, I felt very much like a dog at a fair,
or the proverbial mummy at a feast. But they all bore with me in the
plenty of their kindness, and, in the last week, I have banished the
mummy and trained the scared dog to altogether polite and pretty
behaviour. Till I came back to it, I hardly realised how truly I loved
this place. How should it be otherwise? I met your father first here
after his third term at Eton. I remember he snubbed me roundly. I met
him again the year before our marriage. Without vanity I declare that
then he snubbed me not one little bit. These things are very far away.
But to me, though far away, they are very vivid and very lovely. I see
them as you, when you were small, so often pleaded to see a fairy
landscape by looking through the large end of the gold and
tortoise-shell spy-glass upon my writing-table. All of which may seem
to you somewhat childish and trivial, but I grow an old woman and have
a fancy for toys and tender make-believes--such as fairy landscapes
seen through the big end of a spy-glass. The actual landscape, at
times, is a trifle discouragingly rain-washed and cloudy!---Roger and
Mary are here. Their two boys are just gone back to school again. They
are fine, courteous, fearless, little fellows. Roger makes a rather
superb middle-aged man. He has much of my father--your grandfather's
reticence and dignity. Indeed, he might prove slightly alarming, was
one not so perfectly sure of him, dear creature. Mary remains, as of
old, the most wholesome and helpful of women. Yes, it is good to dwell,
for a time, among one's own people. And I cannot but rejoice that my
eldest brother has come to an arrangement by which, at his death, your
Uncle William will receive a considerable sum of money in lieu of the
property. This last will go direct to Roger, and eventually to his
boys. If your Uncle William had a son, the whole matter would be
different. But I own it would hurt me that in the event of his death
there would be no Ormiston at Ormiston after these many generations. In
all probability the place would be sold immediately, moreover, for it
is an open secret that, through no fault of his own, poor man, William
is sadly embarrassed in money matters. And he has other sorrows--of a
rather terrible nature, since they are touched with disgrace. But here
you will probably detect a point of prejudice, so I had better stop!--I
look out upon a gray, northern sea, where 'the white horses fume and
fret' under a cold, gray, northern sky. The oaks in the park are just
thickening with yellow-green buds. And there, close to my window,
perched on a topmost twig, a missel-thrush is singing, facing the wind
like a gentleman. You look out upon a purple sea, I suppose, beneath
clear skies and over orange trees and palms. I wonder if any brave bird
pipes to you as my storm-cock to me? It brings up one's courage to hear
his song, so strong and wild and sweet, in the very teeth of the gale
too! But now you will have had enough of my news and more than enough.
I write to you more freely, you see, than for a long time past, being
myself more free of spirit. And therefore I dare add this, in all and
every case, my darling, God keep you. And remember, should you weary of
wandering, that not only the doors of Brockhurst, but the doors of my
heart, stand forever wide open to welcome you home.--Yours always,
K. C."
Reading which gentle, yet in a sense daring, words, Richard's shame
took on another complexion, but one by no means calculated to mitigate
the burning of it. His treachery towards de Vallorbes became almost
vulgar and of small moment beside his cruelty to this superbly
magnanimous woman, his mother. For, all these years, determinately and
of set purpose, defiant of every better impulse, he had hardened his
heart against her. To differ from her, to cherish that which was
unsympathetic to her, to put aside every tradition in which she had
nurtured him, to love that which she condemned, to condemn that which
she loved--and this, if silently, yet unswervingly--had been the ruling
purpose of his action. That which had its origin in passionate revolt
against his own unhappy disfigurement, had come to be an interest and
object in itself. In this quarrel with her--a quarrel, intimate,
pre-natal, anterior to consciousness and to volition--he found the
justification of his every lapse, his every crookedness of conduct and
of thought. Since he could not reach Almighty God, and strike at the
eternal First Cause which he held responsible for the inalienable wrong
done to him, he would strike, with cold-blooded persistence, at the
woman whom Almighty God had permitted to be His instrument in the
infliction of that wrong. And to where had that sustained purpose of
striking led him? Even--so he judged just now--to the dishonour and
desolation of to-day, following upon the sacrilegious licence of last
night.
All this Richard saw with the alternately groping, benumbed, mental
vision and the glaring, mental nakedness of breeding fever. Small
wonder that looking for comfort, for promise of restoration, he found
none in things material, in things intellectual, in others, or in
himself! He felt outcasted beyond hope of redemption, but not
repentant, hardly remorseful even, only aware of all that which had
happened, and of his own state. For Lady Calmady's letter was to him
little more, as yet, than a placing of facts. To trade upon her
magnificent generosity of affection, and seek refuge in those
outstretched arms now, with the mark of the branding-iron so sensibly
upon him, appeared to him of all contemptible doings the most radically
contemptible. Obviously it was impossible to go back. He must go on
rather--out of sight, out of mind. Fantastic schemes of disappearing,
of losing himself, far away, in remote and nameless places, among the
coral islands of the Pacific or the chill majesty of the Antarctic
seas, offered themselves to his imagination. The practical difficulties
presented by such schemes, their infeasibility, did not trouble him. He
would sever all connection with that which had been, with that which
had made for good equally with that which had made for evil. By his own
voluntary act and choice he would become as a man dead, the disgrace of
his malformed body, the closer and more hideous disgrace of his defiled
and prostituted soul, surviving in legend merely, as might some ugly,
old-time fable useful for the frightening of unruly babies.
And to that end of self-obliteration he instantly applied himself, with
outward calm, but with the mental hurry and restlessness of increasing
illness. His first duty was to end the whole matter of his relation to
Helen,--Helen shorn of her divinity, convicted liar and wanton, yet
mistress still for him, as he feared, of mighty enchantments. So he
wrote to her very briefly. The note should be given her later in the
day. In it he stated that he should have left the villa before this
announcement reached her, left it finally and without remotest prospect
of return, since he could not doubt that she recognised, as he did, how
impossible it had become that he and she should meet again. He added
that he would communicate with her shortly as to business arrangements.
That done, he summoned Powell, his valet, bidding him pack. He would go
down to the yacht at once. He had received information which made it
imperative that he should quit Naples immediately.
To be out of all this, rid of it, fairly started on the road of
negation of social being, negation of recognised existence, infected
him like a madness. But even the most forceful human will must bend to
stupidities of detail and of material fact. Unexpected delays had
occurred. The yacht was not ready for sea, neither coaled, nor
provisioned, nor sound of certain small damages to her machinery.
Vanstone, the captain, might mislay his temper, and the first mate
expend himself in polysyllabic invective, young Penberthy cease to
dream, stewards, engineers, carpenters, cooks, quartermasters, seamen,
firemen, do their most willing and urgent best, nevertheless the
morning of next day, and even the afternoon of it, still found Richard
Calmady seated at the locker-table of the white-walled deck-cabin, his
voyage towards self-obliteration not yet begun.
Charts were outspread before him, upon which, at weary intervals, he
essayed to trace the course of his coming wanderings. But his brain was
dull, he had no power of consecutive thought. That same madness of
going was upon him with undiminished power, yet he knew not where he
wanted to go, hardly why he wanted to go, only that a blind obsession
of going drove him. He was miserably troubled about other matters
too--about that same brief letter he had written to Helen before
leaving the villa. He was convinced that he had written such a letter,
but struggle as he might to remember the contents of it they remained
to him a blank. He was haunted by the fear that in that letter he had
committed some irremediable folly, had bound himself to some absurdly
unworthy course of action. But what it might be escaped and, in
escaping, tortured him. And then, this surely was Friday, and Morabita
sang at the San Carlo to-night? And surely he had promised to be there,
and to meet the famous _prima donna_ and sup with her after the
performance, as in former days at Vienna? He had not always been quite
kind to her, poor, dear, fat, good-natured, silly soul! He could not
fail her now.--And then he went back to a chart of the South Pacific
again. Only he could not see it plainly, but saw, instead of it, the
great folio of copper-plate engravings lying on the broad window-seat
of the eastern bay of the Long Gallery at home. He was sitting there to
watch for the race-horses coming back from exercise, Tom Chifney
pricking along beside them on his handsome cob. And the long-ago,
boyish desperation of longing for wholeness, for freedom, brought a
moistness to his eyes, and a lump into his throat. And all the while
the coal dust drifted in at each smallest crevice and aperture, and the
air was vibrant with rasping, jarring uproar and nauseous with the
stale, heavy odours of the city and the port. And steadily,
ceaselessly, the descending rain drummed upon the roofing overhead.
