The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
regarding any lapses, real or imagined, of duty towards those for whom
that dread ambassador waits.
Twice Katherine read the telegram, weighing each word of it. Then she
gave the blue paper back to her brother.
"I will ask you all to let me be alone for a little while, dear Roger,"
she said. "Tell Honoria, tell Ludovic, tell my good Clara. I must turn
my face to the wall for a time, so that, when I turn it upon you dear
people again, it may not be too unlovely."
And Ormiston bent his head and kissed her hand, and went out, closing
the door behind him--while the train roared southward, through the
afternoon sunshine, southward towards Chiusi and Rome.
And Katherine Calmady sat quietly amid the noise and violent,
on-rushing movement, making up accounts with her own motherhood. That
she might never see Dickie again, she herself dying, was an idea which
had grown not unfamiliar to her during these last sad years. But that
she should survive, only to see Dickie dead, was a new idea and one
which joined hands with despair, since it constituted a conclusion big
with the anguish of failure to the tragedy of their relation, hers and
his. Her whole sense of justice, of fitness, rebelled under it,
rebelled against it. She implored a space, however brief, of
reconciliation and reunion before the supreme farewell was said. But it
had become natural to Katherine's mind, so unsparingly self-trained in
humble obedience to the divine ordering, not to stay in the
destructive, but pass on to the constructive stage. She would not
indulge herself in rebellion, but rather fashion her thought without
delay to that which should make for inward peace. And so now, turning
her eyes, in thought, from the present, she went back on the baby-love,
the child-love which, notwithstanding the abiding smart of Richard's
deformity, had been so very exquisite to her. Upon the happier side of
all that she had not dared to dwell during this prolonged period of
estrangement. It was too poignant, too deep-seated in the springs of
her physical being. To dwell on it enervated and unnerved her. But now,
Richard the grown man dying, she gave herself back to Richard the
little child. It solaced her to do so. Then he had been wholly hers.
And he was wholly hers still, in respect of that early time. The man
she had lost--so it seemed, how far through fault of her own she could
not tell. And just now she refused to analyse all that. Upon all which
strengthened endurance, upon gracious memories engendering
thankfulness, could her mind alone profitably be fixed. And so, as the
train roared southward, and the sun declined and the swift dusk spread
its mantle over the face of the classic landscape, Katherine cradled a
phantom baby on her knee, and sat in the oriel window of the
Chapel-Room, at Brockhurst, with the phantom of her boy beside her,
while she told him old-time legends of war, and of high endeavour, and
of gallant adventure, watching the light dance in his eyes as her words
awoke in him emulation of those masters of noble deeds whose exploits
she recounted. And in this she found comfort, and a chastened calm. So
that, when at length General Ormiston--incited thereto by the faithful
Clara, who protested that her ladyship must and should dine--returned
to her, he found her storm-tossed no longer, but tranquil in expression
and solicitous for the comfort of others. She had conquered nature by
grace--conquered, in that she had compelled herself to unqualified
submission. If this cup might not pass from her, still would she praise
Almighty God and bless His Holy Name, asking not that her own, but His
will, be done.
It followed that the evening, spent in that strangely noisy,
oscillating, onward-rushing dwelling-place of a railway-carriage, was
not without a certain subdued brightness of intercourse and
conversation. Katherine was neither preoccupied nor distrait, or
unamused even by the small accidents and absurdities of travel. Later,
while preparations were being made by the servants for the coming
night, she went out, with the two gentlemen and Honoria St. Quentin, on
to the iron platform at the rear of the swaying car, and stood there
under the stars. The mystery of these last, and of the dimly discerned
and sleeping land, offered penetrating contrast to the sleeplessness of
the hurrying train with its long, sinuous line of lighted windows, and
to the sleeplessness of her own heart. The fret of human life is but as
a little island in the great ocean of eternal peace--so she told
herself--and then bade that sleepless heart of hers both still its
passionate beating and take courage. And when, at length, she was
alone, and lay down in her narrow berth, peace and thankfulness
remained with Katherine. The care and affection of brother, friends,
and servants, was very grateful to her, so that she composed herself to
rest, whether slumber was granted her or not. The event was in the
hands of God--that surely was enough.
And in the dawn, reaching Rome, the news was so far better that it was
not worse. Richard lived. And when, some seven hours later, the train
steamed into Naples station, and Bates, the house-steward--the marks of
haste and keen anxiety upon him--pushed his way up to the carriage
door, he could report there was this amount of hope even yet, that
Richard still lived, though his strength was as that of an infant and
whether it would wax or wane wholly none as yet could say.
"Then we are in time, Bates?" Lady Calmady had asked, desiring further
assurance.
"I hope so, my lady. But I would advise your coming as quickly as
possible."
"Is he conscious?"
"He knew Captain Vanstone this morning, my lady, just before I left."
The man-servant shouldered the crowd aside unceremoniously, so as to
force a passage for Lady Calmady.
"Her ladyship should go up to the villa at once, sir," he said to
General Ormiston. "I had better accompany her. I will leave Andrews to
make all arrangements here. The carriage is waiting."
