The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
nor part, projected himself violently into the conversational arena.
"Mother," he piped, his words tumbling one over the other in his
eagerness--"Mother, I expect it's the same deer that grandpapa was
talking about when Lord Shotover came over to tea last Friday, and
wanted to know if Honoria wasn't back at Newlands again. And then he
and grandpapa yarned, don't you know. Because, Cousin Richard--it must
have been while you were away last year--the buckhounds met at Bagshot
and ran through Frimley and right across Spendle Flats----"
"No, they didn't, Cousin Richard," Godfrey interrupted. "They ran
through the bottom of Sandyfield Lower Wood."
"But they lost--any way they lost, Cousin Richard," the younger boy
cried.--"You weren't there, Godfrey, so you can't know what grandpapa
said. He said they lost somewhere just into Brockhurst, and he told
Lord Shotover how they beat up the country for nearly a week, and how
they never found it, and had to give it up as a bad job and go home
again. And--and--Lord Shotover said, rotten bad sport, stag-hunting,
unless you get it on Exmoor, where they're not carted and they don't
saw their antlers off. He said meets of the buckhounds ought to be
called Stockbroker's Parade, that was about all they amounted to. And
so, Cousin Richard, I think,--don't you, mother--that this must be that
same deer?"
Whereat the elder Dick's expression, which had grown somewhat dark at
the mention of Lord Shotover, brightened sensibly again. And, for cause
unknown, he looked at Honoria, smiling amusedly, before saying to the
very voluble small sportsman:--
"To be sure, Dick. Your arguments are unanswerable, convincingly sound.
No reasonable man could have a doubt about it! Of course it's the same
deer."
And so the luncheon finished gaily enough, though Miss St. Quentin was
conscious her contributions to the cultivation of that same gaiety were
but spasmodic. She dreaded the conclusion of the meal, fearing lest
then she might be called upon to behold Richard Calmady once again, as
she had beheld him--now just on six years ago--in the half dismantled
house in Lowndes Square, on the night of Lady Louisa Barking's ball.
And from that she shrank, not with her former physical repulsion
towards the man himself, but with the moral repulsion of one compelled
against his will to gaze upon a pitifully cruel sight, the suffering of
which he is powerless to lessen or amend. The short, light-made
crutches, lying on the floor by the young man's chair, shocked her as
the callous exhibition of some unhappy prisoner's shackling-irons
might. It constituted an indignity offered to the Richard sitting here
beside her, so much as to think of, let alone look at, that same
Richard when on foot. Therefore it was with an oddly mingled relief and
sense of playing traitor, that she rose with the rest of the little
company and left him by himself. She was thankful to escape, though all
the while her inherent loyalty tormented her with accusation of
meanness, as of one who deserts a comrade in distress.
But here the small Dick, to whom such complex refinements of
sensibility were as yet wholly foreign, created a diversion by prancing
round from the far side of the table and forcibly seizing her hand. He
was jealous of the large share Godfrey had to-day secured of her
society. He meant to have his innings. So he rubbed his curly head
against her much braided elbow, butting her lovingly in the exuberance
of his affection as some nice, little ram-lamb might. But just as they
reached the door, through which Lady Calmady and the rest of the party
had already passed, the boy drew up short.
"I say, hold on half a minute, Honoria, please," he said.
And then, turning round, his cheeks red as peonies, he marched back to
where Richard sat alone at the head of the table.
"In case--in case, don't you know," he began, stuttering in the excess
of his excitement--"in case, Cousin Richard, mummy didn't quite take in
what you said at the beginning of luncheon--you did mean for really
that I was to come and stay here in the summer holidays, and that you'd
take me out, don't you know, and show me your horses?"
And to Honoria, glancing at them, there was a singular, and almost
tragic, comment on life in the likeness, yet unlikeness, of those two
faces.--The features almost identical, the same blue eyes, the two
heads alike in shape, each with the same close-fitted, bright-brown cap
of hair. But the boy's face flushed, without afterthought or
qualification of its eager happiness--the man's colourless, full of
reserve, almost alarmingly self-contained and still.
Yet, when the elder Richard's answer came, it was altogether gentle and
kindly.
"Yes, most distinctly _for really_, Dick," he said. "Let there be no
mistake about it. Let it be clearly understood I want to have you here
just as long, and just as often, as your mother and father will spare
you. I'll show you the horses, never fear, and let you ride them too."
"A--a--a real big one?"
"Just as big a one as you can straddle." Richard paused.--"And I'll
show you other things, if all goes well, which I'm beginning to
think--and perhaps you'll think so too some day--are more important
even than horses."
He put his hand under the boy's chin, tipped up the ruddy, beaming,
little face and kissed it.
"It's a compact," he said.--"Now cut along, old chap. Don't you see
you're keeping Miss St. Quentin waiting?"
Whereupon the small Richard started soberly enough, being slightly
impressed by something--he knew not quite what--only that it made him
feel awfully fond, somehow, of this newly discovered cousin and
namesake. But, about half-way down the room, that promise of a horse, a
thorough-bred, and just as big as he could straddle, swept all before
it, rendering his spirits uncontrollably explosive. So he made a wild
rush and flung himself headlong upon the waiting Honoria.
