The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
misapprehensions of man--away into the patient, unalterable purposes of
God. And looking, for the moment, into those purposes, he saw this
also--namely, that sorrow, pain, and death, are sweet to whosoever
dares, instead of fighting with, or flying from them, to draw near, to
examine closely, to inquire humbly, into their nature and their
function. He began to perceive that these three reputed enemies--hated
and feared of all men--are, after all, the fashioners and teachers of
humanity, to whom it is given to keep hearts pure, godly and
compassionate, to purge away the dross of pride, hardness, and
arrogance, to break the iron bands of ambition, self-love, and vanity,
to purify by endurance and by charity, welding together--as with the
cunning strokes of the master-craftsman's hammer--the innumerable
individual atoms into a corporate whole, of fair form, of supreme
excellence of proportion, the image and example of a perfect
brotherhood, of a republic more firmly based and more beneficent than
even that pictured by the divine Plato himself--since that was
consolidated by exclusion, this by inclusion and pacification of those
things which men most dread.--Perceived that, without the guiding and
chastening of these three lovely terrors, humanity would, indeed, wax
wanton, and this world become the merriest court of hell, lust and
corruption have it all their own foul way, the flesh triumph, and all
bestial things come forth to flaunt themselves gaudily, greedily,
without remonstrance and without shame in the light of day.--Perceived
in these three, a Trinity of Holy Spirits, bearing forever the message
of the divine mercy and forgiveness.--Perceived how, of necessity, only
the Man of Sorrows can truly be the Son of God.
And, perceiving all this, Richard's attitude towards his own unhappy
deformity began to suffer modification. The sordid, yet extravagant,
chap-book legend no longer outraged either his moral or his scientific
sense. He recalled his emotions in the theatre at Naples when Morabita
sang, remembering how wholly welcome had then been to him that imagined
approaching-act of retributive justice. He recalled, too, the going
forth of love towards his supposed executioners which he had
experienced, his reverence for, and yearning towards, the dull-coloured
working-bees of the _parterre_. How he had longed to be at one with
them, partaker of their corporate action and corporate strength! How he
had rejoiced in the conviction that the final issues are subject to
their ruling, that the claims of want are stronger than those of
wealth, that labour is more honourable than sloth, intelligence than
privilege, liberty more abiding than tyranny--the idea of equality, of
fellowship, more excellent than the aristocratic idea, that of born
master and of born serf! And both that welcome of the accomplishment of
a signal act of justice, and that desire to participate in the eternal
strength of the children of labour as against the ephemeral and
fictitious strength of the children of idleness and wealth, found
strange confirmation in the chap-book legend.
For it seemed to Richard that, taking all that singular matter both of
prophecy and of cure simply--as believers take some half-miraculous,
scripture tale--he had already, in his own person, in right of the
physical uncomeliness of it, paid part, at all events, of the price
demanded by the Eternal Justice for his ancestors' sinning and for his
own. It was not needful that the bees should swarm and the dull-coloured
multitude revenge itself on the indolent, full-fed larvae peopling the
angular honey-cells, as far as he, Richard Calmady, was concerned. That
revenge had been taken long ago, in a mysterious and rather terrible
manner, before his very birth. While, in the stern denunciation, the
adhering curse, of the outraged and so-soon-to-be-childless mother, he
found the just and age-old protest, the patient faith in the eventual
triumph of the proletariat--of the defenseless poor as against the
callous self-seeking and sensuality of the securely guarded rich. By
the fact of his deformity he was emancipated from the delusions of his
class, was made one, in right of the suffering and humiliation of it,
with the dull-coloured multitudes whose corporate voice declares the
ultimate verdict, who are the architects and judges of civilisation, of
art, even of religion, even, in a degree, of nature herself. Salvation,
according to the sorry yet inspiring rhyme of the chap-book, was
contingent upon precisely this recognition of brotherhood with, and
practice of willing service towards, all maimed and sorrowful
creatures. His America was here or nowhere, his vocation clearly
indicated, his work immediate and close at hand.
How the Eternal Justice might see fit to deal with other souls, why he
had been singled out for so peculiar and conspicuous a fate, Richard
did not pretend to say. All that had become curiously unimportant to
him. For he had ceased to call that fate a cruel one. It had changed
its aspect. It had come suddenly to satisfy both his conscience and his
imagination. With a movement at once of wonder and of deep-seated
thankfulness, he, for the first time, held out his hands to it,
accepting it as a comrade, pledging himself to use rather than to spurn
it. He looked at it steadfastly and, so looking, found it no longer
abhorrent but of mysterious virtue and efficacy, endued with power to
open the gates of a way, closed to most men, into the heart of
humanity, which, in a sense, is nothing less than the heart of Almighty
God Himself. It was as though, like the saint of old, daring to kiss
the scabs and sores of the leper, he found himself gazing on the divine
lineaments of the risen Christ. And this brought to him a sense of
almost awed repose. It released him from the vicious circle of self, of
sharp-toothed disappointment and leaden-heavy discouragement, in which
he had so long fruitlessly turned. He seemed consciously to slough off
the foul and ragged garment of the past and all its base, unprofitable
memories, as the snake sloughs off her old skin in the warm May weather
and glides forth, glittering, in a coat of untarnished, silver mail.