At length a stupor took him. His head sunk upon his arms, folded upon
those outspread charts, while the noise of all the rude activities
surrounding him subtly transformed itself into that of a great
orchestra. And above this, superior to, yet nobly supported by it,
Morabita's voice rose in the suave and passionate phrases of the
glorious cavatina--"_Ernani, Ernani, involami, all aborito
ampleso._"--Yes, her voice was as good as ever! Richard drew a long
breath of relief. Here, at least, was something true to itself, and
amid so much of change, so much of spoiling, still unspoilt! He raised
his head and listened. For something must have happened, something of
serious moment. The orchestra, for some unaccountable reason, had
suddenly broken down. Yes, it must be the orchestra which disaster had
overtaken, for a voice very certainly continued. No, not a voice, but
voices--those of Vanstone the captain, and Price the first mate, and
old Billy Tinn the boatswain--loud, imperative, violently remonstrant,
but swept under and swamped at moments by cries and volleys of foulest,
Neapolitan _argot_ from hoarse, Neapolitan throats. And that abruptly
silenced orchestra?--Richard came back to himself, came back to
actualities of environment and prosaic fact. An infinitely weariful
despair seized him. For the sound that had reached so sudden a
termination was not that of cunningly-attuned, musical instruments, but
the long-drawn, chattering rush of the coal, pitched from the baskets
down the echoing, iron shoots.
The cabin door opened discreetly and Powell, incarnation of decorous
punctualities even amid existing tumultuously discomposing
circumstances, entered.
"From the villa, sir," he said, depositing letters and newspapers upon
the table.
Richard put out his hand, turned them over mechanically. For again,
somehow, notwithstanding the babel without, that exquisite
invitation--"_Ernani, Ernani, involami_,"--assailed his ears.
The valet waited a little, quiet and deferential in bearing, yet
observing his master with a certain keenness and anxiety.
"I saw Mr. Bates, as you desired, sir," he said at last.
Richard looked up at him vaguely. And it struck him that while Powell
was on shore to-day he had undoubtedly had his hair cut. This
interested him--though why, he would have found it difficult to say.
"Mr. Bates thought you should be informed that a gentleman called early
yesterday afternoon, as he said by appointment."
Yes--certainly Powell had had his hair cut.--"Did the gentleman give
his name?"
"Yes, sir, M. Paul Destournelle."
Powell spoke slowly, getting his tongue carefully round the foreign
syllables, and, for all the confusion of his hearer's mind, the name
went home. Vagueness passed from Richard's glance.
"He was refused, of course."
"Her ladyship had given orders that should any person of that name call
he was to be admitted."--Powell spoke with evident reluctance.
"Consequently Mr. Bates was uncertain how to act, having received
contrary orders from you, sir, the day before yesterday. He explained
this to her ladyship, but she insisted."
Richard's mind had become perfectly lucid.
"Very well," he said coldly.
"Mr. Bates also thought you should know, sir, that after M.
Destournelle's visit her ladyship announced she should not remain at
the villa. She left about five o'clock, taking her maid. Charles
followed with all the baggage."
The valet paused. Richard's manner was decidedly discouraging, yet,
something further must at least be intimated.
"Her ladyship gave no address to Mr. Bates for the forwarding of her
letters."
But here the cabin door, left slightly ajar by Powell, was opened wide,
and that with none of the calm and discretion displayed by the
functionary in question. A long perspective of grimy deck behind him,
his oilskins shiny from the wet, with trim, black beard, square-made,
bold-eyed, hot-tempered, warm-hearted, alert, humorous--typical West
Countryman as his gentle dreamy cousin, Penberthy, the second mate,
though of a very different type--stood Captain Vanstone. His
easily-ruffled temper suffered from the after effects of what is
commonly known as a "jolly row," and his speech was curt in consequence
thereof.
"Sorry to disturb you, Sir Richard," he said, "and still more sorry to
disappoint you, but it can't be helped."
Dickie turned upon him so strangely drawn and haggard a countenance,
that Vanstone with difficulty repressed an exclamation. He looked in
quick inquiry at the valet, who so far departed from his usual decorum
as to nod his head in assent to the silent questioning.
"What's wrong now?" Richard said.
"Why, these beggarly rascals have knocked off. Price offered them a
higher scale of pay. I had empowered him to do so. But they won't
budge. The rain's washed the heart out of them. We've tried persuasion
and we've tried threats--it's no earthly use. Not a basket more coal
will they put on board before five to-morrow morning."
"Can't we sail with what we have got?"
"Not enough to carry us to Port Said."
"What will be the extent of the delay this time?" Richard asked. His
tone had an edge to it.
Again Captain Vanstone glanced at the valet.
"With luck we may get off to-morrow about midnight."
He stepped back, shook himself like a big dog, scattering the water off
his oilskins in a shower upon the slippery deck. Then he came inside
the cabin and stood near Richard. His expression was very kindly,
tender almost.
"You must excuse me, sir," he said. "I know it doesn't come within my
province to give you advice. But you do look pretty ill, Sir Richard.
Every one's remarking that. And you are ill, sir--you know it, and I
know it, and Mr. Powell here knows it. You ought to see a doctor,
sir--and if you'll pardon plain language, this beastly cess-pit of a
harbour is not a fit place for you to sleep in."
And poor Dickie, after an instant of sharp annoyance, touched by the
man's honest humanity smiled upon him--a smile of utter weariness,
utter homelessness.
"Perfectly true. Get me out to sea then, Vanstone. I shall be better
there than anywhere else," he said.
Whereupon the kindly sailor-man turned away, swearing gently into his
trim, black beard.
But the valet remained, impassive in manner, actively anxious at heart.
"Have you any orders for the carriage, sir?" he asked. "Garcia drove me
down. I told him to wait until I had inquired."
Richard was long in replying. His brain was all confused and clouded
again, while again he heard the voice of the famous soprano--"_Ernani,
Ernani, involami_."
"Yes," he said at last. "Tell Garcia to be here in good time to drive
me to the San Carlo. I have an appointment at the opera to-night."
CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH DICKIE GOES TO THE END OF THE WORLD AND LOOKS OVER THE WALL
The opera box, which Richard Calmady had rented along with the Villa
Vallorbes, was fifth from the stage on the third tier, to the right of
the vast horseshoe. Thus situated, it commanded a very comprehensive
view of the interior of the house. The _parterre_--its somewhat
comfortless seats, rising as on iron stilts, as they recede, row by
row, from the proscenium--was packed. While, since the aristocratic
world had not yet left town, the boxes--piled, tier above tier, without
break of dress-circle or gallery, right up to the lofty roof--were
well-filled. And it was the effect of these last that affected Richard
oddly, displeasingly, as, helped by Powell and Andrews,--the first
footman, who acted as his table-steward on board the _Reprieve_,--he
made his way slowly down to the chair, placed on the left, at the front
of the box. For the accepted aspects and relations of things seen were
remote to him. He perceived effects, shapes, associations of colour,
divorced from their habitual significance. It was as though he looked
at the written characters of a language unknown to him, observing the
form of them, but attaching no intelligible meaning to that form. And
so it happened that those many superimposed tiers of boxes were to him
as the waxen cells of a gigantic honeycomb, against the angular
darknesses of which little figures, seen to the waist, took the
light--the blond face, neck and arms of some woman, the fair colours of
her dress--and showed up with perplexing insistence. For they were all
peopled, these cells of the honeycomb, and--so it seemed to him--with
larvae, bright-hued, unworking, indolent, full-fed. Down there upon the
_parterre_, in the close-packed ranks of students, of men and women of
the middle-class, soberly attired in walking costume, he recognised the
working bees of this giant hive. By their unremitting labour the dainty
waxen cells were actually built up, and those larvae were so amply, so
luxuriously, fed. And the working bees--there were so many, so very
many of them! What if they became mutinous, rebelled against labour,
plundered and destroyed the indolent, succulent larvae of which he--yes,
he, Richard Calmady--was unquestionably and conspicuously one?
He leaned back in his chair, pulled forward the velvet drapery so as to
shut out the view of the house, and fixed his eyes upon the heads of
the musicians in the orchestra. The overture was nearly over. The
curtain would very soon go up. Then he observed that Powell still stood
near him. The man was strangely officious to-day, he thought. Could
that be connected in any way with the fact he had had his hair cut? For
a moment the notion appeared to Dickie quite extravagantly amusing. But
he kept his amusement, as so much else, to himself. And again the
working bees, down in the _parterre_, attracted his attention. They
were buzzing, buzzing angrily, displeased with the full-fed larvae in
the boxes, because these last were altogether too social, talked too
loud and too continuously, drowning the softer passages of the
overture. Those dull-coloured insects had expended store of hard-earned
_lire_ upon the queer seats they occupied, mounted as upon iron stilts.
