The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance

"On the contrary, it was not in the least dull. It was actively objectionable, ingeniously unpleasant. Whereas this----" His face softened a little. He glanced at the golden water and cornland, the lush green of the paddock, the rich, massive colouring of woodland and sky. Honoria glanced at it likewise, and, so doing, rose to her feet. That nostalgia of things new and glorious ached in her. Yet the pain of it had a strange and intimate charm, making it unlike any pain she had ever yet felt. It hurt her very really, it made her weak, yet she would not have had it cease. "Yes, it is all very lovely, isn't it?" she said. She laid her hand on the folded leather of the carriage hood. Again she looked up. "It is a good deal to have this--always--your own, to come back to, Richard." She spoke sadly, almost unwillingly. Dickie did not answer, but he looked down, a certain violence and energy very evident in him, his blue eyes hard, and, in the depth of them, desolate as the sky of a winter night. Calmly, yet in a way desperately, as those who dare inquiry beyond the range of permitted human speech, the young man and woman looked at one another. Lady Calmady's sweet voice, meanwhile, went on in kindly question. Ludovic Quayle's in well-placed, slightly elaborate answer. The near horse threw back its head and the pole-chains rattled smartly.--Honoria's lips parted, but the words, if words indeed there were, died in her throat. She raised her hands, as though putting a tangible and actual presence away from her. She did not change colour, but for the moment her delicate features appeared thickened, as by a rush of blood. She was almost plain. Yet the effect was inexpressibly touching. It was as though she had received some mysterious injury which she was dumb, incapable to express. She let her hands drop at her sides, turned away and walked to the far end of the bridge. Suddenly Richard's voice came to her, aggressive, curt. "Look out, Ludovic--stand clear of the wheel." The horses sprang forward, the grooms scrambled up at the back, and the carriage swung away from the brightness of the open to the gloom of the avenue and up the long hill to the house. Mr. Quayle contemplated it for a minute or so and then, with an air of amused toleration, he followed Miss St. Quentin across the bridge. "Poor, dear Dickie Calmady, poor, dear Dickie!" he said. "He attempts the impossible. Fails to attain it--as a matter of course, and, meanwhile, misses the possible--equally as a matter of course. It is all very magnificent, no doubt, but it is also not a little uncomfortable, at times, for other people.--However that trifle of criticism is, after all, beside the mark. Now that the whirlwind has ceased, Miss St. Quentin, may the still, small voice of my own affairs presume to make itself----" But there he stopped abruptly. "My dear friend," he asked in quick anxiety, "what is the matter? Pardon me, but what on earth has happened to you?" For Honoria leaned both elbows on the low, carved pillar terminating the masonry of the parapet. She covered her face with her hands. And, incontestably, she shuddered queerly from head to foot. "Wait half a second," she said, in a stifled voice. "It's nothing--I'm all right." Slowly she raised herself, and took a long breath. Then she turned to her faithful lover, showing him a brave, if somewhat drawn and tired countenance. "Ludovic," she said gently, "don't, don't please let us talk any more about all that. And don't, I entreat you, wait any longer. If there was any uncertainty, if there was a doubt in the back of my mind, it's gone. Forgive me--this must sound brutal--but there is no more doubt. I can't marry you. I am sorry, horribly sorry--for you have been as charming to me as a man could be--but I shall never be able to marry you." Mr. Quayle's expression retained its sweetness, even its effect of amusement, though his lips quivered, and his eyelids were a little red. "I do not come up to the requirements of the grand passion?" he said. "Alas! poor me----" "No, no, it isn't that," Honoria protested. "Ah, then,"--he paused, with an air of extraordinary intelligence--"Perhaps some one else does?" "Yes," she said simply, "I don't like it, but it's there, and so I've got to go through with it--some one else does." "In that case it is indeed hopeless! I give it up," he cried. He moved aside and stood gazing at the rising trout in the golden-brown water. Then he raised his head sharply, as in obedience to a thought suddenly occurring to him, and gazed at Brockhurst House. The brightness of the western sky found reflection in its many windows. A noble cheerfulness seemed to pervade it, as it crowned the hillside, amid its gardens and far-ranging woods. "By all that's"--Mr. Quayle began. But he repressed the exclamation, and his expression was wholly friendly as he returned to Miss St. Quentin. "Good-bye," he said.--"I am glad, honestly glad, you have found the grand passion, though the object of it can't, in the first blush of the affair be altogether _persona grata_ to myself. But, to show that really I have a little root of magnanimity in me, I am quite prepared to undertake a winter at Cairo, plus Evelyn Tobemory and minus low dresses, if that will enable you to stay on here--I mean in England,--of course." He pursed up his beautiful mouth, he carried his head on one side with the liveliest effect of provocation, as he held the young lady's hand while bidding her farewell. "Out of my heart I hope you will be very happy," he said. "I shall never be anything but Honoria St. Quentin," she answered rather hastily. Then she softened, forgiving him.--"Oh! why," she said, "why will you make me quarrel with you just now, just at the last?" "Because--because--" Mr. Quayle's voice broke, though his superior smile remained to him.