The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
just come in from riding.
"Tell her Sir Richard Calmady is here, and would like, if he may, to
see her."
Without waiting for a reply, Ormiston unbuckled that same chastening
strap silently, quickly. He got down and, coming round to the farther
side of the carriage, lifted Richard out; while Camp, who had jumped
off the back seat, stood yawning, whining a little, shaking his heavy
head and wagging his tail in welcome on the door-step. With the
bull-dog close at his heels, Ormiston carried the boy into the house.
The inner doors were open, and, up the long, narrow, pleasantly
fresh-tinted drawing-room, Mary Cathcart came to meet them. The folds
of her habit were gathered up in one hand. In the other she carried a
bunch of long-stalked, yellow and scarlet tulips. Her strong, supple
figure stood out against the young green of the lawns and shrubberies,
seen through the French windows behind her. She walked carefully, with
a certain deliberation, thanks to her narrow habit and top-boots. The
young lady carried her thirty-one years bravely. Her irregular features
and large mouth had always been open to criticism. But her teeth, when
her lips parted, were white and even, and her brown eyes frankly honest
as ever.
"Why, Dickie dear, it is simply glorious to have you and Camp paying
visits on your own account."--Her speech broke into a little cry, while
her fingers closed so tightly on the tulips that the brittle stalks
snapped, and the gay-coloured bells of them hung limply, some falling
on to the carpet about her feet. "Roger--Colonel Ormiston--I didn't
know you were home--were here!" Her voice was uncontrollably glad.
Still carrying the boy, Ormiston stood before her, observing her
keenly. But he was no longer remote. His insolence, which, after all,
may have been chiefly self-protective, had vanished.
"I'm very sorry--I mean for those poor tulips. I came to pay my
respects to Mr. and Mrs. Cathcart, and not finding them was preparing
to drive humbly home again. But----" Certainly she carried her years
well. She looked absurdly young. The brown and rose-red of her
complexion was clear as that of the little maiden who had fought with,
and overcome, and kissed the rough Welsh pony refusing the grip by the
roadside long ago. The hint of a moustache emphasised the upturned
corners of her mouth--but that was rather captivating. Her eyes danced,
under eyelids which fluttered for the moment. She was not beautiful,
not a woman to make men run mad. Yet the comeliness of her body, and
the spirit to which that body served as index, was so unmistakably
healthful, so sincere, that surely no sane man, once gathering her into
his arms, need ask a better blessing.--"But," Ormiston went on, still
watching her, "nothing would satisfy Dick but he must see you. With
many injunctions regarding his safety, Katherine made him over to me
for the afternoon. I'm on duty, you see. Where he goes, I'm bound to go
also--even to the destruction of your poor tulips."
Miss Cathcart made no direct answer.
"Sit here, Dickie," she said, pointing to a sofa.
"But you don't really mind our coming in, do you?" he asked, rather
anxiously.
The young lady placed herself beside him, drew his hand on to her knee,
patted it gently.
"Mind? No; on the whole, I don't think I do mind very much. In fact, I
think I should probably have minded very much more if you had gone away
without asking for me."
"There, I told you so, Uncle Roger," the boy said triumphantly. Camp
had jumped up on to the sofa too. He put his arm comfortably around the
dog's neck. It was as well to acquire support on both sides, for the
surface of the glazed chintz was slippery, inconveniently unsustaining
to his equilibrium. "It's an awfully long time since I've seen Mary,"
he continued, "more than three weeks."
"Yes, an awfully long time," Ormiston echoed, "more than six years."
"Dear Dickie," she said; "how pretty of you! Do you always keep count
of my visits?"
"Of course I do. They were about the best things that ever happened,
till Uncle Roger came home."
Forgetting herself, Mary Cathcart raised her eyes to Ormiston's in
appeal. The boy's little declaration stirred all the latent motherhood
in her. His fortunes at once passed so very far beyond, and fell so far
short of, the ordinary lot. She wondered whether, and could not but
trust that, this old friend and newcomer was not too self-centred, too
hardened by ability and success to appreciate the intimate pathos of
the position. Ormiston read and answered her thought.
"Oh! we are going to do something to change all that," he said
confidently. "We are going to enlarge our borders a bit; aren't we,
Dick? Only, I think, we should manage matters much better if Miss
Cathcart would help us, don't you?"
Richard remembering the locked-up room of evil contents and that
proposal of inclusive funeral rites, gave this utterance a wholly
individual application. His face grew bright with intelligence. But,
greatly restraining himself, he refrained from speech. All that had
been revealed to him in confidence, and so his honour was engaged to
silence.
Ormiston pulled forward a chair and sat down by him, leaning forward,
his hands clasped about one knee, while he gazed at the tulips
scattered on the floor.
"So tell Miss Cathcart we all want her to come over to Brockhurst just
as often as she can," he continued, "and help us to make the wheels go
round a little faster. Tell her we've grown very old, and discreet, and
respectable, and that we are absolutely incapable of doing or saying
anything foolish or naughty, which she would object to--and----"
But Richard could restrain himself no longer. "Why don't you tell her
yourself, Uncle Roger?"