They meant to have the whole of that which they had paid for, and hear
every note. If they swarmed, now, swarmed upward, clung along the edges
of those many tiers of boxes, punished inconsiderate insolence with
stings?---It would hardly be unjust.--But there was Powell still, clad
in sober garments. He belonged to the working bees. And Richard became
aware of a singular diffidence and embarrassment in thinking of that.
If they should swarm, those workers, he would rather the valet did not
see it, somehow. He was a good fellow, a faithful servant, a man of
nice feeling, and such an incident would place him in an awkward
position. He ought to be spared that. Carefully Dickie reasoned it all
out.
"You need not stay here any longer, Powell," he said.
"When shall I return, sir?"
The curtain went up. A roll of drums, a chorus of men's voices,
somewhat truculent, in the drinking song.
"At the end of the performance, of course."
But the valet hesitated.
"You might require to send some message, sir."
Richard stared at the chorus. The opera being performed but this once,
economy prevailed. Costumiers had ransacked their stock for discovery
of garments not unpardonably inappropriate. The result showed a fine
superiority to details of time and place. One Spanish bandit, a portly
_basso_, figured in a surprising variety of Highland dress designed,
and that locally, for a chieftain in the opera of _Lucia di
Lammermoor_. His acquaintance with the eccentricities of a kilt being
of the slightest, consequences ensued broadly humorous.--Again Dickie
experienced great amusement. But that message?--Had he really one to
send? Probably he had. He could not remember, and this annoyed him.
Possibly he might remember later. He turned to Powell, forgetting his
amusement, forgetting the too intimate personal revelations of the
unhappy _basso_.
"Yes--well--come back at the end of the second act, then," he said.
If the bees swarmed it would be over by that time, he supposed, so
Powell's return would not matter much one way or the other. A
persuasion of something momentous about to be accomplished deepened in
him. The madness of going, which had so pushed him earlier in the day,
fell dead before it. For this concourse of living creatures must be
gathered together to witness some event commensurate in importance with
the greatness of their number. He felt sure of that. Yes--before long
they would swarm. Incontestably they would swarm!--Again he drew aside
the velvet drapery and looked down curiously upon the arena and its
occupants. For a new idea had come to him regarding these last. They
still presented the effect of a throng of busy, angry insects. But
Richard knew better. He had penetrated their disguise, a disguise
assumed to insure their ultimate purpose with the greater certainty. He
knew them to be human. He knew their purpose to be a moral one. And,
looking upon them, recognising the spirit which animated them, he was
taken with a reverence and sympathy for average, toiling humanity
unfelt by him before. For he saw that by these, the workers, the final
issues are inevitably decided, by these the final verdict is
pronounced. Individually they may be contemptible, but in their
corporate intelligence, corporate strength, they are little short of
majestic. Of art, letters, practical civilisation, even religion, even,
in a degree, nature herself, they are alike architects and judges. It
must be so. It always has been so time out of mind in point of fact.
And then he wondered why they were so patient of constraint? Why had
they not risen long ago and obliterated the pretensions of those
arrogant, indolent larvae peopling the angular apertures of the honey
cells--those larvae of whom, by birth and wealth, sinfulness and
uselessness, he was himself so conspicuous an example?
But then still clearer understanding of this whole strange matter came
to him.--They, like all else,--mighty though they are in their
corporate intention,--are obedient to fate. They can only act when the
time is ripe. And then he understood yet more clearly. Their purpose in
congregating here, whether they were conscious of it or not, was
retributive. They were present to witness and to accomplish an act of
foreordained justice.--Richard paused a moment, struggling with his own
thought. And then he saw quite plainly that he himself was the object
of that act of foreordained justice, he himself was the centre of that
dimly-apprehended, approaching event. His punishment, his deliverance
by means of that punishment, was that which had brought this great
multitude together here to-night. He was awed. Yet with that awe came
thankfulness, gratitude, an immense sense of relief. He need not seek
self-obliteration, losing himself in far-away, tropic islands, or the
ice-bound regions of the uttermost South. He could stay here. Sit quite
still even--and that was well, for he was horribly tired and spent. He
need only wait. When the time was ripe, they would do all the rest--do
it for him by doing it to him.--How finely simple it all was!
Incidentally he wondered if it would hurt very much. Not that that
mattered, for beyond lay peace. Only he hoped they would get to work
pretty soon, so that it might be over before the end of the second act,
when Powell, the valet, would come back.
Richard's face had grown very youthful and eager. His eyes were
unnaturally bright. And still he gazed down at that great company. His
heart went out to it. He loved it, loved each and every member of it,
as he had never conceived of loving heretofore. He would like to have
gone down among them and become part of them, one with them in purpose,
a partaker of their corporate strength. But that was forbidden. They
were his preordained executioners. Yet in that capacity they were not
the less, but the more, lovable. They were welcome to exact full
justice. He longed after them, longed after the pain it was their
mission to inflict.--And they were getting ready, surely they were
getting ready! There was a sensible movement among them. They turned
pale faces away from the brilliantly lighted stage, and towards the
great horseshoe of waxen cells enclosing them. They were busy,
dull-coloured insects again, and they buzzed--resentfully, angrily,
they buzzed.
Yet even while Dickie noted all this, greatly moved by it, appreciating
its inner meaning, its profound relation to himself and the drama of
his own existence, he was not wholly unmindful of the progress of the
opera and the charm of the graceful and fluent music which saluted his
ears. He was aware of the entrance of the hero, of his greeting by his
motley-clad followers. He felt kindly, just off the surface of his
emotion so to speak, towards this impersonator of Ernani. The young
actor's appearance was attractive, his voice fresh and sympathetic, his
bearing modest. But the aristocratic occupants of the boxes treated him
cavalierly. The famous Milanese tenor, whose name was on the programme,
having failed to arrive, this local, and comparatively inexperienced,
artist had been called upon to fill his part. Therefore the smart world
talked more loudly than before, while the democratic occupants of the
_parterre_, jealous for the reputation of their fellow-citizen, broke
forth into stormy protest. And Richard could have found it in his heart
to protest also. For it was waste of energy, this senseless conflict!
It was unworthy of the dignity of that dull-coloured multitude, on whom
his hopes were so strangely set--of the men in whose hands are the
final rewards and punishments, by whose voice the final judgment is
pronounced. It pained him to see these ministers of the Eternal Justice
thus led away by trivial happenings, and their attention distracted
from the main issue. For what, in God's name, did he and his
sentimental love-carrollings amount to, this pretty fellow of a player,
this fictitious hero of the modern, Neapolitan, operatic stage? Weighed
in the balances, he and his whole occupation and calling were lighter,
surely, than vanity itself? Rightly considered, he and his singing were
but as a spangle, as some glittering trifle of tinsel, upon the veil
still hiding the awful, yet benign, countenance of that tremendous and
so surely approaching event.--Let him sing away, then, sing in peace.
For the sound of his singing might help to lighten the weariness of the
hours until the supreme hour should strike, and the glittering veil be
torn asunder, and the countenance it covered be at last and wholly
revealed.
Reasoning thus, Richard raised his opera glasses and swept those many
superimposed ranges of waxen cells. And the aspect of them was to him
very sinister, for everywhere he seemed to encounter soft, voluptuous,
brainless faces, violences of hot colour, and costly clothing cunningly
devised to heighten the physical allurements of womanhood. Everywhere,
beside and behind these, he seemed to encounter the faces of men,
gluttonous of pleasure, hungering for those generously-discovered,
material charms. They were veritable antechambers of vice, those
angular-mouthed, waxen cells. And, therefore, very fittingly, as he
reflected, he had his place in one of them, since he was infected by
the vices, active partaker in the sensuality, of his class.--Oh! that
the bees would swarm--swarm, and make short work of it all, inflict
completeness of punishment, and thereby cleanse him and set him free!
In its intensity his longing came near taking the form of articulate
prayer.
