The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
breathlessly into his place. Sir Richard's driving was rather reckless,
he ventured to think, on such a nasty, dark night, and with a lady
along of him too. He was not sorry when the pace slowed down to a walk.
That was a long sight safer, to his thinking.
"The right point of view is this," Richard said at last; "that in
accepting you would be doing that which, in some ways, would make just
all the difference to my life."
He held himself very upright on the sloping driving-seat, rather
cruelly conscious of the broad strap about his waist, and the high,
unsightly driving-iron against which, concealed by the heavy, fur rug,
his feet pushed as he steadied himself. He paused, gazing away into the
silent desolation of the now invisible woods, and when he spoke again
his voice had deepened in tone.
"It must be patent to you--it is rather detestably patent to every one,
I suppose, if it comes to that--that I am condemned to be of precious
little use to myself or any one else. I share the fate of the immortal
Sancho Panza in his island of Barataria. A very fine feast is spread
before me, while I find myself authoritatively forbidden to eat first
of this dish and then of that, until I end by being every bit as hungry
as though the table was bare. It becomes rather a nuisance at times,
you know, and taxes one's temper and one's philosophy. It seems a
little rough to possess all that so many men of my age would give just
anything to have, and yet be unable to get anything but unsatisfied
hunger, and--in plain English--humiliation, out of it."
Madame de Vallorbes sat very still. Her charming face had grown keen.
She listened, drawing in her breath with a little sobbing sound--but
that was only the result of accentuated dramatic satisfaction.
"You see I have no special object or ambition. I can't have one. I just
pass the time. I don't see any prospect of my ever being able to do
more than that. There's my mother, of course. I need not tell you she
and I love one another. And there are the horses. But I don't care to
bet, and I never attend a race-meeting. I--I do not choose to make an
exhibition of myself."
Again Helen drew her hand out of her muff, but this time quickly,
impulsively, and laid it on Richard's left hand which held the reins.
The young man's breath caught in his throat, he leaned sideways towards
her, her shoulder touching his elbow, the trailing plumes of her
hat--now limp from the clinging moisture of the fog--for a moment
brushing his cheek.
"Helen," he said rapidly, "don't you understand it's in your power to
alter all this? By accepting you would do infinitely more for me than I
could ever dream of doing for you. You'd give me something to think of
and plan about. If you'll only have whatever wretched money you need
now, and have more whenever you want it--if you'll let me feel, however
rarely we meet, that you depend on me and trust me and let me make
things a trifle easier and smoother for you, you will be doing such an
act of charity as few women have ever done. Don't refuse, for pity's
sake don't! I don't want to whine, but things were not precisely gay
before your coming, you know. Need it be added they promise to be less
so than ever after you are gone? So listen to reason. Do as I ask you.
Let me be of use in the only way I can."
"Do you consider what you propose?" Madame de Vallorbes asked, slowly.
"It is a good deal. It is dangerous. With most men such a compact would
be wholly inadmissible."
Then poor Dickie lost himself. The strain of the last week the young,
headlong passion aroused in him, the misery of his deformity, the
accumulated bitterness and rebellion of years arose and overflowed as a
great flood. Pride went down before it, and reticence, and decencies of
self-respect. Richard turned and rent himself, without mercy and, for
the moment, without shame. He pelted himself with cruel words, with
scorn and self-contempt, while he laughed, and the sound of that
laughter wandered away weirdly through the chill density of the fog,
under the tall, shadowy firs of the great avenue, over the
sombre-heather, out into the veiled, crowded darkness of the wide
woods.
"But I am not as other men are," he answered. "I am a creature by
myself, a unique development as much outside the normal social, as I am
outside the normal physical law. I--alone by myself--think of
it!--abnormal, extraordinary! You are safe enough with me, Helen. Safe
to indulge and humour me as you might a monkey or a parrot. All the
world will understand that! Only my mother, and a few old friends and
old servants take me seriously. To every one else I am an
embarrassment, a more or less distressing curiosity."--He met little
Lady Constance Quale's ruminant stare again in imagination, heard Lord
Fallowfeild's blundering speech.--"Remember our luncheon to-day. It was
flattering, at moments, wasn't it? And so if I do queer things, things
off the conventional lines, who will be surprised? No one, I tell you,
not even the most strait-laced or censorious. Allow me at least the
privileges of my disabilities. I am a dwarf--a cripple. I shall never
be otherwise. Had I lived a century or two ago I should have made sport
for you, and such as you, as some rich man's professional fool. And so,
if I overstep the usual limits, who will comment on that? Queer things,
crazy things, are in the part. What do I matter?"
Richard laughed aloud.
"At least I have this advantage, that in my case you can do what you
can do in the case of no other man. With me you needn't be afraid. No
one will think evil. With me--yes, after all, there is a drop of
comfort in it--with me, Helen, you're safe enough."
