The History of Sir Richard Calmady Part 84

"Oh, in all sorts of ways and of places! Knott swears it is contrary to reason, an interfering with the beneficent tendency of nature to kill off the unfit. Yet he works like a horse to help me--even talks of giving up his practice and moving to Farley Row, so as to be near the headquarters of my establishment. The lease of a rather charming, old house there fell in this year. Fortunately the tenant did not want to renew, so I am having that made comfortable for them."

Richard smiled. A greater sense of well-being animated him. Out of the world she had come, back into the world she would go again. Meanwhile she was n.o.bly fair to look upon, she was pure of heart, intercourse with her made for the justification of high purposes and unselfish experiment--so he thought.

"I am growing as keen on bagging a fine cripple as another man might on bagging a fine tiger," he said. "The whole matter at bottom, I suspect, turns on the instinct of sport.--Only the week before last I acquired a rather terribly superior specimen. A lad of eighteen, a factory hand in Westchurch. He was caught by some loose gearing and swept into the machinery. What is left of him--if it survives, which it had much better not, and I can't help hoping it will, he is such a plucky, sweet-natured fellow--will require a nurse for the rest of its life. So I am pushing on the work at Farley, that the home may be ready when we get him out of hospital.--By the way, I must go to-morrow and stir up the workmen. Do you care to come and see it all, if the afternoon is fine and not too hot?"

And Honoria agreed. Nor did she shrink when Richard slipping out of his chair picked up his crutches.--"I suppose it is about time to get ready for the Grimshott function," he said.--She walked beside him to the door, opened it and pa.s.sed into the neutral-tinted, tapestry-hung dining-room. There the young man waited a moment. He looked not at her but straight before him.

"Honoria," he said suddenly, almost harshly, "you and Helen de Vallorbes used to be great friends. For more than a year I have held no communication with her, except through my lawyers. Can you tell me anything about her?"

Miss St. Quentin hesitated.

"Nothing very direct--I heard from de Vallorbes about three months ago.

I don't think I am faithless--indeed I held on to her as long as I could, Richard! I am not squeamish, and then I always prefer to stand by the woman. But whatever de Vallorbes may have been, he pulled himself together rather admirably from the time he went into the army.

He wanted to keep straight and to live respectably. And--I hate to say so--but she treated him a little too flagrantly. And then--and then----"

Honoria put her hands over her eyes and shook back her head angrily.

"It wasn't one man, Richard."

d.i.c.kie went white to the lips.

"I know that," he said.

He moved forward a few steps.

"Who is it now? Destournelle?"

"Oh no--no"--Honoria said. "Some Russian--from the extreme east--Kazan, I think--prince, millionaire, drunken savage. But he adores her. He squanders money upon her, surrounds her with barbaric state. This is de Vallorbes' version of the affair. The scandal is open and notorious.

But she and her prince together have great power. Something will eventually be arranged in the way of a marriage. She will not come back."

CHAPTER IX

TELLING HOW LUDOVIC QUAYLE AND HONORIA ST. QUENTIN WATCHED THE TROUT RISE IN THE LONG WATER

Some hour and a half later Miss St. Quentin pa.s.sed down the flight of stone steps, leading from the southern end of the terrace to the gra.s.s slopes of the park. Arrived at the lowest step she gathered the skirt of her dress up over one arm, thereby securing greater freedom of movement, and displaying a straight length of pink and white petticoat.

Thus prepared she fared forth over the still smoking turf. The storm had pa.s.sed, but the atmosphere remained thick and humid. A certain opulence of colour obtained in the landscape. The herbs in the gra.s.s, wild-thyme, wild-balm, and star-flowered camomile, smelt strongly aromatic as she trod them under foot, while the beds of bracken, dried and yellowed by the drought, gave off a sharp, woody scent.

