The History of Sir Richard Calmady: A Romance
and gaily clothed women, of tall hats and many coloured parasols, and
in the space thus afforded, the Brockhurst mail-phaeton became apparent
drawn up against the railings. The horses, a noticeably fine and
well-matched pair of browns, were restless, notwithstanding the groom
at their heads. Foam whitened the rings of their bits and falling
flakes of it dabbled their chests. Lady Calmady leaned sideways over
the leather folds of the hood, answering some inquiry of Sir Reginald,
who, hat in hand, looked up at her. She wore a close-fitting, gray,
velvet coat, which revealed the proportions of her full, but still
youthful figure. The air and sunshine had given her an unusual
brightness of complexion, so that in face as well as in figure, youth
still, in a sensible measure, claimed her. She turned her head,
appealing, as it seemed, to Richard, and the nimble breeze playing
caressingly with the soft white laces and gray plumes of her bonnet
added thereby somehow to the effect of glad and gracious content
pervading her aspect. Richard looked round and down at her, half
laughing. Unquestionably he was victoriously handsome, seen thus,
uplifted above the throng, handling his fine horses, all trace of
bodily disfigurement concealed, a touch of old-world courtliness and
tender respect in his manner as he addressed his mother.
Ludovic Quayle watched the little scene with close attention. Then, as
the ranks of the smart procession closed up again, hiding the carriage
and its occupants from sight, he leaned back with a movement of quiet
satisfaction and turned to his companion. Miss St. Quentin sat round in
her chair, presenting her long, slender, dust-coloured lace-and-silk-clad
person in profile to the passers-by, and so tilting her parasol as to
defy recognition. The expression of her pale face and singular eyes was
far from encouraging.
"Indeed--and why?" Ludovic permitted himself to remark, in tones of
polite inquiry. "I had been led to believe that you and Lady Calmady
were on terms of rather warm friendship."
"We are," Honoria answered, "that is, at Brockhurst."
"Forgive my indiscretion--but why not in London?"
The young lady looked full at him.
"Mr. Quayle," she asked, "is it true that you are responsible for this
new departure of theirs, for their coming up, I mean?"
"Responsible? You do me too great an honour. Who am I that I should
direct the action of my brother man? But Lady Calmady is good enough to
trust me a little, and I own that I advocated a modification of the
existing _regime_."--Ludovic crossed his long legs and fell to nursing
one knee. "It is not breach of confidence to tell you--since you know
the fact already--that fate decreed an alien element should obtrude
itself into the situation at Brockhurst last autumn. I need name no
names, I think?"
Honoria's head was raised. She regarded him steadfastly, but made no
sign.
"Ah! I need not name names," he repeated; "I thought not. Well, after
the alien element removed itself--the two facts may have no
connection--Lady Calmady very certainly never implied that they
had--but, as I remarked, after the alien element removed itself, it was
observable that our poor, dear Dickie Calmady became a trifle
difficult, a trifle distrait, in plain English most remarkably grumpy,
and far from delightful to live with. And his mother----"
"It's too bad, altogether too bad!" broke out Honoria hotly.
"Too bad of whom?" Mr. Quayle asked, with the utmost suavity. "Of the
nameless, obtrusive, alien element, or of poor, dear Dick?"
The young lady closed her parasol slowly, and turning, faced the
sauntering crowd again.
"Of Sir Richard Calmady, of course," she said.
Her companion did not answer immediately. His eyes pursued a receding
carriage far down the string, amid the gaily shifting sunshine and
shadow, and the fluttering lace and gray feathers of a woman's bonnet.
When he spoke, at last, it was with an unusual trace of feeling.
"After all, you know, there are a good many excuses for Richard
Calmady."
"If it comes to that there are a good many excuses for Helen de
Vallorbes," Honoria put in quickly.
"For? For?" the young man repeated, relaxing into the blandest of
smiles. "Yes, thanks--I see I was right. It was unnecessary to name
names.--Oh! undoubtedly, innumerable excuses, and of the most valid
description, were they needed--were they not swallowed up in the
single, self-evident excuse that the lady you mention is a supremely
clever and captivating person."
"You think so?" said Honoria.
"Think so? Show me the man so indifferent to his reputation for taste
that he could venture to think otherwise!"
"Still she should have left him alone."--Honoria's indolent, reflective
speech took on a peculiar intonation, and she pressed her long-fingered
hands together, as though controlling a shudder. "I--I'm ashamed to
confess it, I do not like him. But, as I told you, just on that
account----"
"Pardon me, on what account?"
Miss St. Quentin was quick to resent impertinence, and now momentarily
anger struggled with her natural sincerity. But the latter conquered.
Again she forgave Mr. Quayle. But a dull flush spread itself over her
pale skin, and he perceived that she was distinctly moved. This piqued
his curiosity.
"I know I'm awfully foolish about some things," she said. "I can't bear
to speak of them. I dread seeing them. The sight of them takes the
warmth out of the sunshine."
Again Ludovic fell to nursing his knee.--What an amazing invention is
the feminine mind! What endless entertainment is derivable from
striving to follow its tergiversations!
"And you saw that which takes the warmth out of the sunshine just now?"
he said. "Ah! well--alas, for Dickie Calmady!"
