The History of Sir Richard Calmady Part 82

And Richard watched her curiously. His acquaintance with women was fairly comprehensive, but this woman represented a type new to his experience. He wanted to tolerate her merely, to regard her as an element in his scheme of self-discipline. And it began to occur to him that, from some points of view, she knew as much about that, as much about the idea inspiring it, as he did. He leaned himself back in the angle of the sofa, and clasped his hands behind his head.

"All the same," he said, "I am afraid those burnt acres on Spendle Flats are hardly extensive enough to afford an object for me to knock my head against, and so enforce salutary remembrance of the limitations of human science. Possibly that has already been sufficiently brought home to me in other ways."

He paused a minute.

Honoria straightened herself up. Again she saw--whether she would or no--those defective shortened limbs and oddly shod feet. And again, somehow, that complaint of the moist spring wind seemed to cry against her bare arms and neck, begetting an overwhelming pitifulness in her.

"So, since it's not necessary we should reserve it as an object lesson in general ineffectualness, Miss St. Quentin, what shall we do with it?"

"Oh, plant," she said.

"With the ubiquitous Scotchman?"

"It wouldn't carry anything else, except along the boundaries. There you might put in a row of horn-beam and oak. They always look rather nice against a background of firs.--Only the stumps of the burnt trees ought to be stubbed."

"Let them be stubbed," Richard said.

"Where are you going to find the labour? The estate is very much under-manned."

"Import it," Richard said.

"No, no," Honoria answered, again warming to her subject. "I don't believe in imported labour. If you have men by the week, they must lodge. And the lodger is as the ten plagues of Egypt in a village. If a man comes by the day, he is tired and slack. His heart is not in his work. He does as little as he can. Moreover, in either case, the wife and children suffer. He's certain to take them home short money. He's pretty safe, being tired in the one case, or, in the other, on the loose, to drink."

d.i.c.kie's face gave. He laughed a little.

"We seem to have come to a fine _impa.s.se_!" he remarked. "Though humiliatingly small, that tract of burnt land must clearly be kept to knock one's head against."

Honoria rose to her feet.

"Richard, I wish you'd build," she said, in her earnestness unconscious of the unceremonious character of her address. "Iles ought to have done that before now. But he is old and timid, and his one idea has been to save. You know this Brockhurst property alone would carry eight or ten more families. There's plenty of work. It needn't be made. It is there ready to hand. Give them good gardens, allotments if you can, and leave to keep a pig. That's infinitely better than extravagant wages. Root them down in the soil. Let them love the place--tie them up to it----"

"Your socialism is rather quaintly crossed with feudalism, isn't it?"

d.i.c.kie remarked.

He drew himself forward, slipped down off the sofa, stood upright. And then, indeed, the cruel disparity between his stature and her own--for tall though she was, he, by right of make and length of arm, should evidently have been by some two or three inches the taller--and all the grotesqueness of his deformity, were fully disclosed to Honoria. For the second time that day, her tact, her presence of mind, her ready speech, deserted her. She backed a little away from him.

And Richard perceived that. It is not easy to be absolutely philosophic. Something of his old anger revived towards Miss St.

Quentin. He shuffled forward a step or two, and, steadying himself with one hand on the arm of the sofa, reached down to pick up his crutches.

But his grasp was not very sure just then. He secured one. To his intense annoyance the other escaped him, falling back on the floor with a rattle. Then, instantly, before he could make effort to recover it, Honoria's white figure swept down on one knee in front of him. She laid hold of the crutch, gave it him silently, and rose to her full height again, pale, gallant, stately, but with a quivering of her lips and nostrils, and an amazement of regret and pity in her eyes, which very certainly had never found place there heretofore.

"Thanks," Richard said.--He waited just a minute. He too was amazed somehow. He needed to revise the position. "About those eight or ten happy families whom you wish to root so firmly in the soil, and the housing of them--are you busy to-morrow morning?"

"Oh no--no"--Honoria declared, with rather unnecessary emphasis.

Generosity should surely be met by generosity. d.i.c.kie leaned his arm against the arm of the sofa, and looked up at the speaker. Her transparent sincerity, her superb chast.i.ty--he could call it by no other word--of manner and movement, even of outline--the slight angularity of strong muscle as opposed to soft roundness of cushioned flesh--these arrested and impressed him.

"I had Chifney up from the stables this afternoon and made my peace with him," he said. "He was very full of your praises, Honoria--for the cousinship may as well be acknowledged between us, don't you think? You have supplemented my lapses in respect of him, as of a good deal else."--Richard looked away to the door of Lady Calmady's bedroom. It stood open, and Katherine came from within with some books, and a silver candlestick, in her hands.

