The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
"Very pleasant hearing, my dear young lady, for Shotover, if he was
here to hear it! Lucky fellow, Shotover."--The kindly nobleman beamed
upon her. He was nothing if not chivalrous. Mentally, all the same, he
was much perplexed. "Of course, I remember who she is. But I understood
it was Ludovic," he said to himself. "Made sure it was Ludovic.
Uncommonly attractive, high-bred woman. Very striking looking pair, she
and Shotover. Can't fancy Shotover settled though. Say she's a lot of
money. Wonder whether it is Shotover?--Uncommonly fine run, best run
we've had for years," he added aloud. "Pity you weren't out, Miss St.
Quentin.--Well, good-bye, Mrs. Cathcart. I must be going. I am
extremely grateful for all your kindness and hospitality. It is seldom
I have the chance of meeting so many friends this side of the
country.--Good-day to you, Knott--goodbye, Miss St. Quentin.--Wonder if
I'd better ask her to Whitney," he thought, "on the chance of its being
Shotover? Better sound him first though. Never let a man in for a woman
unless you've very good reason to suppose he wants her."
Honoria, meanwhile, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her long,
fur-lined, tan, cloth, driving-coat sat down on the arm of Mary
Ormiston's flowery-patterned, chintz-covered chair.
"I left you all in a state of holy peace and quiet," she said, smiling,
"and a fine show you've got on hand by the time I come back."
"They ran across the ten-acre field and killed in the shrubbery," Mrs.
Ormiston put in.
John Knott limped forward. He stood with his hands behind him looking
down at the two ladies. Some months had elapsed since he and Miss St.
Quentin had met. He was very fond of the young lady. It interested him
to meet her again. Honoria glanced up at him smiling.
"Have you been out too?" she asked.
"Not a bit of it. I'm too busy mending other people's brittle anatomy
to have time to risk breaking any part of my own. I'm ugly enough
already. No need to make me uglier. I came here for the express purpose
of calling on you."
"You saw Katherine?" Mary asked.
"Oh yes! I saw Cousin Katherine."
"How is she?"
"An embodiment of faith, hope, and charity, as usual, but with just
that pinch of malice thrown in which gives the compound a flavour. In
short, she is enchanting. And then she looks so admirably well."
"That six months at sea was a great restorative," Mary remarked.
"Yet it really is rather wonderful when you consider the state she was
in before we went to you at Ormiston, and how frightened we were at her
undertaking the journey to Naples."
"Her affections are satisfied," Dr. Knott said, and his loose lips
worked into a smile, half sneering, half tender. "I am an old man, and
I have had a good lot to do with women--at second hand. Feed their
hearts, and the rest of the mechanism runs easy enough. Anything short
of organic disease can be cured by that sort of nourishment. Even
organic disease can be arrested by it. And what's more, I have known
disease develop in an apparently perfectly healthy subject simply
because the heart was starved. Oh! I tell you, you're marvelous
beings."
"And yet you know I feel so abominably sold," Honoria declared, "when I
consider the way in which we all--Roger, Mr. Quayle, and I--acted
bodyguard, attended Cousin Katherine to Naples, wrapped her in cotton
wool, dear thing, sternly determined to protect her at all costs and
all hazards from--well, I am ashamed to say I had no name bad enough at
that time for Richard Calmady! And then this very person, whom we
regarded as her probable destruction, proves to be her absolute
salvation, while she proceeds to turn the tables upon us in the
smartest fashion imaginable. She showed us the door and entreated us,
in the most beguiling manner, to return whence we came and leave her
wholly at the mercy of the enemy. I was furious"--Miss St. Quentin
laughed--"downright furious! And Roger's temper, for all his
high-mightiness, was a thing to swear at, rather than swear by, the
morning he and I left Naples. With the greatest difficulty we persuaded
her even to keep Clara. She had a rage, dear thing, for getting rid of
the lot of us. Oh! we had a royal skirmish and no mistake."
"So Roger told me."
Honoria stretched herself a little, lolled against the back of the
chair, steadying herself by laying one hand affectionately on the other
woman's shoulder. And John Knott, observing her, noted not only her
nonchalant and almost boyish grace, but a swift change in her humour
from light-hearted laughter to a certain, and as he fancied,
half-unwilling enthusiasm.
"But to-day," she went on, "when Cousin Katherine told me about it, I
confess the whole situation laid hold of me. I could not help seeing it
must have been finely romantic to go off like that--those two
alone--caring as she cares, and after the long separation. It sounds
like a thing in some Elizabethan ballad. There's a rhythm in it all
which stirs one's blood. She says the yacht's crew were delightful to
her, and treated her as a queen. One can fancy that--the stately,
lovely queen-mother, and that strange only son!--They called in at the
North African ports, and at Gib and Madeira, and the Cape de Verds, and
then ran straight for Rio. Then they steamed up the coast to
Pernambuco, and on to the West Indies. Richard never went ashore,
Cousin Katherine only once or twice. But they squattered about in the
everlasting summer of tropic harbours, fringed with palms and low, dim,
red-roofed, tropic houses--just sampled it all, the colour, and light,
and beauty, and far awayness of it--and then, when the fancy took them,
got up steam and slipped out again to sea. And the name of the yacht is
the _Reprieve_. That's in the picture, isn't it?"