And then his thought shifted once more, attaching itself curiously,
speculatively, to individual objects. For his survey of the house had
just now brought a box into view, situated on the grand tier and almost
immediately opposite his own. It was occupied by a party of six
persons. With four of those persons Richard was aware he had nothing to
do. But with the remaining two persons--a woman fashioned, as it
appeared, of ivory and gold, and a young man standing almost directly
behind her--he had much, everything, in fact, to do. It was
incomprehensible to him that he had not observed these two persons
sooner, since they were as necessary to the accomplishment of that
terrible, yet beneficent, approaching event as he himself was. The
woman he knew actually and intimately, though as yet he could give her
no name, nor recall in what his knowledge of her consisted. The young
man he knew inferentially. And Dickie was sensible of regarding him
with instinctive repulsion, since his appearance presented a living and
grossly ribald caricature of a figure august, worshipful, and holy.
Long and closely Richard studied those two persons, studied them,
forgetful of all else, straining his memory to place them. And all the
while they talked.
But, at last, the woman fashioned of ivory and gold ceased talking. She
folded her arms upon the velvet cushion of the front of the box and
gazed right out into the theatre. There was a splendid arrogance in the
pose of her head, and in the droop of her eyelids. Then she looked up
and across, straight at Richard. He saw her drooping eyelids raised,
her eyes open wide, and remain fixed as in amazement. A something
alert, and very fierce, came into her expression. She seemed to think
carefully for a brief space. She threw back her head, and he saw
uncontrollable laughter convulse her beautiful throat. And, at that
same moment, a mighty outburst of applause and of welcome shook the
great theatre from floor to ceiling, and, as it died away, the voice of
the famous soprano, rich and compelling as of old, swelled out, and
made vibrant with passionate sweetness the whole atmosphere. And
Richard hailed that glorious voice, not that in itself it moved him
greatly, but because in it he recognised the beginning of the end. It
came as prelude to catastrophe which was also salvation.--Very soon the
bees would swarm now! He rallied his patience. He had not much longer
to wait.
Meanwhile he looked back at that box on the grand tier, striving to
unriddle the mystery of his knowledge of those two persons. He needed
glasses no longer. His sight had become preternaturally keen. Again the
two were talking--and about him, that was somehow evident. And, as they
talked, he beheld a being, exquisitely formed, perfect in every part,
step forth from between the lips of the woman fashioned of ivory and
gold. It knelt upon one knee. Over the heads of the vast, dull-coloured
multitude of workers, those witnesses of and participators in the
execution of Eternal Justice, it gazed at him, Richard Calmady, and at
him alone. And its gaze enfolded and held him like an embrace. It wooed
him, extending its arms in invitation. It was naked and unashamed. It
was black--black as the reeking, liquid lanes between the hulls of the
many ships, over which the screaming gulls circled seeking foul
provender, down in Naples harbour.--And he knew the fair woman it came
forth from for Helen de Vallorbes, herself, in her crocus-yellow gown
sewn with seed pearls. And he knew it for the immortal soul of her. And
he perceived, moreover, as it smiled on and beckoned him with
lascivious gestures, that its hands and its lips were bloody, since it
had broken the hearts of living women and torn and devoured the honour
of living men.
"_Ernani, Ernani, involami_"--still the air was vibrant with that
glorious voice. But the love of which it was the exponent, the flight
which it counseled, had ceased, to Richard's hearing, to bear relation
to that which is earthly, concrete, and of the senses. The passion and
promise of it were alike turned to nobler and more permanent uses,
presaging the quick coming of expiation and of reconciliation contained
in that supreme event. For he knew that, in a little moment, Helen must
arise and follow the soul which had gone forth from her--the soul of
which, in all its admirable perfection of outward form and blackness of
intimate lies and lust, was close to him--though he no longer actually
beheld it--here, beside him, laying subtle siege to him even yet. Where
it went, there, of necessity, she who owned it must shortly follow,
since soul and body cannot remain apart, save for the briefest space,
until death effect their final divorce. Therefore Helen would come
speedily. It could not be otherwise--so, at least, he argued. And her
coming meant the culmination. Then, time being fully ripe, the bees
would swarm, swarm at last,--labour revenging itself upon sloth, hunger
upon gluttony, want upon wealth, obscurity upon privilege,--justice
being thus meted out, and he, Richard, cleansed and delivered from the
disgrace of deformity now so hideously infecting both his spirit and
his flesh.
Of this he was so well assured that, disregarding the felt, though
unseen, presence of that errant soul, disdaining to do battle with it,
he leaned forward once more, looking down into the close-packed arena
of the great theatre. All those brilliant figures, members of his own
class, here present, were matter of indifference to him. In this moment
of conscious and supreme farewell, it was to the dull-coloured
multitude that he turned. They still moved him to sympathy.
Unconsciously they had enlightened him concerning matters of infinite
moment. At their hands he would receive penance and absolution. Before
they dealt more closely with him,--since that dealing must involve
suffering which might temporarily cloud his friendship for them,--he
wanted to bid them farewell and assure them of his conviction of the
righteousness of their corporate action. So, silently, he blessed them,
taking leave of them in peace. Then he found there were other farewells
to be said.--Farewell to earthly life as he had known it, the struggle
and very frequent anguish of it, its many frustrated purposes, fair
illusions, unfulfilled hopes. He must bid farewell, moreover, to art as
he had relished it--to learning, as he had all too intermittently
pursued it--to travel, as he had found solace in it--to the
inexhaustible interest, the inextinguishable humour and pathos, in
brief, of things seen. And, reviewing all this, a profound nostalgia of
all those minor happinesses which are the natural inheritance of the
average man arose in him--happiness of healthy, light-hearted
activities, not only of the athlete and the fighting-man, but of the
playing-field, and the ball-room, and the river--happinesses to him
inevitably denied. With an almost boyish passion of longing, he cried
out for these.--Just for one day to have lived with the ease and
freedom with which the vast majority of men habitually live! Just for
one day to have been neither dwarf nor cripple, but to have taken his
place and his chance with the rest, before it all was over and the tale
told!
But very soon Richard put these thoughts from him, deeming it unworthy
to dwell upon them at this juncture. The call was to go forward, not to
go back. So he settled himself in his chair once more, pulling the
velvet drapery forward so as to shut out the sight of the house.
Bitterness should have no part in him. When that happened which was
appointed to happen, it must find him not only acquiescent but serene
and undisturbed. He composed himself, therefore, with a decent and even
lofty pride. Then he turned his eyes upon the narrow door, there in the
semi-obscurity of the back of the box, and waited. And all the while
royally, triumphantly, Morbita sang.
During that period of waiting--whether in itself brief or prolonged, he
knew not--sensation and thought alike were curiously in abeyance.
Richard neither slept nor woke. He knew that he existed, but all active
relation to being had ceased. And it was with painful effort he in a
measure returned to more ordinary correspondence with fact, aroused by
the sound of low-toned, emphatic speech close at hand, and by a
scratching as of some animal denied and seeking admittance. Then he
perceived that the door yielded, letting in a spread of yellow
brightness from the corridor. And in the midst of that brightness, part
and parcel of it thanks to the lustre of her crocus-yellow dress, her
honey-coloured hair, her fair skin and softly-gleaming ornaments, stood
Helen de Vallorbes. Behind her, momentarily, Richard caught sight of
the young man whose face had impressed him as a ribald travesty of that
of some being altogether worshipful and holy. The face peered at him
with, as it seemed, malicious curiosity over the rounded shoulder of
the woman of ivory and gold, The effect was very hateful, and, with a
sense of thankfulness, Richard saw Helen close the door and come,
alone, down the two steps leading from the back of the box. As she
passed from the dimness into the clearer light, he watched her,
quiescent, yet with absorbing interest. For he perceived that the hands
of the clock had been put back somehow. Intervening years and the many
events of them had ceased to obtain, so that, of all the many Helens,
enchanting or evil, whom he had come to know, he saw now only one, and
that the first and earliest--a little dancer, with blush-roses in her
hat, dainty as a toy, finished to her rosy finger-tips and the toes of
her pretty shoes, merry and merciless, as she had pirouetted round him
mocking his shuffling, uncertain progress across the Chapel-Room at
Brockhurst fifteen years ago.
"Ah! so you have come back!" he exclaimed, almost involuntarily.
Madam de Vallorbes pushed a chair from the front of the box into the
shadow of the velvet draperies beside Richard.
"It is unnecessary that all Naples should take part in our interview,"
she said. She sat down, turning to him, leaning a little towards him.
"You do not deserve that I should come back, you know, Dickie," she
continued. "You both deserted and deceived me. That is hardly
chivalrous, hardly just indeed, after taking all a woman has to give.
You led me to suppose you had departed for good and all. Why should you
deceive me?"
"The yacht was not ready for sea," Richard said simply.
"Then you might, in common charity, have let me know that. You were
bound to give me an opportunity of speaking to you once again, I
think."
