The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
trailing, velvet dress. The hushed stillness of the chapel, the
confusion and clamour of the tempest, taken thus in connection, were
very telling. They exercised a strong influence over her already
somewhat exalted imagination. Could it be, she asked herself, that
these typified the rest of the religious, and the unrest of the secular
life? Julius March would interpret the contrast they afforded in some
such manner no doubt. And what if Julius, after all, were right? What
if, shutting God out of the heart, you also shut that heart out from
all peaceful dwelling-places, leaving it homeless, at the mercy of
every passing storm? Katherine was bruised in spirit. The longing for
some sure refuge, some abiding city was dominant in her. The needs of
her soul, so long ignored and repudiated, asserted themselves. Yes,
what if Julius were right, and if content and happiness--the only
happiness which has in it the grace of continuance--consisted in
submission to, and glad acquiescence in, the will of God?
Thus did she muse, gazing questioningly at the whiteness of the altar
flowers and those steady tongues of flame, hearing the silence, as of
reverent waiting, which dwelt in the place. But, on the other hand, to
give, in this her hour of weakness, that which she had refused in the
hours of clear-seeing strength;--to let go, because she was alone and
the unloveliness of age claimed her, that sense of bitter injury and
injustice which she had hugged to her breast when young and still aware
of her empire,--would not such action be contemptibly poor spirited?
She was no child to be humbled into confession by the rod, frightened
into submission by the dark. To abase herself, in the hope of receiving
spiritual consolation, appeared to her as an act of disloyalty to her
dead love and her maimed and crippled son. She turned away with a
rather superb lift of her beautiful head, and went back to her own
bedchamber again. She hardened herself in opposition, putting the
invitations of grace from her as she might have put those of
temptation. She would yield to weakness, to feverish agitations and
aimless longings, no more. Whether sleep elected to visit her or not,
she would undress and seek her bed.
But hardly had she closed the door and, standing before her
toilet-table, began to unclasp the pearls from her throat and bracelets
from her wrists, than a sound, quite other than agreeable or
reassuring, saluted her ears from close by. It proceeded from the room
next door, now unoccupied, since Richard, some five or six years ago,
jealous of the dignity of his youth, had petitioned to be permitted to
remove himself and his possessions to the suite of rooms immediately
below. This comprised the Gun-Room, a bed and dressing-room, and a
fourth room connecting with the offices, which came in handy for his
valet. Since his decline upon this more commodious apartment, the old
nursery had stood vacant. Katherine could not find it in her heart to
touch it. It was furnished now as in Dickie's childish days, when,
night and morning, she had visited it to make sure of her darling's
health and safety.
And it was in this shrine of tender recollections that disquieting
sounds now arose. Hard claws rattled upon the boarded spaces of the
floor. Some creature snored and panted against the bottom of the door,
pushed it with so heavy a weight that the panels creaked, flung itself
down uneasily, then moved to and fro again, with that harsh rattling of
claws. The image of Care, the leopard, as embroidered upon the curtains
of her bed, was so present to Katherine's imagination to-night that,
for a moment, she lost her hold on probability and common sense. It
appeared to her that the anxieties and perturbations which oppressed
her had taken on bodily form, and, in the shape of a devouring beast,
besieged her chamber door. The conception was grisly. Both mind and
body being rather overstrained, it filled her with something
approaching panic. No one was within call. To rouse her brother, or
Julius, she must make a tour of half the house. Again the creature
pushed against the creaking panels, and, then, panting and snoring,
began ripping away the matting from the door-sill.
The terror of the unknown is, after all, greater than that of the
known. It was improbable, though the hour was late and the night wild,
that savage beasts or cares incarnate should actually be in possession
of Dickie's disused nursery. Katherine braced herself and turned the
handle. Still the vision disclosed by the opening door was at first
sight monstrous enough. A moving mass of dirty white, low down against
the encircling darkness, bandy legs, and great grinning mouth. The
bull-dog stood up, whining, fawning upon her, thrusting his heavy head
into her hand.
"Why Camp, good old friend, what brings you here? Are you, too,
homeless to-night? But why have you deserted your master?"
And then Lady Calmady's panic fears took on another aspect. Far from
being allayed they were increased. An apprehension of something
actively evil abroad in the great, sleeping house assailed her. She
trembled from head to foot. And yet, even while she shrank and
trembled, her courage reawoke. For she perceived that as yet she need
not rank herself wholly among fashions passed and things grown
obsolete. She had her place and value still. She was wanted, she was
called for--that she knew--though by whom wanted and for what purpose
she, as yet, knew not.
The bull-dog, meanwhile, his heavy head carried low, his crooked tail
drooping, trotted slowly away into the darkness and then trotted back.
He squatted upon his haunches, looking up with anxious, bloodshot eyes.
He trotted away again, and again returned and stood waiting, his whole
aspect eloquent in its dumb appeal. He implored her to follow, and
Katherine, fetching one of the silver candlesticks from her
dressing-table, obeyed.