Honoria paused. She leaned forward, her chin in her hands, her elbows
on her knees. She looked up at John Knott, and there was a singular
expression in her clear and serious eyes.
"I used to pity Cousin Katherine," she said. "I used to break my heart
over her. And now--now, upon my word, I believe I envy her.--And see
here, Dr. Knott, she has asked me to go on to Brockhurst from here. It
seems that though Richard refuses to see any one, except you of course,
and Julius March, he fusses at his mother being so much alone. What
ought I to do? I feel rather uncertain. I have fought him, I own I
have. We have never been friends, he and I. He doesn't like me. He's no
reason to like me--anything but! What do you say? Shall I refuse or
shall I go?"
And the doctor reflected a little, drawing his great, square hand down
over his mouth and heavy, bristly chin.
"Yes, go," he answered. "Go and chance it. Your being at Brockhurst may
work out in more of good than we now know."
CHAPTER V
TELLING HOW DICKIE CAME TO UNTIE A CERTAIN TAG OF RUSTY, BLACK RIBBON
Yet, as those gray, midwinter weeks went on to Christmas, and the
coming of the New Year, it became undeniable there was that in the
aspect of affairs at Brockhurst which might very well provoke curious
comment. For the rigour of Richard Calmady's self-imposed seclusion, to
which Miss St. Quentin had made allusion in her conversation with Dr.
Knott, was not relaxed. Rather, indeed, did it threaten to pass from
the accident of a first return, after long absence and illness, into a
matter of fixed and accepted habit. For those years of lonely wandering
and spasmodic rage of living, finding their climax in deepening
disappointment, disillusion, and the shock of rudely inflicted insult
and disgrace, had produced in Richard a profound sense of alienation
from society and from the amenities of ordinary intercourse. Since he
was apparently doomed to survive, he would go home--but go home very
much as some trapped or wounded beast crawls back to hide in its lair.
He was master in his own house, at least, and safe from intrusion
there. The place offered the silent sympathy of things familiar, and
therefore, in a sense, uncritical. It is restful to look on that upon
which one has already looked a thousand times. And so, after his
reconciliation with his mother, followed, in natural sequence, his
reconciliation with Brockhurst. Here he would see only those who loved
him well enough--in their several stations and degrees--to respect his
humour, to ask no questions, to leave him to himself. Richard was
gentle in manner at this period, courteous, humorous even. But a great
discouragement was upon him. It seemed as though some string had
snapped, leaving half his nature broken, unresponsive, and dumb. He had
no ambitions, no desire of activities. Sport and business, were as
little to his mind as society.
More than this.--At first the excuse of fatigue had served him, but
very soon it came to be a tacitly admitted fact that Richard did not
leave the house. Surely it was large enough, he said, to afford space
for all the exercise he needed? Refusing to occupy his old suite of
rooms on the ground-floor, he had sent orders, before his arrival, that
the smaller library, adjoining the Long-Gallery, should be converted
into a bedchamber for him. It had been Richard's practice, when on
board ship, to steady his uncertain footsteps, on the slippery or
slanting plane of the deck, by the use of crutches. And this practice
he in great measure retained. It increased his poor powers of
locomotion. It rendered him more independent. Sometimes, when secure
that Lady Calmady would not receive visitors, he would make his way by
the large library, the state drawing-room, and stair-head, to the
Chapel-Room and sit with her there. But more often his days were spent
exclusively in the Long-Gallery. He had brought home many curious and
beautiful objects from his wanderings. He would add these to the
existing collection. He would examine the books too, procure such
volumes as were needed to complete any imperfect series, and, in the
departments both of science, literature, and travel, bring the library
up to date. He would devote his leisure to the study of various
subjects--especially natural science--regarding which he was conscious
of a knowledge, deficient, or merely empirical.
"I really am perfectly contented, mother," he said to Lady Calmady more
than once. "Look at the length and breadth of the gallery! It is as a
city of magnificent distances, after the deck of the dear, old yacht
and my twelve-foot cabin. And I'm not a man calculated to occupy so
very much space after all! Let me potter about here with my books and
my _bibelots_. Don't worry about me, I shall keep quite well, I promise
you. Let me hybernate peacefully until spring, anyhow. I have plenty of
occupation. Julius is going to amend the library catalogue with me, and
there are those chests of deeds, and order-books, and diaries, which
really ought to be looked over. As it appears pretty certain I shall be
the last of the race, it would be only civil, I think, to bestow a
little of my ample leisure upon my forefathers, and set down some more
or less comprehensive account of them and their doings. They appear to
have been given to rather dramatic adventures.--Don't you worry, you
dear sweet! As I say, let me hybernate until the birds of passage come
and the young leaves are green in the spring. Then, when the days grow
long and bright, the sea will begin to call again, and, when it calls,
you and I will pack and go."
And Katherine yielded, being convinced that Richard could treat his own
case best. If healing, complete and radical, was to be affected, it
must come from within and not from without. Her wisdom was to wait in
faith. There was much that had never been told, and never would be
told. Much which had not been explained, and never would be explained.
For, notwithstanding the very gracious relation existing between