In his present state of detachment from all worldly considerations,
absolute truthfulness compelled Richard. The event was so certain, the
swarming of the bees so very near, that small diplomacies, small
evasions, seemed absurdly out of place.
"I did not want to hear you speak," he said.
"But doesn't it strike you that was rather dastardly in face of what
had taken place between us? Do you know that you appear in a new and
far from becoming light?"
Denial seemed to Richard futile. He remained silent.
For a moment Helen looked towards the stage. When she spoke again it
was as with reluctance.
"I was desperately unhappy. I went all over the villa in the vain hope
of finding you. I went back to that room of yours in which we parted. I
wanted to see it again."--Helen paused. Her speech was low-toned, soft
as milk.--"It was rather dreadful, Dickie, for the place was all in
disarray, littered with signs of your hasty departure, damp,
cheerless--the rain beating against the windows. And I hate rain. I
found there, not you--whom I so sorely wanted--but something very much
else.--A letter to you from de Vallorbes."--Once more she paused. "I
excuse you of anything worse than negligence in omitting to destroy it.
Misery knows no law, and I was miserable. I read it."
Richard had listened with the same detachment, yet the same absorbed
interest, with which he had watched her entrance. She was a wonderful
creature in her adroitness, in her handling of means to serve her own
ends! But he could not pay her back in her own coin. The time was too
short for anything but simple truth. He felt strangely tired. These
reiterated delays became harassing. If the bees would swarm, only
swarm! Then it would be over, and he could sleep. He clasped his hands
behind his head and looked at Madame de Vallorbes. Her soul kneeled on
her lap, its delicate arms were clasped about her neck--black against
the lustrous white of her skin and all those twisted ropes of seed
pearls. It pressed its breasts against hers, amorously. It loved her
and she it. And he understood that in the whole scope of nature there
was but it alone, it only, that she ever had loved, or did, or could,
love. And, understanding this, he was filled with a great compassion
for her. And, answering her, his expression was gentle and pitiful.
Still he needs must speak the truth.
"Perhaps it was as well that you should read Luigi's letter," he said.
She turned upon him fiercely and scornfully, yet even as she did so her
soul fell to beckoning to him, soliciting him with evilly alluring
gestures.
"My congratulations to you," she exclaimed, "upon your praiseworthy
candour! I am to gather, then, that you believe that which my husband
advises himself to tell you? Under the circumstances it is exceedingly
convenient to you to do so, no doubt."
"How can I avoid believing it?" Richard asked, quite sweet-temperedly.
"Surely we need not waste the little time which remains in argument as
to that? You must admit, Helen, that Luigi's letter fits in. It
supplies just the piece of the puzzle which was missing. It tallies
with all the rest."
"All the rest?"
"Oh yes! It is part of the whole, precisely that part both of you and
of Naples which I knew, and tried so hard not to know, from the first.
But it is worse than useless to practice such refusals. The Whole, and
nothing less than the whole, is bound to get one in the end. It is
contrary to the nature of things that any integral portion of the whole
should submit to permanent denial."--Richard's voice deepened. He spoke
with a subdued enthusiasm, thinking of the dull-coloured multitude
there in the arena and the act of retributive justice on the eve, by
them, of accomplishment.--"It seems to me the radical weakness of all
human institutions, of all systems of thought, resides in exactly that
effort to select and reject, to exalt one part as against another part,
and so build not upon the rock of unity and completeness, but upon the
sand of partiality and division. And sooner or later the Whole revenges
itself, and the fine-fanciful fabric crumbles to ruin, just for lack of
that which in our short-sighted over-niceness we have taken such mighty
great pains to miss out. This has happened times out of number in
respect of religions, and philosophies, and the constitution of
kingdoms, and in that of fair romances which promised to stand firm to
all eternity. And now, now, in these last few days,--since laws which
rule the general, also rule the individual life,--it has happened in
respect of you, Helen, to my seeing, and in respect of Naples."--Richard
smiled upon her sadly and very sweetly.--"I am sorry," he said, "yes,
indeed, horribly sorry. It is a bitter thing to see the last of one's
gods go overboard. But there is no remedy. Sorry or not, so it is."
Madame de Vallorbes looked at him keenly. Her attitude was strained.
Her face sombre with thought.
"My God! my God!" she exclaimed, "that I should sit and listen to all
this! And yet you were never more attractive. There is an unnatural
force, unnatural beauty about you. You are ill, Richard. You look and
you speak as a man might who was about to join hands with death."
But Dickie's attention had wandered again. He pulled the velvet drapery
aside somewhat, and gazed down into the crowded house. They lingered
strangely in the performance of their mission, that dull-coloured
multitude of workers!--Just then came another mighty outburst of
applause, cries, _vivas_, the famous soprano's name called aloud. The
sound was stimulating, as the shout of a victorious army. Richard
hailed it as a sign of speedy deliverance, and sank back into his
place.
"Oh yes!" he said civilly and lightly, "I fancy I am pretty bad. I am a
bit sick of this continued delay, you see. I suppose they know their
own business best, but they do seem most infernally slow in getting
under weigh. I was ready hours ago. However, they must be nearly
through with preliminaries now. And when once we're fairly into it, I
shall be all right."
"You mean when the yacht sails?" Madame de Vallorbes asked. Still she
looked at him intently. He turned to her smiling, and she observed that
his eyes had ceased to be as windows opening back on to empty space.
They were luminous with a certain gay content.
"Yes, of course--when the yacht sails, if you like to put it that way,"
he answered.
"And when will that be?"
The shout of the arena grew louder in the recall. It surged up to the
roof and quivered along the lath and plaster partitions of the boxes.
"Very soon now. Immediately, I think, please God," he said.--But why
should she make him speak thus foolishly in riddles? Of a surety she
must read the signs of the approach of that momentous and beneficent
event as clearly as he himself! Was she not equally with himself
involved in it? Was she not, like himself, to be cleansed and set free
by it? Therefore it came as a painful bewilderment and shock to him
when she drew closer to him, leaned forward, laid her hand lightly upon
his thigh.
"Richard," she said, very softly, "I forgive all. I am not satisfied
with loving. I will come with you. I will stay with you. I will be
faithful to you--yes, yes, even that. Your loving is unlike any other.
It is unique, as you yourself are unique. I--I want more of it."
"But you must know that it is too late to go back on that now," he
said, reasoning with her, greatly perplexed and distressed by her
determined ignoring of--to him--self-evident fact. "All that side of
things for us is over and done with."
Her lips parted in naughty laughter. And then, not without a shrinking
of quick horror, Richard beheld the soul of her--that being of lovely
proportions, exquisitely formed in every part, yet black as the foul,
liquid lanes between the hulls of the many ships down in Naples
harbour--step delicately in between those parted lips, returning whence
it came. And, beholding this, instinctively he raised her hand from
where it rested upon his thigh, and put it from him, put it upon her
glistering, crocus-yellow lap where her soul had so lately kneeled.
"Let us say no more, Helen," he entreated, "lest we both forfeit our
remaining chance, and become involved in hopeless and final
condemnation."
But Madame de Vallorbes' anger rose to overwhelming height. She slapped
her hands together.
"Ah, you despise me!" she cried. "But let me assure you that in any
case this assumption of virtue becomes you singularly ill. It really is
a little bit too cheap, a work of supererogation in the matter of
hypocrisy. Have the courage of your vices. Be honest. You can be so to
the point of insult when it serves your purpose. Own that you are
capricious, own that you have lighted upon some woman who provokes your
appetite more than I do! I have been too tender of you, too lenient
with you. I have loved too much and been weakly desirous to please. Own
that you are tired of me, that you no longer care for me!"
And he answered, sadly enough:--
"Yes, that last is true. Having seen the Whole, that has happened which
I always dreaded might happen. The last of my self-made gods has indeed
gone overboard. I care for you no longer."
Helen sprang up from her chair, ran to the door, flung it open. The
first act of the opera was concluded. The curtain had come down. The
house below and around, the corridor without, were full of confused
noise and movement.
"Paul, M. Destournelle, come here," she cried, "and at once!"
But Richard was more than ever tired. The strain of waiting had been
too prolonged. Lights, draperies, figures, the crowded arena, the vast
honeycomb of boxes, tier above tier, swam before his eyes, blurred,
indistinct, vague, shifting, colossal in height, giddy in depth. The
bees were swarming, at last, swarming upward through seas of iridescent
mist. But he had no longer empire over his own attitude and thoughts.
