The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
that pure glory of the sunrise, and the vast noble landscape, misty
valley, dewy grassland, far ranging hillside crowned with wood.
"The old story," he muttered, "always repeating itself. And it strikes
one as rather a wasteful, clumsy contrivance, at times. Life forever
feeding on death--death forever breeding life."
Thus ended the Clown, own brother to Touchstone, of merry name and
mournful memory, paying the penalty of wholly involuntary
transgressions. From which ending another era dated at Brockhurst, the
most notable events of which it is the purpose of the ensuing pages
duly to set forth.
BOOK II
THE BREAKING OF DREAMS
CHAPTER I
RECORDING SOME ASPECTS OF A SMALL PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, says the comfortable proverb.
Which would appear to be but another manner of declaring that the law
of compensation works permanently in human affairs. All quantities,
material and immaterial alike, are, of necessity, stable; therefore the
loss or defect of one participant must--indirectly, no doubt, yet very
surely--make for the gain of some other. As of old, so now, the blood
of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.
Julius March would, how gladly, have been among the martyrs! But the
lot fell otherwise. And--always admitting the harshness of the
limitations he had imposed on himself--the martyrdom of those he held
dearest, did, in fact, work to secure him a measure of content that had
otherwise been unattainable. The twelve years following the birth of
Lady Calmady's child were the most fruitful of his life. He filled a
post no other person could have filled; one which, while satisfying his
religious sense and priestly ideal of detachment, appeased the cravings
of his heart and developed the practical man in him. The contemplative
and introspective attitude was balanced by an active and objective one.
For he continued to live under his dear lady's roof, seeing her daily
and serving her in many matters. He watched her, admiring her clear yet
charitable judgment and her prudence in business. He bowed in reverence
before her perfect singleness of purpose. He was almost appalled,
apprehending, now and then, the secret abysses of her womanhood, the
immensity of her self-devotion, the swing of her nature from quick,
sensitive shrinking to almost impious pride. Man is the outcome of the
eternal common sense; woman that of some moment of divine folly.
Meanwhile the ways of true love are many; and Julius March, thus
watching his dear lady, discovered, as other elect souls have
discovered before him, that the way of chastity and silence,
notwithstanding its very constant heartache, is by no means among the
least sweet. The entries in his diaries of this period are
intermittent, concise, and brief--naturally enough, since the central
figure of Julius's mental picture had ceased, happily for him, to be
himself.
And not only Katherine's sorrows, but the unselfish action of another
woman went to make Julius March's position at Brockhurst tenable. A few
days after Ormiston's momentous interview with his sister, news came of
Mrs. St. Quentin's death. She had passed hence peacefully in her sleep.
Knowledge of the facts of poor, little Dickie Calmady's ill-fortune had
been spared her. For it would be more satisfactory--so Mademoiselle de
Mirancourt had remarked, not without a shade of irony--that if Lucia
St. Quentin must learn the sad fact at all, she should do so where _le
bon Dieu_ Himself would be at hand to explain matters, and so, in a
degree, set them right.
Early in April Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had gathered together her
most precious possessions and closed the pretty apartment in the rue de
Rennes. It had been a happy halting-place on the journey of life. It
was haunted by well-beloved ghosts. It cost not a little to bid it, the
neighbouring church of the St. Germain des Pres, where she had so long
worshipped, and her little _coterie_ of intimate friends, farewell. Yet
she set forth, taking with her Henriette, the hard-featured, old,
Breton maid, and _Monsieur Pouf_, the gray, Persian cat,--he protesting
plaintively from within a large Manilla basket,--and thus accompanied,
made pilgrimage to Brockhurst. And when Katherine, all the lost joys of
her girlhood assailing her at sight of her lifelong friend, had broken
down for once, and, laying her beautiful head on the elder woman's
shoulder, had sobbed out a question as to when this visit must end,
Marie de Mirancourt had answered--
"That, most dear one, is precisely as you shall see fit to decide. It
need not end till I myself end, if you so please."
And when Katherine, greatly comforted yet fearing to be over-greedy of
comfort, had reasoned with her, reminding her of the difference of
climate, the different habits of living in that gay, little Paris home
and this great English country house; reminding her, further, of her so
often and fondly expressed desire to retire from the world while yet in
the complete possession of her powers and prepare for the inevitable
close within the calm and sacred precincts of the convent--the other
replied almost gaily--
"Ah, my child! I have still a naughty little spirit of experiment in me
which defiles the barbarities of your climate. While as to the convent,
it has beckoned so long--let it beckon still! It called first when my
_fiance_ died,--God rest his soul,--worn out by the hardships he
endured in the war of La Vendee and I put from me forever all thought
of marriage. But then my mother, an emigrant here in London, claimed
all my care. It called me again when she departed, dear saintly being.
