The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
"No," she answered, "he lived four days. He spoke to me of many things
he wished to do. And--I have done them all, I think. He spoke to me of
you----" Katherine closed her eyes. "The boy might care for the
stables. The boy must ride straight." For the moment she could not look
at Richard, knowing that which she must see. The irony of those
remembered words appeared too great.--"But he suffered," she went on
brokenly, "he suffered--ah! my dear----"
"Mummy, darling mummy, don't look like that!" Dickie cried. He wrenched
his hands from her grasp and threw his arms impulsively about her neck.
"Don't--it hurts me. And--and, after all," he added, reasoningly,
consolingly, "it wasn't one of these horses, you know. They've never
done anybody any harm. It was an accident. There must always be
accidents sometimes, mustn't there? And then, you see, it all happened
long, long ago. It must have, for I don't remember anything about it.
It must have happened when I was a baby."
"Alas, no," Katherine exclaimed, wrung by the pathos of his innocent
egoism; "it happened even before then, my dearest, before you were
born."
With the unconscious arrogance of childhood, Richard had, so far, taken
his mother's devotion very much as a matter of course. He had never
doubted that he was, and always had been, the inevitable centre of all
her interests. So now, her words and her bearing, bringing--in as far
as he grasped them--the revelation of aspects of her life quite
independent of his all-important, little self, staggered him. For the
first time poor Dickie realised that even one's own mother, be she
never so devoted, is not her child's exclusive and wholly private
property, but has a separate existence, joys and sorrows apart.
Instinctively he took his arms from about her neck and backed away into
the angle of the window-seat, regarding her with serious and somewhat
startled attention. And, doing so, he for the first time realised
consciously something more, namely, the greatness of her beauty.
For the years had dealt kindly with Katherine Calmady. Not the great
sorrows of life, or its great sacrifices, but fretfulness, ignoble
worries, sordid cares, are that which draw lines upon a woman's face
and harshen her features. At six and thirty Lady Calmady's skin was
smooth and delicate, her colour, still clear and softly bright. Her
hair, though somewhat darker than of old, was abundant. Still she wore
it rolled up and back from her forehead, showing the perfect oval of
her face. Her eyes, too, were darker; and the expression of them had
become profound--the eyes of one who has looked on things which may not
be told and has chosen her part. Her bosom had become a little fuller;
but the long, inward curve of her figure below it to the round and
shapely waist, and the poise of her rather small hips, was lithe and
free as ever. While there was that enchanting freshness about her which
is more than the mere freshness of youth or of physical health--which
would seem, indeed, to be the peculiar dowry of those women who, having
once known love in all its completeness and its strength, of choice
live ever afterwards in perfect chastity of act and thought.
And a perception not only of the grace of her person, as she sat
sideways on the window-seat in her close-fitting, gray gown, with its
frilled lace collar and ruffles at the wrists, came to Richard now. He
perceived something of this more intimate and subtle charm which
belonged to her. He was enthralled by the clear sweetness, as of dewy
grass newly turned by the scythe, which always clung about her, and by
the whispering of her silken garments when she moved. A sudden
reverence for her came upon him, as though, behind her gracious and so
familiar figure, he apprehended that which belonged to a region
superior, almost divine. And then he was seized--it is too often the
fate of worshippers--with jealousy of that past of hers of which he had
been, until now, ignorant. And yet another emotion shook him, for, in
thus realising and differentiating her personality, he had grown
vividly, almost painfully, conscious of his own.
He turned away, laying his cheek against the stone window-ledge, while
the drops of a passing scud of rain beat in on his hot face.
"Then--then my father never saw me," he exclaimed vehemently. And,
after a moment's pause, added, "I am glad of that--very glad."
"Ah! But, my dearest," Lady Calmady cried, bewildered and aghast, "you
don't know what you are saying--think."
Richard kept his face to the splashing rain.
"I don't want to say anything wrong; but," he repeated, "I am glad."
He turned to her, his lips quivering a little, and a desolate
expression in his eyes, which told Katherine, with only too bitter
assurance, that his childhood and the repose of it were indeed over and
gone.
She held out her arms to him in silent invitation, and drew the dear
curly head on to her bosom.
"You're not displeased with me, mummy?"
"Does this seem as if I was displeased?" she asked.
Then they sat silent once more, Katherine swaying a little as she held
him, soothing him almost as in his baby days.
"I won't lean out of the window again," he said presently, with a sigh
of comfort. "I promise that."
"There's a darling. But I am afraid we must go. Uncle Roger will be
here soon."
The boy raised his head.
"Mother," he said quickly, "will you send Clara, please, to put away
these books? And may I have Winter to fetch me? I--I'm tired. If you
don't mind? I don't care to walk."
Yet, since happily at thirteen Richard's moods were still as many and
changeful as the aspects of that same April day, he enjoyed some
royally unclouded hours before he--most unwillingly--retired to bed
that night. For on close acquaintance the great Ulysses proved a very
satisfactory hero. Roger Ormiston's character had consolidated. It was
to some purpose that he had put away the pleasant follies of his youth.