He had hoped to meet the supreme moment in full consciousness, with
clear vision and thankfulness of heart. But he was too tired to do so,
tired in brain and body alike. And so it happened that a dogged
endurance grew on him, simply a setting of the teeth and bracing of
himself to suffer silently, even stupidly, all that might be in store.
For the bees were close upon him now, countless in number, angry,
grudging, violent. But they no longer appeared as insects. They were
human, save for their velvet-like, expressionless eyes. And all those
eyes were fixed upon him, and him alone. He was the centre towards
which, in thought and action, all turned. Nor were the dull-coloured
occupants of the _parterre_ alone in their attack. For those
gay-coloured larvae--the men and women of his own class--indolent,
licentious, full-fed, hung out of the angular mouths of the waxen
cells, above the crimson and gold of their cushions, pointing at him,
claiming and yet denouncing him. And in the attitude of these the
democratic and the aristocratic sections--he detected a difference. The
former swarmed to inflict punishment for his selfishness, uselessness,
sensuality. But the latter jeered and mocked at his bodily infirmity,
deriding his deformity, making merry over his shortened limbs and
shuffling walk. And against this background, against this all-enclosing
tapestry of faces which encircled him, two persons, and the atmosphere
and aroma of them, so to speak, were clearly defined. They were close
to him, here within the narrow limits of the opera box. Then a great
humiliation overtook Richard, perceiving that they, and not the people,
the workers, august in their corporate power and strength, were to be
his executioners.--No--no--he wasn't worth that! And, for all his
present dulness of sensation, a sob rose in his throat. Madame de
Vallorbes, resplendent in crocus-yellow brocade, costly lace, and seed
pearls, the young man, her companion--the young man of the light,
forked beard, domed skull, vain eyes and peevish mouth--the young man
of holy and dissolute aspect--were good enough instruments for the
Eternal Justice to employ in respect of him, Richard Calmady.
"Look, M. Destournelle," Helen said very quietly, "this is my cousin of
whom I have already spoken to you. But I wished to spare him if
possible, and give him room for self-justification, so I did not tell
you all. Richard, this is my friend, M. Destournelle, to whom my honour
and happiness are not wholly indifferent."
Dickie looked up. He did not speak. Vaguely he prayed it might all soon
be over. Paul Destournelle looked down. He raised his eye-glass and
bowed himself, examining Richard's mutilated legs and strangely-shod
feet. He broke into a little, bleating, goat-like laugh.
"_Mais c'est etonnant!_" he observed reflectively.
"I was in his house," Helen continued. "I was there unprotected, having
absolute faith in his loyalty."--She paused a moment. "He seduced me.
Richard can you deny that?"
"_Canaille!_" M. Destournelle murmured. He drew a pair of gloves
through his hands, holding them by the finger-tips. The metal buttons
of them were large, three on each wrist. Those gloves arrested
Richard's attention oddly.
"I do not deny it," Dickie said.
"And having thus outraged, he deserted me. Do you deny that?"
"No," Dickie said again. For it was true, that which she asserted,
true, though penetrated by subtle falsehood impossible, as it seemed to
him, to combat,--"No, I do not deny it."
"You hear!" Helen exclaimed. "Now do what you think fit."
Still Destournelle drew the gloves through his hands, holding them by
the finger-tips.
"Under other circumstances I might feel myself compelled to do you the
honour of sending you a challenge, _monsieur_," he said. "But a man of
sensibility like myself cannot do such violence to his moral and
artistic code as to fight with an outcast of nature, an abortion, such
as yourself. The sword and the pistol I necessarily reserve for my
equals. The deformed person, the cripple, whose very existence is an
offense to the eye and to every delicacy of sense, must be condescended
to, and, if chastised at all, must be chastised without ceremony,
chastised as one would chastise a dog."
And with that he struck Richard again and again across the face with
those metal-buttoned gloves.
Mad with rage, blinded and sick with pain, Dickie essayed to fling
himself upon his assailant. But Destournelle was too adroit for him. He
skipped aside, with his little, bleating, goat-like laugh, and Richard
fell heavily full length, his forehead coming in contact with the lower
step of the descent from the back of the box. He lay there, too weak to
raise himself.
Paul Destournelle bent down and again examined him curiously.
"_C'est etonnant!_" he repeated.--He gave the prostrate body a
contemptuous kick. "Dear madame, are you sufficiently avenged? Is it
enough?" he inquired sneeringly.
And vaguely, as from some incalculable distance, Richard heard Helen de
Vallorbes' voice:--"Yes--it is a little affair of honour which dates
from my childhood. It has taken many years in adjusting. I thank you,
_mon cher_, a thousand times. Now let us go quickly. It is enough."
Then came darkness, silence, rest.
BOOK VI
THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH MISS ST. QUENTIN BEARS WITNESS TO THE FAITH THAT IS IN HER
Honoria divested herself of her traveling-cap, thrust her hands into
the pockets of her frieze ulster, and thus, bareheaded, a tall, supple,
solitary figure, paced the railway platform in the dusk. Above the
gentle undulations of the western horizon splendours of rose-crimson
sunset were outspread, veiled, as they flamed upward, by indigo cloud
of the texture and tenuity of finest gauze. And those same rose-crimson
splendours found repetition upon the narrow, polished surface of the
many lines of rails, causing them to stand out, as though of red-hot
metal, from the undeterminate gray-drab of the track where it curved
away, southeastward, across the darkening country towards the Savoy
Alps. And from out the fastnesses of these last, quick with the bleak
purity of snow, came a breathing of evening wind. To Honoria it brought
refreshing emphasis of silence, and of immunity from things human and
things mechanical. It spoke to her of virgin and unvisited spaces,
ignorant of mankind and of obligation to his so many and so insistent
needs. And there being in Honoria herself a kindred defiance of
subjection, a determination, so to speak, of physical and emotional
chastity, she welcomed these intimations of the essential inviolability
of nature, finding in them justification and support of her own mental
attitude--of the entire wisdom of which she had, it must be owned,
grown slightly suspicious of late.
And this was the more grateful to her, not only as contrast to the
noise and dust of a lengthy and hurriedly-undertaken journey, but
because that same journey had been suddenly and, in a sense violently,
imposed upon one whom she held in highest regard, by another whom she
had long since agreed with herself to hold in no sort of regard at all.
Since the highly-regarded one set forth, she--Honoria--of course, set
forth likewise. And yet, in good truth, the whole affair rubbed her not
a little the wrong way! She recognised in it a particularly flagrant
example of masculine aggression. Some persons, as she reflected, are
permitted an amount of elbow room altogether disproportionate to their
deserts. Be sufficiently selfish, sufficiently odious, and everybody
becomes your humble servant, hat in hand! That is unfair. It is,
indeed, quite extensively exasperating to the dispassionate onlooker.
And, in Miss St. Quentin's case, exasperation was by no means lessened
by the fact that candour compelled her to admit doubt not only as to
the actuality of her own dispassionateness, but, as has already been
stated, to the wisdom of her mental attitude generally. She wanted to
think and feel one way. She was more than half afraid she was much
disposed to think and feel quite another way. This was worrying. And,
therefore, it came about that Honoria hailed the present interval of
silence and solitude, striving to put from her remembrance both the
origin and object of her journey, while filling her lungs with the
snow-fed purity of the mountain wind and yielding her spirit to the
somewhat serious influences of surrounding nature. All too soon the
great Paris-express would thunder into the station. The heavy,
horse-box-like sleeping-car--now standing on the Culoz-Geneva-Bale
siding--would be coupled to the rear of it. Then the roar and rush
would begin again--from dark to dawn, and on through the long, bright
hours to dark once more, by mountain gorge, and stifling tunnel, and
broken woodland, and smiling coastline, and fertile plain, past
Chambery, and Turin, and Bologna, and mighty Rome herself, until the
journey was ended and distant Naples reached at last.
But Miss St. Quentin's communings with nature were destined to speedy
interruption. Ludovic Quayle's elongated person, clothed to the heels
in a check traveling-coat, detached itself from the company of waiting
passengers, and blue-linen-clad porters, upon the central platform
before the main block of station buildings, and made its light and
active way across the intervening lines of crimson-stained metals.
"If I am a nuisance mention that chastening fact without hesitation,"
he said, standing on the railway track and looking up at her with his
air of very urbane intelligence. "Present circumstances permit us the
privilege--or otherwise--of laying aside restraints of speech, along
with other small proprieties of behaviour commonly observed by the
polite. So don't spare my feelings, dear Miss St. Quentin. If I am a
bore, tell me so, and I will return, and that without any lurking venom
in my breast, whence I came."