"My dears," she said, "do you know it grows very late?"

"All right," he answered, "we're making out some plans for to-morrow."--He looked at Honoria again. "Chifney engaged he and Chaplin would find a horse, between them, which could be trusted to--well--to put up with me," he said. "I promised to go down and have breakfast with dear Mrs. Chifney at the stables, but I can be back here by eleven. Would you be inclined to come out with me then? We could ride over to that burnt land and have a poke round for sites for your cottages."

"Oh yes, indeed, I can come," Honoria answered. Her delightful smile beamed forth, and it had a new and very delicate charm in it. For it so happened that the woman in her whom--to use her own phrase--she had condemned to solitary confinement in the back attic, beat very violently against her prison door just then in attempt to escape.

"Dear Cousin Katherine, good-night. Good-night, Richard," she said hurriedly.--She went out of the room, lazily, slowly, down the black, polished staircase, across the great, silent hall, and along the farther lobby. But she let the Gun-Room door bang to behind her and flung herself down in the armchair--in which, by the way, the old bull-dog had died a year ago, broken-hearted by over long waiting for the homecoming of his absent master. And then Honoria, though the least tearful of women, wept--not in petulant anger, or with the easy, luxuriously sentimental overflow common to feminine humanity, but reluctantly, with hard, irregular sobs which hurt, yet refused to be stifled, since the extreme limit of emotional and mental endurance had been reached.

"Oh, it's fine!" she said, half aloud. "I can see that it's fine--but, dear G.o.d, is there no way out of it? It's so horribly, so unspeakably sad."

And Richard remained on into the small hours, sitting before the dying fire of the big hearth-place, at the eastern end of the gallery.

Mentally he audited his accounts, the profit and loss of this day's doing, and, on the whole, the balance showed upon the profit side.

Verily it was only a day of small things, of very humble ambitions, of far from world-shaking successes! Still four persons, he judged, he had made a degree or so happier.--His mother rejoiced, though with trembling as yet, at his return to the ordinary habits of the ordinary man.--Sweet, dear thing, small wonder that she trembled! He had led her such a dance in the past, that any new departure must give cause for anxious questionings. d.i.c.kie sunk his head in his hands.--G.o.d forgive him, what a dance he had led her!--And Julius March was happier--he, Richard, was pretty certain of that--since Julius could not but understand that, in the present case at all events, neither fulfilment of prophecy nor answer to prayer had been disregarded.--And the hard-bitten, irascible, old trainer, Tom Chifney, was happier--probably really the happiest of the lot--since he demanded nothing more recondite and far-reaching than restoration to favour, and due recognition of the importance of his calling and of the merits of his horses.--And nice, funny, voluble, little d.i.c.k Ormiston was happier too. Richard's heart went out strangely to the dear little lad! He wondered if it would be too much to ask Mary and Roger to give him the boy altogether? Then he put the thought from him, judging it savoured of the selfishness, the exclusiveness, and egoism, with which he had sworn to part company forever.

He stretched his hand out over the arm of the chair, craving for some creature, warm, sentient, dumbly sympathetic, to lay hold of.--He remembered there used to be a man down near Alton, a hard-riding farmer, who bred bull-dogs--white ones with black points, like Camp and Camp's forefathers. He would tell Chifney to go down there and bespeak the two best of the next litter of puppies.--Yes--he wanted a dog again. It was foolish perhaps, but after all one did want something, and, since other things were denied, a dog must do--and he wanted one badly.--Yet the day had been a success on the whole. He had been true to his code. Only--and Richard shrugged his shoulders rather wearily--it had got to be begun all over again to-morrow, and next day, and next--an endless perspective of to-morrows. And the poor flesh, with its many demands, its delicious and iniquitous pa.s.sions, its enchantments, its revelations, its adorable languors, its drunken heats, must it have nothing, nothing at all? Must that whole side of things be ruled out forever?--He had no more desire for mistresses, G.o.d forbid--Helen, somehow, had cleansed him of all possibility of that.

And he would never ask any woman to marry him. The sacrifice on her part would be too great.--He thought of little Lady Constance.--Simply, it was not right.--So, practically, the emotional joys of life were reduced to this--they must consist solely in giving--giving--giving--of time, sympathy, thought and money! A far from ign.o.ble programme no doubt, but a rather austere one for a man of liberal tastes, of varied experience, and of barely thirty.--And he was as strong as a bull now.

