The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
"It is very nice of you to have wanted so much to see me," Dickie said.
His eyes were softly bright.
"Oh! but one always wants to see those who are talked about. It is a
privilege to have them for one's relations."
"But--but--I'm not talked about?" the boy put in, somewhat startled.
"But certainly. You are so rich. You have this superb _chateau_. You
are"--she put her head on one side with a pretty, saucy, birdlike
movement--"_enfin_," she said, "I had the greatest curiosity to make
your acquaintance. I shall tell all my young friends at the convent
about this visit. I promised them that, as soon as mamma said we should
probably come here. The good sisters also are interested. I shall
recount a whole history of this beautiful castle, and of you, and
your----"
She paused, clasped her hands, looking away at her mother, then
sideways at Richard, bowing her little person backwards and forwards,
laughing softly all the while. And her laughing face was
extraordinarily pretty under the shade of her broad-brimmed hat.
"It is a great misfortune we stay so short a time," she continued. "I
shall not see the half of all that I wish to see."
Then an heroic plan of action occurred to Richard. The daring
engendered by his recent act of disobedience was still active in him.
He was in the humour to attempt the impossible. He longed, moreover, to
give this delectable little person pleasure. He was willing even to
sacrifice a measure of personal dignity in her service.
"Oh! but if you care so much, I--I will show you the house," he said.
"Will you?" she cried. "You and I alone together. But that is precisely
what I want. It would be ravishing."
Poor Dickie's heart misgave him slightly; but he summoned all his
resolution. He threw off the concealing rug.
"I--I walk very slowly, I'm afraid," he said rather huskily, looking up
at her, while in his expression appeal mingled pathetically with
defiant pride.
"But, so much the better," she replied. "We shall be the longer
together. I shall have the more to observe, to recount."
She was on her feet. She hovered round him, birdlike, intent on his
every movement.
Meanwhile the sound of conversation rose continuous. Lady Calmady,
calling to Julius, had moved away to the great writing-table in the
farther window. Together they searched among a pile of papers for a
letter of Dr. Knott's embodying his scheme of the new hospital at
Westchurch. Mr. Cathcart stood by, expounding his views on the subject.
"Of course a considerable income can be derived from letters of
recommendation," he was saying, "in-patient and out-patient tickets.
The clergy come in there. They cannot be expected to give large
donations. It would be unreasonable to expect that of them."
Mademoiselle de Mirancourt, Mrs. Cathcart, and Mary had drawn their
chairs together. The two elder ladies spoke with a subdued enthusiasm,
discussing pleasant details of the approaching wedding, which promised
the younger lady so glad a future. Mrs. Ormiston chattered; while
Ormiston, listening to her, gazed away down the green length of the elm
avenue, beyond the square lawn and pepper-pot summer-houses, and pitied
men who made such mistakes in the matter of matrimony as his brother
William obviously had. The rose of the sunset faded in the west. Bats
began to flit forth, hawking against the still warm house-walls for
flies.
And so, unobserved, Dickie slipped out of the security of his armchair,
and rose to that sadly deficient full height of his. He was nervous,
and this rendered his balance more than ever uncertain. He shuffled
forward, steadying himself by a piece of furniture here and there in
passing, until he reached the wide open space before the door on to the
stair-head. And it required some fortitude to cross this space, for
here was nothing to lay hold of for support.
Little Helen Ormiston had kept close beside him so far. Now she drew
back, leaving him alone. Leaning against a table, she watched his
laborious progress. Then a fit of uncontrollable laughter took her. She
flew half-way across to the oriel-window, her voice ringing out clear
and gay, though broken by bursts of irrepressible merriment.
"_Regardez, regardez donc, Maman! Ma bonne m'avait dit qu'il etait un
avorton, et que ce serait tres amusant de le voir. Elle m'a conseiller
de lui faire marcher_."
She darted back, and clapping her hands upon the bosom of her charming
frock, danced, literally danced and pirouetted around poor Dickie.
"_Moi, je ne comprenais pas ce que c'etait qu'un avorton_," she
continued rapidly. "_Mais je comprends parfaitement maintenant. C'est
un monstre, n'est-ce pas, Maman_?"
She threw back her head, her white throat convulsed by laughter.
"_Ah! mon Dieu, qu'il est drole_!" she cried.
Silence fell on the whole room, for sight and words alike were
paralysing in their grotesque cruelty. Ormiston was the first to speak.
He laid his hand somewhat roughly on his sister-in-law's shoulder.
"For God's sake, stop this, Ella," he said. "Take the girl away. Little
brute," he added, under his breath, as he went hastily across to poor
Dick.
But Lady Calmady had been beforehand with him. She swept across the
room, flinging aside the dainty, dancing figure as she passed. All the
primitive fierceness, the savage tenderness of her motherhood surged up
within her. Katherine was in the humour to kill just then, had killing
been possible. She was magnificently regardless of consequences,
regardless of conventionalities, regardless of every obligation save
that of sheltering her child. She cowered down over Richard, putting
her arms about him, knew--without question or answer--that he had heard
and understood. Then gathering him up against her, she stood upright,
facing them all, brother, sister, old and tried friends, a terrible
expression in her eyes, the boy's face pressed down upon her shoulder.
