The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
saying; "and doesn't grow bad peaches, not at all bad peaches, but is
stupid about flowers. He ought to retire. Never shall have really
satisfactory gardens till he does retire. And yet I haven't the heart
to tell him to go. Good fellow, you know, good, honest, hard-working
fellow, and had a lot of trouble. Wife ailing for years, always ailing,
and youngest child got hip disease--nasty thing hip disease, very
nasty--quite a cripple, poor little creature, I am afraid a hopeless
cripple. Terrible anxiety and burden for parents in that rank of life,
you know."
"It can hardly be otherwise in any rank of life," Lady Calmady said
slowly, bitterly. An immense weariness was upon her--weariness of the
actual and present, weariness of the possible and the future. Her
courage ebbed. She longed to go away, to be alone for a while, to shut
eyes and ears, to deaden alike perception and memory, to have it all
cease. Then it was as though those two beautiful, and now laughing,
faces of man and woman in the glory of their youth, seen over the
perspective of fair, white damask, glittering glass and silver, rich
dishes, graceful profusion of flowers and fruit, at the far end of the
avenue of guests, mocked at her. Did they not mock at the essential
conditions of their own lives too? Katherine feared, consciously or
unconsciously they did that. Her weariness dragged upon her with almost
despairing weight.
"Do you get your papers the same day here, Sir Richard?" Lady Louisa
asked imperatively.
"Yes, they come with the second post letters, about five o'clock,"
Julius March answered.
But Lady Louisa Barking intended to be attended to by her host.
"Sir Richard," she paused, "I am asking whether your papers reach you
the same day?"
And Dickie replied he knew not what, for he had just registered the
discovery that barriers are quite useless against a certain sort of
intimacy. Be the crowd never so thick about you, in a sense at least,
you are always alone, exquisitely, delicately, alone with the person
you love.
CHAPTER VIII
RICHARD PUTS HIS HAND TO A PLOUGH FROM WHICH THERE IS NO TURNING BACK
"Dearest mother, you look most deplorably tired."
Richard sat before the large study table, piled up with letters,
papers, county histories, racing calendars, in the Gun-Room, amid a
haze of cigar smoke. "I don't wonder," he went on, "we've had a regular
field-day, haven't we? And I'm afraid Lord Fallowfeild bored you
atrociously at luncheon. He does talk most admired foolishness half his
time, poor old boy. All the same Ludovic shouldn't show him up as he
does. It's not good form. I'm afraid Ludovic's getting rather spoilt by
London. He's growing altogether too finicking and elaborate. It's a
pity. Lady Louisa Barking is a rather exterminating person. Her
conversation is magnificently deficient in humour. It is to be hoped
Barking is not troubled by lively perceptions or he must suffer at
times. Lady Constance is a pretty little girl, don't you think so? Not
oppressed with brains, I dare say, but a good little sort."
"You liked her?" Katherine said. She stood beside him, that mortal
weariness upon her yet.
"Oh yes!--well enough--liked her in passing, as one likes the wild
roses in the hedge. But you look regularly played out, mother, and I
don't like that in the least."
Richard twisted the revolving-chair half round, and held out his arms
in invitation. As his mother leaned over him, he stretched upward and
clasped his hands lightly about her neck.--"Poor dear," he said
coaxingly, "worn to fiddle-strings with all this wild dissipation! I
declare it's quite pathetic."--He let her go, shrugging his shoulders
with a sigh and a half laugh. "Well, the dissipation will soon enough
be over now, and we shall resume the even tenor of our way, I suppose.
You'll be glad of that, mother?"
The caress had been grateful to Katherine, the cool cheek dear to her
lips, the clasp of the strong arms reassuring. Yet, in her present
state of depression, she was inclined to distrust even that which
consoled, and there seemed a lack in the fervour of this embrace. Was
it not just a trifle perfunctory, as of one who pays toll, rather than
of one who claims a privilege?
"You'll be glad too, my dearest, I trust?" she said, craving further
encouragement.
Richard twisted the chair back into place again, leaned forward to note
the hour of the clock set in the centre of the gold and enamel
inkstand.
"Oh! I'm not prophetic. I don't pretend to go before the event and
register my sensations until both they and I have fairly arrived. It's
awfully bad economy to get ahead of yourself and live in the day after
to-morrow. To-day's enough--more than enough for you, I'm afraid, when
you've had a large contingent of the Whitney people to luncheon. Do go
and rest, mother. Uncle William is disposed of. I've started him out
for a tramp with Julius, so you need not have him on your mind."
But neither in Richard's words nor in his manner did Lady Calmady find
the fulness of assurance she craved.
"Thanks dearest," she said. "That is very thoughtful of you. I will see
Helen and find out----"
"Oh! don't trouble about her either," Richard put in. Again he studied
the jewel-rimmed dial of the little clock. "I found she wanted to go to
Newlands to bid Mrs. Cathcart good-bye. It seems Miss St. Quentin is
back there for a day or two. So I promised to drive her over as soon as
we were quit of the Fallowfeild party."
"It is late for so long a drive."
Richard looked up quickly and his face wore that expression of
challenge once again.
"I know it is--and so I am afraid we ought to start at once. I expect
the carriage round immediately." Then repenting:--"You'll take care of
yourself won't you, mother, and rest?"
