The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
little what sacrifices she made, what fatigue, exertion, even pain, she
might be called on to endure. An enthusiasm of self-surrender animated
her.
During the last five months, slowly and with stumbling feet; yet very
surely, she had carried her life and the burden of it up to a higher
plane. And, from that more elevated standpoint, she saw both past
events and existing relationships in perspective, according to their
just and permanent values. Only one object, one person, refused to
range itself, and stood out from the otherwise calm, if pensive,
landscape as a threatening danger, a monument of things wicked and
fearful. Katherine tried to turn her eyes from that object, for it
provoked in her a great hatred, a burning indignation, sadly at
variance with the saintly ideals which had so captivated her mind and
heart. Katherine remained--always would remain, happily for
others--very much a woman. And, as woman and mother, she could not but
hate that other woman who had, as she feared, come very near seducing
her son.
Therefore very various causes combined to reconcile her to the coming
adventure. Indeed she set forth on it with so cheerful a countenance,
that Richard, while charmed, was also a trifle surprised by the
alacrity with which she embraced it. He regarded her somewhat
critically, questioning whether his mother was of a more worldly and
light-minded disposition than he had heretofore supposed.
There had been some talk of Julius March joining the contemplated
exodus. But he had declined, smiling rather sadly.
"No, no," he said. "To go would be a mistake and a weakly selfish one
on my part. I have long ceased to be a man of cities, and am best
employed, and indeed am most at my ease, herding my few sheep here in
the wilderness. I am part and parcel of just all that which we have
agreed it is wise you shall leave behind you for a while. My presence
would lessen the thoroughness of the change of scene and of thought.
You take up a way of life which was familiar to you years ago. The
habits of it will soon come back. I have never known them. I should be
a hindrance, rather than a help. No, I will wait and keep the lamps
burning before the altar, and the fire burning upon the hearth
until--and, please God, it may be in peace, crowned with good
fortune--you both come back."
But the adventure, fairly embarked on, displayed quite other
characteristics--as is the way with such skittish folk--than Katherine
had anticipated. Against possibilities of mortification, against
possibilities of covert laughter and the pointing fingers of the crowd,
she had steeled herself. But it had not occurred to her that both
Richard's trial and her own might take the form of an exuberant and
slightly vulgar popularity, and that, far from being shoved aside into
the gutter, the young man might be hoisted, with general acclamation,
on to the very throne of Vanity Fair.
The Brockhurst establishment moved up to town at the beginning of
April. And by the end of the month, Sir Richard Calmady, his wealth,
his house, his horses, his dinners, his mother's gracious beauty, and a
certain mystery which surrounded him, came to be in every one's mouth.
A new star had arisen in the social firmament, and all and sundry
gathered to observe the reported brightness of its shining. Rich,
young, good-looking, well-connected, and strangely unfortunate, here
indeed was a novel and telling attraction among the somewhat fly-blown
shows of Vanity Fair! Many-tongued rumour was busy with Dickie's name,
his possessions and personality. The legend of the man--a thing often
so very other than the man himself--grew, Jonah's gourd-like, in wild
luxuriance. All those many persons who had known Lady Calmady before
her retirement from the world, hastened to renew acquaintance with her.
While a larger, and it may be added less distinguished, section of
society, greedy of intimacy with whoso, or whatsoever, might represent
the fashion of the hour, crowded upon their heels. Invitations showered
down thick as snowflakes in January. To _get_ Sir Richard and Lady
Calmady was to secure the success of your entertainment, whatever that
entertainment might be--to secure it the more certainly because the two
persons in question exercised a rather severe process of selection, and
were by no means to be had for the asking.
All these things Ludovic Quayle noted, in a spirit which he flattered
himself was cynical, but which was, in point of fact, rather anxiously
affectionate. It had occurred to him that this sudden and unlooked-for
popularity might turn Richard's head a little, and develop in him a
morbid self-love, that _vanite de monstre_ not uncommon to persons
disgraced by nature. He had feared Richard might begin to plume
himself--as is the way of such persons--less upon the charming
qualities and gifts which he possessed in common with many other
charming persons, than upon those deplorable peculiarities which
differentiated him from them. And it was with a sincerity of relief, of
which he felt a trifle ashamed, that, as time went on, Mr. Quayle found
himself unable to trace any such tendency, that he observed his
friend's wholesome pride and carefulness to avoid all exposure of his
deformity. Richard would drive anywhere, and to any festivity, where
driving was possible. He would go to the theatre and opera. He would
dine at a few houses, and entertain largely at his own house. But he
would not put foot to ground in the presence of the many women who
courted him, or in that of the many men who treated him with rather
embarrassed kindness and courtesy to his face and spoke of him with
pitying reserve behind his back.
