The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
yet struck me curiously untouched by it. She is well read, she has
ideas--some of them a little extravagant, but time will modify that.
Only her head is awake as yet, not her heart, I think. Shall I ask her
to come too?"
"So that we may wake up her heart?" Richard inquired coldly. "No
thanks, dear mother, that's, too serious an undertaking. Have her
another time, please. I saw her to-day, and, no doubt my taste is bad,
but I must confess she did not please me very much. Nor--which is more
to the point in this connection perhaps--did I please her. Would you
ring the bell, please, as you're there? I want Powell. Thanks so much.
Good-night."
Some ten minutes later Julius March, after kneeling in prayer, as his
custom was, before the divinely sorrowful and compassionate image of
the Virgin Mother and the Dead Christ, looked forth through the
many-paned study window into the clair-obscure of the windless autumn
night. He had been sensible of an unusual element in the domestic
atmosphere this evening, and had been vaguely disquieted concerning
both Katherine and Richard. It was impossible but that, as time went
on, life should become more complicated at Brockhurst, and Julius
feared his own inability to cope helpfully with such complication. He
entertained a mean opinion of himself. It appeared to him he was but an
unprofitable servant, unready, tongue-tied, lacking in resource. A
depression possessed him which he could not shake off. What had he to
show, after all, for these fifty-odd years of life granted to him? He
feared his religion had walked in silver slippers, and would so walk to
the end. Could it then, in any true and vital sense, be reckoned
religion at all? Gross sins had never exercised any attraction over
him. What virtue was there, then, in being innocent of gross sin? But
to those other sins--sins of defective moral courage in speech and
action, sins arising from over-fastidiousness--had he not yielded
freely? Was he not a spiritual valetudinarian? He feared so. Offered,
in the Eternal Mercy, endless precious opportunities of service, he had
been too weak, too timorous, too slothful, to lay hold on them. And so,
as it seemed to him very justly, to-night confession, prayer,
adoration, left him unconsoled.
Then, looking out of the many-paned window, while the shame of his
barrenness clothed him even as a garment, he beheld Lady Calmady pacing
slowly over the gray quarries of the terrace pavement. A dark,
fur-bordered mantle shrouded her tall figure from head to foot. Only
her face showed, and her hands folded stiffly high upon her bosom,
strangely pale against the blackness of her cloak. Ordinarily Julius
would have scrupled to intrude upon her lonely walk. But just now the
cry within him for human sympathy was urgent. Her near neighbourhood in
itself was very dear to him, and she might let fall some gracious word
testifying that, in her opinion at least, his life had not been wholly
vain. For very surely that which survives when all other passions are
uprooted and cast forth--survives even in the case of the true ascetic
and saint--is the unquenchable yearning for the spoken approval of
those whom we love and have loved.
And so, pushed by his poverty of self-esteem, Julius March, throwing a
plaid on over his cassock, went out and paced the gray quarries beside
Katherine Calmady.
On one hand rose the dark, rectangular masses of the house, crowned by
its stacks of slender, twisted chimneys. On the other lay the
indefinite and dusky expanse of the park and forest. The night was very
clear. The stars were innumerable--fierce, cold points of pulsing
light.--Orion's jeweled belt and sword flung wide against the
blue-black vault. Cassiopeia seated majestic in her golden chair.
Northward, above the walled gardens, the Bear pointing to the diamond
flashing of the Pole star. While across all high heaven, dusty with
incalculable myriads of worlds, stretched the awful and mysterious
highroad of the Milky-Way. The air was keen and tonic though so still.
An immense and fearless quiet seemed to hold all things--a quiet not of
sleep, but of conscious and perfect equilibrium, a harmony so sustained
and complete that to human ears it issued, of necessity, in silence.
And that silence Lady Calmady was in no haste to break. Twice she and
her companion walked the length of the terrace, and back, before she
spoke. She paused, at length, just short of the arcade of the further
garden-hall.
"This great peace of the night puts all violence of feeling to the
blush," she said. "One perceives that a thousand years are very really
as one day. That calms one--with a vengeance."
Katherine waited, looking out over the vague landscape, clasping the
fur-bordered edges of her cloak with either hand. It appeared to Julius
that both her voice and the expression of her face were touched with
irony.
"There is nothing new under the sun," she went on, "nor under the
'visiting moon,' nor under those somewhat heartless stars. Does it
occur to you, Julius, how hopelessly unoriginal we are, how we all
follow in the same beaten track? What thousands of men and women have
stood, as you and I stand now, at once calmed--as I admit that I
am--and rendered not a little homeless by the realisation of their own
insignificance in face of the sleeping earth and this brooding
immensity of space! _A quoi bon, a quoi bon?_ Why can't one learn to
harden one's poor silly heart, and just move round, stone-like, with
the great movement of things accepting fate and ceasing to struggle or
to care?"
"Just because, I think," he answered, "the converse of that same saying
is equally true. If, in material things, a thousand years are as one
day, in the things of the spirit one day is as a thousand years.
Remember the Christ crying upon the cross--'My God, My God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?' and suffering during that brief utterance the sum of
all the agony of sensible insignificance and sensible homelessness
human nature ever has borne or will bear."
