The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
Knott possessed a keen sense of values in the human drama which the
exigencies of his profession so perpetually presented to him. He waited
quietly, his hand on the door-handle, looking at Katherine from under
his rough eyebrows, silently opposing his will to hers.
Suddenly she turned away with an impatient gesture.
"I will not come with you," she said.
"You are right."
"But--but--do you think you can really do anything to help him, to make
him happier?" Katherine asked, a desperation in the tones of her voice.
"Happier? Yes, in the long run, because certainty of whatever kind,
even certainty of failure, makes eventually for peace of mind."
"That is a hard saying."
"This is a hard world." Dr. Knott looked down at the floor, shrugging
his unwieldy shoulders. "The sooner we learn to accept that fact the
better, Lady Calmady. I know it is sharp discipline, but it saves time
and money, let alone disappointment.--Now as to all these elaborate
contrivances I've brought down from London, they're the very best of
their kind. But I am bound to own the most ingenious of such
arrangements are but clumsy remedies for natural deficiency. Man hasn't
discovered how to make over his own body yet, and never will. The
Almighty will always have the whip-hand of us when it comes to dealing
with flesh and blood. All the same we've got to try these legs and
things----"
Katherine winced, pressing her lips together. It was brutal, surely, to
speak so plainly? But John Knott went on quietly, commiserating her
inwardly, yet unswerving in common sense.
"Try 'em every one, and so convince Sir Richard one way or the other.
This is a turning-point. So far his general health has been remarkably
good, and we've just got to set our minds to keeping it good. He must
not fret if we can help it. If he frets, instead of developing into the
sane, manly fellow he should, he may turn peevish, Lady Calmady, and
grow up a morbid, neurotic lad, the victim of all manner of brain-sick
fancies--become envious, spiteful, a misery to others and to himself."
"It is necessary to say all this?" Katherine asked loftily.
Dr. Knott's eyes looked very straight into hers, and there were tears
in them.
"Indeed, I believe it is," he replied, "or, trust me, I wouldn't say
it. I take no pleasure in giving pain at this time of day, whether
mental or physical. All I want is to spare pain. But one must sacrifice
the present to the future, at times, you know--use the knife to save
the limb. Now I must go to my patient. It isn't fair to keep him
waiting any longer. I'll be as quick as I can. I suppose I shall find
you here when I've finished?"
As he opened the door Dr. Knott's heavy person showed in all its
ungainliness against the brightness of sunlight flooding Dickie's room.
And to Katherine he seemed hideous just then--inexorable in his great
common sense, in the dead weight of his personality and of his will, as
some power of nature. He was to her the incarnation of things as they
are,--not things as they should be, not things as she so passionately
desired they might be. He represented rationalism as against miracle,
intellect as against imagination, the bitter philosophy of experience
as against that for which all mortals so persistently cry out--namely,
the all-consoling promise of extravagant hope. As with chains he bound
her down to fact. Right home on her he pressed the utter futility of
juggling with the actual. From the harsh truth that, neither in matters
practical nor spiritual is any redemption without shedding of blood he
permitted her no escape.
And all this Katherine's clear brain recognised and admitted, even
while her poor heart only rebelled the more madly. To be convinced is
not to be reconciled. And so she turned away from that closed door in a
veritable tempest of feeling, and went out into the Chapel-Room. It was
safer, her mind and heart thus working, to put a space between herself
and that closed door.
Just then Julius March crossed the room, coming in from the stair-head.
The austere lines of his cassock emphasised the height and emaciation
of his figure. His appearance offered a marked contrast to that of the
man with whom Katherine had just parted. His occupation offered a
marked contrast also. He carried a gold chalice and paten, and his head
was bowed reverentially above the sacred vessels. His eyes were
downcast, and the dull pallor of his face and his long thin hands was
very noticeable. He did not look round, but passed silently, still as a
dream, into the chapel. Katherine paced the width of the great room,
turned and paced back and forth again some half-dozen times, before he
emerged from the chapel door. In her present humour she did not want
him, yet she resented his abstraction. The physician of the soul, like
the physician of the body, appeared to her lamentably devoid of power
to sustain and give comfort at the present juncture.
This, it so happened, was one of those days when the mystic joy of his
priestly office held Julius March forcibly. He had ministered to
others, and his own soul was satisfied. His expression was exalted, his
short-sighted eyes were alive with inward light. Tired and worn, there
was still a remarkable suavity in his bearing. He had come forth from
the holy of holies, and the vision beheld there dwelt with him yet.
Meanwhile, brooding storm sat on Katherine's brow, on her lips, dwelt
in her every movement. And something of this Julius perceived, for his
devotion to her was intact, as was his self-abnegation. Throughout all
these years he had never sought to approach her more closely. His
attitude had remained as delicately scrupulous, untouched by
worldliness, or by the baser part of passion, as in the first hour of
the discovery of his love. Her near presence gave him exquisite
pleasure; but, save when she needed his assistance in some practical
matter, he refused to indulge himself by passing much time in her
society. Abstinence still remained his rule of life. But just now,
strong with the mystic strength of his late ministrations, and
perceiving her troubled state, he permitted himself to remain and pace
beside her.