"Do anything you please," Honoria replied, "except be run over by the
Paris train."
"The Paris train, so I have just learned, is an hour late, consequently
its arrival hardly enters into the question. But, since you are
graciously pleased to bid me do as I like, I stay," Mr. Quayle
returned, stepping on to the platform and turning to pace beside
her.--"What a gaol delivery it is to get into the open! That last
engine of ours threw ashes to a truly penitential extent. My mouth and
throat still claim unpleasantly close relation to a neglected, kitchen
grate. And if our much vaunted _waggon-lits_ is the last word of
civilisation in connection with travel, then all I can say is that, in
my humble opinion, civilisation has yet a most exceedingly long way to
go. It really is a miraculously uncomfortable vehicle. And how Lady
Calmady contrives to endure its eccentricities of climate and of
motion, I'm sure I don't know."
"In her case the end would make any sort of means supportable," Honoria
answered.
Her pacings had brought her to the extreme end of the platform where it
sloped to the level of the track. She stood there a moment, her head
thrown back, snuffing the wind as a hind, breaking covert, stands and
snuffs it. A spirit of questioning possessed her, though not--as in the
hind's case--of things concrete and material. It is true she could have
dispensed with Mr. Quayle's society. She did not want him. But he had
shown himself so full of resource, so considerate and helpful, ever
since the news of Sir Richard Calmady's desperate state had broken up
the peace of the little party at Ormiston Castle, now five days ago,
that she forgave him even his preciousness of speech, even his slightly
irritating superiority of manner. She had ceased to be on her guard
with him during these days of travel, had come to take his presence for
granted and to treat him with the comfortable indifference of honest
good-fellowship. So, it followed that now, speaking with him, she
continued to follow out her existing train of thought.
"I'm by no means off my head about poor Dickie Calmady," she said
presently,--"specially where Cousin Katherine is concerned. I couldn't
go on caring about anybody, irrespective of their conduct, just because
they were they. And yet I can't help seeing it must be tremendously
satisfying to feel like that."
"A thousand pardons," Ludovic murmured, "but like what?"
"Why as Cousin Katherine feels--just whole-heartedly, without analysis,
and without alloy--to feel that no distance, no fatigue, no nothing in
short, matters, so long as she gets to him in time. I don't approve of
such a state of mind, and yet"--Honoria wheeled round, facing the glory
of colour dyeing all the west--"and yet, I'm untrue enough to my own
principles rather to envy it."
She sighed, and that sigh her companion noted and filed for reference.
Indeed, an unusually expansive cheerfulness became, perceptible in Mr.
Quayle.
"By the bye, is there any further news?" she inquired.
"General Ormiston has just had a telegram."
"Anything fresh?"
"Still unconscious, strength fairly maintained."
"Oh! we know that by heart!" Honoria said.
"We do. And we know the consequences of it--the sweet little see-saw of
hope and fear, productive of unlimited discussion and anxiety. No weak
letting one stand at ease about that telegram! It keeps one's nose hard
down on the grindstone."
"If he dies," Honoria said slowly, "if he dies--poor, dear Cousin
Katherine!--When can we hear again?"
"At Turin," Mr. Quayle replied.
Then they both fell silent until the far end of the platform was
reached. And there, once more, Honoria paused, her small head carried
high, her serious eyes fixed upon the sunset. The rosy light falling
upon her failed to disguise the paleness of her face or its slight
angularity of line. She was a little worn and travel-stained, a little
disheveled even. Yet to her companion she had rarely appeared more
charming. She might be tired, she might even be somewhat untidy, but
her innate distinction remained--nay, gained, so he judged, by
suggestion of rough usage endured. Her absolute absence of affectation,
her unself-consciousness, her indifference to adventitious prettinesses
of toilet, her transparent sincerity, were very entirely approved by
Ludovic Quayle.
"Yes, that see-saw of hope and fear must be an awful ordeal, feeling as
she does," Miss St. Quentin said presently. "And yet, even so, I am
uncertain. I can't help wondering which really is best!"
"Again a thousand pardons," the young man put in, "but I venture to
remind you that I was not cradled in the forecourt of the temple of the
Pythian Apollo, but only in the nursery of a conspicuously Philistine,
English country-house."
For the first time during their conversation Honoria looked full at
him. Her glance was very friendly, yet it remained meditative, even a
trifle sad.
"Oh! I know, I'm fearfully inconsequent," she said. "But my head is
simply rattled to pieces by that beastly _waggon-lit_. I had gone back
to what I was thinking about before you joined me, and to what we were
saying just now about Cousin Katherine."
"Yes--yes, exactly," Ludovic put in tentatively. She was going to give
herself away--he was sure of it. And such giving away might make for
opportunity. In spirit, the young man proceeded to take his shoes from
off his feet. The ground on which he stood might prove to be holy.
Moreover Miss St. Quentin's direct acts of self-revelation were few and
far between. He was horribly afraid those same shoes of his might
creak, so to speak, thereby startling her into watchfulness, making her
draw back. But Honoria did not draw back. She was too much absorbed by
her own thought. She continued to contemplate the glory of the flaming
west, her expression touched by a grave and noble enthusiasm.
"I suppose one can't help worrying a little at times--it's laid hold of
me very much during the last month or two--as to what is really the
finest way to take life. One wants to arrive at that fairly early; not
by a process of involuntary elimination, on the burnt-child-fears-the-fire
sort of principle, when the show's more than half over, as so many
people do. One wants to get hold of the stick by the right end now,
while one's still comparatively young, and then work straight along. I
want my reason to be the backbone of my action, don't you know, instead
of merely the push of society and friendship, and superficial odds and
ends of so-called obligation to other people."
"Yes," Mr. Quayle put in again.
"Now, it seems to me, that"--Honoria extended one hand towards the
sunset--"is Cousin Katherine's outlook on life and humanity, full of
colour, full of warmth. It burns with a certain prodigality of beauty,
a superb absence of economy in giving. And that"--with a little shrug
of her shoulders she turned towards the severe, and sombre, eastern
landscape--"that, it strikes me, comes a good deal nearer my own. Which
is best?"
Mr. Quayle congratulated himself upon the removal of his shoes. The
ground was holy--holy to the point of embarrassment even to so
unabashable and ready-tongued a gentleman as himself. He answered with
an unusual degree of diffidence.
"An intermediate position is neither wholly inconceivable nor wholly
untenable, perhaps."
"And you occupy it? Yes, you are very neatly balanced. But then, do you
really get anywhere?"
"Is not that a rather knavish speech, dear Miss St. Quentin?" the young
man inquired mildly.
"I don't know," she answered, "I wish to goodness I did."
Now was here god-given opportunity, or merely a cunningly devised snare
for the taking of the unwary? Ludovic pondered the matter. He gently
kicked a little pebble from the dingy gray-drab of the asphalt on to
the permanent way. It struck one of the metals with a sharp click. A
blue-linen-clad porter, short of stature and heavy of build, lighted
the gas lamps along the platform. The flame of these wavered at first,
and flickered, showing thin and will-o'-the-wisp-like against the great
outspread of darkening country across which the wind came with a
certain effect of harshness and barrenness--the inevitable concomitant
of its inherent purity. And the said wind treated Miss St. Quentin
somewhat discourteously, buffeting her, obliging her to put up both
hands to push back stray locks of hair. Also the keen breath of it
pierced her, making her shiver a little. Both of which things her
companion noting, took heart of grace.
"Is it permitted to renew a certain petition?" he asked, in a low
voice.
Honoria shook her head.
"Better not, I think," she said.
"And yet, dear Miss St. Quentin, pulverised though I am by the weight
of my own unworthiness, I protest that petition is not wholly foreign
to the question you did me the honour to ask me just now."
"Oh! dear me! You always contrive to bring it round to that!" she
exclaimed, not without a hint of petulance.
"Far from it," the young man returned. "For a good, solid eighteen
months, now, I have displayed the accumulated patience of innumerable
asses."
"Of course, I see what you're driving at," she continued hastily. "But
it is not original. It's just every man's stock argument."
"If it bears the hall-mark of hoary antiquity, so much the better. I
entertain a reverence for precedent. And honestly, as common sense
goes, I am not ashamed of that of my sex."
Miss St. Quentin resumed her walk.
"You really think it stands in one's way," she said reflectively, "you
really think it a disadvantage, to be a woman?"