The whole complexion of his thought regarding his personal
disfigurement was changed.
Not that he flattered himself the discomfort, the daily vexation and
impediment of it, had passed away. On the contrary these very actually
remained, and would remain to the end. And the consequences they
entailed remained also, the restrictions and deprivations they
inflicted. They put many things, dear to every sane and healthy-minded
man, hopelessly out of his reach, very much upon the shelf. Love and
marriage were shelved thus, in his opinion, let alone lesser and more
ephemeral joys. Only the ungrudging acceptance of the denial of those
joys, whether small or great, was a vital part of that idea to the
evolution of which he now dedicated himself--that Whole which, in
process of its evolution, would make for a sober and temperate
well-being, formed on the pattern, sober yet nobly spacious, cleanly,
and wholesome, of the sun-visited landscape there without. He had just
got to discipline himself into the harmony with the idea newly revealed
to him. And that, as he told himself, not without a sense of the humour
of the situation in certain aspects, meant in more than one department,
plenty of work!--And he had to spend himself and go on, through good
report and ill, through gratitude and, if needs be, through abuse and
detraction, still spending himself, actively, untiringly, in the effort
to make some one person--it hardly mattered whom, but for choice, those
who like himself had been treated unhandsomely by nature or by
accident--just a trifle happier day by day.
But, while Richard rested thus in the quiet sunshine, he lost count of
time. High-noon came and passed, finding and leaving him in absorbed
contemplation of his own thought. At last a barking of dogs, and the
sound of wheels away on the north side of the house, broke up the
silence. Then a faint echo of voices, a boy's laughter in the great
hall below. Then footsteps, which he took to be Lady Calmady's, coming
lightly up the grand staircase. At the stair-head those footsteps
paused for a little space, as though in indecision whither to turn. And
Richard, pushed by an impulse of considerateness somewhat, it must be
owned, new to him, called:--
"Mother, is that you? Do you want me? I'm here."
Whereat the footsteps came forward, in at the open door and through the
soft glory of the all-pervading sunshine, with an effect of gentle
urgency and haste. Katherine's gray, silk pelisse was unfastened,
showing the grey, silk gown, its floating ribbons, pretty frills and
flounces, beneath. Every detail of her dress was very fresh and very
finished, a demure daintiness in it, from the topmost, gray plume and
upstanding, velvet bow of her bonnet to the pretty shoes upon her feet.
Along with a lace handkerchief and her church books, she carried a
bunch of long-stalked violets. Her face was delicately flushed, a great
surprise, touching upon anxiety, tempering the quick pleasure of her
expression.
"My dearest," she said, "this is as delightful as it is unexpected.
What brings you here?"
And Richard smiled at her without reserve, no longer as though putting
a force upon himself or of set purpose, but naturally, spontaneously,
as one who entertains pleasant thoughts. He took her hand and kissed it
with a certain courtliness and reverent fervour.
"I came to look for something here," he said, "which I have looked for
at many times and in very various places, yet never somehow managed to
find."
But Katherine, at once tenderly charmed and rendered yet more anxious
by a quality in his manner and his speech unfamiliar to her, the
purport of which she failed at once to gauge, answered him literally.
"My dearest, why didn't you tell me? I would have looked for it before
I went to church, and saved you the trouble of the journey from the
gallery here."
"Oh! the journey wasn't bad for me, I rather enjoyed it," Dickie said.
"And then to tell you the truth, you've spent the better part of your
dear life in looking for that same something which I could never manage
to find! Poor, sweet mother, no thanks to me, so far, that you haven't
utterly worn yourself out in the search for it."--He paused, and gazed
away out of the open casement.--"But I have a good hope that's all over
and done with now, and that at last I've found the thing myself."
And Katherine, still charmed, still anxious, looked down at him
wondering, for there was a perceptible undercurrent of emotion beneath
the lightness of his speech.
"However, all that will keep," he continued.--"How did you enjoy your
church? Did dear old Julius distinguish himself? How did he preach?"
And Katherine, still wondering, again answered literally.
"Very beautifully," she said, "with an unusual force and pathos. He
took the congregation not a little by storm. He fairly carried us
away. He was eloquent, and that with a simplicity which made one
question whether he did not speak out of some pressing personal
experience."--Katherine's manner was touched by a pretty edge of
pique.--"Really I believed I knew all about Julius and his doings by
this time, but it seems I don't! I think I must find out. It would vex
me that anything should happen in which he needed sympathy, and that I
did not offer it.--His subject was the answer to prayer and the
fulfilment of prophecy--and how both come, come surely and directly,
yet often in so different a form to that which, in our narrowness of
vision and dulness of sense, we anticipate, that we fail to recognise
either the answer or the fulfilment, and so miss the blessing they must