But then there were my brother's sons--orphaned by the guillotine--to
place. And when I had established them honourably, our beloved Lucia
turned to me, with her many enchantments and exquisite tragedy of the
heart. And, now, in my old age I come to you--whom I receive from her
as a welcome legacy--to remain just so long as I am not a burden to
you. Second childhood and first should understand one another. We will
play delightful games together, the dear baby and I. So let the convent
beckon. For the convent is perhaps, after all, but an impatient
grasping at the rest of paradise, before that rest is fairly earned. I
have a good hope that, after all, we give ourselves most acceptably to
God in thus giving ourselves to His human creatures."
Thus did Marie de Mirancourt, for love's sake, condemn herself to
exile, thereby rendering possible--among other things--Julius's
continued residence at Brockhurst. For Captain Ormiston had held true
to his resolve of scorning the delights of idleness, the smiles of
ladies more kind than wise, and all those other pleasant iniquities to
which idleness inclines the young and full-blooded, of bidding farewell
to London and Windsor, and proceeding to "live laborious days" in some
far country. He had offered to remain indefinitely with Katherine if
she needed him. But she refused. Let him be faithful to the noble
profession of arms and make a name for himself therein.
"Brockhurst has ceased to be a place for a soldier," she said. "Leave
it to women and priests!" And then, repenting of the bitterness of her
speech, she added:--"Really there is not more work than I can manage,
with Julius to help me at times. Iles is a good servant if a little
tediously pompous, and Chifney must see to the stables."--Lady Calmady
paused, and her face grew hard. But for her husband's dying request,
she would have sold every horse in the stud, razed the great square of
buildings to the ground and made the site of it a dunghill. "Work is a
drug to deaden thought. So it is a kindness to let me have plenty of
it, dear old man. And I fear, even when the labour of each day is done,
and Dickie is safe asleep,--poor darling,--I shall still have more than
enough of time for thought, for asking those questions to which there
seems no answer, and for desires, vain as they are persistent, that
things were somehow, anyhow, other than they are!"
Therefore it came about that a singular quiet settled down on
Brockhurst--a quiet of waiting, of pause, rather than of
accomplishment. But Julius March, for reasons aforesaid, and
Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, in virtue of her unclouded faith in the
teachings of her Church,--which assures its members of the beneficent
purpose working behind all the sad seeming of this world,--alike
rejoiced in that. A change of occupations and of interests came
naturally with the change of the seasons, with the time to sow and
reap, to plant saplings, to fell timber, to fence, to cut copsing, to
build or rebuild, to receive rents or remit them, to listen to many
appeals, to readjust differences, to feed game or to shoot it, to
bestow charity of meat and fuel, to haul ice in winter to the ice-house
from the lake. But beyond all this there was little going or coming at
Brockhurst. The magnates of the countryside called at decent intervals,
and at decent intervals Lady Calmady returned their civilities. But
having ceased to entertain, she refused to receive entertainment. She
shut herself away in somewhat jealous seclusion, defiant of possibly
curious glances and pitying tongues. Before long her neighbours,
therefore, came to raise their eyebrows a little in speaking of her,
and to utter discreet regrets that Lady Calmady, though handsome and
charming when you saw her, was so very eccentric, adding--"Of course
every one knows there is something very uncomfortable about the little
boy!" Then would follow confidences as to the disastrous results of
popish influences and Romanising tendencies; and an openly expressed
conviction--more especially on the part of ladies blessed with
daughters of marriageable age--that it would have been so very much
better for many people if the late Sir Richard Calmady had looked
nearer home for a bride.
But these comments did not affect Katherine. In point of fact they
rarely reached her ears. Alone among her neighbours, Mary Cathcart, of
the crisp, black hair and gipsy-like complexion, was still admitted to
some intimacy of intercourse. And the girl was far too loyal either to
bring in gossip or to carry it out. Brockhurst held the romance of her
heart. And, notwithstanding the earnest wooing--as the years went
on--of more than one very eligible gentleman, Brockhurst continued to
hold it.
Meanwhile the somewhat quaint fixed star around which this whole system
of planets, large and small, very really revolved, shone forth upon
them all with a cheerful enough light. For Dickie by no means belied
the promise of his babyhood. He was a beautiful and healthy little boy,
with a charming brilliance of colouring, warm and solid in tone. He had
his mother's changeful eyes, though the blue of them was brighter than
hers had now come to be. He had her dark eyebrows and eyelashes too,
and her finely curved lips. While he bore likeness to his father in the
straight, square-tipped nose and the close-fitting cap of bright, brown
hair with golden stains in it, growing low in short curling locks on
the broad forehead and the nape of the neck--expressing the shape of
the head very definitely, and giving it something of antique nobility
and grace.
And the little lad's appearance afforded, in these pleasant early days
at all events, fair index to his temperament. He was gay-natured,
affectionate, intelligent, full of a lively yet courteous curiosity,
easily moved to laughter, almost inconveniently fearless and
experimental; while his occasional thunderbursts of passion cleared off
quickly into sunshine and blue sky again. For as yet the burden of
deformity rested upon him very lightly. He associated hardly at all
with other children, and had but scant occasion to measure his poor