"Oh! you want to bear-fight, do you? Two can play at that game," she
cried, "you young rascal!"
Then without apparent effort, or diminution of her lazy grace, the
elder Richard saw her pick the boy up by his middle, and,
notwithstanding convulsive wrigglings on his part, throw him across her
shoulder and bear him bodily away through the lobby, into the hall, and
out of sight.
Hence it fell out that not until quite late that evening did the moment
so dreaded by Miss St. Quentin actually arrive. In furtherance of delay
she practised a diplomacy not altogether flattering to her
self-respect, coming down rather late for dinner, and retiring
immediately after that meal to the Gun-Room, under plea of
correspondence which must be posted at Farley in time for to-morrow's
day mail. She was even late for prayers in the chapel, so that, taking
her accustomed place next to Lady Calmady in the last but one of the
stalls upon the epistle-side, she found all the members of the
household, gentle and simple alike, already upon their knees. The
household mustered strong that night, a testimony, it may be supposed,
to feudal as much as to religious feeling. In the seats immediately
below her were an array of women-servants, declining from the high
dignities of Mrs. Reynolds the housekeeper, the faithful Clara, and her
own lanky and loyal north-country woman Faulstich, to a very youthful
scullery maid, sitting just without the altar rails at the end of the
long row. Opposite were not only Winter, Bates the steward, Powell,
Andrews, and the other men-servants, but Chaplin, heading a detachment
from the house stables, and--unexampled occurrence!--Gnudi the Italian
_chef_, with his air of gentle and philosophic melancholy and his
anarchic sentiments in theology and politics, liable,--these last--when
enlarged on, to cause much fluttering in the dove-cote of the
housekeeper's room.--"To hear Signer Gnudi talk sometimes made your
blood run cold. It seemed as if you couldn't be safe anywhere from
those wicked foreign barricades and massacres," as Clara put it. And
yet, in point of fact, no milder man ever larded a woodcock or stuffed
it with truffles.
Alone, behind all these, in the first of the row of stalls with their
carven spires and dark vaulted canopies, sat Richard Calmady, whom all
his people had thus come forth silently to welcome. But, through prayer
and psalm and lesson alike, as Miss St. Quentin noted, he remained
immovable, to her almost alarmingly cold and self-concentrated. Only
once he turned his head, leaning a little forward and looking towards
the purple, and silver, and fair, white flowers of the altar, and the
clear shining of the altar lights.
"Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an
hungered and fed thee? or thirsty and gave thee drink? When saw we thee
a stranger, and took thee in? or naked and clothed thee? Or when saw we
thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer
and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
The words were given out by Julius March, not only with an exquisite
distinctness of enunciation, but with a ring of assurance, of
sustaining and thankful conviction. Richard leaned back in his stall
again, looking across at his mother. While Honoria, taken with a
sensitive fear of inquiring into matters not rightfully hers to inquire
into, hastily turned her eyes upon her open prayer-book. They must have
many things to say to one another, that mother and son, as she divined,
to-day,--far be it from her to attempt to surprise their confidence!
She rose from her knees, cutting her final petitions somewhat short,
directly the last of the men-servants had filed out of the chapel, and,
crossing the Chapel-Room, a tall, pale figure in her trailing, white,
evening dress, she pulled back the curtain of the oriel window, opened
one of the curved, many-paned casements and looked out. She was
curiously moved, very sensible of a deeper drama going forward around
her, going forward in her own thought--subtly modifying and transmuting
it--than she could at present either explain or place. The night was
cloudy and very mild. A soft, sobbing, westerly wind, with the smell of
coming rain in it, saluted her as she opened the casement. The last of
the frost must be gone, by now, even in the hollows--the snow wholly
departed also. The spring, though young and feeble yet, puling like
some ailing baby-child in the voice of that softly-complaining,
westerly wind, was here, very really present at last. Honoria leaned
her elbows on the stone window-ledge. Her heart went out in strong
emotion of tenderness towards that moist wind which seemed to cry, as
in a certain homelessness, against her bare arms and bare
neck.--"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my
brethren----"
But just then Katherine Calmady called to her, and that in a sweet, if
rather anxious, tone.
"Honoria, dear child, come here," she said. "Richard is putting me
through the longer catechism regarding those heath fires in August
year, and the state of the woods."
Then, as the young lady approached her, Lady Calmady laid one hand on
her arm, looking up in quick and loving appeal at the serious and
slightly troubled face.
"My answers only reveal the woeful greatness of my ignorance. My
geography has run mad. I am planting forests in the midst of
corn-fields, so Dickie assures me, and making hay generally--as you, my
dear, would say--of the map."
Still her eyes dwelt upon Honoria's in insistent and loving appeal.
"Come," she said, "explain to him, and save me from further exposition
of my own ignorance."
Thus admonished the young lady sat down on the low sofa beside Richard
Calmady. As she did so Katherine rose and moved away. Honoria