For the moment she appeared alienated from, and at war with, even
Julius, even Marie de Mirancourt. No love, however faithful, could
reach her. She was alone, unapproachable, in her immense anger and
immense sense of outrage.
"I will ask you to go," she said to her sister-in-law,--"to go and take
your daughter with you, and to enter this house no more."
Mrs. Ormiston did not reply. Even her chatter was for the moment
stilled. She pressed a handkerchief against the little dancer's
forehead, and it was stained with blood.
"Ah! she is a wicked woman!" wailed the child. "She has hurt me. She
threw me against the table. _Maman quel malheur ca se verra. Il y aura
certainement une cicatrice_!"
"Nonsense," Ormiston said harshly. "It's nothing, Kitty, the merest
scratch."
"Yes, my dear, we will have the carriage at once,"--this from Mr.
Cathcart to his wife. The incident, from all points of view, shocked
his sense of decency. Immediate retirement became his sole object.
Lady Calmady moved away, carrying the boy. She trembled a little. He
was heavy. Moreover, she sickened at the sight of blood. But little
Helen Ormiston caught at her dress, looked up at her.
"I hate you," she said, hissing the words out with concentrated passion
between her pretty even teeth. "You have spoilt me. I will hate you
always, when I grow up. I will never forget."
Alone in the great state-bedroom next door, a long time elapsed before
either Richard or Katherine spoke. The boy leaned back against the sofa
cushions, holding his mother's hand. The casements stood wide open, and
little winds laden with the scent of the hawthorns in the park wandered
in, gently stirring the curtains of the ebony bed, so that the trees of
the Forest of This Life thereon embroidered appeared somewhat
mournfully to wave their branches, while the Hart fled forward and the
Leopard, relentless in perpetual pursuit, followed close behind. There
was a crunching of wheels on the gravel, a sound of hurried farewells.
Then in a minute or two more the evening quiet held its own again.
Suddenly Dickie flung himself down across Katherine's lap, his poor
body shaken by a tempest of weeping.
"Mother, I can't bear it--I can't bear it," he sobbed. "Tell me, does
everybody do that?"
"Do what, my own precious?" she said, calm from very excess of sorrow.
Later she would weep too in the dark, lying lonely in the cold comfort
of that stately bed.
"Laugh at me, mother, mock at me?" and his voice, for all that he tried
to control it, tore at his throat and rose almost to a shriek.
CHAPTER VI
DEALING WITH A PHYSICIAN OF THE BODY AND A PHYSICIAN OF THE SOUL
History repeats itself, and to Katherine just now came most unwelcome
example of such repetition. She had foreseen that some such crisis must
arise as had arisen. Yet when it arose, the crisis proved none the less
agonising because of that foreknowledge. Two strains of feeling
struggled within her. A blinding sorrow for her child, a fear of and
shame at her own violence of anger. Katherine's mind was of an
uncompromising honesty. She knew that her instinct had, for a space at
least, been murderous. She knew that, given equal provocation, it would
be murderous again.
And this was, after all, but the active, objective aspect of the
matter. The passive and subjective aspect showed danger also. In her
extremity Katherine's soul cried out for God--for the sure
resting-place only to be found by conscious union of the individual
with the eternal will. But such repose was denied her. For her anger
against God, even while thus earnestly desiring Him, was even more
profound than her anger against man. The passion of those terrible
early days when her child's evil fortune first became known to
her--held in abeyance all these years by constant employment and the
many duties incident to her position--returned upon her in its first
force. To believe God is not, leaves the poor human soul homeless,
sadly desolate, barren in labour as is a slave. But the sorrow of such
belief is as a trifle beside the hideous fear that God is careless and
unjust, that virtue is but a fond imagination of all-too-noble human
hearts, that the everlasting purpose is not good but evil continually.
And, haunted by such fears, Katherine once again sat in outer darkness.
All gracious things appeared to her as illusions; all gentle delights
but as passing anodynes with which, in his misery, man weakly tries to
deaden the pain of existence for a little space. She suffered a
profound discouragement.
And so it seemed to her but as part of the cruel whole when history
repeated itself yet further, and Dr. Knott, pausing at the door of
Richard's bedroom, turned and said to her:--
"It will be better, you know, Lady Calmady, to let him face it alone.
He'll feel it less without you. Winter can give me all the assistance I
want." Then he added, a queer smile playing about his loose
lips:--"Don't be afraid. I'll handle him very gently. Probably I shan't
hurt him at all--certainly not much."
"Ah!" Katherine said, under her breath.
"You see it is done by his own wish," John Knott went on.
"I know," she answered.
She respected and trusted this man, entertained for him,
notwithstanding his harsh speech and uncouth exterior, something akin
to affection. Yet remembering the part he had played in the fate of the
father, it was very dreadful to her that he should touch the child. And
Dr. Knott read her thought. He did not resent it. It was all natural
enough! From his heart he was sorry for her, and would have spared her
had that been possible. But he discriminated very clearly between
primary and secondary issues, never sacrificing, as do feeble and
sentimental persons, the former to the latter. In this case the boy had
a right to the stage, and so the mother must stand in the wings. John