He knew that. He might live to be ninety.--Yes, he thought he would ask for little d.i.c.k Ormiston. The boy would be an amus.e.m.e.nt and interest him.--And then suddenly the vision of Honoria St. Quentin, in her red and black-braided gown, with that air of something ruffling and soldierly about it, whipping the small d.i.c.k up in her strong arms, throwing him across her shoulder and bearing him off bodily, and of Honoria later, her sensitive face all alight, as she discoursed of the ultimate aim and purpose of life and of living, came before him. Above her white dress, he could see her white and finely angular shoulders as she swept down to pick up that wretched crutch.--Yes, she was a being of singular contrasts, of remarkable capacity, both mental and practical! And she might have a heart--she might. Once or twice it had looked rather like it.--But, after all, what did that matter? The feminine side of things was excluded. Besides he supposed she was half engaged to Ludovic Quayle.

d.i.c.kie yawned. He was sleepy. His meditations became unprofitable. He had best go to bed.

"And the devil fly away with all women, saving and excepting my well beloved mother," he said.

CHAPTER VIII

CONCERNING THE BROTHERHOOD FOUNDED BY RICHARD CALMADY, AND OTHER MATTERS OF SOME INTEREST

It was still very sultry. All the windows of the red drawing-room stood wide open. Outside the thunder rain fell, straight as ramrods, in big globular drops, which spattered upon the gray quarries and splashed on the pink and lilac, lemon-yellow, scarlet and orange of the pot plants,--hydrangeas, pelargoniums, and early-flowering chrysanthemums,--set, three deep, along the base of the house wall, the whole length of the terrace front. The atmosphere was thick. Ma.s.ses of purple cloud, lurid light crowning their summits, boiled up out of the southeast. But the worst of the storm was already over, and the parched land, grateful for the downpour of rain, exhaled a whiteness of smoke--as in thanksgiving from off some altar of incense. On the gra.s.s slopes of the near park a flight of rooks had alighted. They stalked and strode over the withered turf with a self-important, quaintly clerical air, seeking provender, but, so far, finding none, since the moisture had not yet sufficiently penetrated the hardened soil for earth-worms and kindred creeping-things to move surfacewards.

Within, the red drawing-room had suffered conspicuous change. For, on Richard moving down-stairs to his old quarters in the southwestern wing of the house, Lady Calmady had judged it an act of love, rather than of desecration, to restore this long-disused apartment to its former employment. Adjoining the dining-room,--connecting this last with the billiard-room, summer-parlour, and garden-hall,--this room was convenient to a.s.semble in before, and sit in for a while after, meals.

Richard would thereby be saved superfluous journeys up-stairs. And this act of rest.i.tution, which was also in a sense an act of penitence, once decided upon, Katherine carried it forward with a certain gentle ardour, renewing crimson carpets and hangings and disposing the furniture according to its long-ago positions. The memory of what had once been should remain forever here enshrined, but with the glad colours of life, not the faded ones of unforgiven death upon it. It satisfied her conscience to do this. For it appeared to her that so very much of good had been granted her of late, so large a measure of peace and hope vouchsafed to her, that it was but fitting she should bear testimony to her awareness of all that by obliteration of the last outward sign of the rebellion of her sorrowful youth. The Richard of to-day, homestaying, busy with much kindness, thoughtful of her comfort, honouring her with delicate courtesies--which to whoso receives them makes her womanhood a privilege rather than a burden--yet teasing her not a little, too, in the security of a fair and equal affection, bore such moving resemblance to that other Richard, first master of her heart, that Katherine could afford to cancel the cruelty of certain memories, retaining only the lovelier portion of them, and could find a peculiar sweetness in frequentation of this room, formerly devoted wholly to a sense of injury and blackness of hate.

And on the day in question, Katherine's presence exhaled a specially tender brightness, even as the thirsty earth, refreshed by the thunder rain, sent up a rare whiteness as of incense smoke. For she had been somewhat anxious about d.i.c.kie lately. To her sensitive observation of him, his virtue, his evenness of temper, his reasonableness, had come to have in them a pathetic element. He was lovely and pleasant in his ways. But sometimes, when tired or off his guard, she had surprised an expression on his face, a constrained patience of speech, even of att.i.tude, which made her fear he had given her but that half of his confidence calculated to cheer, while he kept the half calculated to sadden rather rigorously to himself. And, in good truth, Richard did suffer somewhat at this period. The first push of enthusiastic conviction had pa.s.sed, while his new manner of conduct and of thought had not yet acquired the stability of habit. The tide was low. Shallows and sand-bars disclosed themselves. He endured the temptations arising from the state known to saintly writers as "spiritual dryness," and found those temptations of an inglorious and wholly unheroic sort. And, though he held his peace, Katherine feared for him--feared that the way he elected to walk in was over-strait, and that, though resolution would hold, health might be overstrained.