"Oh! good Lord!" Mr. Quayle ejaculated, softly yet with an air so
humorously aghast that it could leave no doubt as to the nature of his
sentiments. Then he cursed himself for a fool. His shoes indeed had
made a mighty creaking! He expected an explosion of scornful wrath. He
admitted he deserved it. It did not come.
Miss St. Quentin looked at him, for a moment, almost piteously. He
fancied her mouth quivered and that her eyes filled with tears. Then
she turned and swung away with her long, easy, even stride. Mentally
the young man took himself by the throat, conscience-stricken at having
humiliated her, at having caused her to fall, even momentarily, from
the height of her serene, maidenly dignity. For once he became
absolutely uncritical, careless of appearances. He fairly ran after her
along the platform.
"Dear Miss St. Quentin," he called to her, in tones of most persuasive
apology.
But Honoria's moment of piteousness was past. She had recovered all her
habitual lazy and gallant grace when he came up with her.
"No--no," she said. "Hear me. I began this rather foolish conversation.
I laid myself open to--well to a snubbing. I got one, anyhow!"
"In mercy don't rub it in!" Mr. Quayle murmured contritely.
"But I did," Honoria returned. "Now it's over and I'm going to pick up
the pieces and put them back in their places--just where they were
before."
"But I protest!--I hailed a new combination. I discover in myself no
wild anxiety to have the pieces put back just where they were before."
"Oh! yes, you do," Honoria declared. "At least, you certainly will when
I explain it to you."--She paused.--"You see," she said, "it is like
this. Living with and watching Cousin Katherine, I have come to know
all that side of things at its very finest."
"Forgive me.--It? What? May I recall to you the fact of the Philistine
nursery?"
The young lady's delicate face straightened.
"You know perfectly well what I mean," she said.--"That which we all
think about so constantly, and yet affect to speak of as a joke or a
slight impropriety--love, marriage, motherhood."
"Yes, Lady Calmady is a past-master in those arts," Mr. Quayle
replied.--Again the ground was holy. He was conscious his pulse
quickened.
"The beauty of it all, as one sees it in her case, breaks one up a
little. There is no laugh left in one about those things. One sees that
to her they are of the nature of religion--a religion pure and
undefiled, a new way of knowing God and of bringing oneself into line
with the truth as it is in Him. But, having once seen that, one can
decline upon no lower level. One grows ambitious. One will have it that
way or not at all."
Honoria paused again. The bleak wind buffeted her. But she was no
longer troubled or chilled by it, rather did it brace her to greater
fearlessness of resolve and of speech.
"You are contemptuous of women," she said.
"I have betrayed characteristics of the ass, other than its patience,"
Ludovic lamented.
"Oh! I didn't mean that," Honoria returned, smiling in friendliest
fashion upon him. "Every man worth the name really feels as you do, I
imagine. I don't blame you. Possibly I am growing a trifle shaky as to
feminine superiority, and woman spelled with a capital letter, myself.
I'm awfully afraid she is safest--for herself and others--under slight
restraint, in a state of mild subjection. She's not quite to be
trusted, either intellectually or emotionally--at least, the majority
of her isn't. If she got her head, I've a dreadful suspicion she would
make a worse hash of creation generally than you men have made of it
already, and that"--Honoria's eyes narrowed, her upper lip shortened,
and her smile shone out again delightfully--"that's saying a very great
deal, you know."
"My spirits rise to giddy heights," Mr. Quayle exclaimed. "I endorse
those sentiments. But whence, oh, dear lady, this change of front?"
"Wait a minute. We've not got to the end of my contention yet."
"The Paris train is late. There is time. And this is all excellent
hearing."
"I'm not quite so sure of that," Honoria said. "For, you see, just in
proportion as I give up the fiction of her superiority, and admit that
woman already has her political, domestic, and social deserts, I feel a
chivalry towards her, poor, dear thing, which I never felt before. I
even feel a chivalry towards the woman in myself. She claims my pity
and my care in a quite new way."
"So much the better," Mr. Quayle observed, outwardly discreetly urbane,
inwardly almost riotously jubilant.
"Ah! wait a minute," she repeated. Her tone changed, sobered. "I don't
want to spread myself, but you know I can meet men pretty well on their
own ground. I could shoot and fish as well as most of you, only that I
don't think it right to take life except to provide food, or in
self-defense. There's not so much happiness going that one's justified
in cutting any of it short. Even a jack-snipe may have his little
affairs of the heart, and a cock-salmon his gamble. But I can ride as
straight as you can. I can break any horse to harness you choose to put
me behind. I can sail a boat and handle an axe. I can turn my hand to
most practical things--except a needle. I own I always have hated a
needle worse--well, worse than the devil! And I can organise, and can
speak fairly well, and manage business affairs tidily. And have I not
even been known--low be it spoken--to beat you at lawn tennis, and Lord
Shotover at billiards?"
"And to overthrow my most Socratic father in argument. And outwit my
sister Louisa in diplomacy--_vide_ our poor, dear Dickie Calmady's
broken engagement, and the excellent, scatter-brain Decies' marriage."
"But Lady Constance is happy?" Honoria put in hastily.
"Blissful, positively blissful, and with twins too! Think of
it!--Decies is blissful also. His sense of humour has deteriorated
since his marriage, from constant association with good, little Connie
who was never distinguished for ready perception of a joke. He regards
those small, simultaneous replicas of himself with unqualified
complacency, which shows his appreciation of comedy must be a bit
blunted."
"I wonder if it does?" Miss St. Quentin observed reflectively. Whereat
Mr. Quayle permitted himself a sound as nearly approaching a chuckle as
was possible to so superior a person.
"A thousand pardons," he murmured, "but really, dear lady, you are so
very much off on the other tack."
"Am I?" Miss St. Quentin said. "Well, you see--to go back to my
demonstration--I've none of the quarrel with your side of things most
women have, because I'm not shut out from it, and so I don't envy you.
I can amuse and interest myself on your lines. And therefore I can
afford to be very considerate and tender of the woman in me. I grow
more and more resolved that she shall have the very finest going, or
that she shall have nothing, in respect of all which belongs to her
special province--in regard to love and marriage. In them she shall
have what Cousin Katherine has had, and find what Cousin Katherine has
found, or all that shall be a shut book to her forever. Even if
discipline and denial make her a little unhappy, poor thing, that's far
better than letting her decline upon the second best."
Honoria's voice was full and sweet. She spoke from out the deep places
of her thought. Her whole aspect was instinct with a calm and seasoned
enthusiasm. And, looking upon her, it became Ludovic Quayle's turn to
find the evening wind somewhat bleak and barren. It struck chill, and
he turned away and moved westwards towards the sunset. But the
rose-crimson splendours had become faint and frail, while the indigo
cloud had gathered into long, horizontal lines as of dusky smoke, so
that the remaining brightness was seen as through prison bars. A
sadness, indeed, seemed to hold the west, even greater than that which
held the east, since it was a sadness not of beauty unborn, but of
beauty dead. And this struck home to the young man. He did not care to
speak. Miss St. Quentin walked beside him in silence, for a time. When
at last she spoke it was very gently.
"Please don't be angry with me," she pleaded. "I like you so much
that--that I'd give a great deal to be able to think less of my duty to
the tiresome woman in me."
"I would give a great deal too," he declared, regardless of grammar.
"But I'm not the only woman in the world, dear Mr. Quayle," she
protested presently.
"But I, unfortunately, have no use for any other," he returned.
"Ah, you distress me!" Honoria cried.
"Well, I don't know that you make me superabundantly cheerful," he
answered.
Just then the far-away shriek of a locomotive and dull thunder of an
approaching train was heard. Mr. Quayle looked once more towards the
western horizon.
"Here's the Paris-express!" he said. "We must be off if we mean to get
round before our horse-box is shunted."
He jumped down on to the permanent way. Miss St. Quentin followed him,
and the two ran helter-skelter across the many lines of metals, in the
direction of the Culoz-Geneva-Bale siding. That somewhat childish and
undignified proceeding ministered to the restoration of good
fellowship.
"Great passions are rare," Mr. Quayle said, laughing a little. His
circulation was agreeably quickened. How surprisingly fast this
nymph-like creature could get over the ground, and that gracefully,
moreover, rather in the style of a lissome, long-limbed youth than in
that of a woman.
"Rare? I know it," she answered, the words coming short and sharply.
"But I accept the risk. A thousand to one the book remains shut
forever."
"And I, meanwhile, am not too proud to pass the time of day with the
second best, and take refuge in the accumulated patience of innumerable
asses."
And, behind them, the express train thundered into the station.