Other persons, besides Mr. Quayle, watched Richard Calmady's social
successes with interest. Among them was Honoria St. Quentin. That young
lady had been spending some weeks with Sir Reginald and Lady Aldham in
Midlandshire, and had now accompanied them up to town. Lady Aldham's
health was indifferent, confining her often for days together to the
sofa and a darkened room. Her husband, meanwhile, possessed a craving
for agreeable feminine society, liable to be gratified in a somewhat
errant manner abroad, unless gratified in a discreet manner at home. So
Honoria had taken over the duty, for friendship's sake, of keeping the
well-favoured, genial, middle-aged gentleman innocently amused. To
Honoria, at this period, no experience came amiss. For the past three
years, since the death of her godmother, Lady Tobermory, and her
resultant access of fortune, she had wandered from place to place,
seeing life, now in stately English country houses, now among the
overtaxed, under-fed women-workers of Whitechapel and Soho, now in some
obscure Italian village among the folds of the purple Apennines. Now
she would patronise a middle-class British lodging-house, along with
some girl friend richer in talent than in pence, in some seaside town.
Now she would fancy the stringent etiquette of a British embassy at
foreign court and capital. Honoria was nothing if not various. But,
amid all mutations of occupation and of place, her fearlessness, her
lazy grace, her serious soul, her gallant bearing, her loyalty to the
oppressed, remained the same. "Chaste and fair" as Artemis,
experimental as the Comte de St. Simon himself, Honoria roamed the
world--fascinating yet never quite fascinated, enthusiastic yet
evasive, seeking earnestly to live yet too self-centred as yet to be
able to recognise in what, after all, consists the heart of living.
She and Mr. Quayle had met at Aldham Revel during the past winter. She
attracted, while slightly confusing, that accomplished young
gentleman--confusing his judgment, well understood, since Mr. Quayle
himself was incapable of confusion. Her views of men and things struck
him as distinctly original. Her attitude of mind appeared
unconventional, yet deeply rooted prejudices declared themselves where
he would least have anticipated their existence. And so it became a
favourite pastime of Mr. Quayle's to present to her cases of
conscience, of conduct, of manners or morals--usually those of a common
acquaintance--for discussion, that he might observe her verdict. He
imagined this a scientific, psychologic exercise. He desired, so he
supposed, to gratify his own superior, masculine intelligence, by
noting the aberrations and arriving at the rationale of her thought.
From which it may be suspected that even Ludovic Quayle had his hours
of innocent self-deception. Be that, however, as it may, certain it is
that in pursuit of this pastime he one day presented to her the
peculiar case of Richard Calmady for discussion, and that, not without
momentous, though indirect, result.
It happened thus. One noon in May, Ludovic had the happiness of finding
himself seated beside Miss St. Quentin in the Park, watching the
endless string of passing carriages and the brilliant crowd on foot.
Sir Reginald Aldham had left his green chair--placed on the far side of
the young lady's--and leaned on the railings talking to some
acquaintance.
"A gay maturity," Ludovic remarked with his air of patronage,
indicating the elder gentleman's shapely back. "The term 'old boy' has,
alas, declined upon the vernacular, and been put to base uses of
jocosity, so it is a forbidden one. Else, in the present instance, how
applicable, how descriptive a term! Should we, I wonder, give thanks
for it, Miss St. Quentin, that the men of my generation will mature
according to a quite other pattern?"
"Will not ripen, but sour?" Honoria asked maliciously. Her companion's
invincible self-complacency frequently amused her. Then she
added:--"But, you know, I'm very fond of him. It isn't altogether easy
to keep straight as a young boy, is it? Depend upon it, it is ten times
more difficult to keep straight as an old one. For a man of that
temperament it can't be very plain sailing between fifty and sixty."
Mr. Quayle looked at her in gentle inquiry, his long neck directed
forward, his chin slightly raised.
"Sailing? The yacht is?"--
"The yacht is laid up at Cowes. And you understand perfectly well what
I mean," Honoria replied, somewhat loftily. Her delicate face
straightened with an expression of sensitive pride. But her anger was
short-lived. She speedily forgave him. The sunshine and fresh air, the
radiant green of the young leaves, the rather superb spectacle of
wealth, vigour, beauty, presented to her by the brilliant London world
in the brilliant, summer noon was exhilarating, tending to lightness of
heart. There was poetry of an opulent, resonant sort in the brave show.
Just then a company of Life Guards clattered by, in splendour of white
and scarlet and shining helmets. The rattle of accoutrements, and thud
of the hoofs of their trotting horses, detached itself arrestingly from
the surrounding murmur of many voices and ceaseless roar of the traffic
at Hyde Park Corner. A light came into Honoria's eyes. It was good to
be alive on such a day! Moreover, in her own purely platonic fashion,
she really entertained a very great liking for the young man seated at
her side.
"You have missed your vocation," she said, while her eyes narrowed and
her upper lip shortened into a delightful smile. "You were born to be a
schoolmaster, a veritable pedagogue and terror of illiterate youth. You
love to correct. And my rather sketchy English gives you an opportunity
of which I observe you are by no means slow to take advantage. You care
infinitely more for the manner of saying, than for the thing said.
Whereas I"--she broke off abruptly, and her face straightened, became
serious, almost severe, again. "Do you see who Sir Reginald is speaking
to?" she added. "There are the Calmadys."
A break had come in the loitering procession of correctly clothed men