Usually, when thus alone and in contact with nature, such matters claimed Honoria's whole attention, ministering to her love of earth-lore and of Mother Earth--producing in her silent worship of those primitive deities who at once preside over and inhabit the waste-land and the tilth, the untamed forest and the pastures where heavy-uddered, sweet-breathed cows lie in the deep, meadow gra.s.s, the garden ground, all pleasant, orchard places, and the broad promise of the waving crops. But this afternoon, although the colour, odour, warmth, and all the many voices praising the refreshment of the rain, were sensibly present to her, Honoria's thought failed to be engrossed by them. For she was in process of worshipping younger and more compa.s.sionate deities, sadder, because more human, ones, whose office lies not with Nature in her eternal repose and fecundity but with man in his eternal failure and unrest. Not august Ceres, giver of the golden harvest-fields, or fierce Cybele, the G.o.ddess of the many paps, but spare, brown-habited St. Francis, serving his brethren with bleeding hands and feet, held empire over her meditations.--In imagination she saw--saw with only too lively realisation of detail--that eighteen-year-old lad, in the factory at Westchurch, drawn up--all the unspent hopes and pleasures of his young manhood active in him--by the loose gearing, into the merciless vortex of revolving wheels, and there, without preparation, without pause of warning, without any dignity of shouting mult.i.tude, of arena or of stake, martyred--converted in a few horrible seconds from health and wholeness into a formless lump of human waste. And up and down the land, as she reflected, wherever the great systems of trade and labour, which build up the mechanical and material prosperity of our day, go forward, kindred things happen--let alone question of all those persons who are born into the world already injured, or bearing the seeds of foul and disfiguring diseases in their organs and their blood.--Verily Richard Calmady's sad family was a rather terribly large one, well calculated to maintain its numbers, even to increase! For neither the age of human sacrifice nor of cannibalism is really over, nor is the practice of these limited to savage peoples in distant lands or far-away isles of the sea. They form the basis actually, though in differing of outward aspect, of all existing civilisations, just as they formed the basis of all past civilisations--a basis, moreover, perpetually recemented and relaid. And, as she considered--being courageous and fair-minded--it was inevitable that this should be so, unthinkable that it should be otherwise, since it made, at least indirectly, for the prosperity of the majority and development of the race.--Considering which--the apparently cruel paradox and irony of it--Honoria swung down past the scattered hawthorns, thick with ruddy fruit, across the fragrant herbs and short, sweet turf, through the straggling fern-brakes, which impeded her progress, plucking at her skirts, careless of the rich colour and ample beauty outspread before her.

But soon, as a bird after describing far-ranging circles drops at last upon the from at-first-determined spot, so her thought settled down, with relief yet in a way unwillingly--and that not out of any lingering repulsion, but rather from a certain proud modesty and self-respect--upon Richard Calmady himself. Not only did he apprehend all this, far more clearly, more intimately, than she could.--Had he not spoken of the advantages of a certain blackness?--Honoria's vision became somewhat indistinct.--But he set out to deal with it in a practical manner. And in this connection she began to understand how it had come about that through years of ingrat.i.tude and neglect, and of loose-living, on his part, his mother could still remain patient, could endure, and supremely love. For behind the obvious, the almost coa.r.s.e, tragedy and consequent appeal of the man's deformity, there was the further appeal of something very admirable in the man himself, for the emergence and due blossoming of which it would be very possible, very worth while, for whoso once recognised its existence to wait. John Knott had been right in his estimate of Richard. Ludovic Quayle had been right. Lady Calmady had been right.--Honoria had begun to believe that, even before Richard had come forth from his self-imposed seclusion, in the spring.

The belief had increased during her subsequent intercourse with him, had been reinforced during her few days' visit at Whitsuntide. Yet, until now, she had never freely and openly admitted it. She wondered why? And then hastily she put such wondering from her. Again a certain proud modesty held her back. She did not want to think of herself in relation to him, or of him in relation to herself. She wished, for a reason she refused to define, to exclude the personal element. Doing that she could permit herself larger lat.i.tude of admiration. His acknowledgment of fellowship with, and obligation of friendship towards, all victims of physical disaster kindled her enthusiasm. She perceived that it was contrary to the man's natural arrogance, natural revolt against the humiliation put upon him--a rather superb overcoming, in short, of nature by grace. Nor was it the outgrowth of any morbid or sentimental emotion. It had no tincture of the hysteric element. It took its rise in conviction and in experiment. For Richard, though still young, struck her as remarkably mature. He had lived his life, sinned his sins--she did not doubt that--suffered unusual sorrows, bought his experience in the open market and at a sufficiently high price. And this was the result! It pleased her imagination by its essential unworldliness, its idealism and individuality of outlook. She went back on her earlier judgment of him, first formulated as a complaint,--he was strong, whether for good or evil--now unselfishly for good--and Honoria, being herself among the strong, supremely valued and welcomed strength. And so it happened that the tone of her meditations altered, being increasingly attuned to a serious, but very real congratulation. For she perceived that the tragedy of human life also const.i.tutes the magnificence of human life, since it affords, and always must afford, supreme opportunity of heroism.

She had traversed the open s.p.a.ce of turf, and come to the tall, iron hurdles enclosing the paddock. She folded her arms on the topmost bar of the iron gate and stood there. She wanted to rest a little in these thoughts that had come to her. She was not quite sure of them as yet.

