The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
the pastures. Over all brooded an opaque, gray-brown sky, sullen and
impenetrable. Lady Louisa saw all this. But she was one of those
persons happily, for themselves, unaffected by such abstractions as the
aspects of nature. Her purposes were immediate and practical. She
followed them with praiseworthy persistence. The landscape merely
engaged her eyes because she preferred, just now, looking out of the
window to looking her brother in the face.
"Something must be done for the younger girls," she announced. "I feel
pretty confident about Emily's future. We need not go into that.
Maggie, if she marries at all--and she really is very useful at home,
in looking after the servants and entertaining, and so on--if she
marries at all, will marry late. She has no particular attractions as
girls go. Her figure is too solid, and she talks too much. But she will
make a very presentable middle-aged woman--sensible, dependable, an
excellent _menagere_. Certainly she had better marry late."
"A mature clergyman when she is rising forty--a widowed bishop, for
instance. Yes, I approve that," Mr. Quayle rejoined reflectively. "It
is well conceived, Louisa. We must keep an eye on the Bench and
carefully note any episcopal matrimonial vacancy. Bishops have a little
turn, I observe, for marrying somebody who _is_ somebody--specially _en
secondes noces_, good men. Yes, it is well thought of. With careful
steering we may bring Maggie to anchor in a palace yet. Maggie is
rather dogmatic, she would make not half a bad Mrs. Proudie. So she is
disposed of, and then?"
For a few seconds the lady held silent converse with herself. At last
she addressed her companion in tones of unwonted cordiality.
"You are by far the most sensible of the family, Ludovic," she began.
"And in a family so renowned for intellect, so conspicuous for 'parts
and learning,' as Macaulay puts it, that is indeed a distinction!"--Mr.
Quayle bowed slightly in his comfortable corner. "A thousand thanks,
Louisa," he murmured.
"I would not breathe a syllable of this to any of the others," she
continued. "You know how the girls chatter. Alicia, I am sorry to say,
is as bad as any of them. They would discuss the question without
intermission--simply, you know, talk the whole thing to death."
"Poor thing!--Yet, after all, what thing?" the young man inquired
urbanely.
Lady Louisa bit her lip. He was very irritating, while she was very
much in earnest. It was her misfortune usually to be a good deal in
earnest.
"There is Constance," she remarked, somewhat abruptly.
"Precisely--there is poor, dear, innocent, rather foolish, little
Connie. It occurred to me we might be coming to that."
In his turn Mr. Quayle fell silent, and contemplated the reeling
landscape. Pasture had given place to wide stretches of dark moorland
on either side the railway line, with a pallor of sour bog-grasses in
the hollows. The outlook was uncheerful. Perhaps it was that which
caused the young man to shake his head.
"I recognize the brilliancy of the conception, Louisa. It reflects
credit upon your imagination and--your daring," he said presently. "But
you won't be able to work it."
"Pray why not?" almost snapped Lady Louisa.
Mr. Quayle settled himself back in his corner again. His handsome face
was all sweetness, indulgent though argumentative. He was nothing,
clearly, unless reasonable.
"Personally, I am extremely fond of Dickie Calmady," he began. "I
permit myself--honestly I do--moments of enthusiasm regarding him. I
should esteem the woman lucky who married him. Yet I could imagine a
prejudice might exist in some minds--minds of a less emancipated and
finely comprehensive order than yours and my own of course--against
such an alliance. Take my father's mind, for instance--and unhappily my
father dotes on Connie. And he is more obstinate than nineteen
dozen--well, I leave you to fill in the comparison mentally, Louisa. It
might be slightly wanting in filial respect to put it into words."
Again he shook his head in pensive solemnity.
"I give you credit for prodigious push and tenacity, for a remarkable
capacity of generalship, in short. Yet I cannot disguise from myself
the certainty that you would never square my father."
"But suppose she wishes it herself. Papa would deny Connie nothing,"
the other objected. She was obliged to raise her voice to a point of
shrillness, hardly compatible with the dignity of the noble house of
Fallowfeild, _double_ with all the gold of all the Barkings, for the
train was banging over the points and roaring between the platforms of
a local junction. Mr. Quayle made a deprecating gesture, put his hands
over his ears, and again gently shook his head, intimating that no
person possessed either of nerves or self-respect could be expected to
carry on a conversation under existing conditions. Lady Louisa
desisted. But, as soon as the train passed into the comparative quiet
of the open country, she took up her parable again, and took it up in a
tone of authority.
"Of course I admit there is something to get over. It would be
ridiculous not to admit that. And I am always determined to be
perfectly straightforward. I detest humbug of any kind. So I do not
deny for a moment that there is something. Still it would be a very
good marriage for Constance, a very good marriage, indeed. Even papa
must acknowledge that. Money, position, age, everything of that kind,
in its favour. One could not expect to have all that without some
make-weight. I should not regret it, for I feel it might really be bad
for Connie to have so much without some make-weight. And I remarked
yesterday--I could not help remarking it--that she was very much
occupied about Sir Richard Calmady."
"Connie is a little goose," Mr. Quayle permitted himself to remark, and
for once there was quite a sour edge to his sweetness.
