The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
waiting became agitating to the point of distress.
At last the course of her so-dutiful survey brought her to a quaint,
little chamber, situated immediately over the square, outstanding
porch. It was lighted by a single, hooded window placed in the centre
of the front wall. It was evidently designed for a linen room, and was
in process of being fitted with shelves and cupboards of white pine.
The floor was deep in shavings, long, curly, wafer-coloured,
semi-transparent. They rustled like fallen leaves when Honoria stepped
among them. The air was filled with the odour of them, dry and resinous
as that of the fir forest. Ever after that odour affected Honoria with
a sense of half-fearful joy and of impending fate. She stood in the
middle of the quaint, little chamber. The ceiling was low. She had to
bend her head to avoid violent contact between the central beam of it
and the crown of her felt hat. But circumscribed though the space, and
uncomfortable though her posture, she had an absurd longing to lock the
door of the little room, never to come out, to stay here forever! Here
she was safe. But outside, on the threshold, stood something she dared
not name. It drew her with a pain at once terrible and lovely. She
dreaded it. Yet once close to it, once face to face with it, she knew
it would have her--that it would not take no for an answer. Her pride,
her chastity, were in arms. Was this, she wondered, what men and women
speak of so lightly, laugh and joke about? Was this love?--To her it
seemed wholly awe-inspiring. And so she clung strangely to the shelter
of the quaint, little room with its sea of rustling, resinous shavings.
On the other side the door of it waited that momentous decision which
would cause the scale to turn. Yet the minutes passed. To prolong her
absence became impossible.
Just then there was a movement below, a crunching of the gravel, as
though of a horse growing restless, impatient of standing. Honoria
moved forward, opened the window, pushing back the casement against a
cluster of late-blossoming, red roses, the petals of which floated
slowly downward describing fluttering circles. Richard Calmady was just
below. Honoria called to him.
"I am coming, Richard, I am coming!" she said.
He turned in the saddle and looked up at her smiling--a smile at once
courageous and resigned. Yet, notwithstanding that smile, Honoria once
again discovered in his eyes the chill desolation and homelessness of
the sky of the winter night. Then the scale turned, turned at last--for
that same lovely pain grew lovelier, more desirable than any
possibility of ease, until such time as that desolation should pass,
that homelessness be cradled to content in some sure harbourage.--Here
was the thing given her to do, and she must do it! She would risk all
to win all. And, with that decision, all her serenity and freedom of
soul returned. The white light of a noble self-devotion, reckless of
self-spending, reckless of consequence, the joy of a great giving,
illuminated her face.
As to Richard, he, looking up at her, though ignorant of her purpose,
misreading the cause of that inspired aspect, still thought he had
never witnessed so graciously gallant a sight. The nymph whom he had
first known, who had baffled and crossed him, was here still, strong,
untamed, elusive, remote. But a woman was here too, of finest fibre,
faithful and loyal, capable of undying tenderness, of an all-encircling
and heroic love. Then the desires of the natural man stirred somewhat
in Richard, just because--paradox though it undoubtedly was--she
provoked less the carnal, perishing passion of the flesh, than the pure
and imperishable passion of the spirit. Irrepressible envy of Ludovic
Quayle, her lover, seized him, irrepressible demand for just all those
things which that other Richard, the would-be saint, had so sternly
condemned himself to repudiate, to cast aside and forget. And the
would-be saint triumphed--beating down thought of all that, trampling
it under foot--so that after briefest interval he called up to her
cheerily enough.
"Well, what do you make of the dust-cart? Rather fascinating, isn't it?
Notwithstanding its uncleanly name, it's really rather sweet."
To which she answered, speaking from out the wide background of her own
emotion and purpose:--
"Yes, yes--it's sad in a way, Richard, penetratingly, splendidly sad.
But one wouldn't have it otherwise; for it is splendid, and it is
sweet, abundantly sweet."--Then her tone changed.--"I won't keep you
waiting any longer, I'm coming," she said.
Honoria looked round the quaint, little room, with its half-adjusted
shelves and cupboards, the floor of it deep in resinous,
semi-transparent, wafer-coloured shavings, bidding it adieu. For good
or evil, happiness or sorrow, she was sensible it told for much in her
life's history. Then, something delicately militant in her carriage,
she swung away down-stairs and out of the house. She was going forth to
war indeed, to a war which in no shape or form had she ever waged as
yet. Many men had wooed her, and their wooing had left her cold. She
had never wooed any man. Why should she? To her no man had ever
mattered one little bit.