But, if they meant anything, if they were other than mere rhetoric, they must mean a very great deal, into harmony with which it would be necessary to bring her thought upon many other subjects. She was conscious of an excitement, a reaching out towards some but-half-disclosed glory, some new and very exquisite fulness of life.

But was it new, after all? Was it not rather the at-last-permitted activity of faculties and sensibilities. .h.i.therto refused development, voluntarily, perhaps cowardly, held in check and repressed? She appeared to be making acquaintance with unexpected depths of apprehension and emotion in herself. And this, for cause unknown, brought her into more lively commerce with her immediate surroundings and the sentiment of them. Her eyes rested on them questioningly, as though they might afford a tally to, perhaps an explanation of, the strange, yet lovely emotion which had invaded her.

Here in the valley, notwithstanding the recent drought, the gra.s.s was lush. Across the paddock, just within the circuit of the far railings, a grove of large beech trees broke the expanse of living green. Beyond, seen beneath their down-sweeping branches, the surface of the Long Water repeated the hot purple, the dun-colour and silver-pink, of the sky. On the opposite slope, extending from the elm avenue to the outlying ma.s.ses of the woods and upward to the line of oaks which run parallel with the park palings, were cornlands. The wheat, a red-gold, was already for the most part bound in shocks. A company of women, wearing lilac and pink sunbonnets and all-round, blue, linen ap.r.o.ns faded by frequent washing to a fine clearness of tone, came down over the blond stubble. They carried, in little baskets and shining tins, tea for the white-shirted harvesters who were busy setting up the storm-fallen sheaves. They laughed and talked together, and their voices came to Honoria with a pleasant quality of sound. Two stumbling baby-children, hand in hand, followed them, as did a small, white-and-tan, spotted dog. One woman was bareheaded and wore a black bodice, which gave a singular value to her figure amid the all-obtaining yellow of the corn.

The scene in its simple and homely charm held the poetry of that happier side of labour, of that most ancient of all industries--the husbandman's--and of the generous giving of the soil. Set in a frame of opulently coloured woodland and sky, the stately red-brick and freestone house crowning the high land and looking forth upon it all, the whole formed, to Honoria's thinking, a very n.o.ble picture. And then, of a sudden, in the midst of her quiet enjoyment of it and a tenderness which the sight of it somehow begot in her, Honoria was seized by sharp, unreasoning regret that she must so soon leave it.

Unreasoning regret that she had engaged to go abroad this winter, with poor, pretty, frivolous, young Lady Tobermory--spoilt child of society and of wealth--now half-crazed, rendered desperate, by the fear that disease, which had laid a threatening finger on her, might lay its whole hand cutting short her playtime and breaking her many toys. Of anything other than toys and playtime she had no conception.--"Those brutes of doctors tell Tobermory I must give up low gowns," she wrote.

"And I adore my neck and shoulders. Every one always has admired them.

It makes me utterly miserable to cover them up. And now that I am thinner I could have my gowns cut lower than ever, nearly down to my waist, which makes it all the more intolerable. I went to Dessaix about it, went over to Paris on purpose, though Tobermory was wild at my traveling in the heat. He--Dessaix, I mean, not poor T.--was just as nice as possible, and promised to invent new styles. Still, of course, I must look dowdy at night in a high gown. Everybody does. I shall feel exactly like our clergyman's wife at Ellerhay, when she comes to dine with us at Christmas and Easter and once in the summer. I refuse to have her oftener than that. She has a long back and about fourteen children, which she seems to think a great credit to her. I don't, as they are ugly, and she is dreadfully poor. She wears her Sunday silk with lace _wound_ about, don't you know, but wound _tight_. That means full dress. I am buying some lace, d.u.c.h.esse at three and a half guineas a yard. I suppose I shall come to _winding_ that of an evening. Then I shall look like her. It makes me cry dreadfully, and, as I tell Tobermory, that is worse for me than any number of lungs. Darling H., if you really love me in the least, bring nothing but high gowns.

Perhaps I mayn't mind quite so much if I never see you in a low one."--There had been much more to the same effect, pathetic in its inadequacy and egoism. Only, as Honoria reflected, that is a style of pathos dangerously liable to pall upon one. She sighed, for the prospect of spending the winter partic.i.p.ating in the frivolities, and striving to restrain the indiscretions of this little, damaged b.u.t.terfly, did not smile upon her. She might have stayed on here, stayed on at Brockhurst, worked over the dear place as she had so often done before--helping Lady Calmady. Why had she promised?--Well--because she had been rather restless, unsettled, and at loose ends of late----

Whereupon the young lady bent down and unfastened the padlock with a certain decision of movement, closed the gate, relocking it carefully behind her, and started off across the deep gra.s.s of the paddock, her pale face very serious, her small head held high. She would keep faith with Evelyn Tobermory. Of course she would keep faith with her. It was not only a matter of honour, but of expediency. It was much, very much better to go. Yet whence this sudden heat proceeded, and why the Egyptian journey a.s.sumed suddenly such paramount desirability, she carefully did not stay to inquire--an omission not, perhaps, without significance.

