The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
were about in these awkward matters. The modern conscience is
disastrously anaemic."
Although it looks on to the terrace, the dining-room at Brockhurst is
among the least cheerful of the living rooms. The tapestry with which
it is hung--representing French hunting scenes, each panel set in a
broad border pattern of birds, fruits and leaves, interspersed with
classic urns and medallions--is worked in neutral tints of brown, blue,
and gray. The chimneypiece, reaching the whole height of the wall, is
of liver-coloured marble. At the period in question, it was still the
fashion to dine at the modestly early hour of six; and, the spring
evenings being long, the curtains had been left undrawn, so that the
dying daylight without and the lamplight within contended rather
mournfully for mastery, while a wild, southeasterly wind, breaking in
gusts against the house front, sobbed at the casements and made a loose
pane, here and there, click and rattle.
And it was in the midst of a notably heavy gust, when dessert had been
served and the servants had left the room, that Captain Ormiston leaned
across the table and addressed his sister-in-law.
The young soldier had been somewhat gloomy and silent during dinner. He
was vaguely anxious about Lady Calmady. The news of Mrs. St. Quentin
was critical, and he cherished a very true affection for his
great-aunt. Had she not been his confidant ever since his first term at
Eton? Had she not, moreover, helped him on several occasions when
creditors displayed an incomprehensibly foolish pertinacity regarding
payment for goods supplied? He was burdened, too, by a prospective
sense of his own uncommon righteousness. For, during the past five
months, while he had been on leave at Brockhurst, assisting Katherine
to master the details of the very various business of the estate,
Ormiston had revised his position and decided on heroic measures of
reform. He would rid himself of debt, forswear expensive London habits,
and those many pleasant iniquities which every great city offers
liberally to such handsome, fine gentlemen as himself. He actually
proposed, just so soon as Katherine could conveniently spare him, to
decline from the splendid inactivity of the Guards, upon the hard work
of some line regiment under orders for foreign service. Ormiston was
quite affected by contemplation of his own good resolutions. He
appeared to himself in a really pathetic light. He would like to have
told Mary Cathcart all about it and have claimed her sympathy and
admiration. But then, she was just precisely the person he could not
tell, until the said resolutions had, in a degree at all events, passed
into accomplished fact! For--as not infrequently happens--it was not so
much a case of being off with the old love before being on with the
new; as being off with the intermediate loves, before being on with the
old one again. To announce his estimable future, was, by implication at
all events, to confess a not wholly estimable past. And so Roger
Ormiston, sitting that night at dinner beside the object of his best
and most honest affections, proved but poor company; and roused
himself, not without effort, to say to his sister-in-law:--
"It's about time to perform the ceremony of the evening, isn't it,
Ella, and drink that small boy's health?"
"By all manner of means. I'm all for the observance of ancient forms
and ceremonies. You can never be sure how much mayn't lie at the bottom
of them, and it's best to be on the safe side of the unseen powers.
You'll agree to that now, Mr. March, won't you?"--She took a grape skin
from between her neat teeth and flicked it out on to her plate.--"So,
for myself," she went on, "I curtsy nine times to the new moon, though
the repeated genuflexion is perniciously likely to give me the
backache; touch my hat in passing to the magpies; wish when I behold a
piebald; and bless my neighbour devoutly if he sneezes."
At the commencement of this harangue she met her brother-in-law's
rather depreciative scrutiny with her bold little stare--in his present
mood Ormiston found her vivacity tedious, though he was usually willing
enough to laugh at her extravagancies--then she whipped Julius in with
a side glance, and concluded with her round eyes set on Dr. Knott's
rough-hewn and weather-beaten countenance.
"I'm afraid you are disgracefully superstitious, Mrs. Ormiston," the
latter remarked.
She was a feather-headed chatterbox, he reflected; but her chatter
served to occupy the time. And the doctor was by no means anxious the
time should pass too rapidly. He felt slightly self-contemptuous; but
in good truth he would be glad to put away some few glasses of sound
port before administering the aforementioned facer to Captain Ormiston.
"Superstitious?" she returned. "Well I trust my superstition is not
chronic, but nicely intermittent like all the rest of my many virtues.
Charity begins at home, you know, and I would not like to keep any of
the poor, dear creatures on guard too long for fear of tiring them out.
But I give every one of them a turn, Dr. Knott, I assure you."
"And that's more than most of us do," he said, smiling rather savagely.
"The majority of my acquaintance have a handsome power of
self-restraint in the practice of virtue."
"And I'm the happy exception! Well, now that's an altogether pretty
speech," Mrs. Ormiston cried, laughing. "But to return to the matter in
hand, to this hero of a baby---- I dote on babies, Dr. Knott. I've one
of my own of six months old, and she's a charming child I assure you."
"I don't doubt that for an instant, having the honour of knowing her
mother. Couldn't be otherwise than charming if she tried," the doctor
said, reaching out his hand again to the decanter.
Mrs. Ormiston treated him to her little stare, and then looked round
the table, putting up one plump, bare arm as she pushed in a couple of
hairpins.
