The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
imaginations of religious enthusiasts, crazed by superstition, by
austerities, and hysteria, duped by ignorance, by hypocrites and
quacks.
With long-armed adroitness he reached down and picked up those
light-made, stunted crutches, slipped from his chair and adjusted them.
For a long while he had used them as a matter of course without
criticism or thought. But now they produced in him a swift disgust. His
hands, grasping the lowest crossbar of them, were in such
disproportionate proximity to the floor! For the moment he was disposed
to fling them aside. Then again he turned upon himself with scathing
contempt. For this too was childish. What did the use of them matter,
since, used or not, the fact of his crippled condition remained? And
so, with a renewal of bitterness and active rebellion, lately unknown
to him, he moved away down the great room--past bronze athlete and
marble goddess, past oriental jars, tall as himself, uplifted on the
squat, carven, ebony stands, past strangely-painted, half-fearful,
lacquer cabinets, past porcelain bowls filled with faint sweetness of
dried rose-leaves, bay, lavender, and spice, past trophies of savage
warfare and, hardly less savage, civilised sport, towards the wide
mullion-window of the eastern bay. But just before reaching it, he came
opposite to a picture by Velasquez, set on an easel across the corner
of the room. It represented a hideous and misshapen dwarf, holding a
couple of graceful greyhounds in a leash--an unhappy creature who had
made sport for the household of some Castilian grandee, and whose
gorgeous garments, of scarlet and gold, were ingeniously designed so as
to emphasise the physical degradation of its contorted person. Richard
had come, of late, to take a sombre pleasure in the contemplation of
this picture. The desolate eyes, looking out of the marred and brutal
face, met his own with a certain claim of kinship. There existed a
tragic freemasonry between himself and this outcasted being, begotten
of a common knowledge, a common experience. As a boy Richard hated this
picture, studiously avoided the sight of it. It had suggested
comparisons which wounded his self-respect too shrewdly and endangered
his self-security. He hated it no longer, finding grim solace, indeed,
in its sad society.
And it was thus, in silent parley with this rather dreadful companion,
as the blear February twilight descended upon the bare, black trees and
snow-clad land without, and upon the very miscellaneous furnishings of
the many-windowed gallery within, that Julius March now discovered
Richard Calmady. He had returned, across the park, from one of the
quaint brick-and-timber cottages just without the last park gate, at
the end of Sandyfield Church-lane. A labourer's wife was dying,
painfully enough, of cancer, and he had administered the Blessed
Sacrament to her, there, in her humble bedchamber. The august promises
and adorable consolations of that mysterious rite remained very
sensibly present to him on his homeward way. His spirit was uplifted by
the confirmation of the divine compassion therein perpetually renewed,
perpetually made evident. And, it followed, that coming now upon
Richard Calmady alone, here, in the stark, unnatural pallor of the
winter dusk, holding silent communion with that long-ago victim of
merciless practices and depraved tastes, not only caused him a painful
shock, but also moved him with fervid desire to offer comfort and
render help.--Yet, what to say, how to approach Richard without risk of
seeming officiousness and consequent offense, he could not tell. The
young man's experiences and his own were so conspicuously far apart.
For a moment he stood uncertain and silent, then he said:--
"That picture always fills me with self-reproach."
Richard looked round with a certain lofty courtesy by no means
encouraging. And, as he did so, Julius March was conscious of receiving
a further, and not less painful impression. For Richard's face was very
still, not with the stillness of repose, but with that of fierce
emotion held resolutely in check, while in his eyes was a desolation
rivalling that of the eyes portrayed by the great Spanish artist upon
the canvas close at hand.
"When I first came to Brockhurst, that picture used to hang in the
study," he continued, by way of explanation.
"Ah! I see, and you turned it out!" Richard observed, not without an
inflection of irony.
"Yes. In those days I am afraid I did not discriminate very justly
between refinement of taste and self-indulgent fastidiousness. While
pluming myself upon an exalted standard of sensibility and sentiment, I
rather basely spared myself acquaintance with that, both in nature and
in art, which might cause me distress or disturbance of thought. I was
a mental valetudinarian, in short. I am ashamed of my defect of moral
courage and charity in relation to that picture."
Richard shifted his position slightly, looked fixedly at the canvas and
then down at his own hands in such disproportionate proximity to the
floor.
"Oh! you were not to blame," he said. "It is obviously a thing to laugh
at, or run from, unless you happen to have received a peculiar mental
and physical training. Anyhow the poor devil has found his way home now
and come into port safely enough at last?"
He glanced back at the picture, over his shoulder, as he moved across
the room.
"Perhaps he's even found a trifle of genuine sympathy--so don't vex
your righteous soul over your repudiation of him, my dear Julius. The
lapses of the virtuous may make, indirectly, for good. And your
instinct, after all, was both the healthy and the artistic one.
Velasquez ought to have been incapable of putting his talent to such
vile uses, and the first comer with a spark of true philanthropy in him
ought to have knocked that poor little monstrosity on the head."
