The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
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 cock-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 Dickie 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 association 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 passions 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 pass the time of day with the
second best, and take refuge in the accumulated patience of innumerable
asses."
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 passageway 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 space.
At the far end of the passageway 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 bumped
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 gods reigned still, surely, the gods 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.
"Come, sit down, Clara," she said. "Have your cry out. And then pull
yourself together. Remember Lady Calmady will want just all you can do
for her if Sir Richard--if"--and Honoria was aware somehow of a sharp
catch in her throat--"if he does not live."
And, meanwhile, Roger Ormiston, now in sober and dignified middle-age,
found himself called upon to repeat that rather sinister experience of
his hot and rackety youth, and, as he put it bitterly, "act hangman to
his own sister." For, as he approached her, Katherine, leaning back
against the piled-up cushions in the corner of the railway carriage,
suddenly sat bolt-upright, stretching out her hands in swift fear and
entreaty, as in the state bedroom at Brockhurst nine-and-twenty years
ago.
"Oh, Roger, Roger!" she cried, "tell me, what is it?"
"Nothing final as yet, thank God," he answered. "But it would be cruel
to keep the truth from you, Kitty, and let you buoy yourself up with
false hopes."
"He is worse," Katherine said.
"Yes, he is worse. He is a good deal weaker. I'm afraid the state of
affairs has become very grave. Evidently they are apprehensive as to
what turn the fever may take in the course of the next twelve hours."
Katherine bowed herself together as though smitten by sharp pain. Then
she looked at him hurriedly, fresh alarms assaulting her.
"You are not trying to soften the blow to me? You are not keeping
anything back?"
"No, no, no, my dear Kitty. There--see--read it for yourself. I
telegraphed twice, so as to have the latest news. Here's the last
reply."
Ormiston unfolded the blue paper, crossed by white strips of printed
matter, and laid it upon her lap. And as he did so it struck him,
aggravating his sense of sinister repetition, that she had on the same
rings and bracelets as on that former occasion, and that she wore
stone-gray silk too--a long traveling sacque, lined and bordered with
soft fur. It rustled as she moved. A coif of black lace covered her
upturned hair, framed her sweet face, and was tied soberly under her
chin. And, looking upon her, Ormiston yearned in spirit over this
beautiful woman who had borne such grievous sorrows, and who, as he
feared, had sorrow yet more grievous still to bear.--"For ten to one
the boy won't pull through--he won't pull through," he said to himself.
"Poor, dear fellow, he's nothing left to fall back upon. He's lived too
hard." And then he took himself remorsefully to task, asking himself
whether, among the pleasures and ambitions and successes of his own
career, he had been quite faithful to the dead, and quite watchful
enough over the now dying, Richard Calmady? He reproached himself, for,
when Death stands at the gate, conscience grows very sensitive