"Because, my dear old chap, a burnt child fears the fire. I tried to
tell Miss Cathcart something once, long ago. She mayn't remember----"
"She does remember," Mary said quietly, looking down at Richard's hand
and patting it as it lay on her lap.
"But she stopped me dead," Ormiston went on. "It was quite right of
her. She gave the most admirable reasons for stopping me. Would you
care to hear them?"
"Oh! don't, pray don't," Mary murmured. "It is not generous."
"Pardon me, your reasons were absolutely just--true in substance and in
fact. You said I was a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift, and
so----"
"I was odious," she broke in. "I was a self-righteous little
Pharisee--forgive me----"
"Why--there's nothing to forgive. You spoke the truth."
"I don't believe it," Richard cried, in vehement protest.
"Dickie, you're a darling," Mary Cathcart said.
Colonel Ormiston left off nursing his knee, and leaned a little further
forward.
"Well then, will you come over to Brockhurst very often, and help us to
make the wheels go round, and cheer us all up, and do us no end of
good, though--I am a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift? You see I
run through the list of my titles again to make sure this transaction
is fair and square and above-board."
A silence followed, which appeared to Richard protracted to the point
of agitation. He became almost distressingly conscious of the man's
still, bronzed, resolute face on the one hand, of the woman's mobile,
vivid, yet equally resolute face on the other, divining far more to be
at stake than he had clear knowledge of. Tired and excited, his
impatience touched on anger.
"Say yes, Mary," he cried impulsively, "say yes. I don't see how
anybody can want to refuse Uncle Roger anything."
Miss Cathcart's eyes grew moist. She turned and kissed the boy.
"I don't think--perhaps--Dickie, that I quite see either," she answered
very gently.
"Mary, you know what you've just said?" Ormiston's tone was stern. "You
understand this little comedy? It means business. This time you've got
to go the whole hog or none."
She looked straight at him, and drew her breath in a long half-laughing
sigh.
"Oh, dear me! what a plague of a hurry you are in!" she said.
"Well--then--then--I suppose I must--it is hardly a graceful
expression, but it is of your choosing, not of mine--I suppose I must
go the whole hog."
Roger Ormiston rose, treading the fallen tulips under foot. And
Richard, watching him, beheld that which called to his remembrance, not
the hopeless and impotent battle under the black polished sky of his
last night's dream, but the gallant stories he had heard, earlier last
night, of the battles of Sobraon and Chillianwallah, of the swift
dangers of sport, and large daring of travel. Here he beheld--so it
seemed to his boyish thought--the aspect of a born conqueror, of the
man who can serve and wait long for the good he desires, and who
winning it, lays hold of it with fearless might. And this, while
causing Richard an exquisite delight of admiration, caused him also a
longing to share those splendid powers so passionate that it amounted
to actual pain.
Mary Cathcart's hand slid from under his hand. She too rose to her
feet.
"Then you have actually cared for me all along, all these years,"
Ormiston declared in fierce joy.
"Of course--who else could I care for? And--and--you've loved me,
Roger, all the while?"
And Ormiston answered "Yes,"--speaking the truth, though with a
difference. There had been interludes that had contributed somewhat
freely to the peopling of that same locked-up room. But it is possible
for a man to love many times, yet always love one woman best.
All this, however, Dickie did not know. He only knew they dazzled
him--the man triumphantly strong, the woman so bravely glad. He could
not watch them any longer. He went hot all over, and his heart beat. He
felt strangely desolate too. They were far away from him in thought, in
fact, though so close by. Dickie shut his eyes, put his arms round the
bull-dog, pressed his face hard against the faithful beast's shoulder;
while Camp, stretching his short neck to the uttermost, nuzzled against
him and essayed to lick his cheek.
Thus did Richard Calmady gain yet further knowledge of things as they
are.
CHAPTER IV
WHICH SMELLS VERY VILELY OF THE STABLE
April softened into May, and the hawthorns were in blossom before
Richard passed any other very note-worthy milestone on the road of
personal development. Then, greatly tempted, he committed a venial sin;
received prompt and coarse chastisement; and, by means of the said
chastisement, as is the merciful way of the Eternal Justice, found
unhoped of emancipation.
It happened thus. As the spring days grew warm Mademoiselle de
Mirancourt failed somewhat. The darkness and penetrating chill of the
English winter tried her, and this year her recuperative powers seemed
sadly deficient. A fuller tide of life had pulsed through Brockhurst
since Colonel Ormiston's arrival. The old stillness was departing, the
old order changing. With that change Mademoiselle de Mirancourt had no
quarrel, since, to her serene faith, all that came must, of necessity,
come through a divine ordering and in conformity to a divine plan. Yet
this more of activity and of movement strained her. The weekly drive
over to Westchurch, to hear mass at the humble Catholic chapel tucked
away in a side street, sorely taxed her strength. She returned
fortified, her soul ravished by that heavenly love, which, in pure and
innocent natures, bears such gracious kinship to earthly love. Yet in
body she was outworn and weary. On such occasions she would rally
Julius March, not without a touch of malice, saying:--
"Ah! _tres cher ami_, had you only followed the ever blessed footsteps
of those dear Oxford friends of yours and entered the fold of the true
Church, what fatigue might you not now spare me--let alone the
incalculable advantages to your own poor, charming, fatally darkened
soul!"