So she mounted, and they rode away.--A spin across the level turf to
hearten her up, satisfy the fulness of sensation which held her, and
shake her nerves into place. It was exhilarating. She grew keen and
tense, her whole economy becoming reliable and well-knit by the strong
exercise and sense of the superbly healthy and unperplexed vitality of
the horse under her. Honoria could have fought with dragons just then,
had such been there to fight with! But, in point of fact, nothing more
agressively dangerous presented itself for encounter than the shallow
ford which divides the parish of Farley from that of Sandyfield and the
tithing of Brockhurst. Snorting a little, the horses splashed through
the clear, brown water and entered upon the rough, rutted road, grass
grown in places, which, ending beneath a broken avenue of ancient,
stag-headed oaks, leads to the entrance of the Brockhurst woods. These,
crowned by the dark, ragged line of the fir forest, rose in a soft,
dense mass against the western sky, in which showed promise of a fair
pageant of sunset. A covey of partridges ran up the sandy ruts before
the horses, and, rising at last with a long-drawn whir of wings,
skimmed the top of the crumbling bank and dropped in the stubble-field
on the right. A pause, while the keeper's wife ran out to open the
white gate,--the dogs meanwhile, from their wooden kennels under the
Spanish chestnuts upon the hillock behind the lodge, pulling at their
chains and keeping up a vociferous chorus. Thus heralded, the riders
passed into the mysteriously whispering quiet of the great woods.
The heavy, summer foliage remained as yet untouched by the hectic of
autumn. Diversity was observable in form rather than in tint, and from
this resulted a remarkable effect of unity, a singleness of intention,
and of far-reaching secrecy. The multitudinous leaves and the
all-pervading green gloom of them around, above, seemed to engulf
horses and riders. It was as though they rode across the floor of
ocean, the green tides sweeping overhead. Yet the trees of the wood
asserted their intelligent presence now and again. Audibly they talked
together, bent themselves a little to listen and to look, as though
curious of the aspect and purposes of these wandering mortals. And all
this, the unity and secrecy of the place, affected both Richard and
Honoria strangely, circling them about with something of earth-magic,
removing them far from ordinary conditions of social intercourse, and
thus rendering it possible, inevitable even, that they should think
such thoughts and say such words as part company with subterfuge and
concealment, go naked, and speak uttermost truth. For, with only the
trees of the wood to listen, with that sibilant whisper of the green
tide overhead, with strong emotion compelling them--in the one case
towards death of self, in the other towards giving of self--in the one
towards austere passivity, in the other towards activity taxing all
capital of pride, of delicacy, and of tact--developments became
imminent, and those of the most vital sort.
The conversation had been broken, desultory; but now, by tacit consent,
the pace became quiet again, the horses were permitted to walk. To have
gone other than softly through the living heart of the greenwood must
have savoured of desecration. Yet Richard was not insensible to a
certain danger. He tried, rousing himself to conversation, to rouse
himself also to the practical and commonplace.
"I am glad you liked my house," he said. "But I hear the aristocracy of
the Row laments. It shies at the idea of being invaded by more or less
frightful creatures. But I remain deaf. I really can't bother about
that. It is so immeasurably more unpleasant to be frightful than to see
that which is so, that I'm afraid my sympathies remain rather
pig-headedly one-sided. I propose to educate the Row in the grace of
pity. It may lay up merit by due exercise of that."
Richard took off his hat and rode bareheaded, looking away into the
delicious, green gloom. Here, where the wood was thickest, oak and
beech shutting out the sky, clasping hands overhead, the ground beneath
them deep in moss and fern, that gloom was precisely like the colour of
Honoria's eyes. He wished it wasn't so. He tried to forget it. But the
resemblance haunted him. Look where he might, still he seemed to look
into those singular and charming eyes. He talked on determinedly,
putting a force upon himself--too often saying that which, no sooner
was it out of his mouth, than, he wished unsaid.
"I don't want to be too hard on the Row, though. It has a right, after
all, to its little prejudices. Only you see for those who, poor souls,
are different to other people it becomes of such supreme importance to
keep in touch with the average. I have found that out in practice. And
so I refuse to shut my waste humanity away. They must neither hide
themselves nor be hidden, be spared seeing how much other people enjoy
from which they are debarred, or grow over-conscious of their own
ungainliness. That is why I've planted them and their gardens, and
their pigs and their poultry--we'll have a lot of live stock, a second
generation, even of chickens, offers remarkable consolations!--on the
highroad, at the entrance of the little town, where, on a small scale
at all events, they'll see the world that's straight-backed and has its
proper complement of limbs and senses, go by. Envy, hatred, and malice,
and the seven devils of morbidity are forever lying in wait for
them--well--for us--for me and those like me, I mean. In proportion as
one's brought up tenderly--as I was--one doesn't realise the
deprivation and disgust of one's condition at the start. But once
realised, one's inclination is to kill. At least a man's is. A woman
may accept it more quietly, I suppose."
"Richard," Honoria said slowly, "are you sure you don't greatly
exaggerate all--all that?"
He shook his head.
"Thirty years' experience--no, I don't exaggerate! Each time one makes
a fresh acquaintance, each time a pretty woman is just that bit kinder
to one than she would dare be to any man who was not out of it, each
time people are manifestly interested--politely, of course--and form a
circle, make room for one as they did at that particularly disagreeable
Grimshott garden party yesterday, each time--I don't want to drivel,
but so it is--one sees a pair of lovers--oh! well, it's not easy to
retain one's philosophy, not to obey the primitive instincts of any
animal when it's ill-used and hurt, and to revenge oneself--to want to
kill, in short."