Then, Honoria beside her, Katherine was aware of the hot glare and hard
shadow, the grind and clatter, the violent colour, the strident
vivacity of the Neapolitan streets, as with voice and whip, Garcia
sprung the handsome, long-tailed, black horses up the steep ascent.
This, followed by the impression of a cool, spacious, and lofty
interior, of mild-diffused light, of pale, marble floors and stairways,
of rich hangings and distinguished objects of art, of the soft, green
gloom of ilex and myrtle, the languid drip of fountains. And this last
served to mark, as with raised finger, the hush,--bland, yet very
imperative--which held all the place. After the ceaseless jar and
tumult of that many-days' journey, here, up at the villa, it seemed as
though urgency were absurd, hot haste of affection a little vulgar, a
little contemptible, all was so composed, so urbane.
And that urbanity, so bland, so, in a way, supercilious, affected
Honoria St. Quentin unpleasantly. She was taken with unreasoning
dislike of the place, finding something malign, trenching on cruelty
even, in its exalted serenity, its unchanging, inaccessible, mask-like
smile. Very certainly the ancient gods held court here yet, the gods
who are careless of human tears, heedless of human woe! And she looked
anxiously at Lady Calmady, penetrated by fear that the latter was about
to be exposed to some insidious danger, to come into conflict with
influences antagonistic and subtly evil. Wicked deeds had been
committed in this fair place, wicked designs nourished and brought to
fruition here. She was convinced of that. Was convinced further that
those designs had connection with and had been directed against Lady
Calmady. The thought of Helen de Vallorbes, exquisite and vicious,--as
she now reluctantly admitted her to be,--was very present to her. As
far as she knew, it was quite a number of years since Helen had set
foot in the villa. Yet it spoke of her, spoke of the more dangerous
aspects of her nature.--Honoria sighed over her friend. Helen had gone,
latterly, very much to the bad, she feared. And as all this passed
rapidly through her mind it aroused all her knight-errantry, raising a
strongly protective spirit in her. She questioned just how much active
care she might take of Lady Calmady without indiscretion of
over-forwardness.
But even while she thus debated, opportunity of action was lost.
Quietly, a great simplicity and singleness of purpose in her demeanour,
without word spoken, without looking back, Katherine followed the
house-steward across the cool, spacious hall, through a doorway and out
of sight.
And that singleness of purpose, so discernible in her outward
demeanour, possessed Katherine's being throughout. She was as one who
walks in sleep, pushed by blind impulse. She was not conscious of
herself, not conscious of joy or fear, or any emotion. She moved
forward dumbly, and without volition, towards the event. Her senses
were confused by this transition to stillness from noise, by the
immobility of all surrounding objects after the reeling landscape on
either hand the swaying train, by the bland and tempered light after
the harsh contrasts of glare and darkness so constantly offered to her
vision of late. She was dazed and faint, moreover, so that her knees
trembled, her sensibility, her powers of realisation and of sympathy,
for the time being, atrophied.
The house-steward ushered her into a large, square room. The low,
darkly-painted, vaulted ceiling of it produced a cavernous effect. An
orderly disorder prevailed, and a somewhat mournful dimness of closed,
green-slatted shutters and half-drawn curtains. The furniture, costly
in fact, but dwarfed, in some cases actually legless, was ranged
against the squat, carven bookcases that lined the walls, leaving the
middle of the room vacant save for a low, narrow camp-bed. The bed
stood at right angles to the door by which Katherine entered, the head
of it towards the shuttered, heavily-draped windows, the foot towards
the inside wall of the room. At the bedside a man knelt on one knee,
and his appearance aroused, in a degree, Katherine's dormant powers of
observation. He had a short, crisp, black beard and crisp, black hair.
He was alert and energetic of face and figure, a man of dare-devil,
humorous, yet kindly eyes. He wore a blue serge suit with brass buttons
to it. He was in his stocking-feet. The wristbands and turn-down collar
of his white shirt were immaculate. Katherine, lost, trembling, the
support of the habitual taken from her, a stranger in a strange land,
liked the man. He appeared so admirable an example of physical health.
He inspired her with confidence, his presence seeming to carry with it
assurance of that which is wholesome, normal, and sane. He glanced at
her sharply, not without hint of criticism and of command.
Authoritatively he signed to her to remain silent, to stand at the head
of the bed, and well clear of it, out of sight. Katherine did not
resent this. She obeyed.
And standing thus, rallying her will to conscious effort, she looked
steadily, for the first time, at the bed and that which lay upon it.
And so doing she could hardly save herself from falling, since she saw
there precisely that which the shape of the room and the disarray of
it, along with vacant space and the low camp-bed in the centre of that
space, had foretold--for all her dumbness of feeling, deadness of
sympathy--she must assuredly see.--All these last four-and-twenty hours
she had solaced herself with the phantom society of Dickie the
baby-child, of Dickie the eager boy, curious of many things. But here
was one different from both these. Different, too, from the young man,
tremendous in arrogance, and in revolt against the indignity put on him