"My darling, you never grumble now," she had said to him a few days back.

To which he answered:--

"Poor, dear mother, have I cheated you of one of your few, small pleasures? Was it so very delightful to listen to that same grumbling?"

"I begin to believe it was," Katherine declared. "It conferred a unique distinction upon me, you see, because I had a comfortable conviction you grumbled to n.o.body else. One is jealous of distinction. Yes--I think I miss it, d.i.c.kie."

Whereupon he laughed and kissed her, and swore he'd grumble fast enough if there was anything--which positively there wasn't--to grumble about.

All of which, though it charmed Katherine, appeased her anxiety but moderately. The young man worked too hard. His opportunities of amus.e.m.e.nt were too scant. Katherine cast about in thought, and in prayer, for some lightening of his daily life, even if such lightening should lessen the completeness of his dependence upon herself. And it was just at this juncture that Miss St. Quentin wrote proposing to come to Brockhurst for a week. She had not been there since the Whitsuntide recess. She wrote from Ormiston, where she was staying on her way south, after paying a round of country-house visits in Scotland. It was now late September. She would probably go to Cairo for the winter with young Lady Tobermory--grandniece by marriage of her late G.o.dmother and benefactress--whose lungs were p.r.o.nounced to be badly touched. Might she, therefore, come to Brockhurst to say good-bye?

And to this proposed visit Richard offered no opposition, though he received the announcement of it without any marked demonstration of pleasure.--Oh, by all means let her come! Of course it must be a pleasure to his mother to have her. And he'd got on very well with her in the spring--unquestionably he had.--Richard's expression was slightly ironical.--But he did really like her?--Oh dear, yes, he liked her exceedingly. She was quite curiously clever, and she was sincere, and she was rather beautiful too, in her own style--he had always thought that. By all means have her.--After which conversation Richard went for a long ride, inspected cottages in building at Sandyfield, visited a house, undergoing extensive, internal alterations, which stands back from Clerke's Green, about a hundred yards short of Appleyard, the saddler's shop at Farley Row. He came in late. Unusual silence held him during dinner. And Lady Calmady took herself to task, reproaching herself with selfishness. Honoria was very dear to her, and so, only too probably, she had overrated the friendliness of d.i.c.kie's att.i.tude towards the young lady. But they had seemed to get on so extremely well in the spring, and very fairly well at Whitsuntide! Yet, perhaps, in that, as in so much else, Richard put a constraint upon himself, obeying conscience rather than inclination. Katherine was perturbed. Nor had her perturbations suffered diminution yesterday, upon Miss St. Quentin's arrival. Richard remained unexpansive. To-day, however, matters had improved. Something--possibly the thunderstorm--seemed to have thawed his coldness, broken up his reticence of manner. Therefore Katherine gave thanks and moved with a lighter heart.

As for Miss St. Quentin herself, an innate gladsomeness pervaded her aspect not easy to resist. Lady Calmady had been sensible of it when the young lady first greeted her that morning. It remained by her now, as she stood after luncheon at one of the open windows, watching the up-rolling thunder-cloud, the spattering raindrops, the quaintly solemn behaviour of the stalking, striding rooks. Honoria was easily entertained to-day. She felt well-disposed towards every living creature. And the rooks diverted her extremely. Profanely they reminded her of certain archiepiscopal garden-parties, with this improvement on the human variant, that here wives and daughters also were condemned to decent sables instead of being at liberty to array themselves according to self-invented canons of remarkably defective taste. But, though diverted, it must be owned she gave her attention the more closely to all that outward drama of storm and rain and to the antics of the rooks, because she was very conscious of the fact that Richard Calmady had followed her and his mother into the red drawing-room, and it hurt her--though she had now, of necessity, witnessed it many times--it hurt, it still very shrewdly distressed her, to see him walk. As she heard the soft thud and shuffle of his onward progress, followed by the little clatter of the crutches as he laid them upon the floor beside his chair, the brightness died out of Honoria's face. She registered sharp annoyance against herself, for she had not antic.i.p.ated that this would continue to affect her so much. She supposed she had grown accustomed to it during her last two visits to Brockhurst, and that, this time, it would occasion her no shock. But the sadness of the young man's deformity remained present as ever. The indignity of it offended her. The desire by some, by any, means to mitigate the woeful circ.u.mscription of liberty and opportunity which it inflicted, wrought upon her almost painfully. And so she looked very hard at the hungry anticking rooks, both to secure time for recovery of her equanimity, and also to spare Richard smallest suspicion that she avoided beholding his advance and installation.