The History of Sir Richard Calmady Part 73

"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 G.o.d 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 a.s.s, 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 c.o.c.k-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 d.i.c.kie 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 a.s.sociation 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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.s the time of day with the second best, and take refuge in the acc.u.mulated patience of innumerable a.s.ses."

And, behind them, the express train thundered into the station.

CHAPTER II

TELLING HOW, ONCE AGAIN, KATHERINE CALMADY LOOKED ON HER SON

The bulletin received at Turin was sufficiently disquieting. Richard had had a relapse. And when at Bologna, just as the train was starting, General Ormiston entered the compartment occupied by the two ladies, there was that in his manner which made Miss St. Quentin lay aside the magazine she was reading and, rising silently from her place opposite Lady Calmady, go out on to the narrow pa.s.sageway of the long sleeping-car. She was very close to the elder woman in the bonds of a dear and intimate friendship, yet hardly close enough, so she judged, to intrude her presence if evil-tidings were to be told. A man going into battle might look, so she thought, as Roger Ormiston looked now--very stern and strained. It was more fitting to leave the brother and sister alone together for a little s.p.a.ce.

At the far end of the pa.s.sageway the servants were grouped--Clara, comely of face and of person, neat notwithstanding the demoralisation of feminine attire incident to prolonged travel. Winter, the Brockhurst butler, clean-shaven, gray-headed, suggestive of a distinguished Anglican ecclesiastic in mufti. Miss St. Quentin's lady's-maid, Faulstich by name, a North-Country woman, angular of person and of bearing, loyal of heart. And Zimmermann, the colossal German-Swiss courier, with his square, yellow beard and hair _en brosse_. An air of discouragement pervaded the party, involving even the polyglot conductor of the _waggon-lits_, a small, quick, sandy-complexioned, young fellow of uncertain nationality, with a gold band round his peaked cap. He respected this family which could afford to take a private railway-carriage half across Europe. He shared their anxieties.

And these were evidently great. Clara wept. The old butler's mouth twitched, and his slightly pendulous cheeks quivered. The door at the extreme end of the car was set wide open. Ludovic Quayle stood upon the little, iron balcony smoking. His feet were planted far apart, yet his tall figure swayed and curtseyed queerly as the heavy carriage b.u.mped and rattled across the points. High walls, overtopped by the dark spires of cypresses, overhung by radiant wealth of lilac Wisteria, and of roses red, yellow, and white, reeled away in the keen sunshine to the left and right. Then, clearing the outskirts of the town, the train roared southward across the fair, Italian landscape beneath the pellucid, blue vault of the fair, Italian sky. And to Honoria there was something of heartlessness in all that fair outward prospect. Here, in Italy, the ancient G.o.ds reigned still, surely, the G.o.ds who are careless of human woe.

"Is there bad news, Winter?" she asked.

"Mr. Bates telegraphs to the General that it would be well her ladyship should be prepared for the worst."

"It'll kill my lady. For certain sure it will kill her! She never could be expected to stand up against that. And just as she was getting round from her own illness so nicely too----"

Audibly Clara wept. Her tears so affected the sandy-complexioned, polyglot conductor that he retired into his little pantry and made a most unholy clattering among the plates and knives and forks. Honoria put her hand upon the sobbing woman's shoulder and drew her into the comparative privacy of the adjoining compartment, rendered not a little inaccessible by a multiplicity of rugs, traveling-bags, and hand-luggage.