The History of Sir Richard Calmady Part 87

"Of course he has!" d.i.c.kie agreed. "Only, as a rule, poor dear, he can't be contented but that his special reform should be the final one, that his system should be the universal panacea. And in point of fact no reform is final this side of death, and no panacea is universal, save that which the Maker of the Universe chooses to work out--is working out now, if we could any way grasp it--through the slow course of unnumbered ages. Let the reformer do all he can, but don't let him turn sour because his pet reform, his pet system, sinks away and is swallowed up in the great sea of things--sea of human progress, if you like. Every system is bound to prove too small, every reform ludicrously inadequate--be it never so radical--because material conditions are perpetually changing, while man in his mental, emotional and physical aspects remains always precisely the same."

They pa.s.sed from the breezy upland into the high-banked lane which, leading downwards, joins the great London and Portsmouth Road just beyond Farley Row.

"And--and that is where I come in!" Richard said, turning a little in the saddle and smiling sweet-temperedly, yet with a suggestion of self-mockery, upon his companion. "Just because, in essential respects, mankind remains--notwithstanding modifications of his environment--substantially the same, from the era of the Pentateuch to the era of the Rougon-Macquarts, there must always be a lot of wreckage, of waste, and refuse humanity. The inauguration of each new system, each new reform--religious, political, educational, economic--practically they're all in the same boat--let alone the inevitable breakdown or petering out of each, necessarily produces a fresh crop of such waste and refuse material. And in that a man like myself, who does not aspire to cure or to construct, but merely to alleviate and to pick up the pieces, finds his chance."

And Honoria listened musing--approved, enthusiasm gaining her; yet protested--since, even while she admired, she rebelled a little on his account, and for his sake.

"But it is rather a hard life, surely Richard," she said, "which you propose to yourself? Always the pieces, the thing broken and spoiled, never the thing in its beauty, full of promise, and whole!"

"It is less hard for me than for most," he answered, "or should be so.

After all, I am to the manner born--a bit of human wreckage myself, with which, but for the accident of wealth, things would have gone pretty badly. I used to be horribly scared sometimes, as a small boy, thinking to what uses I might be put if the kindly, golden rampart ever gave."

He became silent. As for Honoria, she had neither courage to look at, nor answer, him just then.

"And you see, I'm absolutely free," he added presently.--"I am alone, always shall be so. If the life is hard, I ask no one to share it, so I may make it what I like."

"Oh! no, no--you misunderstand, Richard! I didn't mean that," Honoria cried quickly, half under her breath.

Again he looked at her, smiling.

"Didn't you? All the kinder of you," he said.

Thereupon regret, almost intolerable in its poignancy, invaded Miss St.

Quentin that she would have to go away, to go back to the world and all the foolish obtaining fashions of it; that she would have to take that preeminently well-cushioned and luxurious winter's journey to Cairo.

She longed inexpressibly to remain here, to a.s.sist in these experiments made in the name of Holy Charity. She longed inexpressibly to---- And there Honoria paused, even in thought. Yet she glanced at the young man riding beside her--at the handsome profile, still and set in outline, the suggestion--it was no more--of a scar running downward across the left cheek, at the well-made, upright, broad-shouldered figure, and then at the saddle, peaked, back and front, with oddly-shaped appendages to it resembling old-fashioned holsters.--And, as yesterday upon the bridge, the ache of a pain at once sweet and terrible laid hold of her, making her queerly faint. The single street, sun-covered, sleepy, empty save for a brewer's dray and tax-cart or two standing before the solid Georgian portals of the White Lion Inn, for a straggling tail of children bearing home small shoppings and jugs of supper beer, for a flock of gray geese proceeding with suggestively self-righteous demeanour along the very middle of the roadway and lowering long necks to hiss defiance at the pa.s.ser-by, and for an old black retriever dozing peacefully beneath one of the rustling sycamores in front of Josiah Appleyard, the saddler's shop--all these, as she looked at them, became uncertain in outline, reeled before Honoria's eyes. For the moment she experienced a difficulty in keeping steady in the saddle. But the horses still walked quietly, neck to neck, their shadows, and those of their riders growing longer, narrower, outstretched before them as the sun declined in the west. All the future hung in the balance, but the scale had not turned as yet.

Then Richard's voice took up its parable again.

"Perhaps it's a rather fraudulently comfortable doctrine, yet it does strike one that the justification of disaster, in all its many forms, is the opportunity it affords the individualist. He may use it for self-aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, or for self-devotion--though I rather shy at so showy a word as that last. However, the use he makes of it isn't the point. What is the point, to my mind at least, is this--though it doesn't sound magnificent, it hardly indeed sounds cleanly--that whatever trade fails, whatever profession, thanks to the advance of civilisation, becomes obsolete, that of the man with the dust-cart, of the scavenger, of the sweeper, won't."