The half-dozen dainty fillies, meanwhile, who had eyed her shyly from their station beneath the beech trees, trotted gently towards her with friendly whinnyings, their fine ears p.r.i.c.ked, their long tails carried well away in a sweeping curve. Honoria went on to meet them. She was glad of something to occupy her hands, some outside, concrete thing to occupy her thought. She took the foremost, a dark bay, by the nose strap of its leather head-stall, patted the beast's sleek neck, looked into its prominent, heavy-lidded eyes,--the blue film over the velvet-like iris and pupil of them giving a singular softness of effect,--drew down the fine, aristocratic head, and kissed the little star where the hair turned in the centre of the smooth, hard forehead.

It was as perfectly bred as she was herself--so clean, so fresh, that to touch it was wholly pleasant! Then she backed away from it, holding it at arm's-length, noting how every line of its limbs and body was graceful and harmonious, full of the purpose of easy strength, easy freedom of movement. That it was a trifle blown out in barrel, from being at gra.s.s, only gave its contours an added suavity. It was a lovely beast, a delicious beast! Honoria smiled upon it, talked to, patted and coaxed it. While another young beauty, waxing brave, pushed its black muzzle under her arm, and lipped at her jacket pockets in search of bread and of apples. And, these good things once discovered, the rest of the drove came about her, civilly, a trifle proudly, as befitted such fine ladies, with no pushings and bustlings of vulgar greed. And they charmed her. She was very much at one with them. She fed them fearlessly, thrusting one aside in favour of another, giving each reward in due turn. She pa.s.sed her hands down over their slender limbs. The warm colours and the gloss of them were pleasant to her eyes. And they smelt sweet, as did the trampled gra.s.s beneath their unshod hoofs. For a while the human problem--its tragedy, magnificence, inadequacy alike--ceased to trouble her. The poetry of these beautiful, innocent, clean-feeding beasts was, for the moment, sufficient in and by itself.

But, even while she thus played with and rejoiced in them, remembrance of their owner came back to her, his maiming, as against their perfection of finish, the lamentable disparity between his physical equipment and theirs. Honoria's expression lost its nonchalant gaiety.

She pushed her gentle, equine comrades away to left and right, not that they ceased to please but that the human problem and the tragedy of it once more became dominant. She walked on across the paddock rapidly, while the fillies, forming up behind her, followed in single file treading a sinuous pathway through the gra.s.s, the foremost one still pushing its black muzzle, now and again, under her elbow and nibbling insinuatingly at her empty jacket pockets.--If only that horrible misfortune had not befallen Richard Calmady! If--if---- But then, had it not befallen him, would he ever have been excited to so admirable effort, would he ever have attained so absorbing and vigorous a personality as he actually had? Again her thought turned on itself, to provocation of momentary impatience.--Honoria unfastened the second padlock with a return of her former decision.--There were conclusions she wished instinctively to avoid, from which she instinctively desired escape. She forced aside the all-too-affectionate, bay filly who crowded upon her, shot back the bar of the gate and relocked it. Then, once again, she kissed the pretty beast on the forehead as it stretched its neck over the top of the gate.

"Good-bye, dear la.s.s," she said. "Win your races and, when the time comes, drop foals as handsome as yourself, and thank your stars you're under orders, and so have small chance to muddle your affairs--as with your good looks, my dear, you most a.s.suredly would--like all the rest of us."