"You have been out all day?" Katherine said.
"Yes, I stayed on to the end with Rebecca Light. They sent for me early
this morning. She passed away very peacefully in that little attic at
the new lodge looking out into the green heart of the woods."
"Ah! It's simple enough to die," Katherine said, "being old. The
difficult thing is to live, being still young."
"Has my absence been inconvenient? Have you wanted me?" Julius
asked.--Those quiet hours spent in the humble death-chamber suddenly
appeared to him as an act of possible selfishness.
"Oh no!" she answered bitterly. "Why should I want you? Have I not sent
Roger and Mary away? Am I not secretly glad dear Marie de Mirancourt is
just sufficiently poorly to remain in her room? When the real need
comes--one learns that among all the other merciless lessons--one is
best by oneself."
For a while, only the whisper of Lady Calmady's skirts, the soft, even
tread of feet upon the thick carpet. Then she said, almost sharply:--
"Dr. Knott is with Richard."
"Ah! I understand," Julius murmured.
But Lady Calmady took up his words with a certain heat.
"No, you do not understand. You none of you understand, and that is why
I am better by myself. Mary and Roger in their happiness, dear Marie in
her saintly resignation, and you"--Katherine turned her head, smiled at
him in lovely scorn--"you, my dear Julius, of all men, what should you
know of the bitter pains of motherhood, you who are too good to be
quite human, you who regard this world merely as the antichamber of
paradise, you, whose whole affection is set on your Church--your
God--how should you understand? Between my experience and yours there
is a very wide interval. How can you know what I suffer--you who have
never loved."
Under the stress of her excitement Katherine's pace quickened. The
whisper of her skirts grew to a soft rush. Julius kept beside her. His
head was bent reverently, even as over the sacred vessels he had so
lately carried.
"I too have loved," he said at last.
Katherine stopped short, and looked at him incredulously.
"Really, Julius?" she said.
Raising his head, he looked back at her. This avowal gave him a strange
sense of completeness and mastery. So he allowed his eyes to meet
Katherine's, he allowed himself to reckon with her grace and beauty.
"Very really," he answered.
"But when?"
"Long ago--and always."
"Ah!" she said. Her expression had changed. Brooding storm no longer
sat on her brow and lips. She was touched. For the moment the weight of
her personal distress was lifted. Dickie and Dr. Knott together in that
bedchamber, experimenting with unlovely, mechanical devices for aiding
locomotion and concealing the humiliation of deformity, were almost
forgotten. To those who have once loved, love must always supremely
appeal. Julius appeared to her in a new aspect. She felt she had done
him injustice. She placed her hand on his arm with a movement of
apology and tenderness. And the man grew faint, trembled, feeling her
hand; seeing it lie white and fair on the sleeve of his black cassock.
Since childhood it was the first, the solitary caress he had received.
"Pardon me, dear Julius," she said. "I must have pained you at times,
but I did not know this. I always supposed you coldly indifferent to
those histories of the heart which mean so much to some of us; supposed
your religion held you wholly, and that you pitied us as the wise pity
the foolish, standing above them, looking down. Richard told me many
things about you, before he brought me home here, but he never told me
this."
"Richard never knew it," he answered, smiling. Her perfect
unconsciousness at once calmed and pained him. He had kept his secret,
all these years, only too well.
Katherine turned and began to pace again, her hands clasped behind her
back.
"But, tell me--tell me," she said. "You can trust me, you know. I will
never speak of this unless you speak. But if I knew, it would bring us
nearer together, and that would be comforting, perhaps, to us both.
Tell me, what happened? Did she know, and did she love you? She must
have loved you, I think. Then what separated you? Did she die?"
"No, thank God, she did not die," Julius said. He paused. He longed to
gain the relief of fuller confession, yet feared to betray himself. "I
believe she loved me truly as a friend--and that was sufficient."
"Oh no, no!" Katherine cried. "Do not decline upon sophistries. That is
never sufficient."
"In one sense, yes--in another sense, no," Julius said. "It was thus. I
loved her exactly as she was. Had she loved me as I loved her she would
have become other than she was."
"Ah! but surely you are too ingenious, too fastidious." Katherine's
voice took tones of delicate remonstrance and pleading. "That would be
your danger, in such a case. _Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien_, and you
would always risk sacrificing the real to the ideal. I am sorry. I
would like you to have tasted the fulness of life. Even though the days
of perfect joy are very few, it is well to have had them----"
She threw back her head, her eyebrows drew together, and her face
darkened somewhat.
"Yes, it is well to have had them, though the memory of them cuts one
to the very quick."--Then her manner changed again, gaining a touch of
gaiety. "Really I am very unselfish in wishing all this otherwise," she
said, "for it would have been a sore trial to part with you. I cannot
imagine Brockhurst without you. I should have been in great straits
deprived of my friend and counselor. And yet, I would like you to have
been very happy, dear Julius."