Once more Richard smiled upon his companion charmingly, yet with something of self-mockery.

"And so, you see, having knocked about enough to grow careless of niceties of prejudice, and to acquire immense admiration for any vocation which promises permanence, I join hands with the dustman. In the light of science, and in that of religion alike, nothing really is common or unclean. And then--then, if you are outcasted in any case as some of us are, it's a little too transparently cheap to be afraid of soiling----" He broke off.--"Away there to the left, Honoria," he said.

"You see the house? The yellow-washed one, with the gables and tiled roofs--there, back on the slope.--Bagshaw, the Bond Street poulterer, had it for years. His lease ran out in the spring, and happily he didn't care to renew. Had bought himself an up-to-date, villa residence somewhere in the suburbs--Chistlehurst, I believe. So I took the place over. It will do for a beginning--the small end of the wedge of my scavenger's business. There are over five acres of garden and orchard, and plenty of rooms on each floor, which gives good range for the disabled to move about in--and the stairs, only one flight, are easy.

One has to think of these details. And--well, the house commands a magnificent view of Clerke's Green, and the geese on it, than which nothing clearly can be more exciting!"

The groom rode forward and opened the gate. Before the square, outstanding porch Richard drew up.

"I should like to come in with you," he said. "But you see it's rather a business getting off one's horse, and I can't very well manage the stairs. So I'll wait about till you are ready. Don't hurry. I want you to see all the arrangements, if it doesn't bore you, and make suggestions. The carpenters are there, doing overtime. They'll let you through if the caretaker's out."

Thus admonished, Miss St. Quentin dismounted and made her way into the house. A broad pa.s.sage led straight through it. The open door at the farther end disclosed a vista of box-edged paths and flower-borders where, in gay ranks, stood tall sunflowers, hollyhocks, Michaelmas-daisies, and such like. Beyond was orchard, the round-headed apple-trees, bright with polished fruit, rising from a carpet of gra.s.s.

The rooms, to left and right of the pa.s.sage, were pleasantly sun-warmed and mellow of aspect, the ceilings of them crossed by ma.s.sive beams.

Honoria visited them, dutifully observant. She encountered the head carpenter, an acquaintance and ally during those four years so great part of which she had spent at Brockhurst. She talked with him, making inquiries concerning wife, children and trade, incident to such a meeting, her face very serious all the while, the skirt of her habit gathered up in one hand, her gait a trifle stiff and measured owing to her high riding-boots. But, though she acquitted herself in all kindliness of conversation, though she conscientiously inspected each separate apartment, and noted the cheerful comeliness of orchard and garden, it must be owned all these remained singularly distant from her actual emotion and thought. She was glad to be alone. She was glad to be away from Richard Calmady, though zealously obedient to his wishes in respect of this inspection. For his presence became increasingly oppressive from the intensity of feeling it produced in her, and which she was, at present, powerless to direct towards any reasonable and definite end. This rendered her tongue-tied, and, as she fancied, stupid. Her unreadiness mortified her. She, usually indifferent enough to the impression she produced on others, was sensible of a keen desire to appear at her best. She did in fact, so she believed, appear at her worst, slow of understanding and of sympathy.--But then all the future hung in the balance. The scale delayed to turn. And the strain of waiting became agitating to the point of distress.

At last the course of her so-dutiful survey brought her to a quaint, little chamber, situated immediately over the square, outstanding porch. It was lighted by a single, hooded window placed in the centre of the front wall. It was evidently designed for a linen room, and was in process of being fitted with shelves and cupboards of white pine.

The floor was deep in shavings, long, curly, wafer-coloured, semi-transparent. They rustled like fallen leaves when Honoria stepped among them. The air was filled with the odour of them, dry and resinous as that of the fir forest. Ever after that odour affected Honoria with a sense of half-fearful joy and of impending fate. She stood in the middle of the quaint, little chamber. The ceiling was low. She had to bend her head to avoid violent contact between the central beam of it and the crown of her felt hat. But circ.u.mscribed though the s.p.a.ce, and uncomfortable though her posture, she had an absurd longing to lock the door of the little room, never to come out, to stay here forever! Here she was safe. But outside, on the threshold, stood something she dared not name. It drew her with a pain at once terrible and lovely. She dreaded it. Yet once close to it, once face to face with it, she knew it would have her--that it would not take no for an answer. Her pride, her chast.i.ty, were in arms. Was this, she wondered, what men and women speak of so lightly, laugh and joke about? Was this love?--To her it seemed wholly awe-inspiring. And so she clung strangely to the shelter of the quaint, little room with its sea of rustling, resinous shavings.