"Ah! but she's a real jewel of a child," she said audaciously. "She's
the comfort of my social existence. For she doesn't resemble me in the
least, and therefore my reputation's everlastingly safe, thanks to her.
Why, before the calumniating thought has had time to arise in your
mind, one look in that child's face will dissipate it, she's so
entirely the image of her father."
There was a momentary silence, but for the sobbing of the gale and
rattling of the casements. Then Captain Ormiston broke into a rather
loud laugh. Even if they sail near the wind, you must stand by the
women of your family.
"Come, that will do, I think, Ella," he said. "You won't beat that
triumphant bull in a hurry."
"But, my dear boy, so she is. Even at her present tender age, she's the
living picture of your brother William."
"Oh! poor William," Roger said hastily.
He turned to Mary Cathcart. The girl had blushed up to the roots of her
crisp, black hair. She did not clearly understand the other woman's
speech, nor did she wish to do so. She was admirably pure-minded. But
like all truly pure-minded persons, she carried a touchstone that made
her recoil, directly and instinctively, from that which was of doubtful
quality. The twinkle in Dr. Knott's gray eyes, as he sipped his port,
still more the tone of Roger Ormiston's laugh, she did understand
somehow. And this last jarred upon her cruelly. It opened the
flood-gates of doubt which Mary--like so many another woman in respect
of the man she loves--had striven very valiantly to keep shut. All
manner of hints as to his indiscretions, all manner of half-told tales
as to his debts, his extravagance, which rumour had conveyed to her
unwilling ears, seemed suddenly to gather weight and probability,
viewed in the moral light--so to speak--of that laugh. Great loves
mature and deepen under the action of sorrow and the necessity to
forgive; yet it is a shrewdly bitter moment, when the heart of either
man or woman first admits that the god of its idolatry has, after all,
feet of but very common clay. Her head erect, her eyes moist, Mary
turned to Julius March and asked him of the welfare of a certain
labourer's family that had lately migrated from Newlands to Sandyfield.
But Ormiston's voice broke in upon the inquiries with a determination
to claim her attention.
"Miss Cathcart," he said, "forgive my interrupting you. I can tell you
more about the Spratleys than March can. They're all right. Iles has
taken the man on as carter at the home-farm, and given the eldest boy a
job with the woodmen. I told him to do what he could for them as you
said you were interested in them. And now, please, I want you to drink
my small nephew's health."
The girl pushed forward her wine-glass without speaking; and as he
filled it Ormiston added in a lower tone:--
"He, at all events, unlike some of his relations, is guiltless of
foolish words or foolish actions. I don't pretend to share Ella's
superstitions, but some people's good wishes are very well worth
having."
Unwillingly Mary Cathcart raised her eyes. Her head was still carried a
little high and her cheeks were still glowing. Her god might not be of
pure gold throughout--such gods rarely are unfortunately--yet she was
aware she still found him a very worshipful kind of deity.
"Very well worth having," he repeated. "And so I should like that poor
little chap to have your good wishes, Miss Cathcart. Wish him all
manner of nice things, for his mother's sake as well as his own.
There's been a pretty bad run of luck here lately, and it's time it
changed. Wish him better fortune than his forefathers. I'm not
superstitious, as I say, but Richard Calmady's death scared one a
little. Five minutes beforehand it seemed so utterly improbable. And
then one began to wonder if there could be any truth in the old legend.
And that was ugly, you know."
Dr. Knott glanced at the speaker sharply.--"Oh! that occurred to you,
did it?" he said.
"Bless me! why, it occurred to everybody," Ormiston answered
impatiently. "Some idiot raked the story up, and it was canvassed from
one end of the county to the other last autumn till it made me fairly
sick."
"Poor boy!" cried Mrs. Ormiston, "and what is this wonderful story that
so nauseates him, Dr. Knott?"
"I'm afraid I can't tell you," the doctor answered slowly. A nervous
movement on the part of Julius March had attracted his attention. "I
have never managed to get hold of the story as a whole, but I should
like to do so uncommonly."
Julius pushed back his chair, and groped hurriedly for the dinner
napkin which had slipped to the ground from his knees. The subject of
the conversation agitated him. The untidy, little chap-books, tied
together with the tag of rusty ribbon, had lain undisturbed in the
drawer of his library table ever since the--to him--very memorable
evening, when, kneeling before the image of the stricken Mother and the
dead Christ, he had found the man's heart under the priest's cassock
and awakened to newness of life. Much had happened since then; and
Julius had ranged himself, accepting, open-eyed, the sorrows and
alleviations of the fate he had created for himself. But to-night he
was tired. The mental and emotional strain of the last few days had
been considerable. Moreover, John Knott's presence always affected him.
The two men stood, indeed, at opposing poles of thought--the one
spiritual and ideal, the other material and realistic. And, though he
struggled against the influence, the doctor's rather brutal common
sense and large knowledge of physical causes, gained a painful
ascendency over his mind at close quarters. Knott, it must be owned,
was slightly merciless to his clerical acquaintances. He loved to bait
them, to impale them on the horns of some moral or theological dilemma.
And it was partly with this purpose of harrying and worrying, that he
continued now:--