"Ah, the Christ! the Christ!" Lady Calmady exclaimed, half wistfully as
it seemed to Julius March, and half impatiently. She turned and paced
the pale pavement again.
"You are too courteous, my dear friend, and cite an example august out
of all proportion to my little lament." She looked round at him as she
spoke, smiling; and in the uncertain light her smile showed tremulous,
suggestive of a nearness to tears. "Instinctively you scale
Olympus,--Calvary?--yes, but I am afraid both those heights take on an
equally and tragically mythological character to me--and would bring me
consolation from the dwelling-places of the gods. And my feet, all the
while, are very much upon the floor, alas! That is happening to me
which never yet happened to the gods, according to the orthodox
authorities. Just this--a commonplace--dear Julius, I am growing old."
Katherine drew her cloak more severely about her and moved on hastily,
her head a little bent.
"No, no, don't protest," she added, as he attempted to speak. "We can
be honest and dispense with conventional phrases, here, alone, under
the stars. I am growing old, Julius--and being, I suppose, but a vain,
doting woman, I have only discovered what that really means to-day! But
there is this excuse for me. My youth was so blessed, so--so glorious,
that it was natural I should strive to delude myself regarding its
passing away. I perceive that for years I have continued to call that a
bride-bed which was, in truth, a bier. I have struggled to keep my
youth in fancy, as I have kept the red drawing-room in fact, unaltered.
Is not all this pitifully vain and self-indulgent? I have solaced
myself with the phantom of youth. And I am old--old."
"But you are yourself, Katherine, yourself. Nothing that has been, has
ceased to be," Julius broke in, unable in the fulness of his reverent
honour of his dear lady to comprehend the meaning of her present
bitterness. "Surely the mere adding of year to year can make no so
vital difference?"
"Ah! you dear stupid creature," she cried,--"stupid, because, manlike,
you are so hopelessly sensible--it makes just all the difference in the
world. I shall grow less alert, less pliable of mind, less quick of
sympathy, less capable of adjusting myself to altered conditions, and
to entertaining new views. And, all the while, the demand upon me will
not lessen."
Katherine stopped suddenly in her swift walk. The two stood facing one
another.
"The demand will increase," she declared. "Richard is not happy."
And thereupon--since, even in the most devout and holy, the old Adam
dies extremely hard--Julius March fell a prey to very lively
irritation. While she talked of herself, bestowing unreserved
confidence upon him, he could listen gladly, forever. But if that most
welcome subject of conversation should be dropped, let her give him
that which he craved to-night, so specially--a word for himself. Let
her deal, for a little space, with his own private needs, his own
private joys and sorrows.
"Ah! Richard is not happy!" he exclaimed, his irritation finding voice.
"We reach the root of the matter. Richard is not happy. Alas, then, for
Richard's mother!"
"Are you so much surprised?" Katherine asked hotly. "Do you venture to
blame him? If so, I am afraid religion has made you rather cruel,
Julius. But that is not a new thing under the sun either. Those who
possess high spiritual consolations--unknown to the rank and file of
us--have generally displayed an inclination to take the misfortunes of
others with admirable resignation. Dearest Marie de Mirancourt was an
exception to that rule. You might do worse perhaps than learn to follow
her example."
As she finished speaking Lady Calmady turned from him rather loftily,
and prepared to move away. But even in so doing she received an
impression which tended to modify her resentful humour.
For an instant Julius March stood, a tall, thin, black figure, rigid
and shadowless upon the pallor of the gray pavement, his arms extended
wide, as once crucified, while he looked, not at her, not out into the
repose of the night-swathed landscape, but up at the silent dance of
the eternal stars in the limitless fields of space. As Katherine,
earlier in the evening, had taken up the momentarily rejected burden of
her motherhood, so Julius now, with a movement of supreme
self-surrender, took up the momentarily rejected burden of the
isolation of the religious life. Self-wounded by self-love, he had
sought comfort in the creature rather than the creator. And the
creature turned and rebuked him. It was just. Now Julius gave himself
back, bowed himself again under the dominion of his fixed idea; and, so
doing, gained, unconsciously, precisely that which he had gone forth to
seek. For Katherine, struck alike by the strange vigour, and strange
resignation, of his attitude, suffered quick fear, not only for, but of
him. His aloofness alarmed her.
"Julius! dear Julius!" she cried. "Come, let us walk. It grows cold. I
enjoy that, but it is not very safe for you. And, pardon me, dear
friend, I spoke harshly just now. I told you I was getting old. Put my
words down to the peevishness of old age then."
Katherine smiled at him with a sweet, half-playful humility. Her face
was very wan. And speech not coming immediately to him, she spoke
again.
"You have always been very patient with me. You must go on being so."
"I ask nothing better," Julius said.
Lady Calmady stopped, drew herself up, shook back her head.
"Ah! what sorry creatures we all are," she cried, rather bitterly.
"Discontented, unstable, forever kicking against the pricks, and
fighting against the inevitable. Always crying to one another, 'See how
hard this is, know how it hurts, feel the weight!' My poor darling