The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance

sciatica and his face lent itself to astonishing contortions. "Plain man, Knott," Lord Fallowfeild commented inwardly. "Monstrously able fellow, but uncommonly plain. So's Cathcart for that matter. Well-dressed man and very well-preserved as to figure, but remarkably like an ourang-outang now his eyes are sunk and his eyebrows have grown so tufty."--Then he glanced anxiously at Lord Shotover to assure himself of the entire absence of simian approximations in the case of his own family.--"Oh! ah! yes," he remarked aloud, and somewhat vaguely. "Quite right, Knott. Then of course it was earlier. Record run for that season. Seldom had a better. We found a fox in the Grimshott gorse and ran to Water End without a check." "And Lemuel Image got into the Tilney brook," Mary Ormiston said, laughing a little. "So he did though!" Lord Fallowfeild rejoined, beaming. And then suddenly his complacency suffered eclipse. For, looking at the speaker, he became disagreeably aware of having, on some occasion, said something highly inconvenient concerning this lady to one of her near relations. He rushed into speech again:--"Loud-voiced, blustering kind of fellow, Image. I never have liked Image. Extraordinary marriage that of his with a connection of poor Aldborough's. Never have understood how her people could allow it." "Oh! money'll buy pretty well everything in this world except brains and a sound liver," Dr. Knott said, as he lowered himself cautiously on to the seat of the highest chair available. "Or a good conscience," Mrs. Cathcart observed, with mild dogmatism. "I am not altogether so sure about that," the doctor answered. "I have known the doubling of a few charitable subscriptions work extensive cures under that head. Depend upon it there's an immense deal more conscience-money paid every year than ever finds its way into the coffers of the Chancellor of the Exchequer." "So there is though!" said Lord Fallowfeild, with an air of regretful conviction. "Never put it as clearly as that myself, Knott, but must own I am afraid there is." Mr. Cathcart, who had joined Lord Shotover upon the hearth-rug, here intervened. He had a tendency to air local grievances, especially in the presence of his existing noble guest, whom he regarded, not wholly without reason, as somewhat lukewarm and dilatory in questions of reform. "I own to sharing your dislike of Image," he remarked. "He behaved in an anything but straightforward manner about the site for the new cottage hospital at Parson's Holt." "Did he, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild. "Yes.--I supposed it had been brought to your notice." Lord Fallowfeild fidgeted a little.--"Rather too downright, Cathcart," he said to himself. "Gets you into a corner and fixes you. Not fair, not at all fair in general society.--Oh! ah!--cottage hospital, yes," he added aloud. "Very tiresome, vexatious business about that hospital. I felt it very much at the time." "It was a regular job," Mr. Cathcart continued. "No, not a job, not a job, my dear fellow. Unpleasant word job. Nothing approaching a job, only an oversight, at most an unfortunate error of judgment," Lord Fallowfeild protested.--He glanced at his son inviting support, but that gentleman was engaged in kindly conversation with bright-eyed, little Godfrey Ormiston. He glanced at Mary--remembered suddenly that his unfortunate remark regarding that lady had been connected with her resemblance to her father, and the latter's striking defect of personal beauty. He glanced at the doctor. But John Knott sat all hunched together, watching him with an expression rather sardonic than sympathetic. "There was culpable negligence somewhere, in any case," his persecutor, Mr. Cathcart, went on. "It was obvious Image pressed that bit of land at Waters End on the committee simply because no one would buy it for building purposes. His affectation of generosity as to price was a piece of transparent hypocrisy." "I suppose it was," Lord Fallowfeild agreed mildly. "A certain anonymous donor had promised a second five hundred pounds, if the hospital was built on high ground with a subsoil of gravel." "It is on gravel," put in Lord Fallowfeild anxiously. "Saw it myself--distinctly remember seeing gravel when the heather had been pared before digging the foundations--bright yellow gravel." "Yes, and with a ten-foot bed of blue clay underneath. Most dangerous soil going,"--this from Dr. Knott, grimly. "Is it, though?" Lord Fallowfeild inquired, with an amiable effort to welcome unpalatable, geological information. "Not a doubt of it. The surface water and generally the sewage--for we are very far yet from having discovered a drain-pipe which is impeccable in respect of leakage--soak through the porous cap down to the clay and lie there--to rise again not at the Last Day by any means, but on the evening of the very first one that's been hot enough to cause evaporation." "Do they, though?" said Lord Fallowfeild. He was greatly impressed.--"Capable fellow, Knott, wonderful thing science," he commented inwardly and with praiseworthy humility. But Mr. Cathcart returned to the charge. "The hospital was disastrously the loser, in any case," he remarked. "As a matter of course, the conditions having been disregarded, Lady Calmady withdrew her promise of a second donation." "Oh! ah! Lady Calmady, really!" the simple-minded nobleman exclaimed. "Very interesting piece of news and very generous intention, no doubt, on the part of Lady Calmady. But give you my word Cathcart that until this moment I had no notion that the anonymous donor of whom we heard so much from one or two members of the committee--heard too much, I thought, for I dislike mysteries--foolish, unprofitable things mysteries--always turn out to be nothing at all in the finish--oh! ah! yes--well, that the anonymous donor was Lady Calmady!" And thereupon he shifted his position with as much assumption of _hauteur_ as his inherent amiability permitted. He turned his chair sideways, presenting an excellently flat, if somewhat broad, scarlet-clad back to his persecutor upon the hearth-rug.