CHAPTER X
MR. LUDOVIC QUAYLE AMONG THE PROPHETS
That same luncheon party at Brockhurst, if not notably satisfactory to
the hosts, afforded much subsequent food for meditation to one at least
of the guests. During the evening immediately following it, and even in
the watches of the night, Lady Louisa Barking's thought was
persistently engaged with the subject of Richard Calmady, his looks,
his character, his temper, his rent-roll, the acreage of his estates,
and his prospects generally. Nor did her interest remain hidden and
inarticulate. For, finding that in various particulars her knowledge
was superficial and clearly insufficient, on her journey from
Westchurch up to town next day, in company with her brother Ludovic,
she put so many questions to that accomplished young gentleman that he
shortly divined some serious purpose in her inquiry.
"We all recognise, my dear Louisa," he remarked presently, laying aside
the day's Times, of which he had vainly essayed the study, with an air
of gentle resignation, crossing his long legs and leaning back in his
corner of the railway carriage, "that you are the possessor of an
eminently practical mind. You have run the family for some years now,
not without numerous successes, among which may be reckoned your
running of yourself into the arms--if you will pardon my mentioning
them--of my estimable brother-in-law, Barking."
"Really, Ludovic!" his sister protested.
"Let me entreat you not to turn restive, Louisa," Mr. Quayle rejoined
with the utmost suavity. "I am paying a high compliment to your
intelligence. To have run into the arms of Mr. Barking, or indeed of
anybody else, casually and involuntarily, to have blundered into
them--if I may so express myself--would have been a stupidity. But to
run into them intentionally and voluntarily argues considerable powers
of strategy, an intelligent direction of movement which I respect and
admire."
"You are really exceedingly provoking, Ludovic!"
Lady Louisa pushed the square, leather-covered dressing-case, on which
her feet had been resting, impatiently aside.
"Far from it," the young man answered. "Can I put that box anywhere
else for you? You like it just where it is?--Yes? But I assure you I am
not provoking. I am merely complimentary. Conversation is an art,
Louisa. None of my sisters ever can be got to understand that. It is
dreadfully crude to rush in waist-deep at once. There should be feints
and approaches. You should nibble at your sugar with a graceful
coyness. You should cut a few frills and skirmish a little before
setting the battle actively in array. And it is just this that I have
been striving to do during the last five minutes. But you do not appear
to appreciate the commendable style of my preliminaries. You want to
engage immediately. There is usually a first-rate underlying reason for
your interest in anybody----"
Again the lady shifted the position of the dressing-case.
"To the right?" inquired Mr. Quayle extending his hand, his head a
little on one side, his long neck directed forward, while he regarded
first his sister and then the dressing-case with infuriating urbanity.
"No? Let us come to Hecuba, then. Let us dissemble no longer, but put
it plainly. What, oh, Louisa! what are you driving at in respect of my
very dear friend, Dickie Calmady?"
Now it was unquestionably most desirable for her to keep on the
fair-weather side of Mr. Quayle just then. Yet the flesh is weak. Lady
Louisa Barking could not control a movement of self-justification. She
spoke with dignity, severely.
"It is all very well for you to say those sort of things, Ludovic----"
"What sort of things?" he inquired mildly.
"But I should be glad to know what would have become of the family by
now, unless some one had come forward and taken matters in hand? Of
course one gets no thanks for it. One never does get any thanks for
doing one's duty, however wearing it is to oneself and however much
others profit. But somebody had to sacrifice themselves. Mama is
unequal to any exertion. You know what papa is----"
"I do, I do," murmured Mr. Quayle, raising his gaze piously to the roof
of the railway carriage.
"If he has one of the boys to tramp over the country with him at
Whitney, and one of the girls to ride with him in London, he is
perfectly happy and content. He is alarmingly improvident. He would
prefer keeping the whole family at home doing nothing----"
"Save laughing at his jokes. My father craves the support of a
sympathetic audience."
"Shotover is worse than useless."
"Except to the guileless Israelite he is. Absolutely true, Louisa."
"Guy would never have gone into the army when he left Eton unless I had
insisted upon it. And it was entirely through the Barkings'
influence--at my representation of course--that Eddie got a berth in
that Liverpool cotton-broker's business. I am sure Alicia is very
comfortably married. I know George Winterbotham is not the least
interesting, but he is perfectly gentlemanlike and presentable, and so
on, and he makes her a most devoted husband. And from what Mr. Barking
heard the other day at the Club from somebody or other, I forget who,
but some one connected with the Government, you know, there is every
probability of George getting that permanent under-secretaryship."
"Did I not start by declaring you had achieved numerous successes?"
Ludovic inquired. "Yet we stray from the point, Louisa. For do I not
still remain ignorant of the root of your sudden interest in my friend
Dickie Calmady? And I thirst to learn how you propose to work him into
the triumphant development of our family fortunes."
The proportions of Lady Louisa's small mouth contracted still further
into an expression of great decision, while she glanced at the
landscape reeling away from the window of the railway carriage. In the
past twelve hours autumn had given place to winter. The bare hedges
showed black, while the fallen leaves of the hedgerow trees formed
unsightly blotches of sodden brown and purple upon the dirty green of