The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
consultation. Then the housekeeper went round to the farther side of
the bed, and slipping her arm under the pillows gently raised Richard's
head and shoulders, while Katherine kneeling beside him held the spout
of the feeding-cup to his lips.
"Must I? I don't think I can manage it," he said, drawing away slightly
and closing his eyes.
But Katherine persisted.
"Oh! try to drink it," she pleaded, "never mind how little--only try.
Help me to keep you here just as long as I can."
The young man's glance steadied on to her once again, and his eyes and
lips smiled the same faint, wholly gracious smile.
"All right, my beloved," he said. "A little higher, Denny, please."
Not without painful effort and a choking contraction of the throat, he
swallowed a few drops. But the greater part of the draught spilt out
sideways, and would have dribbled down on to the pillows had not
Katherine held her handkerchief to his mouth.
Ormiston, who had been standing at the foot of the bed in the hope of
rendering some assistance, ground his teeth together with a
half-audible imprecation, and went slowly over to the fireplace again.
He had supposed himself as miserable as he well could be before. But
this incident of the feeding-cup was the climax, somehow. It struck him
as an intolerable humiliation and outrage that Richard Calmady,
splendid fellow as he was, gifted, high-bred gentleman, should, of all
men, come to this sorry pass! He was filled with impotent fury. And was
it this pass, indeed, he asked himself, to which every human creature
must needs come one day? Would he, Roger Ormiston, one day, find
himself thus weak and broken; his body--now so lively a source of
various enjoyment--degraded into a pest-house, a mere dwelling-place of
suffering and corruption? The young man gripped the high, narrow
mantel-shelf with both hands and pressed his forehead down between
them. He really had not the nerve to watch what was going forward over
there any longer. It was too painful. It knocked all the manhood out of
him. But for very shame, before those two calm, devoted women, he would
have broken down and wept.
Presently Richard's voice reached him, feeble yet uncomplaining.
"I am so sorry, but you see it's no use, Kitty. The machinery won't
work. Let me lie flat again, Denny, please. That's better, thanks."
Then after a few moments of laboured breathing, he added--
"You mustn't trouble any more, it only disappoints you. We have just
got to submit to fact, my beloved, I've taken my last fence."
Ormiston's shoulders heaved convulsively as he leaned his forehead
against the cold, marble edge of the chimneypiece. His brother-in-law's
words brought the whole dreadful picture up before him. Oh! that cursed
slip and fall, that struggling, plunging, frenzied horse! And how the
horse had plunged and struggled, good God! It seemed as though Chifney,
the grooms, all of them, would never get hold of it or draw Richard out
from beneath the pounding hoofs. And then Ormiston went over his own
share in the business again, lamenting, blaming himself. Yet what more
natural, after all, than that he should have set his affections on the
Clown? Chifney believed in the horse too--a five-year-old brother of
Touchstone, resembling, in his black-brown skin and intelligent,
white-reach face, that celebrated horse; and inheriting--less enviable
distinction--the high shoulders and withers of his sire Camel. If the
Clown did not make a name, Captain Ormiston had sworn, by all the gods
of sport, he would never judge a horse again. And, heaven help us, was
this the ghastly way the Clown's name was to be made then?
The room grew very quiet again, save for a strange gurgling, rattling
sound Richard Calmady made, at times, in breathing. Mrs. Denny had
retired beyond the circle of firelight. And Katherine, having drawn her
chair a little further forward, so that the foot of the bed might be
out of sight, sat holding her husband's hand, softly caressing his
wrist and palm with her finger-tips. Soon the slow movement of her
fingers ceased, while she felt, in quick fear, for the fluttering,
intermittent pulse. Richard's breathing had become more difficult. He
moved his head restlessly and plucked at the sheet with his right hand.
It was a little more than flesh and blood could bear.
Katherine called to him softly under her breath,--"Richard, Dick, my
darling."
"All right, I'm coming."
He opened his eyes wide, as in sudden terror.
"Oh! I say though, what's happened? Where am I?"
Katherine leant down, kissed his hand, caressed it.
"Here, my dearest," she said, "at home, at Brockhurst, with me."
"Ah yes!" he said, "of course, I remember, I'm dying." He waited a
little space, and then, turning his head on the pillow so as to have a
better view of her, spoke again:--"I was floating right out--the
under-tow had got me--it was sucking me down into the deep sea of mist
and dreams. I was so nearly gone--and you brought me back."
"But I wanted you so--I wanted you so," Katherine cried, smitten with
sudden contrition. "I could not help it. Do you mind?"
"You silly sweet, could I ever mind coming back to you?" he asked
wistfully. "Don't you suppose I would much rather stay here at
Brockhurst, at home, with you--than sink away into the unknown?"
"Ah! my dear," she said, swaying herself to and fro in the misery of
tearless grief.
"And yet I have no call to complain," he went on. "I have had thirty
years of life and health. It is not a small thing to have seen the sun,
and to have rejoiced in one's youth. And I have had you"--his face
hardened and his breath came short--"you, most enchanting of women."
"My dear, my dear!" Katherine cried, again bowing her head.