"Still I can't bear any one not to play fair. You should only hit a man
your own size. I told Helen de Vallorbes so. I'm very, very fond of
her, but she ought to have spared him."--She paused a moment. "All the
same if I had not promised Lady Aldham to stay on--as she's so poorly I
should have gone out of town when I found the Calmadys had come up."
"Oh! it goes as far as that, does it?" Ludovic murmured.
"I don't like to see them with all these people. The extent to which he
is petted and fooled becomes rather horrible."
"Are you not slightly--I ask it with all due deference and
humility--just slightly merciless?"
"No, no," the girl answered earnestly. "I don't think I'm that. The
women who run after him, and flatter him so outrageously, are really
more merciless than I am. I do not pretend to like him--I can't like
him, somehow. But I'm growing most tremendously sorry for him. And
still more sorry for his mother. She was very grand--a person
altogether satisfying to one's imagination and sense of fitness, at
home, with that noble house and park and racing stable for setting. But
here, she is shorn of her glory somehow."
The girl rose to her feet with lazy grace.
"She is cheapened. And that's a pity. There are more than enough pretty
cheap people among us already.--I must go. There's Sir Reginald looking
for me.--If I could be sure Lady Calmady hated it all I should be more
reconciled."
"Possibly she does hate it all, only that it presents itself as the
least of two evils."
"There is a touch of dancing dogs about it, and that distresses me,"
Miss St. Quentin continued. "It is Lady Calmady's _role_ to be apart,
separate from and superior to the rest."
"The thing's being done as well as it can be," Mr. Quayle put in
mildly.
"It shouldn't be done at all," the girl declared.--"Here I am, Sir
Reginald. You want to go on? I'm quite ready."
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH KATHERINE TRIES TO NAIL UP THE WEATHERGLASS TO SET FAIR
It is to be feared that intimate acquaintance with Lady Calmady's
present attitude of mind would not have proved altogether satisfactory
to that ardent idealist Honoria St. Quentin. For, unquestionably, as
the busy weeks of the London season went forward, Katherine grew
increasingly far from "hating it all." At first she had found the
varied interests and persons presented to her, the rapid interchange of
thought, the constant movement of society, slightly bewildering. But,
as Julius March had foretold, old habits reasserted themselves. The
great world, and the ways of it, had been familiar to her in her youth.
She soon found herself walking in its ways again with ease, and
speaking its language with fluency. And this, though in itself of but
small moment to her, procured her, indirectly, a happiness as greatly
desired as it had been little anticipated.
For to Richard the great world was, as yet, something of an
undiscovered country. Going forth into it he felt shy and diffident,
though a lively curiosity possessed him. The gentler and more modest
elements of his nature came into play. He was sensible of his own
inexperience, and turned with instinctive trust and tender respect to
her in whom experience was not lacking. He had never, so he told
himself, quite understood how fine a lady his mother was, how
conspicuous was her charm and distinguished her intelligence. And he
clung to her, grown man though he was, even as a child, entering a
bright room full of guests, clings to its mother's hand, finding
therein much comfort of encouragement and support. He desired she
should share all his interests, reckoning nothing worth the doing in
which she had not a part. He consulted her before each undertaking,
talked and laughed over it with her in private afterwards, thereby
unconsciously securing to her halcyon days, a honeymoon of the heart of
infinite sweetness, so that she, on her part, thanked God and took
courage.
And, indeed, it might very well appear to Katherine that her heroic
remedy was on the road to work an effectual cure. The terror of lawless
passion and of evil, provoked by that fair woman clothed as with the
sea waves, crowned and shod with gold, whom she had withstood so
manfully in spirit in the wild autumn night, departed from her. She
began to fear no more. For surely her son was wholly given back to
her--his heart still free, his life still innocent? And, not only did
this terror depart, but her anguish at his deformity was strangely
lessened, the pain of it lulled as by the action of an anodyne. For,
witnessing the young man's popularity, seeing him so universally
courted and welcomed, observing his manifest power of attraction, she
began to ask herself whether she had not exaggerated the misfortune of
that same deformity and the impediment that it offered to his career
and chances of personal happiness. She had been morbid, hypersensitive.
The world evidently saw in his disfigurement no such horror and
hopeless bar to success as she had seen. It was therefore a dear world,
a world rich in consolation and promise. It smiled upon Richard, and so
she smiled upon it, gratefully, trustfully, finding in the plenitude of
her thankfulness no wares save honest ones set out for sale in the
booths of Vanity Fair. A large hopefulness arose in her. She began to
form projects calculated, as she believed, to perpetuate the gladness
of the present.
Among other tender customs of Richard's boyhood into which Katherine,
at this happy period, drifted back was that of going, now and again, to
his room at night, and gossiping with him, for a merry, yet somewhat
pathetic half-hour, before herself retiring to rest. It fell out that,
towards the middle of June, there had been a dinner party at the
Barkings on a scale of magnificence unusual even in that opulent house.
It was not the second, or even the third, time Richard and his mother
had dined in Albert Gate. For Lady Louisa had proved the most
assiduously attentive of neighbours. Little Lady Constance Quayle was