On the other side the door of it waited that momentous decision which would cause the scale to turn. Yet the minutes pa.s.sed. To prolong her absence became impossible.

Just then there was a movement below, a crunching of the gravel, as though of a horse growing restless, impatient of standing. Honoria moved forward, opened the window, pushing back the cas.e.m.e.nt against a cl.u.s.ter of late-blossoming, red roses, the petals of which floated slowly downward describing fluttering circles. Richard Calmady was just below. Honoria called to him.

"I am coming, Richard, I am coming!" she said.

He turned in the saddle and looked up at her smiling--a smile at once courageous and resigned. Yet, notwithstanding that smile, Honoria once again discovered in his eyes the chill desolation and homelessness of the sky of the winter night. Then the scale turned, turned at last--for that same lovely pain grew lovelier, more desirable than any possibility of ease, until such time as that desolation should pa.s.s, that homelessness be cradled to content in some sure harbourage.--Here was the thing given her to do, and she must do it! She would risk all to win all. And, with that decision, all her serenity and freedom of soul returned. The white light of a n.o.ble self-devotion, reckless of self-spending, reckless of consequence, the joy of a great giving, illuminated her face.

As to Richard, he, looking up at her, though ignorant of her purpose, misreading the cause of that inspired aspect, still thought he had never witnessed so graciously gallant a sight. The nymph whom he had first known, who had baffled and crossed him, was here still, strong, untamed, elusive, remote. But a woman was here too, of finest fibre, faithful and loyal, capable of undying tenderness, of an all-encircling and heroic love. Then the desires of the natural man stirred somewhat in Richard, just because--paradox though it undoubtedly was--she provoked less the carnal, perishing pa.s.sion of the flesh, than the pure and imperishable pa.s.sion of the spirit. Irrepressible envy of Ludovic Quayle, her lover, seized him, irrepressible demand for just all those things which that other Richard, the would-be saint, had so sternly condemned himself to repudiate, to cast aside and forget. And the would-be saint triumphed--beating down thought of all that, trampling it under foot--so that after briefest interval he called up to her cheerily enough.

"Well, what do you make of the dust-cart? Rather fascinating, isn't it?

Notwithstanding its uncleanly name, it's really rather sweet."

To which she answered, speaking from out the wide background of her own emotion and purpose:--

"Yes, yes--it's sad in a way, Richard, penetratingly, splendidly sad.

But one wouldn't have it otherwise; for it is splendid, and it is sweet, abundantly sweet."--Then her tone changed.--"I won't keep you waiting any longer, I'm coming," she said.

Honoria looked round the quaint, little room, with its half-adjusted shelves and cupboards, the floor of it deep in resinous, semi-transparent, wafer-coloured shavings, bidding it adieu. For good or evil, happiness or sorrow, she was sensible it told for much in her life's history. Then, something delicately militant in her carriage, she swung away down-stairs and out of the house. She was going forth to war indeed, to a war which in no shape or form had she ever waged as yet. Many men had wooed her, and their wooing had left her cold. She had never wooed any man. Why should she? To her no man had ever mattered one little bit.

So she mounted, and they rode away.--A spin across the level turf to hearten her up, satisfy the fulness of sensation which held her, and shake her nerves into place. It was exhilarating. She grew keen and tense, her whole economy becoming reliable and well-knit by the strong exercise and sense of the superbly healthy and unperplexed vitality of the horse under her. Honoria could have fought with dragons just then, had such been there to fight with! But, in point of fact, nothing more agressively dangerous presented itself for encounter than the shallow ford which divides the parish of Farley from that of Sandyfield and the t.i.thing of Brockhurst. Snorting a little, the horses splashed through the clear, brown water and entered upon the rough, rutted road, gra.s.s grown in places, which, ending beneath a broken avenue of ancient, stag-headed oaks, leads to the entrance of the Brockhurst woods. These, crowned by the dark, ragged line of the fir forest, rose in a soft, dense ma.s.s against the western sky, in which showed promise of a fair pageant of sunset. A covey of partridges ran up the sandy ruts before the horses, and, rising at last with a long-drawn whir of wings, skimmed the top of the crumbling bank and dropped in the stubble-field on the right. A pause, while the keeper's wife ran out to open the white gate,--the dogs meanwhile, from their wooden kennels under the Spanish chestnuts upon the hillock behind the lodge, pulling at their chains and keeping up a vociferous chorus. Thus heralded, the riders pa.s.sed into the mysteriously whispering quiet of the great woods.