"God has been so good to me here that--I hope it is not presumptuous--I
can't be much afraid of what is to follow. The best argument for what
will be, is what has been. Don't you think so?"
"But you go and I stay," she said. "If I could only go too, go with
you."
Richard Calmady raised himself in the bed, looked hard at her, spoke as
a man in the fulness of his strength.
"Do you mean that? Would you come with me if you could--come through
the deep sea of mist and dreams, to whatever lies beyond?"
For all answer Katherine bent lower, her face suddenly radiant,
notwithstanding its pallor. Sorrow was still so new a companion to her
that she would dare the most desperate adventures to rid herself of its
hateful presence. Her reason and moral sense were in abeyance, only her
poor heart spoke. She laid hold of her husband's hands and clasped them
about her throat.
"Let us go together, take me," she prayed. "I love you, I will not be
left. Closer, Dick, closer."
"Thank God! I am strong enough even yet," he said fiercely, while his
jaw set, and his grasp tightened somewhat dangerously upon her throat.
Katherine looked into his eyes and laughed. The blood was tingling
through her veins.
"Ah! dear love," she panted, "if you knew how delicious it is to be a
little hurt!"
But her ecstasy was short-lived, as ecstasy usually is. Richard Calmady
unclasped his hands and dropped back against the pillows, putting her
away from him with a certain authority.
"My beloved one, do not tempt me," he said, "we must remember the
child. The devil of jealousy is very great, even when one lies, as I do
now, more than half dead." He turned his head away, and his voice
shook. "Ten years hence, twenty years hence, you will be as
beautiful--more so, very likely--than ever. Other men will see you, and
I----"
"You will be just what you were and always have been to me," Katherine
interrupted. "I love you, and shall love."
She answered bravely, taking his hand again and caressing it, while he
looked round and smiled at her. But she grew curiously cold. She
shivered, and had a difficulty in controling her speech. Her new
companion, Sorrow, refused to be tricked and to leave her, and the
breath of sorrow is as sharp as a wind blowing over ice.
"You have made me perfectly content," Richard Calmady said presently.
"There is nothing I would have changed. No hour of day--or night--ah,
my God! my God!--which I could ask to have otherwise." He paused,
fighting a sob which rose in his throat. "Still you are quite
young----"
"So much the worse for me," Katherine said.
"Oh! I don't know about that," he put in quietly. "Anyhow, remember
that you are free, absolutely and unconditionally free. I hold a man a
cur who, in dying, tries to bind the woman he loves."
Katherine shivered. Despair had possession of her.
"Why reason about it?" she asked. "Don't you see that to be bound is
the only comfort I shall have left?"
"My poor darling," Richard Calmady almost groaned.
His own helplessness to help her cut him to the quick. Wealth, and an
inherent graciousness of disposition, had always made it so simple to
be of service and of comfort to those about him. It was so natural to
rule, to decide, to alleviate, to give little trouble to others and
take a good deal of trouble on their behalf, that his present and final
incapacity in any measure to shield even Katherine, the woman he
worshipped, amazed him. Not pain, not bodily disfigurement,--though he
recoiled, as every sane being must, from these,--not death itself,
tried his spirit so bitterly as his own uselessness. All the pleasant,
kindly activities of common intercourse were over. He was removed alike
from good deeds and from bad. He had ceased to have part or lot in the
affairs of living men. The desolation of impotence was upon him.
For a little time he lay very still, looking up at the firelight
playing upon the mouldings of the ceiling, trying to reconcile himself
to this. His mind was clear, yet, except when actually speaking, he
found it difficult to keep his attention fixed. Images, sensations
began to chase each other across his mental field of vision; and his
thought, though definite as to detail, grew increasingly broken and
incoherent, small matters in unseemly fashion jostling great. He
wondered concerning those first steps of the disembodied spirit, when
it has crossed the threshold of death; and then, incontinently, he
passed to certain time-honoured jokes and impertinent follies at Eton,
over which he, and Roger and Major St. Quentin had laughed a hundred
times. They amused him greatly even yet. But he could not linger with
them. He was troubled about the attics of the new lodge, now in
building at the entrance to the east woods. The windows were too small,
and he disliked that blind north gable. There were letters to be
answered too. Lord Fallowfeild wanted to know about something--he could
not remember what--Fallowfeild's inquiries had a habit of being vague.
And through all these things--serious or trivial--a terrible yearning
over Katherine and her baby--the new, little, human life which was his
own life, and which yet he would never know or see. And through all
these things also, the perpetual, heavy ache of those severed nerves
and muscles, flitting pains in the limb of which, though it was gone,
he had not ceased to be aware.--He dozed off, and mortal weakness
closed down on him, floating him out and out into vague spaces. And
then suddenly, once more, he felt a horse under him and gripped it with
his knees. He was riding, riding, whole and vigorous, with the summer
wind in his face, across vast, flowering pastures towards a great light
on the far horizon, which streamed forth, as he knew, from the throne
of Almighty God.
Choking, with the harsh rattle in his throat, he awoke to the actual
and immediate--to the familiar square room and its crimson furnishings,
to Katherine's sweet, pale face and the touch of her caressing fingers,
to some one standing beside her, whom he did not immediately recognise.