He looked out now with a coolness and patience, born of wide experience,
upon men and upon affairs. He had ceased to lose either his temper or
his head. Acquiescing with undismayed and cheerful common sense in
the fact that life, as we know it, is but a sorry business, and that
rough things must of necessity be done and suffered every day, he had
developed an active--though far from morbidly sentimental--compassion
for the individual, man and beast alike. Not that Colonel Ormiston
formulated all that, still less held forth upon it. He was content, as
is so many another Englishman, to be a dumb and practical philosopher--for
which those who have lived with philosophers of the eloquent sort will
unquestionably give thanks, knowing, to their sorrow, how often
handsome speech is but a cloak to hide incapacity of honest doing.
And so, after dinner, under plea of an imperative need of cigars,
Ormiston had borne Dickie off to the Gun-Room; and there, in the
intervals of questioning him a little about his tastes and occupations,
had told him stories many and great. For he wanted to get hold of the
boy and judge of what stuff he was made. Like all sound and
healthy-minded men he had an inherent suspicion of the abnormal. He
could not but fear that persons unusually constituted in body must be
the victims of some corresponding crookedness of spirit. But as the
evening drew on he became easy on this point. Whatever Richard's
physical infirmity, his nature was wholesome enough. Therefore when, at
close upon ten o'clock, Lady Calmady arrived in person to insist that
Dickie must go, there and then, straight to bed, she found a pleasant
scene awaiting her.
The square room was gay with lamplight and firelight, which brought
into strong relief the pictures of famous horses and trophies of
old-time weapons--matchlocks, basket-handled swords, and neat
silver-hilted rapiers, prettiest of toys with which to pink your
man--that decorated its white-paneled walls.
Ormiston stood with his back to the fire, one heel on the fender, his
broad shoulders resting against the high chimneypiece, his head bent
forward as he looked down, in steady yet kindly scrutiny, at the boy.
His face was tanned by the sun and wind of the long sea voyage--people
still came home from India by the Cape--till his hair and moustache
showed pale against his bronzed skin. And to Richard, listening and
watching from the deep armchair drawn up at right angles to the hearth,
he appeared as a veritable demigod, master of the secrets of life and
death--beheld, moreover, through an atmosphere of fragrant tobacco
smoke, curiously intoxicating to unaccustomed nostrils. Dickie had
tucked himself into as small a space as possible, to make room for
young Camp, who lay outstretched beside him. The bull-dog's great
underhung jaw and pendulous, wrinkled cheeks rested on the arm of the
chair, as he stared and blinked rather sullenly at the fire--moved and
choked a little, slipping off unwillingly to sleep, to wake with a
start, to stare and blink once more. The embroidered _couvre-pieds_,
which Dickie had spread across him, gathering the top edge of it up
under the front of his Eton jacket, offered luxurious bedding. But Camp
was a typical conservative, slow-witted, stubborn against the ingress
of a new idea. This tall, somewhat masterful stranger must prove
himself a good man and true--according to bull-dog understanding of
those terms--before he could hope to gain entrance to that faithful,
though narrow heart.
Ormiston meanwhile, finely contemptuous of canine criticism, greeted
his sister cheerily.
"You're bound to give us a little law to-night, Kitty," he said,
holding out his hand to her. "We won't break rules and indulge in
unbridled license as to late hours again, will we, Dick? But, you see,
we've both been doing a good deal, one way and another, since we last
met, and there were arrears of conversation to make up."--He smiled
very charmingly at Lady Calmady, and his fingers closed firmly on her
hand.--"We've been getting on famously, notwithstanding our long
separation." He looked down at Richard again. "Fast friends, already,
and mean to remain so, don't we, old chap?"
Thereupon Lady Calmady's soul received much comfort. Her pride was
always on the alert, fiercely sensitive concerning Richard. And the joy
of this meeting had, till now, an edge of jealous anxiety to it. If
Roger did not take to the boy, then--deeply though she loved him--Roger
must go. For the same elements were constant in Katherine Calmady. Not
all the discipline of thirteen years had tamed the hot blood in her
which made her order out the Clown for execution. But as Ormiston
spoke, her face softened, her eyes grew luminous and smiled back at him
with an exquisite gladness. The soft gloom of her black velvet dress
emphasised the warm, golden whiteness of her bare shoulders and arms.
Ormiston seeing her just then, understanding something of the drama of
her thought, was moved from his habitual cool indifference of bearing.
"Katherine," he said, "do you know you take one rather by surprise.
Upon my word you're more beautiful than ever."
And Richard's clear voice rang out eagerly from the depths of the big
chair--
"Yes--yes--isn't she, Uncle Roger--isn't she--delicious?"
The man's smile broadened almost to laughter.
"You young monkey," he said very gently; "so you have discovered that
fact already, have you? Well, so much the better. It's a safe basis to
start from; don't you think so, Kitty?"
But Lady Calmady drew away her hand. The blood had rushed into her face
and neck. Her beauty, now, for so long, had seemed a negligible
quantity, a thing that had outlasted its need and use--since he who had
so rejoiced in it was dead. What is the value of ever so royal a crown