Richard came to the writing-table, glanced at the papers which
encumbered it, made for an armchair drawn up beside the fire.
"Sit down, Julius," he said. "There is something quite else about which
I want to speak to you. I have been working through all these
documents, and they give rise to speculations neither strictly
scientific nor strictly orthodox, yet interesting all the same. You are
a dealer in ethical problems. I wonder if you can offer any solution of
this one, of which the basis conceivably is ethical. As to these
various owners of Brockhurst--Sir Denzil, the builder of the house, is
a delightful person, and appears to have prospered mightily in his
undertakings, as so liberal-minded and ingenious a gentleman had every
right to prosper. But after him--from the time, at least, of his
grandson, Thomas--everything seems to have gone to rather howling grief
here. We have nothing but battle, murder, and sudden death. These
become positively monotonous in the pertinacity of their repetition. Of
course one may argue that adventurous persons expose themselves to an
uncommon number of dangers, and consequently pay an uncommon number of
forfeits. I dare say that is the reasonable explanation. Only the
persistence of the thing gets hold of one rather. The manner of their
dying is very varied, yet there are two constant quantities in each
successive narrative, namely, violence and comparative youth."
Richard's speech had become rapid and imperative. Now he paused.
"Think of my father's death, for instance----" he said.
His narrow, black figure crouched together, Julius March knelt on one
knee before the fire. He held his thin hands outspread, so as to keep
the glow of the burning logs from his face. He was deeply moved,
debating a certain matter with himself.
"To all questions supremely worth having answered, there is no
answer--I take that for granted," the young man continued. "And yet one
is so made that it is impossible not to go on asking. I can't help
wanting to get at the root of this queer recurrence of accident, and
all the rest of it, which clings to my people. I can't help wanting to
make out whether there was any psychological moment which determined
the future, and started them definitely on the down-grade. What
happened--that's what I want to arrive at--what happened at that
moment? Had it any reasonable and legitimate connection with all which
has followed?"
As he held them outspread, between his face and the glowing fire,
Julius March's hands trembled. He found himself confronted by a
situation which he had long foreseen, long and earnestly prayed to
avoid. The responsibility was so great of either giving or withholding
the answer, as he knew it, to that question of Dickie's. A way of
rendering possible help opened before him. But it was a way beset with
difficulties, a way at once fantastic and coarsely realistic, a way
along which the sublime and the ridiculous jostled each other with
somewhat undignified closeness of association, a way demanding
childlike faith, not to say childish credulity, coupled with a great
fearlessness and self-abnegation before ever a man's steps could be
profitably set in it. If presented to Richard, would he not turn
angrily from it as an insult offered to his intellect and his breeding
alike? Indeed, the hope of effecting good showed very thin. The danger
of provoking evil bulked very big. What was his duty? He suffered an
agony of indecision. And again with a slight inflection of mockery in
his tone, Richard spoke.
"All blind chance, Julius? I declare I get a little weary of this Deity
of yours. He neglects his business so flagrantly. He really is rather
scandalously much of an absentee. And He would be so welcome if He
would condescend to deal a trifle more openly with one, and satisfy
one's intelligence and moral sense. If, for instance, He would afford
me some information regarding this same psychological moment which I
need so badly just now as a peg to hang a theory of casualty upon. I am
ambitious--as much in the interests of His reputation as in those of my
own curiosity--to get at the logic of the affair, to get at the why and
wherefore of it, and lay my finger on the spot where differentiation
sets in."
Julius March stood upright. Richard's scorn hurt him. It also
terminated his indecision. For a little space he looked out into the
stark whiteness of the snowy dusk, and then down at the young man,
leaning back in the low chair, there close before him. To Julius'
short-sighted eyes, in the uncertain light, Dickie's face bore
compelling resemblance to Lady Calmady's. This touched him with the
memory of much, and he went back on the thought of the divine
compassion, perpetually renewed, perpetually made evident in the
Eucharistic Sacrifice. Man may rail, yet God is strong and faithful to
bless. Perhaps that way was neither too fantastic, nor too humble,
after all, for Richard to walk in.
"Has no knowledge of the received legend about this subject ever
reached you?"
"No--never--not a word."
"I became acquainted with it accidentally, long ago, before your birth.
It is inadmissible, according to modern canons of thought, as such
legends usually are. And events, subsequent to my acquaintance with it,
conferred on it so singular and painful a significance that I kept my
knowledge to myself. Perhaps when you grew up I ought to have put you
in possession of the facts. They touch you very nearly."
Richard raised his eyebrows.
"Indeed," he said coldly.
"But a fitting opportunity--at least, so I judged, being, I own,
backward and reluctant in the matter--never presented itself. In this,
as in much else, I fear I have betrayed my trust and proved an
unprofitable servant--if so may God forgive me."
"It would have gone hard with Brockhurst without you, Julius," Richard
said, a sudden softening in his tone.
"I will bring you the documents the last thing to-night, when--when