With which excellent advice she swung away down the last twenty yards of the avenue and out on to the roadway of the red-brick and freestone bridge. Here, in the open above the water, the air was sensibly fresher. From the paddock the deserted fillies whinnied to her. The voices of the harvesters came cheerily from the cornland. The men sat in the blond stubble, backed by a range of upstanding sheaves. The women, bright in those frail blues, clear pinks, and lilacs, knelt serving their meal. She of the black bodice stood apart, her hands upon her hips, looking towards the bridge and its solitary occupant. The tan-and-white, spotted dog ran to and fro chasing field-mice and yapped. The baby children staggered after it, uttering excited squeakings and cries. The lower cloud had parted in the west, disclosing an upper stratum of pale gold, which widened upward and outward as the minutes pa.s.sed. Save immediately below, in the shadow of the bridge, this found reflection in the water, overlaying it as with the blond of the stubble and warmer tones of the sheaves. Honoria sat down sideways on the coping of the parapet. She watched the moor-hens, dark of plumage, a splash of fiery orange on their jaunty, little heads, swim out with restless, jerky motion from the edge of the reed-beds and break up the shining surface with diverging lines of rippling, brown shadow. In the shade cast by the bridge, trout rose at the dancing gnats and flies. She could see them rush upward through the brown water. Sometimes they leapt clear of it, exposing their silver bellies, pink-spotted sides, and the olive-green of their backs. They dropped again with a flop, and rings circled outward from the place of their disappearing.

All this Honoria saw, but dreamily, pensively. She realised, as never before, that, much as she might love this place and the life of it, she was a guest only, a pilgrim and sojourner. The completeness of her own independence ceased to please.--"Me this unchartered freedom tires." As she quoted the line, Honoria smiled. These were, indeed, new aspects of herself! Where would they carry her, both in thought and in action? It was a little alarming to contemplate that. And then her pensiveness increased, a strange nostalgia taking her--amounting almost to physical pain--for that same but-half-disclosed glory, that same new and very exquisite fulness of life, apprehension of which had lately been vouchsafed to her. If she could remain very still and undisturbed, if she could empty her consciousness of all else, bend her whole will to an act at once of determination and of reception, perhaps, it would be given her clearly to see and understand. The idealist, the mystic, were very present in Honoria just then. She fixed her eyes upon the shining surface of the water. A conviction grew upon her that, could she maintain a certain mental and emotional equilibrium, something of permanent and very vital importance must take place.

Suddenly she heard footsteps upon the gravel of the roadway. She started, turned deliberately, holding in check the agitation which possessed her, to find herself confronted by the tall, preeminently modern and mundane, figure of Ludovic Quayle. Honoria gave herself a little shake of uncontrollable impatience. For less than twopence-halfpenny she could have given the very gentlemanlike intruder a shake too! He let her down with a b.u.mp, so to speak, from regions mysterious and supernal, to regions altogether social and of this world worldly. And yet she knew that such feelings were not a little hard and unjust as entertained towards poor Mr. Quayle.

The young man, in any case, was happily ignorant of having offended. He sauntered out on to the bridge, hat in hand, his head a trifle on one side, his long neck directed slightly forward, his expression that of polite and intimate amus.e.m.e.nt--but whether amus.e.m.e.nt at his own, or his fellow-creatures' expense, it would have been difficult to declare.

"At last, I find you, my dear Miss St. Quentin," he said. "And I have sought for you as for lost treasure. Forgive a biblical form of address--a reminiscence merely of my father's morning ministrations to my unmarried sisters, the footmen, and the maids. He reads them the most surprising little histories at times, which make me positively blush--but that's a detail. To account for my invasion of your idyllic solitude--I learned incidentally you proposed coming here from Ormiston this week. I thought I would venture on an early attempt to find you.

But I drew the house blank, though a.s.sisted by Winter--the terrace also blank. Then from the troco-ground I beheld that which looked promising, coquetting with d.i.c.kie's yearlings. So I followed on to know--my father and the maids again--followed on to--to my reward."

Mr. Quayle stood directly in front of her. He spoke with admirable urbanity, yet with even greater rapidity than usual. His beautifully formed mouth pursed itself up between the sentences, with that effect of indulgent superiority which was at once so attractive and so excessively provoking. But, for all that, Honoria perceived that, for once in his life, the young man was distinctly, not to say acutely, nervous.

"The reward will be limited I'm afraid," she replied, "for my temper is unaccountably out of sorts this afternoon."

"And, if one may make bold to inquire, why out of sorts, dear Miss St.

Quentin?"

He sat down on the parapet near her, crossed his legs, and fell to nursing his left knee. The woman of the black bodice went up across the pale stubble to her companions. She talked to them, nodding her head in the direction of the bridge.

"I have promised to do a certain thing, and having promised, of course I must do it."

Honoria looked away towards the harvesters up there among the gold of the corn.

"And yet, now I have committed myself, thinking it over I find I dislike doing it warmly."

"The statement of the case is just a trifle vague," Mr. Quayle remarked. "But--if one may brave a suggestion--supersede a first duty by a second and, of course, a greater. With a little exercise of imagination, a little good-will, a little a.s.sistance from a true friend thrown in perhaps, it is generally quite possible to manage that, I think."

"And you are prepared to play the part of the true friend?"