"Oh yes! I will take care of myself," Katherine said. "Indeed, I appear
to be the only person I have left to take care of, thanks to your
forethought. All good go with you, Dick."
It followed--perhaps unreasonably enough--that Richard, some five
minutes later, drove round the angle of the house and drew the
mail-phaeton up at the foot of the gray, griffin-guarded flight of
steps--whereon Madame de Vallorbes, wrapped in furs, the cavalier hat
and its trailing plumes shadowing the upper part of her face and her
bright hair, awaited his coming--in a rather defiant humour. His cousin
was troubled, worried, and she met with scant sympathy. This aroused
all his chivalry. Whatever she wished for, that he could give her, she
should very certainly have. Of after consequences to himself he was
contemptuous. The course of action which had shown as wisdom a couple
of hours ago, showed now as selfishness and pusillanimity. If she
wanted him, he was there joyfully to do her bidding, at whatever cost
to himself in subsequent unrest of mind seemed but a small thing. If
heartache and insidious provocations of the flesh came later, let them
come. He was strong enough to bear the one and crush out the other, he
hoped. It would give him something to do--he told himself, a little
bitterly--and he had been idle of late!
And so it came about that Richard Calmady held out his hand, to help
his cousin into her place at his side, with more of meaning and welcome
in the gesture than he was quite aware. He forgot the humiliation of
the broad strap about his waist, of the high, ingeniously contrived
driving-iron against which his feet rested, steadying him upon the
sharply sloping seat. These were details, objectionable ones it was
true, but, to-day, of very secondary importance. In the main he was
master of the situation. For once it was his to render, rather than
receive, assistance. Helen was under his care, in a measure dependent
on him, and this gratified his young, masculine pride, doomed too often
to suffer sharp mortification. A fierce pleasure possessed him. It was
fine to bear her thus away, behind the fast trotting horses, through
the pensive, autumn brightness. Boyish self-consciousness and
self-distrust died down in Richard, and the man's self-reliance,
instinct of possession and of authority, grew in him. His tone was that
of command, for all its solicitude, as he said:--
"Look here, are you sure you've got enough on? Don't go and catch cold,
under the impression that there's any meaning in this sunshine. It is
sure to be chilly driving home, and it's easy to take more wraps."
Helen shook her head, unsmiling, serious.
"I could face polar snows."
Richard let the horses spring forward, while little pebbles rattled
against the body of the phaeton, and the groom, running a few steps,
swung himself up on to the back seat, immediately becoming immovable as
a wooden image, with rigidly folded arms.
"Oh! the cold won't quite amount to that," Richard said. "But I observe
women rarely reckon with the probabilities of the return journey."
"The return journey is invariably too hot, or too cold, too soon, or
too late--for a woman. So it is better not to remember its existence
until you are compelled to do so. For myself, I confess to the
strongest prejudice against the return journey."
Madame de Vallorbes' speech was calm and measured, yet there was a
conviction in it suggestive of considerable emotion. She sat well back
in the carriage, her head turned slightly to the left, so that Richard,
looking down at her, saw little but the pure firm line of her jaw, the
contour of her cheek, and her ear--small, lovely, the soft hair curling
away from above and behind it in the most enticing fashion. Physical
perfection, of necessity, provoked in him a peculiar envy and delight.
And nature appeared to have taken ingenious pleasure, not only in
conferring an unusual degree of beauty upon his companion, but in
finishing each detail of her person with unstinted grace. For a while
the young man lost himself in contemplation of that charming ear and
partially averted face. Then resolutely he bestowed his attention upon
the horses again, finding such contemplation slightly enervating to his
moral sense.
"Yes, return journeys are generally rather a nuisance, I suppose," he
said, "though my experience of that particular form of nuisance is
limited. I have not been outward-bound often enough to know much of the
regret of being homeward-bound. And yet, I own, I should not much mind
driving on and on everlastingly on a dreamy afternoon like this,
and--and as I find myself just now--driving on and seeking some El
Dorado--of the spirit, I mean, not of the pocket--seeking the Fortunate
Isles that lie beyond the sunset. For it would be not a little
fascinating to give one's accustomed self, and all that goes to make up
one's accepted identity, the slip--to drive clean out of one's old
circumstances and find new heavens, a new earth, and a new personality
elsewhere. What do you say, Helen, shall we try it?"
But Helen sat immobile, her face averted, listening intently, revolving
many things in her mind, meditating how and when most advantageously to
speak.
"It would be such an amiable and graceful experiment to try on my own
people, too, wouldn't it?" the young man continued, with a sudden
change of tone. "And I am so eminently fitted to lose myself in a crowd
without fear of recognition, just the person for a case of mistaken
identity!"
"Do not say such things, Richard, please. They distress me," Madame de
Vallorbes put in quickly. "And, believe me, I have no quarrel with the
return journey in this case. At Brockhurst I could fancy myself to have
found the Fortunate Isles of which you spoke just now. I have been very
happy there--too happy, perhaps, and therefore, to-day, the whip has
come down across my back, just to remind me."
"Ah! now you say the painful things," Dick interrupted. "Pray
don't--I--I don't like them."