--"I think I will not prolong the interview," he said. "To be frank with you, dear Miss St. Quentin, I am about as miserable as is consonant with complete sanity and excellent health. I do not propose to blow my brains out, but I think--yes, thanks--you appreciate the desirability of that course of action too?--I think it is about time I went." CHAPTER X CONCERNING A DAY OF HONEST WARFARE AND A SUNSET HARBINGER NOT OF THE NIGHT BUT OF THE DAWN That episode, upon the bridge spanning the Long Water, brought Richard would-be saint, Richard pilgrim along the great white road which leads onward to Perfection, into lively collision with Richard the natural man, not to mention Richard the "wild bull in a net." These opposing forces engaged battle, with the consequence that the carriage horses took the hill at a rather breakneck pace. Not that Dickie touched them, but that, he being vibrant, they felt his mood down the length of the reins and responded to it. "Ludovic need hardly have been in such a prodigious hurry," he broke out. "He might have allowed one a few days' grace. It was a defect of taste to come over immediately--but then all that family's taste is liable to lapses." Promptly he repented, ashamed both of his anger and such self-revealing expression of it. "I dare say it's all for the best though. Better a thing should be nipped in the bud than in the blossom. And this puts it all on a right footing. One might easily drift into depending too much upon Honoria. I own I was dangerously near doing that this spring. I don't mind telling you so now, mother, because this, you see, disposes finally of the matter." His voice contended oddly with the noise of the wheels, rattle of the pole-chains, pounding of the hoofs of the pulling horses. The sentences came to Lady Calmady's ears disjointed, difficult to follow and interpret. Therefore she answered slightly at random. "My dearest, I could have kept her longer in the spring if I had only known," she said, a disquieting suspicion of lost opportunity assailing her. "But, from certain things which you said, I thought you preferred our being alone." "So I did. I wanted her to go because I wanted her to stay. Do you see?" "Ah, yes! I see," Katherine replied. And at that moment, it must be conceded, her sentiments were not conspicuously pacific towards her faithful adherent, Mr. Quayle. "We've a good many interests in common," Dickie went on, "and there seemed a chance of one's settling down into a rather charming friendship with her. It was a beguiling prospect. And for that very reason, it was best she should depart. The prospect, in all its beguilingness, renewed itself to-day after luncheon."--He paused, handling the plunging horses.--"And so after all Ludovic shall be reckoned welcome. For, as I say, I might have come to depend on her. And one's a fool--I ought to have learnt that salutary lesson by this time--a rank fool, to depend on anybody, or anything, save oneself, simply and solely oneself"--his tone softened--"and upon you, most dear and long-suffering mother.--Therefore the dream of friendship goes overboard after all, along with the rest of one's little illusions. And every illusion one rids oneself of is so much to the good. It lightens the ship. It lessens the chances of sinking. Clearly it is so much pure gain." That evening, pleading--unexampled occurrence in her case--a headache as excuse, Miss St. Quentin did not put in an appearance at dinner. Nor did Richard put in an appearance at breakfast next morning. At an early hour he had received a communication earnestly requesting his presence at the Westchurch Infirmary. His mission promised to be a melancholy one, yet he was not sorry for the demand made by it upon his time and thought. For, notwithstanding the philosophic tone he had adopted with Lady Calmady in speaking of that friendship which, if not nipped in the bud, might have reached perils of too luxuriant blossoming, the would-be saint and the natural man, the pilgrim on the highroad to Perfection and that very inconvenient animal "the wild bull in a net," kept up warfare within Richard Calmady. They were hard at it even yet, when, in the fair freshness of the September morning--the grasses and hedge-fruit, the wild flowers, and the low-growing, tangled coppices by the roadside, still heavy with dew--he drove over to Westchurch. The day was bright, with flying cloud and a westerly breeze. The dust was laid, and the atmosphere, cleared by the storm of the preceding afternoon, had a smack of autumn in it. It was one of those delicious, yet distracting, days when the sea calls, and when whosoever loves seafaring grows restless, must seek movement, seek the open, strain his eyes towards the margin of the land--be the coast-line never so far distant--tormented by desire for sight of the blue water, and the strong and naked joys of the mighty ridge and furrow where go the gallant ships. With the upspringing of the wind at dawn, that calling of the sea had made itself heard to Richard. At first it suggested only the practical temptation of putting the _Reprieve_ into commission, and engaging Lady Calmady to go forth with him on a three or four months' cruise. But that, as he speedily convinced himself, was but a pitifully cheap expedient, a shirking of voluntarily assumed responsibility, a childish cheating of discontent, rather than an honestly attempted cure of it. If cure was to be achieved, the canker must be excised, boldly cut out, not overlaid merely by some trifle of partially concealing plaster. For he knew well enough--as all sea-lovers know--and, as he drove through the dappled sunlight and shadow, frankly admitted--that though the sea itself very actually and really called, yet its calling was the voice and symbol of much over and above itself. For in it speaks the eternal