The History of Sir Richard Calmady Part 23

"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."

d.i.c.kie, feeling anxiously in his pockets for some coin of sufficient size to be worthy of Mr. Deeds' acceptance, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 d.i.c.kie 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. c.o.c.k-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 b.l.o.o.d.y. 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, gra.s.s 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 ma.s.ses 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 s.l.u.t 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 p.r.i.c.kly, 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 gra.s.s, 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 p.r.i.c.kings of that thorn in the flesh which was so intimate a part of his otherwise n.o.ble 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 la.s.s, 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 coa.r.s.ely 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, G.o.d 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 d.i.c.kie into a greatcoat, b.u.t.toned 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 pa.s.sion of battle. And under the influence of that pa.s.sion 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 G.o.ds. 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 a.s.surance 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.

d.i.c.kie's last humour was less n.o.ble 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 d.i.c.kie all that evening. He was determined to a.s.sert 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."

d.i.c.kie'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 pa.s.sed him.

"Quite right, old chap. I like to see you there. Claim your own, and keep it."

At which a lump rose in d.i.c.kie'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 d.i.c.kie 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-gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 att.i.tude 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 mult.i.tudes 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 mult.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing 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 d.i.c.kie 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 ma.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e, 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.