The heavy, summer foliage remained as yet untouched by the hectic of autumn. Diversity was observable in form rather than in tint, and from this resulted a remarkable effect of unity, a singleness of intention, and of far-reaching secrecy. The mult.i.tudinous leaves and the all-pervading green gloom of them around, above, seemed to engulf horses and riders. It was as though they rode across the floor of ocean, the green tides sweeping overhead. Yet the trees of the wood a.s.serted their intelligent presence now and again. Audibly they talked together, bent themselves a little to listen and to look, as though curious of the aspect and purposes of these wandering mortals. And all this, the unity and secrecy of the place, affected both Richard and Honoria strangely, circling them about with something of earth-magic, removing them far from ordinary conditions of social intercourse, and thus rendering it possible, inevitable even, that they should think such thoughts and say such words as part company with subterfuge and concealment, go naked, and speak uttermost truth. For, with only the trees of the wood to listen, with that sibilant whisper of the green tide overhead, with strong emotion compelling them--in the one case towards death of self, in the other towards giving of self--in the one towards austere pa.s.sivity, in the other towards activity taxing all capital of pride, of delicacy, and of tact--developments became imminent, and those of the most vital sort.

The conversation had been broken, desultory; but now, by tacit consent, the pace became quiet again, the horses were permitted to walk. To have gone other than softly through the living heart of the greenwood must have savoured of desecration. Yet Richard was not insensible to a certain danger. He tried, rousing himself to conversation, to rouse himself also to the practical and commonplace.

"I am glad you liked my house," he said. "But I hear the aristocracy of the Row laments. It shies at the idea of being invaded by more or less frightful creatures. But I remain deaf. I really can't bother about that. It is so immeasurably more unpleasant to be frightful than to see that which is so, that I'm afraid my sympathies remain rather pig-headedly one-sided. I propose to educate the Row in the grace of pity. It may lay up merit by due exercise of that."

Richard took off his hat and rode bareheaded, looking away into the delicious, green gloom. Here, where the wood was thickest, oak and beech shutting out the sky, clasping hands overhead, the ground beneath them deep in moss and fern, that gloom was precisely like the colour of Honoria's eyes. He wished it wasn't so. He tried to forget it. But the resemblance haunted him. Look where he might, still he seemed to look into those singular and charming eyes. He talked on determinedly, putting a force upon himself--too often saying that which, no sooner was it out of his mouth, than, he wished unsaid.

"I don't want to be too hard on the Row, though. It has a right, after all, to its little prejudices. Only you see for those who, poor souls, are different to other people it becomes of such supreme importance to keep in touch with the average. I have found that out in practice. And so I refuse to shut my waste humanity away. They must neither hide themselves nor be hidden, be spared seeing how much other people enjoy from which they are debarred, or grow over-conscious of their own ungainliness. That is why I've planted them and their gardens, and their pigs and their poultry--we'll have a lot of live stock, a second generation, even of chickens, offers remarkable consolations!--on the highroad, at the entrance of the little town, where, on a small scale at all events, they'll see the world that's straight-backed and has its proper complement of limbs and senses, go by. Envy, hatred, and malice, and the seven devils of morbidity are forever lying in wait for them--well--for us--for me and those like me, I mean. In proportion as one's brought up tenderly--as I was--one doesn't realise the deprivation and disgust of one's condition at the start. But once realised, one's inclination is to kill. At least a man's is. A woman may accept it more quietly, I suppose."

"Richard," Honoria said slowly, "are you sure you don't greatly exaggerate all--all that?"

He shook his head.

"Thirty years' experience--no, I don't exaggerate! Each time one makes a fresh acquaintance, each time a pretty woman is just that bit kinder to one than she would dare be to any man who was not out of it, each time people are manifestly interested--politely, of course--and form a circle, make room for one as they did at that particularly disagreeable Grimshott garden party yesterday, each time--I don't want to drivel, but so it is--one sees a pair of lovers--oh! well, it's not easy to retain one's philosophy, not to obey the primitive instincts of any animal when it's ill-used and hurt, and to revenge oneself--to want to kill, in short."

"You--you don't hate women, then?" Honoria said, still slowly.

Richard stared at her for a moment.

"Hate them?" he said. "I only wish to goodness I did."

"But in that case," she began bravely, "why----"

"This is why," he broke in.--"You may remember my engagement to Lady Constance Quayle, and the part you, very properly, took in the canceling of it? You know better than I do--though my imagination is pretty fertile in dealing with the situation--what instincts and feelings prompted you to take that part."

The young lady turned to him, her arms outstretched, notwithstanding bridle-reins and whip, her face, and those strange eyes which seemed so integral a part of the fair green-wood, full of sorrowful entreaty and distress.

"Richard, Richard," she cried, "will you never forgive me that? She didn't love you. It was horrible, yet in doing that which I did, I believed--I believe so still--I did what was right by you both."