--"Sorry to set a man down in his own house," he said to himself, "but Cathcart's a little wanting in taste sometimes. He presses a subject home too closely. And, if I was bamboozled by Image, it really isn't Cathcart's place to remind me of it." He turned a worried and puckered countenance upon his hostess, upon Dr. Knott, upon the drawing-room door. In the hall beyond one or two guests still lingered. A lady had just joined them, notably straight and tall, and lazily graceful of movement. Lord Fallowfeild knew her, but could not remember her name. "Oh! ah! Shotover," he said, over his shoulder, "I don't want to hurry you, my dear boy, but perhaps it would be as well if you'd just go round to the stables and take a look at the horses." Then, as the gentleman addressed moved away, escorted by his host and followed in admiring silence by Godfrey Ormiston, he repeated, almost querulously:--"Foolish things mysteries. Nothing in them, as a rule, when you thrash them out. Mares' nests generally. And that reminds me, I hear young"--Lord Fallowfeild's air of worry became accentuated--"young Calmady's got home again at last." "Yes," Mrs. Cathcart said, "Richard and his mother have been at Brockhurst nearly a month." "Have they, though?" exclaimed Lord Fallowfeild. He fidgeted. "It's a painful subject to refer to, but I should be glad to know the truth of these nasty, uncomfortable rumours about young Calmady. You see there was that question of his and my youngest daughter's marriage. I never approved. Shotover backed me up in it. He didn't approve either. And in the end Calmady behaved in a very high-minded, straightforward manner. Came to me himself and exhibited very good sense and very proper feeling, did Calmady. Admitted his own disabilities with extraordinary frankness, too much frankness, I was inclined to think at the time. It struck me as a trifle callous, don't you know. But afterwards, when he left home in that singular manner and went abroad, and we all lost sight of him, and heard how reckless he had become and all that, it weighed on me. I give you my word, Mrs. Cathcart, it weighed very much on me. I've seldom been more upset by anything in my life than I was by the whole affair of that wedding." "I am afraid it was a great mistake throughout," Mrs. Cathcart said. She folded her plump, white hands upon her ample lap and sighed gently. "Wasn't it, though? So I told everybody from the start you know," commented Lord Fallowfeild. "It caused a great deal of unhappiness." "So it did, so it did," the good man said, quite humbly. He looked crestfallen, his kindly and well-favoured countenance being overspread by an expression of disarmingly innocent penitence.--"It weighed on me. I should be glad to be able to forget it, but now it's all cropping up again. You see there are these rumours that poor, young Calmady's gone under very much one way and another, that his health's broken up altogether, and that he is shut up in two rooms at Brockhurst because--it's a terribly distressing thing to mention, but that's the common talk, you know--because he's a little touched here"--the speaker tapped his smooth and very candid forehead--"a little wrong here! Horrible thing insanity," he repeated. At this point Dr. Knott, who had been watching first one person present and then another from under his shaggy eyebrows with an air of somewhat harsh amusement, roused himself. "Pardon me, all a pack of lies, my lord," he said, "and stupid ones into the bargain. Sir Richard Calmady's as sane as you are yourself." "Is he, though?" the other exclaimed, brightening sensibly. "Thank you, Knott. It is a very great relief to me to hear that." "Only a man with a remarkably sound constitution could have pulled round. I quite own he's been very hard hit, and no wonder. Typhoid and complications----" "Ah! complications?" inquired Lord Fallowfeild, who rarely let slip an opportunity of acquiring information of a pathological description. "Yes, complications. Of the sort that are most difficult to deal with, emotional and moral--beginning with his engagement to Lady Constance----" "Oh, dear me!"--this, piteously, from that lady's father. "And ending--his Satanic Majesty knows where! I don't. It's no concern of mine, nor of any one else's in my opinion. He has paid his footing--every man has to pay it, sooner or later--to life and experience, and personal acquaintance with the _thou shalt not_ which, for cause unknown, goes for so almighty much in this very queer business of human existence. He has had a rough time, never doubt that, with his high-strung, arrogant, sensitive nature and the dirty trick played on him by that heartless jade, Dame Fortune, before his birth. For the time, this illness had knocked the wind out of him. If he sulks for a bit, small blame to him. But he'll come round. He is coming round day by day." As he finished speaking the doctor got on to his feet somewhat awkwardly. His subject had affected him more deeply than he quite cared either to own to himself or to have others see. "That plaguy sciatic nerve again!" he growled. Lord Fallowfeild had risen also.--"Capable man, Knott, but rather rough at times, rather too didactic," he said to himself, as he turned to greet Miss St. Quentin. She had strolled in from the hall. Her charming face was full of merriment. There was something altogether gallant in the carriage of her small head. "I was so awfully glad to see Lord Shotover!" she said, as she gave her hand to that gentleman's father. "It's an age since he and I have met."