"Connie is not quick, she is not sensitive," his sister continued.
"And, really, under all the circumstances, that perhaps is just as
well. But she is a good child, and would believe almost anything you
told her. She has an affectionate and obedient disposition, and she
never attempts to think for herself. I don't believe it would ever
occur to her to object to his--his peculiarities, unless some
mischievous person suggested it to her. And then, as I tell you, I
remarked she was very much occupied about him."
Once again Mr. Quayle sought counsel of the landscape which once again
had changed in character. For here civilisation began to trail her
skirts very visibly, and the edges of those skirts were torn and
frayed, notably unhandsome. The open moorland had given place to flat
market-gardens and leafless orchards sloppy with wet. Innumerable
cabbages, innumerable stunted, black-branched apple and pear trees,
avenues of dilapidated pea and bean sticks, reeled away to right and
left. The semi-suburban towns stretched forth long, rawly-red arms of
ugly, little, jerry-built streets and terraces. Tall chimneys and
unlovely gasometers--these last showing as collections of some
monstrous spawn--rose against the opaque sky, a sky rendered
momentarily more opaque, dirtier and more dingy, by the masses of
London smoke hanging along the eastern horizon.
Usually Ludovic knew his own mind clearly enough. The atmosphere of it
was very far from being hazy. Now that atmosphere bore annoying
resemblance to the opacity obtaining overhead and along the eastern
horizon. The young man's sympathies--or were they his prejudices?--had
a convenient habit of ranging themselves immediately on one side or
other of any question presenting itself to him. But in the present case
they were mixed. They pulled both ways, and this vexed him. For he
liked to suppose himself very ripe, cynical, and disillusioned, while,
in good truth, sentiment had more than a word to say in most of his
opinions and decisions. Now sentiment ruled him strongly and pushed
him--but, unfortunately, in diametrically opposite directions. The
sentiment of friendship compelled him hitherward. While another
sentiment, which he refused to define--he recognised it as wholesome,
yet he was a trifle ashamed of it--compelled him quite other-where. He
took refuge in an adroit begging of the question.
"After all are you not committing the fundamental error of reckoning
without your host, Louisa?" he inquired. "Connie may be a good deal
occupied about Calmady, but thereby may only give further proof of her
own silliness. I certainly discovered no particular sign of Calmady
being occupied about Connie. He was very much more occupied about the
fair cousin, Helen de Vallorbes, than about any one of us, my
illustrious self included, as far as I could see."
In her secret soul his hearer had to own this statement just. But she
kept the owning to herself, and, with a rapidity upon which she could
not help congratulating herself, instituted a flanking movement.
"You hear all the gossip, Ludovic," she said. "Of course it is no good
my asking Mr. Barking about that sort of thing. Even if he heard it he
would not remember it. His mind is too much occupied. If a woman
marries a man with large political interests she must just give herself
to them generously. It is very interesting, and one feels, of course,
one is helping to make history. But still one has to sacrifice
something. I hear next to nothing of what is going on--the gossip, I
mean. And so tell me, what do you hear about her, about Madame de
Vallorbes?"
"At first hand only that which you must know perfectly well yourself,
my dear Louisa. Didn't you sit opposite to her at luncheon,
yesterday?--That she is a vastly good-looking and attractive woman."
"At second hand, then?"
"At second hand? Oh! at second hand I know various amiable little odds
and ends such as are commonly reported by the uncharitable and
censorious," Ludovic answered mildly. "Probably more than half of these
little treasures are pure fiction, generated by envy, conceived by
malice."
"Pray, Ludovic!" his sister exclaimed. But she recovered herself, and
added:--"you may as well tell me all the same. I think, under the
circumstances, it would be better for me to hear."
"You really wish to hear? Well, I give it you for what it is worth. I
don't vouch for the truth of a single item. For all we can tell, nice,
kind friends may be recounting kindred anecdotes of Alicia and the
blameless Winterbotham, or even of you, Louisa, and Mr. Barking."
Mr. Quayle fixed a glance of surpassing graciousness upon his sister as
he uttered these agreeable suggestions, and fervid curiosity alone
enabled her to resist a rejoinder and to maintain a dignified silence.
"It is said--and this probably is true--that she never cared two straws
for de Vallorbes, but was jockeyed in the marriage--just as you might
jockey Constance, you know, Louisa--by her mother, who has the
reputation of being a somewhat frisky matron with a keen eye to the
main chance. She is not quite all, I understand, a tender heart could
desire in the way of a parent. It is further said that _la belle
Helene_ makes the dollars fly even more freely than did de Vallorbes in
his best days, and he has the credit of having been something of a
_viveur_. He knew not only his Paris, but his Baden-Baden, and his
Naples, and various other warm corners where great and good men do
commonly congregate. It is added that _la belle Helene_ already gives
promise of being playful in other ways beside that of expenditure. And
that de Vallorbes has been heard to lament openly that he is not a
native of some enlightened country in which the divorce court
charitably intervenes to sever overhard connubial knots. In short, it
is rumoured that de Vallorbes is not a conspicuous example of the
wildly happy husband."
"In short, she is not respec----"