She followed her ugly, faithful guide across the vacant disused
nursery, and on down the uncarpeted turning staircase which opens into
the square lobby outside the Gun-Room. The diamond panes of the
staircase windows chattered in their leaded frames, and the wind
shrieked in the spouts, and angles, and carved stonework, of the inner
courtyard as she passed. The gale was at its height, loud and
insistent. Yet the many-toned violence of it seemed to bear strange and
intimate relation--as that of a great orchestra to a single dominant
human voice--to the subtle, evil influence which she felt to be at
large within the sleeping house. And so, without pausing to consider
the wisdom of her action, pushed by the conviction that something of
profound import was taking place, and that some one, or something, must
be saved by her from threatening danger, Katherine threw open the
Gun-Room door.
The shout of the storm seemed far away. This place was quick with
stillness too, with the hush of waiting for the accomplishment of some
mysterious event or visitation, even as the dark chapel up-stairs had
been. Only here moving effect of soft, brilliant light, of caressing
warmth, of vague, insidious fragrance met her. Katherine Calmady had
only known passion in its purest and most legitimate form. It had been
for her, innocent of all grossness, or suggestion of degradation, fair
and lovely and natural, revelation of highest and most enchanting
secrets. But having once known it in its fulness, she could not fail to
recognise its presence, even though it wore a diabolic, rather than
angelic face. That passion met her now, exultant, effulgent, along with
that light and heat and fragrance, she did not for an instant doubt.
And the splendour of its near neighbourhood turned her faint with dread
and with poignant memories. She paused upon the threshold, steadying
herself with one hand against the cold, stone jamb of the arched
doorway, while in the other she held the massive candlestick and its
flickering, draught-driven lights.
A mist was before her eyes, a singing in her ears, so that she had much
ado to see clearly and reckon justly with that which she did see. Helen
de Vallorbes, clothed in a flowing, yet clinging, silken garment of
turquoise, shot with blue purple and shimmering glaucous green--a
garment in colour such as that with which the waves of Adriatic might
have clothed the rosy limbs of new-born Aphrodite, as she rose from the
cool, translucent sea-deeps--knelt upon the tiger-skin before the
dancing fire. Her hands grasped the two arms of Richard's chair. She
leaned down right across it, the lines and curves of her beautiful body
discernible under her delicate draperies. The long, open sleeves of her
dress fell away from her outstretched arms, showing them in their
completeness from wrist to shoulder. Her head was thrown back, so that
her rounded throat stood out, and the pure line of her lower jaw was
salient. Her eyes were half closed, while all the mass of her
honey-coloured hair was gathered low down on the nape of her neck into
a net of golden thread. A golden, netted girdle was knotted loosely
about her loins, the tasseled ends of it dragging upon the floor. She
wore no jewels, nor were they needed, for the loveliness of her person,
discovered rather than concealed by those changeful sea-blue draperies,
was already dangerously potent.
All this Katherine saw--a radiant vision of youth, an incarnation, not
of care and haunting fears, but of pleasure and haunting delights. And
she saw more than this. For in the depths of that long, low armchair
Richard sat, stiffly erect, his face dead white, thin, and
strained--Richard, as she had never beheld him before, though she knew
the face well enough. It was his father's face as she had seen it on
her marriage night, and on his death night too, when his fingers had
been clasped about her throat to the point of strangulation. Katherine
dared look no longer. Her heart stood still. Shame and anger took her,
and along with these an immense nostalgia for that which had once been
and was not. Her instinct was of flight. But Camp trotted forward,
growling, and squatted between the pedestals of the library-table, his
red eyes blinking sullenly in the square shadow. Involuntarily
Katherine followed him part way across the room.
Richard looked full at his cousin, absorbed, rigid, an amazement of
question in his eyes. Not a muscle of his face moved. But Madame de
Vallorbes' absorption was less complete. She started slightly and half
turned her head.
"Ah! there is that dog again," she said. "What has brought him back? He
hates me."
"Damn the dog!" Richard exclaimed, hoarsely under his breath. Then he
said:--"Helen, Helen, you know----"
But Madame de Vallorbes had turned her head yet further, and her arched
eyelids opened quite wide for once, while she smiled a little, her lips
parting and revealing her pretty teeth tightly set.
"Ah! the advent of the bull-dog explains itself," she exclaimed. "Here
is Aunt Katherine herself!"
Slowly, and with an inimitable grace, she rose to her feet. Her long,
winged sleeves floated back into place, covering her bare arms. Her
composure was astonishing, even to herself. Yet her breath came a
trifle quick as she contemplated Lady Calmady with the same enigmatic
smile, her chin carried high--the finest suggestion of challenge and
insolence in it--her eyes still unusually wide open and startlingly
bright.
"Richard holds a little court to-night," she continued airily, "thanks
to the storm. You also have come to seek the protection of his presence
it appears, Aunt Katherine. Indeed, I am not surprised, for you
certainly brew very wild weather at Brockhurst, at times."
Something in the young lady's bearing had restored Katherine's
self-control.
"The wind is going down," she replied calmly. "The storm need not alarm